After finishing analyzing my body, my status, and my new skill, I calmed down a little. When I went to sleep I never imagined that I would wake up to something so amazing and here I am sitting with a face of the happiest person on “earth”.

I unrooted myself from the ground and said, “I have a lot of mana to use, I should continue to dig the tunnel and maybe if I am lucky I will find more of those mana crystals.” I didn’t know that even the lowest mana crystals were kinda rare, especially in this part of the forest.

So I continued digging through the Dried stone as more and more debris accumulated at the trench and slowly there was less and less space to place the debris, the closer area to the deeper part of the tunnel was already filled, so I needed to throw the debris further away to dispose of them.

After using my mana reserve, I went right back to sleep. “I guess the mana crystal really did protect me from evil spirits.” I said just as I fell asleep. This time I slept like a baby, no nightmares, and no worries were present.

I woke up in the morning and found out that all of my mana were already replenished, a big smile formed on my face as I said, “Now I don’t need to worry about my mana supply at all.” Now that I didn’t hit the wall in a long time I chose to do it now.

I started hitting the wall till my stamina reached two, after finishing that I continued to dig a little and went to rest till noon. After waking up at noon I immediately left to the trap, I restored some stamina midway and continued on my way as usually using my detection skill.

The trap hole entered my vision, “Wait, the hole is open? Didn’t I left it mostly covered with leaves?” I started to be more cautious and stealthy came closer to the trap. On my way, the mighty voice rang inside my head.

*”Stealth” leveled up to Lv3*

“Took your time…” I mumbled as I continued sneaking to the trap, “I used the sneak skill a lot and only now it remembered to level up.” When I came closer to the trap I couldn’t find any auras around it, but I didn’t lower my guard because there always could be stealthy monsters hiding inside it.

I was only a meter away from the trap, as I sent my roots to the trap hole. While moving my roots to the hole I moved my view to the roots as well, that way I would see what was going inside the trap. I looked inside the trap and didn’t find any monster, but my expression was really glum.

“My trap…” I was shocked to find all the spears inside the trap broken or heavily damaged, I could see only a few spears that were still in good shape. “Looks like I need to rebuild the trap from scratch.” I continued to check the trap for intruders, I looked at the door that was going into the body disposal room and found it broken.

A cold chill went through my body, ‘Did something entered it?“ I asked while being wary. I chose to check it out, I went to a relative location above the room and dug into the ground with one of my roots. It entered the ground and easily penetrated the ceiling of the room, but I found myself unable to see inside the room.

“My magic perception helps me to absorb light and sent it to me as sight, but it can’t do anything if it’s a complete darkness.” so I used my detection skill and found out few weak auras inside, the auras scared me for a second but then I was a lot calmer, those auras were really weak and surely came from weak monsters, so there no way they could hurt me through the ceiling.

I remembered something I did have a way to see them because I had a light source. I took out the mana crystal that was located inside my leaves. This time I chose to carry it with me everywhere as a lucky charm, I would never imagine that it would be useful on the first day.

I wrapped my roots around the crystal and gently inserted it into the small hole, at the same time I moved my view to my roots yet again. My roots entered the small room while the crystal lit the room with a dim blue light. In that room I found three rats, I specifically made the tunnel really narrow that big monsters won’t be able to enter but it wouldn’t be the problem for the smaller ones.

“Most likely a bigger monster came because of the smell of blood of the dead bunny that I left here and destroyed the spears and the door, then these bastards entered the tunnel and made it their home.” I said after thinking a little.

I looked at the three huge rats a little longer and found out that they dug out the carcasses of the other monsters that I buried and started to feast on them. “Those bastards.” Not that I really cared about the bodies of those monsters but now I needed to bury them again. “Well, I guess the body count increased by three.”

A strong killing intent rushed out of my body, the rats in the tunnel immediately raised their head to the ceiling, before that there were too busy eating so they didn’t even notice the crystal, but I accidentally revealed myself to them. They looked at the crystal that was held by my roots and released an annoying hiss, while one of the rats that had a different color than immediately jumped and bit my roots.

“Bastard!” It took me by surprise and because of that I dropped the crystal, “You are so DEAD!” I shouted inside my head and the killing intent gushed even more from my body. I calmed myself a little and immediately inspected the three rats, two of them were gray color but the bastard that bit me was completely white, it took me back a little to the weird colored snake that I met inside my first cave.

-Dust Rat Lv4-

Health: 18/18

Mana: 1/1

Stamina: 8/8

-Dust Rat Lv7-

Health: 21/21

Mana: 1/1

Stamina: 9/9

-Dust Rat Lv5-

Health: 22/22

Mana: 5/5

Stamina: 11/11

Status: Variant

“Why is that level five white rat is so strong?” I looked at its status and saw variant there. ”Variant? Inspect *Variant*.”

Variant – A different form of a monster family, there a small chance that some monsters would be born little different than others and get the variant status. Those variants could be faster stronger and even have some skills that normally not found in their kind, their intelligence and behavior could be different as well. The most obvious giveaway of a variant is its their color or body shape, but that’s not always the case.

“So I guess the weird snake was a variant as well.” I understood that the snake almost killed me because it thought of a different way to approach and attack me. “An anomaly a variant… I should deal with this rat with utmost care or I will only endanger myself, inspect *Dust Rat*.”

*Dust Rat* – Big rats that found in the wild, love dark narrow spaces. Eats almost anything that they can find, mostly active at night, dangerous in huge numbers. There is a tale that a whole city was overrun by dust rats overnight, no one knows if it’s just a tale to scare the guards to stay awake on their night shifts or not.

“A whole city full of rats, that would be scary, at least I won’t need to worry about that, there only three rats here.” I stopped examining the rats and retracted my roots from the ground. “I hope they won’t damage the crystal, I will make that bastard suffer. But first I need to block the tunnel entrance before they escape.”

I went to find some branches, thick bark, and leaves. After few minutes I found all the materials and made a new door, I made it especially thick and sturdy that those annoying rats wouldn’t escape. I placed the new made door at the entrance and I wedged it to the ground with the broken spears that were scattered around.

“Now those stupid rats are trapped, I need to find some way to easily kill them.” I tough a little and my lovely sinister smile appeared again on my imaginary face, “It would break the ceiling of the room but I think I can fix it so there shouldn’t be any problem and the crystal, but I think it will be alright, I hope anyway.”

I left the trap to look for more thick bark, after finding some I took the sled to the dried tree and took some branches and lots of dried leaves that were scattered around. I took few Gravis stones and huge leaves for straps on my way.

I returned to the trap and started to craft Simple Gravis Spears. After finishing fifteen of them I started to cut down the big leaves to create strips and started to cut holes in the bark. I found it really difficult and sadly it didn’t exactly go as planned, the bark broke to few pieces and I only could *sigh* in disappointed, “It’s alright I still can use this.”

Fifteen minutes passed and I shouted with relief, “Done!” I smiled as I examined my masterpiece, currently I was holding something like a big shield that had twelve spears stuck inside it, of course this time the spears were little shorter than usual. “It took me a lot longer to make than I tough.” I dropped the shield on the floor and inspected it.

*Simple Twelve Spiked Shield*

-Durability:12/12

-Damage: 5

-Defense:4

“Oh looks it has a lot of Durability, good good.” After finishing the shield I took it just above the entrance to the room and left it there. I made few more other preparation in front of the entrance, like embedding into the ground all the broken and undamaged spears to the direction of the entrance, that way it created a spiked barrier around the entrance even if the rats would escape from what was upcoming they wouldn’t be able to escape from the trap.

After doing all that I started to dig up right above the disposal room, after I finished the hole I could look inside the small room. The hole wasn’t that small as before, it was half the size of my body if I pushed myself inside slowly I would be even able to enter it, but of course, that wasn’t the plan.

Inside the room I saw the rats they didn’t even bother to look up at the hole, I saw the white rat eating the wolf and the others were eating the boar. “Well, enjoying your meal? Not for long.” I said with a sinister smile on my imaginary face showing up again.

Then I immediately started to push big piles of leaves and twigs down the hole. After dropping inside the hole four big piles of leaves and twigs, I looked inside to see the rats reaction, but there was no change at all. “Hmm.” I said as I took two Gravis stones and started to hit at each other above the last pile that I left near the hole. Hit after hit my smile just got more and more crooked, sometimes sparks would come out from the hits and every time they came out my heart skipped a bit, as you already understood I want to cookout those stupid rats.

But after half an hour I still couldn’t produce a fire and I was getting irritated, “Damn it it’s much much harder that I tough.” But after another hit one of the leafs that were in the pile suddenly caught fire, but it wasn’t enough for a flame to appear. I immediately came closer and tried to blow on the leaf to help the fire spread, but then I stopped and returned to my senses, “Oh right no mouth.”

And like a complete idiot I started to shake my hands around the leaf to create a weak wind current, slowly the leaf was getting smaller and smaller but it didn’t produce any flame. “Please please please…” I prayed in hope for a small flame to be formed and as if someone heard my prayers from above a small flame was created.