The next day, he woke up refreshed and ready to finish the job he started! Just because he was faced with a bit of trouble doesn’t mean he was just going to give up! He had thought of a new strategy, using Bubble, then pelting them with ShadowBolts. While it may seem simple, sometimes, the best things are. The biggest downside though was that this would take a while, as the amount of mana it would take to cast Bubble then kill the snake with ShadowBolt, would take a lot of his mana pool. Meaning he would have to spend time in between waiting for his mana to regen However, he wasn’t in a rush and the snakes were good XP.

Going back to the end of his side, he reopened the entrance and cautiously made his way into the tunnels. Daron had kept his burrow close to the surface, so the tunnels he had broken into, should just be for the snakes to stick there heads out and ambush prey. Acting as the oriole hunting the mantis, he decided not to head deeper when he found a branch in the tunnels that sloped downwards. Deciding that it wasn’t time to go deeper, he went another way.

It took him a short while, but he found another snake. And this time, it was in the midst of hunting. Its body stuck to the side of the tunnel’s wall, head sticking through the ceiling. Sinister laughter resounded in his head as he prepared to attack. Launching a ShadowBolt, he backed up to a corner in the tunnel. By the time the wriggling snake was able to retract its head from the ceiling, he slapped it with another 2 ShadowBolts.

Unlike the last one, this guy didn’t hiss at him but directly charged. And so activating his trap, he cast Bubble, causing it to cover the entire corner. After which he ran to the edge of the spell, the Snake, not being the smartest of creatures, ignored the wall of mana and slammed right into it, in its hurry to chase after its prey.

The snake rebounded off of the Bubble. The spell, that only having 2 mana put into it, shattered just from the force of it charging into it. Daron jumped back out and launched more ShadowBolts at the snake. The trauma to the head, along with the well-aimed ShadowBolts, probably left the snake with a raging concussion and it wouldn’t be able to shake it before it died.

If Daron had a face capable of expressing human emotions, he would probably look like some type of stereotypical cartoon villain. That trick with the corner was something he thought of last-minute but had worked much better then he expected. Not only that, but it used much less mana as he only needed a few points to break the snake’s charge. And that dazing effect? The icing on top!

But if he was right didn’t he level up again? He checked his notifications to confirm it.

Your Spell ‘ShadowBolt’ has advanced to LV.2

Your level has increased to level 4

Yup. Having confirmed it, he brought up his status and invested both his SP into Int to bring it up to a crisp 20.

Status

Name: Daron

Race: Horned Rabbit

Titles: ‘Other Planer’ ‘Prodigy’ ‘Spellcaster’ ’Overachiever’ (4 till bonus to lowest stat) ‘Spell Prodigy(Scorching Ray)’

LV: 3/10 > 4/10

XP: 30/35 > 42/35 > 7/55

HP: 20/20 > 25/25

MP: 128/160 > 148/180 > 168/200

Def: 4 > 5

SP: 0 > 2 > 0

Str: 6 > 7

Vit: 4 > 5

Agi: 6 > 8

Int: 16 > 18 > 20

With such a high Int and MP, he could now slaughter the Tunnel Snakes. He was maybe a bit too excited to have such… juicy prey.

__________

Daron had continued hunting the snakes, only killing 3 more, over the course of a few hours. But it was much less… ‘efficient’ than he would have liked, mainly because of how spread out they were, it was annoying, to say the least. But in better news, he was close to leveling again, and both ShadowBolt and Shadow Magic had leveled up.

He would’ve liked to kill one more snake, to clench that level up, before descending further but this was taking too long for his liking. There was also the fact that there should only be 2-3 or so more snakes in this tunnel system. And it might just be his hubris talking, but he should be able to handle two snakes at once, so going in deeper now wouldn’t be a huge risk. In conclusion, he had decided to enter deeper now rather than later.

He made his way back to the first tunnel he found that had led downwards, so in case something went wrong he could quickly make his way back to his burrow. Descending deeper, the tunnel eventually expanded into a room. The rough walls of dirt having become a darker brown around this area.

In the room, however, was 5 snakes. The size of the colony should have left only 2-3 snakes, yet there were 5 right in front of him. Not that this was a big deal, after all, that just meant more XP for him however, there was still a tunnel leading deeper. If this were all the snakes left, what was down there?

Not that this was something to think about right now. What he needed to do now, was kill the snakes. But he would have to find a way to do it one at a time, after all, he definitely couldn’t kill 5 at once. With a bit of thinking, he was pretty sure he came up with a way to do it.

The first thing he did was cast a new Shadow magic spell, ‘Dampening Shadow’. The spell created a fog-like shadow that crawled along the ground, consuming the snakes and him whole. While it was easy to see through the shadow, sounds would travel through it as if it were water, making much less noise.

And for the second part of his plan, he positioned himself very carefully having to be extremely precise about the range here. He cast Bubble, the dome of magic separated one of the snakes that was sleeping just the slightest bit apart from the others. He had pumped about 20 or so mana in the Bubble, so along with Dampening Shadow, the divided snake had no way to alert its allies sleeping just next to it.

Beginning the fight with a ShadowBolt, the snake was forced awake immediately by the pain. Looking around, it saw its friends all asleep and tried to let out a hiss to awaken them. Unlike what the snake expected, they didn’t awake. despite this, it seemed to choose to confront me alone.

But in return for its effort in trying to wake his allies, it received another shadowBolt. If there was any flaw in this plan, it was that to separate the snake from its friends he not only wasn’t able to separate himself from the snake with the bubble, but he also trapped himself in there with it.

Being within striking distance, the snake decided to go for a ‘Fang Strike’. Daron seemed to ignore it, letting it bite him without even putting up a fight. Just when the fangs would have pierced his fur a thin, nearly invisible membrane of light blocked it. He had casted another spell, the mana spell ‘Shield’.

Shield creates a thin membrane of mana that blocks attacks. However, unlike Bubble where you put a set amount in beforehand, Shield draws directly from your mana pool to block the damage at a rate of 1 to 1. This made it more powerful, but also a lot more dangerous. If the attack you tried to block was too big for your mana pool, it would only negate the damage it could, letting the rest through. And for weaker willed casters, such a sudden sharp dip in their mana pool could knock them unconscious.

The snake, now vulnerable from the failed attack got a taste of Daron’s first-ever Horn Attack. With his horn glowing a dim light, he struck the snake. A small, shallow hole opened up in its side, however, that didn’t mean much damage-wise. The reason he used it though, was to knock his opponent back, giving him room to finish it off with 2-3 more ShadowBolts.

While he had leveled up from killing the snake he held off on checking his status, only looking at his MP to make sure he didn’t use up too much. Seeing that he hadn’t he dispelled his Bubble, he did so before creating a new one around another snake. He was going to kill all the snakes here.

__________

The other snakes were killed in almost the same way as the first. Unexpectedly, knocking them away with his horn had an undesirable side effect of covering his head in blood. One time didn’t stain him with too much but 5? Now his head was coated. Sadly, the only liquid he had here was more blood so, until he finished exploring this place, he wouldn’t be able to clean it off.

Licking the back of his paw, he began to wipe the blood away from his eyes, cleaning himself similar to how a cat would groom itself. When he was doing so, he also brought up his notifications, followed by the description for Dampening Shadow and his status, putting his SP into Str this time, to bring it up to a crisp 10.

You have gained the spell ‘Dampening Shadow’

You have gained the spell ‘Shield’

Your level has increased to level 5

Your spell ‘Shield’ has leveled up to level 2

Your spell ‘ShadowBolt’ has leveled up to level 4

Spell

Dampening Shadow (LV.1)

School: Shadow

Using this spell you crate a mist-like shadow that covers an area, dampening any sounds within

Effect: creates a shadow cloud that cancels sound to an extent

Duration: X*5 Sec.

Cost: X*10 Mana

Spell

Shield (LV.2)

School: Mana

Using this spell you crate a thin shield around your body, draining your mana to block an attack

Effect: blocks damage up to your current mana*2

Cost: X/2 Mana

Status

Name: Daron

Race: Horned Rabbit

Titles: ‘Other Planer’ ‘Prodigy’ ‘Spellcaster’ ’Overachiever’ (4 till bonus to lowest stat) ‘Spell Prodigy(Scorching Ray)’

LV: 4/10 > 5/10

XP: 7/55 > 51/55 > 127/55 > 72/90

HP: 25/25 > 30/30

MP: 200/200 > 50/220

Def: 5 > 6

SP: 0 > 2 > 0

Str: 7 > 8 > 10

Vit: 5 > 6

Agi: 8 > 10

Int: 20 > 22

Such a rapid increase in his level and skills! Truly, Tunnel Snakes Rule!