I screamed mentally as the Hyena's glowing teeth dug deep into my flesh. Disbelief filled my mind as it started ripping into me, doing some incredible damage. How the hell did it manage past my defenses? Wasn't I an incredibly amazing fortress of Poison and steel-like muscles? I could feel the teeth shifting inside my body, attempting to rip me apart and let out another silent scream. With little else to do, I started wildly firing off Lethal Poison Shots into the Hyena's face. The unbearable pain was joined by the feeling of my mana being drained until I eventually bottomed out and couldn't conjure any more poison.

I knew my foe had already been poisoned by the first poison shot it so willingly ate and my mucus armor. At this point, I had no idea if there was a stacking effect to my poison, but I somehow doubted it. While I had an incredibly game-like system at my beck and call, I doubted everything else was like a video game as well. All I could hope for was that my actions ensured that the poison was in effect the entire time. And maybe, with a little luck, the poison increased in severity proportionally to how much of it was consumed. I suppose that was a form of stacking effects as well, but a more realistic version.

Now that I was all out of options, there was only one thing to do. Pray. Pray that this shitty Hyena would kick the bucket before I did. I was mighty proud of how high my constitution was, so please, oh please, let it be enough. I could definitely feel the vitality leaving the Hyena as its onslaught on me became less furious, but I was having the same problem. I could feel myself reaching the point of no return and desperately tried to squeeze out another poison shot, only to come up empty. I was lamenting the fact that my MP was so low when an irregular jerking motion gave me a bit of respite in the form of the teeth leaving my body slightly. I wondered what changed, when I was suddenly released from the Hyena's maw, together with an unhealthy amount of bile.

HA! Take that you stupid mutt! Poison wins once again!

Then again, I'm currently on the verge of toaster bath myself. It didn't help that my bath was filled with puke. Or the fact that the toaster was approaching me currently to finish me off, I'd presume. I shuddered as the Hyena stopped once it towered over me. So this was it then. I just barely started to maybe, just maybe, enjoy this weird new situation I found myself in. But it seemed like my second life was short-lived as well. Maybe the system would take pity on me and give me another chance...

Or maybe, it didn't need to. The brown blur representing the Hyena in my vision slowly tilted to one side before falling over, sending a satisfying vibration through the ground beneath my foot.

You have killed a Lv. 12 Monster Hyena

You have been awarded 120(240)XP

You have been awarded 12 Data Points

You have gained 3 levels!

Your skills Compress, Lethal Poison Mucus Armor, and Lethal Poison Shot have leveled up!

That thing was level twelve??? I really shouldn't be alive anymore. The rewards this time were pretty bountiful, but I had no time to admire my gains. As I just found out, leveling up does not restore my HP and MP, so I was still almost dead. I needed to hide ASAP before another monster strolled over to finish me off. My constitution was high, and since passive HP regeneration was attributed to it, I should be able to restore myself without any issues. The only thing I needed was a safe hiding spot and time. I threw the dead Hyena into my inventory and painfully made my way over to the nearest wall in order to find a hiding spot.

I frantically waved my eye tentacles around in order to not be snuck up on. At this point, probably even a fellow slug could finish the job, so I didn't want to take any chances. Eventually, I found some sort of outcrop in the wall. It wasn't big by any means but big enough to hide a slug behind it. Or at least most of a slug... I belatedly remembered that slugs could crawl around on walls, so without further ado, I navigated by messed up body up the wall and behind the outcrop. I did the best I could, but I could tell that not all of me was hidden from sight. It'd have to do.

Keeping one of my eyes out of cover, I called upon my mighty status window. It would appear as if I just barely survived this time, as I only had two HP left... My maximum HP was currently at ninety. I assumed that I had recovered what little HP I had lost in my first fight when the second Hyena came around, so I lost 88 HP this time. Yikes! I kept my eyes on my HP to see how long it took for me to restore one HP, and after an anxious two minutes or so, it finally ticked up. So maybe around three minutes-ish for one HP? I wouldn't complain about being able to passively restore my health, but this also meant that I'd need to hide out here for hours before I was back at MaxHP!

At least this would give me some time to take a closer look at the system without being interrupted every five minutes... Assuming nothing found my hiding spot.

First off, my level-up rewards! I did gain three attribute points this time, but what should I put it in? It seemed like my defense was still enough to deal with most attacks, so I could probably leave it alone for now. Now that I was able to think calmly about the situation, the Hyena most likely used some sort of bite skill on me. I'd have to watch out for those in the future, but realistically there was nothing I could do but take them head-on for now. Instead, I needed my poison to kill faster. If only my poison could have finished the Hyena off before it decided to use its skill.

Now that I was thinking about skills... didn't mine level up?

A quick check confirmed that all of my skills did indeed go up a level, making them just that little bit stronger. Thankfully, the MP cost of Lethal Poison Shot didn't go up. It seemed like all experience only got distributed after a fight ended, which was why the skills leveled up together after I killed the second Hyena. I wasn't entirely sure what to think of this mechanic. Mostly because I didn't see an immediate way to exploit it. I had planned to grind out skill levels at some point, but now, I might not even be able to...

After putting some thought into it, I finally decided to put two points into intelligence, and one into wisdom. This would allow me to use my Lethal Poison Shot a bit more, while also upgrading the damage of my poison in general. I had only fought two battles so far, but already my status looked a lot better than what I started with.

Name: Gary

Traveler Tier:0 Type:Monster(P2W)

Species: Poisonous Slug

Level: 5

Strength: 3

Agility: 1(permanently fixed)

Intelligence: 6

Wisdom: 3

Constitution: 15

Data Points: 16

Skills: Lethal Poison Mucus Armor Lv.2, Compress Lv.2(defensive), Bottomless Inventory

Magic: Lethal Poison Shot Lv.2

I could only assume that sixteen data points would amount to basically nothing, maybe even less, in the shop. But I was still happy to have collected some. The plan to bank up as much as I could before unlocking the function was still on, and that meant that I'd need to get more kills. For now, it seemed like I'd get a data point for every level my slain enemy had, as well as some from devouring their corpses. I was fairly certain I could also get some from completing tasks for the system, but for now, I had no idea how to trigger those.

With my immediate needs in the system satisfied, I found myself with some extra free time on my hands. So I spent them experimenting and exploring my status window and the associated sub-menus. I also kept an eye on my surroundings, watching as a few creatures passed me by without noticing me. I saw a few Hyena-shaped blobs, but also what looked like a giant toad, an incredibly long centipede, some sort of bat, and a mangy rat. Of course, I couldn't be sure about any of that, since my eyes were still top-tier garbage, but I felt like I was mostly correct. One thing that I noticed, was that all of the monsters seemed to head in the same direction, which must mean there was something of interest that way. Which meant my next target was set. Whatever they were doing over there, I wanted in on it.

But first, I still needed to wait until my HP was completely filled up again. I spent some more time watching colorful blurs go by and even got to watch a fight between a hyena and a centipede that wanted to come through here at the same time. Spoiler, the centipede won. I briefly considered trying to poison the hyena's corpse with my poison shot but decided against it. I could have probably offed the weakened centipede, but for now, I didn't want to take unnecessary risks. There would still be time for experimentation later on.

Eventually, my HP was filled, and I was feeling refreshed and ready to face the world again. After making sure that no monsters were close by, I slowly got out of my hiding spot and made my way to the ceiling. That's right! Since I could climb walls without issues, I figured that the ceiling wouldn't provide much of a challenge either, while simultaneously protecting me from stupid monsters who couldn't reach up here. All that time I had while hiding wasn't wasted after all!

I continued on my merry way, freezing up whenever a monster passed below me, and it seemed to work perfectly fine. They either didn't pay attention to the ceiling or just weren't interested in a little old slug like me. Or maybe they were but just decided they couldn't get at me up here, even if they wanted. The ceiling was quickly becoming my new best friend in this world.

After quite a long time of crawling along, the tunnel-like cave system I was in opened up into a bigger cave. It would seem like this was the place all these monsters were heading to, and I spent some time trying to figure out just how big this cave was. Needless to say, I had no idea since I could barely see. What I could tell, was that there was lots of fighting going on here. Every once in a while the wall I was attached to shook faintly, which I associated with impacts caused by monsters being roughed up. This probably wasn't a good hunting ground for me, since my offensive was so weak. I'd fare much better in the tunnel I came from since most of my fights would be duels. I had spent long enough in there to know that there were a few minutes between monsters coming through, for whatever reason.

Then again, I could just slink along the walls out here and do some recon. I did want to raise my level quite a bit before even considering going into this cave proper, maybe even evolve, but curiosity won out in the end. I made up my mind to explore just a little bit, before retreating back into this tunnel. Maybe I could find something of interest, who knows?

Nothing to it but to do it. Let's go!