“I…”

The voice started sobbing by the sounds of it

“I don't wanna die…”

I took that as a yes.

Chapter 5 start

And from personal experience. Dying sucks

I already had started coming up with a plan to escape. But honestly, the hard part would be getting past the guard seeing as I can’t see anything. I could slice through any material with my Ignore Mortal Material skill but digging a tunnel wasn’t an option, this was soft dirt and they had used the web to keep it from collapsing in the first place, so I’d have to slice through the spears blocking me, and somehow surprise the guard and take him out. I didn’t research him on the way in and I don’t have a line of sight currently. I recently got a new perk point though so I opened the menu again looking for some help

PERK MENU

CHOOSE ONE

20 FREE STAT POINTS

MATERIAL CONVERSION

CONVERT MATERIAL INTO RACIAL EXP CONVERSION IS BASED ON QUALITY OF MATERIAL

NIGHT VISION

BE ABLE TO SEE WHEN FEW OTHERS CAN

The poison expert perk seemed to have disappeared so perks can disappear if they aren’t chosen the first time. In that case, I didn’t want to lose the ability to get free exp, it is kind of amazing. It wouldn’t provide immediate results though so it depended on if ..,

“Could you tell me your name? I’m Lilith” I was kinda embarrassed I didn’t ask earlier, but better late than never

She took a break in her sobbing to answer me

“I’m Para”

“Well, Para, I can get us out of these prison cells easily. The problem comes in taking out the guard. If I can have some time, I think I can do it. Can you hold out?”

She stopped sobbing completely, taking a second to think coughing every few seconds

“I can hold on. If it’s our only hope then I don’t really have a choice, they give us some food and water to keep us alive at least so I think I can hold on for a few days. But I can’t promise I’ll be able to help when we attempt our escape ”

I suppose that’s correct, didn’t hurt to ask though. I was pretty hungry and thirsty so food and water helps, though I doubt it’s anything like a Norwegian prison. Without more input, I chose Material Conversion and selected done. I gained an instinctive feeling of how the perk worked quickly so I took a handful of dirt and opened my menu, a new menu had appeared with the same name as the perk, opening the menu it only had a button that said Input Material. Selecting the button, the dirt then got sucked into a hole that appeared on my hand, I started using it as an incredibly weak vacuum and made a small hole underneath me during the next 5 minutes, hoping that the lizardmen didn’t have night vision to see what I was doing. After sucking up a sandcastles worth of dirt I selected another button that said convert.

DIRT CONVERTED TO RACIAL EXP

1 XP GAINED

This is gonna take a while… and a lot of dirt, I tried cutting off a little of the web next with my nails, creating a little square out of the wall

ALBINO SPIDER SILK CONVERTED TO RACIAL EXP

25 XP GAINED

It was a lot faster, but I couldn’t take that much of this stuff seeing as I need it to keep the tunnel up, I couldn’t take much dirt for the same reason. I might’ve messed up… this is bad. Am I gonna die again? Did I do all this for nothing? I thought I was so clever, sure night vision wouldn’t have helped my combat power but it would’ve helped a lot more than this!? Letting me see at the very least!

A voice like the little erratic fairy appeared in my head again

“So you’re giving up again? You haven’t even tried using magic!?”

I thought to myself

‘But I don’t know the first thing about using magic. And what could it do for me anyway?’

The voice seemed to have gotten annoyed at that

“What do you mean what can magic do! ITS! MAGIC! It has endless uses the limit is what you can think of! You even have me to do the magic for you! Just find the skill mana bolt! It’ll do the job!”

Huh. I forgot about that

Mana bolt (uncommon), LVL 1

100 mana cost

You have acquired magic and so you’ve been granted every new mage's favourite playing bolt, mana bolt, you can create a small ball of strong heated glass and direct it at a target, controlling the trajectory

Amount of damage dealt by bolt increases with skill levels and Intelligence

Mana bolt cost goes down with skill level and wisdom

It would take all my mana to use it, but the voice gave me an idea

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

“Names Ethra! Use it!”

Fine sorry, ETHRA gave me an idea

“Thank you!”

Aiming my palms towards each other, I willed the skill to use. My hand started heating and glowing a faint purple colour, nothing you would notice without focusing on me, even then it would be easy to think might just be a hallucination in the darkness,

“Wait… what are you doing?”

I ignored Ethra for now, the warmth and light from my hand condensed to a small spot on my hand, it then moved to become a tiny translucent ball of glass right in front of my hand. With another burst of will, it shot into my hand. Consuming the material the spell created

GLASS SPHERE CONVERTED TO RACIAL EXP

10 XP GAINED

Mana Bolt 1 ->2

BASE DAMAGE INCREASED TO 15

COST DECREASED TO 98

IT WORKED! ETHRA YOU’RE A GENIUS!

“... yeah… that’s totally… what I was planning. For you to use MY magic to convert to experience. Not to attack the guard, that would be... crazy...”

Exactly! Great idea! It wouldn’t work fast by any means but with my mana regeneration, I could fire one every 5 minutes right now, which means 10 exp every 5 minutes. Which I could essentially do indefinitely! Or at least until I feel confident enough to take out the guard, which I would like to do sooner rather than later.

Getting into a rhythm, I sped up the process with Deep Breaths, increasing my mana regeneration. It turned so natural that after a while, I fell asleep. I was woken up later by light entering the cave, blinking a few times to get used to it, a AlbinoSpider Lizardman with dark red headwear brought 2 wooden bowls to each of the prisoners. One with murky water and one with what looked like foraged berries, I just hoped they separated the poisonous ones for Para’s sake, not everyone is blessed with Poison Immunity after all. After putting it in our cells he left and closed the door. Before the door was completely closed, I used Researcher on the guard

AlbinoSpider Lizardman Guard, LVL 83

HP: 1263/1263

Armour rating: 15 Natural armour

This is a guard of the albino spider lizardman tribe. He isn’t as strong as his scouting brethren, but he can create strong silk that is good for tunnel building and infrastructure.

I Gotta admit I’m liking this thing now, that is an astronomical amount of hp difference though. 6 times give or take. However, I bet the difference in our stats is what’s the actual difference, after all, I’m cheating a bit with my perk that doubles my HP. The door closed and the room was back to utter darkness.

Feeling myself to the food and water I quickly scarfed it down and checked the skill level increases. Mana bolt had gone from level 1 to a whopping 20 giving it 190 damage per bolt and 30 Experience for the additional mass. While deep breaths had gone from 10 to 22, not as good of an increase however it now gave an additional 220 HP, stamina and mana per minute making it so I can cast a mana bolt twice a minute! Which was a huge change and likely the reason it had increased so much.

I checked my level next, seeing it had gone from 6 to 10, finally figuring out that free points weren’t a stat, I decided to put all 20 into my intelligence, it seemed to increase my mana pool and the mana bolt got stronger with it as well, and to be honest, I always liked the sound of having a lot of intelligence. After selecting done my theory was confirmed as my mana pool was increased to 175 from 155

Yupp my build was coming along. And with this exploit, it seemed like I could just keep going!

Goblin RACE REACHED LEVEL 10

NEW EVOLUTION PATH AVAILABLE

GOBLIN BERSERKER ( +20 STR, +10 CON, +10 END, RACIAL ABILITY Goblin Berserker)

NEW EVOLUTION PATH AVAILABLE

GOBLIN BOOYAHG (+5 INT, +5 WIS, +10 CON, +5 CHA, RACIAL ABILITY Mana Bolt)

UNIQUE EVOLUTION AVAILABLE

GOBLIN DRUID ( +20 INT, +10 WIS, RACIAL ABILITY Modify Self, +2 INT PER LVL, +2 WIS PER LVL, +1 FREE STATS PER LVL)

Again, I wonder what I'll take. I feel like a beta tester getting to see all overpowered abilities the creators thought were fine because of their own bias towards their creation. But in all seriousness, while I have used my claws a fair bit, I prefer attacking at a distance, so the booyahg and druid stuck out, and since I already had mana bolt I chose Gobling druid. Checking out my new ability while I felt a newfound sense of clarity wash over me

Modify Self gained LVL 10

Druids are knowledgeable about nature and its inhabitants, even bonding with it to some degree. You can choose to grow new appendages that mimic animals and monsters seen.

I imagined this being an ability that many people would die for in my society. however, for me, it could mean I might be able to create the wings of a DayBirds or the shell of a ShellCharger. I could achieve natural flight! It didn’t fit my build, but I’d probably find uses in the future as well as it is a major boon right now. I tried ordering my eyes to gain night vision like some monsters in games, however after that not working I tried a more detailed approach

I thought of a cat’s night vision, remembering one of my lectures on animal biology, curving my cornea and creating a large lens, then dilating it. I also changed my eyes composition creating more rods in my photoreceptors and a tapetum, which is a reflective layer of tissue that reflects light back to the retina. This made it so I only needed a sixth of the amount of light a normal human would. It didn’t allow for true night vision but I could at least make out my surroundings even with the door closed now.

I took a look at my class level seeing it had reset after my evolution, but instead of just 100 Experience per level up, it now took 5000 meaning after some quick math, with my current production it would take 167 Mana bolts per LVL up or almost 3 hours because I was able to cast 2 mana bolts one minute then one minute of resting to get back to full.

This is… a lot but it was necessary at this point. And I could play around with trying my new modifying ability while because this process was second nature at this point. Before I got to that, however, I remembered I was close to finishing the Initiate Nexus I tree with only 28 tree points left, since the last time I had gained a whole 63 tree points, leaving me plenty to finish it off and start on the next tree. I put the points into it and selected done

Nexus mana flows through all beings in some capacity, beings of light and energy are more susceptible but no matter how you managed to find your way to the nexus, it will no doubt grant you great power.

+20 Int, +10 Wis

All spells do 150% damage

All spells cast through Nexus mana do 1500% damage

I think I might be ready to take on that guard ALOT sooner than originally planned. I worked through the night, no longer able to see any light. By the end, I had gained 3 more levels in my race, putting all the free points into intelligence, increasing my mana bolts size and damage even further. As well as 6 levels in Deep Breaths and 20 in Mana Bolt, the orb is about the size of my hand by now and only costing 60 mana while dealing after all multipliers a total of 696 damage. 2 of these were enough to take out the guard.

Taking a break I took a look at my character sheet

Lilith Hades’

Class: Life creator LVL 15 (24/75)

Race: Goblin Druid LVL 2 (1/5000)

HP: 380/380 (84 per minute)

Stamina: 81/81 (24 per minute)

Mana 224/224 (61 per minute)

Conversion from Mana to NEXUS Mana: 1 Nexus Mana/2000Mana

Stats:

Strength: 21

Dexterity: 24

Constitution: 56

Endurance: 51

Intelligence: 104

Wisdom: 61

Charisma: 6

Luck: 1

0 Free Points

Magical Damage Multiplier: 150%

Nexus Mana Damage Multiplier: 1500%

Physical Damage Multiplier: 100%

Skills

Claw LVL 6, Dash LVL 1, Deep Breaths LVL 28, Feasting LVL 2, Ignore Pain LVL 1, Mana Bolt LVL 40, Mental Checklist LVL 1, Researcher LVL 24,

Class Skills

Mother Of Artificial LVL 1, Slime Symbiote LVL 1

Racial Abilities

Goblin Instinct, Goblin Pact, Modify Self, Poisonous Bite

Today was the day they would regret capturing a random goblin, my intelligence was already passing 100. taking a look at Para panting heavily in the corner, she had been coughing all night until she was finally getting some rest now in the morning. I swear I will help her so I can find my friends in this damn forest