I snapped back to reality, immediately noticing that I had significantly less space in my hole than before my evolution. Much to my dismay, this had to be my most significant growth spurt yet. I had been quite happy with my smaller size since it allowed me to comfortably hide in many places the bigger monsters couldn’t. I suppose I could use void cloak almost indefinitely now, but that was still a change that I wasn’t too fond of.

I was grumbling about my increase in size when my neurons activated and reminded me that I’d gotten a new EX skill from the completed bonus objective! The skill menu was brought up at record speed and I zeroed in on my shiny new skill.

Archive of Asphon (Passive)(EX)

You have witnessed the rise and fall of a race. The Asphons were a race of sentient monsters, endlessly curious about their own situation. Within the expanse, nobody could rival their knowledge of monsters. The vast Archive they have created lives on in the system and gets updated daily.

Allows you to access the archive.

Wait, that’s it? But where’s the rest of it?

Well, maybe there’s more to it than I would be led to believe at first glance. I tried accessing the archive, but curiously enough found that no knowledge about how to do so had been downloaded into my noggin. Was the system on the fritz? I’d looked through a LOT of EX skills when I was choosing which one to buy, and they’d all been pretty crazy. I didn’t remember seeing this particular one though, since I’d sorted them by alphabet, and this one should have been one of the first ones to show up.

I was confused, to say the least.

Just to check, I experimented with my new gills. Using them felt like second nature, although it was apparently a bad idea to open them while I wasn’t in the water. The system had properly supplied the knowledge about them. Same with the seed of the void. If I concentrated on it, I could feel its presence within me, my heightened magical abilities even allowed me to sense the connection it had to my soul.

According to the knowledge I’d been provided, “nurturing” meant supplying the seed with as much mana as possible, void, regular, or other types all worked. The more mana was put in the seed, the higher the return once the time for evolution came. The seed could also be damaged, so I’d need to pay attention to not get speared by anything, lest I want to royally mess up my future.

There was the ominous mention of the intelligent races hunting voidlings for their seeds, but I felt like that wouldn’t be an issue for me. After all, the system already confirmed that there were none of the intelligent races on Suigoss.

Happy with my experiments concerning my new abilities, I decided to emerge from my bunker. The system was already displaying the compass that was supposed to guide me toward the nearest point of descent, and I didn’t see the point in wasting any more time. I emerged into the night, quickly stretched all of my extra limbs, and started in the indicated direction.

I was so confident that nothing on the fourth layer could kill me at this point, that I even pulled up the menu, intent on cashing in my reward for defeating a hunter, namely, choosing a C-tier skill. It was only a few moments of running and thinking about what to choose when a little pang of guilt caused me to stop. I had resolved to not get complacent, lest I want to repeat past mistakes. Yes, I was 100% sure there was no danger for me here, but there was no reason for me to not adhere to at least some basic safety protocol.

So I took a quick rest in one of the trees, now forced to rest on one of the bigger branches, and skimmed through the skills. The last time I’d gotten this reward, I’d opted for an actual skill, since I was of the opinion that I had enough spells. Now, I felt like it would be sacrilege to not take a spell. There was a very specific type of spell that I was looking for, and the filter option helped me narrow it down a lot. After a while of comparing, I decided on a C-tier spell.

Restoration (C)

Restore the HP of yourself or a target.

Cost: 10 MP to restore 1 HP

There were other spells like this, of course, but this one was the simplest. A straightforward heal, even if a bit expensive. I had no doubt that higher tiers of it would allow for an even better conversion rate. A spell like this would have completely emptied out my MP pool without healing a substantial amount of my HP, but now? I could completely heal myself and have a lot of MP left, all while also having a huge amount of VMP in reserve.

Magical Singularity really proved why EX skills were special. In comparison, archive of asphon was still confusing me. I gave the skill description another read-through and tried to access the archive, but nothing happened.

Shaking my head, I resumed my trip. I zoomed through the trees unopposed, relishing the relative calm of not having to skirt around bigger monsters constantly. Eventually, the forest ended and I emerged into a grassy plain. The moon on this layer was pretty bright, so I could see the monsters milling about with little to no issue. The occasional bright and colorful flash indicated where fights were currently raging, and a select few monsters had a passive glow to them.

I eyed a tortoise with icy spikes on its shell that was pretty close to me, remembering having seen a similar one on my first day on this layer, and had to do a double take. There, floating above the monster was system text, labeling it as an “Icy Fortress Tortoise”. The text was idly following the tortoise around as if that was completely normal. Curious to know more, I focused on the text.

Icy Fortress Tortoise (T4)

These monsters usually appear in a very cold climate. They’ve grown to a giant size and adapted to their surroundings. Their shells are incredibly tough, and once they retreat into it for safety, are considered nigh invulnerable. They have access to a deadly array of ice spells, which they use to increase their defense even further while attacking at the same time.

The system text explaining the monster appeared right in front of me, making me jump a little. It appeared like this tortoise was a bit far from home since the climate here was anything but cold. Did the system not care about where it spawned these monsters as long as the tier matched the layer?

I squinted to take a proper look at the monsters further away and, sure enough, they all had been labeled. One of them stood out to me because there was a little symbol under its name. I stared at it for a while, trying to figure out what it was supposed to be when it suddenly disappeared. Could it be?

I cast a poison assassination on the tortoise that was still lumbering about not too far from me. Sure enough, a small symbol appeared below its name. A skull backed by a green square, a sizable plus sign in the bottom right. I cast a regular poison needle and another symbol appeared, identical to the first one, but missing the plus sign. I cast a few more spells, and the symbols increased until two of each were visible, even if I tried adding more.

I was so fascinated by my little experiment, that I was confused when the whole thing just disappeared. The name, the symbols, all just vanished into thin air. Turned out that the tortoise succumbed to my poison pretty quickly. It was upgraded to tier six, after all.

On that note, I sincerely apologize for calling my new skill weird and useless. Archive of asphon could give me information about every monster in existence. Not only that, but it also displayed what status effects were currently active, which would make the upkeep of my poison a lot easier, all while telling me when my opponents buffed themselves. It also answered an old question of mine! Poison and deadly poison were considered separate status effects, and I could stack each of them up to two times!

So the archive of asphon earned its EX rating as well, just in a different way. Information was worth its weight in gold, after all.

Happy with having found out what my new skill did, I resumed my journey toward my goal. I ignored the other monsters, since killing them would net me close to no experience for my new tier, and eventually arrived. The elevator was located in a cave inside a mountain this time around. I settled in and confirmed my desire to descend once prompted by the system.

Fifth layer, here I come!