I had a crazy idea while I was waiting out the night.

Since I couldn’t just pull up the internet on my phone to pass time anymore, downtime usually meant I was left alone with my thoughts. During this time, I liked planning ahead, coming up with new strategies, going over all of my abilities again, and generally attempting to figure out better ways of surviving.

But obviously, I had loads of downtime while waiting out the night in the desert and I found myself drifting more and more to my memories of earth. Things like remembering my favorite TV-Shows, my family that was probably glad that I wasn’t in their lives anymore, and trying to remember what little I knew of games so I could maybe find a way to game the system.

Tonight, my thoughts drifted to the cartoon, South Park. I loved that show, seen every episode… multiple times. And then I remembered the episode where the kids go fishing with their uncle Jimbo. Well, what these gun-nuts considered fishing anyway. Needless to say, it involved grenades and other explosives.

I eventually came to the realization that there was a lake full of “fish” in this oasis. And well, I now possessed an explosive in the form of a void javelin.

Which meant the program for today was: Dynamite Fishing!

I was really curious whether that would be an effective way of leveling for me. With my wisdom having soared to new heights, I was now able to fire off eight javelins, as opposed to the five just after evolving. I guess it all depended on just how tightly packed with monsters the lake was. If I was able to get a direct hit, that was a guaranteed kill, but since the aquatic monsters mostly kept themselves submerged I’d have to fire blindly into the lake.

If I got lucky, I might get two or three fishies at the same time. Granted, that was probably wishful thinking, but I did have a quantifiable luck attribute now. I wasn’t sure how a score of twenty compared with other people and monsters, but it was still a lot higher than it used to be.

I really needed to find out just how pivotal luck was. Maybe I was making a mistake by not investing more heavily into it, but I’d rather get the immediate, visible return of putting points in literally everything else. Gluttony would take care of it…

Eventually, I deemed it safe enough to go out. I quickly fired a poison spear at the tree I lived under, the force of the magic just enough to scar the tree, making it more recognizable. I left for the lake, once again enjoying my heightened speed. I was getting better at controlling my new limbs and felt like I still wasn’t utilizing them to their highest potential.

Well, I enjoyed myself, but at the same time, I must look incredibly stupid flinging myself everywhere, or occasionally doing the front crawl. Thankfully, there weren’t any other humans to judge me, so I didn’t care.

I marked a few more trees along the way, leaving trail markers for myself. I was heavily considering exploring the entirety of this oasis, so I’d eventually have to build more shelters and come up with a more sophisticated way of marking them. But for now, it was enough.

Before long, I was sitting on a palm, safely nestled between the leaves so I wasn’t visible from above. It was finally time to test out this revolutionary method of hunting. I slowly cast void javelin, still annoyed at how long it took.

Eventually, the javelin shifted into existence above me, ready to fire. I let my eyes wander across the lake, looking for any monsters close to the surface, but there was nothing. So, with a shrug, I launched the javelin at a random spot in front of me. It flew in an arc before vanishing into the water. Good. I was slightly worried that it might explode on contact with the water, but apparently, the spell didn’t care.

I waited a few seconds, unsure of what was happening, but then I felt the tree I was on shake slightly, which was immediately followed by an explosion of water. The explosion had displaced a ton of water and I could see a few monsters flying through the air before splashing back into the water.

The lake suddenly came alive and I could see tons of movement underwater. Most of it seemed to run away from the explosion, but a good chunk of them seemed to go towards it, intent on joining whatever was fighting. Sadly, I hadn’t outright killed anything with my javelin.

Yet, the initial explosion was drawing a lot of attention and multiple fights broke out underwater. I could see it clearly since the fights closer to the surface were disturbing the water, and some of the fights were so close to the surface that I could see the combatants.

I may not have killed anything with that first javelin, but it sure delivered me the opportunity to do so on a silver platter. So, while they were fighting with each other, I conjured three more javelins. I was absolutely giddy as I let them fly, one after another, into these hot spots. It didn’t take long for three explosions to rock the lake, unhappy monsters flying through the air, some of them in pieces.

And then the notifications started flooding in.

You have killed a T3 Lv. 4 Steel Piranha

You have killed a T3 Lv. 9 Juvenile Kraken

You have killed a T3 Lv. 2 Leech of Darkness

You have killed a T3 Lv. 3 Lightning Jellyfish

You have killed a T3 Lv. 11 Star Stingray

You have been awarded 10’400 XP

You have been awarded 358 Data Points

You have leveled up four times!

Holy crap!

I don’t think I’ve ever leveled up this much, excluding the time I magically killed the reaper snake on the first layer. I’d been evolved for barely two days, and I was already level nine! Almost halfway to the max. Level!

I felt like this was only possible because A: My firepower was insane, and B: I was hunting monsters a tier above my own. My defense was still lacking if I should get in an actual fight, so I guess I could be considered a glass cannon of sorts. It really looked like I wouldn’t take too long to reach level twenty, so if I didn’t need to worry about that too much, I should probably invest more time to look into this fruit of evolution business.

I’d also need to plan for my eventual killing spree during the night, so for now, I didn’t assign my new attribute and skill points. First I need to make a viable strategy and then assign them as needed.

Sadly, the lake monsters seemed to have gotten the hint and dispersed. All of the monsters were suckers for a good fight, but apparently not suicidal. I had used four javelins, so I could technically do this again, but that would leave me with no void mana to spare for emergencies so I decided against it.

For now, reaching level twenty was my highest priority, so I decided to repeat this process a few more times. Sure, I could go into the oasis to hunt, but why expose myself to more danger than necessary? I could just sit here, occasionally throw a few javelins, and level up easily.

So I settled in, curious if I could hit level twenty before the night fell.

Turns out I could not.

While I did have a bigger void mana pool than before, and the higher Wisdom was contributing to my increased MP regeneration rate, it seemed to have little effect on my void mana regeneration. I might have to look into alternative solutions if I wanted to increase it, such as mutations. It would probably go up if I continued on this evolutionary path, which I most likely will unless some crazy other option shows up.

With the long regeneration time, as well as losing time due to having to hide, I “only” managed to reach level fifteen. I had more than recuperated the DP I’d spent on the P2W shop upon evolution as well.

Hunting in the third layer was insane.

I happily settled into my cave, tired of a hard day's work. Soon, the nightly ritual of this layer would begin, and for now, I wanted no part of it. Was I cheating the system like this? Most definitely. But hey, it just worked so well!

I guess I did have a certain advantage over my peers since they were mostly mindless monsters that purely acted on instinct. It probably was my biggest advantage. That, and my trusty void javelin.

The new spells really pulled their weight and then some today. I managed to level up void javelin once, but void cloak was still at level one. I suppose leveling them was harder because they had a higher tier than most of my other spells. Except for Giant spike, of course, but that one was still at level one as well. With a rating of SS and the fact that I wasn’t using it all that much, it would take forever to level up anyway.

As for tomorrow, I’d probably go fishing until I reached level twenty. After that, I needed to start exploring the oasis more, look for any signs of this weird fruit of evolution, and start constructing more hideouts. It’d be a busy day again, for sure, and I was looking forward to it.