With my eyes as wide as they would go I crept inwards inside the tunnel, trying to get back to where I died to see if my cr was still there. I had a bad feeling that something was going to happen at any moment and the game didn’t let me down.

-Phase One is complete. All Fomys have returned from foraging for slumber. Prepare for Phase two: The Invasion-

“Wait what? No no no, I don’t have any cr to use!” I whispered into the darkness as I slunk as quickly as I dared around the curved tunnel. I could hear something happening off in the distance, sounds of banging and people shouting. My Blidda ears were so much more sensitive and it allowed me to guess the direction and distance of sound. It was almost as if I had echolocation. The shouting sounded like players trying to hurry something along. The more I listened the more their voices started to fill with the sounds of panic. The banging and pounding noises seemed to intensify until all of a sudden it was all calm. What had just happened? Who was going to invade and why? The natives? Something to do with the Fomys going into a state of slumber?

Briefly, I considered using the Fomys Pheromone key but I didn’t know which way to use it. Should I attract them to me or repel them? The key said nothing about changing their hostility to me if I attracted them so I was mostly thinking that I would use it to repel. The problem was… even with my amazing hearing, the tunnels around me seemed to have all gone still. Deathly still.

I hurried up my movement, keeping my eyes upwards to see if I could spy the little scoop in the crevice of the ceiling. I had already passed by the two paths that diverged to different levels and based on my map… I should be just about where I had died. The smell came to me first as I rounded the bend. I could smell the coppery tang of where I had bled out and a sweet smell of something else. The air seemed to be fluctuating within the tunnels, pulling the smell away from my sensitive nose before rushing it back into my face.

Something was moving in the tunnels.

Lots of things… enough to disrupt the flow of air to the degree that it wasn’t circulating inside the curved tunnels. The air was shuddering.

I glanced around quickly in the darkness and studied the ground. The largest stain was where I died so that meant that the mote that had rolled out of the ground should be…. here. I got down on my hands and knees and ran my fingers over the dim edge of the cave floor, coming up empty.

The third mote was gone, either found by a player or swallowed by the Fomys.

Next, I got up and stood on my toes, reaching up as high as I could go with my shorter frame to run my hand along the wall near the ceiling. Ah, here it was, the place that I had cut out. I hissed when I touched something sharp that cut my fingertip, causing me to yank my hand back.

-20,000 unbound cr detected. Would you like to claim it?-

Only 20k? What happened to my other 10k? I wondered as I claimed them and willed the mesh cage to fly out and down to me while I licked off my finger. Blidda didn’t seem to bleed as I expected. I stared at my finger as little fibers stretched out from each side to intertwine with the fibers on the other side of the cut. They grabbed each other and pulled the separation back together, creating perfect skin again. Ok, that was interesting.

I sighed when I saw the two little glowing motes still inside the cage.

Just as I had planned earlier I stuck one of the motes inside my mouth and back behind one of my side teeth to keep it safe. The other mote I held in my fist while I directed my cr to hover in front of me.

-Phase two beginning in 5, 4,...-

I had a bad feeling that I needed to hide or to get to a shelter as fast as possible.

-3, 2, 1. Invasion Phase beginning. Survive as long as you can.-

I could hear hoots and guttural sounds coming from several directions at once, mostly from the way that I had just come so I set off at a quick and silent sprint to get away from the approaching invaders. Was it the natives? I had so many questions.

~You are still alive? Ha! Not for long. You should have given me ALL of the motes and not just left a crumb for my scouts to find. C the Champion~

That person again? I wasn’t going to bother replying, I just kept running until I came to another ramp up or down. The invasion sounds were coming from every direction except in the direction of the upwards path. That path was silent with the only motion being the wind moving in and out, like something breathing.

Down… I heard players start to shout and scream, saying that “They were here!” and the sounds of howls and lots of movement. I entered the upwards path, racing up the rigid slope as silently as I could. I had started to hear rustling coming from both directions along the tunnel that I had been on… the invaders were breathing heavily and occasionally muttering to each other in low tones. My ears were so sensitive that I could even hear the soft clatter of their spears as they loped through the darkness.

The path upwards was strange. I began to make out textures on the inside walls of the mound. It appeared that there was something infecting or growing on the walls. Patches of fibers waved at me as I walked past. Many, if not most, of the patches that I saw, had swipes taken out of the centers of each of them. Perhaps it was the Fomys tasting the walls? Or trying to clean them? Who knew?

I checked the player count out of curiosity and literally saw the count drop by nearly fifty players in one instant. What was happening out there? We were down to 4311 in just moments before the count seemed to pause.

I don’t know what stressed me out the most, the rate at which the players could be killed, or the fact that I could hear something else coming from the path behind me. It smelled like something was chuffing or sniffing. Did I smell? Yes, yes, I did. All this running had begun to make my alien body smell like burnt coffee.

I nearly stumbled when I felt the air shift around me, I had rushed into a dark and very open cavern. My right foot splashed, or rather splooshed into something, causing me to freeze in place. It was very hard to see inside this space, I had to constantly weave my head back and forth to pick up any definition of the surrounding space. I wondered where I was getting even this low light from and discovered that it was shining between the gaps in my long fingers. The small blue mote was glowing just enough to let me pick up some lines and curves in the space around me. I opened my hand and held up the mote between my fingers, casting the barely visible light into the space around me. I was standing in a vast pool of something… let's just say it was muck because it did not smell like anything bad.

I took another slow step and found that I was on a ramp down into the sludge. This suited me just fine because I knew that I had to get my smell contained before the hunter behind me down the tunnel reached this cavern. I tried to swing the little mote around as much as I could to get an image of the room before I lowered myself too far. There appeared to be mounds ten feet from me that I could possibly hide behind if the invaders came in after me. The muck that I was in was perfectly still, something that gave me hope that there wasn’t anything else residing inside it with me. I placed the mote inside my mouth along with the other one, freeing up my hand as the liquid reached my neck. The sounds of the creature coming up the tunnel were almost upon me as I ducked my head under the sludge to coat every surface of my body. I came back up and opened my eyes, turning in place and edging along the ridge with my feet to keep at a height that I could stand at with my nose just above the surface. It was so dark without the use of my mote inside this cavern. I couldn’t feel a heart beating inside my chest but that didn’t matter, I was shivering in fear. I watched the spot that I imagined the opening to the tunnel to be, expecting a torch or something to appear at any moment. Nothing appeared so I simply waited.

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Why did I keep forgetting about my cr and what an amazing weapon it was? What the heck was wrong with me? I had even submerged my ears so I was, in effect, completely blind. I was just letting my fears play this game for me, it was time to do something different and to just play it like it was a video game and a challenge to be smashed. Also, I had come in here to learn how to be creative with my cr, not to get run roughshod by simulated aliens.

I shifted my weight, pulling my two strands of cr in front of me like foot-long blades of invisible death, and slowly began to climb up and out of the sludge. I could personally see the representations of the cr, since I owned them, but they didn’t give off any light in reality. Blidda were very unsuited to swimming due to their slender arms and heavy bodyweight so I needed to ascend completely in control and not lose my three-toed footing.

And… I did just that.

I slipped on something that moved out from under my right foot, it felt like a snot wad. I didn’t have time to feel disgusted because the next thing I knew I had fallen backward. I did, however, have the presence of mind to inhale as deeply as I could while my head was still above the surface. I fell backward and might have made a little splash in the muck, I couldn’t tell however because my ears were still full of the stuff and I was sinking deeper into the thick filthy soup.

Did I panic and start to imagine sharks rising up from the deep blackness to chomp on me? Maybe just a little. I, however, was done with playing this from a position of fear. I would be stronger than this.

All of my focus was on getting through any challenge put before me. This heavy body that sank easily was just a minor setback. I ignored the rising pressure of the sludge around me and the grinding feeling on my back as it landed on a very rough surface at the bottom of the mire. Instead, I focused all my mind on my cr. I flattened both of the strands out into little coins again, bringing them down to my outstretched fingers.

I made little ridges in the surface of the coins, giving me something to grip onto before closing my fingers on the top edge of the coin, leaving a small surface to use cr propulsion with. I forced the little coins to begin to move upwards, pulling me back towards the surface. At least I hoped it was in the direction that I had fallen from, it was getting a little too late to care when I realized that Blidda were terrible at holding their breath. I kicked off the bottom with my feet, feeling something sharp tear a little at my skin when I did. It didn’t matter though, this wasn’t a real body, it was just a machine for me to use in this game.

I was sure to keep the speed of the coins slow enough not to shred my fingers as they pulled me back up to the ledge where I could stand again. My head broke the surface and I made my body wait while I let the coins pull me even further up out of the sludge, freeing my ears so that I could shake them out, before letting my nose slits open to let me breathe again. I needed to hear my enemy before I let them hear me gasp for air.

Once my chest had broken the surface of the muck I let go of the coins, flattening them into blades rapidly and swinging them in crisscrossing patterns as I crawled out of the muck on my hands and knees. I could hear a huffing noise somewhere in the darkness in front of me so I opened my mouth.

I think I startled the alien invader by beaming blue light at him between my teeth. It didn’t matter though because his body was busy falling apart the next moment when I directed my cr to slash his torso apart.

Yes, cr was an incredible weapon.

I pulled myself fully out from the mire and crawled forward, something was wrong with my feet and I needed to see why they weren’t responding as they should. I realized the malaise was spreading up my legs when I stumbled forward when I couldn’t feel my knees touch the ground. I made a command decision and spat one of the stones out, squeezing it before the problem became worse while I looked down at my legs in the dim light. The tiny cut I had felt when I kicked off of the bottom had infected me with something, probably a little of the Fomys poison saliva. It had slowly been working it's sneaky way up inside my legs. If I hadn’t had the cr coins to pull me out I would probably have drowned as my legs stopped working halfway up.

The moment I squeezed the Epic Life Regen mote I felt a rush flow through my body as it removed any poison or damage I had experienced. My legs came back to life and I stood up, sweeping my head from side to side to light up the area around me.

Yes, it felt like a waste to use it in such a manner. - I thought as the stone’s internal light dimmed away inside my hand. But it was better to use it and live then die and have to fight my way back here without any cr again. I fished the other mote to the front of my mouth and held it between my teeth. I would use it as a flashlight from now on, spreading my lips apart when I needed to see anything before hiding the light away again.

I looked down at the four pieces of the invader before reaching down and grabbed at his weapon still gripped in his hand. It was an object that most resembled a plant sword. It was made out of metallic edged leaves and bound together using a wire or vine. The weapon dissolved like the spear had before, leaving me with another 10k of cr in my hand.

Was that how this worked? I wondered as I perked my ears up to any new sound as I moved over the alien body, reaching to pick at the weapons strapped to his back. Sure enough, every spear he had gave me 10k of cr. I came away from him with a total of 40k more cr than I had before. I didn’t get an achievement or anything which made me wonder how many more I would have to “defend against” in order to level.

-Experience percentage till next level: 50%-

Hmm… that was interesting. Did it double every time I killed one of them? I guess I would find out. I beamed a flash of dim light into the distance of the mire, looking for those mounds again that I had spotted before. I had something that I wanted to try. I turned on the Repel feature of my Fomys Pheromone key and got the response that I had expected.

The entire cavern came alive. I felt the sludge ripple against my feet, a ripple that quickly became a surge as an unknown amount of Fomys woke up from the disagreeable scent that my body was putting out and began to seek a way to get away from it. The muck was rocking so much that it was already flowing down the tunnel path behind me. Something big splatted into the surface of the muck not 30 feet from me. Then again and again as the Fomys that had been sleeping along the ceiling fell and began moving to get away from me. Just how many were there?

My ears started to pick up screams and hoots and shouts coming from the distance and through the tunnels connected to this huge cavern. I had just upset the scheduled event and forced the hostile Fomys back into action. I stood there awestruck as notifications started to pop up in my vision. What had I just done?

-Level 3 gained-

-Level 4 gained-

-Level 5 gained-

…

-Level 54 gained-

-Global Announcement! Congratulations! Through inventive use of game mechanics, Master Kevin has sprung past all players on the leaderboard! With one move Kevin successfully killed 1,132 Haoolla native invaders and activated the next Phase of the game. Welcome to Phase 3: Harvesting the Fomys spawning cycle. Special note: Phase 3 hasn’t been achieved in generations. Will you make it to Phase 4 and face Huli the Tela killer?-

-Phase 3 ends once 1% of all spawned Fomys remain. Get out there and harvest those Fomys!-

-You are now level 54! The maximum possible value of 100% was reached and exceeded. Compensation of excess % lost will be awarded in the form of cr armor and or ability keys. Please choose one item from this list.-

Armor:

Head

Chest

Legs

Arms

Available Ability keys:

Prime Speed Control key

All Sight key

All Sound key

All Smell key

All Tremor key

Experimental Cr Mind Link key

Wait a second…

“Ok. What gives System?” I asked the air around me.

-How did you know?- Came the reply a few moments later.