I slowly approached the mouth of the cave. By now, moss was almost completely covering the walls, and if my eyes could be trusted, I saw some type of grass on the outside. Although the most striking change had to be the light.

While the caves up until now had all been illuminated to some degree, even if the source was unknown, I was now crawling towards the quite literal light at the end of the tunnel. It took me a moment for my eyes to adjust once I was finally out, and what I saw made me stop in place.

A whole ass forest spread out before me. The trees didn’t quite align with what I was familiar with, but they were close enough. The most striking difference was that their bark seemed to have a lot more color variation than the ones from my earth, and instead of a lot of smaller leaves they had a bunch of really big ones.

Interspersed between the trees were what looked like humongous mushrooms, towering even over the big trees and giving off some blue-ish light, illuminating the whole area. The Mushrooms seemed to culminate into a flat top and had several vine-like things growing down from under their cap.

I took a moment to take in the completely changed scenery, reveling in the fact that I finally got to look at something other than bleak stone and stalagmites. If not for the boost in experience and levels, coming down here was already worth it because of this view.

This made me wonder just how weird and/or amazing the other layers on this planet looked like.

After a while of ogling at my new surroundings, I remembered that I was indeed in quite a bit of danger when just stopping out in the open like this and started making my way towards the nearest tree for cover. This took me a while to accomplish, but luckily no other monster crossed my path.

Once I arrived at the bottom of the tree, I took a moment to consider my options. The leaves of the trees looked big enough to carry my weight, but before I made a mistake later, I decided to test this theory out. So without any further fussing, I started climbing the tree. Which was of course extremely easy due to my awesome slug powers.

It didn’t take me long to reach the first branch, which I followed to reach a leaf. I immediately crawled on top of it, and much to my joy, the leaf held my weight perfectly. Hiding spot acquired!

I quickly scanned the nearby trees for overlapping leaves that I might be able to use to travel from tree to tree, but apparently, the leaves rarely lined up perfectly for me to cross over. Unless I got some sort of jumping ability, crawling along the ground would be my fastest option. Of course, I could still get up into the trees to sneak around, if needed.

After eyeing the situation on the ground for a while, I was fairly certain that no monsters were nearby and I picked my exploration back up. Next up, I wanted to take a look at one of the giant mushrooms. I carefully made my way over to the closest one while making sure to use the trees as cover whenever possible. I hadn’t seen a single monster down here so far, and it was slowly starting to make me nervous.

My caution turned out to be unneeded, as I arrived at the mushrooms stem without encountering any other monsters. I counted my blessings as I started the much longer ascent of the mushroom.

After a while, I could take my first closer look at the ivy things. They were entirely black and had a weird sheen to them, almost like they were made of some kind of rubber. I couldn’t exactly place why, but they were creeping me out a little. It was probably best for me to try and not touch any of them for the time being.

Eventually, I arrived at the top, and since these mushrooms were flat, I had to spend some time upside down before I could finally cross over to the actual surface of the cap. It wasn’t as bright up here as it was below the mushroom, weirdly enough. The cap seemed to slightly tilt towards its center, almost like a funnel, so I decided to check it out.

While the cap was huge, it didn’t take long for me to arrive, and what I found made me very happy. Smack dab in the center, there was a decently sized puddle of water! I wasn’t sure if the water gathered here was due to some sort of condensation, or if the mushroom was somehow excreting it, but I needed to know if it was drinkable. So with some trepidation, I took a small sip of the water, retreated a bit, and waited.

It couldn’t really taste anything, so if it was bitter due to poison, I wouldn’t be able to tell, and since I hadn’t acquired poison immunity yet, it was better to make sure now. After a bit, I got tired of just sitting there waiting for something to happen to me, so I decided to take a look around the edge of the cap. After all, these mushrooms towered over everything in this layer, so they were my best vantage point.

What I saw once I got to the edge, was a sea of trees, unsurprisingly. Nothing really stood out among the foliage, except for maybe the odd colored tree here and there. So I slowly made my way around the edge, keeping an eye out for anything of interest.

I could see some trees shaking every now and again, most likely signs of a battle taking place below them. Which was weirdly reassuring for me. I hadn’t seen any other monsters up until this point, but they were definitely around. At one point, I was able to observe a flying monster gliding over the treetops, looking for prey. It appeared to stay just above the treeline, but I would have to pay attention above me, even if I was on one of the mushrooms.

When I was about halfway around the cap, the first really interesting thing entered my eyes. Smoke! Quite some distance away, there was what looked like a clearing, and from its center, a plume of smoke was rising up to the ceiling, which was out of sight. A red hue around the clearing clearly announced the presence of a fire!

I very clearly remembered the system telling me that there was no intelligent life on this planet, but the fire I was seeing was most likely deliberately created. Of course, there could be some fire-breathing monster I didn’t know about down here, but if something like that was the cause, they’d just set a whole bunch of trees on fire.

No, this fire was in a clearing and seemed to be contained. Something with some notion of intelligence had made that, and the curiosity was killing me! What kind of monster had the smarts to make a fire down here? I needed to know, so my next destination was set in stone.

I completed my lap around the mushroom cap, finding nothing that seemed more interesting than some fire in the distance, and made my way back to the small pool of water. The cap’s circumference was huge, so it took me quite a while to go around, and since I was still doing just fine, I assumed that the water should be fine. I quickly drank my fill and set out to investigate the fire.

Of course, it took me forever just to descend from the mushroom, and even longer to get where I wanted. So I spent the time where I wasn’t actively keeping an eye out for danger to think about possible sources of the fire.

The key was probably in what the system considered to be “intelligent” races. Obviously, anything with the cognitive functions on par, or higher, with a human should count. So all civilized races were out the window. Which only left certain monster groups that famously banded together and had some primitive form of society going on.

I might be wrong since most of what I know about monsters is just from stories back on earth, so what I considered as fact might be different than what I expected. The list of monsters that I knew that fit the bill was laughably small, and there was literally a whole galaxy of races that I probably didn’t even know about, so for now I’d hold back my judgment.

Eventually, I could spot orange wisps dance across the trees in front of me. I was close!

Not wanting to alert any of the creatures that would no doubt be there, I started climbing the next best tree. From now on I’d have to slowly make my way across the leaves, taking my time to find ways to cross from tree to tree.

It was slow going, even slower than usual, but eventually, I caught my first glimpse of the clearing. How exciting! And it just so happened that one of my guesses was spot on.

My eyes landed on a sizable group of goblins. Right in the middle of the clearing was a large fire, upon which they were roasting some monster I hadn’t seen before. A bunch of them were dancing around the fire, presumably making quite a ruckus, which I couldn’t hear, of course.

Some of them were armed with crude weapons, like a club that was fashioned from a sturdy stick, or a spear that was carved from a pointy stick. They didn’t wear any clothes, and I could see their small penises flopping all around as they performed a happy little dance around the fire.

They were being watched by other goblins, which were already salivating at the thought of eating their roast. The clearing was filled with crude huts, almost tents, really. Groups of goblins were sitting in front of each hut, apparently socializing. All in all, there were twenty-three goblins in this clearing.

I observed them for quite a while, fascinated by the fact that I was encountering the first monster that wasn’t just a fucked up version of an animal I knew. These goblins were like straight from a fantasy book. They did show signs of intelligence, but it mostly displayed itself in their ability to make tools and fire.

Apparently, that wasn’t enough for the system to judge them as “intelligent”, or maybe there were some other criteria that I didn’t know about. What I did know, was that these guys were probably a good source of XP for me, especially since I got a new skill recently that was perfect for situations like this.

Poison Needle was an assassination skill, injecting the enemy with poison without them even noticing. The drawback was, of course, my horrible, stat-driven aim. I was currently sitting quite a distance away, and getting closer wasn’t really an option unless I wanted to reveal myself to a pack of hungry goblins.

Well, on a fully topped-off mana pool, I could easily cast ten poison needles. Surely, one or two of those would hit a goblin. Even if not, I had mutated in a way that would make me recover my mana faster, and worst case, I could eat something to restore my MP as well. All in all, the odds were overwhelmingly in my favor as long as I remained undetected. It was simply a matter of patience.

With that in mind, I shot out the first of many Poison Needles.