I sat on the elevator that was taking me down to the sixth layer, idly going through my status once again. I had gained a few new skills and I was making an effort to commit them to memory. Even with me regularly going through my skills, I sometimes forgot that I had certain skills, especially the newer ones. This had some dire consequences in the heat of battle, but so far I managed to squeeze through with sheer firepower.

Before coming to the elevator, I had attempted to locate a hunter, but the only one I’d managed to find was somewhere deep, deep in the ocean, and I really didn’t feel like trying to fight that thing, even with my newly upgraded deep sea gem. Turns out the upgrade increased the swimming speed bonus from twenty to thirty percent and the damage to aquatic monsters from ten to fifteen. It also increased the chance to extract the souls of aquatic monsters from two to three percent. Barely an increase, but my luck would surely take care of it.

Of course, I already tested it out by doing some of my patented “fishing” in the shallower parts of the ocean near an island. I killed around fifty monsters and got five souls for my troubles, so my luck adjusted the chances to be around ten percent in actuality, which was a decent improvement, to say the least.

I also bought out the once-per-tier items in the shop, which is to say I was five mutation and attribute points richer, as well as six mutation points. As with every tier, they’d become slightly more expensive, but the whole batch only set me back 5400 DP. It seemed like a lot, but at this point, it barely made a dent in my DP savings. All five attribute points were assigned to intelligence since I was of the opinion that I had more than enough MP by now. What I needed now was even more damage, and since intelligence points also counted double, it just made sense.

I then spent twelve skill points to buy the passive that would allow me to see the spell matrixes of others while they were casting. Hopefully, I would be able to avoid a repeat of the fake water dragon lightning surprise now. The mutation points, I saved up for now. So far, it was best to spend them during evolution, or maybe get a smaller mutation that could help me with a tricky situation I was facing.

I closed my status, getting ready to take a look at the sixth layer. The elevator had been going for quite a while already, which made sense since it had to clear the ocean floor, and then some. I was hoping for another layer like the fourth or the second. I quite enjoyed the lush forest biomes, while both the desert and the ocean layers had been quite annoying, to say the least. Suddenly, the walls around the elevator vanished, and a wave of heat slammed into me.

I recoiled at the extreme heat and carefully hopped to the edge of the platform to look down. What greeted me almost made me want to go back up. Massive mountains rose toward the fake sky, each and every one of them spewing lava everywhere. Hundreds of rivers of molten rock flowed toward the bottom where they joined others and culminated into massive lakes of lava. Everything in this layer was seemingly made from cooled lava, black and red being the dominant colors here, with not a single green plant in sight.

I spotted a giant lava worm breach the lava lake, doing a few fancy spins mid-air, before crashing down and sending a wave of lava lapping at the shore of the lake, grilling a few unlucky monsters. In general, large amounts of monsters were fighting for any spots that were not completely surrounded by the hot lava in a desperate struggle to escape the heat. I could understand their aversion to the glowing pools of lava since I was already struggling with the heat while descending downward.

Right, it was time to use those mutation points I’d wanted to save up. I needed some sort of heat resistance, pronto. I pulled up the mutation menu as the platform came to a rest between two lava rivers, almost toasting me due to my close proximity. I dreaded even so much as touching the ground since that would most definitely deal continuous burn damage to my squishy body. As long as I didn’t leave the elevator platform I would be protected by the system, so I had to do this now.

I used the filter function of the system to look for heat resistance-related mutations and quite a few showed up. Some of them I completely disregarded, like the heat-isolating fur or the one that would literally replace my blood with fire. There were some really odd mutations in there that would only help specific types of monsters, but thankfully there were some that were a bit more generalized as well.

One of the more fitting ones was a special type of mucus sac that would let me produce different kinds of mucus, among them one that would help with the heat. Since I was already producing mucus anyway and it was a rather essential thing for me, this was a definitive maybe. The process of switching the mucus out was described as being slow, and it would also make my mucus armor less powerful. I kept looking for now.

There was a selection of “elemental cores”, which would not only buff the abilities of that element but would also grant a certain resistance to them. The drawback was that I could only select one, which would make the others unavailable and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to hastily select the fire core just to make life on this layer easier.

Then there were several mutations that would change my skin in certain ways. I already had a skin mutation that would be replaced if I chose one of those. Sure, it was only at the second tier and didn’t help out all that much. I’d chosen this mutation on the first layer and had neglected it since then because I kept getting more efficient options that did its job. I just spent two mutation points to upgrade the skin, but for now, I leaned most toward this option.

Then, I found a promising mutation. It was called “Crystal Symbiote”. It was a special organ that would not only produce, but serve as a home for a weird species of living crystals. The tiny beings would crawl all over my skin, feeding on the dirt, blood, mucus, and dead cells. In turn for me providing them with food, they’d form something like a secondary skin. Apparently, the little crystals were pretty good at protecting the host from extreme temperatures. I shuddered a bit at thinking how they would literally live in and on me, but if I thought about them like the tiny fishes that cleaned sharks, it wasn’t that bad.

Plus, I would not only be protected against extreme heat but also extreme cold. I doubted that I would be able to jump into the lava, but as long as I stayed away from the rivers and lakes, I should probably be fine. Compared to the other mutations, the only drawback to this one was the price. Since it started at tier three, six mutation points were required to buy the basic version, but after thinking about it a bit more I chose this one. Even if it did cost me the entirety of my saved-up mutation points.

A quick system-induced nap later, I woke up and my skin had become notably shinier. If I took a really close look, I could see the tiny crystal creatures scuttle around on my skin, but I couldn’t feel them running around on me, which was a huge relief. Deciding not to think too hard about the colony of bugs that now lived in me, I hopped off the platform. I had already noticed after waking up that it didn’t feel that hot anymore, and when I landed on the black stone, I got confirmation.

I could see the heat haze coming off the stone below me, a raging river of lava mere ten meters away from me. Yet, I felt like it was merely a hot summer day. Happy with the fact that I wouldn’t get toasted simply by existing on the layer, I started looking for any notable landmarks nearby. Of course, the most imposing landmarks were the giant volcanoes, and I vowed to stay the hell away from these death traps. The only issue is that, if I went away from the volcano, I would eventually end up at one of the massive lava lakes. Essentially, I was caught between a rock and a hard place.

The decision was delayed when the system vied for my attention by telling me my new evolution requirements.

Evolution Goals:

Reach level 20

Bonus Objectives:

Find the Obsidian Palace.

Eat a lava fruit.

Descent Requirements:

Retrieve a magma elevator key.

Defeat an elevator guardian.

Delightfully vague bonus objectives, as always. Although, the descent requirements were new. Apparently, I needed to prove my mettle if I wanted to descend further. Hopefully, there were some keys to be found in that obsidian palace, that way I could kill two birds with one stone. Otherwise, I might be in for quite the search. The fruit quest reminded me of the objective I’d received on the third floor, although finding the fruit here might actually be easier. After all, if I found any kind of vegetation with fruit on it, there was a high chance that it would be what I was looking for.

Well, I started to suspect that the system was usually providing hints toward the bonus objectives in some way. I hadn’t really noticed this before, but on the last two floors, it had kind of become obvious. A blue shimmer usually meant there was something system-related to be found. While the stuff I was looking for was usually located in easily recognizable places. Like giant floating islands, or obvious boss arenas.

What I’m trying to say, is that as long as I spent enough time looking, I’d definitely find what I was looking for. For now, though, I needed to find some monsters to kill. Reaching level twenty should be my top priority for now. That, and finding a nice hunting ground to activate my 24h double XP bonus!

Onwards!