In NotAFailure’s dreams.

Snow was falling slowly on the small wooden house. In the wooden house was a family of three. A mother and two sons.

The eldest son had black hair and was burly and strong. His green eyes emanated a powerful and keen aura.

The younger son had dark brown hair and light blue eyes. He looked fragile and weak. His face was only average in comparison with his handsome brother. He looked at the dying figure of his mother and silently wept.

As their mother died the two boys that didn’t even have 20 years old decided to go out and find work.

A few years later the snow didn’t stop, it only grew more and more fierce. The eldest brother managed to find a stable job and established a family. He had a beautiful wife and two adorable children.

As for the younger brother, he tried and tried, he didn’t manage to become a soldier when he wanted to so he gave up.

He didn’t manage to become a researcher, so he gave up.

He tried to get a job for years. He still lived in the wooden house where he and his brother lived in since they were kids.

One day the younger brother decided to just live peacefully in the wooden house, his brother gave him food and water and he lived peacefully.

Not long after a silhouette could be seen behind the younger brother. The person behind the younger brother was NotAFailure. He looked at the figure of the lone younger brother and stared at him for hours.

For some reason he didn’t know why he was here. He just followed the younger brother everywhere. He didn’t even notice that the snow was starting to fall even more quickly.

He looked at the brother for who knows long. Maybe weeks have passed, maybe years…

“Why do I feel that he resembles me so much?” NotAFailure asked himself. He then noticed the snow outside. He knew that the younger brother wasn’t him, but for some reason he just felt that he had some connection with him.

“Who are you?” He asked the younger brother. The younger brother didn’t hear him though. NotAFailure tried and tried but couldn’t reach out to the younger brother.

NotAFailure followed the younger brother for a while and then stopped after following him for a few hours. He decided to see where he is.

He somehow flew out and passed through the walls of the house. He noticed then that he wasn’t real in this world. He looked at the world covered in snow and was shocked!

How can these people live in this snow? How long has the snow been falling? This isn’t normal.

He thought.

He then looked down at the wooden house and saw that the house was chained down with a white crystal chain.

“What’s this?” He asked himself and touched the chain.

“So cold!” Immediately after he touched the chain he felt a sharp and cold pain appear in his hands.

He let go of the chains and waited until the pain went away. He was surprised by the fact that he could touch the chains though, he thought that he could pass through everything but the chains didn’t let him go through them.

“Huh? Why do I feel sleepy? Ah right! I was sleeping! Am I still sleeping? Is this a dream? What are those chains?” He finally found out what he was doing and before he could get a hold of the chains once more he felt a strong suction power moving him away from the chains and from this world.

[NotAFailure’s POV]

Huh? Where am I now? Wasn’t I in the city? No, I’m in the dungeon, the city was a dream. What was that dream? It felt real and imaginary at the same time.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Let’s get up first though…Wait what? Why am I so high up? Oh,fuck I will die!

God help me please! I prayed and closed my eyes.

?

Am I dead? I didn’t feel any pain though… why?

I opened my eyes and saw that I was alright and that there was a light blue screen flashing in front of me. I looked at the screen once and was shocked!

[Demonic crystal impurities were eradicated, demonic crystal energy absorbed, gained 500% experience!] [You leveled up!] [You leveled up!] [You leveled up!] [You leveled up!] [You leveled up!]

[Race has mutated due to consumption of demonic crystals!] [Race changed from [Lesser Rat] to [Lesser Aquafang Rat (variation)]]

[Aquafang Rat – A mutated variation of the Lesser Rat species, due to the high consumption of demonic crystals and other demons you have initiated a mutation in your species. The prerequisites for evolving into this race are as following: must have touched the basics of a law based with water, must have a maxed out fang type attack.]

[Aqua Fang (Frost Variation),[Passive skill] – Your fang attacks have a chance of freezing the target. 10% chance.]

A new skill! A new race! I evolved, well, mutated to be precise.

It seems that it’s a good thing that I ate the demonic crystals. But…they had impurities? How was I supposed to know that?

The skill is all good and nice but why am I so strong now? It says that I’m a variation but…this is too strong for me to only be a lesser demon. I still have no idea what the rankings of demons are but I must be at least as strong as the black snake from that battle with the bramble plant.

Well…now that I have this new strength it seems that I need to test it out! Let me see if there are some strong demons around. I’m looking for demons at twice as strong as the [Blood Mole] or a huge group of demons that have the same strength as those moles.

I used [Rat Demon Sense] and found 2 demons with pretty good power. One of them was at least 2 and a half times stronger than the [Blood Mole]! I decided that that one will be my first kill in this new form!

Let’s go! I ran towards the place the demon was located and during that time I tried to get a feeling on how to control this new body.

…

Found it! It is a bright crimson snake. The scales look really thin and weak just like its body but the sword like eyes remind me of the lizard from earlier. I carefully planned out a surprise attack and only set out in motion after I managed to get a hang of controlling the new body.

I must say though, the speed of the Aquafang rat is pretty good, the defense on the other hand is not so good. I silently bit into the body of the crimson snake and tried to rip it in pieces. It was harder than it looked like so I backed down and hid.

The snake was startled and it looked for the attacker, namely me.

I hid and tried to attack the snake once more with a surprise attack but it seems that my luck isn’t that good and I was found. I dodged the first attack but due to not being full accustomed to this new body I accidentally slammed my whole body into the snake. The snake started to surround me and left no opening for me to run away.

I wasn’t worried though. I could still jump out! At least I thought so. The snake was smart enough to form a strategy against me.If I tried to jump out the snake would start to become quicker and would try to bite me as fast as it could and oh boy, was it fast.

I then formed a new plan to counter the snake’s plan.

The plan goes like this. I will wait for the snake to encircle me completely and attack it only after it doesn’t have enough space to make quick movements.

The plan worked fantastically! The snake didn’t expect this from me and I managed to hurt it pretty badly, but I was hurt as well. My abdomen area was slashed by the snake’s tail.

After escaping the snake’s range I ran back in and tried to use [Sharp Fangs] but then I realized that it is still undergoing the evolution process of some kind so I used [Sonic Boom] and aimed at the head of the snake.

After making the snake dizzy and shredding the scales on its head a bit I bit into the snake and didn’t let go. I only waited for the snake to die a slow and painful death.

I was biting into the snake until I heard a *ding* and then I let go.

[Crimson-Jade Snake lv.17 was slain! 20% experience gained!] [Level up!]

I leveled up? How?

I looked at my status screen for a second.

[Name: NotAFailure][Level 13 2%/100%][Race: Lesser Aquafang Rat][Title: Rat of Mischief(main),Dungeon Explorer(secondary)]

I am already level 13? I remember being at Level 7 with 82%, I still don’t get how experience works but it should be like this:

100% = 1 level, right?

But that is only if the experience is static. Isn’t there a different experience cap each level? Or what I’m getting is static experience? If I’m getting static experience then that’s great! I don’t need different amounts of experience for each level.

But I do get smaller amounts of experience when I kill lower leveled demons so I think that’s the problem. I mean, that’s how it works.

That means that I all together got 520% static experience from the mutation. Why? I don’t care. As long as I am getting stronger.

But it’s still weird seeing myself this powerful. I need to get used to this new body quickly, good thing that it’s a rat type and nothing different.

Let’s hunt the other demon quickly. This snake doesn’t have a demonic crystal but even if it had one I wouldn’t eat it. I am quite wary of those impurities ever since I saw the message on the screens.

…

After a bit of travelling I took a few detours and killed the lower ranked demons to test something. It seems that I was right. The demons that are of lower rank and level than me really to give a pitiful amount of experience. I only got 2% when I killed a [Blood Mole], they used to give me around 12% experience before.

I killed 3 [Blood Mole]s and got 6% experience in total.

After I found the other demon that has the same power as the [Crimson-Jade Snake], I thought that the snake would be twice as powerful as a [Blood Mole] but due to its intelligence I was having a hard time.

Luckily the second demon was just strong and didn’t have intelligence. I killed it easily and continued on with my exploration of the first stage.

I do find something weird though. How do I enter the second stage? I tried digging under the walls but it seems that there is a barrier there so my only chance of leaving this place is ending this damn labyrinth. I still can’t find the way out of the labyrinth though.

It seems that I only need to continue going there where there are stronger demons. My guess is that the strongest demons are gathered at the center of the labyrinth.