I watched from where I'd just been violated by another pudding—like having a kinky sex toy doing things inside you that you're unsure if you like or not.

Though, to be fair, it had been rather tasty.

Where was I going with this again?

Oh, right. My mind looped back to some movement-restricting rope, three hard-pounding pistons, two titillating electrode clamps, and a cameraman with some online-viewers.

…Wait, what?!

Um… Forget that last part. I will neither admit to nor acknowledge giving porn a go. Nope. Absolutely not. No comment.

…Although… if it did bring in more readers…

This is how it starts. One minute, we're joking about kink gear, the next, we're starring in PuddingHub's top trending "Triple Penetration" category—

NO. STOP. FOCUS!

The gnome had crossed his arms in indignation, even sticking out his lower lip.

Yeaaaaah, I forgot other stuff was going on. Silly me for getting distracted.

Besides—it wasn't my fault he was two-foot-nothing—rounding up—and had been dead silent this entire time!

Anyone would've forgotten he was there!

Still… gods damn it. It was soooo cute seeing a pouting gnome. I could just gobble him up—literally.

He made a few other comments while talking with Asherah and Anal-lyth, but I didn't bother paying attention.

…No time for that.

Not when my beautifully deranged mind had already snapped back to the real priority here—

The glorious feast of corpses before me!

I squealed in delight as I oozed toward the nearest pile, all while desperately trying to ignore the boos in my head STILL bickering over the stupidest shit.

It's a basin!

It's a bowl!

It's a glorified bucket!

It's a receptacle of our gooey majesty, SHUT UP!

Can we go back to the porn topic?

No!

You'd think they'd be over the bowl vs. basin debate by now, amongst other topics, but nooo, the voices never shut up. Being insane is such a pain when your own shattered mind can't even agree on the basics.

So, I found myself humming a little tune—to tune them out?—as I crept forward, hunger rumbling through my sticky form.

Tune. Tune. Isn't that redundant?

Or genius?

"Eh, food first. Linguistic enlightenment later," I grumbled—or burbled?—through a series of popping bubbles, my hum never quite stopping as I dragged myself closer to the pile of delicious, rotting meat.

I might not have been a big hummer before—maybe a few times here and there—but I think I'll start taking it up more often. A lot more.

Seems to be the only way I can get some much-needed alone time.

You know, from myself.

BOOOOO!!!!

Hunger gnawed at me, a sharp, insistent need growing worse by the second.

A sticky tendril lashed out, smacking against the ground with a wet, sucking noise. I pulled, dragging myself forward, then again—another slap, another yank. My body oozed and stretched, every inch feeling heavier, sluggish. The putrid flesh was right there, the scent clawing at me, calling to me.

Another tendril. Another pull. Just a little more.

I heaved, the crushing weight of mana-starved air pressing against me like a boulder. One last push—I hurled a tendril forward, desperate to close the final gap—

Wet slap.

A sharp, sickening detachment.

Something was wrong.

I stopped. Stared.

The tendril was still there, flopped limply on the ground in front of me, but… it wasn't attached.

A thick, glistening strand of my own goo stretched between us, quivering, slowly thinning.

I didn't move.

It did.

I cocked my head—or what might pass for a head on a blob of tar-like black slime—staring as the severed tendril twitched, then sprouted legs.

Tiny, wriggling, octopus-like legs. Each one testing the ground in rapid succession, stretching, adjusting—like a newborn fawn finding its footing. Except, you know… more nightmarish and entirely made of me.

Amusement flickered through me. Huh. That's new.

"Aw. It's cute."

You think it's that Unnamed Skill? If so, we should name it!

"Hmm… A little pundle of horrors—oh, I know! Phantasia!"

Seriously?

Yeah, look at it. It works.

Fine.

I wiggled a small tendril, coaxing it closer. "Come here, little one…"

It twitched. It turned toward me.

Then it bolted.

Straight. For. My. Meal.

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Betrayal.

I felt it in my goo. My own flesh and blood—er, goo and goo— had turned against me.

"No! That's mine!"

A desperate lunge—an outstretched tendril—a dramatic, slow-motion reach—

But the little bitch was fast.

Panic bubbled up as my newest, most adorable (treacherous, backstabbing, insubordinate, meal-thieving) creation scuttled toward the pile of rotting meat that was rightfully mine.

How dare it?!

I was supposed to be the eldritch horror in charge here!

In my moment of outrage and betrayal, I completely missed the system notification updating my Unique Unnamed Skill to Phantasia.

That was a problem for later.

Right now?

I was in a race against my own rogue limb to devour as much as I could before that thieving little eldritch gremlin gobbled it all up first.

Phantasia might have had a head start, but I was on the pile right behind it, my flesh dissolving into the rotting corpses like butter on a hot pan.

This heap was made up of discarded enemies, the ones the beastkin had tossed in here like yesterday's trash. Their own dead, though? Those were neatly lined up—still rotting, of course, but with a little more dignity. You'd think they'd have figured out a better way to dispose of their fallen, but no. They were holed up in a makeshift bunker, waiting out their enemies, which meant no cremations, no proper burials. Just this big ol' underground stone chamber doubling as a morgue.

But they had nothing to fear.

Because I was here now.

To clean up. To feast. To make sure not a single delicious, decomposing scrap went to waste.

Tee-hee!

Now, I just needed to eat faster than that traitorous little pudding thief!

My vision was still shit with the lack of ambient mana, but I could imagine my new Champion looking a bit green around the gills, doing everything in her power to look anywhere but at me while I made gloriously wet, slapping sounds against the corpses, devouring my way through flesh and bone like a happy little nightmare.

Might as well torment her a bit.

After all, I still needed payback for her murdering my snack goblin.

"Anal-lyth! Anal-lyth! ANAL!"

I kept calling out, my voice bubbling with manic delight until—

"WHAT!"

Ohohohoho, there it is.

With exaggerated effort, I reaaaaaached up with two tendrils, trembling from so much exertion, proudly displaying a long, glistening intestine stretched between them. It was fresh from a dead human I was currently lounging inside of—his stomach was so comfy.

"You're a paladin, right?"

"Yes."

The word came out through gritted teeth.

"So, you know all the rules and laws about morality, yeah?"

"I suppose."

That hiss was delicious.

"Would it be considered necrophilia if I ate a corpse's dick?"

The sound of violent dry heaving was music to my nonexistent ears.

Grinning (or the gooey equivalent), I slithered forward, dissolving my way through the stomach, down through the hips, and straight through the dead guy's cock—which, by the way, had been rather impressive in size.

Not that it mattered—because as I bit down—or, you know, the pudding equivalent—the head popped right off and rolled away like some kind of grotesque meatball… or a mushroom cap? Shrug.

Worse still, a squiggly little octopus of black pudding suddenly launched itself out of the corpse pile and snatched it!

I shrieked, torn between mock outrage and genuine annoyance.

"That was mine, you little cock blocker!"

This little bitch was actually trying to out-eat me.

Fine. Two can play at this.

It helped that I was bigger—so, I started lashing out, flinging as many tendrils as I could, grasping at whatever flesh I could get my goo on. I was not about to lose a meal to my own rogue body part.

Glancing down, I spotted the little bitch happily munching on a severed finger. My irritation twisted into a smug satisfaction.

Ha! Pathetic. I was consuming entire torsos, and it was still playing with scraps.

I turned to gloat—but my nonexistent stomach dropped.

Another one.

Another tiny, wriggling, pudding-shaped traitor, this one dissolving a half-rotted face.

Wait… what?

I snapped my gaze back to the first one—yep, still gnawing on that finger. But now that I was paying attention, I started noticing more.

One devouring a hand.

Another squelching over a ribcage.

A third one burrowing into a corpse's gut like some horrific pudding parasite.

Is it multiplying?!

The little puddings didn't get much bigger—about the size of a grown man's thumb—but the moment they reached that size, they split. And then the halves kept eating. And splitting.

I watched in growing horror as my little pundle of horrors multiplied at a terrifying rate, wriggling and oozing over the corpses, devouring flesh and bone with disturbing enthusiasm.

Before I knew it, the collective Phantasia(s) had more mass than I did.

They were out-eating me!

And worse?

They were already moving on to the neatly lined-up corpses of the beastkin before I had even finished with the pile of their enemies. I'd been saving those for dessert!

"HEY! THAT'S MY FOOD, YOU SHITS! NO! BAD PHANTASIA! THAT'S MINE!"

I lunged—well, slithered aggressively—toward the last remaining corpse, which looked thoroughly molested, the rest having already vanished like cotton candy in water. But the little bitches were everywhere, scurrying out like over-caffeinated spiders made of my own flesh, searching for more.

I reached out in desperation.

…But before I could even grasp that last tasty corpse—

The hive of writhing black flesh pounced.

There was nothing left.

Gone.

I wanted to cry.

In fact, I think I even let out a few pathetic, sobbing noises—but let's be real, that was mostly me just whining about losing to my own skill.

As I carried on with my very valid tantrum, the hive of puddings crept back, slithering into my flesh one by one. I could feel it—the mass surging into me, spreading, growing.

A lot.

I doubted I'd fit back into the bowl.

Bas—

—Don't you dare start!

I should have been Hutt-sized with all that mass—but I wasn't. Where the hell did it all go? Some kind of quantum magic effect? A storage space in the Goo Realm™? No clue. Magic was bullshit.

In any case, I still looked like the same amorphous blob, roughly the size of a grown woman. Not in an attractive way, mind you—just goo with proportions.

No, that was something I needed to fix.

But how…?

My gaze flicked to my skill list.

Phantasia was now officially listed under Uniques—oh, joy—but my eyes landed on something else.

Divine Stellar Core.

With that thought, the skill activated.

Mana erupted from me in an instant—violent, torrential, a geyser turned volcanic explosion.

The first thing I noticed?

My sight returned.

The second?

A screaming gnome, flung through the air like a ragdoll caught in a hurricane.

My oh-so-lovely Champion braced herself, leaning into the force, one arm shielding her face as she squinted into the blast.

And Asherah?

Unbothered. Completely unfazed. The only sign she was even standing in the middle of this magical tempest was the way her hair whipped around in the gale-force winds.

The sheer flood of ambient mana crashed against me, and I sighed in relief as my body lifted itself from the pool of tar on the ground.

I was whole again.

A black mass, shifting—shifting—twisting into perfect feminine curves, my form laced with hairline fractures, like shattered glass with golden light seeping through.

No.

Bury it.

Deep.

If there was one thing I'd been good at in my last life, it was suppressing things about myself I wasn't ready to face.

The fractures sealed.

The golden light vanished.

I opened my eyes—gold, for only a flicker of a moment before fading back to their familiar, smoldering orange.

Next, I wove the silk. Layer after layer.

A white façade of delicate, moving silk, shaping itself into a perfect ghostly mask. The contrast against my void-black form was striking.

I smiled at the two onlookers.

No—make that three.

The gnome was picking himself off the ground, eyes locked onto me, growing wide with shock.

However, much to my confusion, the golden light hadn't disappeared.

The chamber was awash in it.

Even the mana—normally unseen—was visible, glimmering like golden flecks suspended in the air. It was the first time I'd seen raw mana that wasn't pink or blue.

The sparkling motes drifted, carried along by the still-twisting torrent of energy, swirling in a chaotic yet mesmerizing dance.

I followed the source—down, down—until my gaze landed on my chest.

A gaping hole in reality.

It was… beautiful.

And horrifying.

Like staring at something Divine.

Or into a—

Stellar Core?

Yeah.

"Blake, dear, would you mind tamping that down? You'll shatter the crystal array we have set up to hide any traces of mana from the invaders on the surface."

I blinked, glancing over at Asherah, who was watching me with mild amusement.

Oh. She's talking to me.

I gave a sheepish smile, muttering under my breath, "How the fuck am I supposed to do that?"

Turns out—it wasn't that hard.

The gaping hole in my chest sealed over, though I kept the skill partially active—like turning an open dam into a leaking faucet. I was still radiating mana, just enough to maintain my human-ish form, but not enough to flood the chamber… or, you know, the entire continent.

I glanced down.

A warm orange glow pulsed just beneath my flesh, nestled between my breasts.

I liked the look of it.

"So… what now?"

I flicked my gaze up, only to find three pairs of eyes locked onto me—two filled with something dangerously close to awe.

…Or was that fear?

Not sure.

But I liked that too.

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