Darkness. No matter where I looked, all I saw was pure and utter darkness. Pitch black darkness that my gaze could not pierce through, no matter what I tried. I tried squinting, but strangely enough I couldn’t feel my eyes…. Or even my own body. It felt like I had no shape and that I was sort of levitating - almost weightless. It was the strangest feeling in the world - I couldn’t wrap my head around it.
But… How did I get into this darkness?
I remember being inside that dungeon and then hearing a voice, before falling asleep… Did I die again? Perhaps my dying wishes were heard finally?
Right as I was getting my hopes up, that I perhaps was given the rest I wished for, I felt this strange warmth enter my body. Then, gradually, I began to feel all sorts of different sensations and feelings - eventually, feeling my own body again. Then, before I knew what else was happening, I felt alive again, as the pitch black darkness around me began to fade into a blinding white colour.
Then, after a few seconds of silence, I opened my eyes slowly - my vision a bit blurry for a second or two.
I was… Still alive.
And the environment around me - it was the dungeon again… Guess I didn’t die after all… And it definitely wasn’t all a dream like I had slightly hoped. I exhaled lightly - guess it all is still as real as it could get. After a moment or two, I heard a loud, loud announcement inside my own head.
Evolution successful.
You have evolved into
‘ Lesser Serpentine ’
Lesser Serpentine…?
Evolution?
What the… Wait - I do remember some kind of announcement about evolution before I lost consciousness. Did I… change forms or something?
I looked at my body, examining my own snake body. I felt and looked a bit longer and my light green colour was now a much deeper dark green - with these strange, faint patterns covering it now. It was certainly clear that my body had changed. Before I got the chance to do anything further, another loud announcement spoke inside my mind, scaring me a little.
Common Skill [Inspector] has become the Rare Skill [Erudition].
Skills [Hard Bite] and [Huntsman] have been combined into the Rare Skill [Harvester].
Skills..? Oh right - I had a couple of them, didn’t I? But… one of them seemingly also changed form and two others were combined into a different skill. Is this a result of my ‘evolution’? Perhaps…
…Maybe I should check out my stats - perhaps those also have changed as a result of this new form.
“Graifrius Hasil.” {Primal Language Translation; ‘Status Open.’}
A second after I said the command out loud, the window that contained my stats opened up in front of me, blinding me just a little bit with its rather bright blue colour that it projected onto my face.
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Name: Faofa Shin
Species: Lesser Serpentine
Level: 20
Rank: E
Stats:
Health; 6700
Strength; 900
Defense; 850
Magical Energy; 4100
Stamina; 800
Intelligence; 198
- Overall Power; 2258
Skills:
-Speech; Active Skill
-Venom; Passive Skill
-Erudition; Rare
-Devourer; Individual Skill
-Harvester; Rare Skill
-Venom Pellet; Rare Skill
-Trickster; Common Skill
-Shadow Step; Common Skill
-Beasts Will; Individual Skill
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‘Hmm… Well, they definitely increased. Once again, I am not an expert in this matter, but those stats have to be decent, right?’
I thought to myself, before exhaling. Who was I kidding, I was probably what most people would call the ‘early game’ or something - no way these stats were pushing even ‘decent’ territory. After a little bit of further examination of my stats and skills, I closed the window. Whether or not my stats were decent did not matter for now - I should continue moving farther into the dungeon.
I looked around the room, falling a bit confused as I did.
Weren’t there a bunch of corpses laying around the place? I swear there were a shit ton of direwolf and poison lizard corpses that I had killed laying around the place… Where did all of them go? Did someone take them? Or…
Did the students that I had seen outside the dungeon before coming inside take them? I then slapped myself with my tail, before shaking my head. Get yourself together - no way in hell those humans - or at least, I think those were humans - took the corpses. What reason would they have to take a bunch of dead bodies of random monsters? Maybe there was a reason I wasn’t aware of, but to me, as it stood, it made no sense.
Whatever was the case, since the corpses are missing, I should be very, very careful treading farther - who knows what else was inside here. After a bit of hesitation, I turned to look towards the opening - which led, what I assume, deeper inside the dungeon itself. There was no time to waste - if those students indeed were already inside this dungeon, they most likely have gone farther in, so I shouldn’t dwindle here too long, otherwise they may end up taking out all the monsters inside here.
I quickly slithered towards the opening.
Moving up to it, I examined the opening for a second, before looking down the tunnel that it led into - it was quite long and a bit narrow, while seemingly leading into a room farther down. Another thing I managed to spot was what seemed like fighting in the room on the other side of the tunnel - I also could hear shouts and sounds of metal clanging.
It was clear, someone was inside the dungeon and in the next room - the only question was, was it the students that I was hearing or someone else? No way to know. After a moment or two of hesitation, I gulped before slithering into the tunnel and slowly approaching the next room - where the sound of fighting was coming from.
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As I got closer and closer, the sounds got more clear and I was able to slowly make out what seemed like humanoid figures - all rushing around. Once I reached the end of the tunnel, I was forced to quickly retreat back into the tunnel a bit, as a male in that student uniform was flung against the wall next to the tunnel. I heard shouts, pants and all sorts of other noises fly across the room. Looking at the chaos inside it, my suspicions were correct - the students I had seen outside the dungeon were now inside and currently in this second room, fighting against the monsters in here.
Sticking close to the shadows, I decided to use ‘Erudition’ to take a look at the monster stats in order to get an idea of the power of these creatures. And what I saw, frankly, scared me a little. Unlike the first room, where there were a few Poison Lizards, Direwolves and slimes - none of which exceeded the level of twelve, in this room… There were some kind of creatures called ‘Armoured Tigers’ all of which were at the level high level of eighteen. That was a mere TWO levels lower than me.
To say they were stronger than the enemies in the first room, would be an understatement… Or at least, I think that it would be an understatement. Again, I wasn’t sure what counted as a ‘high’ or ‘low’ level - I was sort of winging and guessing everything.
Anyways…
As I watched from the shadows the students fight off the monsters, an idea popped into my mind. I didn’t exactly want to be seen by these students - as it could end up with me being killed by them - so why don’t I just move on through this room and leave the students to deal with the monsters in here? Surely there were more rooms to this dungeon than two? I can just ignore this entire room and move onto the next one and fight the monsters there - easy… at least in theory.
I had to get through this room without being spotted or crushed by the individuals fighting - which could be easier said than done.
As the roars of battling between the students and monsters continued on, I took in a deep breath, before exhaling. Screw it - I will just take the risk and rush through. If I get killed, oh well, at least I won’t be disappointed. After a brief movement of hesitation and my body freezing up, I launched myself out of the shadows of the tunnel I was hiding inside of, before quickly slithering through the entire room - dodging all the fighting happening around me. As I got to the halfway point of the room, I spotted the tunnel that led what I could only guess was deeper inside the dungeon - only the tunnel looked a lot more… fancy? I suppose?
It looked different than the first one.
However, I didn’t get much time to examine it from this distance, as I kept rapidly moving through the dungeon - avoiding all the different attacks being exchanged between the students and monsters in this room.
And luckily for me, I managed to reach the next tunnel with little trouble - however, right as I was about to enter it, one of the Armoured Tigers leapt in front of me and growled as it moved towards me - forcing me to back up a bit.
“Oh come on, you’re a piece of shit! Get out of my way!”
I thought before looking around nervously. It seemed like all of the students were far too busy battling the other Armoured Tigers to notice me. It’s risky, but I have no other choice - I had to take out this one armoured tiger in my way myself. As the feline monster got closer and closer, it leapt at me, its jaws and claws wide open. Before the monster managed to get me underneath itself and within its grip, I coiled up my body and propelled myself into the air, dodging the tiger as it landed. Then, I exhaled lightly, before flipping my body towards the tiger. About time I start learning how to use my skills - so how about I try out the ‘Venom Pellet’ skill?
This will be my first time using a skill in combat, so I might not be the best at it, but hey - everyone is a beginner at some point.
As I lingered in the air above the tiger, I closed my eyes before thinking about the ‘Venom Pellet’ skill. I didn’t know how to use the skills I had, so I was sort of winging it at this time - just hoping that it was based on your thoughts or wishes - that if I thought about using a skill hard enough, I would end up using it. Lucky for me, the skill did in fact activate, creating small orbs of purple liquid in the air around me before firing off small darts like bullets down at the Armoured Tiger. The tiger looked up towards me and roared, before getting hit by my small pellets all across its body, causing the tiger to what I assume was take a lot of damage, as it let out a roar of what sounded like pain, before tumbling around a bit and then falling against the ground on its left side, its life clearly having left its body.
“Pretty powerful skill…”
I commented to myself inside my thoughts before landing on top of the deceased monster and throwing a look back behind me. Thankfully, it seemed as though the students were too busy fighting the tigers to have noticed me - thank god.
Before anything else, I hopped off of the tiger and quickly slithered into the next tunnel and made my way rapidly through it - wasting absolutely zero time getting to the next room - so as to not risk any of the humans seeing me.
The tunnel was much, much longer than the last one - it also had this foul stench all across it. The smell was horrid and smelled a lot like a pile of rotting corpses was nearby - it almost smelt like I was walking into some kind of messed up meat grinder, that left all organs to rot while mincing up the rest of the body.
….A bit of a gore-y example, but I think you get my point.
After traveling through the tunnel for a bit, I eventually reached the other side of it and exited the tunnel into a wide, wide and open room. As soon as I slithered into the room, the tunnel from which I had entered it suddenly shot close, with two heavy stone doors closing it up, before I had the chance to react and leap on out. I exhaled lightly as the two stone doors closed with a heavy thud. It looked as though the only way out now was to finish the dungeon - in whatever way constituted finishing the dungeon.
I looked around the vast and open room I was now inside of. It was much, much larger than the other two rooms in this entire place… It was almost creepy how much bigger it was. It made me feel like I was going to encounter something ridiculously huge inside here - I mean, why else would the room be about five or something times larger than the other two rooms in this dungeon? Surely something absolutely massive had to be lurking inside of this room.
As I carefully slithered deeper into the room, my gaze kept jumping around the place - looking at the ceiling, the floor, the walls and all else in the room - I was being cautious. Who knows what was inside here - the last thing I wanted to happen is to be ambushed by… whatever the hell is inside here. As I moved deeper and deeper, I came to notice this strange large statue in the back of the room. The statue was seemingly made out of stone and had what appeared to be the image of… a Scorpion? A large one at that.
The creature's body was segmented and seemed to be covered in something akin to armour - and its tail? It was… well, it was very, very intimidating, to say the least. It was large, long and had a giant sharpened end on it - like any scorpion would… just - this one was about five times larger than any other scorpion I knew of.
“Thank god it is only a statue..”
I thought, before exhaling and turning around, looking around the room again, searching for anything else that may be inside it. However, apart from the massive scorpion statue, the room itself was rather empty - with not much of interest inside it. I mean, there was barely anything inside here - if we didn’t count the very intimidating and scary stalactites that covered the ceiling. Perhaps I can’t fight the monsters in the next room until the monsters in the previous room have been defeated? Could be…
As I slightly lowered my guard, coiling up my body to rest a bit, since I could not access the previous room as the path to it was literally blocked off, I felt the ground tremble a little, as I heard small pebbles hit the ground behind me. A bit confused, I turned around to look at the pebbles, examining them a bit. Where did these even come from..? Did they fall from the stalactites on the ceiling? Surely not…
Then, after a bit, right when I was about to write off the tremor and the pebbles as just a product of my imagination, the room shook again, only a bit more violently. Then, the giant scorpion statue suddenly cracked, sending small pebbles and fragments falling to the ground. My eyes widened as I quickly propelled myself backwards - as far away from the scorpion statue as I could, before it suddenly erupted - sending all the stone I thought was made off flying across the air. The room was shaking so much, causing a couple of stalactites to fall from the ceiling and onto the ground as a giant, and I mean, giant pitch black scorpion hopped off of the pedestal where the statue stood just moments prior.
The scorpion looked at me with shining, deep red eyes, before letting out a loud, loud and horrible screech - hitting its pincers against the ground.
I felt fear rush down my spine and then through my entire body.
You had to be kidding me… right?
That statue was the monster of this room? This has got to be a sick joke… As the scorpion glared at me, I took in a deep breath before gulping and activating ‘Erudition’ to see what I was dealing with. And when I saw the stats of the scorpion, I nearly fainted on the spot - unable to process what on earth I was seeing in front of me right now. I thought that troll I had seen in the forest was scary… well, this scorpion… it was.. Something else.
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Name; Daxina
Species; Greater King Scorpion
Level; 28
A Powerful monster that can only be found as a boss in low ranked dungeons or as a rare monster in swamps and sandy areas. Its body is made of very tough to penetrate armour like plating, which makes it almost invincible to any normal attacks. When encountered, avoiding being hit with its tail is advised.
STATUS;
-Agitated (+15% to Strength)
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