I threw the giant body of the progenitor into my inventory, once again surprised at the space I had in there. When the progenitor died, the entire room lit up with a magical light, and I could finally see properly again. I took a few moments to go over the fight again. I clearly had the upper hand, but that crazy lightning attack had been scary. If I hadn’t collected the scales, I might have died. Again.

The system might have designed that attack to be unstoppable unless you had the scales, but I was once again reminded that, while I could dish out some crazy damage, if something managed to get a good hit in, I was in trouble. Getting more defensive skills had already been on my to-do list, but seeing how the scales magically blocked that attack reminded me that I was a mage. A mage with busted passive abilities. Why should I get a defensive skill, when I could just get a defensive spell?

I’m sure there were spells that conjured up magical shields or magically reinforced my body. In fact, I’d seen some of them way back on the first layer. One of my evolution options at the time had been a boulder slug. It had a defensive mutation, but it also gave access to an earth magic skill tree, which surely had some defensive spells in it.

Currently, my best bet at getting a one-off spell was to defeat a hunter. They seemingly all gave the reward of a C-tier skill, which included spells. I curiously activated my hunter radar, which revealed the direction of the closest one. Of course, I had no idea how far away it actually was, and it probably was an aquatic monster as well, which would make hunting it extra difficult. I shelved the topic for later and curiously dived into my inventory screen.

The system message earlier had mentioned that I’d been rewarded a Deep Sea Gem, and sure enough, there it was. I pulled it out of my inventory and took it with my hand tentacle to look at it. It was an incredibly smooth, algae-green gem. There was some kind of magical swirl in there, and at the center of it all, a soft green glow pulsed. As I kept looking at it, a system tooltip popped up.

Deep Sea Gem (Equippable)

When a Leviathan dies, it goes out with a bang. The divine energy they carry needs to be constantly reined in, and when the Leviathan stops doing that, it explodes. With passion. Any sea creature unlucky enough to be in the general vicinity of about one hundred kilometers of the Leviathan gets instantly killed by the divine energy as it explodes outwards. But, when the progenitor created the Leviathans, he created a failsafe.

About five seconds after the explosion, the scale of the progenitor(from which all Leviathans are made) sucks in the rampaging divine energy, creating what is known as a deep sea gem.

When Equipped:

- Swim 20% faster.

- Deal 10% more damage to aquatic monsters.

- Gain a 2% chance to extract the soul of a defeated aquatic monster.

- Gain the spell: Guardian Summoning

Guardian Summoning (D) (0/100)

Use the captured soul of a creature to summon its spirit as a guardian for 1 minute.

Cost: 50 MP

I got surprised when I saw that the gem was equippable. This was the first time I’d heard that I could equip things. I’d never seen anything in my menus that even so much as suggested that I could do so. Sure, humanoid travelers could probably equip stuff, but what about me? The benefits of equipping the gem were pretty cool, so I really wanted to. Curious, I put the gem back into my inventory and started looking for a way to equip it.

I didn’t have to search very long, because the system essentially threw the prompt in my face as soon as I thought about it. Giddily, I mentally clicked on “equip”, which made the gem vanish from my inventory and opened another window. The window was called “Equipped Items” and featured four slots, one of which was occupied by the deed sea gem now. Two of the slots seemed to be locked for now, but if I managed to find another item, I could equip it.

I stared in awe at the new discovery I’d made, the benefits I got from my equipment conveniently listed below the slots. The spell I got from equipping the stone was pretty cool in concept, but since it was a D-tier spell, the summoning duration was only a minute. Still, if I could get my hands on some strong souls, one minute would probably be all I needed. I was especially happy with the fact that extracting a soul was dependent on chance.

My Luck would make sure the odds were skewed in my favor.

I was a bit confused about the “0/100” next to the spell’s name. Another thing I’d never seen before and, as per usual, the system refused to explain anything about it. Still, summoning a helper for a measly fifty MP, which was further reduced due to my magical singularity passive, was a great deal. The summon was essentially free!

Happy with my new acquisition, I dived back into my menu, finding that the fight with the progenitor had put me at level twenty. I’d also completed both of my bonus objectives which meant it was time to evolve! But first! It was time to consume all the monsters that were in my inventory. Since I was technically in a system-protected room at the moment, there was no better place to hold a feast, and I wanted to get my stats as high as possible before evolving.

So I started a mukbang of monstrous proportions. While I was chewing through corpse after corpse I constantly pumped mana into my seed of the void. During my entire time on the fifth layer, I’d been feeding the seed with as much mana as I dared without putting myself at risk. Now? I was safe and would restore crazy amounts of MP due to gluttony, while in a completely safe location. I pumped every single MP I got into that damn seed, tens of thousands of MP were shoved in there while I ate.

Eventually, though, I’d eaten everything, safe for the progenitor and some twenty monsters I kept in my inventory as emergency rations. I’d eaten a lot of monsters, and my attributes all went up by about twenty points. Some increased a bit more, some less, but what was really important, was that my luck attribute was now over one hundred.

As soon as it passed the threshold, my quest “Flight of the Rainbow Moth” was finally completed!

The Flight of The Rainbow Moth (Part 1) has been completed!

Rewards:

- Every time you receive a system-related choice or reward, there will be a 10% chance to receive additional benefits. (Chance not affected by luck attribute).

- Part 2 of the quest will start.

The Flight Of The Rainbow Moth (Part 2)

Without receiving assistance, and by your own power, leave a planet and visit space.

Rewards:

???

Part 3 of the chain quest.

The reward for completing the quest wasn’t too spectacular, but I was sure getting additional benefits every now and again would be extremely valuable. I was a bit disappointed by the fact that the chance couldn’t be affected by my luck attribute, but I suppose it was only fair. As for the second part of the chain quest, I probably would only be able to complete it once I left Suigoss. At this point, I could most likely just open a void portal into space and be done with it immediately. But for now, I had other things to do.

Evolving!