Level one thirty-seven, not bad, but still only another fifteen levels. If I wanted to get to where Mel wanted me, I had to hit two-fifty, and while there was still another dungeon to do before then, I just couldn’t count on those to do much. My head didn’t hurt all that much, and in theory, I should have a better soul-core reaction going, which meant it was likely okay to try another modifier. I was going to need to remove the floor being lava anyway. That had been a near disaster. So that meant adding two more.

I just didn’t think I had a chance if I dropped my level any more than it currently was, especially with the losing five levels per modifier, but that was worth far too much to turn off. Alright, it was time to turn on all the extra opponents I could and see how that played out. Before I did that, I made the decision to invest in a knowledge skill. I was going to be facing one hundred and twenty of the queens, so that was a little terrifying.

After maxing out Vespology, I looked over my skills and attributes and saw that I had gained both a ranged combat and a claw dart skill. I wasn’t sure if the first applied to my spells or not, so for now, I skipped them both. In attributes I had gained a wasp venom resistance as well as a piercing one. Had that second one been from the wasps or the diredeer? It didn’t really matter, and I threw almost all my new attribute points into both. What little I had left went into arm accuracy since I was going to need to pick off any stragglers once this was over.

After that was done, it was back to the simulator. I changed up my options and launched the simulation. I started on the ground, and so did more wasps than I could count. They weren’t what I was worried about. The several larger queens that were also directly in front of me were my bigger fear. I swung my mallet, and as I did so, I saw an overlay pop up on the wasps I was aiming at. Several parts of their bodies were highlighted with percentages of the likelihood of what kind of damage. Fatal damage was highlighted in red. So this was why Elicec was pursuing knowledge skills, smart kid.

Looking at the giant clustering masses all around me, I wasn’t sure I could actually win this. Despite my doubts, I tried anyway. My mallet went to work with one hand while the other channeled my aether orb, launching columns of wasps skyward over and over, crashing into each other, stingers ripping apart allies. It wasn’t nearly enough. The sheer number of wasps was far more of a problem than I had considered. It wasn’t the queens. There were few enough of them that they had trouble even reaching me through the wall of their drones. Within minutes I was out of mana and had more venom coursing through my body than I did blood. I gasped for air on the ground as more stingers found their home, and the simulation ended in failure.

At least my head felt fine. There was no real backlash at all from adding the extra modifier. As I was contemplating if it mattered whether I could push it or not with how badly I had lost the last simulation, I remembered the armor. I had purchased it from Mel and it was just sitting there doing nothing in my storage. I had a new, much more interesting idea. It would have been great before I wasted the skill points, but there was no helping that now.

I exited the simulator menu and put on the flame retardant suit. Could I live in lava longer than the wasps could? I had no idea, but it seemed entirely likely. I removed the no armor and weapon modifiers, the weapon one only because the bonus wasn’t better than turning on more lava, and decided to risk both starving and poisoned. The chances of living more than a minute in this attempt were exceedingly low, so I doubted the effects had a chance to hurt me. I launched the new, much more firey iteration of Waspy Woods.

For the briefest second, everything was red. Through the goggles, I could make out a few wasps packed in around me, and then I was encased in a solidified stone. That was something that hadn’t occurred to me; the relative temperature difference between any of the beings here, myself included, would likely instantly form a lava cast around us. It should change the idea of the wasps dying faster than me, as the casts were still super heating, and no one was coming to their rescue. So now it was a waiting game of seeing who would cook the slowest.

I had no idea what the mutation was or where I had started, neither of them mattering much as the agonizing wait was unaffected. If this worked and my head didn’t hurt too badly, I could likely run it again, possibly even start decreasing my level or increasing theirs. I’d have to be very careful, though. It was entirely possible the queens could outlast me, especially if any of them started in their hive, away from the flames. I didn’t want to experience this kind of pain for nothing.

The feeling of your own body rapidly cooking itself while you hope it roasts the slowest is one of the least enjoyable experiences I could imagine. Toss in the fact that I was ravenously hungry, and the smell of my own cooking flesh triggered some feedback with the poison in me that caused me to start throwing up, sealed in a suit with nowhere for it to go. That wasn’t even the worst thing I could think of. That was that, in the very strong likelihood this worked, it was something I’d be forced to repeat, at least until I had enemies that had no issue with lava, which was probably sooner than I’d like to think about. Just as I felt my lungs start to scream with superheated air, the simulation came to an end with a new record experience total.

Monsters Defeated

Wicked Wasp x9,600

5 Experience

Wicked Wasp Queen x120

50 Experience

Experience Gained

54,000 Points

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Multipliers Applied

No Weapon

x1.1

I Stand Alone

x1.5

All At Once

x1.5

Nanosecond From Death

x5

5 or More Modifiers

x5

10 or More Modifiers

x10

Total Experience Gained

33,412,500 Points

Modifiers In Effect

Randomize Starting Locations

x1.5

x2 Opponents

x1.5

x3 Opponents

x2

x4 Opponents

x2.5

x5 Opponents

x3

x2 Opponent’s Level

x1.5

The Floor is Lava

x4

The Air is Lava

x8

The Walls are Lava

x2

Remove Sense: Auditory

x1.5

Random Mutation

x2

Poisoned

x2

Starving

x3

Lose 5 Levels Per Modifier

x14

Modified Total Experience Gained

27,280,638,000,000 points

My head hurt like hell, and the memories of that last simulation run were refusing to fade, making the pain just that much worse. Even with the pain, I was still able to see a couple of ways I could push it. I didn’t really need my vision for this, and they may as well all be queens, but that was it. These thoughts ran through my head as I tore the suit off my body, fighting the urge to vomit yet again.

I grabbed some of the leftover food and forced it down, crawling my way into the shower as I did so. I let the hot water wash over me as I devoured everything I was able to drag in here with me. Chip sat outside the stall watching me, looking like he found the whole thing hilarious. As the food settled and my head stopped swimming, the intensity of the pain was slowly going down. Fourteen modifiers were my current maximum, and I wasn’t willing to push that again anytime soon. Had the food not been waiting, I wasn’t even sure I’d have made it to the dining hall this time.

One eighty-two, all that, and I was still short another sixty-eight levels. I guess the skill points I gained made up for the ones I had wasted. The problem was since my mana orbs weren’t growing with the simulations coupled with the already impeded growth to the extra amount of them, this meant I had to just sit on the skill points in fear of wasting them before I hit a mana skill I really needed. While this wasn’t as true for attributes, it still seemed like a good idea to hold them as well and only apply them when situations deemed them necessary. That had the potential blowback as had happened when I initially assigned several, but I was confident the potential gain outweighed the risk.

What I really needed to do was to figure out some way to predict my mana usage. So far my guestimations were not accurate enough. Had I actually tried to use any spells in that last battle, it was fully possible that my headache would have been back in the realm of unconsciousness and strange dreams. I didn’t understand why so many of the mana costs seemed random when it came to my skills and spells. Was this on purpose to make it harder to quantify exactly how much a person was capable of or was there just a more complex formula to it all?

I wasn’t going to be sleeping any time soon with how I felt, and another simulation was out of the question. That meant it was the perfect time to get some more reading done. I wouldn’t have access to this archive much longer and I may as well see what I could learn about applied mana theory or whatever they called it, and if they hadn’t named it yet somehow, that was my new official term for it.

----------------------------------------

----------------------------------------

Unfortunately, not all species responded well to integration. Some lesser species succumbed to what was officially known as Eldritch Rejection Syndrome, or more colloquially, core madness. Their minds could not handle the vastness of the universe outside their own home world for whatever reason, be it strict religious or cultural beliefs that the System did not align with, causing whole civilizations to fall. Many mourn them, but if you were to ask me, I can't imagine what good they'd have done for the universe at large in the first place.

Freckeridge VonScralmp, Diaries of an Observer