Frantically I pulled up the system notifications I had triggered- there was an innate sense I'd been given of when they were waiting for me, which along with the sensation of gnawing hunger lessening told me I had important things to look at.

Rare skill unlocked:

Darkvision I

Can see very vague outlines in pitch darkness

+1 perception

Rare skill unlocked:

Spite Spite

costs a random amount between 10-15 mana.

does 4-8 damage modified by Spite strength

skill unlocked:

blind vision I

Other senses are heightened when vision is insufficient

+1 perception

Okay, I can spit mana angrily like a lizard and do damage. I mean at lest I can see.

Level up +5 stat points +1 strength +1 constitution

New abilities available:

Harden

pachysaur

Head rush

Unable to spare much more time as the first millipede had entered audible range I quickly allocated 3 points to strength, 1 to constitution, and 1 to dexterity. Unwilling to take an ability like head rush that may not work in the confines of the tunnel and that might affect my already fragile mental state I hurriedly reviewed the pachysaur ability.

Pachysaur Bone ridges form on your head in combat. Can be used to deflect attacks and do more damage headbutting. Named for It's similarity to the dinosaur from Planet:Earth

I was sorely tempted to take the ability. But, before I could commit to it the throbbing in my arms reminded me of the injuries I was suffering from. I couldn't analyze the harden ability but I had to hope that it affected it my whole body and not just my head. As the first one of the horde became visible as barley distinguishable shadow in the otherwise uniform darkness I picked the harden ability.

A brief jolt ran through me and my wounds briefly flared as if they were just given to me. However, as soon as the pain was felt it was gone. I felt my bones and flesh solidify and my skin draw more tightly together. My body solidified and my head actually seemed to become heavier then it was before- telling me the effect was more prominent there. I shook my body once to test the change and was pleasantly surprised that there was no change.

I was still tracking the insect with my eyes but it was impossible to see it more then it was visible. Trusting my intuition I closed my eyes and focused on hearing It's approach. Instantly I noticed a distance. The sound of it's scampering became clearer and the image of the threat became much more detailed in my mind. I could hear each of it's legs tapping in tandem on the dirt and using the new in formation available I shifted my body head first to face it as it lunged toward me. Mostly guessing where the things head was in the air I headbutted down once I felt it was close enough. I caught it with just the top of my fore head and as I finished my headbutt into the ground I only crushed the top of the carapace. Due to the mistiming of my heabutt I failed to fully crush the things skull. Its pincers weekly scraped against the skin over my cheek bones but unlike before where they easily pierced into my body now they could only faintly shed skin. I swiftly headbutted the millipede into the afterlife and pulled it onto the corpse of mr stabby to my right- using my now functioning hands to squash them into one another.

I felt gratification that my harden ability had worked like I hoped It would and I quickly instructed the system to show how killing the millipede had progressed me to my next level

level 1 50/200 50 granted

50 What? I thought perplexed

Unauthorized

Alright geez.

Unwilling to further provoke the system I stopped prying, although I did make a mental note to ask somebody later if they knew what you gained from killing things here- that is if I ever found a person to talk too.

Feeling incisors begin to carve into my harden skin I slammed my head down viciously killing yet another millipede. I lifted my head out of bug brain scope again. Wiping blood off my face I silently berated myself for losing focus. I grabbed The warm corpse of bug number 5 and smushed it on the corpse laid to the left of me. I realized that I was building a house of dead bugs around myself as I did so and half expected to get some sort of mythic "bug construction' skill. Seeing the outline of yet another millipede flash I closed my eyes and prepared to headbutt yet another creature.

I repeated my heabutt the bug mid air trick twice more to level up and instantly allocated 2 points to dexterity and 1 to endurance- for some reason I had only 3 free points this level. Excitedly I waited for a new millipede to arrive so I could test my improved strategy. Using my enhanced hearing I used the moment where bug number 8 paused to reach forward and grab it's mandibles. With the speed granted to me buy my boosted dexterity I was able to easily grasp them and use them to pull it forward. The pincers were serrated but I knew from the bodies of the other monsters there was gaps between each serration. I placed my fingers here as I pulled to avoid cuts. My high strength made it laughably easy to pull it forward and headbutt the millipede. My method perfected I settled in to keep killing these bugs until no more existed.

For a while, thats exactly what happened. I ended up slaying enough of them that I built a kill tunnel of carapace that forced them through a small gap pincers first. This made it laughably easy for me to grab their supposedly 'deadly' weapons and pull them in for a headbutt. The only problem with my plan was that after a while I couldn't build up the body stacks any higher. I was pondering this issue as I felt bug number 99?105? ponder toward me. Shook out of my train of thought I focused on the new inconvenience piddling toward me. After I few seconds I began to frown, and after a couple more my brow wrinkled in confusion. Usually the bugs were in the blood stacks by now with a crushed brain. Finding myself not comprehending what was happening I closed my eyes and listened in closely to what I could hear. The more I depended on blind mans vision the better it had become. I didn't know if it had improved yet as after I hit level three I had chosen to allocate 3 points to strength and had left notifications on snooze- as I heard the weight behind the taps of this particular millipede, I started to regret that decision.

I opened my eyes slowly in an effort to try and see the scope of this bigger organism. As soon as my eyes were fully open the sounds of legs thudding silenced. I was staring at a sea of undulating shadow that must of been the things legs. Raising my eyes slightly I locked gazes with beady eyes three times the size of the little menaces I had been exterminating. After I had gotten to bug number 20 the tide of enemies had greatly sped up. I had started to theorize that this alien species of millipede gigantus functioned as some sort of hive mind. I was workshopping the idea that like ants they lest some sort of pheromone trail and that after a while the death sent go so strong that it could be smelt throughout the entire colony; this of course caused most millipedes to rush to discover what was responsible for the smell and to subsequently attack me in attempt to protect the hive. As it turns out, I was right- except, it was one of those rare times in life where you weren't happy to be.

So as I lay there staring into the beady eyes of a solider millipede who was conveying nothing but killing intent, I was very much seriously regretting falling into complacency. Frozen in fear I watched the millipede slowly roam it's eyes over fort carapace I had built and felt my pride at my creation wither and die in my chest. At the longer breaks between waves of the horde I had started to use millipede antenna to bind bundles of bugs together to form steady walls. I had made them two corpses deep and they surrounded me on all sides except behind me. They were pushed up against the walls of the tunnel before slowly turning inwards to form the 'gate' which I had being pulling these monsters through. I had even gotten on to all fours to make the walls cover my elevated height and had turned some of the smaller millipedes from the earlier waves sideways to form battlements in a perverted recreation of a castle wall. The gaps between waves had actually become so long that at one point I had rearranged the entire structure so that the larger bugs from the later waves formed the foundations with the smaller ones forming the top and battlements. I had then used the antenna pile I'd been collecting from the bugs as I went and the ropes I'd made out of them to make sure not only were each pair of bugs secured together but that there were bigger ropes covering larger sections of the castle walls tying the smaller bundles closer together. Now that I looked back on the fact that between waves the bugs had been getting bigger and their shells harder to crack and the actual time between waves also increasing I realized this wasn't actually that shocking of a development. If I hadn't started seeing these things as building blocks for my new hobby of fort building I would have been preparing appropriately for the increase in difficulty fighting the next wave promised. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case; Although killing millipedes was boring, it did not justify getting this distracted. I found myself berating myself ones again for not paying due attention, but unlike the other times I could now recognize that this wasn't a normal loss of concentration. This serious de-railment of thought was a worrying sign of how scatter-brained I was becoming. I realized then that if I didn't soon find something to talk to, I would go crazy.

Finally the massive millipede in front of me stopped surveying the real estate I had so painstakingly crafted, and judging by how long it had lingered on my faux 'battlements' it was not pleased with the artistic liberties I had taken. Once again we locked eyes and this time I could tell he would do everything In his power to end me. I inadvertently started crawling backwards as I felt the killing intent of this semi-intelligent creature wash over me. It let out a deep long hiss like a bull snorts deeply before charging. In that paused moment where it's huge body began to slightly shake and I heard the ground shift in millions of places as it dug in to launch I fought very hard not to pee a little.

I threw myself up onto all fours as the millipede flew towards me so that I matched it's level of height. I shot out my hands to try and catch the bug mid flight before it could impale me in the torso but to my surprise it's mandibles simply stretched wider around them. In wild panic I shoved my arms to the sides tearing them along the serrated insides of the pincers.I cried out as I used the times the bug was caught in my flesh to inch it's weapons downwards. My desperate actions. redirected it's lunge just enough that the pincers ended up sinking deep into my biceps instead of chest-only stopping once they slightly sunk into bone. Pain unlike I'd ever felt filled me. Tortured I whipped my head forward with a viciousness I had never before portrayed. Motivated by my desire for revenge I had headbutted with all velocity I could bring to bear. My head bounced off it's shell casing. There had been a brief crack as I impacted and I saw the small fracture as I pulled away but otherwise the insect remained undamaged.

It ripped it's daggers out of my blended forearms triumphantly and screeched proudly in victory. My tortured brain accelerated into mach ten speeds as I watched the millipede slowly rear up above me. Franticly I searched for a way out. My mind raced through the experiences I had gone through since arriving here, quickly I scanned over the perks I'd gained the subclasses open to me and the skills I'd possessed. Desperately I turned to the system for help thinking on what I could take from it to survive. Realization struck me as I turned onto this line of thinking. I'd taken two things from the system and while both helped me one had healed. Trusting in an old inspirational quote I'd read about the speed of thought being faster then the speed of light (although I doubted that was true) I instructed the system to select the next level of the hardness ability vainly hoping such a thing existed. As I did so I also ordered 12 points of strength and 8 points of dexterity be allocated hoping I had that much to spend. The world snapped back into reality. The sudden jolt of all my tissue compressing and wounds flaring up told me all I needed to know. With a titanic effort of will I blew past the wave of immense pain to launch myself backwards. My new strength and speed combined allowed me to just barley throw myself out from under the millipede body slam about to bury me for real.

The force of my newly empowered legs and arms surprised me. I went soaring not only backwards but also upwards in the limited airspace the large tunnel provided. Which given the fact I was still In a tunnel was not very much. I slammed into the roof of the passage ,getting two long incisions from the very tips of the millipedes bladed eating aids as I did so, bouncing off the ceiling and back to ground a few feet from the millipede. My hardened skin allowed me to shake off the impacts with nothing more then embarrassment and slightly noticeable body ache. The lacerations on my upper back to shoulders were shallow enough to go on ignored for now. I dug my feet into the soil behind me and braced myself for the insects next charge. It dived forward almost immediately after it saw me stop bouncing and when It saw me lift my hands once again stretched it's mandibles wide. However this time I only faked grabbing it's terrifying forelimbs and instead now reached for them. I place my hands slightly to the sides of where they currently where correctly predicting it to move it's pincers even wider. What I didn't expect was for them to completely open all the way so that the insides of the death traps faced me. I committed this time and lunged my hands forward to grab the middle of the incisors grimacing in expectation of the tearing pain coming. I wrenched the limbs even further back and down slamming them into the dirt causing the millipede to slide into me headfirst. I kept pushing the mandibles into the dirt as I slid backwards head to head with this disgusting creature. Its beady brown eyes stared into my own. I lifted my head and slammed down into it's skull once again, this time I made more than just one little crack. The skull plate of it'f body split into thousands of tiny lines and as I was still holding it's mandibles bent back in the dirt, the sudden downwards jolt caused its head to rip forward leaving them behind. Blood leaked down from the sides of its face and it's chattering mouth let loose a hiss of pain. I smiled with grim satisfaction as my enemy laid slumped forward beneath me. I whipped my head down bursting through it's cracked armor to smash it's brain to smithereens. I quickly whipped my head out of the brain soup I was in to wipe grey matter and blood from my face in a habitual manner. 'I really hate bugs' I muttered, wishing there was someone near to agree with me.

I crawled forward over the humungous corpse of the solider millipede with the goal of finding the queen. If they really were like ants then that meant there was a very definitive way I could end this. As I crawled deeper into enemy territory I looked back at the ruins of fort carapace, destroyed by the monsters long winding body. I shook my head in disappointment somebody would suffer for this. As i resumed my crawl into the unknown I finally let the system show me what I'd missed.

Rare skill leveled:

Darkvision III:

Can see well in dark. Can see gray, blacks and some brown

+2 perception

Rare skill leveled:

Blind mans vision II:

Other senses are heightened when vision is insufficient

+1 perception

status: level 8 0/1600 3 unallocated point

Strength:40

Dexterity:16

Inteligence:12

Wisdom:8

Endurance:4

constitution:12

Perception:14

Putting the final three points into endurance I continued on my way to commit some regicide.