Helloooooooo! Orchid here with her daily...weekly...hour....anyway, with her sometimes-happening special report! My siblings and I are getting bigger! Yes! Mother says we can explore a little farther if we stay in groups! Yes! I have found more of the pretty blue mushroom! Yes! There are also other pretty mushrooms! Yes! I have lerned to talk...slightly! Yes yes!

And that wraps up our special report for right now, on to current events!

"Fear, fear sister..." says Pretty Shell as our little group of four trots down one of the newerly..newish...less old...bah, this big tunnel that Stoney found a while ago.

"Mm. Fun, fear, same." Stoney replied, the craggy grey of his skin and beak making it hard to see when he moves his mouth in the slight darkness.

Pretty Shell, in return, simply quivers her much softer lip thingies and tucks in her tri-pointed tail into her (obviously) pretty shell. The off-white of it is a bit of an attention-getter, but we like her anyway.

"Ouk! ......Ouk!" comes a small voice from right beside me, and in response I turn my head up and to the right.

"Yah, Mount?" I say, a bit annoyed at how my stiffer jaw makes things hard to say. Mountain was easily twice my size though, and all of his words where heavy-laden and slowly said. I guess the way i talk is good enough.

Carefree+1 Kindness+1

"Thank you Squiglies!" I think as Mountain begins the ever-crawling process of forming a sentence. In fact, it isn't until a minute later that the lumbering giant actually manages to say something.

"Smell....new. Live....few. Dead...many." he said in a sombre voice, each letter seeming to lazily drift around the stalagtites around us.

Stopping for a moment, Pretty Shell, Stoney and I all cock our heads to the side and wait to see if he had anything more to say. Mountain might be big, slow, a liiiittle bit dumb even...but that boy had a nose that could sniff out a mushroom from three tunnels away.

"Fur....*imagine a long intake of breathe that sounds kind of like whistling*.....new....smell...closer. We...leave." he manages to say just before a small shadow lands on the top of his head.

Admittedly, seeing Mountain gradually cross his eyes to look as the little purple thing licking it's from paw, but the scream of absolute horror that burst from his mouth about half a minute later took me to the ground.

The world around me turns white for a moment, and by the time I can even think again I'm on the ground and drooling. Mountain is bucking and thrashing around, releasing ear-splitting albeit not s much as before screams. Pretty Shell seems to have bolted the moment the shadow fell, as I could just barely see her turning the far corner down the path we came.

Hopefully she's going to get mother. She's probably just running though...pebbles.

With a force of will, I rise to my feet and shake my head to get my bearings. The ringing noise in my head doesn't seem to be getting better, but I still have to focus in order to not fall once more.

Will+2

New defensive statistic evolved! Lck+5

Mental Strength has gained one point! Mental strength: The mind's ability to withstand crippling or harmful assaults/spells/sounds/ideals/etc.

Congratulations! Your Lv.54 Carefree ability, along with a few other less pronounced skills, merges perfectly with your new MntStr statistic! As such, you gain +237 MntStr at no deficit to your other mental stats!

Thank you Squiglies! I have no idea what you did, but I feel a lot better now! So then...time to help my little brother! Turning as fast as I can, I begin tensing my legs in preperation for what would likely be a pitiful run to the rescue!

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Or, at least that's the plan before something barrels into my side and falls with a thump to the floor.

Umm...what..oh, shi- my job!-(Redacted before viewed)

Congratulations! For your...unique foray into a first kill, and Lck stat of (Oh...oh no...how...when?-Redacted before viewed) 649, you have gained the skill Ricochete! All physical attacks rebound 1-100 percent depending on the situation!(Averaging 1-5 percent.) Projectiles not designed to bore through armor will often simply bounce off of you! (So long as the damage does not exceed up to five points over your PhysDef stat.) Any magic without an adhesive, AoE, or lingering property will likely slide off of your shell, though a direct hit or internal hit will simply have their damage reduced by around 50 percent.

Congratulations! You have gained a soul leve......

>>>>

Prey...has come. Silently, my kin stalk through the dusty tunnels of our birth. The prey is slow, the shelled-creatures that the packmother sometimes hunts. The purple sheen of my fur meshes exceedingly well into the off-black walls, and the silence of my claws even as I dig them into the stoney floor below me is wonderous.

As my sleek frame nears a bend just sixty tails from our den, I hear the voices of our next meal. One is light, almost reminicent of the beat of a cave-beetles wings during their mating dance. Another sounds as though their toungue is of rock, scraping and scratching their mouth with each syllable.

Run, our hunt-leader, let's out an almost silent hiss and instantly we take to the walls. As our pack's srong claws pull us to the ceiling, each of us goes deathly silent. Hanging upside down, our bellies against the cold stone that lines the top of the cave...we wait.

A rumbling noise echoes in the silence, lumberingand thick. Almost instantly, a much lighter voice answers this call. Not the same as before, no, far to confident to be the prey we first heard.

Finally, after nearly ten minutes of waiting the prey are just under us. The smallest, a thing with white armor and the source of the lightest voice, is practically radiating fear. If Run does not give the signal soon, I worry that my drool will fall onto them. They are all slow, luckily, but even the smallest is twice our size.

A short hiss is followed by one just a bit longer, and Run's claws recede from the hold he had carved with them. Soundlessly, he falls directly onto the head of the largest, testing their aggression. Regardless of their size and strength, none of these shelled things could hope to match our peerless speed and agility.

What the large one does, however, surprises us all. Even worse, it makes us realize just what we're dealing with.

Ever-so slowly, the thing looks up at Run. Our fearless leader simply sat there, gently licking his killing paw in defiance of the beast's strength. In response, the monstrocity shrieked. As that horrendous sounded echoed and was amplified off the tunnel walls, every muscle and tendon in my body tensed to their uppermost limits. I couldn't fall from the ceiling even if I desperately wanted to, as my claws had dug themselves into the point that my paws were cracking the thick rock.

Once the brain-shattering wail had simmered down to frieghtened screams, my body dropped on it's own. If I wasn't expecting such a thing to happen, my spine would have likely broken upon crashing into the uneven stone of the cave floor. As it were, one of my paws had likely been twisted to the point of frature, and my teeth bore several holes into my tongue.

Hissing, I notice the white-shelled beast scurry off, but ignore the runt for the more fufilling prizes. My brothers are all working together in order to fell the greatest of the prey, so it falls to my sisters and I to claim the smaller beasts. As the chorus of battles echoes around me, my eyes find themselves settled on the closer of the two; an average looking tortoise with a strong jaw, two long tails, and a flat, sturdy-looking shell with a strangely pink/purple design splayed across the back.

One of my kin must have used it as a base-board to jump onto the larger one, as I see it awkwardly fumbling to stand and look around. Instantly I charge at it, fangs bared and claws ready to eviserate the life of my opponent. As the blood rushes into my veins and battlefury takes me, I leap in an all-consuming rage at the throat of my next meal.

Just before I am able to sink my teeth into the vile thing's neck, it pivots on one leg, even seeming to take up a runner's stance towards the larger of it's kind. That in itself isn't all bad, no no, if anything such courage is commendable. However, as my bloodlust driven brain takes in this commical fact, the small part of me still under control realizes what an absolutely terrible position I'm in.

Just as my clawy find purchase on the ground, my snout has a very personal meeting with the slightly blunted edge that connects the top and bottom parts of the thing's shell. Just before the cartilage and bone of my face are pushed back and into my brain by the sheer force of my jump, I chuckle at how lucky this little beast is. Afterall, you'd have to be the luckiest being alive to look so carefree during what should be a massacre.

As my vision begins fading to black and I go to join the great hunt, I could almost swear that this little prey was talking to itself. Weirdo.