Fatal Poison Mucus Armor (D)

Generate Poisonous Mucus that covers your body, making it harder to grasp your body or inflict damage. Additionally, Inflicts the Lethal Poison status effect. Able to explode the poison off for 30MP, inflicting a little kinetic damage as well as poisoning anything it hits. If this ability is used, it will take at least ten seconds to use the skill again.

Compress (D)

Tighten all your muscles to increase your defense by 150% as long as the skill is active. Can move slightly while the skill is in use. Passive now adds three strength points instead of one.

I stared at the fruit of all my hard work. To be honest, the upgraded Mucus Armor was a little bit disappointing since it only gained an additional ability to apply my poison. I already had more than enough ways to do that, so the usefulness was limited. At least it’d provide a little bit more protection than its E-tier version used to.

On the other hand, Compress started to look incredibly useful. Not only did the defense and strength bonus rise, but I’d finally be able to move a bit when I used it. I was still a slug, so this barely mattered, but at least I wouldn’t be a complete sitting duck anymore.

Who knows? If I continued to level this skill up, I might just become a walking tank in the end.

Even if Mucus Armor wasn’t as powerful as I’d wished, Compress alleviated some of my worries. I’d definitely not get ripped apart instantly with this. So now all that was left was to use Gluttony to boost my attributes before making my way to the third layer.

I was already well hidden near a wall of this layer, behind copious amounts of greenery, so I was ready to indulge in what my inventory had to offer. At this point, I had a whopping thirty-one monsters squirreled away, so I could realistically expect anything between ten and twenty attribute points if I ate all of them. I wanted to leave at least ten of them just in case I couldn’t get any food in the third layer.

So I started shoving the monsters into my tiny mouth one by one, a process which took quite some time. At least Gluttony made it so that I wouldn’t fill up, so I could get through all twenty-one monsters in one sitting. I managed to get a whopping sixteen points from doing that! Once I finally finished eating, I purchased the attribute points from the P2W store and distributed them as I felt necessary.

At this point, I’d become an absolute anomaly in terms of attribute points. A tier-one like me shouldn’t be able to have anywhere near this amount of stats. I’d come a long way from being a small slug that could barely see, and I was a little proud of myself, actually.

I’d done and seen some absolutely crazy things, that I couldn’t even imagine back when I was a human on earth. And now, I was about to go down to the third layer, facing possibly my hardest challenge yet. I felt like I’d prepared as well as I could have at this point, so there was no point in delaying any further. But still, I was a bit afraid of what was awaiting me down there.

I took one last look at my stats, before heading toward where I assumed the way down was.

Name

Gary

Traveler Tier

1

Type

Monster(P2W)

Species

Elder Slug

Access Authority

T2

Level

20

Max HP

258

Max MP

350

Strength

14

Agility

12

Intelligence

49

Wisdom

36

Constitution

33

Luck

18

Attribute Points

0

Skill Points

1

Data Points

860

Skill Trees 1/1

Poison

I crawled along the wall until I arrived at one of the tunnels that lead away from the segment of this layer. Of course, I couldn’t be sure if it was the way down, and with my slow speed, I couldn’t just go down there and quickly check it out. So the only reasonable option left to me was to post up, wait, and see if any tier-three monsters came this way.

Safely nestled in between the leaves of a tree, I observed the tunnel, waiting for any monsters to come by. There was essentially no traffic around here, which I suppose was a good sign that I was in the right place. I actually had to sit and bore myself to death for what felt like an entire day before finally, something made its way into the tunnel.

The monster in question came flying in, which almost caused me to miss it since I was so focused on the ground. Thankfully it had to fly into the tunnel, which I was always keeping an eye on. The thing looked like a bigger, meaner version of the harpies I fought a while back, so it was probably a freshly evolved tier-three.

Perfect.

Assured that this was the way down, I slowly made my way down the tree and started following the ugly bird. Of course, by the time I made it to the cave, the harpy probably already flew all the way down to the third layer. Just like all the other times, I traveled through a tunnel, I firmly stuck to the ceiling. One eye back, and one forward, keeping up my stealth ability at all times. Truly, the only way I felt somewhat safe in such an open environment.

It took quite a bit until the straight tunnel started tilting downwards, but I was finally on my way to the third layer. Ever since I started to properly prepare myself for this descent, I kept wondering what kind of quest the system would throw at me once I got there. And what the third layer looked like!

The first layer was just a series of interconnected caves, caverns, and tunnels. While the second layer was some sort of foresty-jungle type biome. The second layer still had walls, and since I never left the cavern or segment, I didn’t even know if there were other kinds of forests. So what would the third layer be like? Maybe it was just a whole bunch of water and islands? Or some kind of mountainous area? Maybe just grasslands? Or a frozen tundra?

That last one would probably be particularly bad for me.

Essentially, there truly was no way for me to know, but I was about to find out. I kept making my way downwards, undisturbed, since no other monsters came after the harpy. It must be pretty rare for a monster to evolve and descend.

After another hour or so of just crawling along a featureless tunnel, something finally changed. The walls started to smooth out and slowly assumed the shape of a large hallway with perfectly smooth walls. It felt somewhat weird to suddenly see something that seemed manmade. What was the point of having something like this here? Why not just make the tunnel seem natural all the way down?

I kept crawling along the ceiling, but it didn’t take long until something like a platform came into view. There was a large, perfectly square section of the floor that was raised by a foot or so, swirly decorations running along the edge. Behind the platform was another wall, making this a dead end.

The only interesting thing here was the platform, so it was probably connected to the way down somehow. I unceremoniously let myself fall from the ceiling onto the platform to check it out, my attributes allowing me to do so without taking damage. As soon as I touched the platform, the system chimed up with a message.

You currently do not have the authority to descend to the third layer, traveler. Please return once you have evolved into a tier-three monster.

I quizzically looked at the message, confused as all hell. I quickly pulled up my evolution conditions, and the quest to descend to the third layer was very clearly displayed, so this couldn’t be a mistake. So why wouldn’t they let me go down? And why was there no checkpoint when I came down to the second?

I looked around the dead end I found myself in, checking if there were any holes, or hidden switches or something. I crawled all along the wall, carefully scrutinizing the entire platform, but ultimately came up empty. There really was no hidden stuff around here, or at the very least, nothing I could find.

I eventually came to the conclusion that I either needed to hitch a ride with something else or find an alternative path down… somewhere. The former option seemed a lot more attractive and I really hoped it would work out, otherwise, I might be doomed to wander the second layer in search of some hidden path that I might never find.

No, if the hitchhiker plan didn’t work out, I might as well just proceed to evolve instead of wasting my time eternally searching for a ghost.

Thankfully, the platform was high enough off the ground that I’d be able to hide my entire body behind it. That way, I could sit there in stealth mode, keeping my eyes above the platform while waiting for the next evolved monster to come down. Hopefully, I’d be able to keep myself hidden, otherwise, I might have to fight while the… I guess it was an elevator, went down.

With a sigh, I settled in for another boring waiting session, hoping that the next authorized monster would come quickly.

These times of downtime made me wish I had my phone back, but alas, the only thing I could use for entertainment was my own status screen and the system in general. Sadly, I had already stared at the damned thing for way too long. I could probably recite everything I had access to in my sleep at this point.

It took yet another hour or two until I could feel the familiar vibrations of an approaching monster; heralding the arrival of my ticket to the third layer. I kept my eyes trained on the tunnel, curious to see what was approaching.

What eventually came into sight was what appeared to be a horse with a flaming mane and tail. It had dark fur, and the flames seemed to occasionally change colors between orange and blue. Every now and again, little bursts of fire would come out of the sides of its mouth serving as a warning that it could probably breathe fire as well.

I anxiously watched it get closer and closer. I would need to get on the platform with it, and even though I had my stealth active, I wasn’t entirely sure with how much I could get away with at this close proximity. I had positioned myself to the side of the platform, planning to board it on whichever side the monster's back would be turned to so it had less chance of spotting me.

It eventually reached the platform, uncaringly stepping onto it and then almost freezing as soon as it arrived at its center. I hurriedly, which is to say, very slowly and carefully made my way behind the horse, careful to not let go of the platform's side, just in case it started moving without me.

Which is exactly what happened.

The platform hummed to live, startling me, and started to slowly descend. The aboveground part I’d been holding on to disappeared, and I unceremoniously flopped onto the platform as it went past, just as planned. I nervously kept my eyes trained on the monster horse as I made my way to its blind spot while the platform was gaining more and more speed.

Dark rock whizzed past us as we descended deeper and deeper, the horse not even twitching a muscle, which made me believe that the system might be interfering with it somehow. I still positioned myself so that I could stick myself to the side of the platform as soon as we got into open air… or rather, if we ever saw anything else besides this claustrophobic elevator shaft.

After what felt like two or three minutes of the breakneck elevator ride, my eyes recoiled at the sudden brightness. I couldn’t really blink my eyes until they adjusted, so I had to wait until the irritation passed and I could properly see again. What greeted me was a seemingly endless blue sky, and if it wasn’t for the dark hole just above the platform, I would have thought I was outside instead of deep underground.

The ceiling seemed to be an imitation of the sky, and once I got over that fact and let my eyes wander a bit, I started sweating metaphorical bullets.

We were rapidly descending towards a desert. Roiling dunes as far as the eye could see, which caused mild panic for me. Slugs weren’t built for this kind of environment! I quickly swiveled my eyes around desperately searching for an ounce of green amidst the sea of brown and gold. There was no chance to ever be this high up again, so I’d either have to spot an oasis right now or be doomed to wander the desert with no clue where to get moisture.

Luckily, I saw a spot of green far, far off in the distance. I needed to get there as fast as I could, or I’d succumb to the desert rather than its inhabitants. It didn’t take long for the green spot to disappear behind an especially large dune as we made our final approach to the ground.

A large amount of sand got thrown into the air as the platform settled down with a lot more force than it needed to and shortly after, my horse companion showed signs of life again, confirming my earlier suspicion. It took a cautious look around, thankfully not spotting me behind it, before confidently stepping of the platform.

It got about three paces away from the platform when the ground exploded beneath it. The horse disappeared in a torrent of sand, which revealed a large worm shortly after, the horse trapped in its jaws, wildly flailing around to no avail. It didn’t take long for the horse to disappear entirely and the worm to descend back below the sands, leaving a shell-shocked slug in its wake.

There was no way I could outrun that!