Chapter 7: Evolved monster.

As Trent jogged along the empty and featureless incline, he noticed a larger than usual blob of ghostly haze at the edge of where he could see. It also seemed a bit darker, even at the edges. As he watched, another Morel got close enough for the big one to see. The giant blob lunged at and devoured the smaller one.

What was going on was fairly simple to see. The monster had evolved, probably because it reached level 15. Trent had waited for something like this at the level ten mark, but the Morels hadn’t changed at all besides the normal increase in power.

While it was somewhat tempting to deal with it like a normal one—Voiding was their kryptonite, and he could destroy them in less then a second—it paid to be cautious. But what other attack could he hurt them with you ask? Power Throw was just physical… not!

Skill Name: Power Throw

Increase the physical force of a thrown object by 150%. You can focus on this Skill to increase the effect to 546% and cause the thrown object to damage conceptual effects. 

He could damage conceptual effects! From his testing, it seemed that the force that kept Morels together at least partially counted as a conceptual effect. His projectiles were quite effective against them.

It didn’t take more than a minute to destroy the gaseous entity. It even seemed that it couldn’t quite see him from where he bombarded it and just went in the general direction that the attacks came from. A job well done!

*Defeated Morel Fudasha (Lv. 17). Bonus experience is gained for defeating a monster 10 or more levels above you. Bonus experience is gained for defeating a high-tier monster above your level.*

So, the evolution—if that’s what it was—increased the monster’s ‘tier’. It made some sense. The Morel Fudasha took thirty times as many hits to kill as a level 14 Morel, and its eating of its brethren displayed a much grater means of attack. The next time he came across one, he would weaken it with rocks and then finish it with Voiding to check danger of that strategy.

Actually, that felt kind of counterproductive. To avoid danger, he would deliberately put himself in danger. To be fair, he was doing it in a semi-controlled way. It was much better than being surprised sometime in the future.

The next Fudasha was the same size but took a bit more damage from Trent’s attacks. So, the size increase was a one-time bonus from evolution and not a smaller boost every level. He got it down to its last legs and then approached.

As soon as he got to around 50 meters from the blob, it hurried forward with a renewed vigor. It had almost reached the twenty meter mark when Trent activated Voiding. Its movement was even less effected than the normal Morels, and it didn’t pause in shock at the suppression.

But that didn’t matter all too much because it almost died from the initial activation. Trent’s special power had grown with leaps and bounds since he first obtained it. No new effects had been added to Voiding, but its strength had been increased both by his Mind stat and his experience with manipulating void power.

He could have easily killed it before the monster reached him, but he wanted to see how much damage it would deal. And any surprises that it might have.

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He did flinch a bit as the monster barreled into him, but it didn’t have real physical mass, so he wasn’t hurt. It did, however, have a nasty life drain and a nastier matter corrosion. But with Voiding focused on the active mana of its abilities, he barely felt a tickle. He had made a lot of progress with his ability in addition to the use of its power in Power Throw.

The monster perished a second later as he voided the foundation of its form. Not a surprise, nor at all unpleasant. These were gimmick monsters that happened to be utterly countered by his main ability. Well, that was suspicious in and of itself. He didn’t want to fall into the mindset that he was a protagonist, but it was hard when he had a literal Prodigy Title and was killing high-tier monsters twice his level.

Really, he had no idea what was ‘normal’ for humans using this system. Maybe he was the only one. He had sort of assumed that this place was a bit like a hell to a sword-and-sorcery world. In that case, this place would use the same system there. But if that assumption was wrong—which he was well prepared to be the case—there might not be any other humans using this system.

It was difficult to say. A lot of the things that had happened were conforming to his expectations about transmigrator fantasy, but there was nothing close to a guarantee that would continue. Prepare for the worst, he guessed.

A few more religious experiences passed by without any notable changes. He had leveled up to seven and was now encountering both types of enemies as high as level 19. But there was no progress on altering skills or making his own. He had gotten a bit better at throwing rocks though.

One effect of his increased Perception was that he could see much farther into the haze covering this whole realm. So when he passed by an actual feature on this blasted slope, he caught sight of it even though he was miles away.

He diverged from his current path to head straight for the irregularity. It seemed to be a large rock jutting out of the ground. A normal thing in any other place, but here it was the only change in the flat ground he himself had not caused. Besides the entire slope he was on. He had almost started believing that he had imagined the flat ground before the slope. It really didn’t seem like a mountain anymore.

Trent exercised plenty of caution once he finally reached the rock. The only thing breaking up the monotony so far had been monsters, and he saw no sense in assuming this wasn’t one.

However, it hadn’t reacted even when he got to just a few meters away from it. So he decided to wait.

After a couple of minutes, he decided that he could simply bombard it from afar. No reason to take risks with no obvious payoff.

He called out first, just in case. “He-” He coughed. “Hello? Um, is anyone there?”

There was silence. The rock, obviously, didn’t respond.

“Um, just so you know, I’m going to be destroying this rock. From a distance. So, if you aren’t an enemy, well, please come out?” He shuffled his feet. He was really hoping that he was just talking to a rock, so no one had to hear this embarrassment. “I mean, I’m going to destroy it because it could be an enemy, so… yeah.”

He walked awkwardly away from the rock. It seemed that while he wasn’t really suffering from the lack of human contact, it didn’t have a good effect on his social skills.

After he got a good 50 meters away, he began his assault. Stones as big as a child’s head were dug and shaped from the homogenous ground and flew through the air to strike the suspicious stone monument. Every throw broke the sound barrier with a lovely crack and the projectiles practically evaporated on impact, fire igniting in the air from sheer friction.

It was quite honestly disconcerting. Being afraid of his own power was a ridiculous thought, but if he could do this with 15 strength and one skill, then there could easily be beings that could rearrange the landscape with a single punch. And that’s not even considering magic, which he had basically decided to never delve into.

When his salvo had completed, the rock was nothing more. It was a bit anticlimactic. He went over to the crater left in its wake. There was nothing left. If there had been anything inside the rock, his bombardment had reduced it to dust.

After loitering around a bit more, waiting for something to happen, he left to continue up the slope. He wondered if he had been to hasty and destroyed something important. But that was very unlikely. He was just overreacting because the rock was so out of place compared to the rest of the blank landscape.

He had mostly just been scared because it fit the pattern of a new monster every five levels. He still didn’t think his reaction was illogical, so he wouldn’t let it eat away at him too much. So he would just go on with his new existence.

Sometimes, a rock was just a rock. Even in a place without rocks. At least it was something to spice up the dull grind.