Haaaah… such sweet, wonderful dreams…

Mmmm, if only I can stay in bed a little longer… Damn, why did I say I would post chapters in the morning…

Keh, but those online commenters… if they dare get impatient-

Wait, Mimi?

Just like that, the familiar cold grip of grief curled its fingers around my heart. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t think. All I felt was pain and guilt. Horrific shards of my first death and the draining, helpless sensation of losing Health swirled around my mind. Some part of me wanted to just close my eyes and fall back asleep.

I forced my eyes open; that was my resolve for this second life.

I popped up out of the small mud burrow into which I had collapsed last night, sending a few flies buzzing away. My eye flashed; the side dish to my morning meal today would be vengeance. All flies who transgressed the sanctity of my sleeping body fell as I unleashed my Dainty Finger Asura Form.

Actually, I shouldn’t allow such silly naming thoughts to take root… this System might actually curse me with a related Skill.

Your Skill (Earned) Monster’s Wisdom has grown to Level 21.

“Such a smug System…” I muttered to myself. Yet the combination of my forced humor and the familiar cadences of this life gave me a little bit of relaxation.

Then I looked up at the sky. A mission from a land god loomed over me. I felt a twitch suspiciously like stress in my chest; I had slept in until midmorning, perhaps due to how totally I had thrown myself into my preparations yesterday.

…and the day after tomorrow was the day to unveil the temple…

I walked back to the clearing and looked at the half-finished (one-fourth finished) construction. I did my best to remind myself about the Second Blessing that should be waiting for me upon successful completion. And obtaining a Second Blessing would also complete an Interesting Quest. The benefits to throwing more labor at the problem continued to accrue.

I improved myself with every second of work. In this, at least, this life was definitely superior to the first, when so many of my efforts would just earn me derision from the public.

“Don’t think about that.” I made a fist with my small hand. “Instead… commence amazing destress day squelching around in mud!”

What I built here would stay. And also (hopefully the Kami couldn’t read my thoughts), building the temple would be excellent practice for when I poured my effort into creating the forever home for myself, my sister, and my brother. Whether we could all live under one roof… well, that remained to be seen, but my eye sparkled with daydreams of the superior structure I could someday build with this practice.

So I worked. I used my crayfish digging claws to scoop out mud. I broke down reeds to add some integrity to the bricks. I laid these new ones out to dry and carried the finished product back toward the location of the temple.

Honestly, due to my ramped-up amount of drying racks I had greeted, the transportation of bricks became the new time sink. By the time I had hauled all of the bricks, it was already afternoon.

I tried to ignore the sinking feeling in my stomach and examined the work site.

No one had broken in and destroyed the walls, which would have been cataclysmic-

Why the hell did I think that? Horror blossomed in my chest. I tried to consider how likely a worry this actually was. After all, a toad had come to sit at the edges of the mud yesterday. I doubted they would care about the current temple, but as it grew larger…

My expression darkened as I remembered the activities of the snakes. Once it’s built up, greedy new tenants might try to monopolize it…

Still, worries would just slow me down. So I worked while considering this problem. I began to slow process of stacking the next layer of bricks up onto the already laid wall.

It occurred to me that I would soon need to use my bricks to make a basic step ladder, so I could lift the bricks into place. My tentacles were strong, but not quite strong enough to extend them that high, now that I had lost the extra Strength from my foreleg.

I wonder, can I create some sort of Engineering or Construction Skill? I thought as I lifted up another brick and set it down. I waited several seconds for the System to consider my cautious query. In the end, I could only sigh and reach for the next brick. Well, I suppose I’m not taking specific enough actions. Maybe if I knew more construction-

Your Skill (Earned) Monster’s Wisdom has grown to Level 22.

So passive-aggressive… ah, is the System just as afflicted by stress as I was in my past life? Tragic.

Ahem, ahem, must be difficult to handle all the stress pounding through your veins… putting pressure on your cardiovascular lower-case-s system… Each day begins and ends with stress. Perhaps you are just envious of my relaxing, mud-covered existence? The silliness helped alleviate the knot of worries. I waved my digging claws in an approximation of a dance as I moved on to the next brick. When this made me jiggle slightly. I began doing the macarena with my human hands.

Heeyyyy, Mud-mud-mu-mud-mud, da mu-mud muderena~!

Don’t have an aneurysm from watching my joyous life-

As the sun continued to rise, I continued to work.

First, I contacted the spiderlings and asked them to set up a watch around the mud clearing. The little buggers couldn’t exactly stop anything from approaching (I didn’t want them to create another web zone) but they could warn me of scavengers. Then I spent most of the afternoon creating another two drying racks, laying out bricks, transporting bricks, and then laying out more replacement bricks.

In the end, it was a relatively exhausting experience, all about creating the raw materials. I didn’t even get to start erecting the temple. I just erected another, smaller mound of bricks I could use tomorrow morning.

Your Skill (Earned) Mutinous Grit has grown to Level 5.

I looked at the sun sinking and the sky and considered working through the night, but I already felt drained. If I was being honest… I recognized a bit of my current mental state; almost unbeknownst to me, my machine had begun to stir in the back of my mind. I fell into my habit of fixation, ignoring how I felt in favor of a task.

I forced my body to relax. I settled on the ground, flesh and flubber and stolen limbs. “Maybe tonight… I need a break?”

Several seconds passed with no incident. I couldn’t help but smirk. “Really System? You didn’t take this opportunity to rub my face in the mud? Maybe you are learning manners-”

A frog tongue smacked into my back, claiming eight of my Health. I wheeled around to find two monsters pushing past the edge of the clearing into my work site.

Three-Horned Swamp Frog Lvl 7

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Three-Horned Swamp Frog Lvl 8

Is this a coincidence, I straightened back up on my tortoise legs. Or did the System send monsters to attack me because of my attitude…?

Either way, a frog that hadn’t yet passed its first Growth Threshold wasn’t a worry. It only took about ten seconds for me to charge them, poke their eyes, smash their legs, and turn them into two delicious Anima meals.

But definitely, having the spiderlings set up a perimeter is the right choice…

While the dutiful spiderlings labored, I returned to the stump and allowed myself to settle in for an early bedtime. Which transformed naturally into an early morning, as the warmth of the sun permeated through the stump and roused me.

I yawned, mostly out of habit, then patted myself. “Okay, Tallum, two more days. Let’s get to work.”

The day started much like the previous one ended. I moved bricks, I laid out new bricks to dry. And just when those tasks had been finished and I began to assemble the pieces of the temple together-

“Tallum!”

I jumped out of my jellied skin, slamming wildly into the half-finished section of the wall in front of me. Despite the fact I struggled to lift the bricks up high enough to set them into place, my instinctual face slam possessed enough force to knock off two from the top layer and have them topple onto the ground.

Dizzy, I turned around and found Sage bouncing right next to me. Her tails wiggled in excitement. “Ah, you are just as excited to see me as I am to see you? Thankfully, that thug Nightshade isn’t present. Alright are you ready for today’s adventure?”

“Uh.” I made a single articulable sound, my mind racing. How had Sage snuck on me without pinging Detection? Was here Stats or Skills really so much higher? Or…

My old therapist pal would have said this was paranoia talking, and admittedly an aspect of myself that wasn’t quite as relaxed and calm as I would like, but I had the strangest feeling-

Your Skill (Earned) Monster’s Wisdom has grown to Level 23.

“I knew it!” I released a triumphant cry. Then I turned concerned. But wait, does that mean that the System can really control monsters…?

Sage misinterpreted my jubilant mood. “A fine day indeed to hunt vermin! Let’s begin.”

Ah but the construction-

Her tails snaked out and grabbed onto me. I was dragged away, once more reminded of the superior physical specs. I managed one more ‘uh’, but it was lost in the frenzy of our motion. Sage happily carried me all the way to the edges of my strawberry fields, by which time I belatedly remembered our promise to meet and clear out the snakes.

At the very least, bricks are drying and a lot of bricks are already present at the construction site. So long as I can haul and lay out more tomorrow… this should be fine?

My eye twitched a bit, when the edge of the area already had three fresh corpses bleeding out. Sage beamed at me. “Swung my on my way over and got rid of a few of the small fries. Alright, let’s go draw out the big ones!”

Sage bounded forward and into the nearby reeds, drawing out a chorus of hisses from the snakes lounging within. At the same time, two other serpents slithered out in the other direction, spotting me.

Quick Viper Lvl 7

Armored Viper Lvl 9

Per its moniker, the Quick Viper began winding its way forward the second it saw me. The larger varietal moved more slowly. I wiggled my body and straightened, shifting from brick-layer to powerful battle sludge. Basically, I just sat still as the Quick Viper pounced and sunk its teeth into some of my interstitial flesh.

Okay, so sue me, I need a little bit of time to switch modes. Being a monster is a complex experience.

I lost five Health, but jabbed my tiny human/squirrel fingers through its eye and popped it. The finger dug around in the eye cavity, until I caught a vein and blood gushed out. Will a sigh, I drank deeply.

You have successfully Absorbed Anima! Anima +11.

You have successfully Absorbed Anima! Anima +29.

You have successfully Absorbed Anima! Anima +10.

Your Skill (Species) Absorb Anima has grown to Level 33.

You have successfully Absorbed Anima! Anima +10.

With the high Level in my Skill, I drained the little viper in a flash. Its armored companion realized too late I wasn’t one to mess with, and by the time it launched its heavier body forward, I had tossed the dead viper to the side. I used my deft hands (okay, I admit the human fingers came in useful in a lot of situations) to grab the edges of its wide-open mouth and redirect its bite to a nearby pile of mud.

Your Skill (Earned) Body Manipulation has grown to Level 19.

While it struggled to pull its teeth out of the mud, I rumbled over to the Armored Viper and began to stomp down on it with my Swirlback Tortoise legs. The armor of its scales might have resisted other sorts of attack, but it was quite easy to rely upon my superior weight to just mush its organs to nothing with pure force.

“Really, Chimera Cores are too unbalanced.” I shook my head as I considered the two quickly dispatched snakes. That, and the passing the Level 10 threshold, essentially guaranteed that I was invulnerable amongst weaker monsters.

So long as Sage doesn’t aggro hundreds of snakes that possess the ability to spit acid or something… I shivered, hearing the distant sounds of battle. They might not get along very well, but from my perspective, Sage and Nightshade had some… overlap in their behavior.

To keep myself in her good graces, I focused on my victims, and then the surrounding snake corpses, looking for a tail to add as my final of 10 body parts. My aggravatingly useful human hands began cutting apart the snakes; the small claws on the fingers weren’t useful for fighting, but they made remarkable scalpels.

Your Skill (Earned) Apprentice Butchery has grown to Level 8.

Your Skill (Earned) Apprentice Butchery has grown to Level 9.

I examined the four harvested tails. In the end, I sighed; the best tail still belonged to the Armored Viper I had murdered through repeated stomps. I had some worries about the interior portion of the body part, but Sage had been even more violent in her executions.

Would you like to integrate slightly pulped tail of Hopeful Armored Viper Lvl 9?

Ick, why does the fellow I stomped to death need to be hopeful?!? Could he be waiting for his potential mate to reply to his engagement proposal?

…what a dark thought…

Integration requires 29 Anima. Continue?

You have integrated Slightly Pulped Tail of the Hopeful Armored Viper Lvl 9! Slightly Pulped Tail of the Hopeful Armored Viper provides Constitution +1, Poise +3, and Agility +1.

I twisted and looked around at the tail behind me. I swished it back and forth experimentally. Oh, actually, this is quite nice. I’ve missed the extra poise. Despite these heavy tortoise legs, I can step-

A new snake slithered out of the reeds. We both froze, me because I got caught admiring a new body part, and the snake because-

The snake’s eyes flicked from my core body, to the tail, to the snakes on the ground, then to one snake in particular, and then back to the tail. The snake began blinking rapidly. Although I believed it to be impossible, tears formed in the snake’s eyes.

Uh, am I overreacting, or… The potential fiance stumbles upon the desecrated corpse of her soon-to-be-betrothed and swears eternal vengeance against the murderer?!

With a hiss laden with rage and grief, a second Armored Viper launched itself at me. I did the only gentlemanly thing; pinned this Armored Viper to the ground and allowed it to die in the same manner as its lover.

Stomp, stomp, stomp, who can afford a wedding’s pomp? So let’s just-

Ah, I’ve definitely become a villain.

“Don’t think too deeply about this,” I said to myself, looking at the squished snake body beneath me. Luckily, Sage’s voice cut through the surrounding noise.

“Tallum! To me! I’ve discovered their leader.”

I scooped a little mud onto the corpses, to hide my crimes from any other family members lurking in the area, then rumbled away through the screen of reeds. Any sort of guilt I might have felt quickly vanished, as I wandered through the remnants of Sage’s attack. Whereas I might have been party to a single tragic story, Sage had single-handedly eliminated dozens of snakes. In addition…

She destroyed all of the strawberries… I shook my head, looking at all the crushed fruit from an over-enthusiastic avenger.

I finally pushed through the reeds enough to see Sage, standing opposite a thicker completely white snake. It possessed more mass than both of us, a thick snake large enough to wrap around and crush the limb of a humanoid.

Albino Python Baron Lvl 14

My Level, huh. I glanced at Sage. I wonder what Level she is… together, this should be quite doable.

Actually, isn’t it weird I can’t see Sage’s Level anymore? Did she earn a Skill?

…Definitely, don’t my companions seem more like the main characters here and I’m the tag-a-long voice of reason…

“The grand arena for your duel has been arranged,” Sage announced. She and all her tails offered me an elaborate bow. “I’ll keep any of the rabble from interfering. In order to reclaim your fields and defend your honor, Tallum, it is time for you to vanquish this usurper! Look at its hubris, claiming it is a Baron! Pah!”

“Uh,” Again, my mind lurched to a stop as I tried to keep abreast with developments around me.

Understanding Sage’s words much more quickly, the giant Python Baron’s eyes focused on me. Its thin pupils narrowed even further. With a hiss, it put its head on the ground and slithered toward me.