I slowly distanced myself from the now desolate goblin camp. It was almost scary how easily I was able to dispose of all of them and gain their XP. My inventory was now filled with mostly goblins, and the odd creature I brought down from the first layer. When I finally found a safe spot to eat them all, I’d be able to get a whole bunch of attribute points… probably.

It wasn’t long since I’d descended down to the second layer, but now I was already considering going down to the third. There were only four levels until I’d hit the cap for a tier-one creature and considering that I’d need quite a while to locate a tunnel that went down, I should probably start looking sooner rather than later.

I felt a bit jealous of the monsters that only descended once they were at the appropriate tier since they seemed to have some sort of guidance system in place to find the way down.

As I snaked my way between trees and bushes, focused on my planning, my musings were disturbed by slow, rhythmic shakes of the earth. Something big was approaching, and I’d rather not be caught in the open, so I immediately gunned it to the nearest bush to hide.

Slowly, of course.

I wasn’t even fully hidden yet, when the behemoth came into sight. A truly giant bear that could easily crush me underfoot and not even notice he’d done so. His fur was black, with some lighter hair forming some sort of pattern over his chest area. I could even see the occasional wisp of fire escaping his mouth whenever he breathed out.

I was terrified as I watched him pass. Was that guy really only a second-tier? Or was he actually a tier-three monster on his way downwards? Having some sort of identification spell would be nice, but alas, the only way to truly know was to kill him and read the system notification.

What I did know, though, was that I didn’t want to tussle with him. Sure I could probably shoot a poison needle or two without him noticing, and with my newly purchased upgrade to the spell I might actually be even able to kill it, but… The sheer size of it made me freeze.

Sure, I’d fought the terrifying Reaper Snake before, but that was just a last-ditch effort I was somewhat forced into. If given a choice, I would choose to not fight monsters like these ten out of ten times. I’d probably get rewarded handsomely if I succeeded, but I would much rather fight something that couldn’t kill me by accident.

To illustrate my point, the big bear toppled a tree over by casually walking into it.

Thankfully, he either didn’t notice me or just didn’t care about a tiny slug in the grass, lumbering onwards. Just in case he was actually a newly evolved tier-three, I took a mental note of the direction he was going in. If I would start my search for a way down over there, maybe I’d get lucky.

I watched the titan as he passed me, making sure not to move and keep up my stealth passive. Luckily, he didn’t notice me and I breathed a sigh of relief. I was just considering moving on when something atop the trees caught my attention.

Some sort of bird monster flock seemed to be stalking the bear from the trees. Were they planning to attack it? They certainly had the numbers for it, as more and more of them arrived, landing on the trees around me while watching the bear truck on. One of them landed on the tree next to me, giving me a proper look at it.

Apparently, these things weren’t birds, but harpies. And not the kind with beautiful womanly features. No, these things only vaguely resembled a woman, bordering on fugly witch territory.

They kept fluttering after the bear, landing every now and again, carefully watching their prey. Or maybe they were like vultures and waited until the big bear killed something only to steal his food from him. Either way, if I had any say in it, I’d never find out.

Set on not getting tangled up in whatever mess was brewing that way, I started slugging my way away from them, intent on circling around to where the bear was going eventually. I did still have to kill a few monsters to max out my level, and I wouldn’t descend before that anyway.

But before I could get far, a shadow fell over me. I couldn’t even react before I was lifted into the air, claws stabbing into me and holding on tightly. I would have screamed if I could, but all I could muster was a pained wiggle.

I looked at what had grabbed me, immediately recognizing the ugly face staring back at me. One of the harpies seemed to have noticed me and decided to go for a snack before the main course. Her claws had dug in deep, and for the first time in a long while, it was me that was getting ambushed.

It took me a moment to remember that I had defensive skills since I hadn’t used them in quite some time, but I eventually activated both Compress and Fatal Poison Mucus Armor. Compress made me stiffen up, stopping my involuntary wiggling, but since the harpies' claws were already digging into my flesh, it didn’t provide much protection.

It’d have to do for now.

Not feeling as much pain now, I focused on my spellcasting. While I could just use a poison needle, I wanted this hag to release me quickly, so I went for the old reliable: Poison Spear. I conjured up the spear and immediately shot it at my assailant. Funnily enough, my agility stat was still messing with me, even when shot point-blank. So instead of taking this thing's head clean off, I just ripped off one of its wings.

Of course, that meant we were crashing down now, and on impact, I finally felt the claws leave my insides. I quickly released my Compress skill in order to get myself right side up, swiveling my eye-stalks to look for the harpy. It didn’t take long for me to find the grotesque bird, now missing a wing.

It was already angrily getting up from where it crashed, presumably screaming at me. Maybe she was even using some sort of howling skill, but that was useless against me since I didn’t have ears.

I quickly re-engaged Compress as it came charging at me, readying another Poison Spear to throw at it. Since I was now quite fast at casting these, I managed to ready up two of them before the harpy reached me. Now that she was closer, and my chances of missing lower, I immediately fired both of my spears at her. Unsurprisingly, one of them went wide, but the other one struck true, piercing a nice hole into the bird's torso.

That did a lot of damage, and it fell over, not quite dead yet. No matter, my poison was already in her system, and all I had to do was wait and defend. She obviously didn’t want to go down without a fight, so she started trying to bite me to death.

Big mistake.

My defensive skills mitigated most of the damage, and the more she bit at me, the more of my poison she’d ingest, speeding up her demise. It didn’t take long for her struggles to end, and I was rewarded with a system message.

You have killed a T2 Lv. 9 Harpy

You have been awarded 500 XP

I surprisingly didn’t get a level for killing this one, but no matter. I quickly threw the harpies body into my inventory for later consumption and started to crawl away as fast as I could. Whether or not that scream earlier was a skill or not, it was sure to have alerted the other harpies nearby, and I wanted to get the hell out of dodge before they came over to check what was happening.

Realizing that I could probably use my poison mist as both a deterrent and a smokescreen, I started charging about a hundred MP into it before releasing the spell. A massive wall of poisonous, green mist exploded outwards from me. It wasn’t a very dense mist, but every little bit helped, and anything that was stupid enough to brave the mist anyway would be in for a world of hurt.

I kept swiveling my eyes in all directions as I fled the battlefield, eventually finding a sizable bush to hide in. I crawled past some pointy branches and went deep into the bush before activating my stealth passive, intent on staying here for the time being.

The bush was easily big enough to hide a hundred of me, so I wasn’t really worried about being found unless harpies had especially sensitive noses to track me down by smell, but I seriously doubted it.

I nervously stayed in my hidey-hole for what felt like an hour, before relaxing a bit. I doubted that they were still on my case if they ever even were. Still, better safe than sorry.

Judging the large bush as a nice enough hideout, I decided to eat some of the monsters in my inventory, maybe even clean it out. I probably couldn’t take out the bear without messing up my hiding spot, but everything else was fair game.

I started out with all the tier-one monsters I still had catching dust, making quick work of a lizard, two wolves, and a spider. They barely gave me any XP, but I got a few attribute points. Next up were the goblins I decided to leave three goblins and the harpy as an emergency ration and devoured the rest of them, gaining a bit of XP(which put me at level 17), and more attribute points.

Due to the effect of Gluttony, you have gained the following attribute points:

4 Strength

3 Agility

1 Intelligence

2 Constitution

I was once again reminded of just how broken Gluttony was. No wonder it was an SSS-rated passive. I just casually got attribute points equal to leveling up ten times! Sure, the system seemed to be getting its kicks from giving me points in agility, but I’m sure these points would come in useful once I finally unlocked my agility stat somehow. I quickly threw the point I got from leveling into constitution, eager to get a bit more health in case I got ambushed again.

I may be a lowly slug, but I’d eventually overpower everything with my superior attributes!