“There he is, devouring our rubitus” the first one sighed.

“What the f…?” Gardner swore. “This glittering stuff is damn hard to find and it’s hard as hell to find those rotten mushrooms.”

“Not as rotten as they could be, when you consider what poisons they’re necessary for and how much they cost,“ the warrior with the two swords responded, chuckling.

“Well, what’s this low-level trash doing?” Gardner’s face twisted into a grimace. “It just keeps devouring our rubitus.”

“Well, the mushrooms are still his.”

“We can change that easily enough,” the ripper’s face lit up with a nasty grin. “And we’re gonna do it right away.”

The two-legged took out a rather big claw, holding it with both hands, and moved slowly toward me. The other one put his hands behind his head and slowly set off in my direction as well, humming something to himself.

Gardner, level 62

Dor Kloz, level 63

I saw the information about their levels above their heads and got scared. They were much stronger than me, but it didn’t matter, I didn’t want to die. Then I got the stones out of my spatial pocket and began to throw them at the approaching human being.

“Ah ha ha!” came the nasty laughter of this two-legged monster.

“This freak’s throwing stones at us, haha!”

“Hmm... this one, as you put it, is a freak and only level five, but he’s not afraid of us.” The other frowned. “This is strange.“

“C’mon, Dor,” Gardner waved his hand at him. “Let’s play with him a bit.”

The warrior moved so quickly that I didn’t even notice until it turned up by my side. He struck his sword against the ground, and a wave of pebbles bombarded my shell, leaving deep scratches in it and taking my health away.

“Don’t forget, you cannot inflict too much damage on small mobs all at once, otherwise, there’ll be no loot,” Kloz said calmly.

“Yes, I remember,” Gardner grunted. “I’m going to finish it neatly with these fragments, I can do without the meager experience if it means the rubitus will probably drop.”

The man didn’t even try to dodge, and the pebbles flew at him one by one but didn’t cause any damage, just bouncing off his glittering shell. They tried to kill me by striking the ground, which showered me with broken stones, causing a lot of pain. Soon, there were no more pebbles, and I rushed at the warrior instead. However, after a particularly strong wave of debris, large stone fragments got lodged in my belly, causing critical damage. Everything faded before my eyes.

“That’s great!” the warrior exclaimed. “He has a whole set here. Very rare quality emeraltus, two rubitus. Even five haloptirius. I wish these low-level cockroaches ran around here more often.”

“That’s not what it was,” Kloz frowned again. “I haven’t seen beetles around here before. It seemed like a karkant, but something was wrong with it”

“What do you mean? “

“Its behavior wasn’t typical for its kind,” answered the warrior. “Small mobs, when they see that they cannot defeat the enemy, try to escape immediately. This one began to throw stones at you, and when he ran out of those, he rushed in for an unsuccessful attack.”

“Think they got smarter?”

“They might have” the man scratched his head. “Need to search for more information on the forum.”

“Forget it. The main thing is we got the items.”

Damn! Everything was hazy for a few minutes, after which I saw the graves of my parents again. Taking a deep breath, I tried to calm down. I wanted to go warn the cave bug about the rippers, but I noticed something strange. There was a beetle sitting near Trirlil’s grave and digging through the pebbles to get to her body. My blood boiled with anger. I didn’t want anyone to harm them. They had to rest in peace. It was a whitish beetle with six massive legs and strange jaws that were noticeably smaller than mine, but it seemed as if it had two or even three pairs of them.

Small Grave Beetle, Level 5

Aha! That’s who you are. Now I will show you why you shouldn’t disturb the dead. After picking up some stones from the ground, I hit the beetle with a throw on my second attempt. He let out a scream of pain and turned his attention toward me.

“What are you doing, karkant?” He clacked his jaws.

“Don’t hang around my parent’s graves,” I said in response.

“What does that mean?” he asked and stared at me in bewilderment. “That’s my goal. The essence of my existence: to devour the dead.”

“Don’t touch them,” I warned him again as I approached.

“Not convincing enough,” the beetle’s words were full of arrogance. “Make me,” he said and headed in my direction.

“Oh, I’ll make you,” I promised, and grabbing two sharp shards that had fallen nearby, jumped at this jerk and stuck them into his eyes. The gravedigger shrieked and spun in place. Dark red blood spurted out of his eyes, and I felt uneasy. I pictured the rippers killing Trirlil and Cytrilct. My heartbeat sped up again and I froze.

“Kh-hh-hh-ts! I’ll smash you, karkant!” the bug squeaked out and rushed at me.

His blow was very powerful. Everything swam before my eyes, and my claws began to buckle. With an effort of will, I regained my balance and hit the beetle in the side. I bunched my claws up before the strike, so the attack was quite successful. My claws ripped into the beetle’s side and he squealed again. Holding him like this, I began to strike him with my other hand. After a while, the beetle collapsed, and his health bar began to blink bright red.

“We will... meet again...” the gravedigger hissed out and died.

“Hardly,” I grinned, remembering how I’d poked out his eyes. I lay back on Trirlil’s grave. I was able to handle my first enemy, someone who’d wanted to make a mockery of my dead family. Looking at the body of my defeated foe, I felt sick at the mere thought that his blood could be consumed for the sake of getting some new parts. My aversion to doing such a thing overwhelmed me, and I carefully taking the body, pulled it away from my relatives. Let the rippers have their way with him.

50 points of experience gained

Oh, I’ve been awarded more experience. Wonderful! Now I have seventy points. Where to put them... The brain seems to be doing its job well so far and my thoughts seem clear. Well, what should I upgrade then? I looked at the tables showing what I was made of attentively. The first table indicated the parts of the body, their number, and characteristics. At that moment, I had two karkant hands, four legs of a beetle, the cold-proof shell of a beetle, mandibles, two eyes, two organs intended for hearing, and an organ intended for smelling. The second table included internal organs. An ordinary brain, and next to it was a fifty, which seemed to indicate the amount of experience I had put into it. Then came the heart, lungs, blood circulatory system, nervous system, nutritional system, and the muscles. The third table had only one line, which indicated that I had the genes for cave moss. Hmm… what should I upgrade then? On one hand, I need to keep developing my brain, but on the other - the grave beetle had managed to damage me greatly and I had too little power to feel confident fighting him again. Only my anger and luck helped me hit his eyes with the stone shards, otherwise, I would’ve been in trouble. Thus, I could conclude I needed a higher level of defense, or something that would help me damage the enemy more successfully. I guessed it would take too long to develop my hands enough that they could do real damage because I’d had to hit the beetle a lot before he died. I guess I’ll develop the jaws. I’ll try to bite my enemies with them. I put all fifty points into them.

Your jaws are evolving. Now you have Long Jaws

Stats: Evolution +1, Strength +2, Structure +1.

20 points of experience gained