I dodged to the right, barely avoiding being skewered by the antlers of a… rabbit.

The body of the rabbit was entirely too long, reminding me of a wiener dog in some ways, but the rabbit had some seriously powerful back legs that warranted the extra length. It kept jumping at me in a straight line, trying to spear me with the impressive set of pointy antlers on its head. The thing was jumping around like a bullet and I had problems dodging it in time.

Most of my own attacks had missed since it was moving too fast. I don’t think I’ve ever had this much trouble hitting something. Well, my aim was shite while my agility was still locked at one, but this was different. I realized early on in the fight that I should shoot my shots when it’s either turning around or coming straight at me. Except, the little bugger was able to turn on a dime, swerving out of my shot's path easily.

I cursed as I dodged again, trying to hit it with a poison bomb, but even the increased area of effect couldn’t catch the rabbit. My attacks were useless, not even poison assassination, which spawned right behind the target wasn’t able to hit the speed demon. I quickly realized that I only had one attack left that could help me and started pumping mana into the spell, void-infused mana, to be precise.

I had to dodge again and felt the tip of an antler gouge a long gash into my side, wincing at the pain. I glared at the weird rabbit and unleashed my spell as it was turning to charge at me again. A huge cloud of poison mist spread out from me, covering the entire area with the deadly gas. The rabbit didn’t seem to notice and charged again, barely missing as I jumped over it.

My poison should be applied, which made this a game of endurance. All I had to do was wait for my poison to slow down the nasty bugger, and once it did, I would be able to deal with it easily. After all, it seemed like the lion's share of its point was invested in agility and strength, which meant that it should have laughably little HP.

I kept dodging, occasionally taking a hit from the antlered rabbit while summoning two void javelins and letting them hover above me. All while keeping my eyes glued to the brown blur, watching for the moment it faltered. It took quite a while and I was starting to feel the exhaustion, worriedly keeping an eye on my own HP, but eventually, the rabbit stumbled during a turn.

Immediately capitalizing on the mistake, I let both of my javelins fly, and finally, the rabbit couldn’t dodge in time. A spectacular twin explosion ripped the thing apart, the system rewarding me with something I’d been waiting for, for a long time.

You have killed a T4 Lv. 14 Long Jackalope

You have been awarded 28’300 XP

You have been awarded 256 Data Points

Your skill Destructive Poison Mist(D) has reached Lv. 10!

You have unlocked the spell Destructive Poison Aura(C)!

Destructive Poison Aura(C)

Emit an invisible, poisonous Aura in a 10m area around yourself. Every creature within the area will receive slight poison damage every second and all poison effects will become slightly more potent.

Cost: 40 MP per Second.

My poison mist finally evolved to the next tier! The new spell seemed very useful if a bit mana intensive. I did have a lot of cost reduction on my poison spells, and a quick glance into my spells revealed the adjusted cost to be twenty-four mana per second. Still expensive, but a lot better.

I happily jumped past the mangled corpse of the jackalope, too damaged to be worth taking with me, and started looking for a nice spot to recover my lost HP and MP. As soon as I was topped up, it’d be time to continue my rampage through the fourth layer.

I was running for dear life, weaving between the trees of the forest I was in. A quick glance behind me revealed that, yes, the angry horde of massive ants was still coming after me.

I had been fighting with a giant mudskipper fish that ambushed me when I passed by the bank of a river. The fish was uncomfortably fast on land and used water spells to attack and support. At first, I tried to put some distance between us, believing that it would return to the river eventually, but our fighting exploded what apparently was an anthill. The occupants weren’t happy about this, of course, and they started chasing after us.

I’d lost sight of the mudskipper some time ago, unsure if it was caught or not, but I didn’t have time to care. There had to be at least fifty ants coming after me, each of them towering above me. Their red carapace reflected the sun whenever it broke through the trees, and their lifeless eyes were following me wherever I went. I did try to take some potshots here and there, but it quickly became apparent that I’d run out of mana long before I managed to put a dent in the masses.

With no other choice, I started running, pushing myself to the limit while using my leap skill off cooldown, barely managing to stay ahead of the mad ants. I’d been leading them deeper into the forest, where it was thickest. Another glance upwards revealed that there was close to no visibility upwards, which was perfect.

I kept dodging around trees and the occasional glob of acid shot by the ants while charging up a void jump. I made sure to leave some mana for if I needed to fight something shortly after, but eventually I felt it was enough. I dodged behind a particularly thick tree, quickly activated the spell, and hopped through the portal, appearing a few hundred meters up in the air.

I spread my wings and looked down, the trees obscuring the ants from sight completely. Glad to have dodged that bullet, I banked away from the angry mob below me and kept an eye open for flying monsters.

I needed a break.

I looked at the creature in front of me with disgust, not only because it looked scary, but because of what it was doing.

“Gambling… Addict…”

The creature croaked out the words in a warbled voice, making me wonder if it was a traveler. I quickly dismissed the notion due to how animalistic it had been acting ever since we started fighting. Even if it was a traveler, it had turned insane long ago, and since it was trying to kill me, it was just fair to reciprocate. But just how the hell did it know about my gambling addiction?

The monster was a little similar to an Asphon, but only marginally. It had two muscular legs and two spindly arms, all being entirely too long to match its torso. Its black skin was helping it hide in the dark, and several spines could be seen on its back. Huge claws extended from its hands and feet, ready to rip its enemies apart, complemented by a mouth with equally sharp teeth. And above the mouth, a singular large green eye was staring at me creepily.

“Gambling… Addict…”

Its voice seemed to have some telepathic traits since I was able to hear it. The sheer fact that it could talk caused me to stop our fight and just stare at its eye in wonder. Just what the hell was that thing? And what was it trying to do? As soon as I stopped fighting, it did as well, its creepy eye fixated on me.

I felt some pain in my body but chalked it up to the scratch wounds it had inflicted on me. Its eye was mesmerizing, the green color seemingly swirling around in increasingly interesting patterns. I winced as a sharp pain demanded my attention. A look back at my body revealed that chunks of my flesh were falling off, looking almost rotten. I recoiled at the sight before barely managing to leap out of the way of another claw attack from the monster.

That shithead had hypnotized me while it used some other skill to rot off my flesh!

Adjusting my threat assessment of the monster to “hella fucking threatening”, I wasted no time bombarding the thing with everything I had. Poison spears, bombs, and void javelins flew out in quick succession, shortly after followed by a giant spike. I tried not making eye contact with it, lest I be hypnotized again, which made aiming a bit harder, but thankfully, most of my spells exploded so I could afford to be a bit inaccurate.

Once I went all out, not caring about keeping some mana in reserve for eventual follow-up fights, the… thing didn’t stand a chance, keeling over dead soon after. I angrily dismissed the kill notification from the system and started munching on the corpse, eager to delete this thing from existence, as well as to kickstart my recovery.

Seriously, fuck whatever that was.

Is that a snake? Is it a centipede? No, it’s a weasel-pede.

I stared in confusion as the incredibly long weasel passed under my hiding spot in a tree. It was actually fairly cute if you ignored the hundreds of legs. Just looking at the thing confused me. Like, how was that a decent combat form? It just looked like a fluffy noodle, it’s many legs didn’t even have claws. Of all the things I’d seen so far, this one looked the least threatening of all.

Which was exactly why I left it the fuck alone. I wasn’t about to fall for the “hey look at how non-threatening I am” shtick… again.

No sir, you continue on with whatever you were doing, Mr. weasel.

I patiently waited in front of the cave I’d been camping at. I managed to find a cave where the system was spawning in fresh tier four monsters and decided to do some spawn killing of my own. The result was me reaching level twenty, as well as racking up an impressive amount of bodies to consume. Sure, they didn’t help a whole lot in the XP department, but they were still valid targets for gluttony, and gave out a decent amount of DP as well.

I did notice a decline in the spawn speed, though, and the last monster had spawned a few hours ago. The system might have caught on to what I was doing and stopped generating new monsters… spoilsport. No matter, just to be sure I’d observe the camp a bit longer and grab a bite to eat from my inventory.

Hopefully, I would find a camp like this again at some point.

I sat on a barstool inside Tim’s bar, waiting for the man to serve his other customers. My body was currently sleeping on one of the floating islands, my go-to retreat for when I needed to sleep. I’d done some furious hunting over the past two weeks, and it had paid off big time, so it was time to take a break.

“Hey there Gary, haven’t seen you in a while,” Tim said as he approached me. “What can I get you?”

“I feel good today, so get me something that costs around ten attribute points, please,” I replied happily.

“Oh? Got points to spare now?” Tim started mixing a drink behind his back.

“I wouldn’t say to spare, but I got enough, and that’s a reason to celebrate!” I waved my eye-stalks a bit to indicate my joy.

“Congratulations, then,” Tim said as he put a cloudy blue drink in front of me. “Enjoy.”

I took a sip of the drink, idly noting that I could taste a hint of flavor. Damn, I needed to order the more expensive stuff more often.

“Hey, Tim? I remember you telling me that you can make drinks with beneficial effects,” I asked curiously. “Just what kind of effects are we talking about here?”

“Oh you know,” Tim waved a tentacle around a bit. “Higher maximum Mana for a while, more potent spells, increased strength, more XP, harder skin, stuff like that. To be honest, if you can think of what you’re looking for, I can mix it. For a price, of course.”

“That’s pretty cool…” I said, rubbing my chin area with a tentacle. “You know, I got some big fights coming up, so I might just drop by and buff up a bit before starting.”

“I always welcome the business, as you know.” Time nodded. “Especially when my customers want something aside from the regular drinks I usually make.”

Tim was waved over by another Patron and left me with a few words of apology. I sat back on my stool, occasionally sipping the drink. Happy with my recent progress, I continued making plans for occupying the node. I’d have to be as prepared as I could be to defend that thing for three whole days. When I observed it, the fights seemed to start at a one-hour interval, which meant I would need to persevere through 72 fights against multiple opponents in total.

I took another look at my status, deciding that the time to challenge the node was almost here.

Name

Gary

Traveler Tier

1

Type

Monster(P2W)

Species

Nascent Voidling (T4)

Level

20

Max HP

582

Max MP

2388

Max VMP

1313

Strength

32

Agility

45

Intelligence

80

Wisdom (C)

97

Constitution

57

Luck

40

Attribute Points

0

Skill Points

26

Data Points

28789

Skill Trees 1/2

Poison

Mutations

1