The pain started almost immediately.

It felt like my whole body was on fire and I could feel my insides slowly ripping apart and shifting around. I subconsciously activated my defensive skills, but they really didn’t help all that much. Sure, the pain lessened a bit, but if you take away a few percent of a huge number, it’ll still be huge.

Back during my first evolution I barely managed to stay awake for a minute, maybe two. This time I felt like I could last longer. Probably not through the whole thing, but I’d most certainly try! I fought against the pain, trying to keep myself conscious by sheer power of will, but already I could feel my vision turning black. I guess this was another failed attempt, yet, I was happy that I managed to last longer. Maybe once I got to tier five or so, I might actually last through the entire thing.

I struggled for a bit longer, but eventually, the darkness took over and I fell into the black void of unconsciousness. Failed, I might have, but at least the pain was over.

I heaved a sigh of relief, before realizing that I was still aware of my surroundings somehow. Granted it was just a completely black expanse, but I guess I was still awake? I looked around a bit, noticing that my body was just a shadowy wisp, barely recognizable in the darkness.

What the hell was going on here?

All of a sudden, I froze. A shiver went through my whole body as I realized that there was something here with me. Something immensely powerful. I felt like a mouse in a KFC, magically drawn to the deep fryer. Fascinated by the thing, even though I knew getting too close would kill me.

A golden rift appeared in the distance. It started out as a thin line that spanned a huge distance and slowly expanded. My eyes were glued to it, even if I wanted to look away, I physically couldn’t.

The golden rift kept expanding until it took the form of a massive eye. It had a golden coloration, but there were literally thousands of pupils of different sizes, all of them slowly shifting their size and position. It was a confusing mess to look at and I could feel my brain hurt the longer I looked. Then, all of the pupils seemed to zero in on me.

I stopped breathing as an otherworldly force descended on me. I could not avert my eyes, but I could see that the black space I was in was slowly filling up with stars, ever so faintly illuminating it. And in the faint light, I saw the vague shape of something truly gargantuan. The eye was attached to this being, still staring at me.

The room was getting brighter by the second, and I could make out more and more of this being. But, before I could truly comprehend what I was looking at…

I lost consciousness.

I awoke with a start, as seemed to be the norm after a system-induced “sleep”. The first thing I noticed was that I had a bit less room in my hideout, which meant I got a bit bigger again. Not by much, to be sure, but it was maybe a 20% increase. Still small, though. I quickly let my eye wander over my body to look for other changes.

My body seemed to be the same, if bigger, at first glance. I was still a black slug with large red and green spots, although, when I took a closer look, my spots seemed to be shifting around ever so slightly. Even the black parts of my body seemed to be shifting around a bit. To be honest, it was confusing to look at, so I directed my eyes toward where my new tentacles should be.

I could feel them in their retracted state and willed them to expand. Slowly, a pair of black tentacles emerged from my body. They were pretty thick at the base and tapered off to a point. I moved them around a bit, experimenting with their range of movement. Curious I directed one of them to a root sticking out above me and tried to grab it. While I managed to wrap my tentacle around it and tug at it a little, as soon as I tried lifting my body up a bit, it slipped off the root.

I might have to try something a bit more stable.

Satisfied with my quick inspection, I redirected my attention to the system, which wanted to get my attention ever since I woke up. I quickly opened up the menu and was promptly greeted with a notification.

Achievement: Witness of the Void. (A)

You took a glance at the world in between. And it glanced back.

Reward: Increase passive Void Mana regeneration.

I suddenly remembered my encounter with the mysterious being. So that place was the void? Did that mean that the “ominous being” that would notice me upon evolution was that thing I’d seen? I shuddered just remembering it and quickly banished it from my thoughts. Hopefully, it was satisfied with just taking a quick look at me, because if that thing wanted to do anything to me, I might as well kill myself right now.

I welcomed the increase in Void Mana regeneration, though. Speaking of which, I seemed to have unlocked two new void spells.

Void Javelin (B)

Fire a javelin made out of pure void mana. Corrupts anything it touches and explodes upon impact.

Cost: 60 VMP

Void Cloak (C)

Cloak yourself in a layer of void mana, perfectly blending into your surroundings and blocking any magical attempts at discovering you.

Cost: 10 VMP per minute.

They looked pretty costly, as a quick glance at my stats revealed that I had just about three hundred Void Mana, but they also looked incredibly powerful. Void Javelin would help me take out anything that engaged me whenever my poison failed, and Void Cloak would help me stay undiscovered in a dangerous situation.

I wondered if leveling these spells up was the only option to get more void spells, or if there were other ways for me to get more. I guess I could try and get a Void skill tree once I unlocked a second slot, or maybe there were some achievements that granted me new spells.

The best thing was that Void Mana was stored separately from my regular mana, so I could use them pretty liberally if needed. I’d need to test how fast it regenerated, and whether or not I could use Gluttony to restore it as well. I was giddy to test out all of my new things, but first, I quickly glanced over my new status.

Name

Gary

Traveler Tier

1

Type

Monster(P2W)

Species

Ominous Acolyte Slug T2

Level

1

Max HP

304

Max MP (base 20)

602

Max VMP(Void MP)

301

Strength

15

Agility

12

Intelligence

59

Wisdom

51

Constitution

37

Luck

20

Attribute Points

0

Skill Points

1

Data Points

1160

Skill Trees 1/1

Poison

Skills: Fatal Poison Mucus Armor Lv.2 (D), Compress Lv.2 (D)

Magic: Fatal Poison Shot Lv.10 (E), Fatal Poison Spear Lv.4 (D), Fatal Poison Mist Lv. 3 (D), Fatal Poison Needle Lv. 6 (D), Giant Spike Lv.1 (SS), Void Javelin Lv.1 (B), Void Cloak Lv.1 (C)

Passive Skills: Bottomless Inventory (S), Stealth (C), Turret (B), Giant Hunter (S), Gluttony (SSS), Toxic and Poison Immunity (B), Increased Passive Void Mana Regeneration (A)

Mutations: Fatal Poison Mucus (T3), Mana Gland (T1), Mana Concentration Gland (T1), Mana Absorbent Skin (T1), Spell Attuned Brain (T1), Monster Eyes (T1), Void Connection (T3), Void Mana Conversion Gland (T3)

My status had grown a lot when compared to when I first spawned in the first layer. I felt an odd sense of fulfillment as I looked up and down the list. There was just something about seeing your progress quantified in numbers that was surprisingly satisfying.

I quickly noted that my evolution was still considered as tier two, even though I’d evolved into a third-tier monster. I assumed that going forward, I’d always be one tier higher than what the system labeled me as, which would give me a huge leg up when fighting others of the same tier. Then again, I was quite certain that I completely skipped over my second-tier choice, the Omen Slug. I got no bonuses of any kind that seemed to be tied to that specific evolution.

Which brought me to my new void spells. I wasn’t too keen on firing off a void javelin while still in my bunker, but I should be able to test out void cloak without any issues. As usual, the knowledge of how to cast both of these spells had been implanted in my brain by the system. Useful? Maybe. Still creepy? Definitely.

I could tell that these were advanced spells because casting void cloak was a lot harder than any of my poison spells. I wasn’t entirely certain that I’d even have the brainpower to cast it if my intelligence attribute wasn’t as high as it was. The spells were clearly intended for tier three monsters with the corresponding stats, and if I hadn’t gotten all of these crazy bonuses, I might just be unable to use them,

As it was, they were challenging to cast, but I could still do so. Since I was planning to go in a magic-heavy direction, I’d have to look into mutating my brain when I evolved again.

Eventually, I completed the spell and an odd sensation washed over my skin. I looked carefully at what was happening to my body, amazed by what I saw.

The slowly shifting parts of my body seemed to almost detach from my skin, floating just above my body. The air began to shimmer and shift and I slowly turned invisible. I recoiled a bit at watching my body disappear, but at the same time, I was endlessly fascinated by it.

It took me ten void mana to cast this spell, and since I wasn’t actively supplying more, the spell ended after one minute. Just as before, I gradually became visible again and watched the shifting layer settle back down on my skin.

I quickly pulled my status back up again, intent on seeing just how fast my VMP regeneration was. I got a bonus from the achievement, after all. It took somewhere around forty seconds to regenerate a single VMP, and after some quick maths, I concluded that I’d need a bit more than three hours to regenerate from zero to full. Not too shabby, but I’d have to keep them as my trump cards for now. Maybe I’d be able to increase the regeneration with Gluttony, but that required further testing.

I really wanted to go out and test the void javelin, but before that, I had to check something else. System! Show me my new evolution requirements!

Evolution Goals:

Reach level 20

Bonus Objective:

Kill 100 monsters in a single night.

Find and eat the fruit of evolution.

Well, reaching max level seemed to be a given, really, but those bonus objectives were really something. Killing a hundred monsters in a night was pretty straightforward, and I do believe I had the tools to do it, but that didn’t really make it an easy thing to do. It’d probably need loads of preparation on my side and attempting this before I reached max level seemed to make it unnecessarily difficult, so I put it off.

Finding and eating the fruit of evolution was a lot harder by comparison. I had no clue what this fruit looked like, or where to find it. I’d guess that it would be in a oasis since this one was full of fruits anyway, but there was no guarantee that there was a fruit like that in this oasis. Maybe it only grew in the middle of the desert, so I might be screwed.

Well, there was little more I could do than to keep my eyes peeled. Maybe this was the first bonus objective I would have to pass on, even though completing this objective would probably give me some neat evolutionary bonuses.

Happy that I didn’t get any obscured tasks like last time, I made my way outside. It was time to blow something up.

Once I was outside, I made sure there weren’t any monsters in the immediate vicinity and started experimenting with my new limbs. I tried many ways of moving with them, such as wiggling them as a snake would move, grabbing onto things to pull myself forward, and essentially doing the front crawl, but instead of in the water I was doing it on the ground.

I got mixed results with these, and I got kinda miffed that my only option to go faster had been these weird tentacles. After a while, I settled on two main ways of moving with them. The front crawl was surprisingly effective, although this required me to spear the ground with the tips a bit to pull myself forward, so if I was ever on a hard surface it’d stop working. The second one was to launch myself forward by pushing off with both tentacles at the same time, a trick I remembered from seeing mudskippers on the internet.

I assumed this made some audible noise whenever I hit the ground, but I was so small, it was probably negligible… maybe?

For now, I didn’t really care and happily launched myself to and fro, enjoying the extra speed I now had. The accursed lock on my agility was gone, although I wasn’t sure if that was because of my current evolution or because I now had these fancy tentacles. Maybe it was a bit of both, actually. I was really looking forward to not constantly missing my shots due to shit agility, and might even start investing some points into it from now on.

I made my way closer to the lake, a lot more confident than I was before evolving. Sure, I was still pretty squishy, but I had better options to run away now.

Eventually, I arrived close to the shore and made my way up a tree while trying to use my tentacles to climb. It wasn’t graceful, and eventually, I just opted for the tried and true classic of just crawling up there.

I’d been cooped up for the past few days, so being out and about was exciting. I scanned the lake shore for unwilling participants in my experiments, keeping an eye trained on the lake, lest I’d be ambushed by weird fish again. Most of the candidates were way too far away from me to consider using them as test subjects, but then again, this was before my agility stat got unlocked.

Sure, I only had twelve agility, but that was still twelve times better than the single point I had before. Just to test it out, I cast a regular Poison Needle, took aim, and let fly. Just a few days ago, there’d been close to no chance for me to hit a shot like this, but the needle just barely missed its target. I adjusted my aim a bit and sent another needle flying, this time hitting the drinking emu-monster square in the body.

I cheered at my success, watching the monster for any reactions to my poison. It was, after all, poison of the third tier, further enhanced by my high intelligence stat. It took a moment for the poison to do its thing, but eventually, the emu started displaying the usual symptoms. Its legs started to buckle, and eventually, it vomited into the water. I kept watching, curious to see if a needle was enough to kill it, but after a while, it became clear that it wasn’t quite enough.

Sure, I could still use the concentrated version of poison needle, which would probably take it out in one shot, or I could just follow up with a poison spear to take it out. No reason to strain my precious reserve of VMP just to take out an already weakened target. I was just about to try and shoot it with a spear, when two tentacles reached out of the water, grabbed the big bird, and pulled it into the lake, never to be seen again.

I scoffed a bit at the fact that my kill was stolen from me, but no matter. I was just testing things, and there would be many more opportunities for me to get my tentacles on some XP. Speaking of which, it was time to test out my void javelin.

Not willing to miss my shot, I spent some more time in the tree, waiting until something got a bit closer to my location. And after sitting around for two hours, it finally happened. A shadow fell over me, and when I looked up, a hippogriff was coming in for a landing. It landed about ten meters away from me, and after eyeing the water suspiciously for a moment went to drink.

I smirked and started casting Void Javelin. It took me almost half a minute, which meant that it maybe wasn’t as much of a “get out of jail free” card as I’d hoped. No matter, I eventually completed the spell.

Above me a javelin-shaped mass seemed to materialize out of nothing, seemingly displacing reality itself to pop into existence. It was a black mass, about two meters long, and had some purple patterns shifting along its entire length. I was impressed for a second, idly noting that after I summoned the javelin, it just hovered there, ready for me to throw it, the same way my poison needle behaved.

If I had enough time, I could probably summon multiple javelins and then absolutely annihilate a bigger monster.

But, giddy to see it in action, I took careful aim at the hippogriff and yeeted the javelin. Thankfully, my aim was true. I watched as the javelin impaled the hippogriff… or not? It seemed to just phase through its body and got stuck halfway. I didn’t look like it made a wound, and the hippogriff got startled, giving a confused look at the weird thing going through it.

This lasted for barely a second, then the javelin detonated. A huge spray of blood erupted from the hippogriff, body parts and organs flying in all directions. I could see a shockwave travel along the ground, disturbing both the water and the dirt on the ground as it went. The tree closest to the poor sap got ripped clean out of the ground, and I had to hold on to my palm leaf so I wasn’t blown away as well.

I stared at the stain on the ground that once was a hippogriff, barely able to believe what I saw. I was ten meters away and still almost got blown away!

It would seem I needed to be incredibly careful about using this spell or I might just blow myself up alongside my victim.

I shuddered at the thought of higher-ranked void magic…

You have killed a T3 Lv.12 Hippogriff

You have been awarded 4250 XP

You have been awarded 84 Data Points

You have leveled up twice!