Jed flops down onto the floor to take a break and allow his mana to regenerate fully. He's feeling somewhat tired after his battle and the following victory lap. 

'It makes sense, that one passive replaced stamina with mana so this is how fatigue must work for me. I'm assuming I'll feel better with a short rest, I can't tell if I need to sleep in this body yet.'

Impatient to get moving again, he spams his status screen periodically until it looks close enough to being full. With renewed vigor the miniature elemental hops up onto his feet and stretches his arms up into the air, breaking the silence with the sound of his joints scraping against each other like nails on a chalkboard.

Noticing that the corpses are still littered around the room, an idea pops into his head. If this world is like a game, then aren't enemies supposed to drop items or something? As if the poor bats hadn't been violated enough, Jed flips them over to see if he missed anything but there are no signs of drops.

'Well they are just bats, I don't really know what I was expecting. Maybe it is for the best, I doubt I can even use many items with a body like this. My status screen makes it look like I am somewhere between being a player and a monster but I'll have to do some testing to figure out what that means.'

After making his way back to the fork in the tunnel, he decides to try his luck at going right this time. Might as well explore this place and get a few levels in before heading outside. If a stupid bat was that tough in this world, imagine how fearsome wolves and things could be.

As Jed gets deeper into the latest tunnel, more and more of these strange looking plants start showing up. Upon closer examination they look like an asparagus, except much bigger and they give off a faint greenish glow. They tend to grow close to the walls in little patches of three to five.

He comes to a stop when a dark blue lizard with white speckles covering its scales happens to slither out from between some rocks. It shoots him a curious glance but then quickly turns away and begins munching on one of the weird plants.

'I just realized that I have natural camouflage in this cave! As long as I stay still I probably just look like another chunk of stone. I should really use that to my advantage when possible.'

As the lizard continues to gorge itself, Jed scoots his way toward it with small steps. He's careful not to make any sudden movements and watches the reptile's head closely for any indication that it is about to turn around. He has a much easier time with his newly upgraded stats and before long the little elemental is positioned right behind the lizard in a blind spot.

He calls on his earth magic and whips up a cloud of dust into the air around the lizard, obscuring its vision. Now is the moment of truth, with a few well placed steps Jed is in range to bring a fist down in the spot where he remembered it was standing. His stone fist impacts the floor of the cave and cracks the ground, along with part of his hand from the power of the blow.

'No satisfying smoosh noise, it must have moved in time. Also, ow.'

He shakes his hand out and activates Assimilation while the dust cloud clears. The lizard is now on the opposite wall, glaring and hissing at him. It flicks its tongue in the air a few times and then jumps off of the wall, darting toward a foot-shaped rock.

Jed is too slow to react to the speed at which the thing moves and looks down just in time to see fangs latch onto his foot. They look a lot more like those of a snake and venom dripped off of the tips of the two largest fangs at the front of its mouth.

'Venom, huh? I guess being made of stone has its perks after all.'

He kicks out to try and dislodge the thing from his foot and without its fangs being able to penetrate anything, it has no grip and easily goes flying, landing upside down with its feet flailing wildly in the air. Jed takes this opening to shoot a rock the size of a golf ball straight toward its head. 

The lizard is overjoyed as it flips itself over and regains its footing, only to take a rock to the face and fall back over in a daze. Everything is blurry but it can just barely make out what looks like a boulder falling toward it. That boulder is actually Jed, who is performing an impressive belly flop right onto the weakened creature.

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'Let's see if you can dodge this!'

The force and weight of his whole body squashes it before it manages to scramble away, splattering his chest with green tinted blood. He goes to stand up but something is wrong because his leg slips right out from under him. Confused, Jed looks down and sees that half of his foot was missing where the lizard had bit him and there was a pleasant sizzling sound coming off of it, like bacon in the morning.

'Acid venom... you've got to be shitting me. What the hell is in those plants it was eating?'

He's in the middle of trying to repair his foot faster than the acid melts it when he hears that familiar sound.

*Bloop!*

Battle ReportYou have slain the following:x1 Toxic Cave Lizard Lvl 7   

*Bloop!*

Congratulations!Your level in Assimilation has increased to level 3!Vitality +2

  Strength +1

*Bloop!*

Congratulations!You have reached level 3!+10 Unused stat points.

'That thing was level 7? It seemed too weak to be that much higher than me, the fact that it is poisonous must make it worth more experience I guess.'

A few seconds later the acid that was melting his foot finally wears off and he is able to get it back into working condition. After taking a couple tentative steps to test it out, he's satisfied that it's good as new and opens up his status screen to test a theory.

'Status'

*Bloop!*

Status Information (Unspent:10)NameJedAge23RaceLesser Earth ElementalGenderN/ALevel3ClassN/AHealth223/240Mana134/180Strength22Agility10Vitality24Dexterity10Intelligence21Wisdom18

Jed sticks all 10 points into Strength, bringing it up to 32 and then closes the screen. He finds the spot where he'd missed the lizard earlier and busted a chunk off of the ground. He moves off to the side of it and pounds the floor with his new-found  strength, leaving a bigger hole than the last one but that was to be expected. Holding his hand up closer to his eyes, Jed takes a moment to examine it closely.

'I was right, it is cracked much less than before. Since I can't wear armor or anything as an elemental, it looks like raising Strength also benefits the density of my body. I feel pretty fragile for being made of stone but this should be a huge help.'