“Ah shit,” I groaned as I came to the conclusion that I was going to have to do something that I dreaded having to do because there was no way that it was going to be a pleasant experience.

Picking the thing up and slinging as much of it over my shoulders as I could, grimacing as I felt the thing’s oily blood trickled down my back staining my shirt once more and walked back towards the clearing.

Once I had made it back to the clearing, I dropped the Crawler’s corpse and turned towards it with a loud sigh. I really wasn’t looking forward to doing this.

Drawing my knife, I started sawing at one of the Crawler’s limbs, cursing loudly as the knife slipped several times on the tough flesh but eventually, I was left holding length of tentacle as long as my forearm that I looked at with distaste.

“Yeah this is definitely going to be gross to eat,” I grumbled. I mean it was technically possible that it could taste like squid or something but the strange smell that wafted up from it suggested otherwise or at least that it wouldn’t just taste like squid. Unfortunately for my stomach Crawlers seemed to be quite common which meant that I had to figure out whether they could be eaten because finding things that the Yajashian refugees could eat was a higher priority than my squeamishness. I was just hoping that the bloody thing wasn’t poisonous.

Sadly, the rest of the corpse was so badly damaged that I doubted that I would learn anything by dissecting it. So instead I decided to just use Essence Drain before burying it with the other things that I had killed.

And yes, that was still weird for me to think about. My family had never been the sort to go hunting but my dad had been a relatively keen fisherman, so I had killed things before but never like the way that I had since being sent here.

Once I had done this, I checked my Status to see how much Essence I had managed to harvest from the Crawler’s remains.

Status

Level 1

Exp: 42%

HP: 124/124

MP: 121/121

HP Regen: 11.1 per minute

MP Regen: 8.5 per minute

SP: 74/74

Essence: 29

SP Regen:6.9 per minute

Control Points: 14.6

Str: 6 (+3/Lvl)

Agi: 10 (+4/Lvl)

Con: 16 (+ 4/Lvl)

End: 8 (+6/Lvl)

Tou: 16 (+3/Lvl)

Int: 14 (+20/Lvl)

Coor: 9 (+5/Lvl)

Vit: 21 (+6/Lvl)

Wis: 18 (+12/Lvl)

Will: 15 (+14/Lvl)

Per: 12 (+10/Lvl)

Cha: 8 (+5/Lvl)

Additional Growth Rate: +8 Unassigned Stat Points/Lvl. +20 MP/Lvl. MP regen increased by 1/min per Lvl.

Unassigned Stat Points: 0

I grinned widely as I read my newly updated Stats, I now had enough Essence to use my Create Giant Amoeba Skill which was something that I had been looking forward to since I had unlocked it. Activating the Skill caused the same strange tendrils to emerge my hand that using my Essence Drain Skill did but this time they started weaving together until they formed a strange greenish cocoon-like object on the ground that pulsed slightly as it continued to grow for a few seconds before splitting open to reveal a translucent grey orb that was about the size of a rock melon and covered in tendrils.

I felt a link form between myself and the strange-looking creature and I suddenly knew what it was capable of. While at this point the Giant Amoeba in front of me wasn’t going to be able to fight anything that the System registered as being powerful enough to have a Level it could grow stronger faster than I could by eating anything that it killed with a Skill that was simply called Consume. In fact, consume was the only Skill that this new-born creature had. I was, however, pretty sure it would be able to learn new ones when my Create Giant Amoeba Skill Levelled Up.

Giant Amoeba rolled slowly towards me as I watched it, the thing wasn’t intelligent. Or at least not in the way that I understood intelligence anyway. Its instincts were just telling it that we were related in some manner and that it should follow my orders.

“Well I suppose I’d better figure out what you can do before anything else,” I muttered under my breathe as I considered the primitive creature. It wasn’t quite what I had expected to summon when I had activated the Skill but then I hadn’t really expected to receive the Skill in the first place, so I wasn’t going to complain. Now after using the Skill I knew that while this particular amoeba would only get stronger by hunting and Consuming its prey but it doing this would also Level Up the Create Giant Amoeba Skill which means that the next time that I used it I would summon a stronger amoeba. This amoeba would probably still be more powerful than a newly created amoeba if I allowed it to use its Consume Skill.

Sending an order to the creature was as simple as willing it to do something and soon I had it rolling all over the clearing while I considered the roles that it could play. In its current form there weren’t very many that I could think of. I mean it was innocuous enough looking that it probably wouldn’t get attacked that often if I ordered it not to do anything that could be considered threatening so it could probably function as some sort of scout except for the fact that its senses were basically limited to touch and the ability to sense the vibrations of something moving around or otherwise making some sort of noise if something was close enough, so maybe I could use it as a guard or make some sort of hiding place so that we could spring a trap.

Still it was weird to think that I had actually created this creature, and even weirder that it would actually follow my orders with such ease that it was almost like it was an extension of myself except for the fact that it also had a will of its own as well. As it was a living creature it still had to eat and needed water to survive and will obtain these things all by itself without me ordering it to do so which was pretty useful.

“Well then I guess we’d better get back to it huh?” I asked the amoeba which just sat there in front of me instead of acknowledging my words, not that it really had any method of doing so. Still I’d never really gone this long without interacting with someone or something else before and I’d certainly never been alone for this long in a situation as stressful as the one that I was in now. So, considering the lack of a better conversation partner the amoeba would have to do for now, as silly as that sounded. It decided to leave off on making a new axe for now, I could always make a new one once it got dark and it got too difficult to see the grey-skinned Crawlers. Even with my Dark Vision Skill which I realised now still hadn’t Levelled Up which was probably because I didn’t do much after it got dark and besides getting a good night’s sleep was too important when I didn’t know how things were going to go tomorrow so I’d be finishing up as soon as it started to get dark and spend the time working on my other Skills and making new gear.

Picking the amoeba up, I placed it on my shoulder before jogging back towards a random stretch of the barrier. Once I got there, I watched the Crawlers moving around as they searched for a way through the barrier for a few moments as I picked my target.

Deciding on a particularly small Crawler I fired first a Stone Shot that I quickly followed up with a Mana Bolt. I had discovered that doing this allowed the stone spike that had been created by my Stone Shot spell to be driven deeper into a target and sometimes shatter inside the target which seemed to do quite a lot more damage. A combo attack if you will and quite an effective one at that. In fact, it had given me a few ideas for new spells that I had a feeling would be considerably more powerful than the ones that I had now but I had a feeling that most of them would be too dangerous to attempt to unlock until I had increased my Mana Manipulation and Spellcrafting Skills and possibly my Earth Affinity.

My latest victim tilted to one side as the stone spike was driven deep into its body by the surprise assault and I felt the cilia of the amoeba writhe as though it was excited by this turn of events and I agreed with the sentiment even though the strange sensation of the amoeba’s cilia stroking me on the side of my face was a little off putting.

Firing another Stone Shot into the Crawler as it tried to run away sent it careening when one of its legs simply stopped working and once again, I followed it up with another Mana Bolt and watched in surprise as the Crawler suddenly stiffened before collapsing in a heap.

“Huh,” I grunted in surprise. “I must’ve hit something important.”

I had only used my makeshift combination attack a couple of times before but even the last Crawler that I had killed hadn’t fallen so quickly from it so this was the only explanation that I could think of. I gritted my teeth as I saw the other Crawlers that had been nearby starting to converge on the corpse. I had to get that corpse so that I could figure out exactly what had happened inside its body but I simply couldn’t fight against that many Crawlers and survive even if they were all Level 1 normal Crawlers which they weren’t and even then I would run out of MP before I had killed all of them and I hadn’t even replaced my axe yet.

A few seconds spent thinking provided me with what I hoped would be the solution to my problem the solution. It wasn’t something that I would’ve even been able to attempt if I hadn’t been able to summon the Giant Amoeba and it would still be pretty risky with the extra help.

Sending the instructions to the Amoeba I placed it on the ground before moving a few meters to my left and stepping through the barrier to provide a distraction while the amoeba pulled the corpse through the barrier. Once I was on the other side, I quickly launched a Mana Blade at a nearby pair of Crawlers. One of them managed to react in time to avoid the attack by leaping into the air but the blade of energy crashed into the other one and sliced into its rubbery flesh eliciting a hiss from the creature and drawing the attention of all the other Crawlers that were nearby.

Good thing that was all a part of my plan because otherwise I would be freaking out right now, though to be fear now that they were all charging towards me I was starting to get a little bit nervous but I shook it off and cast Sticky Bog on the ground in front of me before turning around and running in the opposite direction for a few seconds then leaping sideways back through the barrier.

Turning back I watched as the Crawlers found themselves wading through the mud which turned out to be almost half a meter deep and slowed them down even more than I had anticipated which was good to see and I quickly capitalised on the situation by firing another Mana Blade at them while they were struggling to move. Just then I noticed that one of the Stinging Crawlers was about to take its first step into the mud but instead leapt right over it without slowing down in a fairly impressive display of agility for something that looked so out of place on land.

“Well shit, there goes that part of the plan,” I muttered as I realised that I would have to hope that the Crawler’s would stay here if I kept attacking them from where I was now instead of going after the amoeba when it tried to drag the corpse of the dead Crawler back through the barrier.

I was starting to run out of MP too but I should have enough to pull this off so long as I just used Mana Bolts, if worst comes to worst I could try throwing rocks as well but who knows if that was going to be distracting enough so I told the amoeba to abandon stealth and just go for it as I fired a Mana Bolt at the Stinging Crawler making it start slamming its limbs against the barrier in a rage.

Meanwhile the amoeba all but leapt out from the barrier and hastily wobbled over to the corpse of the Crawler and wrapped some of its cilia around as many of the dead Crawler’s limbs that it could reach before attempting to tug the body back through the barrier but unfortunately the corpse was just too heavy for it to make any real progress even after 30 seconds. When I realised what the problem was I told the amoeba to try digging some of its remaining cilia into the ground to gain extra traction even as I noticed that one of the Crawlers that had been trapped in the mud was trying to head back towards the amoeba instead of attacking me. Luckily this seemed to work better than what the amoeba was doing before allowing it to actually start to make progress and I was able to focus on what I was doing once more.

Targeting the Crawler that was showing an interest in what the amoeba was doing I fired a Mana Bolt at it causing it to start heading in my direction once more even as the Stinging Crawler continued to strike the barrier. From what I could tell these attacks didn’t seem to be powerful enough to effect the barrier in any real way but it was still pretty intimidating to have this massive thing which stood taller than I did and must weigh at least three times as much slamming its limbs down onto the barrier repetitively and that’s without even considering the spikes on the ends of those limbs.

Now that I had more important things to worry about than moving onto the next area to attack, I finally took a really good look at the Stinging Crawler in front of me and started looking for weaknesses, I had already noticed that Crawlers in general couldn’t actually move that fast. The normal ones might be able to move about as fast as I could over flat ground and had a definite advantage if they had to climb over things thanks to their multiple limbs but the Stinging Crawlers were a bit slower and I quickly figured out the reason for this; Stinging Crawlers had plates of what I was assuming was the same substance that made the shells on the back of the Shelled Crawlers covering parts of their bodies making them both less flexible and heavier which would make it difficult for them to move quickly while increasing their ability to take damage. This might also explain why they had developed the acid attack that I had noticed earlier.

This also gave me a bit of insight into how the different types of Crawler worked; the normal ones probably worked as scouts and maybe foragers, attacking weak creatures by themselves or larger ones in small groups but leaving anything dangerous to the Stinging Crawlers which had the benefit of greater power, better defences and a ranged attack. Taking this theory, a step further I could assume that the Shelled Crawlers which were both the largest and slowest breed of Crawlers were something along the lines of commanders. They were smarter than their smaller and weaker brethren as well as capable of using some form of magic, so it was easy enough to come to that conclusion but for some reason I still wasn’t convinced that they were the most powerful form of Crawler. I wasn’t entirely sure why I thought that but for some reason it just didn’t feel like that was the case.

While I was thinking this, I was still firing Mana Bolts into the group of Crawlers outside of the barrier. That was the nice thing about this situation; I didn’t have to worry about what one I was hitting because my goal was simply to distract them so I could just fire at whatever one I wanted, I even fired a couple at the Stinging Crawler to see what sort of effect the weak attack would have on it but from what I could see all the magical projectiles did was irritate it which was even less than what they did with its weaker friends.

Just as I was starting to run out of MP, I noticed that the amoeba was now within arm’s reach, so I stopped attacking, ran over to the amoeba and started pulling it though the barrier while it held onto the Crawler’s corpse. Naturally the other Crawlers noticed what was going on and headed towards us, but we managed to get the corpse safely through the barrier just in time for the Stinging Crawler to fire a jet of acid at where we had been mere moments ago.

“Well that worked better than I thought it would,” I muttered to myself as I watched the acid that the Stinging Crawler had shot slowly run down the barrier before turning to look at my partner with a pleased look on my face. The amoeba might not be that useful in combat for now but that didn’t mean that it was useless I just had to think about how to use it a bit more than just throwing it into battle. Especially since it was a bit more difficult for me to get the Essence needed to create another one than it would be if this was a game. I was still hopeful that it would be able to hold its own when it got a bit stronger, but I would probably still have to make sure it had an advantage against things of a similar Level.

“And you did well too,” I told the amoeba giving the strange creature a pat. I knew it didn’t understand what I was saying but it still made me feel a bit better about being able to control another being as completely as I could control the Giant Amoeba.

Picking the Crawler up I carried it back to the clearing with the Amoeba following behind me, I could feel that it was interested in the Crawler’s corpse so once I was back in the clearing I cut the limbs into chunks that it could easily envelop and digest with its Consume Skill. This was both a fascinating and disturbing thing to watch, especially as once the first few pieces of flesh dissolved inside the amoeba’s body it rippled before growing slightly larger.

“Hmm, so that’s how Consume works,” I murmured once I had recovered from my surprise. I could feel through our link that the Amoeba had grown a bit more powerful and I got the feeling that if the situation was right it might even be able to defeat a Level 1 Crawler if I injured it first and as soon as I realised this I started brainstorming methods of increasing the amoeba’s chances of winning as it continued to eat the Crawler meat that I had prepared for it.

Once I had come up with what I thought were some viable strategies I turned back to what remained of the Crawler’s corpse which was worse shape than I had thought it was when I had killed it and after cutting it open with my knife the reason for this was obvious. When I had hit the Stone Shot with my Mana Bolt as I had expected the stone spike had broken up inside the Crawler’s body as it had been deeper by the impact of the Mana Bolt which had shredded the majority of the thing’s organs.

“Well yeah that’ll definitely do it,” I said as the things guts started leaking out over the ground. While most of a Crawler was made up of rubbery flesh this had actually led to its demise as its organs were actually softer than the rest of its flesh which meant that when the rock pieces had been driven further into its body, they had taken the path of least resistance and shredded its organs. This ‘combo technique’ was even more dangerous than I had thought it was.

Once I was sure that I had discovered all that I could I decide to cut up what remained of the body to feed to my amoeba which soon swelled to a larger size once more. It was now slightly larger than an average watermelon and I got the feeling that it’s Stats were about as high as an average Level 1 which made me smile happily.

By now it was starting to get dark so I decided that I wouldn’t be heading back out to continue attacking the Crawlers, I had riled them up enough that they would probably be on guard all night. Besides I had to make a replacement for my axe and cook the Crawler meat that I had taken from the corpse of the other Crawler earlier which I had managed to prevent the amoeba from eating earlier. I still wasn’t really looking forward to eating it, but I was starting to get a bit hungry which might make it a bit more palatable, after all hunger is the best spice.

“So, do you want to help me get some wood to make a new fire?’ I asked the round creature that was sitting next to me. Naturally it didn’t answer but it followed me when I got up, so I decided to take that as I sign of agreement. “Alright then partner let’s go.”