My first thought is to go and find my missing parts, but I have no idea where to start. It's not like I was in a train and they fell out of the window, so I can backtrack my route. In other words, I'm stuck in this loli form for now. A loli in a white shirt and bloomers, which are actually nothing more than body paint.

Fortunately, this is a forest, so there are no wild beasts around who could be enticed by my appearance and attempt to eat me up. In the sexual sense. Unfortunately, this is a forest, so there are bound to be wild beasts that could be enticed by my appearance and attempt to eat me up. Not in the sexual sense.

Of course, all of the above was a red herring, because I'm actually staring into the eyes of one such beast, a wolf-like creature with a row of spines on its back, its shoulders about as tall as I am in my current form. Why is the first monster of these kinds of stories almost always a wolf? For now, neither of us is moving, but as if realizing that I'm alone, the beast sneers. At least that's how I perceive it, as it bares its sharp fangs and approaches me slowly.

Maou-mama, you didn't teach me how a Crawling Chaos fights. The image of the maou in elven queen form floats into my mind, looking away, closing one eye and sticking out her tongue. "Tehepero~" I flip a table in my mind in response.

I run away. There's nothing I can do with my small stature and little mass, and against a monster that seems more likely than not to be a member of a pack no less. If I kill it, it will most likely call out to its companions in its death throes. At least I'm confident in my running.

Obviously, I was wrong.

As if my short legs could outrun a canine's four legs! In fact, even if I were at full size, a wolf can still run faster than a human! It catches up with me in no time and pushes me down. Ahn, I'm gonna get ravished!

Sorry, now is not the time to make such jokes, I'm seriously in a pinch here. With a front paw on my back I'm completely pinned and unable to move. Its saliva drips on the ground next to me. The ground is sizzling and dissolving, oi! Acid saliva on a hunter-predator... why? Only the god of fantasy knows. Now it's sniffing me. I'm seriously going to get eaten! The story of Chaos-chan is going to end here, Maou-mama. I'm sorry to disappoint you...

With a whimper, the wolf takes its paw off of me and runs away with its tail between its legs.

I cry. You made me cry with that attitude of yours! Take responsibility and eat me!

So that's how a Crawling Chaos fights in the wild? By being unpalatable? I'm sorry I was born, world. Nobody would want to eat something that would take precedence to a cockroach when getting a mosaic applied, right? Even though right now I look like I did when I was ten... I feel like crying some more...

With the immediate danger averted, I have time for such idle thoughts. Maou-mama, you sent me here for training, you said. Does that mean I have to survive in the wild on my own for a certain amount of time and you'll come and get me when the time passes? Or will I have to find my way back to you on my own? It would appear that at least I'm not a member of the natural food chain. Or so I hope. There may always be a monster that eats even things that look unappetizing or inedible.

Like me.

I'm so hungry, I could eat myself. It should have been only an hour since I had the human king as breakfast, but I'm starving. There's no cute rumbling noise from my stomach. Instead, it feels like I'm actually eating myself from the inside out, dissolving my body to create energy to keep me going. That's not the case, is it? Regardless, I have to find food, this is a really uncomfortable feeling. Is that how it feels to starve to death? I'm not exaggerating, that's how bad it is.

There the wolf is again. It's eating a small furry animal it just hunted. Noticing my approach, it moves around to keep me within its line of sight. I won't fight you over that small thing, alright? Since it won't satisfy me. I'll just take you instead!

Dissolving my appearance, I change into the shape I had earlier this morning.  My arms and legs are made of tentacles, so if I unwind them, they should be longer than they appear. It's really strange, I instinctively know what I'm capable of, how to move all these individual appendages and use them to their full potential. This must be is inborn instincts.

Unraveling my leg tentacles explosively, they expand like a spring and I lunge forward. Taken by surprise, the wolf flinches and appears unable to respond in time, but I already latch onto it with my whole body, making sure to seal its mouth so that it can't call out to any potential friends. Time to eat.