I slept fitfully that night and when I woke up the next morning, I wished that I would be able to just go back to sleep for a few hours, but I had way too many things to get done today for that. With a sigh I sat up and started munching on one the last of the cake things that I had left. Hopefully I would be able to find an area that was not only relatively safe but had some of those fruits that I had eaten the other day nearby so that I had access to something that I could eat because if I didn’t then I would have to take the risk of eating other things which I wasn’t really looking forward to after eating the Crawler meat yesterday.

Yes, eating the Crawler meat had barely harmed me but it had been enough to make me decide to be more careful with what I tried to eat, at least until my Poison Resistance Skill increased a bit more.

Once I had finished my breakfast, I decided to bring up the Skill increases that I had ignored last night and brought up the relevant screen with a wave of my hand.

Skills increased!

Cooking increased to Lvl 2

Poison Resistance increased to Lvl 2

Mana Manipulation increased to Lvl 9

Inner Vision increased to Lvl 3

Unbreakable Will increased to Lvl 3

Available Aspect points increased by 5

“Well no point in not using these points,” I sighed and placed them all into my Aspect of the Summoner.

The real world faded away into a blur of light before I found myself in my internal world once more reminding me why I usually closed my eyes immediately after I used Aspect Points. When everything came back into focus, I looked around to see that I was on land. There was little more than mossy rocks as far as the eye could see but then I noticed something moving amongst the rocks. Approaching it I saw that it was something that most closely resembled a slater or woodlouse skittering along on multiple pairs of legs. Every so often it would stop to gnaw on the moss that covered the rocks. It wasn’t the most interesting of creatures to look at but as I did a massive grin crossed my face. The fist land-based animals had finally appeared in my internal world.

Once the vision faded, I looked at the new notifications that popped up in front of me with the same massive grin on my face.

Aspect of the Summoner has been increased to 28/50.

A Summoner must be able to use all of the minions that they control in the way that best suits them.

Intelligence increased by 3!

Aspect Points: 0

Soul Aspect increased to Level 90!

In an attempt to escape from the predators that once hunted them a new species has developed the means to survive on land and now rule the world outside of the dangerous oceans. However, it will only be a matter of time before other species follow them.

Constitution increased by 2!

Growth Rate increased by 1 Unassigned Stat Points

Well I was certainly right about what was happening in my internal world but for all that it seemed to be quite a big breakthrough it didn’t seem to offer that much in the way of bonuses. Still Stats were Stats and I wasn’t going to say no to more Constitution.

Before doing anything else I quickly brought up my Stat Screen to have a look at how things were progressing.

Status

Level 1

Exp: 55%

HP: 130/130

MP: 136/136

HP Regen: 12.6 per minute

MP Regen: 9.6 per minute

SP: 83/83

Essence: 29

SP Regen: 6.9 per minute

Control Points: 16.4 (6.4)

Str: 6 (+3/Lvl)

Agi: 13 (+5/Lvl)

Con: 18 (+ 4/Lvl)

End: 9 (+6/Lvl)

Tou: 18 (+3/Lvl)

Int: 17 (+21/Lvl)

Coor: 9 (+5/Lvl)

Vit: 23 (+5/Lvl)

Wis: 13 (+13/Lvl)

Will: 21 (+15/Lvl)

Per: 13 (+10/Lvl)

Cha: 11 (+5/Lvl)

Additional Growth Rate: +11 Unassigned Stat Points/Lvl. +20 MP/Lvl. MP regen increased by 1/min per Lvl.

Unassigned Stat Points: 0

Now, I didn’t really know anything about how other people who used this System made their builds and for all I know having a reasonably large amount of HP was considered to be a good idea whether you were a mage or warrior. In fact I’d personally bet that was the case because reality wasn’t a game where you could min-max your Stats and still expect to survive but I was quite pleased with the Stats that my Soul Aspect was giving me seemed to mostly be related to Health and Health regen with a healthy number of Unassigned Stat Points sprinkled in as well. This might change later on as even more complicated organisms evolved in my inner world evolved, but for now that did seem to be the case.

However, now that I was done with fiddling around with my Stats it was time to get to work on other more important things. I had started working on a kunai last might and had even done a decent job of making it, but I decided to try and fix some of the problems that I could see and test out the balance for throwing the weapon. I wasn’t planning on throwing it often because most of the time because I was able to use my magic for ranged attacks, but it was always nice to have the option especially considering how quickly I ran out of MP in a fight.

About half an hour later I decided that I had done as much with the kunai that I was going to be able to do for now and decided to make my way out of the clearing towards the barrier. Sure, enough when I reached the barrier, I could see through it with only the slightest tint of blue allowing me to actually even know it was there.

“Man, I hope it’s still strong enough to last until tonight,” I muttered as I examined the weak looking wall of energy that was the only thing keeping the swarm of Crawlers that I could see on the other side from killing me. This was actually a bot worrying because I planned on doing the same thing that I had done yesterday which meant that it was likely that the Crawlers that I would going to be attacking were probably going to be reacting the same way that they had yesterday and attack the barrier which would probably be a bad thing if the barrier was as weak as it looked. I was actually having second thoughts about my plan, but I didn’t really have a lot of other options, so I was just going to have to risk it.

The giant amoeba had followed me and was now sitting next to me and watching what I was doing through my eyes. I could also feel an echo of everything else that I could feel through the spell that allowed it to see, which was an odd sensation but one that I could feel growing on me. I was hopeful that this ability would be as useful to me as it was hopefully going to be for the Amoeba.

Taking aim at one of the smaller Crawlers I fired a Stone shot that I quickly followed up with a Mana Bolt, the first spell struck the Crawler a glancing blow to one of its legs but the second missed my target entirely when it flinched away from the first attack. This sequence of events seemed to be very interesting to the Amoeba as it watched the effects of the spells that I had cast on the Crawler through my eyes with exceeding interest.

Continuing my assault, I fired a Stone Shot into the crowd of Crawlers that had immediately swarmed the area where the first two spells had appeared from. It was at this moment that I realised something about the spell that I had made last night, something that was actually quite obvious now that I had realised it. The amoeba was paying a lot of attention to the spells that I was casting because it could feel me forming the spells with my Mana.

As I kept firing spells into the Crawlers that were now mounting an assault on the barrier, I wondered whether it was possible for the amoeba to learn to cast spells from watching me. This was actually a little worrying for me as I didn’t know whether this amoeba learning magic would affect the ones onside my internal world which would likely end up with creatures like this becoming the dominant species which would be bad for me so I decided to deactivate Share Senses which would also allow me to regenerate my MP a bit faster, once I had done this I moved off to the next area leaving the amoeba in the dust as I did so. A quick check of my MP levels told me that I only had enough MP left to do this one more time before I had to take a break and do something else.

Once I made it to the next area, I was planning on attacking from I took a moment to have a look around at the various types of Crawlers that I could see. The previous area had only really had the normal Crawlers, but this area had two Shelled Crawlers and several Stinging Crawlers and I wondered briefly why this might be the case before my Mapping Skill pointed out that this was very close to the last area that I had attacked from before going to bed yesterday. This was actually a good thing as far as I was concerned because it proved that what I was doing was working.

Once I had finished up in this area I turned and headed back towards the clearing for a few metres before stopping and picking up a nearby stick. As the amoeba came to a stop beside me, I started digging a hole in the ground with the stick using it as a makeshift shovel, occasionally stopping to hack at any roots that I found with my kunai.

A few minutes later I was covered in a layer of dirt and staring down into a hole about half a metre deep. Deciding that I should move onto the next area and continue trying to draw more of the Crawlers off I turned to the amoeba and placed it into the hole giving it orders to try and do some digging while I was gone. It probably wouldn’t be able to dig very well but it would be better than it wasting its time trying to follow me while I was running around performing hit and run attacks on the Crawlers.

Making my way to the next area that I had chosen at random I took aim at one of the smaller Crawlers that I could see and fired a Stone Shot and a Mana Bolt at it, the two attacks ripping into its rubbery flesh and spraying the surrounding area with its oily blood. Immediately the others raced to where the two spells had exited the barrier like they usually did but this time I had prepared a little surprise for them and two lances made of stone shot out from the ground at an angle and ripped into their undersides as they ran onto them.

The two Rock Spears I had made were only about half a metre long and about two inches thick, but they were still long enough to do a decent amount of damage when the Crawlers ran onto them like a boar running onto a spear. Thankfully unlike a boar spear I didn’t have to be supporting them which meant that they were far more effective as I had no illusions about my ability to move afterwards if anything went wrong.

The two Crawlers that had run onto the spears hissed in pain but before they pulled themselves back off the spikes, I fired a Mana Blast at them in the hopes of breaking the spikes off inside of them. One of them moved fast enough that the wave of force only served to knock it off the end as it reversed off of the Rock Spear and sent it tumbling into the other Crawlers as they approached but I succeeded with the other and it was obvious when it managed to drag itself to its feet that I had wounded it badly enough that I was pretty confident that it would bleed out later. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough MP left to fire so much as a Mana Bolt in an attempt to finish it off for a few seconds but by the time that I did it had managed to drag itself out of sight behind a tree.

“Oh well,” I shrugged. It was a little disappointing that I couldn’t finish it off but there wasn’t much I could do about it, still there was a good chance that it would die later but I wasn’t sure that I would receive any Experience from it. I guess I can check my Status later and see if I have more Experience but I would have to do more research if there wasn’t because there was no way for me to know if I didn’t receive Experience because the Crawler didn’t die or for some other reason.

Heading back to the hole where I had left the Amoeba I blinked in surprise when I saw a ring of dirt surrounding the hole. It turned out that the amoeba was actually surprisingly adept at using its cilia to fling loose dirt away from it. Looking into the hole I could see that it was now almost a full metre deep but was there were some rocks that the amoeba had been unable to move with its fairly soft and weak body and more of the roots that I had been forced to try and cut away earlier. Hacking away at the roots with my kunai and axe I ordered the amoeba to stop digging while I was working. The last thing that I needed was to get a face full of dirt.

Once I had removed the roots that I could get at, I ordered the amoeba to try and lift some of the rocks so that I could get them out easier and then we moved onto widening the hole and clearing away the dirt that had been excavated so it wouldn’t fall back into the hole is it was widened. I wasn’t sure how effective a pitfall trap was going to be on a Crawler, but I figured that having them would be better than not.

Realising that my MP had regenerated again I pulled the amoeba out of the hole and cast my Rock Spear spell created two more spikes of a similar size to the ones that I had made earlier and then took the amoeba to the next place I wanted to start digging a hole and gave it orders to start digging, this time making sure that it would make the hole wider than the last from the beginning and then went back to the hole that we had already dug and created two more spikes with my Rock Spear spell before running back towards the barrier and performing another hit and run attack on the Crawlers.

Once I finished attacking the Crawlers, I headed back to the new hole and cut away the roots that the amoeba had dug around then went back to the previous one and used my Nature Shaping to add barbs to the ends of the Rock Spikes. If I was going to do this then I was going to do it right and make my traps as effective as possible, thankfully I had quite a few Skills and spells that were actually quite suited to this sort of thing which would hopefully work quite well with the summoning skills that I wanted to focus on in the future. The idea of being able to create an easily defendable area that I could safely command my minions from seemed like it would be pretty overpowered.

I went back and forth between attacking the Crawlers in different places while trying to get them all to gather on one side of the barrier and helping the amoeba dig the pitfalls for a couple of hours during which time we managed to make three of the simple traps before I decided that it was time to send the amoeba on its way. Like I had mentioned before the amoeba was considerably slower than I was and too large and heavy for me to carry while running at full speed so it was either let it get a head start or leave it to die and I just didn’t feel comfortable with leaving it to die for no real reason.

Making our way over to the opposite side of the barrier I noticed once again that my plan seemed to be working; there were only a couple of Crawlers that I could see through the barrier and I placed the amoeba on the ground before jogging off to the left away from it and took aim at one of the nearby Crawlers. Unlike yesterday I was planning on drawing them off a bit more before telling the amoeba to sneak out of the barrier as they had noticed it fairly quickly yesterday so I decided that playing it safe would be a good idea.

After checking in front of me to make sure that I wasn’t going to accidentally run into another Crawler I stepped out of the barrier and fired a salvo of Mana Bolts at the Crawlers that I could see before turning and running away for a bit and firing another series of Mana Bolts over my shoulder s I ran.

A couple of minutes later I dove back inside the barrier and sent an order to the patiently waiting amoeba to start making its way through the jungle. Hopefully it would run afoul of any other predators but unfortunately there was no way for me to know what it would find until it got there. Still it would be able to give me a vague idea of what it found as it travelled through the area.

“Good luck little one,” I muttered to myself as I watched it disappear into the undergrowth before heading back into the clearing to get a drink of water. I still had to keep doing what I had been doing, which was starting to get a bit boring, not that what I was doing was that different from what I had done in multiple games over the years. It was just that I had failed to finish off even one of the Crawlers that I had attacked so far today which admittedly wasn’t the main objective of what I was doing but it would’ve been nice.

“Alright then, back to it,” I said to myself once I had drunk my fill. I wanted to make at least 3 more pitfall traps before I attempted my escape tonight which meant that I had a lot of work to do.