‚Well, aint that a surprise' Emilia thinks while inspecting her new body which looks like a ball made from tentacles.
She doesn't have the slightest clue how she ended up here, one moment she waters the plants in her apartment and the next she awoke in a dark cave with a completely different body.
Wiggling one of her many tentacles in front of her supposed face she takes a good look at the silvery surface and the neon blue veins which for a complicated pattern on her limb.
'Those blue lines kinda remind me of a nervous system. Anyway, what am I supposed to do now?' A bit lost Emilia tries to move by pushing the ground with her tentacles.
'HMM! COMEON !!' She pushes with all the strength her tentacles could muster, but in the end her core didn't even move an inch.
'So, does that mean I'm stuck here?' A strange expression form on the ball of tentacles, if one has a lot of creativity, one would be able to interpretate it as a annoyed frown.
'What the hell! I can't even move from my current position, what should I do from here inside this dumb cave?' Emilia's annoyance slowly starts to tip over to anger.
Frustrated she lashes out with one of her tentacles and smashes the silvery limb into tone of the walls of the cavern.
The moment the tentacle was about to connect to the wall all the blue veins on its tip start to glow brightly.
With a powerful sound the tentacle crashes into the wall, digging deep and leaving a trail where all the stone has disappeared.
Emilia immediately gets assaulted by a wave of information causing her to instinctively retract her tentacle.
After quivering in place for a moment, Emilia recovered from the sudden infodump.
'The fu*k!?' She curses.
Confused she shuffles through her mind only to come across something completely new.
At the edge of her mind, she finds something new, a storage area, the information contained inside this storage is solely about rocks dirt and some small insects.
'This doesn't feel like a memory or anything I have ever experienced, it almost feels like actual rocks and dirt is lying around in my mind.' Intrigued by this new part of her mind, Email dives deeper and tries to find out what is going on.
After a while examining this new part of herself and going over the cause of this new development, she came up with a theory.
'All things considered it looks like I'm able to devour physical objects and store them as information in this new part of my mind by touching them with my tentacles, but only if the tentacle glows or I wouldn't have been able to try and push off the ground when attempted to move.
This brings for some questions, am I able to spit things I devoured out again? How do I control that strange glow in my tentacle? What else can I do with this ability?' Emilia feels how a growing excitement overtakes her, driving her to explore the limits of her new abilities.
After calming down a bit, she starts to experiment around with her new body and ability, poking the ground, walls and roof of the cave with her tentacles trying to stimulate the strange glow again.
It takes her a good while to figure out how to control the devouring glow at will, but it was totally worth the many holes, dents and chasms she created while testing.
'Now that I can control the absorption of information it is time to figure out if I can spit them out again or what I can do with them other than just store them in my mind.'
Emilia enters her mind and goes over the extremely detailed information of the things she absorbed with her tentacles and tries to interact with them.
Her first few attempts end in failure, but after she figured out how to manipulate the information she stored, an almost unlimited number of possibilities opened up in front of her.
'Damn, I can freely mix, separate, combine and shape all the information I have stored. I can mix the information of all the dirt and rocks together and shape them into any form I want, hell, I can even combine rocks together with the information of insects that I absorbed while digging around the cave, giving them stone skin or shells.' Emilia's mind goes wild with ideas of things she could possibly do with such an awesome power.
Just before she completely lost herself in her own fantasies, she manages to wake up by telling herself that none of those ideas could be achieved if she doesn't find a way to turn the information back to something physical.
'Good, I'm calm again. Now where do I begin with trying to turn information into physical matter.' Pondering for a while she decides to just attempt to push the information from her mental storage out through one of her tentacles.
To her surprise this actually works flawlessly and without any real effort on from her part.
'…well, that was easy. NOW ON TO DEVOURING MORE THINGS AND CREATE LOTS OF AWESOME SHIT!!!' Unable to restrain herself anymore, Emilia lashes out with tens of tentacles gauging out deep chasms all around her.
It wasn't till a big rock crashes onto one of her tentacles that she realized that it maybe wasn't such a good idea to destroy the walls and roof of a cave.
Looking up at the cracking roof which threatens to collapse onto her at any moment, Emilia finally regains some of her wits.
'I probably should get the hell outa her if I don't wanna be buried underneath a sh*t tone of rocks and earth. But how do I move? I can't lift my body off the ground, nor can I pull myself around. 'A touch of panic appears in her mind, and she starts to brainstorm for any good ideas which would allow her to move to safety.
'Wait, can't I just dig a hole by absorbing the ground underneath me?... Wouldn't I also be able to absorb any of the falling debris before they can hit me?' Realizing that her situation wasn't as bad as she initially thought, Emilia no longer was in a hurry to come up with a way to flee.
She calmy warps her tentacles around her core not leaving any space uncovered before all the neon blue veins on her tentacles start to emit a bright glow.
Emilia instantly starts to sink into the ground as the earth and rocks underneath her get absorbed and transformed into information.
'Hahaha, it works! Doesn't that mean that I'm technical invulnerable? My tentacles absorb anything the moment it comes into contact with me, not allowing anything to hurt me.'
If her current body had a mouth it would currently be twisted into a giant grin.
Even more excited, Emilia continues to dig her way down, but instead of keeping her tentacles as close to her body as possible, she fans out all her spare tentacles in order to cover more ground and absorbing more matter.
Only after a long time did she stop digging downward, her senses have adapted themselves to the complete darkness allowing her to see her surroundings just fine.
'I should me a fair distance underground, on my way down I absorbed some ores and gemstones, I gotta find out if I can refine material while they are in information form, if it is possible then this would be a great boon. Also, this time I should be a bit more careful when absorbing the things around me, don't wanna be buried again.' With some ideas to work on Emilia starts to dig out tunnels and rooms, creating a strange cavern where the walls are completely smooth.
She does this for a while before her focus slowly starts to shift onto trying to refine the different ores which are currently lying around her information storage.
Something very convenient and useful about working with material that are in information form is that everything about the material is laid bare before her.
The hardness, flexibility, endurance and lots of other information about the respective material are freely accessible to Emilia, making it possible for someone like her who doesn't have the slightest idea about minerals, metal working or crafting in general to refine those impure lumps of ore into high quality material.
'Puh, its kinda exhausting to search each impurity in the information form of all those materials, maybe I can make something like a program which will do this for me.' Emilia lets her mind drift a bit not realizing that the tentacles which she used to dig never stopped their task even when she no longer paid any attention to them.
Silvery tentacles with neon blue lines extend out of Emilia's core into different tunnels and room, expanding the cavern further and further.
The farther the tentacles stretch the thinner they become causing the efficiency of digging to decrease.
Lost deep in her own thoughts Emilia remained obvious to pretty much everything including the continues refining of ores in her information storage.
After some time, she suddenly jerks out of her thoughts, having received a unfamiliar mental notification.
A bit confused after being brought out form her musing Emilia takes in the sight of a temple made from stone.
'Huh? What is going on?' She asks herself and surprisingly got an answer in the from of a string of memories in which her tentacles dug out this area to the point that they could hardly reach any future before starting to chisel patterns into the walls, pillars, ground and roof.
Just as the string of memories ended, another one started, showing her the process where all the remaining impure ore gets refined and turned into ingots.
'Did I do all this unconsciously?' Pleasantly surprised by this development Emilia inspects the temple and compares it to the memories in order to verify their truthfulness.
'Damn, this makes multitasking so much easier. I only have to start doing something and can leave after a while and my body will continue as if I'm still fully focused on the task.' She continues to gloat a bit before focusing again.
'Anyway, I came up with some ideas before my subconsciousness informed me that the two things I wanted to do are finished.
First thing, my inability to move around. This will limit me greatly so I need to find a way to move and expand my influence, one of the ideas is to try and absorb one of my tentacles and find out why I cant use them to move my body. I probably should try that out right now.' Without delay, one of her tentacles starts to glow and smashes into a second one.
The glowing tentacle effortlessly absorbs the attacked tentacle and Emilia feels how the information of the tentacle appears in her mind.
'Well, that worked great. Now I only need to figure out if I can reattach it or if I just lost one of my limbs forever.' Strangely excited, Emilia starts to exam the information of her tentacle.
The more she learned about the tentacle the more she understood how fu*king overpowered her current body is.
'From the looks of it my current body is something like a living dimension, solidified into this world. My tentacles act as collector tunnels which suck up matter and transfer it into the core where it is stored in the form of information.
The core is pretty much my only weak spot as it is solidified and can be attacked. The tentacles are space tunnels hard to hit or even affect.
This is also the reason why I can't use my tentacles to move, they aren't made form matter.
The more information is stored inside the core the more powerful the dimension gets, making it possible to form more collector tunnels expanding my reach.
Sadly, I still need to be careful, at my current level I'm unable to absorb energy, this means that my tentacles can't defend against things like heat, electricity and other forms of energy.' Emilia continues to exam the information of the tentacle which contains a ton of important information about her race, abilities and how they work.
After reading all the information she retracts all her tentacles and curls up into a ball.
'What should I do?' The question bounces around her head for a long time.
Now that she knows what she is and how her powers work, she too realized that she has become something so inhuman that it was even hard to call her a living being and in order to grow stronger she would have to kill and devour pretty much everything.
Memories of her old live flash past her inner eyes, showing all the good and bad times she had in her twenty-two years as a human.
With a deep and heavy mental sigh Emilia uncurls her tentacles.
There is a subtle change in the way the tentacles move around the cavern, gone is the underlying hesitation and awkwardness whenever the tentacles twist and turn.
'It is too late now, I am no longer human, so what good is it to keep hanging on those old principles and morals.' Emilia has made a decision, she would store and cherish the memories of her old live, but she won't be restrained by them in this new live.
A new life needs new principles and morals fitting of the new situation of the new life.
'Now with that settled let's come up with a plan to devour the world. From what I learned about my race till now it will take a while and lots of matter in order to enter the second stage of maturity. Right now I'm a infant, the second stage is maturity and lastly adulthood. In the maturity stage I will be able to absorb energy and in the adulthood stage I gain access to the secondary dimensions. I'm not entirely sure what the secondary dimensions are but I will eventually find out.
For my plan to devour the world, I think it is a good idea to try and get some minions which can help me.
They can carry me around or directly bring me food.
Now how the hell do I do this?' After thinking for a while Emilia's attention lands on the bugs she absorbed while digging.
'Maybe I can turn them into my minions, but I first need a way to control them or they will just run away.'
Skimming through the information of the insects I try to find something that can help me.
'What would happen If I combined them with the tentacle which I absorbed? Time to find out!'
And so, Emilia experiments around with fusing one of her tentacles with an insect.
While experimenting, her body starts to act automatically, and the tentacles wildly swing around the rather beautiful temple destroying everything in reach intending to collapse tons of rock and earth upon itself
This would allow her to continue to absorb great amounts of matter without needing to move away from her spot.
At some point Emilia absorbs some plants and mushrooms which fell down from further up because of the continues collapse she causes by absorbing all the falling materials like a black hole.
Imitating some of the information from different materials Emilia turn her tentacle into something similar to seeds.
She plants one of the seeds into an insect's brain and release it through one of her tentacles.
The centipede like insect stands frozen in place not moving at all.
Emilia wasn't discouraged and she activates the seed she plated inside the insect's brain.
In an instant she feels how a connection between her, and the centipede gets made.
'YES! It worked.' Her tentacles wiggle joyfully at her success.
Here's what she has done.
The seed made from her tentacle, which is a space channel connected to her core, is deeply rooted into the insect's mind, by sacrificing all the other functions of the tentacle except form the connection to the core she was able to form a channel between her and the insect's mind.
This connection has a great range because of the channel is practically a portal allowing the exchange of thoughts.
Using this connection Emilia is able to control the insects freely like all her other tentacles.
'Right now the usefulness and number of minions is greatly limited because of the lack of better creatures that can carry lots of things and the amount of tentacles I have. The number of tentacles will increase the more information I store in my core, as for the creatures, it depends on what I encounter. Right now I better stay underground and slowly accumulate, but it is almost certain that I will eventually come across some other creature.'
With a flick of her tentacle Emilia absorbs the insect back into her core and separates the tentacle from it before regrowing her tentacle.
The efficiency of the tentacles exceeds the insect by a lot, so she decided to leave this project on pause till she got better specimen.