It was the next portal, the middle of the three, that led me back to those familiar, fleshy caverns. The soft, pinkish walls extended down a number of tunnels that would lead me to my hunting grounds. Thankfully, my time away had done this place some good. The small lake of blood I’d unleashed upon this cave system had somehow gone away, leaving little more than the occasional puddle to remind its inhabitants of my stylish entrance.

Judging by the skittering sounds I heard approaching from the distance, they would need a reminder. These bugs were just smaller versions of the big one that I crushed. They had lots of legs, hard shells, those creepy eyes, and were mostly round while matching the same fleshy tone of the rest of this place. Really they were just asking to get stepped on. Literally. They were quite small and made a lot of noise. Honestly, what else even could they be saying?

They couldn’t be more than a dozen centimeters tall and just a little longer than that. Without the ability to fly like those ant-bees could, this would be a slaughter. At least that was my impression when I saw the first dozen or so. But no matter how many little fuckers I kicked away, there were always more to replace them. Pretty soon I looked like I was at a ska concert, kicking my feet up off the ground one after another to launch the insects into the air.

The good news was how strong I was in comparison to them. Honestly, it wasn’t even close. An errant fart from me would kill one of these little shits. The problem was I didn’t have enough beans in the tank to handle the endless waves.

I’d probably killed a hundred or so by the time they began getting to me with any frequency. Unlike my last encounter, these things weren’t damaging enough for it to be an issue. At least, one of them wasn’t. Both bug armies were just that, armies. It didn’t matter how many squads I killed if I let a platoon walk up on me.

Despite my big numbers, they still did more than zero damage to me. So long as that was the case, the damage would stack. Sadly, I’d been too impatient to wait for my health to fully fill up before charging into danger again. How the hell had those girls gotten past the entrance if it was like this?

Clearly, I needed some crowd control in my arsenal.

It was that thought that reminded me that I was stupid. My class had given me a new ability, hadn’t it? And I’d presumably gotten that class thanks to fighting my way to a skill in the first place. If I needed crowd control, I just had to control the crowd.

With that brilliant thought in my mind, I used every ounce of strength I had to heel kick the ground in front of me, imagining a powerful shockwave shooting out from my stomp. Instead, I allowed three more bugs to climb onto me and start chewing on my ankles.

“Ok, let’s try the skill I do have then.”

The image of a boxer floated to my mind as I tried to conjure the power of a jab, launching with incredible speed the likes of which had never been seen before. Instead, it was just a regular punch. The distraction once again cost me valuable ankle real estate. The skin housing market would collapse at this rate, so I once again retreated outside, disposing of the stowaway bugs that were rude enough to tag along uninvited. The dark night sky at least let me know that I hadn’t wasted much time in my idiocy.

“I really thought I was stronger than this. Looks like I’m just a glorified boss killer that can’t handle mobs. That sucks. And why can’t I use this stupid skill? Stats.”

Frustrated once more, I pulled up my character sheet, determined to get to the bottom of this.

Lawrence Schlager

Classes

Brawler: 3

Ability Scores

Health: 244/930

Strength: 81

Agility: 87

Resilience: 93

Awareness: 12

???

Passive Skills

Infinite Scaling

Unarmed Combat: 25

Pain Tolerance: 12

Masochist: 11

Active Skills

Dimension Tearing: 6

Jab: 1

Now I was really confused. I was guessing that my awareness went up thanks to trying to follow all of those bees. Great. They’d even given me a little more resilience to boot, but what about the two missing stats? Did god’s shitty interface not link up with the other one? It looked slightly different now, but where were magic and spirit? And what about my class still being stuck at three despite killing hundreds of bugs? Did I actually not gain a single level or would I have to go touch a fucking rock every time I wanted to get my numbers updated?

This sucked. Why was this going so fucking poorly? I really needed to get enough money to ask people some basic questions. Clearly I was missing something really fundamental if I was having this much trouble already.

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In the meantime, I had the rest of the night to kill and a body that didn’t need sleep. May as well figure out this whole jab situation.

Jab: A swift and deliberate strike with enhanced speed. Has no cooldown but reduced damage.

“Ok, that’s great and all but it doesnt tell me how I need to actually activate it. Wait, wasn’t there something in the shortcuts?”

A quick look revealed that there was now a shortcut field for jab that was currently left blank. As stupid as I would feel shouting out the names of my moves to use them, it was better than not having them in the first place. With that out of the way, I stood still and tried out my new ability.

“Jab.”

Nothing happened. Settling into a fighting stance and cocking my shoulder back, I tried again.

“Jab.”

This time, my fist flew faster than I’d ever seen it, delivering on the promise that my status had made. I was no professional boxer, but I was also pretty damn sure that this punch would kill the average man if it connected. Not that it would help against the ankle biters, but it was handy to keep in my back pocket. Aside from that, inspecting awareness revealed exactly what I expected. It was perception. Nothing special there, but it was something I’d desperately need more of if I wanted to not get jumped in the future. Those bees really did a number on me.

Overall, it was really annoying how few options I had at my disposal. I needed to grind up and suck less, but how much strength would I need before my stomps could shockwave out and actually do crowd control? At what agility would I be able to break the sound barrier in order to sonic boom my surroundings? Barring that, how high level and what class would I need to be for my body to have an automatic retaliation effect to handle these little nibblers for me?

“Man, what I wouldn’t give for some magic right now but nooo! We can have nice things.”

Frustrated as I was, I still refrained from saying some things out loud. It wouldn’t do me any good to proclaim my affiliation with the murder god to the world at large.

Checking my numbers again, I concluded that my health regeneration was a percentage for sure. It was also incredibly slow. That being the case, I may not have lost as much health in the flesh pit as I thought, considering how hurt I was when I left the beehive.

Maybe I could do this after all? I couldn't afford to go back and spend four silver every time I thought I had leveled up, and a couple stat points weren’t likely to change shit anyway. If that was the case, I just needed to accept my lot in life.

As a low level class without magic, I was just a stat stick. Until I got better skills, I would just need more stats. With that out of the way, I got to work.

My sprints had always been hampered by the invisible wall in the distance, but now I could race as fast as I wanted to. To start off, I pushed my body as fast as it would go with a slight tilt, doing enormous circles around the portals as the moonlight lit my surroundings. Belatedly, I realized that the moon wasn't white like the one back home but was instead a pale bluish gray.

It made my running a little more interesting than it used to be at least. Even still, I struggled to reach a speed that could wear out my improved body. Between my big numbers and survival mode being turned off, I just couldn’t strain myself without extreme circumstances.

With that in mind, I resolved to spend most of my remaining money on stat training equipment. Someone might have stolen my clothes or coin purse if I didn’t hide it, but a wagon wheel and some rope were probably not worth the trouble. If only this world had tires for dragging.

Ultimately, finding something that was cheap, ergonomic, and heavy for strength training would be the hard part. Resilience could train itself so long as I was strong enough to keep breaking my nose, but getting that level of power without weights would be a challenge. That was fine though, I had nothing better to do anyway.

By the time the sun started to come up, my health was still below half and my agility had only improved by two points.

If that was the case, then just how long had I been in that training camp? I’d spent half a night recovering less than a quarter of my health. While I couldn’t automatically assume that a day was twenty four hours here, that still meant that it took more than a day to fully heal.

How many of my health bars had I recovered before? I must have broken my bones at least a thousand times by the time I’d managed to escape. If a broken bone was a quarter of my health on average, then that would mean…

“What, nine months at least? Wouldn’t it be even more for my broken arms following punch practice?”

The breeze and the sunrise were the only responses to my questions. Neither was terribly comforting right now.

Combined with the strength and agility training I did, that must mean I’d been there for years. And even after all of that time, I still couldn’t fumigate some fucking bugs.

I rechecked my health as the anger began to boil inside of me. It was nearly half and the tiny shits barely hurt in the first place.

“Alright, Law. Time for some high danger sprints.”

I just had a new idea for crowd control.

Stepping back into the flesh tunnels was like putting on an old glove, assuming it was filled with spiders waiting to bite you. It didn’t take long before my friends began to approach, all signs of their deceased brethren long gone. I wondered idly if it was the bugs who ate them or the walls themselves while I waited for the little shits to group up. Once the room was nearly full to bursting with them, I took up my runner's stance. I stretched one foot in front of the other as I lowered my arms down in front of me, touching the ground with just my fingertips as I prepared to dash. As I waited for them to get closer, I could almost hear the starting gun go off.

Just like that I was unleashed once more, a storm in human form running through these creatures before they could react. I slid to a stop right before hitting the wall, skidding through even more of them as I did. A couple of the lucky survivors managed to nibble at my legs in the brief time it took me to turn for my next dash, but they were killed as soon as I moved again. In this manner, I was able to clear out dozens of the creatures in a second just due to the sheer force of my running speed. I still longed for something more efficient that didn’t allow so much room for retaliation, but this would do for now. A wide grin split across my face as I ran through them like a runaway train.

I really liked stepping on bugs.