It didn’t take long until six saurians had emerged from the water and onto dry land. I felt like a deer in headlights as a cold panic slowly took hold of me.

Just as I’d thought, nothing was ever easy, and Murphy's law seemed to have followed me from earth to this planet. My mind was racing as the saurians just looked between me and my newest kill.

Was there anything I could do? I was left with a measly eight MP, which was only enough to use my earliest skill, poison shot, or generate a measly amount of poison mist. Poison shot wouldn’t get me anywhere, so poison mist really was my only option. Maybe the mist would act as a deterrent while I could beat an incredibly slow retreat.

Whatever the case, I was out of time as the saurians decided to take action. They approached with a speed that I couldn’t possibly outrun, crawling on all fours. I hastily started to crawl away, while casting poison mist.

Just as I’d thought, the MP I had left was barely enough to cover me and extend maybe half a meter beyond my body. If it was gonna be like this, I might as well not have cast the spell. But at this point, I’d take any little help I could get. Thankfully my defensive skills didn’t use up any MP, but I still had to deactivate Compress since I couldn’t really move while it was active.

So all I could rely on was a flimsy cloud of poison to shield me, as well as a thin layer of poison on my skin, that would hopefully kill the saurian trying to eat me before my HP reached zero.

I was already saying my final prayers when the saurians finally arrived. I was hauling ass so hard that I felt like I somehow was able to access a second agility point, but in the end, it was all in vain. I mentally prepared myself to reactivate Compress as soon as I was gobbled up.

But… as it turned out, I was panicking for nothing. The six saurians were seemingly only interested in their fallen friend. Not out of concern, mind you, but to eat it. The tier-three saurian was huge and provided lots of food. Next to that thing, I was barely big enough to count as a tiny snack.

Not wanting to linger too long, lest they decided that some dessert was in order, I gunned it for the trees. I had to get away from here, activate stealth and then try and calm my beating heart.

The next few minutes went by agonizingly slowly as I put some distance between myself and the feeding frenzy. I already knew that monsters weren’t beyond eating their own as long as they could fill their bellies. I couldn’t help but nervously keep one of my eyestalks pointed in their direction as they devoured the giant saurian a lot faster than I was comfortable with.

Eventually, I made it out of sight and behind the first tree. But just to make sure I went a bit further before going up the trunk of a tree with particularly big leaves, praying to any god that would listen that I didn’t encounter any other monsters.

I eventually found some decent cover between two close leaves that could cover me completely, ensuring that my stealth passive was in use. Then, finally, I allowed myself a breath of relief. It was highly likely that I was safe for now.

That was close. Way too close…

For starters how did that giant saurian even know I was up in that tree? And why did it decide that I was a worthy target for a fight? Did my stealth fail because it was a tier-three monster? Did it just want to test its new powers, or did it somehow perceive me as a threat that was stalking it?

I was still a tier-one monster after all, and this served as a grim reminder that I was down here fighting with monsters an entire tier above me. Worse, I was supposed to go down to the third tier to complete my optional quest for evolution. Down there every single monster would be at the third tier, and not just at level one.

I still didn’t know what the third tier even looked like, so depending on what was going on down there, I could be well and truly fucked.

It was clear that I was at a massive disadvantage in open combat. I always knew that of course, but this encounter really drove the point home. I, technically speaking, had it easy up until this point. I’d just assassinate my targets from a safe distance without really putting myself in danger.

As soon as I was discovered I was in hot water. I was reminded of the encounter with the harpy, where I had the exact same problem.

So, after considering all these things… was it even worth it to go to the third layer for this quest?

Of course, I had made up my mind earlier to do all of the optional quests, but now I wasn’t so sure. I could of course become a lot stronger by doing the extra quests, and I honestly needed to be as strong as possible, since I had this weak body. But if I was facing down certain death by doing the quests… wouldn’t that kind of defeat the purpose?

I wanted to stay alive, obviously, and to do so I needed to be strong. Maybe, just this once, I should just give up on the extra rewards, and take a slightly weaker evolution. That way, I could stay on the second layer and get ready to evolve again before going down to the third, alive and well.

On the other hand… I knew from experience that the system was very generous with its rewards once you did something seemingly impossible. So if I could really do the extra quest down there, I’d probably get an insane boost to my evolution options.

I was really torn between my will to survive, and my blatant greed.

Eventually, I decided that I really shouldn’t be making this decision while whatever slug adrenaline I had was pumping through my veins. I needed some sleep and was in a safe place, so I’d worry about making a decision after I got a good sleep and calmed down.

I awoke an undetermined time later. Due to the fact that the layers didn’t have a day/night cycle, it was near impossible to keep track of time.

I gingerly extended my eye stalks over the edge of the leaf I was on to scout out the area. A quick sweep of my surroundings told me that there seemingly were no other monsters nearby. Another “night” successfully survived.

Now that I was sufficiently calm and had some time to think about my newest predicament, I felt a lot more certain. I wasn’t willing to give up on the evolution bonus but realized that I’d probably have a bad time. Which meant I needed to get stronger.

Problem being, that I couldn’t level up anymore. And the only other way I knew of that would let me get stronger quickly involved doing either emergency quests or stumbling across achievements. Which left me with only one choice.

Since I could level up my skills and magic by using them, I’d just have to do that. I felt like I’d probably be fine with the magic I currently had, even on the third layer. What I needed was more defense.

Which sucked, because the only way to level my defensive skills was by letting myself get beaten up.

Then again, it was still better than just going to the third layer and getting obliterated. I’d risk my life a little bit in a semi-controlled environment, instead of just throwing it away. Maybe I’d even manage to level another skill or two up while I was at it.

While I wasn’t entirely sure how ranking up a skill worked, I did have one example to go off of. Poison Shot, which was an E-tier spell, evolved into Poison Spear when it reached level ten. So either all skills had a level cap of ten, or it was dependent on the tier of the skill somehow. For now, I’d set my goal to leveling up my Compress and Poison Mucus Armor to ten. Hopefully, they’d both rank up at that point.

For now, I decided to stick to my tried and tested strategy of moving across the big tree leaves. There’d be fewer predators up here and I could take cover easier if something crossed my way. What I needed to find was a monster that was alone, preferably. Or weak monsters in low numbers.

My poison didn’t kill instantly, especially if I wasn’t using the higher-tier version of Poison Needle. So my plan was to goad some monster to attack, poison them and then turtle up while they tried to kill me.

I grimaced as I thought about what I had to do, but if I didn’t, I’d lose out on that sweet, sweet evolution bonus.

So I stalked the forest floor from up above, looking for a suitable training dummy. I did occasionally find monsters, but they either looked too strong or were hunting in packs. Ideally, I’d find a lone goblin or something along those lines, but I wasn’t having much luck.

I watched on in horror, as a weird raccoon abomination passed by, a plethora of tentacles sprouting from its back. I saw a wolf-like creature, that kind of looked like a platypus. There was even an honest-to-god strawman awkwardly stumbling along. I briefly considered using it as my training dummy, for added irony, but that thought quickly vanished after I saw what it did to that poor salamander monster.

Throughout my time in the trees, I kept reminding myself that I wasn’t on a timer. I had all the time in the world, and it was probably a good thing to slow down a little. I got to the second layer way too fast, which was what basically landed me in this predicament. Speed was good, but right now, slow and steady would win me the race.

I saw plenty more weird and familiar monsters pass me by until I finally found a suitable target.

At first, I thought it was a goblin, but upon closer inspection, it lacked the iconic green skin. It looked more like a stout human, about the size of a young child. A very big nose decorated its face and its beady eyes were completely black. It had repurposed some of the tree leaves as roughshod clothing, the first time I saw a monster with clothes.

All in all, it looked suitably harmless. Of course, I was probably being tricked. This monster probably just made itself look harmless so that potential predators would let their guard down, only to turn the tables on the attacker when they thought they had found an easy dinner.

I had originally planned on using Giant Spike as a fallback plan for when things were about to turn bad, but since this guy was so small that wouldn’t work. Well, Poison Spear would probably do the job as well. Who knows, maybe I could even rank up poison spear as well if I used it enough.

Trying to stay in the monster's blind spot, I descended from my tree. The monster was inspecting a berry bush, that sported some green, bulbous berries with purple spots. Unaware of my presence, I got as close as I dared and fired a regular Poison Needle which, due to the close proximity, hit on the first try.

Reliable as ever, the monster didn’t even notice that it got poisoned by my spell, so I lobbed a Poison Shot at the back of its head. That got its attention and after spotting me so close behind it, it gave off a little yelp and jumped back into the bush.

After its original scare passed and it realized that the thing that snuck up on it was a mere slug, it changed gears right quick. Just as I’d thought, its harmless demeanor was but a facade and it began to transform. The skin took on a more greyish tone, a gnarly set of pointy teeth revealed itself, and its fingernails grew out into sharp claws.

With a mental sigh, I resigned myself to what was coming next and activated both of my defensive skills. This was going to suck.

Your skill Compress (F) has reached Lv. 5!

The skill has ranked up into Compress (E) Lv. 1!

Compress (E)

Compress gains a passive component.

Your muscle mass has grown accustomed to being in a compressed state, and will now passively increase your defense. This will make the active use of the skill even more effective, as well as provide you with +1 strength. Increasing strength can further increase the passive and active defense value.

It happened after I had repeated my little spiel for the third time. Apparently, F-tier skills only needed to reach level five to rank up. The newly evolved skill was just marginally better than the F-tier version but that wasn’t all that surprising. Both F- and E-tier skills and spells were the bottom of the barrel, after all.

Still, the passive promised more gains as I increased my strength, so I finally had a reason to invest in strength. Well, maybe I wouldn’t actively invest in it, since I had Gluttony that could do it for me while I kept pumping the attributes I really cared about.

I also noticed a few key differences in how skills ranked up versus spells. When Poison Shot ranked up into Poison Spear, Poison Shot remained in my spell list with the max level reached. While the rank-up of a skill seemed more akin to an evolution. The level got reset and a few things got added or altered.

It would probably take some time, but I should get both of my defensive skills up to D-tier before heading down to the third. With Poison Mucus Armor at level three and Compress back to level one, I’d have to get beaten up a lot.

While the prospect of doing it this way wasn’t exactly appealing to me, there was another benefit of farming some monsters here. I could amass quite a bit of DP from all the kills I’d get along the way. At this point, I’d almost forgotten about the Pay 2 Win shop I had access to, but there were quite a few cool things I could still buy.

I could even purchase some skill level-ups, but those were quite expensive. And since I could only buy five skill levels until I raised my Traveler tier, I'd rather save my DP for higher-tiered skills. Especially since I could still level up my skills at a fairly decent pace by just using them.

Well, there really was no time like the present, so back to my half–suicidal plan I went.