Carly jogged towards the next rabbit, slowing slightly in anticipation for its choice of first strikes. This one leapt like some bloodthirsty predator aiming its very large incisor teeth towards her throat. It was the most common initial attack that the rabbits executed.

Carly was ready. She began to turn sideways and drop slightly with knees bent while using her push dagger to execute with delicacy, an uppercut into the beast's throat. As the weight of the strike began to penetrate the hide, Carly lightly pivoted to her left. Using the mobs own momentum, she pulled it over her shoulder and down. Its forward momentum and bodyweight plus Carly's strength and weight were both leveraged. The rabbits head slammed into the hard concrete surface while the blade and Carly's fist penetrated deeply into the soft tissue of the creature.

Carly put her foot on the rabbit's head and pulled the push dagger out. Despite the horrendous damage, the creature was still alive. With it rolled on its side, Carly did two more targeted strikes causing critical hits, ending its existence. Fast and efficient, Carly had been in the zone taking down these mobs.

Using the push dagger had dramatically improved Carly's progress. Her downtime was reduced, breaking once every three laps to regenerate her endurance, rather than once or twice per lap to regenerate mana. Further, Carly noticed around a third of the way through lap-21, that she was able to maintain the mana blade construct with hardly any deficit, while it was consuming 1-mana per second. The usage was in fact too low. She was going to have to stop to regenerate her [Endurance] pool anyway. So Carly decided to make better use of that fact by increasing the size of the blade construct. Making it consume 2-mana per second instead and effectively doubling the experience, she would gain. It also increased her damage output, all with no downside.

The first lap Carly saved her Development Points until she had enough to upgrade a spell or skill once they accumulated sufficient experience to upgrade.

It did not take long, lap-22 and [Mental Construct Imagery], was upgraded. Carly dropped 5-DP into [Reduce Construct Maintenance Cost], which resulted in a 2.5% increase from 20% to create and maintain a construct shape. Carly could feel a palatable reduction in mental strain. It eased a tightness within her mind as though she was operating near her mental limit and had just freed a little capacity. Unfortunately now she felt the effect of the upgrade, she also better correlated the strain of maintaining the construct constantly.

On lap-23 Carly upgraded [Melee], where she again upgraded the [Improve Summon Maintenance Cost] with another 5-DP. The volume of the construct increased from 700 to 800 square millimeters of a construct per 1-mana per second. At 2-mana per second, the mana blade construct was now about 8-centimeters in length.

Again on lap-29, Carly upgraded [Mental Construct Imagery], selecting the [Reduce Construct Maintenance Cost] once more bringing the effect up to 25% and freeing her mind slightly more. Carly was starting to blame running the construct for such long periods for the headache she now carried. On the other hand, maintaining the mana construct for such a long time was levelling up the skill exceedingly fast.

On lap-30 [Regen] was ready to be upgraded, Carly improved the spells regeneration rate improving it to 210% while in use.

When the opportunity arose, Carly added 10-DP into the [Constitution] stat whenever she had enough. Carly did this on lap-24, 26, 28, and 30. Raising her Constitution stat to 140 points by the end of the rabbits.

Carly decided to bump [Constitution] mainly because it was the only stat that improved her Fatigue regeneration. Carly noticed a significant jump in her Fatigue Bar now she was not taking breaks so often. It was starting to reach the point where it would diminish Carly's physical proficiency, according to the details when she delved into about the stat. If it got above 30-percent, then Carly would hit for less with melee attacks and move marginally slower for the same amount of endurance spent. If it continued to rise above 50-percent, chances of missing a melee strick she would normally make would have a small percentage chance to occur and grow along with the Fatigue. Carly did not like the sound of that and wanted to alleviate the issue as soon as possible by adding more [Constitution]. That it also enhanced her endurance pool and regeneration rate was pure bonus.

Carly gained time on the elimination boundary while killing the rabbits. By the end of the 10-laps, she was in positive territory accumulating just over 22-minutes. It wasn't as much as she would have liked, but at least she was in positive territory once more.

Carly finished off the last couple of rabbit mobs in quick succession before finishing along the straight and taking the dog-leg curve of the tunnel into the next lap and next mob type.

This time what she faced was a rather small spider in comparison to the physical size of the previous three mob types. The spider had an outer colouring of mottled browns with a random patch of grey or green. Considering the situation for a moment, Carly pondered what could be up with such a small creature guarding the way now. To this point, each mob type had increased their experience reward by 100 points. Carly didn't see that changing too much. She also had her Personal Status Screen to gain ideas from.

One thing she had gleaned from the details and numbers was that size and weight mattered, both required Development Points. 'So, if a creature was small and light, yet offered more experience. That could indicate they would be difficult to deal with.' Carly pondered this while looking at the spider from a considerable distance away.

Carly shrugged. 'Only one way to find out what's up with this critter type.'

She approached the spider cautiously, after the rabbit's and their charging leap from 10-meters away Carly wanted to be safe and systematic while learning how the spider would react to her nearing presence.

Stepping as quietly as she could she, on the balls of her boots, balanced to move quickly to the left, right or forward, Carly continued to move closer. She had both the mana blade and push dagger ready also, and as she got nearer continued to push the mana consumption up for the blade, lengthening it out to 40-centimeters.

Inside the 10-meter mark and still no response, she quieted her breathing as much as she could and swallowed as she stepped again, and again, continuing to draw nearer.

The spider suddenly charged but that was expected, Carly pushed off to the right putting her mana blade closer to it. The spider tracked her movement and continued to approach, executing a small leap forward at her left leg.

Carly kicked outwards and up, causing the spider to miss and fly between her legs. She spun quickly as she could to keep the spider in her vision while the spider did the same. Carly lunged out in an attempt to stomp the spider, catching the middle and back leg partially underfoot. It wheeled on her, but she used her momentum to spin and leap backwards. Lunging again she tried to stomp it again but narrowly missed before she stepped up and stomped again with her other foot. This time she was on the mark. With a crunch and squirt of the spider's abdomen fluids, Carly received the death message in the combat log.

'Ha! It really was worth 100 more experience than the rabbits. Yet, it is small and easy to squish underfoot.'

Carly took several steps forward before looking back to where she had been. Spider guts footprints remained, Carly ground her boot into the concrete to try and get some of it off. Unfortunately, the stuff was thick and squirted up into the tread grooves.

Carly shrugged, as long as it didn't affect her footing grip, she didn't really care.

As Carly continued along, she soon adapted to the variations in attack, by the spiders. It was why she was so good in the normal loop, going further into the laps quicker than other martial trainees. She could read the flow of combat and really beasts and creatures aren't exactly big thinkers, seeming to have a limited few attacks. Nor was this artificial environment suitable for such creatures. Hard floor walls and ceiling severely limits their combat potential, compared to how the creatures would likely attack in its natural habitat.

As such combat against them soon became rudimentary, and Carly adapted her reactions to ensure quick, easy kills.

Nearly halfway through the first lap, Carly landed perfectly on the thorax and abdomen, leaving most of its front intact. This gave Carly a chance to check an idea she was having about the spiders. With body still firmly stuck underfoot, Carly ran her push dagger blade under the spider's fangs around the blade edge. After a few seconds, she was rewarded with a thin trailing line of liquid. She made special effort to coat the tip on both sides quite thoroughly before pushing it into what remained of the spider.

It didn't take much to kill it, the spider was on its last legs, but the combat log did state that the spider was poisoned and lost 58 health from the from the first tick of damage. That must have been enough to tip it over the edge though. The death notification appeared immediately after. That got Carly thinking, that these spiders must make a very strong venom. It was the only conclusion Carly could come up with considering its small stature and weak physical defence.

Trying out the poison on the next spider, Carly was pleased with the massive amount of damage the poison accumulated. It was incredibly potent, and with the spiders having low health it made for an easy kill by just letting the poison do its thing. The poison reported the same amount of damage for 6-messages in a row before the damage declined at all. By that stage, the spider died from the accumulated poison damage along with the minor stab wound into its thorax.

'So powerful,' Carly thought. 'Could I milk these things?' The idea began to play out in her mind while she continued along on the lap which she soon completed.

With a semblance of a plan, Carly turned left into the safe room with the final spider from the lap dead but in hand. Dropping it on the floor along with her push dagger and dispersing her mana blade, Carly sat down and grabbed an empty water bottle. It was a 2-liter plastic container with a screw top lid. After travelling 31-kilometers, she was halfway into the second of those small sized bottles. She managed to fit three into the top of her backpack, and she still had four other containers that were tied onto the sides of it. Each of those was storing an additional 5-liters.

She looked at her [Thirst] bar; it was up to 17%. So she took a drink from the bottle. It was funny, how far you could go on so little water compared to real life. But then, the idea of actually needing to drink water was amusing in this quantum world. 'Fail mechanics, creating adversity for adversities sake.' Carly shrugged, it was what it was. She learned a long time ago it was easier to accept the situation and work within the restrictions than rail against them in futility.

Carly grabbed the spider carcass and tried getting some venom out by pulling back with its fangs caught on the lip of the bottle and working them back and forth. After nearly half a minute playing like this Carly gave up disappointed. She then grabbed the push dagger and tried opening the spider up, seeing if she could figure out where the venom was stored and squeeze it out maybe. Looking at the internals around its head though, Carly had no idea what she was seeing. Nothing was glaring at her saying, 'venom, press here.'

Another minute wasted, Carly decided she may as well regen some endurance while in the safe room and think about how to go forward with getting spider venom. Just over 2-minutes later she was ready to go and with the straightforward plan of, 'keeping things loose.' Meaning, take the bottle, have the intention to milk spiders but only if it did not risk herself getting bit. Judging from the damage report, a single bite would do more than 1000 damage. Carly had just 1758-health at present, so it was better to be extremely cautious and miss out on getting the venom, rather than taking excessive risk and be bitten.

With these goals prioritised, Carly set out once more. The second lap of spiders yielded just four milkings. This gradually improved, leading to the last three laps yielding twenty plus spiders forcibly donating their venom. Each spider generally released ten to fourteen drips of the potent liquid. This meant, by the end of the 10-laps of Small Bark Spiders, Carly had a centimeter worth of venom sloshing around at the bottom of the plastic bottle.

Doing this obviously added a lot of additional time to the laps, but Carly knew against other mobs, a venom this potent was going to become exceeding useful.

Upon killing the last spider and crossing the boundary into the next lap, Carly took a quick glance at her [Loop Data].

Loop Data [Lap] 40 [Boundary Timer] 216:13 [Last Lap Time] 28:32 [Lap Position] 9,452 [Boundary Position] 12,557 [Remaining Competitors] 14,476

She could only shrug and soldier on, at least milking the spiders for their venom was her idea, instead of being influenced by some anonymous hacker inside the PURG development team. She really could have kicked herself for being so foolish. She never counted on people, only her own capabilities. 'What the hell was I thinking to trust some unknown with so much. What an idiot,' she thought while shaking her head at her current position.

The new mob appeared to be a large locust. The first thing Carly did was dip the tip of her push dagger into the venom. Time to see if there really is a payoff.

As she approached, she was ready for the insect to do something aggressive. Carly did not expect 'the something,' to be a leaping head strike that had tremendous velocity from a standing start. It was so fast that as she stepped to the right to dodge it still managed to clip her arm. Spinning her around violently and leaving her flat on her back. It took a moment for Carly to come out of her stunned daze. As she tried to sit up, Carly's shoulder bloomed into agony from its dislocation. Even though it was a glancing hit, yet it knocked off a little over 300-health. Fortunately, it seemed the attack left the locust disabled for a few seconds as well. The insect just stood statue still while Carly lashed at it with lots of swearing while getting back to her feet.

By the time she was upright, it was also turning around. With her left hand holding onto her shirt on the right shoulder trying to minimise movement. She sidestepped early and narrowly avoided another leaping attack. Chasing after it while it was immobilised, Carly stabbed into the exposed joint area where the large rear leg attached to its body.

The venom activated and Carly moved well away from the mob to see how much health the locust had. Tick by tick the damage mounted and soon the creature lost all strength in its legs, collapsing to the ground a death message and 2,400-experience were awarded.

She headed back to the safe room, most unhappy to have to deal with a dislocated shoulder. They were most annoying, especially when alone. But, Carly had experience with this sort of thing from her time living in her TME farm. Once, she was redoing some fencing and went down awkwardly while attempting to carry a too large corner post. Another time, she was having fun with 3-month old chickens and slipped in some muck while chasing the nimble little buggers. The results were the same, dislocated shoulder. The trick was to completely relax the muscle around the joint while holding onto something, then using your body weight as leverage to return the joint into its stable position. It was basic biomechanics, something Carly loved and regularly focused upon no matter what kind of physical activity she involved.

Standing in the connecting hallway, she helped her dislocated arm reach into the green semi-translucent screen to grab the corner of the safe room. She then leaned back to hold it in place. Her head was resting on the wall. Eyes closed, she focused. It took a while to get that balance of firm hand grip and relaxed shoulder muscle. When Carly was satisfied, she began leaning away from the shoulder applying pressure to the tendons and muscles. Grimacing, Carly dug deep, relying on all her mental strength to keep the shoulder relaxed despite the pain. Gradually the movement and weight of her body forced the arm to lengthen out of its dislocated position.

She felt it release. Carly slowly eased back the force she placed on the joint, watching the whole time to ensure it lined into its correct anatomical position.

With all the excess tension taken off the joint, Carly let go of the corner and eased her arm down. She gently moved the shoulder and arm in various directions to test how it. It hurt on almost every movement, that was to be expected. The fact that it moved naturally and with a good range of motion was an excellent sign. Carly would just need to proceed cautiously with it for a while to let the damage heal.

While she was at the safe room, she took some of the cord that was holding her larger water bottles to her backpack and used it to tie the bottle of poison around her waist. With it hanging at her back, she wouldn't have to put it down before every fight and collect it after saving precious time.

Now aware of the ridiculous attack the locust's used, she would be making extra sure she avoided them. Heading out she looked at her time and had lost another 5-minutes. Resummoning her mana construct, she went with a new shape. For now, a blunt round disk hovering across the top of her hand. Carly with some effort, though unassisted by her other hand, grabbed her shirt at the right shoulder to help keep it as immobile as she could. She jogged back into the loop heading for the next mob. With caution, Carly approached it from the inside wall. As she got nearer she cut across to the other side then back so the locust couldn't line up its leaping attack.

It launched anyway, missing Carly by a meter at least. She propped, turning to charge in and stab the sizeable rear leg joint, before backing off to watch the results. The locust twitched and floundered from the effect of the poison, once again the mob died from the single strike.