With Tane guiding me I quickly found a fairly decent sized group of Bugs. However instead of attacking them right away I decided to watch them for a while and see if I could discover anything new about them.

Much like the last group of Bugs that I had hunted this one was made up of what seemed to be a variety of different types of Bugs which struck me as somewhat odd. While there were a few exceptions usually different species kept to themselves back on Earth so seeing a group of Bugs that seemed to be made up of different species was interesting to me, so I asked Tane about why they acted like this.

To my surprise according to Tane they were actually different types of the same species. Apparently, they started off life as a very simple looking thing with a tube-like mouth and a thin exoskeleton that were about as large as the average housecat and they developed different traits depending on what they were fed by the other members of their group among other things. As such any one group of Bugs had members that were herbivores as well as members that were carnivores and would even kill and eat Bugs from other colonies if they found them.

A flashing symbol appeared in the corner of my vision part way through Tane’s explanation which told me that I had probably just Levelled Up my Zoology Skill again, but I decided to ignore that for now.

Stepping out from behind the tree that I had been hiding behind I fired a Stone Shot at one of the Level 1 Bugs which was just one of the plain looking ones that Tane had told me about. It’s only real defining features was its tube-like mouth which it had been using to suck up some weird sort of sludge which another of the Bugs had spat up for it. The spell struck with enough force that it completely ripped a hole in the young Bug, and it fell from the branch that it had been standing on without even a sound.

Seeing that I had either mortally wounded it or killed it in one shot I turned my attention to the other Bugs nearby which all turned towards me with a strange buzzing, shrieking sound that reminded me of hearing someone running their nails down a chalkboard combined with radio static. Like the ones that I had seen before none of them had wings but they were all able to jump large distances and they closed in on me very quickly even as I fired Mana Bolts at them whenever I was confident that I was going to hit one of them and soon enough the ones that had developed less defensive and offensive traits started to peel of as they realised that attacking me was too dangerous for them.

As soon as I felt like the remaining Bugs were close enough, I cast my new Gravel Shotgun spell which tore through several of the Bugs that were now only a couple of metres away. The individual stones didn’t do much damage but several stones striking a Bug were more than enough to rip holes in their tough exoskeletons. However, this was only the case with the closest of the Bugs as the damage that my new spell did decreased significantly over distance. In other words, my new spell was more like a shotgun in a game than one in real life.

Despite the rather severe damage fall off even this one blast was enough to badly wound two of the Bugs, outright kill one and deal minor injuries to one other which had been a bit further away. As such I was very happy with my new spell but was unable to get a second blast off before I was forced to dodge another of the Bugs as it leapt at me.

Stepping sideways I swung my axe at the thing with as much force as I could muster with my recently increased Strength. Rather than cutting into the Bugs rather thick shell the blade of my axe caved it in and left it a twitching wreck on the ground so despite my irritation that I hadn’t been able to finish it off with that attack I decided to leave the clean up to my Amoeba which was already finishing off the other injured Bugs by suffocating them with its body.

Looking up once more I saw that the Bugs had spread out so that I couldn’t hit them all at once with my Gravel Shotgun like I had the first time. So, I started firing Mana Bolts again as I tried to herd them closer together. I snarled in irritation as the Bugs dodged most of the attacks, my MP wasn’t going to last much longer if I kept up my assault.

Thinking quickly, I lowered my hands and pretended to ignore the Bugs that were watching me closely from the trees. In reality I was actually watching them out of the corner of my eyes but to them it should look like I wasn’t paying any attention to them as I stepped over to the fallen body of the Bug whose head I had crushed with my axe and started stomping on its body.

I wasn’t sure if this would work but it was the only thing that I could think of right now. The strange buzzing, hissing sound that the Bugs were making intensified as I turned the already damaged head of their fallen family member to mush. I looked up and pinned one of the Bugs with a challenging stare as it started to gather itself.

“What?” I asked knowing full well that it couldn’t actually understand the words, but I was hoping that they could understand the intent of what I was saying. “Don’t you want to stop me?”

As soon as I finished speaking the Bug leapt at me with a loud chittering hiss as its large mandibles opened wide. This Bug looked fairly similar to the one that had nearly cut off my hand except for the colour of its exoskeleton which was a bright red instead of the mossy green of the other one.

Unfortunately for it, this bright colouring made it a very easy target for a Mana Bolt which knocked it to the ground. The attack didn’t actually do much damage to the Bug that I had hit but as I’d hoped its actions did serve as a starting gun for the other Bugs and I looked up from my fallen opponent just in time to see another three bugs of various types leaping at me.

With grin I raised my hand and cast Gravel Shotgun once more tearing the closest one to shreds and either severely wounding or killing both of the others. As the third Bug fell I felt a surge of power fill my limbs as I Levelled Up for a second time and grinned as I also knew that my MP and MP regen had also increased significantly which meant that I didn’t have to worry quite so much about how low my MP was getting.

Changing targets to the other groups I raised my other hand and fired two blasts of shrapnel using my Gravel Shotgun that tore through the shells of the closer ones and scared the remaining ones that had decided to wait and see what happened to the more reckless members of their group off completely.

Now that they were badly injured, I decided that I would try and get some Levels in my melee combat Skills since I had yet to use my Unarmed Combat Skill in combat. I also decided to activate my Needle Armour since I had no desire to take more damage than I needed to. I also hoped that doing this would increase the damage that I could deal with my punches and kicks.

As drew my kunai I charged towards one of the downed Bugs and kicked it into a nearby tree before spinning around just in time for one of the other injured Bugs to leap at me. The claws on the ends of its legs ripped into my flesh as it attempted to bite my face off. So, I stabbed it just behind its head with my kunai several times causing it to stiffen slightly before letting go and falling to the ground.

Grimacing as I looked down at the holes that its surprisingly sharp claws had torn in my wooden breastplate I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye and leapt backwards just in time to dodge a stream of acid from another one of the Bugs which I quickly ordered the Amoeba to attack since it had just finished eating one of the Bugs that I had mortally wounded with my Gravel Shotgun spell.

What followed was nothing short of horrifying as the strange translucent body of the amoeba swallowed the Bug whole despite its struggling. Even the acid that it could spit didn’t really seem to damage my minion and it soon suffocated inside the fleshy prison of the Amoeba’s body.

Incredibly I wasn’t attacked the entire time that I watched the Bug slowly dying and when it finally stopped moving, I turned around to see the Bugs trying to scramble away from the Amoeba. Unlike insects back on Earth Bugs didn’t have compound eyes and I could swear that I could see fear and horror in their eyes.

Chasing after the badly injured Bugs I managed to kill another two of them, but the rest got away. I was alright with that since I now had plenty of meat for another couple of days, so I just ordered the Amoeba to clean up the really badly damaged body parts. The parts of the Bugs that had received the brunt of the damage from my Gravel Shotgun spell were basically torn to shreds anyway so it just wasn’t worth it.

Still despite the damaged bodies that I had created with my rather destructive spell casting I had enough meat for the next couple of days so long as I didn’t go overboard with my serving sizes. What few relatively minor injuries that I had faded relatively quickly now that I had even more HP regen that I’d had before the fight started.

I wasn’t too worried about being attacked by the Bugs now that I had chased them off like I had last time. It was pretty clear that I was considerably stronger than most of them now that I had reached Level 3 and I doubted that they were brave enough to come back after I had killed so many of them. After Levelling, my Perception Stat was also much higher and besides even if I missed anything sneaking up on me Tane wouldn’t.

Once I had delivered all of the meat back to the cooking area, I sat down to have a look at my Stat Screen and assign my Unassigned Stat Points. Bringing up the screen I whistled under my breath as I saw the rather significant changes that had occurred. I had 14 Unassigned Stat Points, so I placed 4 points into Endurance and followed this up by putting another 4 points into Willpower and the remaining 5 points into my lowest Stat Strength.

Once I had done this, I looked over the Stat Screen one more time.

Status

Level 3

Exp: 7%

HP: 253/253

MP: 590/590

HP Regen: 25.2 per minute (+1)

MP Regen: 32.7 per minute

SP: 201/201

Essence: 21

SP Regen: 20.1 per minute

Control Points: 35.2 (25.2)

Str: 29 (+12/Lvl)

Agi: 45 (+12/Lvl)

Con: 38 (+ 4/Lvl)

End: 34 (+8/Lvl)

Tou: 39 (+7/Lvl)

Int: 81 (+39/Lvl)

Coor: 31 (+8/Lvl)

Vit: 36 (+8/Lvl)

Wis: 45 (+19/Lvl)

Will: 47 (+26/Lvl)

Per: 44 (+18/Lvl)

Cha: 26 (+8/Lvl)

Additional Growth Rate: +14 Unassigned Stat Points/Lvl. +40 MP/Lvl. MP regen increased by 1/min per Lvl +5 Control Points/Lvl.

Unassigned Stat Points: 0

“Jeez I have a lot of MP now,” I muttered to myself as I stared at the massive amount of MP that was listed on my Stat Sheet.

I was rapidly approaching the point where I could actually use Earthen Armour for a reasonable length of time. Even now I could use it for about 5 minutes if I didn’t use any other magic thanks to my regen and I decided to use it if I decided that I was going to practice my melee combat Skills.

Closing the screen, I started going through the various corpses and body parts that I had collected a bit more carefully. I had collected anything that I felt was large enough that it would provide a decent amount of food or didn’t look too badly damaged. Even now the amoeba was still eating the pieces that I had left behind. During the last trip back to collect more meat I had noted that the Amoeba had actually increased by size by a significant amount. When I had first summoned it, the amoeba had been slightly larger than a grapefruit and now it was considerably larger than a watermelon and would be much more difficult to carry it like I had when I had first arrived here. Thankfully this also meant that it was more useful in a fight as it had shown when it had swallowed the injured Bug whole earlier.

Once I had sorted through the parts that I had collected I started butchering the larger pieces for the meat and placing it on a nearby rock. I really needed to think of a way to keep the meat that I collected for longer. While I wasn’t too uncomfortable with the idea of keeping meat for a day before eating it, it seemed like a really bad idea to keep it unrefrigerated for any longer than that.

So, I continued to consider my options while I worked and by the time, I felt that I had gotten all of the meat that I was going to get from the Bugs I used my Essence Drain on what remained. Which was mostly pieces of shell as well as a few scraps of meat that were so insignificant that I decided that getting it out of whatever nook or cranny it was in would be a complete and utter waste of my time.

“12 Essence nice,” I said once the strange green tendrils withdrew back into my hand. “Wait a minute how much Essence did my Create Primitive Scorpion Skill cost again?”

Bringing up the Skill description made a smile cross my face as I realised that it would cost 30 Essence to use this Skill. Activating the Skill caused the same glowing green tendrils that my Essence Drain created started creating a strange cocoon much like they had when I had used my Create Giant Amoeba and as I watched them work a dark shape started to become visible in the cocoon. About a minute later the dark shape was about the same size as the Amoeba had been last time, I had seen it and the tendrils had withdrawn into my hand once more.

The dark shape within the cocoon continued to grow for a little while longer before suddenly tearing through the strange substance that surrounded it and turning towards me. For the most part it looked quite similar to every other scorpion that I had ever seen before except for the fact that its tail looked slightly undeveloped. It did have a spike on the end but from what I could sense through our connection it wasn’t venomous which was a little bit disappointing because that would’ve been quite useful. Oh well at least it had eyes, they weren’t very good eyes, but they were better than nothing.

Honestly, it was a little bit creepy seeing such a large scorpion, but I could tell that it would follow any order that I gave it much like the amoeba would. I could also tell just by looking at it that this scorpion was more formidable than the amoeba was even now.

Reaching out I touched the exoskeleton of the scorpion which just stood there as I poked it. Surprisingly its exoskeleton actually had a bit of give but something told me that wouldn’t last long, and it would quickly become incredibly tough as it ate more food and the Skill Levelled Up.

“Alright then,” I said as I stood back up since I had obviously had to bend over to touch the scorpion. “What am I going to do with you now?”

Despite it being more powerful than the amoeba had been when I had first summoned it, I knew that sending it out to fight on its own would just end up with it getting killed. Hell, even if I sent the amoeba with it there was no way that they would be able to fight off a group of Bugs like I had earlier.

Well at least my Minion Control Skill will improve faster now,” I muttered to myself. My Create Primitive Scorpion would be growing stronger as well but now that I had two minions running around my Minion Control Skill should be improving much faster than before. Not that the amoeba actually had legs to run on, but you get the idea.

Eventually I wanted to be able to send my minions out to hunt by themselves. Not to get more food for me but so that they could eat and grow stronger themselves. Something was telling me that they would become stronger much faster if they ate what they hunted down after killing it. But this would require them to become more powerful first and they would need to fight alongside me until they grew powerful enough to fight by themselves.

Now that I had butchered the meat it was time for me to start cooking lunch. So, I placed some of the meat on top of the barbeque that I had made the other day and after quickly collecting some more wood to use for fuel. Once I had enough wood for cooking the meat, I quickly used my new Candlelight Spell to light the fire and soon enough the meat was sizzling away nicely.

While the meat cooked, I sat back and checked my Skill increases.

Skills increased!

Zoology increased to Lvl 9

Observation increased to Lvl 7

Mana Manipulation increased to Lvl 17

Telepathy increased to Lvl 8

Mana Bolt increased to Lvl 8

Spell Targeting increased to 8

Gravel Shotgun increased to Lvl 3

Minion Control increased to Lvl 9

Axe Mastery increased to Lvl 5

Growth Rate increased by 1 Strength

Unarmed Combat increased to Lvl 4

Spine Armour increased to Lvl 2

Available Aspect points increased by 16

Total Aspect Points: 18

“16 points, nice,” I muttered as I checked the meat to make sure it wasn’t starting to burn. Once I had done this, I brought up my Aspects Screen and placed all 18 of the Points into the Aspect of Willpower 1 and confirmed my decision.

As soon as I confirmed my decision, I found myself in the shallow water of a river. I looked around for a few seconds trying to find what it was that I was here to see and when I finally spotted it I froze. It truly wasn’t that remarkable looking a creature but that didn’t really matter. What mattered was what it did next. The strange looking creature made its way slowly to the bank of the river and slowly but surely hauled its way up the bank and onto land where it took several breaths before continuing onwards. This creature was the first amphibian to have appeared in my internal world and I knew that its appearance would cause the world to change dramatically as it had on Earth.

Aspect of Willpower 1 has reached 18/25!

Willpower increases the strength of your mind providing better protection against a variety of techniques that attack the mind directly.

Willpower increased by 3!

MP regen/min increased by 0.4

Soul Aspect increased to Level 193!

The first amphibious vertebrates have appeared in your internal world. These new creatures will bring about new possibilities and completely change the face of your internal world. Will these changes be for better or for worse?

Only time will tell.

Toughness increased by 2!

Unassigned Stat Points increased by 1!

Growth Rate increased by 1 Constitution!

Time passes and your internal world changes once more. New predators more dangerous than any seen before roam the seas and force more life up onto land where they begin to thrive. The first forests begin to grow which provide both a habitat and food for the large variety of creatures that now roam the land.

Constitution increased by 1

Unassigned Stat Points increased by 2!

Growth Rate increased by 1 Unassigned Stat Point!

“Well that last part of the description of what happened is a little bit foreboding,” I muttered to myself. If I had to guess the warning was about the rise of humanity and the damage that we had caused since we had started to develop technology but that was okay because I wasn’t planning on going down that route anyway if I could possibly avoid it. “The Stat increases are nice though.”

After a couple of moments of thinking I decided to all 3 of the Unassigned Stat Points that I had to my Wisdom bringing my total MP up to 532 and my MP regen up to 33.7 per minute. While it was nice having a lot of MP that I could use once it ran out my combat potential took a fairly severe nosedive so increasing my MP regen was a no brainer.

“Alright,” I muttered. “Now to figure out how to use this Enchanting Skill of mine.”

As I said this, I realised that I had completely forgotten about the meat that I was cooking for lunch and it was starting to burn so I quickly took it off of the barbeque yelping slightly as I burnt my hand and started eating.

Working out how my new Skill worked would have to wait until after I finished lunch.