The air was thick with humidity, the moisture from watering the garden, having nowhere to escape, saturated the atmosphere. The sunlight fell through the thin membrane up in the cavern ceiling, illuminating the entire cavern.

A single, stronger beam of light pierced through a tear Alex had made intentionally to be used as a weapon against the hybrids.

In the middle of the garden, Alex sat on the corpse of a hybrid as he chewed through the softer parts of its tissue. There were parts of the exoskeleton that he couldn’t chew through, it was far too hard, so he was forced to eat around it, avoiding those sections.

He looked around the cavern, taking in the countless hybrid bodies that were spread across the garden. Disgust twisted his face as the taste of the monster’s flesh began to overwhelm him, his efforts to ignore it becoming futile.

Spitting out what he was chewing, he fought the urge to vomit, breathing heavily as he resisted the growing nausea.

“Poison resistance does nothing to the taste,” he said, once again feeling something rise in his throat. At this point, it wasn’t just the taste, the smell of the dead bodies became more pronounced, they mixed and made it impossible for him to keep it down. “Gotta get out of here,” he added with urgency, walking away from the center of the cavern, heading toward a small pond near the wall.

Reaching the pond, Alex knelt and drank deeply, his skill purifying whatever impurities might have been in the water, though he was too focused on getting rid of his nausea to think much about it. As he hurriedly drank water, he thought back to how difficult it had been to get to this point.

When he first descended into the cavern, he only did so after managing to make a small tear through the membrane that covered the cavern ceiling.

It took him a while to be able to tear through the membrane by just hurling jagged stones at it, and by the time he accomplished it, he had already drawn the attention of most of the hybrids within the cavern.

Feeling that the hunger was too much to bear any longer, he jumped down, crushing some of the hybrids. As soon as he landed, he darted toward where the sunlight coming through the tear was.

He had been proud of his ability to damage the membrane and expected to gain a giant aid when it came to combat, but the ray of sunshine that made its way through to tear was actually pretty small, barely enough to cover his fist.

Confused because he was sure that it should be bigger, he snapped his head upward. Upon closer examination, he confirmed that he wasn’t wrong, the tear was significantly bigger, but the membrane stuck together, not allowing the hole to open in its entirety.

By the time the hybrids arrived, he knew that his fight with them would consist entirely of dodging and pushing them toward the sunlight. And he was right. He was basically running in circles, just waiting for each of them to catch fire.

He was lucky on a few occasions. The amount of hybrids was enough that it caused them to be too close together, and the fire would spread among two or three of them. If it didn’t kill them, it was at least enough to heavily damage them and, at times, cripple them.

At times he would stop, fight some of them head-on, kill one or two of them, and then return to running when he noticed that too many of them had gathered.

After repeating this process for a couple of hours and the sun was starting to set, only a few hybrids remained. But they were ones that had been damaged by the sunlight and were slowly crawling toward Alex.

Alex gathered whatever strength he had left and pummeled them until he could do so no more, some parts of the hybrids becoming permanent paint on the cavern floor.

Back to the present, Alex finished drinking water as his smaller wounds visibly healed thanks to his Regeneration skill.

The stone that covered his fists had become so durable that whatever mana he used, other than that initial one to create the stone, was mostly used to keep it affixed to his fists, which left him with enough left over to recover from whatever wounds he acquired through his battles.

He glanced around, his gaze landing on one of the fruit trees. He hadn’t had the opportunity to actually try any of the fruits. At first it was because of the constant influx of enemies, and then it was because he wanted to try his skill, but in the end, he just forgot about the fruit.

It had a trunk similar to that of a palm tree, but it was short, and its leaves were more like the typical ones that everyone knew, green and with a sort of water droplet shape. He reached for the fruit, which was within arms reach, and yanked it from the stem.

The fruit was a pearl white color. Its shape was almost perfectly spherical. It felt hard to the touch, yet when Alex applied some force to it, the fruit began to deform much easier than he thought it would. He stopped applying force, and like a balloon, it returned to normal, only a bit more egg-shaped.

Alex grabbed the stem of the fruit, which resembled that of a banana, and tried to yank it back, but the fruit just became deformed. Instead, he made a small incision near the stem and removed it entirely, leaving a small hole. Tilting the fruit slightly, a greenish liquid began to pour out.

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He, trusting his skill completely—if not too much—drank the entire contents of the fruit, as in his mind, it was a combination of a coconut and a banana.

To his surprise, the flavor reminded him more of lemon, but not quite the same. It was too sweet—far too sweet. Some of the fruit’s pulp stuck to his teeth, and when he tried to remove it with his tongue, the sweetness became unbearable. He dropped the fruit and returned to the pond to clear his mouth.

“Could probably be worth something once diluted,” Alex said, still trying to chase the intense sweetness from his mouths. “Aagh. I feel it in my throat,” he said, complaining.

The experience had brought him back to reality. Making him remember that he was currently completing a quest. He quickly glanced around the cavern on instinct, as if he were trying to find a path to go forward, but he had long since decided on his path.

The cavern only had two tunnels that led it away from it. He had followed one for some distance and quickly came across what appeared to be an egg chamber.

The eggs, which reached his hip, filled the entire space—a chamber as large as two basketball courts. He hadn’t ventured further in because there were significantly more hybrids inside. However, he had caught a glimpse of a chamber deeper inside, that seemed to be where the queen was.

Not feeling comfortable to tackle such a room quite yet, he would now explore the other tunnel.

He had noticed hybrids go toward the egg chamber carrying food, but he hadn’t really seen any of them go through the other tunnel. Without having anything else to do, he began his journey through the remaining tunnel, walking at a leisurely pace, representative of the growth he had experienced since his arrival.

The tunnel was a straight shot at first, but after about an hour or two of walking, the path suddenly gained an extreme inclination.

To continue advancing, Alex had to move on all fours, the incline making it impossible to stand upright. It wasn’t until the inclination lessened a bit that he could walk normally again, but even then, the extreme inclination would always return for short bursts.

After another hour of this difficult journey, he could feel how the tunnel began to even out, but it still didn’t eliminate the inclination entirely.

Soon after the change, he saw sunlight entering the tunnel. Encouraged, he picked up his pace and ran toward the exit, eager to see where this path would lead him.

Once outside, Alex took a deep breath—not the moist and stuffy air that was within the tunnels, but the fresh and cool air from the forest.

“The forest?” Alex asked himself, glancing at the forest before him. Surrounding the tunnel he had just exited was a forest, in fact, he was pretty sure that it was the same forest he came from.

He turned to the sky and guided by sun’s position; he became sure. If he walked straight forward from where he stood, he would eventually return to Solace, or at least somewhere near it.

“Have to mark this area somehow,” he told himself. Wasting no time, he quickly began to tear down the trees in the surrounding area and just covered the floor with them. His hope was that this would prevent new trees from growing, making the tunnel entrance easier to find later.

Some trees had already been felled. By the hybrids, Alex thought. The speed at which he could do such a task was beyond astonishing. At times a single punch sufficed to make a tree fall. The reason behind his speed was because Alex was fast approaching level 20, already having killed hundreds of monsters in the tunnels.

It was why the smell had become so pervasive in the cavern. It wasn’t just because the air was trapped, it was because most of the ground was littered with corpses.

According to Eric, at level 20, he would get the chance to level up his class, and he was only two levels away. Even though he was excited at the idea, doubts began to creep into his mind.

What if he didn’t get the class he wanted? What if Eric was mistaken? What if he, like Eric, also lost access to some of the System functions?

He slapped himself with both hands. “Those are problems for the future. Right now, I have to kill some baby insects,” he said, his words full of a steely determination.

The journey back to the cavern was much faster. Alex didn’t hesitate and ran all the way down. Even when he tripped and fell, he just got back up and ran once again, letting his skill heal whatever small injury he suffered.

With his current stats, the most he could get from slipping and falling were small cuts and, which his skill could easily heal.

When he arrived at the cavern, he headed toward the small water pond, grabbing some more fruits, and sat. While waiting for his mana to regenerate entirely, he began to check each of the fruits he got, to see if he didn’t just get one that wasn’t ripe yet, or perhaps overly ripe.

Having confirmed that, no, the fruit he had eaten at first wasn’t different. He once again rinsed his mouth and got up. With his mana fully regenerated, and his body rested, he began his journey toward the egg chamber.

During his observation period, from what he guessed were the original tunnels, he noticed a few things.

The first was that the hybrids that collected fruits never did anything else. It was the same for all the other hybrids and the tasks they performed. He couldn’t be completely sure, since he couldn’t actually distinguish them from each other, but he was fairly confident in his assessment.

“Plus, the ones in the incubation chamber never came to get food, even after I killed the ones responsible with transporting it to them,” Alex said in a hushed tone as he was getting near the chamber entrance. “Wonder what they’ve been eating?”

Upon arriving at the chamber entrance, he got his answer.

About a third of the eggs in the chamber had huge pieces missing, while some were missing entirely. There was no indication that they hatched; it was very clear that the pieces were bitten off.

“That answers that,” Alex told himself as he covered his fists in stone. “Better get to it.”

He walked leisurely into the chamber and began to smash the nearest eggs. Soon, the hybrids that were nearest noticed the commotion and rushed over, immediately attacking him.

One tried to bite his arm, only for Alex to grab its mandible, pulling it closer and bashing its head in. The second one to arrive tried to do something similar, only to his leg. Alex stepped back, and when the hybrid lunged at him, he tried to step on its head, missing.

Another arrived, rushing through the chamber, destroying all the eggs in its way, and it wasn’t the only one. From all across the chamber, all the hybrids that had noticed the battle, began to rush over, destroying everything on their paths.

All the hybrids in the chamber quickly arrived, blocking Alex’s advance. He retreated to the tunnel, restricting the number of attackers he would have to fight at the same time.

Unfazed and certain of his victory, he smirked, ready for battle.