I spent the next few days building up my supplies so I wouldn't run out of food and water anytime soon. There weren't many second-tier solid monsters. Only a few monsters at tier 2 were strong.

Colt was the strongest monster I had ever seen, and when I saw him again from a distance, I could see that it was almost a tier 3 now. As much as I wanted to fight it, I knew I wouldn't even be worthy of fighting for it with how weak I still was.

I haven't gained any new quests either during this time. It wasn't exciting if I had to say so.

Going back to the mountain, I spent some time exploring and finding things that might be nice. I might find some heavier stuff near or inside the mountain tunnels. That stone slab I have ain't going to cut it much longer as I increase my Str stat. Agi will be the hardest to improve, while Vit is easier because I can just hurt myself with different things to train it up faster. Int won't grow; I don't have the necessary stuff to use to make it grow.

The closer I am to the mountain, the higher the level of the monsters there are, and vice versa. I hope that I can at least find some monsters that are strong enough to fight. Maybe I can find more monsters to give me more resistance skills to different things. Can I get magic or a physical one to have? Those would be great.

I can probably catch the Hollow Cat by breaking all of its limbs and then using the tentacles it has to grow my rot skill to a higher level and tier. But for now, I must raise my Light and Void resistances and skills to make me stronger against them.

I have three goals right now. 1st make myself stronger against Light and Void. 2nd, I Increase my three magical affinities skills to increase my damage with my magic. And finally, number 3, I raised my level fast enough to reach higher tiers quickly to evolve and withstand the oncoming attack by the light god's servants.

I still don't know when they will notice me, and he will send them after me. Mother should be able to warn me with a quest when they begin to invade.

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Four hours later, I saw the white rocks that made up the mountain's base at the base of the mountain. I would need to search around for a bit of time to find a cave or tunnel that monsters used before to look inside.

After a while, I saw a cave opening far up on the side of the mountain, about more than 1000ft(304.8m). I could climb up to the cave, but if the flying monsters saw me, they would use that to their advantage and end up hurting or killing me. And as much as I love a challenge, I am not a suicidal idiot.

Twenty minutes later, I found what I was looking for in the eastern part of the mountain. At first, all I heard were moaning noises, and I went to it to see if I could find some monster to fight but found the cave instead.

I was thrilled with my discovery of the cave and walked into it without a care. The low moaning noises were growing louder the deeper I went inside. It was dark, but I could still see a reasonable distance in front of me. I sniffed the cave to see if I could smell anything, and all I got was the smell of blood, death, and old earthy air. Slowing, the moaning turned into wailing and crying noises. But why should I care if anything attacks me, I'll kill it before it even has a chance to run away.

Ten minutes into my stroll in the tunnel, I saw two pathways I could take to continue. The left one went up and smelled of fresher air with less blood hanging around in the air. The left had a smoother path and seemed to be getting brighter. The right tunnel went down and smelled of pure blood and death. The right felt weird, as if it called me toward blood and death. The tunnel was horrible and dangerous to go down where I could impale myself if I tripped.

Right, it was. I could always return to the left after exploring the right tunnel. So I went down the dark and dangerous tunnel just because it looked more fun than the tunnel on the left had looked. My body was cut and ripped apart by the sharp rocks and slippery floor. My regeneration skill was getting a good workout today. It also became harder to see the deeper I went, even with my skill making it easier to see in dark places, maybe magical darkness which restricted the field of vision to make it more troublesome to see things easier to kill the further they went. Now, this was becoming even more fun.

I felt the eyes watching me as I descended toward the mountain's depths. I may not be able to see like them, but at the very least, I could feel their eyes and the bloodlust they had for me. As much as I wanted to fight them, I knew they weren't strong since they were ambush monsters and would likely die fast against something like me. Still, I continued down and followed my feeling that there was something strong down under. I needed to fight or have whatever this thing was.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

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After going deeper for another few hours, I felt the eyes watching me stop and retreat through the tunnel back to where I had come from. I had invaded territory here in the depths of something I didn't know. It was silent, and I felt I was being watched by the owner of this place I had invaded. My sight was by the time I had come here; I'm sure I could have used my light magic to see again, but I wanted to fight without doing that and only use my danger sense skill to get used to fighting without my vision. I could still smell, hear, and feel it somewhat off in the darkness.

"YOU HAVE COME TO DIE, YOUNG ONE. I SHALL DEVOUR YOU WHOLE." As it spoke, the cavern we were in shook from the booming voice.

I could hear the thing moving and slithering around like multiple snakes covered in slime, like a slug, as it moved to kill me.

I got ready for the fight by dropping into a lower position, so I could dodge incoming attacks when I tried anything. And just as I did that, a cold chill ran over my legs, so I jumped up and heard the whooshing noise of something big flying under my feet. Landing back on my feet, I felt another chill run down my head toward my stomach, so I rolled to the side as it smacked down hard, breaking the rocky ground into pieces and shooting them everywhere. Not wanting to lose this chance, I spring back towards where it slammed down and slashed with both claws and my tail using three skills at once.

Tail slash and Twilight slash glowed dimly as they cut into the giant tentacle in front of me. But out of my eye, I saw a 16ft(4.87m) tall and wide ball of meat with a massive eye and a huge mouth filled with razor-sharp teeth. This thing had three tentacles with no other limbs. At the end were spikes that could hook onto the prey. As it realized I saw it, it smiled and opened its mouth even more wide open than before.

My attacks had cut an excellent deep gash through the tentacle, but it started to bulge, trying to trap me in the flesh of it. Feeling the danger, I kicked off with both feet and launched myself backward about 20ft(6m) away from the other tentacle coming where I was. While moving back, I shot six twilight bolts at the two tentacles wrapping around each other. All six were the light magic versions of it, which slammed into them, destroying most of both tentacles.

"AAAAaAAHHHHHHH. BASTARD, HOW DARE YOU USE THE LIGHT ON ME. NOW I WILL SMASH YOU INTO BLOODY CHUNKS." It screeched out in pain as it yelled out at me.

All three tentacles were now being swung around with reckless abandon, all trying to splatter me against everything around here. Danger sense was going crazy as I dodged strike after strike. It was fast for its size and incredibly strong. Damn it; I can't fight this thing in a physical fight at all. I'll have to switch up to just dodging and magic to win this.

I shot five bolts a second at it. I could shoot more, but I was trying to save mp to last longer in this fight. The only downside to this was it could see me even better than before because of the constant light source next to my head. Looking at the face of this thing, I realized I could kill it in one hit If I did something reckless. I did it before but wasn't in battle the last time I did it. I would only shoot three of the bolts at a time while casting five more bolts every time. It would take a minute to complete, but I could kill it.

I merged every two bolts of the five making the bolt bigger and bigger every second. It was challenging to hold onto and keep from falling apart or exploding. The meatball fucker knew something was up and kept trying to stop me from doing what I was doing. The tentacles had tried hitting the bolt but disintegrated the parts that hit it, and I had to struggle to hold onto the bolt with every bit of force I had to keep it stable. The tentacles didn't try to attack the light bolt again but focused entirely on me and began using their skills. The damage I did was healing very slowly, and bone spikes grew out of the three tentacles as the tentacles began to move even faster while splitting apart. Now there were nine tentacles covered in bone spikes, and I still needed thirty seconds left to finish this off.

Cuts ran all over my body as I dodged attacks, and the ones I couldn't dodge sliced into me. Hp was at half now, and I still had around ten seconds left. Instead of shooting three bolts at it, I stopped and focused on dodging, turning the bolt into new magic that would destroy this fucker.

Two seconds were left, and a tentacle wrapping around my leg caught me. It swung me around and slammed me against the walls dropping my hp to where I only had 15 points left. Before I was hit with another, I used the new skill I had gotten and blinked away from its grip. And time was up. I had gathered enough and compressed it into a lance as it spun faster and faster. Until I shot it in the eye of the monster, and it ripped clean through the giant meatball killing it in one hit.

You have killed a Meat Sphera Level 15 Tier 2 rewards are being granted. You reached level 10/15 Int +12 Str +6 Vit +3, and free points +12. New magic skill gained by creating it with an existing skill -> Twilight Lance Level 1/10 Tier 2. Mp cost 300 cast time 30 seconds. Cost and time decrease the higher the level of the skill.

And like I always do, all free points go straight into Int. Nice, my new total or mp is 965 points. I put the corpse into my tattoo and bought out the shack to rest in to recover.

The shack was spat out of the tattoo, and I opened the door, went right to the bed after closing it, and collapsed into it. I used almost all of my mp during that fight, leaving me with just enough for one final heal to stop the bleeding so I don't die from blood loss. It is going to take some time to regenerate everything, but at least all of those skills will at least be able to grow some while I rest. When I get up from sleeping, I can look around to find some things and see if I can go any deeper down. Mother, I hope to find some good stuff here to use in training my body even more while I am exploring. Damn, this bed is too comfortable to lie in. I haven't even been here a minute, and already I am falling asleep.