Tim crawled towards the fireflies. He did so very efficiently, because it would appear that the fireflies weren't so smart. They were brickshit stupid in other words, and this stupidity gave Tim an advantage, because the fireflies were just randomly setting whole patches of grass ablaze! There was no plan or technique behind their doing, they were just determined to burn everything to the ground. They were stupid.
With that considered, once he snuck up on them, Tim buried himself in a bit of dirt, and then started sneak-snipping the fireflies. He shot the first target down with a single thunderbolt, and then shot a couple of other bolts against another firefly!
He relied on thunderbolts, because he feared that if he shot fireballs at these things, then he'd accidentally fuel their next rebirth. It was possible that all fifteen of these enemies could be reborn for the third time, and he didn't want to risk that. He tried to work in an optimal manner.
Anyway, he continued snipping his targets down, to the point where he started giggling. He killed four fireflies already, and they couldn’t do anything about this murder-spree, because Timmy was very well hidden. He depended on the ashes and dirt to hide, and muffled his location as effectively as he could. He muffled his location, by shooting a single bolt every ten seconds or so, and this kept him from being spotted.
Tim acted like a solid, sneaky wizard just there, or at least, he acted like a very handy, sniper spider. Either nickname would be exceptional, but the upcoming results were the same; He secured his victory!
“Hehe,” He giggled, after another successful shot.
In the following two minutes, Tim secured his victory. He destroyed every single one of the fifteen fireflies he had to deal with, and secured his momentary survival. Killing those phoenix-like fireflies had other rewards as well, as it would appear. His enemies had been very tiny, so he hadn't expected a huge reward out of them, point-wise, but the system begged to differ.
She announced, [Congratulations, Timothy! You successfully killed all fifteen of those phantomized devilish ants, differently known as the fireflies. Such kills are deemed improbable to achieve, a lot of other insects wouldn’t be able to do it, so the reward is great, but reasonable. You won 400 whole points for killing those fireflies.]
Then, she also added. [In total, you've accumulated 2,663 system points.]
“Nice! I'm not planning to upgrade anything while I'm a spider, though, cuz it could be risky… but at least I'll have a lot of points to get back to later on. I'll be a fish again, soon hopefully, and I’ll be a really happy fish too! It's really hard to be a spider, harder than I thought!” He rambled on.
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Tim was ready to be a fish again, no doubt about it. He couldn't have ever imagined that an insect's life would be this difficult, so he didn’t want to live like this for long, not nearly.
Shapeshifting was otherwise very useful, though, because under the right conditions, he could be human once more, and this was his dream goal. However, since the conditions weren't right for the time being, he had to settle with being a fish, for as long as possible; It was his safest option, safer than being a spider at least.
Anyway, he waited a few minutes for every whiff of fire to diminish, and then, he got ready to crawl across the dry lands. He had leaped out of the waters with a goal in mind, after all, and now that he had the opportunity to focus on the said goal, he was on the move.
As he crawled across the dust and ashes that the fireflies left behind, he couldn’t help thinking. “It feels like it'll take a while to find that soul tampering cave. I hope it doesn't take long either, cuz it's been brutal ever since I beached on this bitch of a land, man, and all to find a soul cave. I can't guess what I'll have to do just to be human again… gonna have to murder a civilization sized amount of creatures, just to get shit done, no doubt! Shit’s scary.”
Tim was a contemplative little spider, he wanted to be cautious about the future, he had to be. As for today, he was happy that he survived the onslaught. That aside, he wanted to relax for a moment, because he didn’t either have the nerves or the mana to fight again.
The system confirmed this, she pressured. [Your mana pool has gone down to 34/120 mana points, Timothy. Be careful with how you spend it, because in this spider body, you can only regenerate 10 points of mana an hour. That's a significant downgrade in comparison to what your stingray body was capable of regenerating. It would even be a good idea if you hid and rested somewhere, just for a couple of hours.]
“Hmm…” He contemplated.
Out of all the things that he expected to go wrong, he didn’t expect to run out of mana. He even took measures to be more savvy with mana, in the midst of battle, so this problem seemed fresh for him, unprecedented even. He ended up feeling really nervous as a result, and then started developing a sense of fear too, so he decided to take the system's recommendations seriously.
Tim buried himself within the naked roots of some grass, and then he started to rest. His belly was full of food and he wasn't in danger anymore, so there was no harm in resting for a couple of hours, all for the sake of replenishing his mana pool. It was a sensible decision, because he was in no condition to rush!
He tried to be logical, and therefore, he pondered. “I'll rest, system, there isn't shit else that I can do. Maybe an ant or two will cross in front of me, erg… smaller ants hopefully, the type that I can eat. It would be good to find something to eat, maybe I can eat those devilish ants too, or maybe not? Chances are that they've been burnt for good, right out of existence.”