《STEM: The Topical Dungeon》#005 - Trapped in a Ranbi Rodeo Pt. 3
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Enemy Slain
Defended the Dungeon: +1 Favor
Personal Execution: +1 Favor
Kill rewarded to: Creeper Thorn (Kaden)
I did it. I finally got my first kill. Our last kill necessary for the bonus. I'll gloss over the fact that being the one to personally kill the target seems to grant me additional favor and just explain for now.
It had been a total of fourteen hours since coming to this world — thanks quest timer for helping me keep track! — but when the grass rustled near the stairs, Bomber and Ivy fled back and I proudly strode forward. It was a fierce ranbi as far as they had appeared so far with its... vicious vegetation-devouring teeth.
Okay, it wasn't terribly intimidating. The truth was that my isekai OP-power had finally shown itself and I finally wanted a chance to use it. So... well, I pasted the ranbi while my summons hid in their meat bunkers outside of Thorntwist range for safety.
[Notification]: Quest Update
You're alone with traps and surrounded by danger. Most people would give up hope.
Survive for 24 hours.
(10:03:22 Remaining)
Bonus Condition: Defeat 5 enemies personally or with allies. Completed!
Secret Condition: Achieve Evolution for 1 or more dungeon creatures.
See that there? That secret condition? Ever isekai lover knows that those sorts of conditions are always the signature of astounding loot or rewards. But this time, I'm not going to gloss over the most important part: Evolution. I had a hunch that it would eventually be the case given levels. But now, it was basically waved in my face.
The only issue is that even after earning a kill, I didn't get experience. In fact, there wasn't anything about the experience or kills on our menus. At first, I assumed I was merely missing it and had spent almost half an hour sprawling the various pages to no end hoping to see it.
So, I've deduced I'm either missing a title or ability of some kind that lets me see it. An extremely basic deduction, I know, but an isekai protagonist has to move on if I want to keep myself calm. Even though they were mere rabbit lookalikes, Ranbi were still living creatures and the amount of blood had started leaving me rattled. Bomber and Ivy didn't seem to have any means to understand me but knew about my commands, so I tried to get them to handle cleaning things up and keeping myself thinking of any way that I might induce evolution. Of the main ways, there are commonly three.
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Achievements, experience, and time.
Based on the condition, I could eliminate time. If it wasn't possible to evolve my manifested form or one of the ranbi before 24 hours, I doubt it would have popped up. After that, it was either through action and achieving specific goals or experience... and given the number of kills that Bomber had, it seemed less and less likely to be experience. Testing evolution through achievement means I need to try anything and everything I can think of.
Or, perhaps, the rules of evolution existed for all three and I was merely deluding myself trying to find the sole one. Honestly, that seemed the most likely so I said screw it and resumed my body-moving and kept feeding kills between myself and Bomber.
[Quests]://Survive_Day_One
You're alone with traps and surrounded by danger. Most people would give up hope.
Survive for 24 hours.
(2:43:16 Remaining)
Bonus Condition: Defeat 5 enemies personally or with allies. Completed!
Secret Condition: Achieve Evolution for 1 or more dungeon creatures.
It's official, my new body — consciousness, more adequately — so far didn't grow tired. Mentally I was getting exhausted since I still think and feel like a normal person... but as far as physically, the Creeper Thorn didn't move slower or act differently. My spectral form also let me move just as quickly as earlier in the day, albeit my mental sluggishness made it hard to adequately float around. Maybe it's because both my ghostly true state and the plant body aren't traditionally similar to animal bodies like a human, but for now, there was no way to know exactly why.
The sun went down around six hours left on the timer, so daytime lasts at least fourteen hours in this world. Or this part of it? It could also be summer but confirming the exact length of a day wasn't possible since I was dropped into this world in the middle of the day.
Honestly, the most surprising thing was both of my ranbi plopping down near their body bunkers once the sunset arrived. And I mean they did it instantly. Their reaction and the lack of attacks following that must mean that the ranbi sleep during the entire night. Given how much they had eaten, both of the ranbi were plump and content... and my clearing had reached an astonishingly massive circle at least fifty feet wide. The defensive circle at the center stood out considerably since the dried Creeper Thorn had no coverage... but it wasn't like we needed it with Thorntwist's destructive power. We'd left a lot of bodies in between our defensive line and the grass as a sort of morale-breaking no man's land for now.
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But with the ranbi having slept, I used the time to myself to test various methods that might give me achievements. In that time, I saw four pop-ups in those hours.
[Notification]
Total kills by self or summons have reached 10.
Condition Met: Granting title.
New Title: Beginning Slaughterer
Everyone has to kill in this world to survive!
Passive Effect
+ 2 Maximum SP
+ 1 STR
+ 1 CON
+ 2 to Trap Limit
Equipped Effect
N/A
The first two are connected. A new title. It did increase my Trap limit, which I immediately used to give us an almost complete circle-guard of traps. For now, I left small gaps near the corners of the stairs. Based on the name, I think I'll probably get more as I reach raising intervals. No telling just how many ranbi we had killed on our first day, after all...
ALERT Body acclimation point achieved.
Current Manifested Form influence allowed.
Class shifting...
Kaden Unaligned Mage has shifted alignment!
New Class: Fledgling Nature Mage
Assigning class benefits...
This was a large update that back then, I didn't take it into account. I had only three hours left at the time it fired, yet after searching I had found my stats and Manager bereft of anything new. The only difference was the Class section being swapped to the new one.
But what I didn't know is that it took time. Perhaps it was because it mentioned I achieved it, but I didn't consider that the class benefits would only assign after another acclimation point was achieved. So color me shocked when as the timer ticked down, a little over fifteen minutes later I was barraged with my fourth and final notification since then.
[Kaden] & [Manager] - Updated Stats improved.
+ 2 DEX
+ 2 RES
+ 5 Maximum MP
New ability(ies) assigned.
Gain Ability: Compost
The stats were nice; so far, it was making me a very proficient and all-around stat-balanced plant. The additional MP also gave us a bit more flexibility for tomorrow's battle plans.
Though my attention immediately snapped to the new ability because as a plant it was something baffling to me: the ability to Compost meant that I could produce more archaic fertilizer. Among the various means of producing fertilizer, there are both organically friendly and synthetic, yet out of all of them, the most well-known but perhaps misunderstood might be composting. Normally, having specific bins would be necessary to do something like that as fungi, bacteria, and the like need to be significantly strengthened to break down the biological material for use.
But this ability meant that I could do it as a mere action. Rather than months at a time, it could be done in an insanely shorter window of time.
Compost Inherited Personal-type Compost is a necessary part of creating a healthy harvest!
Select and compost a corpse over 5 Minutes; increase Nutrition by 1.
Given the absurd amount of killing we had done, the huge amount of bodies in our clearing now had a purpose. Although I was mentally exhausted, I at least had a new method to try out in my pursuit of evolution.
So like a dumbass, I immediately turned to the nearest bunny body and used it. In seconds, my conscious control over the Creeper Thorn vanished. I panicked at first but to my shock, that agency wasn't needed because my body was on auto-pilot. Breaking free into my Manifested Form, I floated higher and watched.
One moment the ranbi corpse had been peacefully resting... and the next, my new body's snaking length coiled around it like a cocoon and started squeezing so hard I could hear it pulping the ranbi. I gagged and turned my head away to avoid puking, though I don't imagine that's possible anymore.
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