A massive wall almost as tall as the mountain I stand on stretches far in the distance on either side of me. It's an obsidian black, with all kinds of battle scars and markings covering its surface.

  Behind it, Even bigger buildings stretch high into the sky, many being far larger, in both width and height, than this mountain. But the most important, and worrying part, was that it was all full of dragons. I could see thousands, ten of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dragons just moving and flying around in the massive metropolis. The golden dragon was being paraded through what looked like some sort of main street, towards the biggest building I could see.

  Compared to the towering structures, the dragons looked regular people-sized. They weren't. They were still bigger than most human buildings.

  I feel like I really underestimated what my memories meant when they told me I was deep in the wilds, and that the deeper you go the stronger things get. The more intelligent too, by the looks of all that engineering, organization, and communication.

  Now, I was ready to bolt at this point. I wanted no part in any of that. But as I turned to leave, something caught my eye. A reflection of the sun, coming off of the wall.

  No.

  Yes.

  I am not going closer to the giant city of dragons.

  But it's the first reflective surface I've seen! I have to try!

  Reluctantly, I turn into a worm and dive into the mountain. If i'm gonna go to the dragon city, i'm at least going to be stealthy about it. Which calls for some tunneling. I shoot downwards at first, then angle myself towards the dragon city. I grow every now and then, and like 1/4th of the way down I reach my max, so I sell and get Capacity again.

  Capacity: level 25 (32500) → level 26 (35100)

  I move closer to the side of the mountain (from inside), and carefully move so that the top of my wormy form peeks out of the ground while my speed picks up. I move both my eyes to the top so that I can actually use them to see, and watch the wall carefully. I don't know how good dragon eyesight is, so I need to keep an eye on them, just in case one of them spots me and I need to run.

  I zip through the ground with my frictionless body and all-consuming maw combining to make my descent off the mountain the fastest thing i'd ever done. The wall looms in my sight as I reach level (It still has an incline, it's just barely noticeable compared to the mountain) ground, and alter my trajectory to stay partially above the surface. I notice I'm about to reach my max again, so I sell the instant I max, barely preventing me from slamming into the ground.

  As I get closer to the wall, I notice just how scarred and roughed up it is. It has the looks of something that has endured countless tribulations, a monument of time and probably dragon crafting.

  I wanna eat it.

  I reign in the urge to eat it. It does look very tasty, but I'm here for one thing and one thing only. To see my reflection. Which might be a bit hard with how scratched up this bottom portion of the wall is. It's only reflective in the middle portion, the top portion dulled from so much dragon foot traffic.

  I guess I'll have to climb.

  I emerge from the ground, sliding into my spider form as I do so. Regular feet don't seem like they'd work to scale this wall, so I taper the ends of the limbs into thin points, then widen them along a single axis. This should allow me to stick them into the scratches and pull myself up without damaging the wall further. I hook my first limb onto the wall and begin climbing.

  I clamber up the wall, one eye roaming around the underside of my body to help find places to put my limbs, the other watching the dragons above for any hint that they've spotted me. They seem mostly focused on the things going on within the wall, with only a few looking outwards. None look down. I manage to navigate all the way to the middle, sometimes following the puncture marks of something else's attempt to scale the wall.

  I gaze at my reflection with both eyes, which are visible as two perfectly circular dots floating in midair. Huh. Good thing I came and checked, otherwise I never would have known that my invisibility was imperfect in such a way. I revert just my head back into my humanoid form, and color it a dull grey.

  looks like a cartoon cutout. My eyes don't even have any definition or depth, just void.

  It was what I expected, but not what I hoped for. Well, I got what I came for. Time to leave. I turn my head invisible again and absorb it back into the rest of my body, returning to full nightmare spider mode. One eye watching the dragons, one coordinating my limbs.

  As I'm almost to the ground, I spot something unusual out of the corner of my dragon watching eye. A bit further away, leaning over the wall, head drooped down, is a sharp, spiky dark grey dragon. Watching me. Not moving to attack or alerting any of it's companions, just watching.

  I turn dull white, revealing my form but not broadcasting my existence like the pure white color does. I wave at the dragon with one spider limb.

  The dragon lazily waves back, and I dive back into the ground, becoming a worm as I do so. So there are some friendly dragons, good to know.

  ¨ Sigh.¨ I rest my head on the side of the great barrier, my posture screaming boredom and exhaustion. Guard duty is the most boring. Nothing ever happens. Sure, the Prince is here now, but i'm probably the least patriotic dracona this side of the Golden City. The prince holds little importance to me.

  There was another fight with the wolves last night, and we killed them all, as per usual. Not that I got to participate.

  Movement.

  I whip my head up off the ground, eyes training on the tall mountain, trying to spot the source of the movement I noticed. There! At the bottom of the mountain, some sort of weird line is making its way towards us. I consider telling the others, but they're still so enamored by the sight of the prince I don't even bother. Not that it matters. Anything the seers don't pick up that gets this close isn't a threat.

  As the line gets closer, I become able to pick out more details. It's pretty small, with two black dots traveling forward on seemingly nothing. Is it using some kind of cloaking spell? It should probably hide those black spots then, or someone else might see it.

  It reaches the great barrier and, still invisible, climbs out of its tunnel. It pauses for a moment, then starts scaling it. It's close enough that I should be able to sense what it's doing to cloak itself, but I can't. So I just watch as the strange dots make their way up. If it gets close to the top I'll sound the alarm and attack.

  Halfway up, It pauses, examining the wall. Not sure why, the great barrier is just a giant slab of ancient dragon scales. Not much difference from one part to the other. As I watch the tiny thing, It seemingly de-cloaks part of itself, still staring at the wall. It moves it's ¨head¨ side to side, what I now know to be it's eyes glued to the wall.

  It's using the great barrier as a mirror. A surge of indignant anger rises from within me, but I squash it. The thing probably isn't even sentient.

  Seemingly satisfied with it's examination, the creature cloaks itself again and starts moving back down. I can still see your eyes you lower life form! I mock shake my fist at it. Yithanor, the hot red dragon who usually gets stationed up here with me turns, a questioning look on his face. I wave him away.

  ¨Go back to staring off into the distance menacingly, don't mind me.′

  ¨I wasn't going to say anything.¨

  He turns his menacing face back to its normal position, eyes locking onto something in the distance once more. Seriously, I don't understand how he's able to hold that pose the entire time we're up here. I get tired after just an hour.

  The creature is almost to the bottom when it suddenly stops. Both eyes turn to me. Oh, finally noticed me, have you?

  To my surprise the thing removes it's cloak entirely, revealing a rather large white spider. It frantically waves at me with one of its eight legs. I wave back. Then it dives into the ground, somehow transforming into a worm midair. Then it vanishes into the ground. It leaves a hole open behind it, and the long tunnel it dug from the tall mountain to all the way over here is still there, but it's so small, nobody's gonna notice it.

  Huh. Maybe guard duty isn't the most boring job. Just among them.

  I slide under the ground, moving parallel to the tunnel I made getting here. I now know that even when my skin is the color of air, my eyes are still visible. Troublesome, but I can't really do anything about it. I still need to see after all. I can't just get rid of my eyes. Maybe if I had sonar or something, but that would create other issues.

  Can I go back and pet the friendly dragon?

  I don't think that's a good idea. I'm too small to do that, for one, and the dragon would probably take offense to such an action. Maybe when I get a lot bigger I could come back and do that.

  I keep digging, getting another level in speed and two more in maximum capacity while I go. Yay, Upgrades! Other than that, I just travel in a straight line away from the wall. The only reason I was this close in the first place was because I didn't know it was there. I'm still way less powerful than even a single dragon, so a city of them is several orders of magnitude out of my league.

  Maybe I should go live in the wolves territory? They can't fly. They're wolves, so they probably have great noses, which means they might smell me and track me down. Or not, if I'm disguised as air, and tiny bits of me break off in the wind like what happened with the wood chips, won't they just smell air? The more I think about it, the better an Idea it becomes.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The wolves might be faster than me on land (might, i'm getting faster and who knows how fast i'll be by the time I reach them), but I can always just go underground again. I doubt many could follow me down here.

  My decision made, I alter course slightly, heading towards where I'm pretty sure the wolves are. I'm sure that, since they're willing to and able to fight with the dragons, they'll also have a decent amount of territory that I can hide in. I'm going to get big, and it'd be nice to have enough room to move around when I'm at my biggest.

  Oh hey, another max Capacity upgrade! That makes it level 29 now. I wonder when I'll be able to upgrade Multiplier? I am very interested to see what it does. I think about forms I could become that might be better at digging, but really, nothing can beat the tendril worm.

  Every now and then I grow, and it got really annoying having to constantly shrink myself by shunting mass to the back, then doing it again every two seconds. So instead, I widened the rim of my mouth. That way, the hole I'm moving through is slightly bigger than me, and when I grow I still fit inside it. I implemented this solution a while ago, and just didn't really think about it.

  I should be past the mountain by now, but that's nowhere near far enough.

  I know what that means! WORM TIME!

  ------------------------

  I have absolutely no idea how long I've been down here. I've just been eating and eating and eating, I've upgraded things so many times.

  Capacity: level 29 (43500) →level 43 (94600)

  Speed: level 12 (34) → level 25 (60)

  Growth: level 4 (4) → level 9 (9)

  Multiplier: level 1 (1)

  I zoned out while doing all this upgrading, and ended up assimilating more memories without any pain or other side effects. Most of them were related to languages, specifically, languages in this world. A bit of elvish, some orcish, a couple different human ones, and a surprising amount of draconian language. Not enough to make me sound like a native speaker by any means, but enough to understand a dragon when it talks.

  Anyway, that's not why I'm freaking out right now. I'm freaking out because Multiplier, after so much grinding and a lot of missing ground that no one will miss, can be purchased. I feel like purchased isn't the right word for it, acquired? Obtained?

  Reinforced!

  Reinforced doesn't make sense grammatically, but it feels closer to what actually happens when I put cubes into each upgrade. Speaking of which, in the cubes go.

  Capacity: level 43 (94600) → level 43 (104060)

  Speed: level 25 (60) → level 25 (66)

  Growth: level 9 (9) → level 9 (9.9)

  Multiplier: level 1 (1) → level 2 (1.1)

  I feel it as pure P?o???w???e???r??? floods my entire body, enhancing every aspect of my existence. Everything, not just the Upgrades themselves, gets multiplied. I can feel my control over my body increase, gain depth. Everything feels more real all of a sudden, like a haze had been lifted from my eyes that never close.

  HOLY SHIT! I wanna do that again!

  Not right now. It's time to go back up to the surface. I've been down here for way longer than last time, so we should be out of the dragons territory. All these upgrades have been great, but I can't just stay down here forever.

  Awwwww. Okaaaaay~

  I rouse my body from where it'd been laying down in the tunnel, and resume digging upwards. I find that I can morph and move my tendrils slightly faster, which helps. I'm very deep right now, but even at the deepest I'd ever gone, I still didn't feel it getting any warmer. Planets really are bigger than one can comprehend, aren't they.

  I turn, heading to the side for a bit, then I max and sell. The difference between my empty state and my full state has grown massively, to the point that my full state is almost bigger widthwise than my empty state is lengthwise, even in worm form. Another upgrade for speed, and I continue upwards.

  ...

  This is boring! Is there anything I can do to speed up all this digging?

  I think for a moment. The main limiting factor is propulsion, as I am fighting gravity for every inch of height gained. My tendrils stop hauling me up, and I hang, suspended over the massive drop into darkness. Inspiration strikes me, and I begin changing.

  Three curved spikes dig into the walls on each of my four sides. Then, my body elongates while becoming thinner, except for the general area around the spikes. The bottom of my form widens, and four long tentacles sprout from it. The tentacles head upwards, and connect to the blocks holding the spikes into the wall. The blocks disconnect from the rest of my body, and now I'm held in place by the tension between the tentacles, the pillar in the middle of my body, and the spikes in the walls.

  I go in and adjust a few proportions, making the limbs more evenly balanced and the spikes a little shorter. The plan is for these tentacles to fling me up by contracting extremely quickly, then having the spikes withdraw from the wall before they slow me down.

  Satisfied that none of my parts are going to snap off from the sudden force about to be exerted on them, I yanked. Shooting upward far faster than before, I only barely managed to retract the spikes in time. The only way I have to gauge my speed is how fast I was filling up, and I've been monitoring my hunger the whole time. Judging by how much the influx of material changed, this method is about 4-5 times faster. Means I max quicker too.

  I bring the tentacles back up, then ram them into the walls while shoving downwards. This adds to my speed even more, and I fall into a rythme. I rapidly approach my max, at which point I sell just before becoming full. This lets me upgrade Capacity yet again, and my momentum keeps me going up, even when there are no walls around me to push off of. That's why I sold a little early, to prevent myself from suddenly slamming into the ground.

  I might be tougher than I was in the beginning, but F=MA. My mass has continually increased, to the point I don't even know how much bigger and heavier I am. And my speed increased by over 4 times with my new form, so slamming into solid earth at those kinds of speeds could outright kill me. I just don't know, and a few points are not worth the risk of potential death.

  While I fly through the earth, I realize that when I reach the surface, I'm going to come flying out of the ground at top speed. Due to my method of travel, I have no actual way of telling when that will be, so it could happen at any moment.

  I'll just grow wings. That should work.

  I consider the thought. I don't know how heavy I am, again, haven't been able to compare myself to anything for a while. Thats a big reason I'm going back to the surface.

  Also, I haven't seen any color other than black for DAYS! It's dark down here! The half dead forests aren't any fun either! And while the mountaintops have actual interesting plant life, I STILL can't eat there because then the dragons will find me! ARGH! That was a horrible place to appear.

  My tentacles whiff, missing the walls when I haven't even maxxed.

  It takes me a second to realize that I'm seeing light again. And that I'm very, very high up. Finally, I've reached the surface. The blue sky stretches out before me, the evening sun bathing everything in warm tones.

  Beautiful scenery aside, I'm starting to fall. Wings! I need wings, or even just a parachute! Parachute would probably be better!

  I mush together all of my limbs and I close my mouth, then spread myself out in a wide sheet, as thin I as I think will hold. Essentially, I become a giant invisible piece of paper (you thought I changed into some other color? Wrong! I've been air color this whole time!) being pulled back to earth. I pull my corners down as best as I can to direct the pressure and slow me down, but the wind starts to pick up. It becomes more difficult to hold this form every moment as I slowly gain momentum.

  The momentum gain stops pretty quickly, to my surprise and great relief. I'm only barely able to hold my paper thin form together, and I'm still descending decently fast, but not at a rate that will kill me. I take a moment to observe the world beneath me. It's dark green, filled with animals and birds, the sunlight reflecting off all kinds of things and casting long shadows across the land. The hole I made sits almost directly beneath me, A bit bigger than most trees, but not actually that visible from up here.

  I look further out, and spot a giant, kinda squished outpost in the distance. It's got wolves in it, not dragons, thank god. I'm only barely able to see it because of my height, as it's actually pretty well camouflaged. If I was just a little higher or a little lower- and it's gone. Must be how they hide from the dragons. Smart. If I ever make someplace to live I'll probably also need to hide it.

  I land. It's not as gentle as I was hoping, but also isn't the crash landing I feared. It does jar me a bit, but I don't break. Or fall into the hole. I flap my thin self upright, away from the hole, and transition back into my base form. At half my maximum height, I'm past the level where I can walk under the trees without bending down. Speaking of, I don't think I ever really thought about how big the trees are.

  They seem to be normal tree height, at about 30 to 40 feet tall. Those dragons and wolves were walking and leaping over them, so I have quite a ways to go, even with how big I am already. If I assume that I'm kinda short in my base form, then at this point I'm already taller than any human who has ever lived.

  Wait, no, magic. There's totally someone out there bigger than me.

  I start walking, away from the hole and where I saw the outpost. I'm sure they'll come to investigate the hole eventually, and I want to be nowhere near here when they do so. They could find me while i'm sleeping but... do I even need to sleep? The purpose of sleep is to allow your bodies cells to rest and recover, while your brain sorts through information and organizes itself. I do not have either of those things, and my memories...

  What happens to my memories? I know that all of my initial ones are a mess, but what about the ones I've made?

  Looking through my most recent memories, I can recall them all perfectly. Every hour of boredom, every turn, every twist, the precise details of every form. Nothing I observed or felt was forgotten.

  Oh goodie, I have eidetic memory on steroids! Bet the world won't somehow find a way to make that a problem.

  I think, to myself, definitely not invoking the curse of inevitable ironic tragedy. I shrug away the pesky thoughts that aren't helpful anymore (Hey!) and keep walking. I dislike having to bend down constantly, so I flow into my dog/giraffe/satan spawn form. I also give myself three asymmetrical horns and a tail, because why not? It makes me look even more ridiculous.

  I start grazing, eating small bits of ground, pretending to chew for a moment, before going back for another bite. At this point I don't even know what animal I'm pretending to be. Either way, the ground is getting eaten.

  And I'm getting bigger. Once I hit my maximum capacity, even in this hunched over form, My back is almost bumping into the tree branches. I flow back into my base form, and compare myself to the surrounding trees.

  Still smaller. little bit more than half their size, but smaller.

  I almost equal them in girth, but i'm still just not big enough! I'll never be able to defend myself from the other giants of this forest like this! I must grow BIGGER.

  More.

  I need to eat more.

  Only one mouth is slow. I've messed with the rest of my body a lot, but I haven't really touched my eyes and mouth. That needs to change. Also, sometimes, when I get distracted on mental tangents, like this one, I stop eating or slow down. That also needs to change. Currently, my mind only has the bare frameworks of a personality, which means it's still malleable. Not as much as my body, but enough to serve my purposes.

  Am I about to mess with stuff I probably shouldn't?

  Yes. I am. First, I'm going to address the elephant in the room. There's two of us in here.

  There is? Oh wait, thats me.

  And me. You seem to be the eccentric one, the part who wants to do things. I'm the rational one, made of observations and logic. We need a third. One to execute and meld your desires with my observations and information. Nascent personalities though we are, I can already see how imbalanced we are.

  You hold far more sway over our actions than I, and this could put us at risk. A great example is that, despite how dangerous it was, we still walked right up to the wall, didn't we? I didn't want to, and could've just waited to find a lake or some other, less dangerous way to look at our reflection later. But you wanted to use the wall, so we did. And, right now, while we're thinking, we're not paying attention to the outside world. We need a part of ourselves to always be there, always be ready, and be able to take in input from both of us while doing so.

  So I'll make one.

  I begin searching through the memories for something to base this new personality on, something... robotic. Mechanical. Precise. I stumble across the concept of AI, and it's perfect. Grabbing some spare mental energy, and some cubes, I begin mixing them together while exploring the idea of AI further. I didn't think I could add the cubes, but they're surprisingly receptive to the idea, melding into the mental construct and forming a sort of framework without issue.

  Slowly, the new personality begins to take shape. I dive deep into how AI and computers actually function, carving their effects and capabilities into it's very core. Other me got bored and turned it's attention back to the outside, so they're busy doing who knows what. Probably eating, given how my fullness is increasing. The construct keeps growing, becoming larger and more complex and interconnected in my mind the more I work on it.

  It reaches out unprompted and connects to me, tethering me to it and it to me. It reaches out to the other one as well, and pulls us all together. I let go of the process and let it take it's course, not that I could control past this point anyway. It integrates us into itself, and itself into us, granting us bits of each other and pulling us even closer. We aren't one being, not fully, but enough to be mistaken for one.

  We continue to grow, drawing in more cubes and reinforcing the growing structure. We seem to be approaching some kind of precipice, a turning point. I brace myself as best I can, other me wonders if we're gonna go back and eat the wall soon, while our new personality stays silent.

  And suddenly, I'm complete.