“Ah, I hate these damn birds! Leave me alone already!” Bug curses as she takes a step back to dodge a diving bird that is trying to peck at her head as it flies by.

Lashing out from under her cloak, Bug grows out her claws into sword like blades and reduces the bird to ribbons and a cloud of colorful feathers before it can even flap it wings to fly away. The strike is so quick that before everyone can even blink, her arm is already hidden away under her cloak again.

Max and Sam share a look, before the giant woman eventually breaks the quiet with a laugh. “Haha, your pretty fast, huh? I could hardly see that attack…”

Bug looks to her and shrugs as she steps over the corpse of the bird, kicking its head aside. “I focus a lot on my dexterity.”

Giving a quick look towards the corpse, Bug feels some regrets.

It’s a shame that I can’t store it, but I’m pretty sure they would freak out if I started making corpses disappear. Plus, Hannah keeps watching me when I put stuff away under my wings… The less they know, the better. At least I am still certain that they think my wings are just a cloak. Best to not let them learn too much…

“So, what kind of training do you do? Some kind of martial arts maybe?” Sam continues to ask.

“Hm? No, I don’t do training. I just kill stuff and get stronger.” Bug answers truthfully.

“Ah, you’re one of those types. You ever fight on any battlefields, maybe do some mercenary work?”

Bug looks over to Sam and tilts her head. Scouring through her limited knowledge of the outside world, Bug manages to come to a simple but reasonable answer.

“Do you honestly think that they would hire someone that looks like me? Normally, people point weapons at me before I can even introduce myself.”

“Ah… Haha, ya uh, good point. Sorry… So then how did you- “

“I just wander around and fight. Chance saw me to this Dungeon, and now I am here. That is all.” Bug says pointedly, her tone making it clear that she will not be answering anymore questions on this subject.

“So… I shouldn’t ask where you’re from?”

Bug turns and stares at Sam without saying a word. Walking up behind her, Max reaches up and smacks Sam in the back of the head.

“Stop digging. We’re working together now, and we don’t need you pissing her off. We got gold and our lives on the line here.” Max reprimands, but it feels a bit hollow.

Hmm, as long as I didn’t get mad, he probably would have let her keep asking questions. Not too hard to guess that they want to know more about me, and they clearly still don’t trust me… Not surprising.

Looking away from Sam, Bug casts her eyes over everyone, noticing as Jakub shifts a little and his hand quivers in a halted motion towards the handle of his dagger. Bug pretends not to have noticed and moves on.

Walking along in awkward silence for a while, Hannah eventually points out one of the flowers and directs everyone to avoid it. “That one is a snatcher. Give it some room and don’t step on the vines.”

As everyone moves to walk around the gigantic flower, Bug asks Hannah a question. “How do you tell them apart? The carnivorous ones?”

“Oh, uhm, if you look at the edges of the flower petals you can see some bulges where the teeth are stored while they wait for prey. Also, the ones with the vines will try to grab your legs if you step on them, but you can tell them apart by the purple leaves and thorns on the vines.”

“Hmm.”

Looking closely at the flower, it takes a second, but Bug does eventually find the bulges that Hannah mentioned. Trying to Identify the flower just gets the same result as last time, with it showing as being no different than the other flowers around it.

Maybe if I finally Level-up Identify, it might be able to tell them apart. The only problem is that I have had this skill for a while now, but it still hasn’t gone up in Level yet. No matter how much I use it… Such an annoying skill.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Bug nods as she stares warily at the flower. Taking a step away from the thing, she says. “Thank you, Hannah.” And then walks off. Further up ahead is their destination, the branch leading towards an opening in another tree, where the next set of stairs down should be located.

Hannah just blinks from the surprise, not expecting Bug to thank her for such simple knowledge. “Uh, you’re welcome…”

Hannah follows along a short distance behind Bug, the others sending a curious look back at the two stranglers. Bug just pretends to not notice that she has someone walking right behind her as she catches up with everyone else and returns to hanging out off to the side, away from everyone else.

Inside the tree, the interior is similar to, but yet also different in some ways to the other trees’ interiors.

Why the heck do they all look like this. You would think that they would all look the same on the inside or something… Wait, I’ll just ask the smart girl. Maybe she knows?

Turning around as everyone walks through the halls of the massive tree, Bug asks, “Hey Hannah. Why do the insides of the trees look like this?”

“Oh, uhhh… Nobody really knows for certain.”

“Oh…”

“But, uhm. A popular theory is that the trees grew over and subsumed some ancient civilization's buildings some millennia ago, and then remained in the shape of those buildings after the original material disappeared. So now, all that is left is the trees.”

“Huh… But then why is it underground?”

“Mmm, again, the leading theory is that the Dungeons are responsible for dragging those ancient cities underground, or that the Dungeons were born from these remains. This is supported by the fact that every recorded Dungeon so far has a layer similar to this one with these trees.”

“Really… Thanks.”

Ancient civilization huh… neat. I wonder what it was like back then. They must have really like building tall houses…

Still looking towards Hannah, which for some reason has the weird girl blushing again, Bug sees some plant bulbs on the wall twitching towards Hannah who isn’t looking where she is going. The head of one of the bulbs opens lightly, a needle with purple liquid coating it, sticking out of the opening.

Widening her eyes in surprise, Bug dashes forward and grabs Hannah by the arm, yanking her forward as she lets out a scream that irritates Bug’s sensitive ears. The others shout something as they turn around and draw their weapons, but Bug ignores them as she watches the plant bulbs spit out their needles towards her and Hannah.

Pulling Hannah behind her body as she screams, Bug draws her other three arms out and smacks aside as many of the flying needles as she can.

They fly forward in clusters, several fired per pod, and while Bug manages to swat aside most of them, plenty still manage to make their way through, pinging against the scales of her winged cloak or against her scaled arms. Some manage to stick to the palms of her hands, the purple fluids mixing with her blood.

“Hannah! Are you ok!? Bug what are you–!" Max screams as Sam is looking like she is about to jump towards Bug with her axe. But they stop as they see Hannah hiding behind Bug's little back, and Bug’s posture clearly looking defensive and not aimed towards them. They come to a grinding halt as they realize that Bug is not attacking them.

Looking to where Bug is glaring, Max finds the plant bulbs and calls out, “Poison dart traps. Sam, break it before it can fire again!”

“Right!”

Sam rushes forward and jumps up to the corner of the wall where the bulbs are growing. Swinging her battle-axe in midair, she buries it into the side of the wall and crushes the cluster of bulbs with one blow.

“Is Hannah ok!?” Max asks in a hurry.

Bug looks behind her and checks the girl over, but doesn’t find any of the needles.

“She’s fine.”

Hannah slowly pulls herself up and looks to where the bulbs were. “I’m sorry, it’s my job to be looking for traps like that, did anyone get-“

She stops as she looks down at Bug and finds her pulling needles out of her palms with her teeth before spitting them out with globs of blood.

“Bug! You got hit! Are you ok!? Max, we need one of the antidotes, quickly!”

Max hesitates before reaching for his bag, but Bug just say, “Don’t need it. I’m immune to the poison.”

“Ehh, immune?”

“Mhm, so don’t worry about it.” Bug answers casually before yanking out another bloody needle.

Finishing pulling the last needle out, Bug activate Become Weapon and pushes her palms to rapidly heal. Licking some of the blood off her hands, Bug show a palm to Hannah, it is completely unharmed and just a bit stained red.

Looking down at her notifications, Bug reads the pop-ups.

//Warning! You have been poisoned!

//Notice: Poison is well below your Level of Resistance. All damage has been negated.

//Notice: The poison has been neutralized successfully. You are no longer poisoned.

I guess that the plants here aren’t using Deadly Poisons, so my resistance is more than enough for this layer probably. Still, I should play it safe…

“Uh, uhm… Bug?”

“Hmm? What is it?” Bug asks as she looks up at Hannah. For some reason, she is blushing again as she looks down between them.

What is up with this weird human?

“Uhm… You’re still holding my arm…”

“Hmm?” Bug looks down and sees that she is indeed still holding her arm with one of her hands. Bug just blinks a couple of times at the sight of it, but eventually lets go and returns her arm beneath her wing cloak.

“Thank… Thanks for saving me. I should have been watching for traps instead of getting distracted like that… Thanks-“

Bug walks away and returns to her normal spot aside from the rest of the party, ignoring the weird girl.

“Don’t worry about it. Let’s just hurry to the stairs...”

The others move over to Hannah as they stow away their weapons and fret over her for a bit as Bug waits off to the side.

They were ready to attack me in order to protect her. But they were also smart enough to realize what was happening before they made a mistake. They’re definitely better than some of the other humans I’ve met so far…

Looking over the humans, Bug catches Hannah looking at her again, so she gives her a frown and looks away.

Weird human…