As Max and Jakub are finishing up on bullshitting about stories they had heard. Sam finishes checking over her gear and interrupts them.

“If we are going to get going, we should hurry up. Is everyone ready?”

Max and Jakub nod and the three of them turn to Hannah and Bug.

“I have my dagger, but don’t expect me to be able to do much…” Hannah tells them as she pulls the dagger out from her coat, but it is better described as a knife rather than a dagger...

Bug simple shrugs back her cloak so that her wings are hanging from her shoulders behind her like a cape. Silently casting Become Weapon the claws on her lower arms grow out to a dangerous point, while her topmost forearms shift to become a pair of long bone swords coated in scales and fur where her arms transition into blades. Some blood lost from the transformation runs down the blades and dyes the white bone with lines of red as her arms heal into their new form.

“I’m ready.” Bug tells them as everyone gawks at her sudden changes. Their eyes clearly locked onto the pair of massive blades that are almost touching the ground with their needle like tips.

Max quickly pulls himself together and clears his voice. “Right, let’s get going then…”

Bug looks over to Hannah, and of course, the weird girl is staring at her again, her eyes locked onto Bug’s changed arms.

“Mrm, stop staring at me…”

Hannah looks away in a hurry, but her eyes keep darting back to Bug’s arms.

The group starts walking towards the nest, with Max and Sam in the front, while Jakub and Bug stay on the left and right, with Hannah in the middle.

Bug sighs as she notices Hannah still throwing glances at her.

“Ahh… What do you want to ask?”

Hannah fully looks back, and asks, “Does it hurt to do that? That looked painful…”

Bug looks to her curiously, tilting her head. She wants to ask why she even cares, but doesn’t. “It hurts, but I’m used to pain now.”

Turning away and ignoring Hannah for now, Bug looks towards the nest. The thing really is obvious about being what it is. The nest itself is an area of overlapping branches and hanging vines, with colorful fruits hanging in bushels from almost every branch. And munching on those fruits and lounging around are troops of monkeys that can be seen from a distance.

The monkeys are ridiculous looking things, with long arms, short legs, and colorful bottoms of blues and reds with equally colorful mohawks on their heads and spikes growing from their shoulders.

As they get closer to the nest, Max calls out to everyone. “Get ready. We are going to take it slow and steady. We kill them as they come at us, focus on not getting overwhelmed.”

Hannah pipes in with some info after him. “They are called fancy mandrils. Individually, they aren’t very dangerous. They are most dangerous in groups, and they have a nasty bite that can pierce leather armor. Besides that, they have a lot of grip strength, so don’t let them grab you.”

Max nods, “So we take it slow, and we eliminate them one group at a time without drawing the others.”

One last check over of everyone’s gear and they head in under the cover of the layered branches and hanging vines. It only takes but five minutes for monkeys to start descending upon them. Screaming from above, the monkeys fall towards them with murder in their eyes as they glare at the intruders.

The first to arrive after swinging down from a vine, gets its head and an arm removed as it meets Max’s sword. The corpse tumbling to the floor and getting kick aside as the group pushes on.

The next drops towards Bug, landing on the floor and swinging for her head with a roar as it shows off a line of long, sharp, yellowed teeth in its snarling mouth.

Bug side steps it and strikes with a bladed limb, cutting the monkey in half bellow the arms. Its lower half trips and falls, as the top half lets out a gurgled scream before collapsing to the floor and dying.

Hannah lets out a yelp as the corpse falls behind her, moving to stand a bit closer to Bug as the little Body Mage jumps up and kicks aside a second monkey, folding its spine with a crunch and then cutting a third in half before landing with bent knees, the tips of her bladed limbs carving lines into the bark-covered floor at her feet.

Hannah hears Bug mutter something to herself about thirty experience each or something, as she is shaking the blood off her arms.

As Sam is pulling her axe out of a monkey and tossing its corpse aside, Max checks around and nods. “Good job everyone. If we keep it up like that, we should be able to get through with no trouble.”

Jakub laughs as he retrieves his throwing knife from another monkey. “We’ve got this. How long until we get through the nest?”

“Uhm, going slowly, maybe half an hour or so?” Hannah answers.

Max and Sam join in to talk with them. While ignoring everyone else, Bug looks over and pokes at one of the monkey corpses, examining it and poking around at its limbs, Bug plays around with how its arms move and examines its hand like feet.

“Bug, you ready to get going?”

“Hmm?”

Everyone is looking at her as she is holding its arm up. Dropping the thing, Bug stands up and joins them with a shrug.

Shame I can’t take a few of these with me. Undead of these things are probably better that the Goblin ones…

…

Four more groups of pissed off monkeys later, Bug is feeling very bored. Slicing yet another colorful monkey in half, Bug can’t help but let her mind wander away from her.

This is taking forever… And I can’t even get any new Undead like this. I’m having fun playing adventurer, but it is also getting in the way of other things… Is there a way that I could make this more fun? Hmm, yes. Yes, there is.

Smiling to herself, Bug gives an order to her roving bands of zombie birds, ordering them to fly straight into the nest.

It takes only a few moments for the sounds of chaos to eventually come from back the way they came, the sounds of screaming monkeys creating a mess of noises as the branches shake violently from hundreds of monkeys running and fighting as they kick up a ruckus and make fruits drop all over the place.

“What the hell is that!?” Curses Jakub.

“Sounds like the monkeys are getting riled up…” Answers Sam.

Turning around and looking back the way they came, Bug watches for a bit. It doesn’t take long until a flock of zombie birds comes flying overhead and attacks a group of monkeys, tackling them in a suicidal charge that results in tangled messes of birds and screaming monkeys falling from on-high to their deaths.

Not too far away, corpses smack into the surface of the branch with wet squelches of breaking bodies. Bug has to hold back her smile and a laugh as she watches her experience start to slowly go up faster. The number of her bird zombies is also steadily going down, but the sacrifice is worth it.

Everyone starts to freak out as the chaos spreads all around. Calling one of the flocks down to do a fly by, Bug moves to cut down one of the birds as they are flying towards Hannah, just to put on a bit of a show and give them a scare.

A single cut brings the bird down, its bisected body crawling on the floor as it moves for Hannah’s legs. The thing is already half rotted, with one eye missing, most of its feathers are falling out and its beak is coated with blood and pus.

Hannah lets out a scream and trips backwards as the crawling thing goes for her feet, but it is stopped as Bug pins it to floor with her blade, severing its spine and destroying most of what is left of its chest cavity. The Undead finally dies and its pull on her mana disappears after a couple seconds.

Hmm, no experience for killing my own Undead. Makes sense honestly, but worth checking.

Hannah looks up to Bug and stutters out a thank you as she keeps looking back to the corpse at her feet. “Than- thanks… Was that?”

“Mhm, Undead.” Bug looks up to Max as she offers Hannah one of her unaltered hands to help her up. “We need to hurry. The necromancer might be close. If we don’t, this place will be full of the Undead in no time.”

“Right, we need to move. We keep moving and we cut down anything that gets in our way. Let’s go!” Max tells the others in a hurry.

The group gets running as the chaos of screaming monkeys continues to call out from all around. Up ahead, some of the monkeys alight from the vines as they spot the fleeing humans, their anger firmly getting turned towards them.

The party continues to move as they cut down any monkeys that get in their way, tossing aside the corpses as they run.

Jakub yells out a complaint, but Bug ignores him as she is too busy trying to keep herself from laughing. Directing her birds to spread as much chaos around as she can, Bug eviscerates another two monkeys that tries to attack her from the side.

As they run, more and more monkey’s get drawn towards them until the path ahead is practically swarming with them. Cutting their way through waves of monkeys, Bug notices as several of the corpses around the area starts to pick themselves up. Off to the side, Bug spares a moment to watch as one of the monkeys crying, over a corpse, celebrates as it gets back up. Hugging the living corpse, the monkey screams as it gets its throat ripped out.

“Huh…”

Bug can’t help but to watch the surprisingly human like behavior from a dungeon spawned monster. Watching as it continues to hug the zombie even as it dies.

Up ahead, Max and Sam continue to cut their way through waves of pissed off monkeys. Over on Hannah’s left, Jakub reels back from grasping hands and kicks a monkey in the face.

Pulling the group together tightly, with Hannah sandwiched in between everyone. Bug has to hold back some more of her joy as she continues to cut apart monkeys one after the other.

Hahaha, this so much fun! Spreading chaos and stringing these people on, making them think they are being chased by someone that isn’t even real! Oh, and now here comes the wild Undead to spread more chaos.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Behind us! We need to move faster, cut your way through or we are going to get overwhelmed!” Bug yells out to them as she fights to keep down a giggle.

Getting an opening to look over his shoulder, Max curses as he sees dozens of zombie monkeys running towards them from behind. “Shit, run! Push through with everything you have! Bug, switch with Sam and help me cut through!”

“Alright.”

Bug moves forward and slips past Hannah and under Sam’s arms, as Sam turns to move and strike at a monkey that tried to jump into the opening. Moving to the front, Bug transforms her remaining arms into blades and moves forward with all four arms lashing out to cut apart everything in front of her, turning everything into a bloody mess of flying limbs as she digs her way through the horde of monkeys like a blender.

Max continues to fight next to her, swinging over and past Bug to strike at anything that tries to get past her. Behind them, Sam and Jakub continue to cutdown anything at their tail as the Undead slams into the monkeys from behind, turning the melee into a three-way brawl as the humans run from the zombies and the monkeys in the middle get caught off guard by getting bitten on their colorful asses.

“We’re almost through!” Max yells. “The exit to the nest is just ahead of us!”

Bug looks over her shoulder and sees that the wild Undead are getting closer.

Funs over, I guess. I don’t want to risk anyone getting killed…yet.

Sending out an order to her flyers, Bug has a flock of them kamikaze straight into the monkeys ahead of them, scattering the horde a bit and making an opening for everyone to run through.

“Quickly! We have an opening, move!” Bug yells as she cuts apart another monkey.

Everyone moves quickly as the rear guard disengages. The Undead are quick to slam into the monkeys and push through as they try to chase the fleeing humans running through the opening made by the suicidal birds.

Bug has to slow herself down to not outrun everyone else as they make a mad dash for the exit, cutting apart everything that gets in their way.

Behind them, Hannah screams as she falls, a half dead monkey holding her by the ankle. Sam and Jakub run past her as Max keeps going, making his way for the exit. Turning around, Bug looks to Hannah and their eyes meet.

The fear in her eyes is obvious, and a call for help is right on her tongue as the Undead are just steps away from running her over. Peaking back at the fleeing humans, they aren't even looking back.

Are they seriously not going to help her?

Tisk, damn humans…

Bug stops and turns mid sprint, dragging her blades into the floor as she kills her momentum. Pulling on her arms, Bug launches herself back and jumps toward Hannah, moving past Sam and Jakub as they sprint past.

Delivering a kick to the wounded monkey, Bug smashes it away as she moves past Hannah, standing in between her and the oncoming horde of zombies.

Activating Become Weapon, Bug extends out her arms by turning them into bladed tentacles, serrated claws growing down their lengths like a line of blades. Lashing out with her four modified limbs, Bug removes the legs and tops-halves of everything around her in slicing arc, her weaponized limbs passing harmlessly over Hannah’s cowering head with a woosh of cutting wind, instantly disabling or killing everything for a dozen meters around her. Taking a peek behind her, the others are exiting from the nest along with a few dozen monkeys on their tail. Hannah is still on her rear, looking around as she tries to find something.

The following groups of zombies trip over the first, but they are quick to recover as they catch themselves and run forward on all four limbs. The live monkeys are still fighting the dead, and all around the area Bug just cut out is now a place of chaos.

Continuing to lash-out with her limbs in large slashing arcs, Bug cuts down anything that gets within a few meters of the two.

“Hannah, we need to move! Get up and run, I have you covered!” She shouts down at the girl.

“I, I can’t! I lost my glasses! I can’t see!”

Bug looks back at her as she cuts apart a dozen more targets. Hannah’s glasses are nowhere to be seen.

“Shit… Stand up and hold my shoulders! We’re walking out of here.”

Walking backwards and nudging Hannah with her foot, Bug stands there as Hannah grabs onto her and climbs back to her feet. Once she has her hands on Bug’s shoulders, they both start walking backwards towards the exit as Bug continues to cut down everything around them, aiming for legs, arms, and heads to disarm everything she can.

Getting guaranteed kills on the Undead is impossible in this situation, so the best thing she can do is limit their ways of attacking.

“Just keep walking and don’t trip, we’re almost to the exit. Just don’t let go of my shoulder.”

“Ok, yes! Thank you, Bug. Thanks for- “

“Shut up and focus!” Bug yells as she lashes out at a monkey that jumped from a branch and tried to attack from above.

Stepping over the corpses and scattered limbs at their feet, they continue to work their way closer and closer to the exit.

Up ahead, deep into the vines of the monkey nest, the sounds of crashing and breaking wood sounds out as something big comes smashing its way through, the sounds of screaming monkeys echoing out as they scream in fright.

Around Bug and Hannah, the remaining living monkeys scatter in all directions. Thankfully, many of the Undead are drawn away by the fleeing monkeys, freeing up space around them and giving Bug some room to breathe.

“Something big is coming, we need to move. Come on!”

Bug turns and moves as quickly as she can while making sure that Hannah doesn’t fall behind. Which ends up being not very fast. Bug hasn’t spent much time checking to see how fast she is now, but having to slow down so much for someone else is really brings it into perspective for her. Realizing just how much stronger she has already become compared to a normal human.

A short run later, Bug and Hannah exit the nest moving as quickly as Hannah can while being supported. Up ahead, Bug spots the others as they are finishing off the remaining monkeys that had chased them out.

“Thanks for the help by the way!” Bug yells over at them. They look surprised as they turn and see Hannah still alive and whole.

“Holy shit… hey uh…” Max tries, But Bug just waves him off as she helps Hannah forward and further away from the nest.

They try to come over and talk with Hannah, who is looking around while squinting, and Bug leaves her by a large leaf while the adventurers fret over her. Catching her breath and looking down at her stamina bar, Bug waits for it to slowly refill. Taking out her canteen from under her wings, Bug drinks her water as she continues to listen to the sounds coming from the nest. Whatever it is that is making all the noise is clearly very big… and is getting closer…

Storing away her canteen back away under her wings, Bug walks back towards the nest as she reforms her arms into even larger blades. Planting her feet and growing her claws into the ground to anchor herself, Bug spreads out her limbs and readies herself.

Walking up from behind Bug, Max calls out to her. “What are you doing? Shouldn’t we be going, we made it out of there?”

“Shut up.”

The noise from the nest is growing even louder, getting to the point of where even Max is turning from Bug and looking that way. Before he can ask what is happening, a large figure comes bursting out of the wall of the nest, flesh and scales falling loose from its body in thick sheets of necrotic rot as it scrapes against branches and rips through tangled up and binding vines.

Letting out a gurgling hiss, the gigantic snake wiggles around as it works its way out through the wall of the nest. It eventually stops moving around as its one good eye locks onto Bug and the humans down on the branch. With renewed vigor, the snake fights its way out of the wall of foliage and charges towards the little living figures on the branch.

Bug looks over at her shoulder at Max and the others as he freezes up, and then back to the snake.

Mmmm… I could just use Turn Undead on it, but then that would just ruin everything… Hah… I would have really liked to keep this one. And I don’t want to ruin the fun yet…

Bug notices that Max is backing away from her as the snake is charging towards them. Bending her knees and pulling back her arms, Bug waits until it enters her range and then lashes out with all four of her arms, aiming straight for its mouth.

Pushing her Dexterity enhanced speed to the limit, her whiplike arms lash out and reach the mouth of the snake in less than a second, the air snapping with a clap as her blades tear into the sides of its open mouth, slashing its jaws open and cutting up into its head from four directions.

With the air exploding with a whip crack, the lower jaw of the snake gets blasted away as its head gets thrown up into the air. Reeling back her arms for another attack, Bug launches her blades forward and buries them into the neck of the snake form both sides, slicing though like two pairs of scissors sliding through its rotting flesh.

With the four blades meeting in the middle, the snakes head goes flying. Bug ignores the surprised curses from behind her as she continues to attach the snake’s body, sending out her bladed limbs to carve furrows through its blackened-scales and expose the bones underneath.

Regretfully, taking its head off is not enough to kill it. The body continues to charge forward even as its head falls off the side of the branch. And though it is without direction, the thing is simply massive enough that simply moving towards them is all it needs to do in order to be a threat.

This is going to suck…

Letting out a sigh, Bug lashes out with her blades again and sinks them into the side of its body. Pulling them as hard as she can, the snake is forced to move. After fighting against its immense weight, Bug finally manages to redirect its headless charge towards the side of the branch. As it goes over the edge and begins to fall, Bug tries to yank out her blades from its body. Only three of them manage to get pulled free before the snake starts to fall, its weight pulling on her and ripping her feet free from the ground. Claws cutting lines through the branch’s surface, Bug transforms her freed arms back to normal as she is pulled along the ground. Her remaining trapped arm refuses to change as she continues to pull on it, every second drawing her closer to the edge of the branch.

The things I do to have some fun!

Drawing too close to the edge and resigning herself for some pain, Bug grows out one arm’s claws and takes it to her trapped arm, slicing though it with one swipe.

Bug lets out a scream as she falls forward, rolling towards the edge. Slamming her claws into the bark of the branch, Bug stops her roll just as she reaches the edge, her legs dangling off the side as she holds on for dear life with three arms, her feet scrabbling to get a purchase in the bark.

“Haaaaaaah… OUCH!!!”

Slamming a hand into the ground angrily, Bug slowly works her way back onto her feet after climbing back up and walks over to the stunned adventurers. Hannah is squinting as she watches Bug.

//Congratulation! You leveled-up a Skill!

//Pain Tolerance Lvl 3 is now Lvl 4!

Oh, thank goodness… That helps so much more. Become Weapon.

Clutching her arm as it regrows, Bug rejoins everyone and then uses two arms to rewrap her wings around herself like a cloak, having managed to somehow keep herself from using them and maintaining her disguise. She doesn’t say anything as they all look towards her with looks ranging from amazement to outright fear.

Max comes up to her after giving a look to the squinting Hannah, “Bug… uh, I’m sorry that- “

“I don’t care. We need to keep moving. The necromancer is close, and we still have a lot of distance to cover before night. We still need to get to the safe room on the nineth floor for you guys.”

“Ehm, uh, you’re right. Yes, let’s get going…”

Bug starts walking but is stopped as Hannah calls out. “Wait, I can’t see very well without my glasses…”

Max scratches at his hair as he thinks, “Uhm, Jakub, help Hannah walk. Hannah, can you still read your maps without your glasses?”

“Yes, it will take me a while, but I can…”

Hannah looks towards Bug and tries to walk towards her, but almost trips and Sam has to catch her.

Bug lets out a sigh as she looks at Hannah squinting. Wetting her lips, she walks forward.

“Bend over or kneel. Just let me see your face really quick.”

“Uhm, why…?”

“Just do it, let me see your face.”

“Ok?”

Bending over, Bug reaches up with two hands and brushes the hair out of her face, holding her face and placing her thumbs just beneath Hannah’s eyes.

Silently casting Grow Eyes, because saying it out loud would just sound scary, Bug pushes the spell into Hannah’s eyes and orders them to have the same structure as Bug’s own, just without changing their color. Bug likes Hannah's hazelnut eyes the way they are, they suit her face very well, and she also doesn't like the idea of her having her eyes be exactly like Bug's. Bug's emerald like eyes is her own personal treasure, one of the few parts of her appearance that she truly actually cares about, and she isn't about to share them.

Hannah winces as her eyes change, her innate magic resistance not being anywhere near high enough to stop Bug from using the spell on her body. Especially when considering that Death infused Body Magic also functions as offensive spells, designed to change a targets body against their will. With just a slight push of will and some mana, Bug could do some truly horrifying things to this girl's body, and she would be entirely unable to resist. Thankfully, for Hannah, these spells can also be used beneficially. After all, Death is not a wholly evil thing, and neither is Bug.

“Ouch! What are you doing!?” Hannah winces as the mana goes to work on altering her biology.

“Bug, what are you-?" Max tries, but Bug simply points a clawed finger at him and says, “You left her behind earlier. Shut up and let me fix her.”

Max trips on his words as Hannah continues to try and pull her head away from Bug, but her strength is nowhere near high enough to get away from Bug’s grip.

After a few seconds, she stops fighting as she blinks her eyes with surprise. Her hazelnut eyes eventually locking onto Bug’s emerald ones as realization sets in.

Holding her face and moving Hannah’s head around as she checks over each eye, Bug eventually nods. “Good, now you don’t need help walking, right?”

“No… I… Did you just?”

“I healed your eyes. Made them better. Now you don’t need your glasses anymore.”

Turning to Max, Bug snaps out, “Let’s get going.”

As she is about to turn and walk away, Hannah moves forward and wraps Bug up in a tight hug. She freezes at the sudden contact, just barely holding herself back from making her spikes grow and impaling the larger girl, her claws itching to remove her by force, and her teeth aching to bite her in order to free herself by any means, just barely being held back by a modicum of self-control.

“… Please, let go of me…” Bug eventually works out through her frozen mind and clenched teeth.

“Oh! Uh, sorry… It’s just… Thank you…” Hannah says nervously as she lets go of Bug and backs away. Straightening out her clothes, she looks away with a blush on her face, one hand going up to investigate her eyes and marvel at her clear vision.

Bug turns and walks away in a hurry as she tightens her winged cloak around her body. Once everyone realizes that she isn’t going to wait for them, they hurry to catch up with her.

Under her wings, Bug hugs herself tight with all four of her arms…

That felt… weird…