It was dead obvious what the rock golem was trying to do. At any moment, it was going to hurl that massive boulder at her. Kurushimi really needed to find a solution fast. Dodge it? With the size of the boulder and her leg injury, would she be able to avoid it just by strafing to the side? She felt that to be very unlikely. Running to the avem to heal first would probably also result in being crushed before even being able to bite down! Another option was to destroy the boulder itself. However, as she looked over towards the boulder, she thought, There is no way in hell I can break that thing.

She didn’t have a skill capable of breaking it and her physical strength wasn’t nearly at that level. If she was capable of that, she would have blasted the rock golem to smithereens ages ago! Without much time, she hastily searched her surroundings for a solution. Eventually, her eyes locked onto what looked like a drop in the ground of sorts. Kurushimi’s eyes lit up as she shouted, “That’s it!”

Not too far away from her, she had noticed a part where the ground disappears. It was hard to notice at first because of the angle, but that was most likely a cliff! If she could run over to it and slide down before the boulder reaches her, she would have a chance of winning. What could win against a massive rock? An even greater collection of rock and sand, Aka. the ground!

Kurushimi started to run as fast as her injured leg could take her whilst simultaneously charging short-distance teleportation. To maximise movement speed, she needed to be using short-distance teleportation every time it came off cooldown. Her current priority was reaching the cliff and using it to shelter away from the boulder. After it passed her, she would have plenty of time to come back for the avem and use fangs for the heal.

Disappearing and reappearing, she covered some distance with her short-distance teleportation. An individual usage didn’t yield much results but the difference by the time she got there could very well be the difference between life and death. Just as she had covered some distance, a loud booming sound echoed from behind her. Kurushimi didn’t have to look back to understand what caused it. By now, the boulder should be mid-flight and she was about half way there!

Her legs kept running. Fueled by adrenaline, she couldn’t even feel the injury in her leg anymore. But the injury wouldn’t matter if she were flattened by a boulder anyway. Closer and closer, she got to the cliff. And finally, with her breathing ragged and sweat dripping down her forehead, she reached it.

But as she did, Voice-san suddenly spoke in a regretful tone. “Kurushimi. It seems you were unlucky this time…” Kurushimi didn’t even need to hear Voice-san’s comment as she herself had already seen. The cliff, her saviour, wasn’t even half a metre deep. It was only a little groove. Standing there, panting and blood pouring down her injured leg, Kurushimi exclaimed a brief, “Shit.” Before the boulder crushed her in an instant.

After a moment of darkness and suffocation, Kurushimi gasped for air as she opened her eyes. Her fifth death and also the second time she had been crushed to death by rock. Collapsing back onto her back, she shouted out into the sky that was barely visible through the canopy of the trees above her. The sky had become dark, showing that she had regressed about a day this time.

“I died again!” Kurushimi shouted. She had gotten the ‘crushed to death’ ending once again and although it was better than being eaten alive, it was never nice. And mostly, it pissed her off! She thought she would be safe if she stuck to the centre of the scorched land! But no, of course there were rock golems there too. Kurushimi felt scammed!

“But even if the rock golem showing up was bs, I still was losing to the cimex. I ain't got no excuse for that…” Sighing, she thought about her battle with the cimex. The cimex had actually been on the winning side and the rock golem had actually saved her. Although it then went to kill her next, so it wasn’t a very good saving. But regardless, she had thoroughly lost to that bug.

“For someone who has died five times and gotten to keep everything from every run, you sure are weak.” Just as she was feeling down, Voice-san had to make a comment that only made her feel worse. But it was true, she was weak. But what exactly was missing? What could she do right now that could improve her strength?

Whilst pondering, Kurushimi idly opened up her status menu and looked around. She had thirteen skills as of this moment. Including, Fangs, Blood magic, Night walker, What’s yours is mine, Shadow magic, Appraisal, Farsight, Evade, Short-distance teleportation, Camouflage, Shadow veil, Salamander’s blood and Language comprehension. Thirteen seemed like a lot but considering she could learn seemingly unlimited skills according to her skill points, it really wasn’t a lot.

Just as she was looking at those, her eyes suddenly locked onto her skill points, “Ah! That’s why I’m so weak!” The total skill points she had stored away were 2200. She had been storing them away as they look to be a limited resource, gained only through leveling up. But in the end, she had only been hoarding them. Could she really afford to be so greedy in her situation?

Kurushimi hastily sat herself up. Since she had respawned, she had once again lost her weapon. Previously, she had wielded a polearm. Before that, her weapon was a katana. Now she would have to create a new weapon to replace the lost old ones. But she needed to decide between going back to the old katana, going for the polearm again or going for another new weapon.

However, why did she have to only pick one? It was because she couldn’t afford to be carrying around multiple weapons like that. They would get heavy and would get in the way. It simply was impractical. But what if she had a place to store them? Kurushimi opened the skill list and searched around briefly until she found a certain skill.

‘Storage magic’. The description of the skill stated that it allowed her to store non-living items of her choosing, up to a limit based on skill level. The skill cost 300 skill points and had no other requirements. She could have potentially met those requirements already, or perhaps it never had any requirements. Not that it mattered. Kurushimi was just happy she didn’t have to search for the requirement.

Deciding to learn it right away, she used up 300 skill points and bought the skill. With the ‘ping’ of a system message and the text,《learned skill: 『Storage magic Lvl. 1』!》appearing in front of her, she gained the skill.

“Let’s see how much it can hold then!” Kurushimi said as she enthusiastically took her jacket off to be the first test subject. Although her jacket alone wouldn’t prove she could carry her sword yet, if the storage magic couldn’t even carry the jacket, she would at least know it definitely wouldn’t carry the sword either. With her arm extended out and her jacket hanging under it, she activated storage magic.

With the activation of her skill, the jacket was slowly engulfed by some kind dim golden light. The jacket slowly broke apart into the golden light until it fully disappeared. With the way it broke apart, Kurushimi felt worried over whether her jacket was alright. Quickly reactivating the skill, the light reappeared and almost as if the process had been reversed, the golden light quickly formed back into her jacket.

“Now that I know I can store my jacket, I need to see if I can store my sword and polearm…” Kurushimi said. But first she needed to actually make them both again. And differently than before, she had to make two, one after another. Sitting down next to a tree, using it for support she activated shadow magic to create the base for the polearm and katana.

The creation of the base was much quicker than beforehand, so it didn’t take long to make the both of them. “Next is the blood…” Kurushimi looked down at her arm. Self-injury was never good but she needed blood to create her weapons and she wasn’t good enough at blood magic to use someone else’s blood for that yet. Repeating this notion for the third time now, she used her nails to claw down her arm and draw blood. The activation of blood magic and infusion of it into the bases followed shortly after.

“Now I need to strengthen and refine them.” Kurushimi said. This was the final step of the process and also the hardest. For her, it wasn’t any problem doing it again but she was going to do it for two at once now. Although if it got to be too much to handle, she could always put one aside and do one at a time.

Simultaneously activating blood magic and shadow magic at the same time, she concentrated on the two weapons and worked to refine them. With blood, sweat and tears - the blood part being literal - she refined the two and finished them. Kurushimi stood up, holding the polearm in her left and the katana in her right.

“Haa, haa… Time to see if these bad boys will go into the storage magic.” Kurushimi said, a little out of breath from the refining process. Holding her right arm up, the first one to be tested was the katana. The gold light wrapped around the katana, covering it whole. Shortly afterwards, the katana disappeared with the light. The katana was a success, now how about the polearm? The gold light started to stretch around the polearm but it didn’t get far. It stopped after covering it a little bit.

“Oh right, I need to pull out the katana first.” Kurushimi hit herself on the head before pulling out the katana and attempting to store the polearm. The gold light stretched around the polearm and got much farther this time. Just when the light was struggling to completely surround the polearm and Kurushimi had begun to give up, the polearm disappeared with the light.

“Oh, that’s good! That’s good!” Kurushimi exclaimed, seeing that the polearm was able to be stored too. It had seemingly only just barely managed to be stored, so it looked like that was Lvl. 1’s limit. But Kurushimi was happy it could be stored. She wouldn’t have to lug around the polearm with her everywhere! If it had failed, she would have seriously considered abandoning the polearm.

KREEE! KREEE! KREEE!

Just as she finished testing it out, a shriek cried out from nearby her. Kurushimi nonchalantly looked over towards the source of the noise to see the familiar three canisfangs standing there, growling and shrieking away. Saliva slobbered about from their mouths that could barely contain their massive fangs.

As they showed up, Kurushimi looked over towards them in delight, “Ah, you’re here! You always have such good timing!” she gleefully shouted. The clearing was always a super convenient place to construct weapons. Why? Because there would be three walking blood bags that would always come to her so she could heal herself. Since she could feel her blood dripping down her arm, she felt especially hungry. So much so that she didn’t mind if it was canisfang blood!

Kurushimi stowed away her katana and simultaneously pulled out the polearm as she approached the canisfangs. The canisfangs shrieking became frenzied as they sprinted for her. As a canisfang leapt at her, she thrusted her polearm forward in response. The tip pierced straight through the canisfang’s skull and dived further into its body.

Meanwhile, another canisfang leapt at her, spreading its jaw wide open to take a bite out of Kurushimi. Putting her arm forward, the canisfang’s jaw latched onto it and bit down. However, the canisfang barely grazed her arm despite the direct hit. Kurushimi stowed away her polearm and pulled out the katana, quickly piercing through the belly of the canisfang. As it went limp, she waved her arm and the lifeless canisfang dropped to the ground.

The third and final canisfang let out a whimper and attempted to run away but was quickly impaled by a bloody spike. Having condensed some of the blood dripping down her arm, Kurushimi had formed a spike and shot it at the canisfang, not allowing it to escape. “No escape for you. You may be a low level but you’re still my precious stats~” Kurushimi taunted as she smiled at the canisfang.

After having offed the canisfangs, she went around biting all of them and sucked their blood. The message, 《You have gained +2 HP, +2 STR, +2 END, +2 SP, +2 AGI, +2 MP!》popped up a total of three times and the self-inflicted wound on her arm healed up quickly.

Not paying too much attention to that, Kurushimi turned back to her skill list. “Got a bit side-tracked, but it’s time to pick out some skills!” she said. She now had a total of 1900 skill points to buy skills with.