Once we got back to the base of Tane’s trunk I started preparing some food while I gave my minions time to rest. Now that the Amoeba had evolved to a Gel, I felt that my minions were now strong enough to go hunting on their own but since they were living things, they did get tired like I did.

Actually, to be honest they got tired faster than I did since my Endurance was higher than both of them. I was pretty sure that the scorpion was close to having the same amount of Endurance as I did but since I couldn’t actually see their Stats I only had a vague idea of how strong they actually were compared to me. It was also starting to get late, so I decided to cook dinner and go to bed. I would send them out hunting in the morning.

While I was preparing the meat, I heard a strange rustling sound coming from the makeshift barbeque that I had made and bent down to look inside only to fall on my arse when a black blur shot out of the opening.

“Holy shit!’ I gasped once my heart had stopped trying to break out of my chest and looked around to see if I could find what had just shot past my head. Just then I heard a strange chittering sound and looked up at a nearby tree to see the Black Darter that I had fed several pieces of fruit to the other day. I could tell it was the same Darter because it had a small scar that had left a small patch of skin under one of its eyes that made it look rather roguish which was only enhanced by the cheeky way that it was looking back over its shoulder at me right now.

“Holy shit,” I repeated. “You were really lucky I wasn’t ready to start cooking or you might not have made it out of there.”

The Darter made a funny little trilling sound as he shuffled back and forth on the branch.

“Sorry I don’t have any fruit for you little buddy,” I told the silly creature while I continued to prepare the Bug meat for cooking.

‘You do know that it actually wants some of the meat that you have, right?’ Tane asked suddenly.

“Wait a minute,” I said in confusion. “Didn’t you tell me that it’s only the mature Darters that ate meat?”

‘Not exactly,’ Tane replied. ‘The younger ones sometimes scavenge from the kills of other beasts.’

“Huh, okay then I guess I can spare some meat,” I replied as I cut a small piece of meat off a larger bit and tossed it to the Darter which squawked happily as it snatched it from the air. I was guessing that it had seen me hiding all of the meat in my makeshift fridge. Also known as the pool of water next to me.

I continued it to toss the smaller and less appetising pieces of meat to the Darter until it let one of the pieces drop to the ground before it snatched it up. By now it was looking quite a bit rounder than it had been when I had first seen it and looked even more amusing than it had before. It eyed me for a few minutes before hopping a little bit closer and watching me calmly as I started cooking the meat. It did glance at my minions warily a few times but when they didn’t react it settled down and just watched me while I cooked.

I decided that I didn’t quite trust it not to try and steal more of my food despite how obvious it was that it had eaten more than enough. I had a feeling that it would eat until it puked if I let it.

‘It seems to be quite interested in you,’ Tane said making me smile slightly to myself.

“Well that’s fair enough,” I chuckled as I turned the meat over. “I’m quite interested in it as well.”

As I said this something occurred to me. When I had been completing the Aspect of the Yajash one of the notifications had mentioned that my new species were actually quite good at taming animals and monsters. I wasn’t sure how that ability actually manifested itself but feeding the Darter seemed like a pretty good start to me.

Once the meat had finished cooking, I wrapped it in same edible leaves that I had earlier and tucked in. The Darter watched with interest as I ate but didn’t move from its spot on the ground a few meters away.

When I’d finished eating, I decided to go over my Skill Increases from killing the last of the Scourges.

Skills increased!

Calm Mind increased to Lvl 10

Growth Rate increased by 1 Wisdom

Minion Control increased to Lvl 13

Create Gel increased to Lvl 8

Create Primitive Scorpion increased to Lvl 5

Check Skill Description for details.

Essence Drain increased to Lvl 5

Essence Drain can now be used to drain a small amount of HP from a live target.

Growth Rate increased by 1 Unassigned Stat Point.

Condense Water increased to Lvl 7

Telepathy increased to Lvl 9

Available Aspect points increased by 10

“Oh crap,” I muttered as I looked at my Skill Increases. “Essence Drain has been dragging behind quite a bit.”

The new effect of the Skill was quite nice to see and would definitely make it a Skill that I would be more likely to use in the future. Now that I had unlocked the Devourer Mutation for my Amoeba which had caused it to evolve into a Gel I didn’t need to use my Essence Drain Skill to get more Essence and I had been feeding the amoeba quite a lot of the stuff that I would use Essence Drain on so I probably wouldn’t use it that much for the purpose that it was originally intended for so having a use for it in combat could only be a good thing. Especially considering that it now gave me two extra Stat Points that I could distribute however I wanted when I Levelled Up which was a really useful benefit. It must’ve been close to Levelling Up as well since I was pretty sure that it had only been Level 3 until now.

Now that I knew I had enough Aspect Points to unlock the next lot of Bonuses I brought up my Aspect Screen and placed all of them into my Aspect of Perception and confirmed my decision.

Immediately I found myself inside my internal world. The area that I was in was covered by greenery and I could see a number of arthropods wandering around when suddenly a Gel came out of nowhere and started firing globs of acid at the bugs which quickly scattered. Some of them were hit by the acid that the Gel was spitting but their exoskeletons were tough enough that they were able to escape being gravely wounded. The ones that were hit by larger amounts of the acid were quite easily finished off by the much more dangerous Gel but quite a reasonable number of the different things that it had attacked were able to get away.

I was hoping that this was a sign that things with tough outer shells like arthropods would become more common due to the fact that they would be better protected from the acidic attacks of the Gels which seemed to be becoming the apex predators of this world. I wasn’t sure this was actually the case yet, but it was looking more likely which was a good sign as far as I was concerned.

Blinking my eyes as I returned to the real world, I started reading the notifications that had appeared in front of me during my vision.

Aspect of Perception increased to 20/25!

Those with high Perception can use their Intelligence and Agility to react to things faster than would be possible for normal people.

Perception increased by 1!

Intelligence increased by 1!

Agility increased by 1!

Soul Aspect increased to Level 245!

With the appearance of new more dangerous predators that use acid to dissolve their prey many of the organisms in your internal world have developed thick protective armour. Many of the species without this protection have found their numbers drastically decreasing and it seems that if they do not follow suit they may well be wiped out.

Toughness increased by 2!

Constitution increased by 1!

Growth Rate increased by 1 Toughness!

“Well I’m definitely not going to say no to extra survivability,” I said with a sigh once I had finished reading. I was slightly disappointed that I hadn’t received a new Skill, but I couldn’t really complain after what had happened the last time, I had unlocked a new set of bonuses from my Soul Aspect.

I quickly brought up my Stat Screen to check the changes.

Status

Level 3

Exp: 65%

HP: 287/287

MP: 616/616

HP Regen: 25.7 per minute (+1)

MP Regen: 38.6 per minute

SP: 168/201

Essence:34

SP Regen: 21.7 per minute

Control Points: 40.6 (10.6)

Str: 32 (+13/Lvl)

Agi: 49 (+14/Lvl)

Con: 42 (+ 6/Lvl)

End: 34 (+10/Lvl)

Tou: 46 (+10/Lvl)

Int: 74 (+35/Lvl)

Coor: 32 (+8/Lvl)

Vit: 37 (+8/Lvl)

Wis: 51 (+24/Lvl)

Will: 52 (+38/Lvl)

Per: 51 (+18/Lvl)

Cha: 27 (+11/Lvl)

Additional Growth Rate: +18 Unassigned Stat Points/Lvl. +40 MP/Lvl. MP regen increased by 1.4/min per Lvl +5 Control Points/Lvl.

Unassigned Stat Points: 0

“Right I guess that I should check my Create Primitive Scorpion Skill,” I muttered to myself as I dismissed my Stat Screen and brought up the Skill in question.

Create Primitive Scorpion (Primordial) has reached Lvl 6!

Having reached its first milestone, you may now pick a mutation for your minion from the selection below. Please bear in mind that this will cause the same mutation in the scorpion in your internal world and may have unintended consequences.

Needle Shot- Allows the Scorpion to fire a stinger from its tail to deliver a mild poison.

Armoured Shell- The Scorpion develops a thicker shell to protect it from damage while it uses the venomous stinger on the end of its tail to kill its prey.

I snorted as I read the two options before selecting the Armoured Shell mutation. I already had a minion that could use ranged attacks and I was already using the Scorpion as a melee fighter, so this was the obvious choice as far as I was concerned.

As soon as I made my choice a cracking sound came from the direction of the scorpion and I turned around to see that my minion was moulting which was pretty normal for things with exoskeletons like scorpions. It was obvious that shedding its skin wasn’t easy for the scorpion, so I got up to help it out.

Helping the scorpion shed its skin was definitely an odd experience but the results were quite impressive. Not only was the scorpion considerably larger than it had been before, it also looked quite a bit different. Where its shell had once been a sort of reddish brown it was now a dark grey and covered in small lumps that became spikes in some places giving it quite an intimidating look. It’s tail and both of its claws were also quite a bit larger and the end of its tail now had the bulbous look that I was familiar with. I could also feel through our connection that my minion was also considerably stronger than it had been. I was still faster than it, but its Toughness and Strength were both higher than mine and its Constitution was about even. All in all, I was quite pleased with the outcome of my decision.

“Alright I should probably head to bed,” I sighed as I waved goodnight to the Darter which was still watching me from where it was sitting.

The next morning after I had made breakfast, I sent the two minions out hunting like I had planned. I made sure to give them specific orders to only hunt Bugs in small groups which were the only things that I was confident of them being able to defeat right now. The Scorpion probably wouldn’t be that useful in a fight against Bugs since it didn’t have a ranged attack, but it could still protect the Gel from their attacks and eat the corpses once they were done. One thing that I had noticed was that my minions grew a lot faster when they ate the things that they had killed and sending them hunting like this would allow them to become a lot stronger while also allowing me to do other things. I probably wouldn’t get experience for letting them fight on their own, but my Minion Control and summoning Skills should grow pretty quickly could only be a good thing as far as I was concerned. I should also get a reasonable amount of Essence from the Gel’s Devour ability which would allow me to summon even more minions.

As my two minions went on their way, I heard a rustling sound from behind me and turned around to see that the Darter had shown up again. I smirked at the funny creature. It was obvious that the Darter was quite curious which suggested that it was quite intelligent but like a lot of animals it was also pretty cautious.

Shaking my head, I tried to decide what I was going to do next. Since my axe had broken again, I would have to replace it at some point, and I could probably finish making it today if I really tried. As I thought everything got a bit darker and I looked up to see clouds overhead.

A frown crossed my face as I started making different plans. I didn’t know if it was actually going to rain anytime soon but I also didn’t want to get rained on if I was wrong so I decided that I would make a small shelter over my cooking area. I also decided to make a separate area for making things like armour and weapons when I had the time.

Using my Stone Spike spell, I created a large spike that slowly became a pillar. Once I was happy with the size of the first pillar I made three more that surrounded the cooking area making sure that I had a couple of meters of clearance on every side of the barbeque so that I had plenty of room for whatever I was going to do.

Once I had done that, I wandered over to the massive branch that had fallen off Tane and started to make parts for the roof. I ended up making four large wooden triangles before carrying them back over to the cooking area and trying to figure out how the hell I was going to get them up on top of the pillars. Shrugging I headed back to Tane’s and started taking the smaller branches off it and fusing them together until I had two long poles but then I was interrupted by something that was happening to my minions.

While I was working my minions had found a couple of groups of Bugs and had killed a couple of them before retreating like I had told them to if things got too dangerous which meant that I had been able to use all of my MP to make things but this time was different. They had been attacked by something and the scorpion had been injured enough that it couldn’t fight back as well as it should be able to which was kind of bad. Unfortunately, they were too far away for me to be able to do much to help them and because I had just used up most of my MP on using my Nature Shaping Skill I barely managed to regenerate enough to cast my Heal Minion spell which bought me enough time to cast it again and we slowly started to wear the thing that they were fighting down. I was quite irritated by this, but I understood that it what had happened wasn’t my minion’s fault. Once they had finished off the thing that had attacked them, I ordered them to bring the body back for me to examine.

The scorpion’s eyes weren’t very good so I didn’t really know much about what it was that had attacked them other than the fact that it was something that I hadn’t encountered before and was probably an ambush predator judging by the way it had attacked my two minions.

Once I had regenerated my MP again I went back to work on the ladder that I was making and once it was done I propped it up on one of the pillars and started hauling one of the roof pieces up to the top. It wasn’t easy and it definitely wasn’t something that Health and Safety would approve of and it predictably ended with me nearly falling off the ladder so since my minions were on the way back I decided to wait until they arrived so that they could help me out.

Since they were still a few minutes away I carried all of the pieces of the roof over and then started working on a new axe. I was definitely getting better at making things using my Nature Shaping Skill and the axe was starting to come together quite well when my minions arrived, and I put the weapon to one side as they approached. The corpse of the monster that had attacked them was slung over the scorpion’s back and ‘monster’ was definitely the right term for whatever this thing was.

The monster sort of resembled a cat with really long legs that ended in things that looked more like a monkey’s hands. That is if a monkey had talons like a predatory bird on the end of its fingers and no eyes. It was also hairless and was covered in a strange oily substance which thankfully didn’t really smell like anything which was somewhat surprising considering the smell coming from the various holes in the monster’s corpse.

As I pulled the cat monster off the back of the scorpion, I noticed that it was surprisingly heavy despite its bony appearance. Taking my knife, I used one of the larger holes in the things hide to start cutting and gagged as its foul-smelling guts fell out.

“Oh god,” I groaned. “I really wish that I hadn’t done that now.”

Eventually I decided that the longer I put this off the worse off I would be and bent down to pull more of its guts out and pile them up next to the monster’s body. I found the stomach easily enough but to my surprise it didn’t seem to have much in it other than some liquid that smelt even worse than the rest of the thing which I was guessing was stomach acid and some sort of sludge that could be anything. No bones or anything like that.

“Hmm, that’s weird,” I muttered as I turned to look at the cat-monster which was blatantly a carnivore since it had a mouth full of large, sharp and slightly serrated teeth that had pieces of some sort of meat stuck between them. “I wonder if you make pellets like an owl or something.”

It was possible that this monster just hadn’t eaten anything in a while but for some reason I felt that I was correct. Its skull was also quite interesting. As I had noticed before the monster didn’t have any eyes, but it did have very large bony protrusions that resembled ears and I was guessing that this was what they were which probably meant that this thing used echolocation to track its prey. I suppose it could also use some form of heat vision or something as well, but echolocation seemed more likely to me just because I didn’t know if something like heat vision would work very well on something like a Bug or a Crawler.

It also seemed to be quite tough judging by the number of small holes where it had been stabbed by the scorpion’s stinger and the areas of flesh that had been melted away by the Gel’s acid. Either way I definitely wasn’t going to be eating this thing. Not only had it been stung multiple times by the scorpion, but I wasn’t confident that eating it would be a good idea even if that wasn’t the case.

With a wave of my hand I told both of my minions that they could eat the corpse and both of them fell upon it and started feasting. I knew that they had already eaten quite a lot today, but it seemed that eating for them was more something that directly fuelled their growth as it was for the sake of staying alive like it was for me so their appetite was basically endless.

“Right then,” I said once the grisly spectacle was over. “Let’s get to work!”