Progress was slow since I was still cursed with a single point in agility. But I had come across a few tunnels so far. My new eyes allowed me to take a proper look at them, but as far as I could tell, none of them were going down. I wasn’t entirely certain that I’d be able to tell just from looking into the tunnels, but until I was certain that I couldn’t, I’d just keep looking.

As always, monsters didn’t frequent this part of the cave, namely the wall. So far, I only had to fight once, when a level two lizard came out of a tunnel I was checking out, but my poison spear dispatched of it rather quickly.

This, once again, proved to me that I was strong. I had started out as the weakest little thing, but thanks to some lucky encounters, I had become undeniably strong. At least as far as other tier-one monsters were concerned. My higher than usual attribute points allowed me to go toe to toe with even the higher-leveled monsters, I assumed. And they’d continue to go higher once I ate my fill and went further in my skill tree.

As far as I was concerned, though, I was still just building up my base. My encounter with the reaper snake just hammered home just how crazy things got in the higher tiers, so the more I pumped my attributes, the better.

As I was crawling along the wall, alone with my thoughts, I could spot another tunnel coming up and got excited again. Maybe this was finally the one.

I paid special attention to any and all vibrations being transmitted to me via the ground as I approached. There was nothing out of the ordinary, so I peeked around the corner. What greeted me was one of the same boring stone-walled tunnels I’d come to know. And this one as well seemed to stay level, much to my disappointment.

With a mental sigh, I crawled along the edge of the tunnel’s opening, intent on continuing my journey on the other side.

Just as I reached the top of the tunnel, I stopped. I tilted my eyes this way and that way, trying to figure out what I just saw. One of the protruding bits of stone ahead of me just moved. It was perfectly still now, but I could’ve sworn it moved.

This smelled all sorts of bad, so I immediately started conjuring up a poison spear. I wasn’t about to fall for ye olde camouflage trick. Not if I spotted a movement at least. I’d much rather blast some rock away, wasting some MP, than get caught in some asshole’s trap.

The “stone” seemed to have realized that the jig was up, and started to move in earnest. Eight legs spread out, supporting a bulbous body which then turned in my direction. A whole slew of eyes stared at me as I cringed in disgust.

I never had an issue with spiders as a human, but this thing was twice as big as me! I was just about done conjuring up my spear when the spider rushed at me.

GAH! I was so startled by the sheer speed with which it came at me that I accidentally lost my grip on the wall and started falling. This helped me dodge the spider’s charge but also caused me to miss my spear by a long shot. Holy crap, that thing was scary.

My brain stopped working for a second when I realized I was falling quite a distance and I forgot to activate any defensive skills in order to lessen the damage I’d receive from the impact. I hit the ground shortly after, presumably with a wet squelch. A quick check of my status window told me that I only took one point of damage, much to my surprise. I’d fallen several times my body length, after all.

Tiny vibrations from the ground reminded me of the spider that was still skittering to make me its meal, so I activated my defensive skills. I got a bit scared again when I saw it rushing at me, especially when it bared its big fangs at me. Just as expected, though, my defense was just too tough.

Unless a skill was used, I seriously doubted that this little shit could do anything to me, so I carefully conjured up another poison spear. I immediately was punished for my leisurely approach to this battle when I saw the spider’s fangs start glowing, the tell-tale sign of a skill being used.

Moments later the fangs penetrated my skin, if only barely. It didn’t hurt all that much, maybe the same as a bee-sting, but I could feel something being pumped into my body. This asshole was poisoning me?

I almost lost control of my poison spear from the sheer audacity this spider had, trying to poison me. This, of course, couldn’t stand and I fired off my spear. Attached as the spider still was to me, there was no way I’d miss this shot. And while the spider may be bigger than me, my poison spear still absolutely obliterated it.

The poison effect didn’t even need to come into play, as the entire head was just ripped clean off. Take that, stupid spider!

You have killed a Lv. 6 Monster Spider

You have been awarded 50 XP

You have been awarded 6 Data Points

I quickly stored the spider corpse in my inventory while fleeing towards the wall again. I may have won, but I was still injected with the spider’s venom. I felt sick, almost as if I’d caught a cold, but that was it. When I pulled up my status window, I could watch my HP tick down slowly, one at a time.

This may be annoying, but since it seemed to be a relatively weak venom, I wasn’t in any danger. I’m pretty sure that one of the later unlocks in my skill tree promised complete immunity to poison and venom, so I was looking forward to that. I’d have to get a whole bunch of skill points before I could get it, though, so that was still a ways off.

Undeterred by the venom wrecking my body, I continued on my journey along the wall, making sure to pay extra attention to suspicious-looking rocks. Along the way, I checked another three tunnels, all of which were busts, until I spotted something interesting going on. Four monsters were fighting each other close to the wall.

It was already a rarity seeing just one monster this close to the wall, but four were unheard of. Another pack of three wolves were fighting against a big bear monster. Apparently, wolf monsters liked to hunt in packs, even in this dog-eat-dog world.

Currently, the bear was at a disadvantage due to the teamwork the wolves displayed, but I knew from experience that big monsters like this only needed to get one hit in to seriously damage their opponent.

There was a wolf constantly going for the bear’s blindspot while the other two distracted it. If this continued, the bear would most definitely be dead at the end of this. Of course, this would only apply if I didn’t interfere, and since this was the perfect opportunity to field-test my poison mist, I would most definitely interfere.

As I was getting closer, the bear managed to get a decent hit on one of his assailants, sending it flying. I mentally cackled at its misfortune, since this would make my job a lot easier.

I eventually reached a distance that I deemed close enough and hid behind one of the many stalagmites. Now, poison mist could be activated with as little as five MP, but doing it like that barely generated any poison mist, as my own testing had proven. For starters, I pumped forty MP into the spell, twice as much as a poison spear needed.

It took a while to generate all that poison, during which the fight kept on going. The wolf that got hit was back to harassing the bear, and the bear was still accumulating damage. Eventually, my spell was finished, and a gas with a green tint was released towards the fighters. I worried a bit about the fact that the mist was visible but I banked on the fact that they were too absorbed with their own fight to notice or care about the encroaching danger.

After all, my poison was incredibly dangerous to tier-one monsters.

The mist engulfed all of the fighters, guaranteeing that all of them got poisoned. At first, no immediate effect could be seen, but soon after, that wolf that got sent flying earlier started flagging. It slowed down mid-attack, before keeling over, dead.

The bear capitalized on the disruption that the broken attack formation suffered, and crushed another wolf to death. All of a sudden, the last wolf was at a massive disadvantage and had to decide whether to stay and fight, or run away and live to fight another day. Apparently, it decided that enough was enough as it turned tail and ran.

That apparently wasn’t enough to get the bear to relax. Maybe it was aware that there was still an enemy around since the poison mist had to have come from somewhere. It turned its head from side to side, looking for me. There was no way that I’d get spotted though, since only my tiny eye stalks were visible currently, and to top it all off, I had the stealth passive skill.

Eventually, it decided that it was safe and started to go eat the wolf it crushed earlier. It probably needed the HP regeneration after a tough fight like that, and my poison was probably still chipping away at it as well. It got barely one bite of it when a glow from underneath alerted it to something being wrong.

Moments later, a giant spike emerged, finishing the bear off with no chance to retaliate. I had used the time where it was looking for me to carefully cast the spell, and it proved to be lethal once again.

You have killed a Lv. 6 Monster Wolf

You have killed a Lv. 5 Monster Wolf

You have killed a Lv. 12 Monster Bear

You have been awarded 230 XP

You have been awarded 23 Data Points

You have leveled up!

Your skill Poison Mist has leveled up!

I somehow got credit for killing a second wolf, which led me to believe that the one that ran away was killed by my poison, much to my delight. I finally emerged from my hiding spot and approached the dead bodies, putting them into my inventory one by one. I probably had no chance to find the wolf that ran away, so I decided to just leave it wherever it may be.

Happy with the results of this fight, I returned to the wall to continue my search for a downwards sloping tunnel.

Poison Mist really showed its value this time around, netting me a kill from an enemy that ran away. If there were any more group fights in the future, I would definitely need to intervene. After all, I emerged the victor and hadn’t taken a single point of damage!

As I crawled along, I quickly threw my newly gained attribute point into wisdom, and since I had two skill points now, purchased myself another unlock that gave me five wisdom points. With that, I got started on the path to poison immunity and even got more MP to sweeten the deal along the way. As I just learned, it was good to have the spare MP to cast giant spike, so it was worth investing more points into that for now.

My power was truly like night and day, compared to how I started out in this world, and I was starting to be pretty happy with what I had. Hopefully, I could enjoy this easy mode a little bit longer.