Chapter 1:

Well, Fugu My Life

I was Turned Into an Engine of Calamity!? I Just Wanted to be a Foodie!


"Terry Gluzou, you have died." Were the first words I heard after the accident.

"Wha."

I looked around, finding that I was in a garden in an infinite featureless void. Standing before me was a beautiful…. Girl? Boy? It was hard to tell. They were pretty, and seemed to have an indistinct set of animal ears and a tail that seemed too vaguely off to call to mind any actual animal.

"You have died. Got wasted. Your mortal coil has drawn it's last breath. You decided to eat Fugu on the same day the chef's wife left him and took the dog."

I got the sense that they were somehow annoyed by my confusion. I sighed, slumping. "So I'm in purgatory?"

"Do you want to be in purgatory?"

"What?! No! Of course not! I'd much rather be continuing my Japan Food Tour!"

"Then this isn't purgatory…. And also not Japan."

I just stared at the… Furry.

"I'm not a furry. I'm a god, and you are dead."

"Yes, you… Said that already. Wait, you can read my thoughts? Nevermind… So, why am I here?"

"You already know. Died before your time, reincarnation, popular fiction topic, blah blah blah. So what do you want to be when you get there?"

If my jaw could hit the floor it would have. I had to take a minute to think about it. Fortunately, I wasn't just a man addicted to food.

"Fantasy world?" I asked.

"Closer to gas-lamp and steampunk, but magic and by your definition, fairly 'modern'. All the fantasy species and monsters… No you can't fuck them."

"Culture level? Technology? What's the food like?"

"We gods haven't been as tyrannical as your set, and the world and biodiversity is large, so there's not much issue there besides the occasional extremist group. Again, magipunk gaslight steam. Though with an equivalent technology level as your 20th, 21st centuries. Food is fairly regional unless you're wealthy, but you won't be inventing much new."

"Oh thank fuck. I would hate to have to try and replicate my favorite foods."

The deity crossed their arms. "Would you like to finish 20 questions or actually pick your cheat abilities? We can do pretty much whatever you want."

It was my turn to cross my arms. What did I want… I could wish for mega ultimate power, but I might reincarnate into a demon lord or something. I don't particularly feel like a hero, so…

"Man I wish I could eat as much as I want. Kind of a stupid power though…. You know that giant dinosaur creature that just hibernates and wakes up to eat basically everything? From that popular western TTRPG? Thing has three stomachs. I'd love to have that thing's abilities… Physiology, maybe? I just wanna eat good food…"

I couldn't help but ramble. I gazed up at the bright blue sky, watching a cloud drift by… looked like a hamburger… wait, cloud?

My gaze snapped back down, only to find that the void world had been replaced by a world world. A small slime that looked like an oil bubble was staring at me with large eyes. If anything, it looked as confused as I was. Kinda cute actually.

".... WAIT! DID YOU GIVE ME THE ABILITIES OR NOT YOU IMPATIENT GODDESS!?" I shouted to the sky.

Then I heard the growling behind my back… Turning to look back slowly, it seemed to be an exceptionally large gray bear. "Oh f-"

It's a good thing this is an autobiography and not a comic book, I absolutely would not be allowed to show you what state I was left in. Fortunately, that shitty god did actually give me the abilities I asked for… kind of.

I wanted to be able to eat and try anything without having to worry when I picked my power. I didn't expect to get its godly levels of regenerative abilities. So, did I literally turn into a monster?

It's thanks to that though, that I was able to see what happened to the bear and slime…. The slime won. It just fucking exploded all over the giant gray bear, dissolving it down to almost nothing in a few heartbeats. How a slime barely taller than my knees bested that thing is beyond me, must be a high tier variant or something.

Ah, shit. It seemed to notice my parts. Fortunately a good portion of my torso grew out from my severed head by now. Unfortunately the slime exploded all over my direction to start eating up my giblets.

There wasn't much I could do, though, as I didn't exactly know what I could do. So I sat there in agonizing pain as it ate it's fill. And it never seemed to fill.

Finally I had an idea. They said it's like the typical Isekai right?

"Status! Ow. You gotta stop sometime dude."

And up it popped. My status screen. I looked first at my health, and saw that it was creeping up slowly. This thing was eating me fast but not as fast as I could regenerate. I had nothing to compare my max amount to to know if it was high or low, so I simply moved on. At least it was trending upward one hit point at a time.


Name: Terrance Glutzou
Age: 20
Health: 44/350
Mana: 30/30
Level: 1

Mind: 40
Processing - 10
Memory - 10
Concentration - 10
Control - 10

Body: 60
Strength - 15
Agility - 10
Dexterity - 10
Constitution - 25

Spirit: 55
Ki - 10
Mana - 10
Power - 15
Will - 20
Skills: Cooking (3)☆, Eating (EXG)★★★★★, Dying (1);
Traits: Engine of Calamity; World Eater; Form Shifter; Outsider; Tutorial
Titles: Gluttonous Knave; Otherworlder; Blank Slate; Tutorial Participant.

"What the hell?! How is dying a skill? Are they fucking with me?"

A message screen popped up in front of my face. After thinking and speaking several command words, it finally opened after I poked the read button with my nose.

'Hey, you're kind of an idiot aren't you? Are you just going to sit there and let it eat you like that? I thought you wanted to be the apex predator? We have those kinds of Tarrasque type beings here too, by the way, so you might be in for a bad time if word gets out.

I've installed a menu for you, with a HUD function. You can reference anything you want to know in the compendium. Just think of the commands and it'll happen, soon it'll become second nature for you just like everyone else.

Don't forget, you're the apex predator. Let it eat you too long though and it'll split, then you'll have to deal with more of them.'

TITLE GAINED: Simpleton

I shook my head, clearing my vision of the message and status window. "You really are just messing with me… If I really was the apex predator, I'd also be a yautja or xeno…"

In the time that it took to read all that, I'd regrown an arm. I considered my options, watching the various bits and blobs of slime begin to grow. Ah, so that's what they meant by 'split'. I remember how slimes multiply now.

"This is probably going to taste awful…" I muttered to myself while picking up what I assumed was my now extraneous spleen and looking at the blob that was mindlessly eating away.

I cringed as I moved it closer to my mouth. It was in the dirt, that was extremely unsanitary… but i assumed I was immune to illness now. I didn't want my first meal to literally be part of myself mixed in with an unappetizing monster.

Opening wide I felt… weird. I could feel my jaw stretching and expanding, teeth growing to fill space. Before I could dwell too much on it, I popped it in my mouth and swallowed it whole. I shuddered at the taste, not horribly bad, but certainly not appetizing…

"Mmm, oily…. Could use some salt."

It didn't take too long before I was able to either peel off enough of the slime to eat it, or just eat the pieces it was eating. By then I had regenerated the rest of myself. I felt a small ding in my mind, which I saw was a notification when I visualized the hud again.

Potential gained! Health +1!

Checking my status screen again, I saw no additional hit points. Weird. I clicked around a bit, finding that the attributes could expand. They had a single bar beneath them labeled potential. No matter how hard I tried though I couldn't figure out how it worked from inside the attributes screen itself.

Fortunately, the Compendium started flashing. Checking it out, I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

"Skill, eating, exagen five star. Possessing multiple stomachs and teeth that can eat anything, absorb potential of creatures you eat. Every attribute has a potential rank, the higher the rank, the more the attribute gains on level up.
So like a monster catching game? What's the limit? Do I have to eat all of a mob? Their Gem? A ratio? Why is there no info? Damn thing is less a strategy guide, and more of a basic instruction booklet."

I looked around, checking to see if any loot dropped. Of course there wouldn't be, I ate the damn thing.

"This is going to make getting cash pretty rough, eh? Well, whatever, I'll figure it out when I get around to it. Maybe I can just chomp the legs off some bandits and steal their stuff."

I did manage to scrabble together a loin cloth from the scraps of the gray bear fur. Consulting the map function, I struck out towards the main road.

"Civilization and good food! Let's chew this!"

*~*~*~*~*
Name: Terrance Glutzou
Age: 20
Health: 44/350
Mana: 30/30
Level: 1

Mind: 40
Processing - 10
Memory - 10
Concentration - 10
Control - 10

Body: 60
Strength - 15
Agility - 10
Dexterity - 10
Constitution - 25

Spirit: 55
Ki - 10
Mana - 10
Power - 15
Will - 20
Skills: Cooking (3)☆, Eating (EXG)★★★★★, Dying (1);
Traits: Engine of Calamity; World Eater; Form Shifter; Outsider; Tutorial
Titles: Gluttonous Knave; Otherworlder; Blank Slate; Tutorial Participant.
*~*~*~*~*

*~*Engine of Calamity*~*
A trait possessed by those with the potential to end civilizations.
Effect: Similar physiology and capabilities to primordial beings of destruction.

Armorien
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AkuaSenpai
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