[NOTIFICATION: STAMINA HAS REACHED CRITICAL LEVELS, HP DAMAGE WILL BE TAKEN UNTIL FOOD HAS BEEN CONSUMED.] I groaned as I trudged through the cave I was in. I didn't know why it bothered with this.
/Shut up already! I haven't found anything to eat yet at all!/ I complained in my head, hearing my stomach rumble. I've been here for what I could only guess may be a few hours, or even a day, but haven't found anything edible yet.
And yes, I know I talked about mushrooms, but I puked them out as soon as I put them in my mouth. It wasn't that they tasted bad, quite the opposite, they were actually edible, non-poisonous funghi. Problem with me is that I'm apparently a obligate carnivore, meaning I can only consume meat, flesh. I'm a hunter but I'm also a baby! My parents were meant to feed me and yet here I was!
As I trudged on, my HP ticking down one point per 5 seconds, I really felt just fatigue. How was I supposed to find food in an empty cave? Was this even a dungeon? Were they just messing with me? Well, that question was answered the second I turned the corner. There, sleeping against a wall, was a rat. A large rat. Like, my size-kinda big rat.
"Chirp." I whispered, not even caring for this being a rat of all things. I was hungry, starving even. Who cares for filth? Who cares for it being dirty? Who cares for the fact that I was sinking my teeth so hard into the thing it's neck broke in a second? Who cares if I was eating it raw moments after without thinking?
When I finally come to my senses I was left with the skeleton of a rat, having devoured the entire thing in one sitting. /Boy, hungry me's scary./ I thought, seeing my SP, aka stamina, now 90% full. I just ate a rat my own size and it wasn't enough.
[NOTIFICATION: EXPERIENCE POINTS HAVE REACHED SUFFICIENT LEVELS. SMALL LESSER DRAGON LEVEL 1 IS NOW LEVEL 2 +50 SKILL POINTS ; NOTIFICATION: PROFICIENCY REACHED SUFFICIENT LEVELS, SKILL [Hunter] HAS BEEN CREATED ; NOTIFICATION: CONDITIONS MET: DUE TO DEVOURING EVERY SCRAP OF MEAT ON YOUR PREY THE SKILL [Predator] HAS BEEN OBTAINED.] I blinked, this lengthy message was unexpected but welcome.
After cleaning myself, and boy was it odd to use my tongue and claw to clean the blood off of me, I turned to the rat's remains. "Chirup." I finally said, wanting to know what it was. Perhaps it would work.
[WESTDELL DURAN (SKELETON), LEVEL: 3/10, HP: DEAD ; MP: 0/0 ; UNNAMED ; DECEASED] I blinked, it still read somewhat like my own appraisal.
"Chirup." I repeated, trying to focus on the Westdell part of the information.
[WESTDELL DUNGEON: DIFFICULTY: D.] I blinked, apparently this worked just as well, though information was scarce but now I knew that it was a dungeon indeed.
As I was about to leave I heard a chittering noise. Turning around I found another monster like the one I just killed. /Huh, guess my lucky day is here./ I thought, licking my lips. Because this was free food for me.
The rat, or Duran I guess, leaped at me, teeth barred as I leaped aside, using [Appraisal] on it.
[WESTDELL DURAN, LEVEL 4/10, HP: 200/200, MP: 0/0 ; UNNAMED ; MALE] With the fact that this one was a level higher than the first, I took the opportunity of it's back being to me, to jump onto it's back. Seconds later, I felt my teeth break through the neck of the creature which gave a shriek of pain.
After it was dead, I begun to feed, it was disgusting, sure, but I was still hungry and wanted to get that out of the way.
[NOTIFICATION: EXPERIENCE POINTS HAVE REACHED SUFFICIENT LEVEL. SMALL LESSER DRAGON LEVEL 2 IS NOW LEVEL 3, +50 SKILL POINTS] I blinked seeing this, I've leveled up again huh? But something else caught my attention: Skill Points.
"Chirup." I tweeted, curious about what that meant. Were Skill Points perhaps related to skills like the ones I've gotten so far?
To my surprise, instead of an audible set of information I got a large list presented to me.
[SKILL SHOP]
[NEW SKILLS:]
[100 SP:]
[DETECT: COLLECTIVE SKILL THAT GIVES MAX STATS IN ALL SKILLS DEALING WITH THE SENSES OF THE BODY.]
[PARALLEL PROCESS: BASIC ABILITY TO KEEP TWO THOUGHT PROCESSES AT THE SAME TIME. THE HIGHER THE LEVEL THE MORE THOUGHT PROCESSES CAN BE PERFORMED.]
[TAMING: ALLOWS TO EXCERT CONTROL OVER MONSTERS AFTER BEATING THEM IN COMBAT AND USING THE [Tame] SKILL. INCLUDED SKILLS: [Tame], [Summon]. CAN ONLY BE USED ON MONSTERS OF LESSER OR EQUAL LEVEL.]
[SUMMON: MAGICAL SKILL TO CREATE AND SUMMON CREATURES. INCLUDES [CREATE TEMPLATE] TO CREATE PRE-ESTABLISHED SUMMON TEMPLATES. MAXIMUM COST OF CREATION IS LEVEL MULTIPLIED BY 100. FOR EVERY 10 MP PAID THIS WAY, 1 POINT CAN BE ALLOCATED TO LEVEL, AFFINITY OR SKILLS OF THE CREATURE CREATED. WILL BE INCORPORATED INTO PRE-EXISTING [Magic] SKILL.]
[LEVEL-UP SKILL (50 SP):]
[KARATE: 9/10]
[CALCULATION: 4/10]
[READING: 4/10]
[LESSER ROYAL DRAGON MAGIC: 1/10]
[LESSER MAGIC CASTING: 1/10]
[APPRAISAL: 3/10]
[PREDATOR: 1/10]
[NOVICE HUNTER: 1/10]
I blinked at that, taking in everything I saw. I wasn't even aware that I had so many skills available at this point but... Lesser Royal Dragon Magic? What was that supposed to be? Was it like Dragon Slayer Magic in Fairy Tail?
Shaking my head I decided not to dwell on them too much. Most of them could either be trained easily, or I couldn't even use them either because of my physique like Karate, being a quadruped, small dragon baby and all, or because I had no idea how they could work, such as the magic skills.
Regarding those offered, some were interesting, such as Parallel Process, though I had a feeling that may be something I could get just by what I assume may be evolving skills, such as [Calculation] up there, while Detect sounded like a headache about to happen, as it implied sensory overload in my opinion. Then there was taming, which sounded interesting, but was beaten out by the last one, Summon.
With that thought, I purchased [Summon] before also leveling it by 1, which flooded my mind with the information I needed to use it, which was interesting.
First of all, [Create Lesser Template], the skill's current stage, was basically something like a monster creator or character designer. I could change various settings, skins and the like, and even go for various body types, including humanoid, though skins were limited so far to furry, but various skills were already available to load my first 200 points creation with.
Summoning cost would be 20 MP per summon on this level, being lesser Summons and all. Looking through the skills available to equip my summons with I saw stuff such as [Lesser Heal (2 Points)], [Multiply (5 Points)] – which would do exactly as it says, making copies of the summoned creature to fight – [Novice Swordsmanship (5 Points)], [Lesser Detonation (5 Points)] and [Lesser Magic Casting (5 Points)].
Basically, this wasn't the largest list, likely limited by my skill with this, but it was useful. I could create weak magic knights, healers, a endless army a- /Wait a second./ I thought, going to the creature Designer and sure there was a round body type. Messing around I found out that yes, I could make THAT quite easily, it would be... interesting to see.
/Bet it's a beautiful day outside. Birds are singing, flowers are blooming. On days like these, guys like you, get hit by my hairy balls./ I thought with a grin as I sent wave after wave of my first summons at a nest of rats, or Duran as they were called here.
This summon was a small, round being covered in brown fur with four small, green limbs that ended in claws. They had large, brown eyes, rather cute looking too, and had not received a level up by me, all the 20 points I had available at their conception being instead focused on their skills instead.
These were [Lesser Detonation] at level 5 and [Lesser Multiply], also on level 5. This resulted in a new one spawning every 5 seconds as long as there was at least one of them left, and them exploding on impact for 50 damage each. And I had currently 5 of them standing back to keep the flow running.
Yes, you hear me right. I've created and summoned, the one, the only, the Kuriboh! /It's time, to Dududududududu-Duel!/ I shouted in my head before snorting, the minor AOE damage my [Multi-Kuriboh] caused wasn't impressive, but [Lesser Detonation] caused staggering on the enemy and kept them together, making the pay-off greater.
Every now and again a Duran died, earning me EXP in the process, this led me to level up twice since I started throwing my hairy balls at those rat.
...
/I must've watched way too much Yugioh abridged./ I thought as another of the rats died and I got my third level up notification. Now I was level 6 already. It was a handy method of farming as I had my swarm of Kuribohs with me, which protected me somewhat even from the back.
Suddenly I heard a roar and saw how the rats swiftly run away, out of my Kuriboh's reach as they were too fast to be caught.
Scowling I turned to where I had heard the roar from and- /That's big./ I thought, my ears going flat to my skull as my Kuriboh swarmed between me and the new monster. "Chirup." I muttered, focusing on it.
[WESTDELL DURAN QUEEN, LEVEL 22/30, HP: 4000/4000, MP: 0/0 ; UNNAMED ; FEMALE] I swallowed thickly at that, this thing was WAY out of my league at this point.
Right now I was relatively save as the "Queen" was one huge, fat rat, but not large enough to reach my perch up on the wall where I had dug in a bit in ambush earlier. But with a HP pool of 4000 HP, I wasn't sure how long I could keep it up with my Kuriboh army.
Making a quick decision I took the 150 Skill Points I've got and put them into the only skill that, at this point, was any good for a big fight. [Novice Summon], which brought it's attached [Create Novice Template] to level 5.
I followed this up with creating a copy of myself with [Lesser Dragon Magic] (5 Points) and [ Lesser Mana Replenishment] (10) points, and leveled them both up to 10, evolving them, then put 9 points into level, evolving the copy into a Baby Dragon and leveled it further with the remaining 8 points, leaving me with a level 8 evolved form of myself to summon.
Summoning four of them I had them attack, which both did using [Baby Dragon's Breath], a dragon magic apparently, which did solid damage. Naturally I kept pettering it with Kuribohs and had two of my, well, clones, on replenishment duty and would summon new ones when they run out of Stamina, which was what they paid for replenishing MP.
The tactic worked, the Rat Queen was wailing under the impact of draconic fire against her fur as she was continuously bombarded by the blasts which were basically ripping her a new hole.
As I watched my clones, I labeled them "My Clone", for simplicities sake, I couldn't help but wonder if I could add something myself. I had no idea how to use magic or a breath attack but I could watch them do it. And Summon Magic had at least some similarities to it.
"Chi charu Chirp!" As cute as these sounds were, it was actually me giving the magic form. And from the array of magic that formed before my mouth, a bright beam of iridescent light shot. I had no normal Dragon Magic, as such [Baby Dragon's Breath] was beyond my ability to use.
However, I had a different family of the same skill. [Royal Dragon's Magic], giving me [Royal Dragon's Breath] instead. I winced as the attack hit and threw the boss back. It took 100 MP from my pool per shot but it also took, upon a check, around 900 HP out of the boss. That was... impressive.
Summoning a third regenerator I fired another few shots, my reserves were far from depleted but as she proved soon, I'm no sniper and the queen dodged my next shot, though she did land herself in the middle of about 40 Kuriboh I had set there. It did some damage, but this thing clearly had a high defense as it took less than 500 damage. What sort of damage was then my skill worth if that many Kuriboh barely scratched the surface?
Shaking my head I focused on directing my summons. By this point the boss was rather weak, at less than 1000 HP it was staggering, bleeding and looking generally rather beaten up. I sent another [Royal Dragon's Breath] downrange, but this time I hit it's head and, to my surprise, punched through.
[NOTIFICATION: CRITICAL HIT! [Westdell Duran Queen] HAS BEEN KILLED. EXPERIENCE POINTS HAVE REACHED SUFFICIENT LEVEL. SMALL LESSER DRAGON LEVEL 6 IS NOW LEVEL 7, +50 SKILL POINTS, EXPERIENCE POINTS HAVE REACHED SUFFICIENT LEVEL. SMALL LESSER DRAGON LEVEL 7 IS NOW LEVEL 8, +50 SKILL POINTS ; EXPERIENCE POINTS HAVE REACHED SUFFICIENT LEVEL. SMALL LESSER DRAGON LEVEL 8 IS NOW LEVEL 9, +50 SKILL POINTS. PROFICIENCY SUFFICIENT, SKILL [Novice Summoning] LEVEL 5 IS NOW LEVEL 6, ALL SUBORDINATE SKILLS HAVE BEEN ADJUSTED.]
I blinked, I had just been shot up to level 9 in an instant, three levels at once! But then again, my opponent appeared to have been a boss monster so that made some sense, especially with the level difference between us.
Dismissing my summons I clambered down to the ground where now lay the corpses of over 50 rats along with the massive queen of the nest. The remaining ones didn't come out, likely because I was, by this point, stronger than them. Additionally, my MP was fully restored now as well, which was nice.
I begun to eat the meat quickly, not wanting to let it go to waste, luckily my claws were more than up to the challenge as I ripped into the queen through her pelt. Mind you, I cut the fur off and put it away, perhaps I could sell it later if I got the chance. It wouldn't be long before I would reach what, according to my clones, would be a evolution point.
After finishing up with the meal, my [Predator] skill leveling up three times from the sheer amount of food I had consumed. Regarding the rest, I cut it up and stored it in my bag, no need to let it go to waste since I may not encounter another find like this.
What was strange was when I found something in the ribcage of the queen of all places.
To be continued...
...
AN: Yeah, cliffhanger XD
