AN: Once again, experimenting with different ways to move the story forward. Your reviews and feedback especially constructive criticisms will be greatly appreciated! :) Thanks rosidbeken2, deuszurich and KalebR for your reviews!

“The stat and experience boosts are great but what the hell is with the penalties!”

Feng raged aloud about his latest title and its resulting “benefits”.

“I’m effectively blocked from grinding or even effective party hunting… not to mention that added interaction penalty with the worshippers of Athal Gods.”

Leena’s bright and cheery voice rang out in his head though somewhat subdued by his obvious anger.

“Look on the bright side James! You hate playing in groups anyway and grinding on low level mobs bore you, I mean you always create ridiculously overpowered characters to avoid that when we game… Remember our last D&D game when the GM banned your level 1 human ranger dual-wielding throwable bastard swords?”

“Tch. It was a perfectly legit concept which obeys every written rule… Anyway, it’s the principle of things, you never know when it might be profitable to grind on certain low-level mobs to quickly level up or gain materials!”

“Well… Trust the Lord to provide for all your needs?”

“That was how I landed in this situation… But, yeah. I suppose you are right. After all, it isn’t as though I have been doing badly or anything. I managed to scrape my way through somehow despite the ridiculous situations so far…”

“Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for Thou art with me.”

“Amen.” Feng responded without thinking to Leena’s quotation of the bible and thought wryly.

‘… Considering Leena is way more devout than me, she’s probably going to be flagged as a blasphemer of the Athal religions too… At least I won’t be alone, I guess?’

After a quick rest combined with a meal of bread and cookies, Feng returned to the corpse of the giant lizard and rolled the heavy corpse over before digging around in its insides to retrieve his knives. Preparing himself to extract whatever loot he can from the corpse, Feng examined the corpse closely and activated the Observe skill.

Giant Comodon Lizard Corpse

Type: Corpse (Lizard Monster)

Level: ~60

Extractable Components: Claws, Hide, Eyes (Destroyed), Meat, *Unknown*

Description: A corpse of a monstrous lizard with striped patterns on its back, the scales on its body looks extremely tough and the claws on its thick limbs can easily shred flesh. Its eyes have been gouged out leaving bloody holes and its mouth is a gory mess of glass shards and poison.

Wielding his knives with greater finesse than before, after his experiments with the salamander corpses, Feng managed to skin the large reptilian corpse although his final work was ruined by some holes and jagged edges due to the toughness of its hide.

Giant Comodon Lizard Hide

Type: Crafting Material

Quality: Below Average

Effects: *Hidden*

Description: The tough but flexible hide of a Giant Comodon Lizard, it could prove useful in crafting.

Slowly dissecting the rest of the corpse, Feng first de-clawed the lizard taking some time to saw off the large claws before proceeding to extracting its innards which he suspected could be used for alchemy but at the moment was simply too unskilled to extract without damaging them. However, while he was extracting the heart, Feng bumped into an unexpectedly hard object and groped around in the bloody and mangled corpse… to find an oddly smooth black rock.

Giant Comodon Lizard Monster Core

Type: *Hidden*

Quality: *Hidden*

Effects: *Hidden*

Description: A mysterious fist-sized stone found within the Giant Comodon Lizard.

“Ooo! Cool, is that some sort of magical monster stone? Maybe it can be used to enhance equipment? Summon monsters?”

Leena’s voice broke Feng’s train of thoughts as he examined the odd stone and he couldn’t help but sigh at the reminder of his unwelcome spectator… Deciding there was little he could do now, he decided to set it aside for appraisal and research when he returns to town and started butchering the lizard corpse for chunks of meat.

*DING*

After finishing his bloody work, Feng read and closed the notification windows informing him of the increase to his anatomy skill and knowledge of lizards. He then took stock of his current equipment and the loot laid out before him.

‘Hm… the knives are down to less than 50% durability though the rest of my equipment is still fine. I really need to find a way to repair equipment on the go… Blacksmithing maybe? For now, I’ll save my knives for skinning purposes and fight with my fists instead’

Preparing to toss out some of his inventory items to make space for the loot he just obtained, Feng was pleasantly surprised to be greeted with a notification when he inspected his inventory.

*DING*

By reaching level 30, your maximum inventory slots have been increased to 4x4.

Noting that his inventory has eight free slots at the moment, Feng decided to optimize his inventory space given that items such as [Magical Contract], [Librarian’s Robes] and [Teleport Stone - Cracked] are taking up a slot each. Taking the robes out, he carefully wrapped the magical contract, teleport stone as well as monster core within it before replacing it into a slot…

*DING*

Librarian’s Robes (Container)

Type: Container

Description: Simple grey working robes used by librarians, it has been repurposed to contain small items.

Packing all the loot into his inventory, Feng examined the giant lizard’s den carefully one last time as he prepared to leave. With nothing but some gnawed on bones and the bloody corpse in sight, Feng left via the other tunnel continuing upwards.

The long winding dirt tunnel snaked upwards for nearly fifteen minutes of walking before opening up to a small cavern which was in a four-way intersection... and was occupied by a few large lizards.

Observing them, Feng noted that these [Large Gila Monsters] were poisonous but only level 42. Nonetheless, he decided caution was the way to go and stealthily lured one of the monsters towards him by throwing clods of dirt at it. Dropping onto its back and raining blows onto its head, Feng dispatched the monster almost instantly. Sweat-dropping at the ease of slaying the monster, Feng was reminded of his recent stat boosts… and the unpleasant fact that killing these lower level monsters would not be grant him much experience.

Large Gila Monster Corpse

Type: Corpse (Lizard Monster)

Level: 42

Extractable Components: Poison Sacs, Fangs, Hide, Claws, *Unknown*

Description: A corpse of a large colorful lizard with streaks of yellow, red and blue running through its black hide serving as a warning that it is highly venomous… Or at least that is the purpose for its smaller lizard cousins, but this monstrous example of the Gila Monster is more than capable of driving predators back with its sheer bulk and even more lethal poisons.

After taking time to observe and dissect it, Feng decided to only extract its poison sacs given that its poisons are likely the most valuable loot from it and also relatively fast and simple to extract as compared to skins.

Given the relative weakness of the mobs and his uncertainty of the time required to travel back to the city, Feng decided to throw caution to the winds and plunged into battle with the Large Gila Monsters, quickly slaying the remaining group of four in the room without taking any hits and proceeded to explore down a randomly chosen tunnel.

However, that tunnel only led him through dozens of encounters with the Large Gila Monsters before ending in a dead-end. It took him hours to find the right combination of tunnels to reach the next level of tunnels where he was faced with a surprisingly weak but annoying lizard monster.

Venomous Chimera

Type: Lizard (Uncommon)

Level: ~40

Attacks/Weapons: Bite (Poisoned), Claws

Traits: Poisonous, Camouflage, *Skill Level Too Low*

Stats: *Skill Level Too Low*

Weak Spots: Head, *Skill Level Too Low*

Description: A small lizard measuring less than an average man’s arm, it boasts a poison bite made deadlier by its ability to blend in with its surroundings.

Feng’s first encounter with these annoying critters was when he accidentally stepped into a nest of them, causing the group of four to collectively sink their poisonous fangs into his legs and rapidly decreasing his health due to the high poison damage taking away nearly a third of his health within seconds, only mitigated by him hurriedly downing health potions while stomping down on the deadly lizards.

Such encounters were repeated through yet another maze-like network of tunnels as Feng searched for the exit to the rapidly growing monotonous dungeon. It took so many hours to explore that he was forced to exit and rest in real life multiple times by Leena before continuing onwards.

Besides the loot of poison sacs and chimera hides he extracted offsetting his quickly dwindling health potion supply, Feng was ultimately pleased with the annoying chameleons due to the massive gains he was getting to his Observe skills as well as gaining a new skill through his encounters with them.

New Skill Obtained: Poison Resistance

Congratulations! Through frequently exposing your body to toxins and poisons, you have developed a resistance for them.

(Passive)

-10% Poison Damage

+3 Constitution

*Many Hours Later*

After more than fifty in-game hours, which was only interrupted by enforced rest periods from Leena who visited him as often as she could after work (unfortunately), Feng finally reached the exit of the cave dungeon and saw daylight after more than three days of endless tunnels filled with various reptile monsters, progressively growing weaker and insignificant after the Venomous Chimera.

He had made short work of the Rock Lizards, which was only annoying due to their rock-hard skin not to mention the headaches he got trying to skin them; followed by common Brown Lizards which were completely insignificant except for their speed but that was hardly comparable to Feng’s.

By the time Feng has reached the exit, he had gained 100% understanding of [Lizards] in his [Anatomy] skill and unlocked a 5% understanding of [Reptiles] of which lizards belong under, and leveled it to Basic 2, granting him increased intelligence and perception stat bonuses. His [Skinning] skill had similarly leveled up to Basic 3 and granted him increased success as well as greater stat bonuses.

Unfortunately, the rest of his skills made little notable progress… except for [Sense Hostile Intent] teetering on the upper brink of Novice 9 due to the annoying surprise ambushes by large groups of the lizard creatures.

Making his way out of the cave, Feng took a few moments to enjoy the refreshing feel of the cool breeze and warmth of the sun on his skin after his long subterranean journey before looking around… and saw only dense forest surrounding him in all directions.

*DING*

Quest Update: Remaining Time till Library Quest Failure – 3 days