[How is a skeleton moving?!]
{I don't know, just run!}
The skeleton runs at us again, clumsily tripping on loose rocks as it charges at us.
{Luckily, it doesn't seem like it's as fast as the wolves.}
[Hey, isn't there something weird about it?]
{What do you mean?}
[I only caught a glimpse, but I’m pretty sure I saw something attached to its spine.]
{Hmm… we can think about that later, let's get back to our hole for now.}
[Right.]
The skeleton continues chasing us, but it quickly falls behind us as we run as fast as we can.
[Hah, that thing’s pathetic. Maybe we should just turn back and deal with it right now.]
{I… don't disagree, actually. I'm interested in what you said about something being attached to its spine.}
[Hell yeah! Let's beat that thing up!]
{Still, be cautious.}
[Yeah yeah yeah, I get it. I won't die, I promise.]
Is this what they call a death flag?
Whatever… I'm more intrigued by the thing she told me about than I am concerned with our safety.
This is another world, so the thought of an undead monster isn't that strange, but…
Insight definitely called it a corpse, right?
If it was actually a skeleton monster, wouldn't insight call it that?
Maybe that's related to the thing Gloria saw?
There's only one way to answer all of these questions…
Get close to the skeleton again!
{Gloria, try to get a good look at its spine this time.}
[Gotcha.]
Gloria stops in her tracks, then swiftly turns around and runs back towards where we came from.
[There it is!]
The skeleton comes into view, lumbering slowly towards us.
Attack!
Until recently, I wanted to stay away from combat at all costs.
But now that I've seen our skills thanks to insight, I'm more confident.
‘Slash’ and ‘cut’. Those are definitely combat skills.
And we started off with them, along with digging! It seems we weren't as defenseless as I thought.
Gloria leaps forward, landing on the skeletons chest, knocking it backwards.
It stumbles back, but stops itself from falling.
But before it can fully steady itself, Gloria jumps at it again, this time knocking it to the ground.
[Gwahaha! Take that!]
{Before it gets up, look for the thing you saw on its spine!}
We move closer to the skeleton, and immediately I notice something attached to it.
Go, insight!
Hmmmm?
The thing attached to its back has a level?
Actually, on closer inspection, whatever is attached to it snakes around the skeleton’s whole body.
Is it some kind of parasite?
But it doesn't really look organic…
It looks like it's made of some kind of bronze-y metal, and usually metal isn't alive, as far as I know.
{Gloria, target the thing attached to its spine.}
[Why?]
{According to insight, the skeleton itself is just a corpse, but the thing attached to it has a level.}
[Gotcha.]
The skeleton struggles, trying to stand itself up. Before it can, Gloria dashes in and shoves it, rolling it onto its stomach, putting the object on its back in full view.
{Now! Kill it!}
Gloria swiftly brings our claws down on the object, shattering it.
Yep, seems like it's not an organic living thing.
Usually those don't break into tiny solid pieces.
Damn! That thing must be quite exp-dense!
Only level two, but it single handedly brought us up a level!
And there it is! Evolution!
Thank you, Mr skeleton. You were a valuable source of exp.
Well then, let's evolve right away!
* Plated cavern pest * Cavern beast> {What do you think, Gloria?} [I dunno. Cavern beast sounds cool, but it sounds like it'd be big, so it'd be harder to dig holes to hide in. Plus, I'm assuming a plated cavern pest has like a shell or something, which would have been nice during that earthquake.] {Ooooh! That makes sense, good observation!} [Hehe, I'm a genius, aren't I?] I don't know about that… {So, plated cavern pest?} [Sounds good to me.] Beginning evolution> Ah, we probably should have hid in a hole first. Whatever, it's probably fine… Yaaawn! Good morning~! Let's cut straight to the chase and find out what we look like! {Gloria, find some water!} While she does that, let's check out insight. H: 20/20 M: 10/10 E: 43/50> > Woah! We can see how much health, mana, and energy we have now! But why? Ooh, it seems some of our skills leveled up when we evolved, including insight. This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. We also have a new one, scale armor, which we probably got from becoming a plated cavern pest. [Found some water.] {Nice, let’s take a look at ourself!} Hmmm… Like before, there isn’t a huge difference between what we looked like before and what we look like now. Obviously, we have scales now rather than spines on our back, but apart from that we seem to be more or less the same. Same body shape, same size, same huge ears. I’m sure having these scales will be super helpful though. Like Gloria said, if we had had scales during that earthquake we probably would have taken a lot less hits. Now, with all that out of the way, back to the skeleton we encountered. According to insight, it was simply a ‘corpse’. However, there was something attached to its spine that insight called a ‘centurion’. I think it’s probably pretty safe to assume the centurion was in control of the skeleton, seeing as it stopped moving when we attacked the centurion. What I still don’t understand is what exactly the centurion was. I’m pretty sure I know what it isn’t. namely, a living thing, as it shattered into pieces when we ‘killed’ it, and no blood came out. But I also don’t know what it is. Is it some kind of magic tool? Maybe it is alive, just not an organic living thing. Like some sort of robot. I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but… Rorthal’s title was ‘engineered guardian’, right? I can’t help but think that if Rorthal was “engineered”, it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine that whoever engineered it could have also created whatever the centurion is. Maybe they also made the weird stone that taught us about the Stadiea. Speaking of that stone… [Fir, I wanna touch it.] We just came across another one. {I don’t know, what if it knocks us out like last time? It was already reckless enough of us to start evolving without digging a hole and hiding in it. We shouldn’t push our luck.} [Scaredy cat!] Ignoring me, Gloria walks up and touches the stone anyway. Sigh. Yeah, I kinda expected that. Just like last time, a blindingly bright light shoots out from the stone as we’re launched backwards. This time, we’re immediately slammed into the wall behind us. Luckily we have scales to help tank some of the damage, but it still hurts like hell. Ouch… ouch… I don’t know whether it’s a good thing or bad thing, but we didn’t get knocked out this time. On one hand, we don’t have to worry about something killing us in our sleep. On the other hand, now we have to be awake through the physical pain of being thrown into a wall and the mental pain of a ton of information being violently shoved into our head. Getting this information shoved into us seems to be leveling insight, so I guess it’s not too bad. Still hurts, though. I’m trying to parse the information from the stone, but it’s pretty difficult. Easier than last time, but it’s still gonna be hard. I might have to wait a little while for it to settle. It’s times like this when I really wish we could use healing magic of some sort… Speaking of, I wonder what our health’s like, since we can see it now. Insight! H: 13/20 M: 10/10 E: 38/50> Huh? Huuuuuh? thirteen out of twenty? Isn’t that really really bad? We lost seven whole HP from that impact! That’s like, uh… Thirty five percent of our total HP! Just how weak are we? We’re going to have to be even more cautious than we’ve been. If we can lose that much health from a single impact, which was weakened by our scales, we can’t risk getting hit at all! Also, I think I want to start working towards getting magic even faster. Healing magic would be a life saver in situations like this. Right now, we’re at level two in mana perception and level one in beginner’s magic understanding. I think the more important of the two for actually using magic would be magic understanding. Even with maxed out mana perception, you can’t really do anything if you don’t have any understanding of magic. Then again, even with maxed out magic understanding you probably wouldn’t be able to do anything without at least some mana perception. So, we need to level those skills basically. Mana perception will probably be relatively easy to level. I assume to level it, we just need to pay attention to the mana surrounding us. Easier said than done, though. With such a low level in the skill, It’s hard to perceive any mana at all. So, if mana perception is gonna be such a pain to level up, why did I say it was going to be relatively easy? Because magic understanding will be even more of a pain. Think about it, it’s called magic understanding. It’s definitely not the type of skill you can level up just by using. Or at least, it’ll be extremely slow to level up that way. If we were human, we’d probably have to go to school or be mentored by an experienced mage to level it. But we’re a monster! Monsters don’t have schools or teachers, so we’ll have to be our own teacher. But that’s like, seriously impossible isn’t it? How can you teach yourself something you don’t know? It’s like a caveman trying to teach himself about quantum mechanics! So, what are we supposed to do? Well, I had an idea earlier when I was thinking about who made Rorthal and the centurion. With so many man-made things in this cave, it has to be the home of some ancient civilization! Maybe, we can find some of their stuff and learn from it! I’m really not sure if that’s a good idea or not, but I don’t have any better ideas. Like, seriously, what am I supposed to do? If this was the world of some novels I’ve read before, I’d just open up the skill shop and buy some magic skills using skill points, but those don’t exist in this world as far as I know. Maybe I should just beg whoever reincarnated us to create a skill shop. Oh, god, please give us a skill shop! It’d make my life so much easier! Yeah, no way. Even if that would work, I don’t think I want to poke the bees next that is gods and stuff. A certain evil god named D comes to mind. Yikes. So yeah, I think I’d rather try to find any way possible before resorting to praying. I don’t know if gods exist in this world, and if they do, I don’t know if they’re trustworthy. I think I should just stop thinking about this entirely. No point worrying, for now at least. Let’s see what information that stone held… Hmm, hmm, I see. Hey, this is pretty useful! Turns out, that stone held info about those wolves we killed. Apparently, they’re called ‘Sorwolves’. [Hah! It calls them stupid.] {It says ‘low intelligence’.} [Close enough.] I was right about their fear ability! Hehe, I’m a genius! But just like the Stadiea’s stone, there’s some weird stuff in here. Overhunting, endangered, sanctuary… Yeah, I don’t get it. Ooh? Another title! I really wish we could check what our titles do… Wait, maybe we can? Insight leveled up twice earlier, maybe that’s enough to let us see our titles? Let’s try! > > > > increases XP gains for mind-related skills > > Increases mental clarity > > Allows for increased understanding and cooperation between different minds > > > > decreases kill-related requirements for skills and titles > > increases XP gains from consumption of anything not directly killed by user > > > > indirect kills caused by the user are counted as direct kills > > applies camouflage effect proportionate to user’s camouflage skill to traps > > > > Increases XP gains for knowledge related skills > > Locked > > Locked Woah! It worked! First things first, there are some titles I don’t remember getting. We must have started with them. ‘Tandem’ and ‘Herbivore’... Herbivore makes sense, I guess, and it has some pretty good effects. Tandem though… Could this be… one of those? Our unique ability! I thought it was weird when we didn’t have one earlier, it’s a staple of the reincarnation genre after all. Although… Isn’t it kinda lackluster? None of the three effects really stick out to me as amazing. Well, whatever. Back to herbivore, its effects are pretty nice. That second part is probably why we level up so easily just from eating moss. And that first part definitely helped us get the trapper skill. Speaking of the trapper skill, it’s so useful! Well, it would be, if we were still up in that forest. Down here, there’s not really enough dirt to create traps. Whatever, maybe it’ll be useful again someday. Moving on to the final and most recent title, discoverer of the dead. It has three effects, but two just say ‘Locked’, so it seems we can only use the first one for now. I’m not complaining though, because this effect seems awesome! More XP for knowledge related skills is exactly what we need! Insight is definitely a knowledge related skill, so we’ll level that even faster, but more importantly… Magic understanding! Magic understanding is obviously a knowledge related skill, so now our huge problem of needing a good way to level it up is a bit less of a huge problem. That doesn’t mean it’ll suddenly be easy, though… Now, it’ll be like a medieval peasant trying to teach themself quantum physics. Still a monumental, probably impossible task, but just a little less so. I’m definitely gonna have to start focusing on learning magic if I ever want to use it… [I’m hungry! Let’s go find food!] {Agreed.} I guess I should probably get started right away. Sigh. Who could have known learning magic would be so hard? I wonder how the Stadiea did it, they must be super-geniuses.