Jack emerged from the murky waters gasping for breath. He had tried to say underwater for as long as possible. His body was covered in fat leeches greedily sucking on his blood.

In his hand was his familiar staff, while nothing had attacked him in the water yet, he wasn’t going in empty-handed. Nothing, that is, if you didn’t count the dozens of leeches.

He bent down and lept out of the water, landing a few feet away from the busy Lucy. She looked up from the tiny net of webbing she was currently weaving.

“Ok, get them, but leave this one.” He pointed to a leech that was attached to his forearm. Lucy dropped the net and proceeded to climb up his legs, gently sinking her fangs into the attached leeches.

The leeches injected with venom would gradually turn black and drop off of him. After clearing his legs off, she would remove the rest of them in a similar fashion.

After some trial and error, they found this to be the best way to give Lucy the majority of the experience from the kills, leaving Jack with about ten percent.

While she cleared the leeches, Jack was poking and prodding the single one on his arm.

Carmilla’s Chosen Level: 1 Highest Skill: Blood Drain, Carmilla's Kiss, Swim

He had already unlocked both Swim and Carmilla’s Kiss from the little parasites. He figured he could have easily unlocked Swim by himself, but learning it from the leech gave him a level in Mimicry. Carmilla’s Kiss seemed to be some evolution of the Bite skill. Neither of them were skills he actually wanted so he didn't bother learning them.

Skills were definitely weird when it came to what ones he could unlock. After unlocking the Bite skill, he tried to also learn Lucy’s Poison Fang Mastery, but was not able to. After enough time, he got an odd feeling from Mimicry that he interpreted as meaning he already knew the skill.

So his theory was that somehow Fang Mastery and Bite were considered the same skill. Either that or they were close enough that having one unlocked prevented you from learning the other. Again, skills are weird. He wondered, theoretically, if he grew fangs, would Bite change?

Right now his focus was on getting the Blood Drain skill. He wasn’t particularly interested in drinking blood, but the skill could have a lot of possibilities. Health draining being the biggest.

It was the third or fourth batch of leeches that day, and so far he couldn’t figure out Blood Drain, but he had an idea.

The first part of the idea was already accomplished, and that had to do with the Carmilla’s Kiss affliction. Turns out it was a poison and he had been building up a tolerance to it. His blood would still thin, but he could now feel the tiny bites of all the leeches.

Once the numbing part of the poison no longer affected him, he was surprised to find that the system would notify him when he would be poisoned. It led him to believe that there were poisons out there that could specifically block the poison notification.

Now that he could feel the bites, the second part of his idea could be done.

Using focused senses, he narrowed in on the feeling of his arm. The blood pulsing under his skin. The leeches teeth stabbing into him. The suction of its ‘lips’ attaching itself to him. His blood would flow from the wound and fill the area inside of the leeches ‘lips,’ then he would feel the slightest increase in pressure as the blood was vacuumed into the leeches body.

The entire process had his undivided attention for several minutes. The steady rhythm of his heart matching the increases in suction.

Whenever he was trying to understand a skill, it almost felt like he was filling a balloon with water. The information about the skill was the water, and his focus was the pressure that filled the balloon. The balloon would expand and expand until it couldn’t hold anymore and it would suddenly pop.

**Skill Up** Mimicry Level 9 **Skill Unlocked ** Through observation, you have unlocked Blood Drain with Mimicry. Would you like to learn this skill? Yes No

He replaced Burrowing with Blood Drain. That was not something he was looking forward to training.

Blood Drain Level: 1 Drain the blood out of a target.

Jack looked around at the blackened, shriveled leeches surrounding him. Lucy’s venom was particularly effective against them. She only had to inject them with a tiny amount for it to kill them.

They ran into an issue earlier where she ran out of venom. She only had enough venom for around sixty ‘normal bites total. The venom replenished at about two to three bites an hour. After finding this out, she started injecting the leeches with the smallest amount possible to kill them. One normal dose could be split between around seven leeches.

Jack’s guess was that her skill level had a correlation to her maximum stored venom. Since she was level six and the max was sixty it kind of fit. Her venom production rate also seemed to work out that she could fully restore her supply in one day.

Lucy had gone back to working on her net, so he used his knife to push off the last leech and stomp on it.

Your party has slain 30 Carmilla’s Chosen Level: 1

Your contribution 10%

You are awarded 22 Experience.

That should have been enough for Lucy to level. He pulled up her sheet and, sure enough, she was finally the same level as him. All of her attributes went up by themselves again, her vitality even went up two points. That’s twice on even levels now. He put her extra point into vitality and looked over her whole sheet.

Name Lucifer Race ManaWeaver Age 1 Month Level 6 Health 35/35 Stamina 14/14 Experience 6/600 Strength 3 Dexterity 5 Endurance 4 Vitality 10 Perception 4 Available Attribute Points 0 Skills Hydraulic Assist Lvl 8 Poison Fang Mastery Lvl 6 Hair Manipulation Lvl 5 (15) Sneak Lvl 4 Web Weaving Lvl 3 Unlocked Skills Burrow, Grapple

He finally felt comfortable with her health. Because she is so small she still seemed fragile, but her current health is about the same as his when he was level five. Though her regeneration at half a percent an hour was nowhere near his, but that was because of Human Resilience.

Now he could start investing in her endurance and dexterity.

After double-checking that he had plenty of health, he jumped back into the water. Submerging himself, he released an Empowered Howl. Jack figured out the leeches flocked towards movement in the water, so howling underwater was like ringing a dinner bell.

“Seven days,” Jack was avoiding an unpleasant task by telling Lucy his thoughts. “That’s how long we have until this place breaks. Then we have to deal with that wolf out there.”

With all the fighting they’ve done while in the dungeon, he felt the chances that they could either kill the wolf or, at the very least escape it, were very high. His primary concern was unlocking its Mana Absorption skill before he had to fight it.

Lucy was practically oozing confidence at the thought of taking on the wolf.

He wagged an index finger towards her. “Don’t get too big of a head, little miss deadly. Most of the things we have fought are too stupid to pose a genuine threat by themselves. I know you feel a lot stronger than before we came here, but that wolf is still very dangerous.”

In response, he received an image of a dead wolf and a giant Lucy standing over it in triumph.

He barely held back a laugh. “You are nowhere near that size, you are barely as big as a softball.”

Lucy lifted her front legs and let out a hiss.

He raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Oooh, I am so sorry. You’re huge, how could I not see that.”

She began to twirl around in a circle and move around the tunnel. It was something she had started doing when she was bored or felt she had outsmarted him in some way.

A ribbit came from the water pouch, distracting Jack from Lucy’s twirling. The crowned prince hadn’t run off yet, seemingly content with his faux puddle. This was fortunate for Jack since his upgraded Identify revealed a new skill for him to learn, Mucus Shield. So far, the skill proved to be more difficult to figure out.

Glancing back to the spider, he saw she had already moved on from twirling and started to build a small nest of webs.

He sighed and looked over to the bound, unconscious rabbit. Blood Drain wasn’t going to level itself up.

The thought of drinking blood made him want to puke, though. He didn’t even like his steak to be bloody; he'd always order it well done.

The instincts that Mimicry gave him when he thought about activating the skill pushed him to bite into its neck and start sucking. His natural instincts though recoiled against that.

Maybe he could just cut its neck and drink the blood from there, it might make it easier.

Grabbing the rabbit, he brought a knife to its throat. His heart was beating quickly as anxiety filled his entire being.

With a deep breath, he cut deep into its neck. Quickly, he pressed his mouth to the gash and began to suck.

Warm blood swiftly flowed into his mouth. He was overwhelmed with the taste of iron. He tried to swallow, but when it was halfway down his throat, his stomach lurched.

He dropped the rabbit. A moment later, the contents of his stomach, plus all the blood, were splattered across the ground.

Jack was on his knees in a coughing fit as his stomach lurched again.

He summoned his inventory and furiously washed out his mouth with water.

Using Hair Manipulation, Jack was poking around at the hair-tubes all over his body. He was trying to take his mind off his failed experience with Blood Drain.

The hairs probably had another week until they started poking out of his skin, so he still wasn’t worried about ruining what’s already grown.

He was experimenting with opening and closing tubes all over his body, just getting a better feel for it. He’d never been a fan of facial hair, so he closed most of the ones on his face.

He opened all the ones on his hands in anticipation of future wall climbing. As he flipped the ‘switches’ that opened and closed the tubes, he noticed an odd pulse go through the tube when he opened it.

Rapidly opening and closing a tube gave him a better view of what the pulse was doing. The pulse flowed through the entire tube from top to bottom, it even traveled through the string-like object that he thought connected to his blood vessel.

The pulse revealed something interesting, though. Previously he thought that the bottom of a tube was pinched shut like the tops were when they were closed. But following the pulse, it showed that the bottom was twisted shut, not pinched.

That explained the resistance he felt trying to open it. He was trying to pry it open and that would have torn the tube. Instead, the entire tube needed to be rotated to open it up.

Choosing a single tube on the back of his hand, he slowly rotated it. As the bottom gradually opened, he felt something flowing into the tube from the blood vessel. Scared he might be somehow bleeding, he exited Focused Senses.

He looked at the back of his hand but did not see any sign of blood. There was a horrible itchy feeling in the spot he was working with.

Curious, he dipped back into Focused Senses and checked on the growing hair in that location. What he felt was incredible. That single hair was growing almost ten times faster than the rest.

**Skill Up** Hair Manipulation Level 8

He focused back on the tube. Upon closer inspection, it didn’t seem like there was blood flowing into the tube just right next to it at a much higher rate than it was before.

Since nothing bad had happened when he opened it a little, and there was still no resistance, Jack started twisting the tube again. The blood flow kept increasing, but he didn’t notice any adverse effects.

Once it was completely open, he checked on the hair growth rate and was shocked to find it had stopped growing entirely. It stopped growing because it was fully formed.

A single half-inch long hair was sticking out of the back of his hand. The increased blood flow to the tube had stopped.

Jack reached down and pulled the hair out of his skin. Instantly the blood flow increased, and the hair grew back within seconds.

He adjusted the length of the tube, making it longer, and the hair would grow to the length the tube allowed. Stretching the tube to be as long as possible, the hair grew to be eight feet long.

Shortening the tube while the hair was already grown in didn’t do anything, but when he plucked the hair out, it would only grow to the new length.

Once he was absolutely sure there were no side effects, he went and started untwisting all the tubes on his head. It took over an hour, but when he was done he had a full head of hair again.

The hair on his head reached down to his hips before it stopped growing.

While he was overjoyed to have his hair back, he was filled with unease. There had to be something fueling the hair growth, and he needed to find out what.

Manipulating his hair into a tight braid, he cut it halfway down his back. Instead of rapidly growing back like it had when it was a single hair, the large group of hair was much slower to grow.

On a hunch, Jack took his knife and made a minor cut on the meat of his palm where it wouldn’t hurt as much. As soon as he cut his hand, his hair stopped growing.

By opening the bottom of those tubes, he had linked his hair growth to his natural health regeneration. It seemed that actual injuries would take precedence over hair growth, though.

This opens so many possibilities!