Chapter 8: Caution, and how to partially use it.

The Abyssal Slope--as Trent had started to call it—followed certain patterns. Where it first began there were monsters just above level 5. The higher you went, the higher levels would rise. And when the levels of the monsters hit a multiple of five, a new monster was introduced.

He had initially thought that the Fudashas had evolved from the normal Morels, but it was possible that the names just referred to the fact they were spectral, because it quite seemed like the Fudashas were born or spawned the way they were. And the newest demon he had to deal with certainly didn’t seem like an evolved Velder.

Trent studied the new type of enemy he would have to fight from here on out. It looked a lot like a stereotypical jacked red dude that could fit into the role of either expendable demon grunt, or demon lord. Hopefully, it would be the former.

The demon stood almost twice Trent’s height, with broad shoulders and corded muscles. It had large, curling goat horns on its head. However, its manner showed no signs of intelligence. It just stood there with a stony and vacant expression on its face. That boded well for his plan of killing it.

The fact it seemed so physically focused was quite a concern. Both—or all three, depending on how you see it—of the other enemies he had been fighting suffered from a vulnerability to Trent’s main claim to fame: Voiding. The Velders’ magic was disabled, and the Morels were directly destroyed by his main Skill.

But a monster entirely focused on physical power? That was a lot more dangerous to him. He would have to entirely rely on the momentum suppression stop it from getting close while he peppered it with rocks. That had its own problems.

After all, he didn’t have a dimensional storage or something like that. He had to dig up every projectile he wanted to throw. And due to the uniformity of the rock ground, it took quite a bit of time to sculpt out each individual rock. Therefore, when running away from an enemy he was forced to pause to dig up his ammo to kill them with. This was a problem if they were faster than him. Which everything in this place was.

He had compensated for this against the first Velder by increasing the intensity of Voiding, but if the new monster was fast enough, it could catch up in that time even if it had to catch up to him. And that’s not even considering that it might just be fast enough to catch him with Voiding on while he ran. That was very unlikely though.

What was more likely is that it would have an ability that allowed it to ignore restrictive effects. That was still quite a pessimistic outlook, so he wasn’t going to give that unwanted speculation much though.

His plan to defeat the newest demon was as simple as it was ridiculous. He had spent slightly less than one religious experience-day digging up a line of rocks stretching miles away from the monster’s standing place.

Yup, miles. His stats made the work tolerable, but if the godly presence didn’t get rid of his exhaustion, he would be in no shape to go into battle afterwards. Still, it felt a bit like overkill. Thousands of rocks piled in groups of five every 50 meters along a route which he would be running away from a demon that he would purposely agro in his wish to grow stronger.

Man, he had really gotten into the murderhobo lifestyle.

In the end, there wasn’t any deliberation or hesitation inside of him. He had already decided to fight all enemies he came across, despite the risks. He could have waited and trained his void powers until he was strong enough to eliminate the risk. But he simply wasn’t patient enough.

Trent stood one hundred meters away from the beefcake demon. He launched the first rocks of his salvo. The monster roared and charged towards him. It was definitely far faster than him and reached the range of Voiding quickly. He ran away while continuing his assault.

The first thing he noticed was that there was a small amount of mana inside the monster. It might not necessarily have been a sign of a magical ability, but it was safer to eliminate all of that first. It didn’t even take too long because the amount was so small.

He felt his heart pound in his ears. It would never stop being terrifying when he risked his life against an unknown enemy. He hoped it wouldn’t, at least. He was constantly in danger, and the fact that he hadn’t even gotten injured besides some life drain and burns from fireballs. Complacency would surely kill him.

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As he ran, he slowed periodically to grab a pile of rocks and send them blasting towards the demon’s head. It was already looking slightly worse for wear, but it showed no signs of faltering. So he continued.

The demon lasted three miles. He didn’t come close to the end of the prepared rocks, but it was still closer than Trent would like. His estimates were actually a lot less, and if the monster had been some extra-special strong one he might have died. Next time he would be even more cautious!

One very positive piece that came out of this was the evidence that the slowing function of his Skill was well up to the task of fending of enemies with over four times his Agility. That boded well for his future fights with these monsters many times his level.

*Defeated Abyssal grunt (Lv. 20). 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.* 

Level up! You have reached level 8. +1 free stat points. +1 Mind and +3 Perception(phys) from Affinity. +1 Vitality, +2 Endurance, and +2 Strength from Sub-affinity.

Wow. Either this just happened to finally give him enough experience to level up, or he got more experience due to the challenge that a fully physical monster posed to him. Actually, it could also be that Abyssal grunts—he could process the implications of that name later—just gave way more experience.

He opened his status to check his updated stats.

Name: Trent

Species: Human

Titles: Rune Manipulator, Prodigy

Lv: 8

Affinity: Abyss

Sub-affinity: Opposition

Stats: 

Physical: 

Vitality: 10

Endurance: 17

Strength: 17

Agility: 9

Mind: 10

Perception: 24

Magical: 

Capacity: 0

Regen: 0

Power: 0

Control: 0

Connection: 0

Perception: 0

Free points: 1

Skills: Voiding, Power Throw

Wow. He had to say, it was kind of a high to look at his stats and see that his senses were 8 times better than a normal human’s.

Oh, that was interesting. He had never looked at his status before putting his free point in Agility. Now there was a new category at the bottom for them. He rectified that little bit, wondering why he always forgot something so important every time he leveled up.

Now, there was nothing else to put it off. The name of that monster. Abyssal grunt. Not only did it basically confirm he was in the Abyss, whatever that was, but it specified grunt, which basically told him there were much stronger versions. That’s… sort of good? More stronger monsters meant he could level up more. If the monsters stopped growing stronger, he might stall in levels before he got a world-traveling Skill.

So, he would have to do that over and over again… Maybe the other things might be better for experience. At least experience/time ratio.

Unfortunately, they were extremely good for exp. After encountering and killing only three more, he had already gotten to level 9. Sure, he killed plenty of other monsters on the way, but nowhere near the amount it took to get from 6 to 7, let alone 8 to 9. Even with each one taking upwards of a day to safely kill, this was quite a windfall. It also basically confirmed that the exp increased with the level of challenge.

In that vein, Trent decided to try and fight a few Velders with just his bare hands and Voiding. It was a mistake. For one thing, there was no way to really tell if it was helping, and for another, it was really fucking annoying! His fists were bleeding by the end of it all, and he timed the whole thing poorly enough that he had to deal with the injury for hours.

Things were going quite well. Of course, that meant it was the perfect time for things to go horribly wrong.

It started like any other Abyssal grunt fight. He set up a giant line of rocks, aggroed the grunt, and retreated along the line while bombarding it. The problem wasn’t immediately obvious. The grunt roared like usual and chased him like usual. It had the usual amount of mana and the usual toughness. But it also had a friend!

Apparently, the roars could be heard by other grunts from miles away, and just before he killed the first one he was almost blindsided by a second monster. It came up behind him and only his high Perception and the feedback from Voiding saved him from being smashed into the ground by the brutish demon.

He managed to dodge around it and continue running, but now both of them were chasing him, and he didn’t have enough rocks to kill the second one. This… wasn’t good.

But he couldn’t really muster up that much fear. He had become to used to being chased by monsters that the addition of one more chaser didn’t give too much of an instinctive fear response, even though the implications were very bad.

How to deal with this. Well, maybe go back in time and clock himself in the head for not realizing what the roars would do! But for now, he should just kill the first one and go from there.

It didn’t even take that long before if fell to his barrage of rocks. But now he had less than half his line of rocks left.

*Defeated Abyssal grunt (Lv. 22). 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.* 

Lovely. Now, how would he survive this dilemma.