“I want to go home!”
Jonah’s voice rang out in the forest.
“Come on, Jonny Boy! Less crying for Mama and more running. You won’t get any levels if I help you!”
Jonah glanced at the car-sized caterpillar chasing him. The light green behemoth moved with surprising agility as it wormed its way across the shrubbery ground and between the trees he tried to use as obstacles to buy some more time. ‘Tried’ was the keyword since it was far from successful. The Motheater turned the corners and chased him around the trees like it was attached to him with a string.
He would have glared at Serina due to her suspiciously cheerful shouts if it weren’t for the fact that the monster caterpillar was gaining on him.
Jonah wondered how he had ended up in this situation, despite knowing all the individual steps that had led him to it.
Serina had said that he needed to gain some levels to make their explanation for his possession of [Decapitation] believable. Jonah already knew he would have to kill living beings for that, so Serina’s plan of going on a murder spree on their trek through the woods didn’t come as a surprise.
But then, she had said something about making up for lost time and how someone with a leveled (RARE) skill wouldn’t be low-leveled. Since [Mana Heart] was also pretty high level, it would be even better if they could cram in several tens of levels in this short period they had before leaving the Jadur Woods. Those words were the trigger for the first round of chills Jonah felt.
Serina mentioning how he could defeat a Rock Roarer without the System’s help triggered the second round of chills. And her explanation about how he wouldn’t get any experience or levels if she helped set off the third and final bout of tremors climbing up and down his spine.
After that, it didn’t take long for Serina to find something she said ‘Perfect!’ to.
To Jonah, it had just looked like a big sphere attached to the base of one of the trees. It was almost perfectly round, grass green with dark green, almost brown, spots dotting it. It looked like an oversized mushroom of some kind. At least, it had done so until Serina threw a branch at it.
It didn’t react immediately, but after a couple of seconds, the large sphere stirred and trembled before uncurling like a pillbug and extending to its full length. It went from a smooth, even sphere to a cylindrical monstrosity that, with a yaw, revealed a mouth that split its front part like a dog’s snout. It was just that with how it was round, symmetrical, and without a clear distinction between face and body, the being’s maw opening looked like the opening sequence to a fantasy horror of some kind.
At least it didn’t have any teeth dripping and gleaming with the fresh blood of their latest victim. But Jonah wasn’t sure if that would have been scarier than the net-like texture he could see fill the inside of the being’s mouth as it bent over backward to look at what had provoked it.
The net wasn’t inherently scary. In fact, it looked like a mix between spiderweb and a coffee filter. But it fluttered with the being’s soundless howl, and for some reason, Jonah could just tell that the net was sticky, and getting caught in it meant he wasn’t escaping.
Serina then tapped him on his shoulder with a grin, seemingly overjoyed at Jonah’s horror.
‘That’s a Motheater Larva. Good luck!’ she said before sprinting in the other direction, leaving Jonah and his frozen legs behind to deal with the Motheather Larva on his own.
The Motheater larva’s front spun and lowered itself to the ground. Its behind, still attached to the tree, followed shortly after and landed on the soft forest rug almost without sound. Four compound eyes, like those on flies, opened on the larva’s forehead—what Jonah assumed was its forehead, at least.
Since the eyes didn’t have any pupils and pointed in four different directions, Jonah didn’t have any proof, but he could feel that the Motheater larva was looking at him, observing him, and sizing him up and down.
He could have sworn that it was warm and nice weather this morning, so why was he constantly getting chills and shivering?
That sudden thought, free from his concerns about what Serina had gotten him roped into, also freed his frozen body. Without giving time for another thought to pass through his mind and slow him down, Jonah turned around and legged it through the forest.
And that was how he had ended up in a situation where he felt desperately homesick in a completely new way for his, so far, relatively short adventure in another world, only moments after looking forward to the endless possibilities and opportunities he could find in this new world.
His dream of limitless magic in this world, aflush with mana, was overshadowed by the huge caterpillar-like monster, itching to change its name from Motheater to Jonah-eater.
Jonah didn’t continue thinking, even after avoiding the Motheater’s first wave-like lunge, since his first priority was to escape. He knew, deep down, that Serina was still close by, and he ended up venting his innermost desires out loud. But all he got in return was mockery.
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Fortunately, Jonah had his previous experience with the Rock Roarer to fall back on now that he was being chased by another strange monster in this strange new world. It was just that he had an easier time accepting reality while the Rock Roarer chased him since that one was just a slightly bigger-than-average dog. If he bent his understanding of reality enough to accommodate the size, he could also accept its fur, which was made from rocks.
However, a caterpillar armed with a maw that could swallow him whole was still outside the scope of Jonah’s personalized reality warping. So, it took several exhausting movements of sprinting full speed ahead through the forest with its tall trees, their winding roots, and the ensnaring shrubbery and vegetation before he realized—remembered—that the only way to not be chased by the Motheater is to remove it from the equation.
Added to how he needed to kill living beings to gain levels and hide the fact that he was an invader, or at the very least the fact that he was too suspicious to be granted entry to the Chambria Royal Institute of Magic, there was a very simple solution to his problem.
Jonah just had to get rid of the Motheater by killing it, and he would no longer have to worry about it eating him.
The idea was simple, and Jonah came up with it as soon as his thoughts began moving almost as quickly as his legs. The solution popped up in his mind like a flower in spring. However, theory was a lot simpler than practice and execution.
Unfortunately, Jonah didn’t really have the leeway to tinker with the fine details and calculate the angles he needed and whatnot. He had managed to evade the Motheater and stay ahead of it. However, it was slowly but surely gaining and increasing its momentum and speed.
Even when he turned sharp corners, the Motheater’s speed was almost unaffected. Since his twists and turns winding through the trees were sharp and desperate enough, he could glance at the Motheater without losing too much of his own speed. And he saw how the Motheater’s soft, mushy, gelatinous body jiggled and shifted its center of gravity to displace its drag and sideways momentum. It was like a cheetah’s tail swiveling to keep up with its prey’s quick sidesteps and jukes. But bigger and contained within the Motheater larva’s body.
The sight of the Motheater’s body was revolting since it looked like it was bulging on one side and collapsing on the other like rotten apples. But Jonah had already grown numb after seeing the gaping maw running down almost a fourth of its body. He began focusing on his magic instead of the weird monster’s even weirder physicality.
After his fight with the Rock Roarer, when he first noticed the difference in atmospherical mana density between Earth and Thyskria and its effects on magic casting, Jonah had little to no time to develop a temporary workaround or a more permanent solution. But he had gotten a little more used to controlling the mana in his body and practicing forming stable magic circles.
He definitely hadn’t had enough time to edit and adapt his magic circles to the mana density, so he was still working on what he used against the Rock Roarer.
And if Jonah had to be honest, he would easily admit that while the Motheater Larva was scarier than the Rock Roarer, it looked softer and more susceptible to sharp objects. And if he had to continue being honest, his triangles were among the sharpest things he had encountered since they were almost two-dimensional. They were almost at the point of being able to cut cells.
Jonah created a magic circle in each hand and lit them up with mana. One of them failed. He tried again and succeeded—much to his relief—so he had one black triangle floating in each of his hands. He didn’t look back. If he did, he would probably run into a tree or slow down enough for the Motheater Larva to catch up.
Thankfully, he didn’t need to look back to feel the crawling giant inching forward at a staggering pace. He wasn’t sure if it would do much, but Jonah tossed the triangles back over his shoulders toward the Motheater. Since it was more of a probing attack, he didn’t put his all into them and didn’t expect that much.
But his triangles, the instant before making contact with the Motheater, sped up and dug into the oversized caterpillar’s soft skin. Jonah wouldn’t have felt or seen it if he weren’t still connected to the triangles through the magic circles. Even then, it was so faint and instantaneous that he wouldn’t have been surprised if he had dreamed it.
Although wondrous about the sudden acceleration, Jonah didn’t think about it more at the moment since he was preoccupied with the Motheater.
Instead, he conjured another pair of triangles and launched at the Motheater, this time with more power. The first round hadn’t done enough damage to the monster. Jonah had trouble sensing more than that, considering it was still chasing him, and he didn’t dare look back and see the effects of his attack.
However, he couldn’t really tell the effects of his second round, either. So, he decided to add some details to his initial plan of simply throwing triangles at the Motheater until it died. It didn’t look like it had any obvious weak spots except possibly the inside of its mouth. But it also looked soft and squishy enough that he needn’t bother looking for any.
Though, with [Decapitation] aiding him, even if he didn’t quite like the fact that he had the skill, Jonah would be better off trying to separate the Motheater’s head and body.
The thought of that skill also made him realize that it could be [Invader] that increased the power of his triangles at the last moment before they hit their target. It was interesting, and Jonah almost subconsciously began to wrap himself up in the how before he could remember what he was doing.
So, he quickly refocused.
His current magic circles were still designed for the mana-thin Earth. Jonah had managed to tweak them just a little so that it would be easier to control them in the dense mana in the air of Thyskria, but the base was still the same to almost a hundred percent.
His magic wasn’t as powerful as it could have been if he had had the time to change or design new magic circles. But it was efficient—way too efficient.
His black triangles barely cost any mana to conjure and propel forward. And every breath he took drew the dense mana around him into his lungs and heart, constantly refilling his mana heart. Since he was busy running, Jonah couldn’t tell if the refill and consumption rates were equal or if one was greater than the other. But he knew that he could fling triangles for longer than he ever could on Earth.
And, although the circumstances weren’t ideal, he had an opportunity right now to test just how many more triangles he could propel in a row.
It only remained to be seen if he could do it before the Motheater succumbed to the trickling avalanche of triangles before he ran out of mana—if that would ever happen. Or if it caught up to him first.