Name: Natasha

Race: Mandrill matriarch lvl 11

XP: 1365

Size: 75

Type: Beast

Faction: Unaligned

Armor: 0

HP: 110/110

Strength: 8/Speed: 12/Endurance: 8/Magic: 8/Plasticity: 5/Luck 10

Senses: Vision 4, hearing 4, smell 4, taste 1, touch 2

Abilities: Balance 2, omnivorous 5, aposematism 3, specialized innate magic 6, Voice 1, coordination 2

Skills: Piercing bite 6, Jab 8, grapple and strike 7, precise throw 7, agile climb 7, nimble sneak 6, hide 1, rapid dash 6, dodge 3, block 1, discern weakness and strength 6, mysticism 1, quickstep 1, tumbling 1, leadership 4, mystic channeling 1, adaptability 1, infliction 1, sp[ell focus 1

Spells: Wind drake breath 6, dual windfury 6, jetstream 1, cloud step 1, thunder missile 1, misty path 1

Boss ability: mob boss

Lao Tzu

Mandrill lvl 8

HP:40/40

Tony Luciano

Mandrill lvl 8

HP: 40/40

As soon as I was finished leveling up, I turned my attention towards the many, many dead goblins. Now, I’m sure they probably have a lot of good things to grab, but unfortunately, I’m only able to carry so much. I’ll have to narrow down the list of things I can actually take. I went through, one by one, and grabbed a couple stone daggers from the goblins that I could use for the new dual windfury.

Then the rest I went through to see if they had anything out of the ordinary. Which most did not, they did have one that looked like he had some dried meat which, I was glad to finally be able to get my hands on actual cooked meat again. Though I put that away into my persimmon pouch. There was only one other thing that looked really different, and that was a bracelet made of black wood.

Now before I would have thought, it’s just some accessory of some particularly trendy goblin. I’m sure it’s possible. However, much more likely is that this dropped after the goblin died since they weren’t wearing it. I slipped it on, and got the ping from the screen telling me what I’d found, checking and in fact it did show up on the inventory screen.

East wood bracer: Slows the degradation of weapons.

Huh, well that’s… unexpected. I would have thought it would be something like +1 armor, or resistance to poison, or things like that. Slowing the degradation of weapons is odd and specific. Does this mean I was supposed to be sharpening my knife all that time? Either way, what it means now is that my weapons require less maintenance. But how much less? And what kind? This seems to be a recurring thing with this world. You get descriptions that are just vague enough to let you make an uninformed decision. Still, I kept it on. A benefit is a benefit after all. I’m not gonna say no to it.

I debated whether I should take a bow with me, but really I have no clue how to use one, so it’s probably best to just stick to throwing rocks instead of trying to teach myself archery from scratch, on the fly. It’s a miracle I was able to do it while hallucinating. Besides, throwing rocks is pretty effective if you add wind magic. And I have an accuracy buff to it. You know, I didn’t think I’d run into the problem of choosing skills that might just be outmoded by other better skills. Probably something I should have thought of beforehand.

Though, now that I’m done with all of this, I really need to get back to what I was doing before all of this. Needless to say I’m not eating any more of those mushrooms. Though now I’m wondering what the ants want with them? I can’t imagine ants would be big on mass hallucinations within a hyper productive hive network. Though that would be pretty funny to watch.

Also… did I really manage to kill all of these goblins and a giant lizard? I looked around and there were maybe twenty dead bodies around here. I know I’ve killed quite a bit before, but while I had my wits about me, I had trouble with just two. How’d I manage to do all of this when I I was delirious? I mean, this is basically a massacre. I’d like to think I’m pretty tough, but not this tough.

Halfway through my thoughts they were interrupted by a familiar hoot from behind. I turned to see the boys climbing down from the tree, landing on the grass beside me. Ah, right. The ‘other mes’ must have been these two. Don’t know why that didn’t occur to me until now. Though then again, I forgot what I was seeing wasn’t real at least a few times. Both of them came over and started looking me up and down, supposedly looking for injuries, but healed fully from the level up.

Now that I've managed to get past all of that Alice in wonderland schtick I can actually get back to what I was doing before. Which was… right, I was building a trap. Or trying to figure one out. Luckily I know where I am, so it should be easy to get right back there if I just follow the river. I’ll be right back at the waterfall, and I stored the mushroom right near there.

I started towards the sound of the water, and swam across. Well, I say swim, it’s just a doggy paddle. I know how to swim properly but number one, it would feel really awkward in my monkey body, and number two doggy paddle always was just way easier even when I was a human. Once I got to the other side, I shook myself out, fur poofing out like a sheep.

Now, getting back to the idea of trap making, what I really need to do is place the mushroom down, and set myself up above it somewhere with the net in hand. Wait for an ant to come by and snag it with the net, drag it away and kill it somewhere else. Then repeat the process. Or at least that’s the plan. Makes me wish I had looked up how to make snare traps and things like that when I still had access to the internet.

Once I found my way back to the waterfall, I followed the cliff along until I found the mushroom. it was still where I’d left it, wrapped up in the net covered by the roots of the tree. I pulled the net out, dragging the mushroom with it and came over to the most open area under the trees. My plan, or as much as I’ve managed to think of, is this:

I am going to dig a divot into the ground to plant the mushroom down, then once an ant is nearby and tries to eat the mushroom I drop the net, and then drag it away so I can kill it without leaving a trace. Then repeat the process a few dozen times to get a consistent stream of xp. Theoretically. This idea seems good, but I have learned not to just trust ideas just because they look good on paper.

So I pulled out my ax and maneuvered around to the place I wanted to put this mushroom, using the ax head as a makeshift shovel. It was not a good one, in fact it was pretty tedious, but it was better than my hands at least, but still took way longer than I was hoping. It must have been over half an hour, maybe a full hour, and it was still only like six inches deep. I dragged the mushroom over and turned it up so that it stood in the hole, then packed in the dirt around the base so it stayed in place.

By the end of it, I was way more tired than I thought I’d be. I thought that I was reasonably fit, but when you actually get down to it and start to do any real hard labor you learn fast how unfit you actually are. For which, I really did not want to lug that heavy net up a tree right now. So for now, I’ll just leave this plan on the backburner. So I dragged the net over to the base of the tree, and then flopped over onto my back to look up at the trees above me.

Unfortunately I did not see trees, I saw the distinctive scar across the nose of Tony, who brought his nose just inches from my face, sniffing at my eyeballs. I waved a hand to try and shoo him away from my face but he was quickly replaced by Lao, who did the same. I sighed, rolling back over to push myself up onto my hands and feet, seeing the two of them looking at me intently. Now, I do not speak monkey, but I do have some manner of intuition, and I could tell that the two were hungry.

By which I mean they were motioning to their mouths, so it was a pretty easy guess. I was sure they’d just eaten a while ago, but maybe it’d actually been a while. Now that I’m thinking about it, I’m kind of hungry too. I looked around for something but I don’t know any of the foods up here on the second level. I’ll have to go looking, cause I am not eating any more mushroom.

I started walking around, scanning the jungle floor for anything that could be food, but unlike below, there didn’t seem to be all that many fruits laying around up here. So I scanned all around for more root vegetables, or maybe edible herbs, maybe a cabbage or something? Though after searching for a while all I could manage to find was a bunch of the exact same kind of nut. Which makes sense when looking around, all I see is the exact same kind of tree.

I took the nut, sandwiched it between the ax-head and the tree and tried to smash it with my palm until I heard it crack. Once it opened up I saw the inside and it had cracked open like a walnut, but it smelled way more pungent. It kind of smelled like vinegar, which wasn’t a good sign. I took a bit and scooped it out of the shell, and popped it in my mouth. The taste was completely out of left field. I was expecting something to taste nutty, and it had the texture of a nut, but tasted more like worcestershire sauce.

It wasn’t something you’d really want to eat a ton of, I wouldn’t even really call it good, but it wasn’t bad either. So I did my best to try and eat as slowly as I could so I didn’t get tired of it as badly, which helped when I was spreading it around to the boys as well, tossing the shells as we went. After about six, I couldn’t eat too many more. Which is unfortunate because they’re not that big, but at least they held me over for now. I can keep an eye out for anything else that might be edible… I think I’ll call them worcestnuts. Heh.

Actually, now that I think of it… a weird thought just came to mind. I’ve been here in this world for several days now, but I have not had to use the bathroom once. Now, either I was born very constipated or as a monster I just don’t use the bathroom. Which is odd, because I do eat. So, where does the food go? Does it all become energy? Like I’m just a hundred percent metabolically efficient or something? Or maybe it does go somewhere but I just don’t see it. Like there’s some sort of wind up key that just keeps me ticking. Eh, who knows? Wondering about it is just making my head hurt.

Back to the task at hand. I need to go looking for more food, and I need to keep on leveling up as I go. Though, now that I think of it, it may be possible for me to actually cook some meat. Wait no, the humans took my flint, and my knife. But the goblins clearly had something in terms of fire, so they must have something to start fires, right? Unless they just knew how to do the whole swiveling stick thing they do in the movies.

Regardless, not something I want to worry about at the moment considering the massacre I just went on, I’m not looking forward to doing the same thing again. Though, I am still curious about the ants and why they wanted all those mushrooms. Am I just going to go back to that anthill and see some ants running around in circles high as a kite? I do remember seeing a thing that said some ants do farm some things like fungus, so maybe that?

Either way I needed to figure a way to lure out one ant alone. So again, I walked through the wide open expanse of trees that seemed empty. I still need to figure out why there’s this dead zone in the woods too, but that’s probably outside of my skill set. For now, I will just pass through, keeping an eye out for anything else that might be willing to brave the jungle like I had. Luckily or unluckily there seemed to be none.

It was only after ten minutes of quiet did I realize that I didn’t even hear the chirping and cawing of birds overhead, which all other times formed a comforting background white noise. This section of woods was just quiet all the way through travel. Then once we finally exited the area I could hear the distant sounds of chirping getting closer. It’s actually really unsettling. I don’t know if I actually want to know why that area of the jungle is just empty. Might end up being something like sand worms and I’ve just been extremely lucky so far.

But luckily I still remember the general area where the ant hill must be. There isn’t much in the terms of landmarks in the forest but you notice a few things like particular fallen logs, or big rocks that stand out, trees that have a few battle scars around the base. I came up to what I recognized as part of the trail the ants made towards the mushrooms, and quickly traced it back to the ant hill. Though as I did, it wasn’t exactly as I’d left it.

Last time I was here, there were a bunch of ants coming in and out with big ol’ soldier ants poking their heads out every now and then. Right now, the mound was totally sealed up. There were stones piled up at all the entrances to the mound, and it looked like there was no way in, but one look around showed that there was one hole left unplugged, right at the very top.

Now, I want to know what the heck is going on, but I am not foolhardy enough to think I can sneak my way into an anthill and make it back out with no consequences. This is not Fallout 3. I was just going to have to accept the fact that my burning curiosity will go unsated. At least until I can wade through armies of ants like they were… well, ants. That simile kind of got lost in the weeds.

Anyways, it looks like the ants aren’t coming out to play, so I’m not going to get my trap going until they start coming back out. Actually now that I think about it, they might have sealed up because they knew something was going to happen. Like they were about to eat a ton of mushrooms and didn’t want everyone to go wandering around the jungle imagining all the trees were made of sugar. Speculation, but I haven’t got any other ideas.

Still, what do I do now? I’m just going to have to look for something else to hunt, yet again. Honestly it feels like ever since I evolved I’ve just been running in circles up here. Maybe if I go further out, but going further out means taking longer to get back too. But frankly, other than my brief stint on the nightmare road trip, I haven't leveled up at all. I still have nine more levels until I get to level twenty and get my next evolution… supposedly.

I chewed my lip for a good two minutes, looking down at that ant hill, trying to make a decision, before finally shaking my head and just resolving to just try it. After all, I’m not making any progress just sitting here, so I might as well push my luck and go looking for something else. The worst I could run into is probably that owl again.

So that’s what I did, continuing past the ant hill, and traveling out further east than I’d ever been before. I kept going for just about five minutes before I spotted the first new monster, which looked almost like an average wolf. Not like the giant wolf I’d seen once before, these were closer to normal wolf sizes, but their heads were just a bit off. Wolves in general gave these pointed muzzles, but this thing is rounded, shaped like an alligator’s snout. It was kind of off putting.

Still, not that it mattered to me, because I wasn’t about to fight wolves anyways, especially since there were six of them that I could see. So I disregarded them and continued east, but what I was not expecting was to run into another cliff face. The tree line ended, and a sheer stone wall continued up until it was just higher than the trees. Now, I recognize that this must be another level barrier, but still I wanted to get a look up over the top of it, so I climbed up as high as I could to get a peek up at the next level.

The level I’m on had tall trees that had bright orange leaves, and long vines hanging from them. The next level up had these dark gnarly trees, with no leaves but a lot of branches. Taking a longer look at them showed that there were some trees in there that were green, maybe one in every ten, and they didn’t have leaves, so much as they looked like needles, similar to pine trees. It was a very different biome to this one, almost looking mostly dead, and one I’m certainly not ready to explore, but good to know it exists.

So, I climbed back down to the lower branches to continue my search, following along the cliff towards the… north? I think? Just to see if there’s anything worthy of note. Which it does not take long to find. Just like the cliff face below, there is a cave in this wall as well, however, unlike the previous cave which was just a cave, this one had doors on it. The alcove in which the cave sat had large wooden doors affixed into the stone. A wooden palisade erected around the outside.

Getting closer, I could see not monsters but humans standing guard outside the cave, dressed in very thick outer coats with metal helmets, the kind that looked like wide brimmed hats and didn't cover the face. There were four, and they all had short bows, and it looked like swords on their belts. Unlike the other dungeon it looks like some group of people came out here and tried to fortify it. I wonder, is it because the dungeon is more dangerous, or is it because they wanted to farm it for resources or something?

I decided to try and sneak a bit closer, just to see if I could see the name of the dungeon, but it looks like the palisades are built pretty much at the border mark for how close you’d need to be to see it. Which is probably intentional. It would be nice to get in there, but it’s just one more thing to add to the list of things I’m curious about but cannot get access to. So for now, I’ll just have to move on…

With a slight grumble under my breath, I made my way further north again until I came across the familiar sound of running water, and just like on the level below, there was a large waterfall from the level above. Though with this one I was not about to go looking behind this one. The waterfall was way higher, and raging way harder. If I tried to dive through that, I’d be pummeled against the rocks. Though it does mean that there is a straight shot from my own dungeon all the way up to the next level if I really needed it.

However, it’s still not what I was looking for. I was beginning to expect that everything on this upper level is too tough to just be farmed outright. I might have to pick a singular strong thing and try and take it out instead of lots of small things like I was able to do on the lower levels. Or rather, I need to figure out how the heck I was able to kill the giant lizard so easily before. Or, not easily, but quickly.

I was able to use the thunder missile on a bow and arrow to severely wound it, and then I guess I just attacked the wound. Which I mean, I suppose that was just common sense that that would do more damage, but it did die very fast compared to how much I expected it to do. Sadly, no using bows for me, but if I could do the same thing with a stone it could very well have a similar effect. Which in hindsight, this is probably exactly what sense critical weakness would have been for, but I passed on it… crap.

Though while I was complaining to myself, a shape came out of the jungle, trodding into view. I turned, expecting maybe those wolves again, but instead I saw the gigantic deer that I’d seen before with the antlers; it must have stood two stories tall. I suppose you could say I asked for this, given that I did just say I should find one strong thing to kill instead, but this wasn’t what I was thinking.

I hesitated, sitting on the branches overlooking the small lake at the base of the waterfall, thinking about my options. I can’t just keep putting everything off. Quite frankly I’m annoying myself with all of these annoying setbacks, but how am I even going to fight this thing if I wanted to? So I started trying to use my discernment on it.

The deer was likely very hearty, with a lot of health, and a lot of strength. It also has a lot of damage if it were to get you with any of those horns. Those muscles in the neck are bigger than my whole body. They would just slice through me like butter. Though that said, it doesn’t exactly have any sort of weapons other than the antlers and maybe hooves. So if I were to get to a place where it couldn’t use those, then I should have free reign to just hack away.

I scanned around its giant form, and managed to pick out what was probably my best bet. At the base of the neck, right where it meets the shoulders, there’s a little patch there that looks like the antlers can’t reach, and it for sure can’t kick me. So as long as I can hold on, I should be able to ax it directly into the neck. Or at least if everything goes perfect.

Now I realize that this plan is dumb and pretty reckless, but just sitting back and waiting for some perfect thing for hunting to just fall into my lap was not only wishful thinking, but I’m not exactly going to get stronger to hunt these things without… actually hunting these things. Besides, if worse comes to worse, I do still have a full heal in my back pocket just in case.

I climbed up in the branches over where the deer stood, its head dipping down to drink the water from the river. I paused, turning back to see the boys on the branch behind me and started my little song and dance trying to get them to stay, which by now they seemed to understand that me pointing downward means to stay here. Or at least I hope they do.

Seeing the deer’s haunches below me, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to land right where I wanted to be. I was going to need to land on its back and climb my way up to his neck, hoping it doesn’t just throw me off or I’m too slow. So I lowered myself down the vine, trying to stay as quiet as I could, going down hand over hand instead of trying to slide. Yet somehow the closer I got, the more it felt like I was underestimating how big this deer actually was.

I was close enough to actually jump on his back when I paused, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. Suddenly my body was as light as a feather, and I dropped off the vine, trying for as much distance as I could. I made it about a quarter of the way up his back, but jumped forward as soon as I landed. The head of the deer shot up, much faster than anything that big should be moving, but I was three quarters up the back when the hind end shot up to try and buck me off.

I dug my hands in tight, grabbing onto the short fur with both my hands and feet, managing to keep myself attached despite nearly being chucked off. It bounded up and into the air, and my stomach lurched. I did not think something this big could still jump, I didn’t really think it was possible, but very clearly I was wrong, because I could feel my shoulders trying to rip themselves out of their sockets moments before my face was slammed into the dense muscle on his back.

Still, I was able to hold on, but I wasn’t exactly moving anywhere either. I needed to get up to the neck, but if I let go for a moment, I’ll be sent flying into low orbit. So instead I’m just stuck here. What had I just said about plans working on paper? And there I was, showing how I was incapable of following my own advice.

He bucked again and I felt myself flipping nearly upside down, taking a risk and letting go to be flung forwards towards his neck, but it wasn’t so easy. He wasn’t just standing still and bucking, the whole torso was twisting to the side, so I fell forward, coming just shy of the shoulder and latching on. Gripping wildly for the fur as I hung off the base of the neck, trying to climb back up like I was playing Shadow of the Colossus, which in hindsight I have way more respect for his upper body strength if he was able to keep a hold on those giants.

And then I felt my back slam against a tree