Chapter 13: Intelligence.

After finishing the Create molds, he continued onto the next ‘zone’. One thing that he had noticed was the distance he had to travel from one new monster to the other. At first, his stats were increasing quickly enough that the time per zone was actually decreasing, but it seemed that the increase was exponential as the giant turtle zone took quite a while to pass through, even without much of a new threat to slow him down.

It gave him a lot of time to worry about his speed of progress. He was trying not to overthink things too much, but that directly clashed with his pessimistic instincts, which were what was keeping him alive. So, he had to choose between danger and depression. Well, there’s one way to defeat depression! Laugh! LAUGH DAMMIT. HAHA. Haha. Ha.

He really was going a bit crazy. He wanted to say that it wouldn’t affect his actions, but he could totally see himself doing something really reckless because he was impatient. But in the end, he believed in himself. Even if it took a few hundred levels to escape this place, he thought he could last through that. It could easily be more than that, but what else was he going to do?

Wah, I give up. Boo-hoo. I’m not going to try and train or progress anymore. I’ll just sit here and be miserable.

…

I’m bored, let’s make a new Skill! Made the new Skill, lets test it on some monsters! None of these monsters are strong enough to test the Skill accurately! Better go further up the slope. You get the idea.

Unless he actually died, there wasn’t any danger to giving up. Really, fighting his way through the monsters was almost fun! This was quite helped by the battles being easy and repetitive, but complex enough to not be dull drudgery. And the feeling of throwing dozens of projectiles every second, each one causing a sonic boom, was amazing.

Trent forced himself to be optimistic. If, no, when he got out of here he would be extremely strong and easily able to live comfortably. And if there were things that made that difficult? Huh, that sounds a bit like an isekai adventure. Why would he be upset about that?

Now, onto the next hurdle. He had noticed a Morel at the edge of his perception. that seemed to be between the size of a Finisis and a Fudasha. This wasn’t innately worrying- or it wouldn’t be, if all Fudashas and Finisis were a standard size with not the slightest deviation. The obvious assumption was that this was a third type of Morel, and the level 35 enemy.

He immediately conjured his new helmet—a pitch-black helm that looked a bit like something a samurai might wear—and started building up a pile of ammunition. Yes, he was a bit of a weeb. Just a little bit though.

Once he was drowning in void balls, he initiated the battle. The projectiles crashed through its nebulous form, impacting the ground beneath it, and sending up a cloud of dust that did little to impair his vision. He could see that the new monster wasn’t taking anywhere near as much damage as a Fudasha, which would have already been destroyed. It had immediately started rushing towards him with somewhat surprising speed.

He watched with some interest as the blob of haze formed shields around itself. They were made up of haze like the rest of it, but much more concentrated and with a pearlescent gleam to them. It didn’t seem to lose any mass when it created them, although they didn’t do all that much to stop Trent’s attacks. That was to be expected with the bonus defense-piercing effect of Power Throw. Wait, was it defense-piercing?

…make the thrown object damage conceptual effects. 

So not piercing, but the ability to damage at all… maybe the shields were just really weak? But that doesn’t make sense. If it had an entire ability for defense, it should be way stronger than this. Maybe it was an ability that was also used for offence? That would make much more sense. Why didn’t that feel right…

As he thought, he was still creating and throwing void balls at the approaching monster, but he was still far enough away that he had the leeway to think with his enhanced processing speed. So far, the enemies had followed a sort of logic. So, he should be quite cautious of any deviances. But why did this feel weird? A flexible ability with multiple functions didn’t appear in the monsters because… They were too stupid to use one properly.

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That was it, wasn’t it? It required some level of intelligence to use a weapon conjuration ability to form defenses. A level that nothing else here could come close to with their preset responses and rigid thinking. Was he overthinking things? Perhaps. But was it better to assume the worst, that it had the ability to think? Definitely.

The murderous haze barreled closer and came into the range of Voiding. Trent slammed down the full suppression and nullification, all while continuing to conjure and throw void orbs. The newest Morel seemed a bit stunned, but almost instantly got over it and started attacking, both with its own hungering aura and conjured scythes of the same translucent material. He used the closed distance as a chance for his worst Skill to try and show its worth.

Morel Mentis (Lv. 35)

Yup, Identify wasn’t good for much at the moment. It didn’t even work on the scythes.

The conjured weapons were actually quite interesting. They were being dissolved by Voiding, but the slowing effect was less effective on them. This property threw a wrench into his plans. Even with the monster quickly dying from pressure of the void bearing down on it, Trent still found it hard to dodge the blades, especially with the way they appeared from nowhere to slash at him at tricky angles.

He took several wounds, but his helmet protected his neck and head from damage. Quite convenient that this thing would appear right after he made the mold. The monster started to flag as it got close to death, and then the unthinkable happened. The creature fled.

Its floating body was even less affected by Voiding’s momentum suppression than its scythes. It quickly escaped the range and continued fleeing. What?

This was conclusive evidence that the newest Morel was in fact intelligent. Or that it was designed to trick him into believing that. Either way, this wasn’t the best news for future encounters. One of the things that allowed him to kill monsters two and a half times his level was their lack of strategy and adaptation.

Without that, the raw stats his enemies possessed would put them far above what he could beat even with the advantage of his vid power. The main reason he could even hit most monsters at long distances was that they couldn’t dodge. Speaking of, it was probably a bad idea to let this one get away.

All these thoughts happened in less than a second, as he resumed creating and bombarding the poor life-hunting demon. Wait, what about the moral implications of their intelligence? Well, there was no one in this place to judge him, and they seemed pretty evil…

The cloud of ectoplasm tried to dodge, but it was a bit too weakened, and its movement wasn’t the best for dodging. The newest arrival joined the thousands of kill messages he had read and dismissed.

*Defeated Morel Mentis (Lv. 35). Bonus experience is gained for defeating a monster 20 or more levels above you. Bonus experience is gained for defeating a high-tier monster above your level.*

Level up! You have reached level 14. +1 free stat points. +1 Mind and +3 Perception(phys) from Affinity. +1 Vitality, +2 Endurance, and +2 Strength from Sub-affinity.

Nothing new there. Maybe its name meant something in another language, but it wasn’t one he knew. Actually, ‘Mentis’ shared two thirds of its form with ‘mental’, so maybe it referred to its intellectual capabilities. But there still wasn’t anything he could do with that speculation.

These guys were probably really good experience, but hunting them would be difficult. If they had enough intelligence to run away, they might act unpredictably and get away or kill him. He couldn’t guarantee how they would respond, so he would have to treat each one like a new enemy type. Well, he only needed one more level to get a new Skill, so he could probably keep his guard up for a few kills.

Maybe it would be a bit more exciting than just grinding?

It actually was a lot more exciting than killing the enemies with set patterns! They all had subtle differences in behavior, some running away sooner and others just getting more frantic before death. All of them had some form of difference in the style of their conjurations, be it more detail or forming slower but stronger weapons. One even had a single large sword that it devoted its full attention to, moving it much faster than others would something of that size.

…He kind of regretted killing that one. But he had tested their reactions when not attacked, and they were just as violent when he approached calmly. All of this, especially the last test, was risking one of them getting away, which would have unpredictable consequences. But his latest level gave him just enough of a boost to kill them before they got out of range.

In the end, it all worked out and he avoided the big pitfalls he was worried about. He had a vague sense that he was really close to his next level. Wait, he still had a few more fights where anything could happen… Please don’t let this jinx him.