New Title Received: Master of the Abyss Tower.

“Feat performed, become the owner of the Abyss Tower. Title awarded: Master of the Abyss Tower.”

I pondered my new Title as the others finished packing away their tents. It was obvious why I’d only gotten it now; I had only just named and marked the tower, but as for why the Title Granter had decided it was significant enough to merit a Title? That, I was uncertain about.

Shuffling into a slightly more comfortable position on my log, I cast my gaze around the clearing. The space I’d carved out of the jungle was already being invaded by saplings, growing supernaturally quickly with the aid of the mana leaking out of the ground.

Movement caught my eye. I watched, slightly surprised, as a Green Slime wobbled cautiously into the clearing, then made a bouncing beeline straight for me. Karma, coiled twice round the entire base of the tower, didn’t even look up. The green blob reached me, jumping at my face and encountering my hand instead. It glommed onto it and did its best to try and dissolve it, to no avail. I lifted it up to my face to give it a good look. I hadn’t seen any other monsters from Terraria yet, none of the low-level mobs could survive in the Beast Forest. That made this slime even more surprising.

The Green Slime hopped off my hand, engulfing my head. My visor materialised to keep it out of my eyes, and it didn’t seem able to get through my mask, my Solar Flare Armour integrated into it as it was. Being a Terrarian, I could hold my breath for minutes with no problem.

I poked the slime. It wobbled, ripples rolling over my green-filtered vision. I poked it again, more ripples. “Heh.”

I briefly considered pretending to be dead, but decided that would cause too much consternation (and complaints), so chose to just to sit on my log, poking the slime, until everyone else was sorted.

“Everyone ready to get going?” Lupia asked the adventurers, who all answered with varying forms of assent. She turned to Tear, who nodded, then to me. It was kinda impressive how little she reacted when she saw the slime. I gave her a thumbs-up and held up my yoyo, then thought for a second and held up a finger.

Karma’s tail flicked through my head, the Green Slime exploding into little more than green vapour, not a single hair on my head being disturbed.

“Just one thing.” I turned to the group’s front line swordsman. “Dranner, I apologise for damaging your sword yesterday, I went too far. I can give you a replacement weapon if you’d like. Your current one is a bit... um... structurally compromised, and I would hate for you to die if it broke.” This was actually true; I disliked the spoiled brat, but not enough to let him die.

He just gave me a glare.

“I’ll take that as a ‘no’ then,” I shrugged.

“All done?” Lupia asked. I nodded. “Great. Let’s go.”

We were barely a hundred metres out of the clearing when we ran into the first monster, and the next about the same after that, and the next after that. The trend continued for about an hour, the adventurers quickly and efficiently dispatching each monster that appeared. While I wasn’t entire sure what distinguished the ranks of adventurers, A rank sounded pretty high, and they appeared to be earning it.

I didn’t recognise the majority of the monsters we encountered, but from what I saw and deduced, the increase in monster numbers and types was sorta my fault. No monster with more than half a braincell, or less suicidally aggressive than a Breaker Bear, would want to attack somebody outputting as much raw power as my aura had been, even while supressed to avoid registering on human senses. Now I’d restrained it perfectly… 5 strong(ish) people, 2 weaker, and 1 so weak that they didn’t even have an aura sounded like a group entirely worth attempting to murder.

We were currently resting around the base of a particularly large oak tree, its bark cracked and ancient. Something rustled softly in the leaves above us, followed by a particularly loud rustle and a two foot long cricket dropped out of the canopy, one of Vyra’s throwing knives embedded between its compound eyes. I pulled out the knife, wiped it off on a cloth I pulled out of my inventory, then tossed it back upwards, where it stuck in a branch within arm’s reach of the dark elf assassin.

I eyed the cricket curiously. “How do these taste?” I asked Liz, who was sitting next to me.

“What?”

“The cricket. I haven’t eaten one that big before, I was wondering how it tastes. How do you guys normally cook them?”

By now, everyone was giving me strange looks. Dranner muttered something about barbaric backwards societies.

After an expectant pause, Liz cleared her throat. “Lyte, we don’t eat bugs. That’s disg- gross.”

“Gross? Crickets especially can be delicious if cooked right! I prefer mine roasted plain, with salt.”

“They’re not bad,” Tear agreed timidly.

“See!”

“I, uh, think I’ll stick to eating meat thanks. Eating insects is weird.”

Well, Liz was missing out. I’d been eating insects my entire life, as had most people. In fact, most of the protein I’d ever eaten was from insects, even though my family had been well off enough to have livestock meat relatively often. It was just another meat. And besides, insects were just better than livestock because they’re so much more efficient. Feed and water one cow, or five cows worth in weight of insects. Shifting protein sources away from inefficient livestock was an important part of restoring the screwed up climate, and it freed up a lot of land for habitat reestablishment programs. Eating insects was just better.

“By the way,” Vyra’s voice floated down from above, “I’m on Lyte’s side for this one. Taarasii caterpillars are amazing roasted.”

“I’ve never heard of those, what’re they like?” I asked enthusiastically.

“Best roast chicken I’ve ever had, but nutty. The tricky part is cooking them just right so they have a creamy texture and crunchy outside. My family always makes sure to have them when we get together every year.”

The conversation rapidly devolved into recipe swapping. Lupia finally had enough when I pulled out a grill and a handful of jars of spice. “Lyte! Can it wait until we’re out of the monster infested jungle?!”

“Er, sorry. Got carried away. Continue this later?”

“Sure,” the dark elf replied from the treetrop.

“If you’re done,” Lupia said firmly, “let’s carry on.”