When someone levels up there is a myriad of subtle effects that become more obvious in high-leveled individuals. For every Class, these effects are different. For every individual, these effects are different. Every specialization or Skill contributes to the manifestation of one's levels. I as a [Worldly Chronicler] have been said to give off a regal, wise, and traveled aura. I'd honestly never been aware of it.

-Accounts of my Travels, Coby Tuuli

Jayke was unaware of the small smile that had long since alighted on his face. His spell was working to perfection. The four-limbed creatures were surrounding it. Jayke had pumped it with mana and left it at that. The moment the first one approached and broke the radius of its detection, something immediately cracked against its skull.

The rest of the pack blinked at their dead friend. Then all their heads turned up and bared fangs. Screaming, they leaped forward. A flurry of bodies moving in concert, group tactics.

Jayke watched his spell dodge away as bodies broke against its repeating detection field. It was programmed to dodge away from the trajectory of whatever it detected entering its radius. It managed to dodge a handful of bodies, cracking hands or skulls in the process before being taken down.

"Hm." Jayke hummed from above. "Enough to break their bones. It's aiming at the first thing that pushes through its radius. Sometimes its the head other times its a reaching hand. Should be fine for bugs." He said. "Mana consumption wasn't the worst." He had since figured out how to implement a forcebolt. The spell had been utilizing that knowledge.

There was a piercing screech from the birds of prey above and Jayke instinctively flinched at the sound of thunder and fire. He peered up at the filtering sunlight and shielded his eyes, watching the clash of feathers. "Still not used to that."

He turned around and an iron and glass door opened for him, disappearing as he stepped through.

Ever since his budding understanding of the Rarity and its context, he had a new appreciation for all his initial Skills. All those lights that he had long ago pulled from the rainbow sea. Epic, Mythic, and Legendary. He wasn't so foolish to discount them. The fact that among them were proficiency Skills made them all the more valuable. They were what allowed him to get this far. Careful treasures.

"I'm probably gonna need to downplay a lot of my capabilities in the future. At least, until I get a better measure of what's normal." He recalled the four-armed pack - his handiwork. "I doubt many people could do something like that remotely while staying completely uninvolved. I also doubt most people care enough to investigate random strangers but it can't hurt to be careful."

There are so many varieties of magic as evidenced by The Feel of Magic by Coby Tuuli that Jayke wondered at what his non-combat peers were tasked with. After traveling for a month he had learned that not everyone had combat applicable magics. Jayke remembered Hucobb vetting everyone the very first test against the monsters born from one's imagination. Hucobb had directed a number of people off to the side. It was only after the fact he realized they were non-combat.

Somehow the fact that Sterext had pinpointed both Jayke and Oz's general capabilities didn't lead him to doubt the Coterie's resources. He hadn't witnessed a single tester participating so far that had been helpless. Jayke just wondered why he was let through, he'd been doing fine so far but his magic wasn't terribly suited to it. Maybe it was something to do with his mental state?

It made him all the more wary of the organization. He was still unsure at the relative normality of his level gain. He'd been doing some idle comparisons when anything in passing conversation came up. There was nothing concrete to be concluded so despite the wariness of the organization he was still hungry for answers. He had a lot of questions, a significantly important one regarding his arrival in this world, one which he'd rather answer with the Practioner Coterie's resources than ask them directly.

And if that research happened to lead him to the God of Lost Travelers, all the better. Perhaps Keylos could answer his questions too. Actually, he'd probably be better suited to it. He still had that [Mysterious Arrival] Quest.

There were a few small libraries in Nubilum but the selection of knowledge was disappointing, to say the least. Chee's bookshop had been much more varied than what he encountered. Apparently, the local bookshops, bookstores, and libraries were pretty small.

He wasn't sure if his curiosity justified this cruel testing. Not for the first time, Jayke wondered at the culture of the world by and large. He knew it was driven by the individual, notable people usually took the reins in society. To become high-level though that meant risking your life constantly, or alternatively just living a long time. The former was conducive to quick death while the latter meant slower leveling.

There weren't a large number of people testing, truthfully. At least, relative to the commonfolk Jayke had counted. That hinted at a small fraction of people who actually decided to risk death. Nubilum was a full city and its people filled the streets with yipping and wind-calling. It was a wealthy area and people lived happily, Jayke could tell just from the quality of life. It gave some much-needed context to Jayke. He was acutely aware of how reckless he'd been in jumping on the test as soon as he heard it, but he felt it was necessary to grow rather than stagnating in the middle of nowhere. Who knows how little he would've leveled if not exposed to the dangers that he was?

It was a trial by fire and some people had already melted.

He took stock of his [Safehaven] and really took a moment to appreciate the boon that it was. It was the only reason he had the moment for introspection. Obviously, he hadn't been able to really frequent the place during his month traveling, but the time in [Runic Skies] alone, if nothing else, proved its utility.

Reading the data of the [Safehaven] wasn't in his ability. What returned to his senses was something too vast to comprehend. Like he was looking only at a single instruction referencing millions of systems. It was nice to occasionally look at though like one might look at the sunset, or peer through the security cameras upon a horrible nightmare.

He chuckled, staring at his [Safehaven] with his actual eyes.

He hadn't even really noticed them, or rather he did initially, but never realized what a wonder it was. In his [Safehaven], there was electricity. Lights. And a bathroom for god's sake. The entire haven was the size of his old underground bunker, easily the size of the first floor of a suburban home. Only all that space was converted into a circular room which consisted of a bed, bookshelves that were only just considered empty upon which sat a small budding collection, a study along with a chair, and currently a whole lot of monster parts, giants fruits, and other crates filled to the brim. There was also a door to the bathroom.

Jayke scratched his head. "I've become a hoarder."

Upon one of the recesses set into the room's circumference at regular intervals, he had set his valuables. A small sack of healberries, a small glass vial full of blue liquid, and a grainy potion that swirled in a way that was hard to concentrate upon.

Item: [Decoction of the Mammoth] (Epic)

A liquid that constitutes the purest form of a Mammoth Tree's sugary sap. Within the vastness of a Mammoth Tree, gargantuan natural processes take place which rival the motions of entire river currents. Undeterred, these processes concentrate the energy absorbed by the tree into sugary sap to be sent throughout its entirety. However, in the largeness of the tree, there are many organisms that tap into this process, diluting the natural purity of the liquid. Through the maginatural processes of a [Whitecrest Gatherblossom], this decoction is of the utmost purity. Imbibing this decoction grants upon the user a massive boost to health and constitution.

Item: [Potion Of Desert Blurr] (Uncommon)

An alchemical potion drawing upon the essence of Great Sand Worms. Once imbibed the user becomes difficult to make out in desert terrain. To onlookers, they become harder to focus upon and may altogether avoid notice. The inherent magic of the potion lasts no longer than a single minute.

He persued the Items quietly. Aside from his [Sand Rabbit's Foot] and [Fire Feather] they were the only other Items in his possession. He hadn't gotten the chance to use the [Potion of Desert Blurr] and since high in the treetops there was no sand, he didn't like to carry it around. He'd rather not accidentally break it.

As for his [Sand Rabbit's Foot] he was fine with it secure in his pocket, the same for his [Fire Feather] which actually conveniently kept him warm from the wind chill, and also safe from the small chance a fire-attuned Elemental Raptor decided it wanted to kill him.

Reflecting on his experiments, he admitted that the four-armed creatures were the perfect test subjects for his spell. He'd managed to bank on the natural curiosity of the creatures and their tendencies to hunt when numbers were in their favor - attracting them for various test cases.

It had helped immensely in his development.

Jayke wasn't above admitting that the very first one of their kind that had thrown him from the tree hollow and thus endangered his life had left him with more than a small racial grudge. He wasn't a violent person, nor was he racist, but he was more than happy they were his first test subjects. Objectively, that probably didn't help his case, but he found solace in the fact that they also happened to be the most prolific and numerous of the creatures that frequented the Mammoth Tree.

In an effort to change his testing grounds he'd been using the other friendly delver's [Safe Zone] to move around a relatively safe handful of pathways which led to and from the cairn. He'd managed to gather a lot of data, smoothing out many many unforeseen bugs in the interfacing magics. Even optimizing the spell in places, simply as a consequence of his close scrutiny during its testing.

His most recent test on that roving four-armed pack hadn't netted him any rewards. Neither had the last six experiments.

Until now.

Reward: Item: [Cave Scale Armor] (Unusual)

A quality work of overlapping stones which protect both the torso and upper arms. The armor is strong enough to repel slashing and piercing attacks but is fundamentally weak to blunt damage. The armor repairs itself when surrounded by stone and kept in caves.

Jayke looked at the armor resting on his bed and donned it, immediately feeling the weight press onto him. It was, perhaps predictably, entirely stone. He scrunched his mouth, weighing the benefits against its literal weight. Unfortunately, he doubted the nest counted as a cave.

"Damn, I can't be weighed down when moving between branches. Freedom of movement is too crucial up here." He said, regarding the armor. He took it off. "Though, I wonder if an Unusual Rarity might cut it. I wasn't aiming for a reward but this actually might work. In any case, the [Giant Silvanid Queen] is gonna net me something either way." He let the possibility of failure slip away unsaid.

Jayke placed the [Cave Scale Armor] in another recess, content with the reward.

He left his [Safehaven] and picked his way towards the same perch above the silvanid nest. Again, his don't-look-at-me stone came in handy once he pumped it with mana. He'd have spent time trying to figure it out and use it to his advantage if he hadn't been unable to do just that for the past few weeks.

After moving past the outgoing silvanid workers unscathed and unnoticed he found himself in his familiar perch. He needed to regenerate his mana before committing completely. In the meantime, he made his preparations. Planning escape routes, working on both his detection spell and his new spell.

"I'll call it an orb turret for now." He cringed at the name as soon as it left his mouth but couldn't for the life of him improve it.

Thus, the last-minute tweaks to both his detection spell and orb turret spell came to fruition. He set the filling of his mana pool as the go-clock, no matter the state of his spells. He needed to stop stalling. Once his mana pool was filled, that was it. It was go-time.

Idly, he stared down at the hole. There were a number of them, all of which silvanids were bustling about. They were dragging corpses, various decomposed bodies. Jayke had been monitoring the movements of the hive and didn't miss the sudden influx of four-armed bodies. Jayke suppressed a malicious smile.

The program which controlled his sphere was relatively simple, logically. In practice, as was usually the case with his magic, it was much more complex. For instance, a particular set of iterations kept collapsing upon themselves until Jayke tracked down the problem to the thin detection shield being created over and over without even a previous detection of something being hit. It led to a critical failure in the spell and it collapsed without the mana.

He'd managed to fix the error.

He'd finally narrowed down code magic's behavior in the same way that the behavior or protective magic was obvious. Simply put, it was code magic was adaptable to instruction, intuitive in a way that a programmer would generally not expect. Qualitative rather than quantitative, much to Jayke's initial month of headaches. He'd slowly understood what that meant for him. The entire reason the magic could apply to most things was because of its flexibility, but its real utility came from its ability to conform to precise instruction.

Specific instructions that Jayke willed were often the hardest for the magic to cooperate with. It preferred simple instructions like 'move left' or 'move right'. This was evidenced by some earlier experimentation. Some instructions didn't take to the magic unless Jayke could explicitly state their parameters. Those parameters were widely qualitative and more recently were closely connected to Jayke's protection magic.

But Jayke was implementing math. Numbers and symbols meant little to the magic. He was forcibly introducing the concept of measurement where the code could have settled for a more loose descriptor, but that meant a strict mind as he programmed.

He grinned. He was building a small reusable library of instructions. Enough to memorize off the top of his head, but by now he was aware in time that it would only come easier.

It was easier for the magical program to malfunction during these stricter instructions, but if they were perfect then Jayke had something working.

It was the reason that creating a perfect sphere had been a hurdle for code magic but oddly uncomplicated for him. Unfortunately, it was an unneeded one. There were some fundamental problems with that implementation after all. If the orb was too close to something then its detection field would be crippled as its expanding shields would break near immediately. Oddly, the implementation of multiple outgoing sphere segments seemed to be more acceptable. They were basically curved ballooning planes. This way there were multiple sections a target could be detected from without altogether crippling an entire direction.

The amount of control needed to reproduce that effect manually was plainly impossible. And never with the amount of delicacy a coded piece of magic could achieve. Only a machine could've done so. And Jayke had just made it.

Caught up in his thoughts he hadn't realized his mana reserves had filled out.

He took a break, looking at the crawling bugs below. The workers were the size of a finger. Big for a bug back home, at least those that he was used to, but certainly not enough to be life-threatening.

Then again, the trail of them that was leading to and from the hive was completely blanketing the floor. The ones that he had to watch out for were the flying ones though. He was prepared to deal with them if they came, and mentally braced for any other unforeseen circumstances.

Positioned over a hive entrance, he traced the path of branches he'd take the moment he dropped the orb. It would fall straight through the hole and stop once it touched the ground. If not interacted with for at least ten seconds, it would send out some forcebolts in random directions before moving arbitrarily, avoiding collision when possible.

The orb of magic coalesced into his hand. The program formed in his other. Together, the orb turret spell.

He dropped it and immediately retreated to above another hive entrance. An intense buzzing overcame the area as Jayke dropped the second one. Then the third. Then the fourth.

He had mana for a fifth but that was better kept for other things. Mainly protecting himself if it came to it.

Every outgoing or incoming silvanid dropped what they were doing and started rushing towards the hive. Jayke heard angry chittering from within the nest, the buzzing sound of many bugs, and the whizzing of insectile wings. It was hard to describe the crunch he was hearing. That, was from his orb turrets.

He had wanted to tweak the forcebolts as to only apply only enough force to kill whatever bug came at it but there was no way to distinguish between them. The compromise was this; each forcebolt was enough to kill the largest bug he had seen barring the queen. Later, he would remove that restriction and allow full power.

The entire nest went into a craze and flying bugs zipped around the enclosed area. Jayke carefully kept himself out of sight, nestled in a small cavity he had scouted out earlier. The large flying silvanids scanned the entire area but missed him completely. Roughly understanding the hive, he knew a single one of them spotting him would be deadly. The silvanids could easily climb the branches up to him and overwhelm his position.

Jayke conjured a number of orbs as his mana replenished, taking manual control of their movement. He'd included several overrides in the magical program structure for manual control, movement was only one of them. Out of sight, he manipulated the watermelon-sized orb over the nearest hole which was still well within his range. He made sure to keep the orb well away from him by the it would come into notice. That way, at the very least, there was some disconnect with the orbs and his position, if anything ever picked up on them.

More buzzing. The air was filled with friction and Jayke felt itchy at all the sound. He dropped the orb and there was a series of crunching noises. Jayke smiled, realizing his invention was working. The smaller bugs didn't stand a chance against an automated exterminator.

Jayke heard something thudding against the wood below. Then his breath caught and his eyes bulged.

Creature: [Giant Silvanid Elite] (Unusual)

The brawn behind the large amount of food provided for a silvanid colony as prominent as this one. Silvanids are woodworking crafters that create defensible nests from the wood of nearby trees. Their structures are often buildings in and of themselves and have been the inspiration of many [Architects] and [Builders]. In number, a silvanid colony can flourish anywhere with wood or similar material as they are highly adaptable to their environments. The [Giant Silvanid Elite] is the result of that adaptability, harboring traits necessary for an environment as large as a Mammoth Tree.

Jayke had thought they were scavengers. Of course he was wrong. How had he not ever run into one of these? Now he was trapped in this enclosed space with that thing. It rivaled the size of the [Giant Tree Scyther].

"O-okay." He said to himself. "Not the end of the world. Been through that already." It wasn't completely left-field, he'd expected something to go wrong.

He racked his mind but realized the elite was heading straight for one of the larger holes. He had the colony under siege and the [Giant Silvanid Queen] had called in backup. But maybe Jayke hadn't realized what a Rare Creature really entailed, because three more of its kind appeared. All of them were System-recognized like the previous.

Jayke's eye twitched and he wondered how lucky he was to survive encountering the [Giant Tree Scyther] and the [Whitecrest Gatherblossom].

"Well. Maybe it is the end of my world." He said. "What the fuck did I just pick a fight with?" Things were staring to look less and less doable.

At that point, he was considering retreat. The runic circle was a means to leave the Dungeon. He couldn't leave [Runic Skies] if he was dead. It didn't matter his desire though, there was no escape route. The entire floor had filled to the brim with silvanids, all entrances and exits were basically flooded in them.

His spheres might've worked too well. He couldn't even hear them amid all the buzzing chaos of millions of crawling silvanids. He didn't even know if they were still going, he couldn't tell.

The three [Giant Silvanid Elites] which hadn't yet entered the nest were moving to do just that so he assumed the orb turrets were still functioning as they were supposed to. He could already tell they weren't breaking through their chitin carapace so it was game over once they were in the picture. Maybe a full forcebolt could crack the chitin, but only that. And an orb turret authorized for that mana output would last for ten shots or less.

He had planned to kill most of the hive and cull their numbers before loosing the stronger orb turrets down there. He hadn't expected the [Giant Silvanid Queen] to call in reinforcements. Well, he'd entertained the possibility, he just hadn't expected the size.

Jayke stared at the giant behemoth silvanids in plain awe. They were like-

One of their heads fell clean off. Something shifted from its back. A form, imperceptible. Then, in the rearing of its head it became visible. Its roar immediately quieted the noise of every bug in the area. A pregnant pause followed where every bug lost uniformity. Then suddenly everything swarmed towards it immediately, ignoring all other previous threats.

Another Rare Creature. The [Giant Tree Scyther]. Out of nowhere. Jayke made extra careful he was nowhere to be seen. He could've retreated to his [Safehaven] but that did nothing if he only came back out to this. He sat and watched, dumbfounded.

Jayke accepted that he had not taken into account every possible situation. "This is ridiculous." He lamented, taking stock despite his moans. His eyes tracked the figure, filling with visual information. Its form outlined itself in bright red, so did the [Giant Silvanid Elites].

It raked its scythe arms at a horizontal angle so clean that it bisected the smallest of bugs right above the floor. And Jayke realized that thing had just snuck into the entire hive unnoticed. Riding one of its largest members.

Then the two other [Giant Silvanid Elites] barreled forward like charging bulls using their open mandibles like horns. They jerked their chitin carapace against the roving scythes and all the weapons managed to do was score deeply against their bodies. Meanwhile, the mandibles of the two were enough to bite into the [Giant Tree Scyther's] abdomen. It skittered up the wall immediately, hundreds of legs carrying its weight while one of its scythes pierced the wall to maintain support. Its other arm sliced the air and the flying bugs were doubled for a moment before there no flying bugs at all.

Its antennae flicked up and down and somehow its many legs were squashing every regular silvanid that tried crawling up its abdomen. Anything else that actually managed to crawl onto its torso was absent-mindedly sheared off.

Then the hive was in chaos. Jayke had been ill-informed on what that looked liked. Every single silvanid was in a frenzy. The swarm of brown bugs was like a literal wave in their effort to shut down the scyther. They rode upon the backs of the elites and the flying types tried attacking the face and eyes, the antennae.

They failed.

The opposing Creature was too fast. The [Giant Tree Scyther], at times, looked like it had more than two scythes. It was cutting apart the bugs too fast to be anything but supernatural. It swept them away with the flat ends of its arms whenever there were too many and too close.

Jayke, surreptitiously, dropped more orb turrets into the hive. It went on for minutes before the tide of brown silvanids divided. Half went towards the hive as Jayke dropped the seventh addition orb turret down. The hole below was closing up, hundreds of bugs emptying their stomachs to seal the entrance. He registered them in his detection spell and each smaller silvanid outlined itself in a light brown. His spell program barely flinched at the numbers. He found some small satisfaction with that.

It might've been a completely new environment, but the situation was familiar. He was a small man in a battle between giants. Nothing more nothing less. His role was whatever he wanted it to be, no one was paying attention to him. And that fit his purposes well. He kept throwing orb turrets into the hive. He'd long since given up limiting the forcebolt mana outage.

If the best forcebolt he could have conjured by the orb turret was enough to at least damage the chitin then it'd be enough to eventually prevail. So long as he could crack the chitin of an elite, even if it was just by a small margin, he could kill the [Giant Silvanid Queen]. There were no countermeasures she could take other than defending herself. She was in checkmate by Jayke's orb turrets and the random [Giant Tree Scyther].

Jayke watched one of the silvanid elites go down, reaped by the scythe. The other was doggedly chasing the scyther. The [Giant Tree Scyther] was chittering at a lower frequency than the silvanids and it was doing something to the closest of them. Especially the smaller ones. Some of them were outright paralyzed or curling up.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, Jayke wasn't really sure who he was rooting for if any, the flying silvanids were in enough number that eventually they got past the scythes. Once they landed on its eyes, head, or antennae an entire troop of smaller silvanids deployed and began eating away at the face, or spitting dissolving acid on the eyes.

It screamed and sliced around its head. Its spatial awareness was beyond anything he'd ever witnessed, it had completely dodged its own head and eyes and cleanly sliced off everything which had present on them. It was blinded now though, regarding its foes. It paused, antennae twitching. It was completely still, in the inhuman way that insects often stood, until suddenly it disappeared.

There was no barely imperceptible form, or shifting of the light, or camouflage. It was gone. Just like that. The red outline vanished completely. Jayke had just seen a magic trick. The entire towering bug had just disappeared.

Jayke shivered. He remembered the antennae and kept perfectly still. The silvanid workers were swarming the entire covering every nook and cranny. They were trying to locate it blindly, by bumping into it. And that meant...

"Oh no." They were swarming the branches and that meant the tide of brown bugs were crawling upwards, upwards toward him. They were trying to cover every inch of the enclosed space. Jayke, unfortunately, happened to be in some of those inches.

Jayke plugged the openings to the small cavity he was in with barriers. He made sure to step out of sight. The buzzing loudened and he heard the pittering feet of hundreds of bugs engulf the wood around him. The barriers had kept them out. They hadn't seen him. He wondered if that was enough, or if the barriers were a giveaway in themselves.

There was a high-pitched keening noise that drowned out everything. An accompanying roar emanated from the hive below. Every single silvanid made for the nearest entrance. Bug parts littered the floor but soon the floor was visible. Everything moving had disappeared into the nest. The nest was under attack.

"Did that thing go straight for the queen?" Jayke blinked.

Keening noises, chittering, buzzing. A deep roar and the constant noise of gutted bugs. Whizzing sounds of insectile wings. Inhuman screams were the norm, filled with emotion. They stunned Jayke physically, permeating through him. He flinched at the noises and struggled to move as his eardrums threatened to burst. He conjured a shield around them and that was enough to move through the piercing noises of the fighting below.

Unabashed, Jayke dropped more orb turrets. And kept dropping them, keeping his mana generously above half. At this point, all he could do was damage. He didn't dare take his chances leaving, the vibrations of the fight below were too disconcerting.

He didn't think himself far from a fireman, or stoker, the people who shoveled coal into a boiler. He was just stoking the fire, feeding the flames. He needed them to burn either way.

Something cried out below. An insectile frequency that was both lower than the queen's and higher than the scyther's. A toss-up between either one. But nonetheless, a noise of death.

Jayke ventured out of his cavity and looked at the massacre below. He was wary of an invisible scyther but he was curious what happened in the nest below.

Unmistakably, something had died.