“Gazelug,” Moonwash said. A name pronounced as Ga-Zel-Lug.

She and Elfrafim did the identification ritual for my kill, before cutting off the eyes for my later use.

“Its slime must be so valuable, but so much of it is ruined.” Elfrafim prodded at the corpse, making a disgusted face at the gunk that stuck to her palms.

She wiped it on me.

“Hey!” I snapped, still coming down from the high of my most recent fight. The infuriating elf woman had already jumped up at the trees. She moved with such grace along the canopy that I could never hope to catch her.

“Haha! Sorry about that!” Her melodious tone was the opposite of apologetic. “The slime’s effects actually fade very quickly, which is why it can be replaced so constantly. I imagine the vulnerability was only exacerbated by being exposed to air.”

“Eh, I think it was very strong.” I sat down, and she quickly fell just beside me, seeming to not disturb the environment at all with any of her movements. “Which is why I who won is also very strong.”

Elfrafim chuckled. “Sure. That tracks.”

We went back home after a short break, wherein we took a very long break spent in idyllic bliss. We returned to The Endless Dive afterwards, because there were very vague and unreliable rumors about a monster that might have just the perfect things for my horns.

It was normally a lead that was too flimsy for me to follow through on, but we were just killing time until Luine got back, so it didn’t hurt to just go there to fish with the possibility of finding something nice.

I did also get back to grinding my hyperdemon gland, eager to just get those remaining levels out of the way. Elfrafim helped me with this, while Baston found his new calling as a fisherman. I approved.

~~~

Months passed without any sign of the new monster we were looking for, but I found success in a different area for my hyperdemon gland had finally reached the current level cap. I could’ve reached this point much sooner really, but I had to use the hyperdemon gland sparingly. I’d learned my lesson, and I didn’t want to have a repeat of the disaster that happened before.

Although that did end up with me frenching Moonwash, so maybe a repeat wouldn’t be so bad…

I am going to ignore that I ever had those thoughts. Damn menace mana, why are you making me think these things???

[Hyperdemon Gland has reached Level 20!]

There were other notable things that happened during this time, such as an adventurer coming by while I was indisposed, therefore my friends hid me under layers of harvested materials.

In other words, the smelly rotting corpses of predominantly fish. I seethed while buried, and then raged when freed.

Cloudbirds came by, giving us rain, until Moonwash thought to kill one of them in order to summon their protector… without telling any of us.

It wasn’t that big a problem, Elfrafim held it back until we were ready, and then Baston went into the blue forest and built a fortress of trees for himself, weathering the onslaught of water bullets and tying our enemy up, forcing its attention on him so it didn’t leave for easier targets.

I and Moonwash were on damage duty, as we launched projectiles from afar, uncaring of the heavy rain. My friend used the hellbreeze staff, meanwhile I went for menace bullets calibrated for maximum weakening. Astan too helped, but his wind blades still weren’t all that sharp, especially not at range. All our attacks were quite ineffective really, as there was little we could do against our target.

“Hey. Why don’t we just kill the cloudbirds?” I came up with that brilliant idea, to rid the monster of its source of ammunition. We refocused our fire and the cloudbirds began to drop, causing the boss monster to absolutely go crazy. We trusted Baston to hold it back, and I was able to hide behind the trees to dodge the remaining projectiles, switching to confusion bullets to mess up with the thing’s aim further.

I pulled Moonwash back to safety just as a hail of water dropped to where she once was. Just in time too, as the cursed staff had taken its toll on her despite the nature of its creation making its influence much softer on herself. Meanwhile, Astan had managed to absolutely dance around the onslaught from the air while still slaying the weaker cloudbirds. I felt proud for having managed to at least beat him once, while I was in a yet lesser evolved form.

The birds were massacred, and those that remained fled. The big monster was left without a source of easy water, unless it decided to go for the lake, but that’s why I was doing my best to confuse it!

That didn’t mean the elephant-hippo was defenseless, however, as its water magic could conjure water from thin air, but at a steeper cost. Its magic was pitted against Baston’s own, and Baston won the battle of endurance. Making plants grow faster was a fair bit more efficient than conjuring whole blobs of water.

All that was left of the monster then was its massive bulk, and that was when I went in with my eyes and aura. It barely had an effect, and even drew the monster’s attention to me, but that was precisely what I intended you fool!

The creature tripped trying to make its way toward me, it didn’t notice but vines and roots had wound through its legs. Baston slammed the butt of his staff into the ground and with it came a tide of plantlife that buried our opponent, piercing through its thick hide, crushing the mass of flesh, and eventually ending its life.

Baston panted and dropped to the ground, his mind fully spent.

“Good job team!” I cheered. I had no idea where that came from.

Moonwash took over and identified the corpse with a ritual, informing us finally of its true name.

“Nimboar.”

It… it wasn’t a boar.

~~~

“Run!”

We were just doing what was our usual routine by now, of gazing out into The Endless Dive as another peaceful day passed by. That was when Elfrafim screamed for us to run, and I could feel the palpable fear in her melodious voice.

I wasted no time in complying, and so did the rest of my friends. We made it into the treeline, but Elfrafim shouted at us to keep moving, and so we did.

I felt it then, a palpable pressure that all but forced me to look back. Stronger than Baston, Luine, my parents, or anyone in their party. Stronger than Elfrafim. Stronger than Grandpa. It was a being entirely out of the world as I perceived it.

The ominous creature broke through the surface of the water, and I could see its grotesque form from beyond the trees. A body of tentacles and tendrils of seaweed, interspersed with eyes but with no central body that I could perceive. It floated in the air, and great masses of water flowed around it ponderously. The world held its breath in an uncanny and unnatural way.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

I did not pause to take in any more of the scene as I pushed my legs to carry me forward as fast as they could. My menace magic activated, my demonic hooves fulfilled their purpose to charge, and I existed only to run away.

Idly, I noted how fear could still grip me so long as it wasn’t… artificial, a product of magical influences. That thing was worthy of being feared.

~~~

“Hey. Haell. The horizon is clear. You can stop now.” I heard a voice from the green and normal trees. The tone was a familiar timber of harmonious notes.

A brief thought crossed my mind about how it was a trick from the monster, and that I should kill her now, but I did not care to entertain the notion.

“Hey Elfrafim.” I finally came to a stop, my legs feeling like jelly. “You sure?”

“Of course I am.” She jumped down lightly and offered me a hand. I grabbed it and allowed her to lead the way. “I wouldn’t stop if I wasn’t sure.”

I just nodded in response, and we traversed the forest in silence, until we were back to where the trees were starting to turn blue.

Baston was there, and so was Moonwash.

“Hey guys!” I waved lazily, smiling. I allowed the joy of the reunion to wash over me, holding tighter onto Elfrafim’s palm. I was safe now, the danger had passed, I would one day be the danger of that scale.

“Oh good, you’re back,” Moonwash wore a smile, before immediately rounding on Elfrafim. “So, I have some questions…”

I listened to them bicker in peace as I took a seat by the campfire right next to Baston. Moonwash asked about what that monster was, but Elfrafim knew not the name. Only that it was over level 160, the next step from her own.

“What about its abilities?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never encountered it before.”

“How strong is it compared to you? You’re only one evolution below, right?”

“Yes, but the gap in power only grows between evolutions.”

“What about that wrongness that I felt? And that intimidation factor that made my instincts go wild?” I chimed in with my own questions, gratefully taking the snake skewer from Baston. Moonwash may not have noticed the same things, as her instincts weren’t nearly as developed as my own.

“Level 160 is some sort of qualitative change, I think. It comes with a host of benefits, which I only know of a few. I think one of those might be causing the sense of wrongness, but essentially once a being reaches that level, they may gain certain… abilities. I believe I’ve heard the ancient elves say that it had to do with broadening their horizons, the environments they could explore. I’ve seen them walk on literal air, while others yet breathed water.”

“What do you mean…?”

“It’s not supposed to be able to fly,” Moonwash was the one to answer.

“Yep.” Elfrafim smiled and took her own seat around the campfire.

“Oh.” I smiled back as Moonwash took her own seat beside me.

“Looks like I have something to look forward to,” I said smugly.

~~~

We went back home and then returned, only the find the clearing around The Endless Dive to have been severely widened. The trees surrounding it had been decimated, but new ones were already growing from the remains of the old, far faster than they should have in just a few meager days.

Moonwash, Elfrafim, and Baston examined the site, and concluded through their nerd magic that it was heavy impacts of water that did most of the damage, and that the absurd level 160 monster we faced–ran away from, really–was likely the cause of it.

“That was more or less my guess too, and I didn’t even have to look through shit to get there, which means I’m even smarter!”

It was true.

My friends just chuckled, in agreement I was sure. After a few cautious prods at the lake, we finally engaged in our typical setup and set up camp.

Gradually we began to relax. We chatted and ate whatever bounty we were able to catch, occasionally running away when a particularly dangerous creature surfaced, but nothing nearly as intimidating as the monster of seaweeds and tentacles. Elfrafim could take care of most of them, and she did just that against a level 80 shark, practically running across the water with the support of her wind magic, and whacking the animal with her staff whenever it drew too near. Sometimes she even baited it out, confidently allowing the megalodon’s jaws to draw close just so she could get a chance at a melee. I also found out that her wind blades were far sharper at close range. It was just like my fire magic, in that it dissipated as it traveled.

The monster retreated after only a short battle, bloodied and with its will broken. That Was when Elfrafim took out her bow, shooting into the water with such force that it hardly seemed to slow. The speed at which her projectiles flew was as if a bullet to a mundane human. I couldn’t follow it at all, it seemed to just teleport to its target.

Still, the monster somehow managed a successful retreat, if with heavy wounds that might eventually kill it anyway. Getting a clean kill was just too difficult from our position. The water was a barrier that worked both ways, preventing pursuit from either side.

~~~

It was when we were just about to leave again, that hope was rekindled and a large level 40 squid came to the surface with the barnacle we wanted attached. It was a wiggling thing, like a tiny horned fish latched onto the squid. We had some spotty knowledge saying that those things increased the potency of magic.

That theory was soon confirmed as waves upon waves of water crashed against us, and Baston hurriedly raised barriers of earth and plant against it.

Elfrafim pulled out a water wand, and dragged the thing closer to shore. Vines followed soon after to pull the squid closer to land. The animal shrieked, and its crystal-tipped tentacles thrashed. I intuited them as focuses, just before an erratic storm of pressurized water hit all around us like whips, whizzing through the air and leaving deep furrows in the ground. One managed to snake past Baston’s barriers, and I pushed Moonwash out of the way, taking the hit in her stead.

The water was heavy, my armor crumpled, and the internals of my stomach were scrambled. I knelt through the pain as blood poured out from a hole where I was hit, but it was far from the worst I’d suffered. The continuous heal from Moonwash had me standing back up in no time.

“Don’t die.”

I laughed weakly. “Of course not. That was weak and ineffectual in the grand scheme of things.”

We both enacted a plan after that, making a rushed but still well-made ritual just behind the barrier.

Baston and Elfrafim got the message, and soon the reluctant squid was dragged to shore by a final gust of wind. It was then tossed further away by Elfrafim, hefting it with her staff and a huge helping of wind. The monster sailed through the air, and landed right in the middle of our ritual. We activated it just before the creature reached the ground.

“Curse of Weakness!”

The blood began to evaporate, and the monster was caught in the middle of its effects. Its body became sluggish, the natural processes of its muscles and organs slowed down. It no longer had a ready source of water for its attacks here, and I allowed the stronger of us to weather its final onslaught and tire it out further before I went in for the kill.

Not of the squid, but of the barnacle fish attached to it.

My blade flashed forward, and I found the squid’s flesh to be tough. I poured more mana into my sword, which somehow made it more effective, along with strengthening the effects of the magic it could bring to bear. This time I went for the withering effect, in hopes that it would weaken the flesh enough for me to cut through faster.

I painstakingly carved through flesh, weathering and dodging the occasional tentacle for only a short while, until finally I was able to extract the parasite. The level 20 fish then tried to jump me instead, and it did succeed as I was stupid and not ready. Its teeth made short work of my armor, and then latched onto my arm. The monster extended out some sort of sharp proboscis into my flesh, and then I realized that the fish was a friend here to make me stronger. I should protect it.

Those thoughts were false. They faded quickly thanks to my demonic brain, and that the intrusion was nothing compared to what my mana constantly brought to bear.

I took a second to observe the creature, noting how its aim was to fuse itself with me, eventually becoming almost like just another limb. It did come with benefits, like chemicals to strengthen my muscles, and horns with which to enhance my magic. It sorely regretted the latter as I activated my magic during its attempts to incorporate itself into my bloodstream. The horned barnacle fish withered from the inside as I performed a ritual cast with the blood it foolishly sought to drink and incorporate into itself.