"Can I eat the mushrooms master?" (Simerene)
"Let me check and see if they are poisonous first" (Auxentius)
"Oh no you don't, if they turn out to be poisonous you will complain about it not being potent enough to level up your resistance, and will consume more until I need to use all of my MP to keep you barely alive while we are still in unexplored territory" (Nasby)
"Awwwww, so you do care" (Auxentius)
"Now I wanna do that to level up my skills, and master you better use the lecture skill a lot on me since you helped everyone else skill up while I had to tunnel for a month!" (Ratina)
"Why do the smartest members of our group have the most careless personalities?" (Nasby)
"Cause we are smart enough to get ourselves out of the trouble we cause" (Ratina and Auxentius simultaneously)
"No using magic connection to speak at the same time! Its freaking creepy" (Nasby)
Nasby ends up taste testing the mushroom, it unfortunately wasn't poisonous so Slimerene ate, well she ate ALL of them. Our slimy friend is one hell of a glutton
The cave is rather ordinary at first glance, but with magic sense and mana perception it is clear that the mushrooms feed off mana in the walls to grow, and wind mana creates air spontaneously throughout the cave.
Speaking of spontaneous creation, we see a bird literally form out of mana in front of us. We kill it for that bit of xp, and it has copper loot like most mobs.
Me and Ratina halt any further exploration to attempt the creation of life through magic the same way as we just saw for 5 days until having the same interferance when I attempted to use higher tier magic based off Ratina's experience.
Stupid laws of the universe interupting my fun with their stupid interferance, all I want is to play god just a little bit, is that too much to ask?
Pythana and Nasby hunted a bit while Simerene just ate every mushroom in sight over the past 5 days, and we continued our expedition.
The monsters down here aren't particularly aggressive, which is probably why they are so low level. They are few and far between and seem to mostly live off the mushrooms in order to survive.
We go in a mostly linear direction in the same direction we tunneled here to start, ignoring the branching paths and keeping magic sense to see if the land starts rising at any point to indicate a new landmass.
There are a few false alarms due to underwater hills, and me and Ratina take a few shots at crabs on the ocean floor, but nothing particularly interesting happens over the next week.
Until we find a large open area in the cave, that has a fortress with horned creatures living inside it.
Looks like we found a demon fort, and one that has a good number of people at the same strength of our party and a few stronger ones.
Assuming any of them have detection skills, they probably also noticed us, but the rest of the group is weaker than me atm and we haven't indicated that we will approach yet so they probably aren't too worried about us.
I have no idea what human-demon relations are like in this world, but they are usually worse than demon-monster relations so I will have Ratina pretend to be our leader. They may be suspicious of the superpwered human baby in the group, but I can have Ratina make up a story of it being a high level enchantment to keep track of her food depending on how negotiations go.
Ratina walks up to the front gate and begins communications via telepathy to one of the guards.
"We would like some information, would it be alright if we entered your city and traded some goods for some?" (Ratina)
"You can speak beast?" (Demon guard)
"My name is Ratina not beast, and yes I can" (Ratina)
"An elegant speaker and in charge of some monsters, you are likely a ruler class than considering your humanized features, why do you have a human with you anyway?" (Demon guard)
"I believe that isn't something you need to concern yourself with, you still haven't given your name nor informed us of if we'll be allowed entry" (Ratina)
"My superior will arrive shortly and handel any decisions on your request, my name is Bulkforv, but that isn't particularly important" (Bulkforv)
The demon guards have been talking amongst themselves as we wait for the approaching superior, who I sense all along the way with magic sense as being one of the few stronger beings, he is weaker than the bear we fought but so is everything else in that fort and enough strong presences are prepared at the other side that running will be the go to plan if a fight breaks out. The demons eye me with slight malice, but not overwhelming hatred or unnaceptance.
"My name is Lebtrine and I am in charge here" (Lebtrine)
I am holding myself back from laughing at his name because it sounds a lot like latrine, all the dramatic build up is gone as I can only think of the person in charge as a toilet now. Why do the strong people here have the dumbest names?
Ratina holds back a snicker as she replies
"We would like to trade for information in your settlement, we have food we can trade or we can hunt some monsters in exchange depending on the type of monster of course"
"And what type of information would you like to know for example?" (Lebtrine)
"What this things race is like *she gestures towards me*, along with basic knowledge of the surface world, I know it exists but not much else about it" (Ratina)
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Pretending to be a local who is curious about a strange human should avoid angering them regardless of their opinion on humans, the only risk is if their society tries to cover up the existance of the surface world in a cult like manner.
"If that is all you want to know, I'd rather tell you and send you on your way that then let a monster roam in our walls, no offense" (Lebtrine)
"That will suffice" (Ratina)
"Long ago, humans along with many enlightened races had spread out to live all across the globe, they made settlements and weapons that allowed them to outcompete other animals and while the occasional local or regional lord would destroy a settlement for xp or out of boredom, they thrived nonetheless" (Lebtrine)
And here goes the expositional dialog where humanity fucks everything up for everyone else and ends up hated for it.
"The enlightened races don't evolve like monsters, but instead class up and keep their level as they upgrade. The enlightened races often fought one another over territory, us demons included although we were much less advanced than the other enlightened. One day, ,the humans, elves, and dwarves formed the United Enlightened Empire and expanded to cover a massive amount of land. The local lords of regions were pushed back by this, but the regional lords were still unconcerned and allowed the growth and developement of this Empire" (Lebtrine)
"What is a local lord and regional lord?" (Ratina)
"Local lords rule over a single territory of varying size based on their strength, regional lords are ancient beings who have long surpassed the strength of anything other than other similarly ancient ones. Now as I was saying the empire advanced in strength and techniques until eventually, they discovered a certain higher class of formation magic. Formation magic takes a long time to prepare and connot be moved after it is made, it takes a lot of MP to run but is quite powerful. This higher tier was capable of being powered by several extremely powerful mages, and one day one of these formations allowed a regional lord to be killed. This finally made the regional lords take the empire seriously, but their wrath rained down upon all enlightened races as they were now considered too threatening. The empire suffered serious losses, losing 70% of their territory before their strongest regrouped and fought a decisive battle in a city with a new formation against the regional lords. There were 23 regional lords against 100 enlightened capable of fighting local lords, and thousands of weaker enlightened, 5 regional lords died and 80% of human forces were lost along with the city, but the regional lords considered 5 casualties to be too much cost, and refocused on keeping the enlightened contained than from risking their own lives to fight them head on. Demons were not capable of fighting local lords, much less regional ones, and thus retreated underground to live in mana caves, and that is all the history of the surface that I know." (Lebtrine)
"Thank you for the information, and sorry if our presense scared your people" (Ratina)
"HA a monster that apologizes, isn't that something...... and don't mention it, it is good for an old man to tell some stories from time to time" (Lebtrine)
So humans didn't fuck things up for everyone on this world, we had help. Steven is probably a local lord based off this story, If this entire fort of demons fought him I think theyed have a chance of killing him if they got lucky which doesn't match with the supposed strength of a regional lord.
We also asked if they knew any ways to the surface from here, but they apparently didn't and only gave me some glares due to blaming humans for the decline of their ancestors. None of them seemed to notice or else they didn't care that a baby was rank 2, but we didn't ask in case they just didn't notice.
We go around the fort and continue down the tunnel once more.
It takes about 6 months until we discover the first creature strong enough to be interesting.
On the ocean floor above us there is a huge manatee, it is about twice the size of a bus and has 3/4 of my mana concentration, which if that isn't its main or sub attribute than it should be higher level than me considering my rincarnate buffed mental stats and that this value puts it at just a bit waker than that bear we fought some time back.
In these 6 months, I leveled up once but still don't have the option to class upgrade despite being LV 30 now, Ratina levelled up 3 times and had me use lecture on her a lot so she actually managed to level up all her ball skills and manipulations (other than stone) to 10, mana perception to 8, mana manipulation to 10, minor arch magic to 5, and magic sense to 10. She got her wall skills to 7 and also got
Water magic: Torrential downpour LV2 Aoe water magic, base MP cost 30 cooldown 57 (114 after archmagic), blast radius 1 meter
Earth magic: Rupture LV4 The earth version but with cooldown of 51 (102) and radius 2 meters
Fire magic: Burst of flames LV 2 Fire version, same stats as water
Wind magic: Column of wind LV 3 Wind version, 54 (108) 1.5 meter blast radius
Higher tier attribute magic LV1 Can learn higher tier elemental magic at a 90% skill growth penalty rate for higher tier elements that are not of your current attribute (current attribute:none)
Burst of speed (land) LV1
Her new teachable skill menu is
Ratina possible skills Foraging Expanded mana pool Magic overdrive Minor cooldown reduction Ice magic: ice shard Lightning magic: electric shock Light magic: beam of light Dark magic: beam of darkness Earth magic: enhanced fertilizer Eath magic: Throw boulder Water magic: tide manipulation Water magic: moisture manipulation Water magic: Greater water ball Fire magic: Greater fire ball Fire magic: guider of flame Wind magic: Minor weater manpulation Wind magic: Gale manipulation Wind magic: Greater wind ball
I really want her to learn magic overdrive already, but oh well.
Nasby also levelled up 3 times, but only levelled up her taunt skill once and intimidating roar twice.
Pythana levelled up 6 times and levelled up slither and ambush once each.
Slimerene levelled up 7 times and levelled up sticky grasp twice.
I have Pythana "prepare the field" by just having her tell Ratina where to make the pit that we will dop this sea cow in.
We make a big hole with spikes there basically just as a cosmetic since they wont deal real damage, Slimerene will stick back with me and Ratina as she probly still can't tank anything this strong yet.
Nasby isn't quite as high health as she was against the bear, but she has new skills to compensate, my own buff skills are strong enough to put her at higher health than she had then, and Ratina is capable of much stronger support now.
Pythana is fast, but she will only be attacking when she sees and opening and running away after a hit or two so she doesn't get hit and make Nasby take damage via shield aura.
Theoretically this should be easy, but last opponent near this strength exploded so it is best not to get careless.
Me and Slimerene coordinate using magic connection to use water manipulation to push the water pressure such that an air pocket forms around the manatee, and Ratina uses stone manipulation to drop it into our hole and then close it immediately with stone manipulation.
Now that we have successfuly beached it..... BOOOM
Magic sense warned me in advance that it was using water manipulation, Ratina slowed it for a bit, but the water pressure gave it an advantage in flooding the cave. Pythana sprinted towards me and we used stone manipulation to make a barrier around us so the water doesn't seperate us.
We tried to trap it out of its territory, but it fliiped the tables on us, and now its pissed.