I took a moment to really take a look at this oasis, just letting my eyes wander over it. The trees were mostly palm-tree-like, although, just like everything else on this planet, a lot bigger than I was used to. Interspersed between the trees were various flowering cacti, as well as a few bushes bearing different, alien-looking fruit. I couldn’t see any rocks or boulders from up here, so my hiding places would have to be the greenery around the lake.

Monsters roamed the oasis, but there were relatively few of them since it was day. As far as I could tell, they weren’t fighting each other which led me to believe that the oasis was a safe place. Or at least it was so long as you were close to water. I could see shaking trees in the distance, and sand being thrown into the air. I guess the further away you were from the water, the more likely a fight broke out.

I’d need to get as close to the lake as possible.

My curiosity sufficiently sated, I made the slow trek down the last dune separating me from the oasis. Finally touching the grass covering the ground felt almost orgasmic to me. Crawling across the sand was like swimming through a thick, sticky substance to me, so when I finally had something other than sand below me it felt incredibly liberating.

Five days of severely limited movement made my newly regained speed feel like I was some sort of racecar, albeit, still an incredibly slow one.

I happily made my way through the greenery, swiveling my eyes around to take in all of the new things. For the entire duration of my trip, I had seen little else than sand, sand, and more sand, so this was incredibly refreshing. The colorful fruits hanging from the bushes especially earned my curiosity causing me to stop and look at them.

I’d sure love some kind of identification skill right now, but I went for one of the fruits anyway. Even if they were poisonous, I purchased the immunity passive from my skill tree, so I should be fine. It took some finagling, but I eventually got one of the fruits to fall to the ground where I could eat it without any issues.

From the very first bite I took, an explosion of juice invaded my mouth. For the first time since being reincarnated as a slug, I lamented the fact that I had no taste buds. This fruit was probably delicious, but for now, I’d just have to make do with the refreshing juice they seemed to contain. Even if the lake was too dangerous for me, which didn’t seem like it was the case, I could just eat these fruits to sate my thirst.

As I dug into the purple fruit with abandon, I looked around again. There was plenty of fruit all around me and I wasn’t entirely sure if that was because the monsters didn’t eat them or if the dungeon could just regrow them at an incredible rate. Whatever the case, more for me!

I quickly started collecting the fruit into my inventory since I still hadn’t tested whether I could just store plain water in my inventory. If that plan failed, I could still fall back on their juices. My inventory was almost completely empty at this point, so I made sure to pile a ton of fruit in there. Of course, I still hadn’t discovered the limits of this skill, but if it lets me store huge monsters and tons of corpses, a few hundred fruits would probably not even dent it.

The work was boring, difficult, and repetitive, but I eventually managed to store two-hundred fruits of varying shapes and colors in my inventory. The oasis was truly bountiful and now I had picked the area around me clean. I planned to occasionally check in here to see just how fast the fruits regrew, but what I had should last me quite some time.

Happy with my harvest I continued onwards towards the oasis’ center where the lake was waiting to be discovered by me.

The fact that I wasn’t being bothered by other monsters almost felt like a vacation where I could just enjoy the scenery for a bit. So I took my time to explore my immediate surroundings a little more closely. Aside from the palm trees and fruit-bearing bushes, some yellow desert flowers dotted the ground, as well as some cacti. I was so absorbed in the nice sights, that I almost missed the bird sitting in a tree ahead of me.

When it suddenly took off, spreading its colorful wings to an impressive wingspan, I was suddenly reminded that I was still in hostile territory. Luckily, the huge bird wasn’t interested in me, flying away and out of sight. After receiving this grim reminder, I made it a point to move around covertly, instead of just mucking about like a tourist.

Eventually, I arrived at the edge of the lake.

This was definitely the largest body of water I’d encountered since coming to this planet. The water was clear and very inviting, but I wasn’t about to make the same mistake as earlier. This was still the third layer after all, and all the aquatic monsters I’d seen on the second layer had to be somewhere in this desert, most likely they were duking it out in lakes just like this, all around the desert.

I carefully ascended a palm that had a nice view of the surroundings, sticking myself to the bottom of a leaf pointed at the lake. First, I scanned my immediate surroundings, especially looking for the telltale sign of an invisible Saurian. Of course, their invisibility might have gotten better when they became tier three, so I made extra sure to scrutinize every possible place for them to hide in, looking for any distortions in the vegetation.

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Fairly confident that there were probably no Saurians around, I let my eyes wander the shores of the lake. The opposite shore was so far away that I could only barely make out whatever monster was partaking of the cool water as an indistinct blob. To my right, I saw what looked like a herd of buffalo drinking. They were a bit far away, so I wasn’t entirely certain, but it seemed like they were clad in a sort of rock armor, a small amount of sand constantly swirling around them.

Occasionally, a part of the lake would explode, sending tons of water flying and exposing whatever was fighting below for a brief moment. This confirmed my earlier theory of the water monsters being present. I’d have to be careful around the shore, or some colossal fish might just mistake me for an afternoon snack.

I spent a few hours just observing the comings and goings around the lake, fascinated by the wide array of monsters that came around. A lumbering crocodile with what seemed like an active volcano on its back, magma dripping to the ground around it, setting small fires wherever it went. A camel that looked as ordinary as can be, that could spit water jets with enough force to cleave apart the giant bug it was fighting. Some huge bird creature that crashed into the lake, only to emerge gripping a gigantic watersnake in its talons.

Even though the oasis seemed peaceful at first, there were constant battles being waged around the lake. Smaller skirmishes, sure, but once night fell, I expected all hell to break loose, just like in the desert proper. Maybe even worse, since all the thirsty monsters would congregate here.

Thankfully, my only task, for now, was to survive. Of course, I’d already internalized the fact that I really, really should not be on this layer, but watching the monsters come and go around the lake, just hammered that point home once more. I was just a tiny, slow, slug baby lost in an adult world.

The plan, for now, was to just hide as well as I could, hoping that my small frame would allow me to stay out of sight, and, supported by my stealth passive, I should be able to survive the quest duration. It was entirely possible that any regular monster attempting this quest would be slaughtered almost immediately, as seen by the horse monster that came down here with me, so I guess being a slug wasn’t that bad after all.

But even then, if I was to survive down here, I needed more options to both defend and attack. Unless I was able to push my poison to a stupidly high level, only having a single way of fighting enemies would definitely be my death sentence. So far, I managed to coast by, but from this layer onwards, it just wasn’t enough.

I’d have to consider this when I got to evolve.

But, before I started to hide away for the next nine days, I wanted to run a little experiment. I took another look around, trying to make sure that there were no monsters anywhere near me, before slowly descending my tree and approaching the lake. I needed to know whether or not I could store water in my inventory, and now was as good a chance as any.

I stopped a few inches away from the water and tried to store some water in front of me, which failed. I wasn’t sure exactly why that was, but my best guess was that I’d need the water to be in some sort of container to store it. I should really have tested this a lot earlier, and I wasn’t entirely sure why I didn’t, but I resolved to test my skills a bit more from now on. Surviving already wasn’t easy here, to begin with, and the further I went down, the more prepared I’d need to be.

If I didn’t know about some aspect of my own abilities, I might make a mistake someday that’d cost me my life. As it was, I only survived the desert by sheer luck. If I hadn’t left some monster corpses in my inventory before coming down, I’d just dried out and died on my way to the oasis.

After drinking some of the refreshing water, I turned around, my eyes falling upon one of the many fruit bushes in this oasis. Well… If I couldn’t store the water in my inventory, I should at least make sure that I shoved as many of these juicy fruits into my inventory as I possibly could.

It at least gives me something to do aside from hiding over the next few days.

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Just as I’d thought, the oasis wasn’t being spared from the nighttime battle royale of the desert. The only difference was that the monsters didn’t emerge from the ground as they had so far. At first, I’d thought that there might be no fighting at all, but it was only on a delay. I’d assume there was a ton of fighting at the edges of the oasis, before the winners of those fights made their way toward the lake. Of course, this lead to more and more fights breaking out along the way until they finally entered my field of view.

Most of the monsters emerging from the trees around me were bloodied from top to bottom and already looked exhausted. They tried to drink some of the water to sate their thirst, which was made difficult by more and more of them appearing around the lake, which eventually lead to more fights breaking out. Some of the aquatic monsters emerged as well, sniping a kill and dragging them under the water, or generally harassing everything that got too close to the water.

I watched on in fascination, hidden among the leaves of a large palm. Trying to gather some data on the types of monsters for when I eventually would have to fight them. So far, I was too focused on hiding in the sand to take a proper look at the different monsters duking it out, but now I felt relatively safe. Of course, I kept an eye out for anything that might have spotted me, ready to throw out some spells, but I was thankfully left alone during the whole night.

Again, after looking at the different abilities on display, I was reminded of just how weak I was in comparison. So far I had more or less steamrolled everything via poison, but there was no way I could coast along with that. Whatever I’d get on evolution, I would need to consider it very carefully.

And I’m sure I’d get some good options this time around. After all, what I was currently doing was probably deemed as “impossible” by the system, and if I’d learned anything about the system it was that the harder the challenge, the better the reward!