My chest heaved as I struggled to catch my breath, each inhalation a desperate attempt to fill my empty lungs with air. My vision blurred and my mind was clouded, unable to think straight. With each heartbeat, blood and mana rushed through my body reminding me that I was fine despite how shitty I felt.

Closing my eyes, I allowed myself a moment of rest as the moss embraced my aching body. The cold touch felt soothing on my burning muscles and I felt my body slowly cool down, the heat of battle vanishing for good.

Eventually, my breathing slowed and a sense of calm settled over me, clearing away the fog in my head. Just in case, I sent a small wave of Regeneration through my body, but my body was not damaged beyond some overstrained muscles.

When blood started to wet my feet, I took it as a sign to force myself up again. More blood on my body would not make much of a difference at this point, but I still preferred not to have more blood paint my body.

Unable to stand up yet, I inched backward to avoid the blue liquid. In the process, my eyes inevitably fell onto the corpse, the origin of the blood. In my… small fit… I had not really paid much attention to it, but I did quite the number on its head. If what remained could still be called as such.

Funnily enough, after reining in my emotions, I could not really understand my own actions or emotional reasoning behind my outburst. Well, I did, but it was the first time someone tried to touch my crotch like this and it was a surprisingly unpleasant thought. Unpleasant enough to evoke an anger within me that I until now could only direct at Malik and the Wen.

It also reinforced my believe that I definitely needed some clothes in the future.

As for the result of this fit of anger? It was a surprise, that’s for sure. I physically overpowered the drone and gave it no chance to retaliate, while spending little to no mana. It died before a fight could break out and left me only with physical exhaustion after draining all of my stamina.

It was a feat that I did not believe possible with my current stats.

Talking about stats, I leveled up. Once for my species and twice for my class. This increased my stats and granted me three Free Stat Points to distribute. Since my stamina still had to recover, there was no better time to allocate them then now. The only question was where to put them.

Vitality: 11

Strength: 4

Agility: 8

Dexterity: 6

Intelligence: 17

Willpower: 22

Perception: 24

Faith: 0

Free Stat Points: 3

Even if the changes were not obvious yet, seeing the numbers go up kind of felt… accomplishing. As if my actions had meaning, as they brought me closer to where I wanted to be. Closer to who I wanted to kill. But, it also made very clear that I still had a long way to go.

Considering Malik likely also had a class, I could only imagine how high his stats were. And compared to those assumed numbers, I was just taking the first step of a hundred. This was not discouraging though. After all, to take a hundred steps, one would have to take the first.

And while I understood that, there was still this slight worry that my time was limited—or rather, Malik’s time was limited.

Revenge plans and motivational speeches aside, I had still three points to allocate. My first point went into Strength. Even if it was not very important to my skills, it was still a very essential and useful stat.

The next went into Perception, just because the four was now a five and I figured having better perception would help me in these tunnels. Lastly, I put the third point into Intelligence. It was one of my most important stats and I would prefer it to catch up with Willpower and Perception soon without hampering the other two’s growth.

By the time my stat points were allocated, my stamina was also almost completely recovered. It was one of the perks of having so little stamina. It drained in the blink of an eye, but it was also back to max just as fast.

After getting to my feet, I walked over to the dead drone and, with my regained strength and a lot of effort, rolled it over onto its back. A decision I regretted almost instantly. The back was already horrible to look at, from this side its head looked just vile. Minced meat was the only thing I could vaguely compare it to.

The quicker I was done with this the better, so I grabbed the pincer that was still stuck in the mess that was once a head and pulled it out. Unfortunately, only half of it was still there—the other half broke off. I could have dug the other one out, too, but it would be useless anyway, so I discarded the broken pincer.

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There was no need to even think about it, after all, I had already obtained two new ones. From all parts that were connected to its head, they had definitely taken the least damage and were ripe for the taking.

With telekinetic help, I ripped one of them out and let my new weapon float over my palm. As I watched it spin, I remembered that the plates of this drone had blocked the other pincer. That caught me off guard and almost got me killed, so I had to make ascertain some things.

Flipping the corpse once more—although calling it ‘flipping’ was quite ambiguous—I tried to cut the plate with the new pincer only to find out that it actually cut into the plate and the flesh it was protecting.

I thought that maybe this particular drone just had a harder exoskeleton than the other drone before, but this proved me wrong. Then I recalled that the pincer which broke just now was from a level 8 drone, while this one was from a level 13 one. And the level 13 pincer cut through the level 13 drone’s plate, while the level 8 one did not.

So were body parts of lower-leveled Exapoda ineffective against higher-leveled ones? That was the only reasonable explanation. Given how stats and levels seemed to work, it would technically make sense that body parts of a level 8 were weaker than that of a level 13.

This complicated things a bit, although not to a degree where I would be unable to fight anything above level 13 now. It just meant that I had to be careful from level 14 and above. It also was just the back plates that could completely null my attacks, unprotected places, like the underside, mouth area or the gaps between plates would still inflict damage.

With this confirmation, there was nothing else holding me here, so I grabbed the pincer and tore it out of the drone’s back before continuing onward.

On my way, there was another thing I wanted to test now that I had some time. My stats had increased and while physically there were no changes, I still hadn’t checked how it affected my Mana Affinity skill. While holding the pincer in my left, I pushed mana into my right one and emitted it in the palm of my hand. The streaks of mana wove together and formed a single orb. The orb contained twenty or so mana and was the limit of what I could hold previously, but I could already tell that this wasn’t the case anymore. Carefully, I added more and more mana to the orb and it kept growing. When it doubled in size, I eventually felt that I was reaching my limit and stopped the input.

The orb was about the size of my head and I couldn’t help but whistle. My previous orbs already did quite some damage, so naturally I was curious how much havoc this one could wreak, but that was something I would test later. When I could spend mana without worrying that it would cause my death.

But there was even more change to my Unique skill. It was the way my mana moved and felt. The change was very faint, but definitely there. It felt smoother, as if my mana had become more me. It was hard to explain, honestly, but manipulating mana just felt a tiny bit more natural. As for the control outside my body, it felt like the link between my mana grew stronger, more durable, which proved right as I discovered that I could now control mana in a slightly bigger radius around me.

Since that was the case, I wanted to experiment a little. I deconstructed the orb back into multiple streaks of mana that merged together and moved like a fluid. It looked like I was controlling golden water, albeit the water had neither mass nor wetness.

Eventually, I reabsorbed the mana back into my hand where it integrated back into my mana pool. I was satisfied with the improvements, even if they were minuscule, but I also felt that there was still massive room for growth.

This should have been the end of my experiment, but walking by itself was quite boring and soon another streak of mana twirled around my hand and fingers as I tried to make small, fine movements with it. It was just something to keep myself busy, but it actually felt like training my mana control so there was no reason not to do it.

This peaceful atmosphere was shattered not long after that, when I heard familiar noises in the distance.

The mana in my hand went back into my body and I assumed a more battle ready stance while moving closer to the sound. Looking at my mana one last time, I confirmed that I had almost nine hundred mana. This eased some of the sudden tension that engulfed me.

Not so much longer after hearing it for the first time, the origin of the sound came into sight. The moment it did, my body was engulfed in shadows as I activated my skill and at the same time, identified my opponent.

[Exapoda Drone - Lvl. 13]

I held back a relieved sigh. Even if I said that I could take on drones above level 13, that did not mean I actually wanted to. And thanks to my tests, I new that my pincer could cut it, so that was just about the perfect match.

Like the last one, this drone seemed immersed in eating and with Shadow Cloak on, it would have no idea that I was here. It was kinda strange that there were these individual drones several hundred feet apart from each other, casually eating moss, but I wouldn’t complain about it. I just hoped I wasn’t missing something important.

I shook my head and made the unnecessary thoughts go away for now. There was a fight ahead, worries were for afterwards.

Since I could freely chose where to strike, I decided to go for the head. Nailing them to the ground worked good when they rushed at me and I had no proper time to aim, but now I had complete freedom of when and where to strike. Naturally, I would go for the most vulnerable place.

I circled the drone until I stood face to face with it and let the pincer float out of my palm. Carefully maneuvering it around the antennae, I placed it right above its head. Swinging my arm down, the pincer crashed down and bore right into the top of the drone’s head, penetrating it with ease.

Blood splattered and before it could even finish its pained scream, the body crumbled to the ground.

You have slain [Exapoda Drone | Lvl. 13]. Experience will be awarded. Bonus Experience for

[Novice Witch] has leveled up! Stat points have been allocated! 1 Free Stat Point acquired!

[Novice Witch] is now Level 5.

Victorious, I retrieved my pincer, which thankfully remained undamaged, so there was no need to waste any more time around here and just as quick as it died, I left the drone behind.

The entire encounter was anticlimactic and less dangerous than I expected, but I was not enough of a fool to take things easy. Veraxia warned me that Shadow Cloak had limitations, so I should not get too used to having the advantage by striking out of hiding.

However, even if I did not delude myself into believing that I was strong, I took pride in the fact that I could take on enemies on my own without almost dying or almost losing a foot to acid. It was just proof again that I was beginning to turn the tables on life.

And with that, my exploration continued, yet another drone’s screeching already in my ears.

Guess the pace will pick up from here on out.