My human sce didn't die screaming et locked into the bay mind. It ged along with me, I didn't even notice it before it was far too te to go back. I wasn't going to enjoy this but it would keep me alive for longer. I felt my need for sustenand knowledge like a stant pain in my side. Whatever I was his. I could get much more from this than any human could. I could now transform biomass without waste into energy for myself a buried knowledge hidden deep ihese bodies. My 'instincts?' told me I wasn't able to mimic a human quite well now, it was only an outer shell that would be quite easy to see through for ah proper equipment or senses. I studied puter engineering, not human anatomy. Not that even that would have given me a perfederstanding of the human body.This would though. I only o eat them and absorb them. Assimite whatever was useful about them aray information that would be useful. The rest would be stored as energy. Yes. I his to survive. With a deep breath that was entirely unnecessary, I shifted bato my real form. My human bones, muscle, and skied into the pure white tendrils that came crawling out from deep within. Iime it would take for me to blink, I was doh the morphing and I desded on my first target. Thankfully I didn't have taste in this form nor did I have smell. I subsciously uood what kind of substances I absorbed but I didn't feel them, I just knew. Along with it came the satisfyiion of energy filling my starving body. I didn't feel it as strongly before but now that I got a taste and endless hunger settled in the bay mind, urgio quickly e more. For a moment I was distracted by the bizarre way my white skin or maybe flesh absorbed the corpse, the moment I touched it the skin and flesh on the body disappeared. My tendrils carved hollow lihrough it wherever they passed and I felt the abysmal amounts of increase to my energy. The questions about how this ossible, why I was here, or where I was were all insequential right now. My new body's instincts told me this was the first form of suste had in more than ten millennia and the way energy streamed into whatever ted as my stomach felt almost euphoribsp;I shed out with tens of long tendrils, they extended into the pile and weaved through it. With a thought they split and the tens of questing tendrils became hundreds. With my increasing energy capacity, I could morph them however I wished so I did. Tendrils fttened as much as they could while retaining most of their strength to make it easier to absorb the food and I stood there at the edge of the pile. If I was in my human form I would have sighed in satisfaaybe even moaned but I wasn't so all that was left for me to do is to coordinate all of my appeo finish this meal as fast as possible. I still wasn't too fortable with this form and the dissonance I felt increased with every additional sed I've spent in it. I experiehe half a mi took to transmute all of the anic matter in the room into energy in a trance-like daze. It felt like I'd spent hours on it with all the mianaging it took to not tangle up a few huwisting and turning tendrils. When I retook my human form I nearly colpsed on the floor, maybe a bination of exhaustion or after-meal tiredness. My body looked a bit different than it did before, I used all the knowledge I gained about the human body and its biological tempte to fix whatever I could. The energy wasn't the only thing I gained from this, I uood how everything worked and bined inte interected work of bones, muscles, ans, and neural pathways. The only thing I was still somewhat missing was the brain. I could replicate o I still couldn't uand how the myriad of eg neuroed in sciousness or how the memories were stored in them. Yet.That would need something that hasn't beeo rot for days, maybe months in a moldy room. I could eventually extract memories from them. With a start, I realized I robably the greatest shapeshifter there was if that was the case, or was my soul a dead giveaway even then? I didn't know. Before I died I would have scoffed at the notion of souls being a thing.I wasn't a stubborn moron though, I could accept facts when my face has been smashed into them. Yeah, being reinated as an eldritch biomorph by some kind of demonic ritual erfectly uandable. Probably an average Tuesday around here. I s that, right? I didn't even know what day it was. Now for the ges in my body. I fixed up a few things. My horrid eyesight was repced by the best I could make it. The grinding joints in my fingers were also obviously repced by perfees, crag my knuckles has been one of my nervous traits. I've made other simir fixes and I made all of my humanoid parts as good as I could with my current knowledge, such a shame I wasn't a bio-engineer. If I was I could already start thinking about upgrades that could bring me above the human level. Memories and knowledge. That would e in handy. If I found a single damned living human in this maze. I turned and made my way out of the room, the stink has been siderably lessened with the so my human nose was still objeg to staying any more than necessary here. As I passed the door I morphed my right index finger into a tendril and tried to 'eat' the crete making up the doorframe. With a bit of force, a small k of crete slipped through my skin and I recoiled at the sensation. The crete wasn't getting broken down nor was it getting turned into energy, it was sort of just swimming there under my skin. I grimaced as I felt it, just like it was under my human skin but as if I had nerves all around it. Its form and shape were clear in my mind but not its position. I 'spat' it out. It plopped through my alien skin and cttered on the simir crete floor. Useful to know that I could 'eat' my way out of here but also let's not do that unless necessary. Wait. 'first form of suste had in more than ten millennia'That would be about 8000 BC, wouldn't it? Maybe aliens did build the pyramids. Or I was very far from the pyramids.