ALL NOVEL Chapter 42- Infiltration…?
Trying to sneak around an enormous jellyfish is pretty much impossible with my current strength.
Half of its arms are tucked under its huge body in a way reminiscent of a drawn bowstring, only getting released when prey passes by, dragging it down to wherever its mouth is.
The other half are all buried underground, anchoring its huge body against the strong currents around here.
Yup, the water currents around here are pretty violent.
Sticking to a smaller body size was a very smart move.
The density of my stat distribution became quite high as a result, so resisting those currents takes practically no effort.
The jellyfish’s buried arms might seem harmless, but it’d be foolish to ignore them.
I mean, they were drilled through the earth in one go without taking any visible damage.
The chances of the ground actually restricting them are abysmal.
Instead, those arms should be able to move around and catch any unsuspecting underground burrowers.
My current plan is to dig a tunnel that goes deeper than the length of its fully outstretched arm, then use it to bypass the jellyfish.
While jellyfish are quite adept hunters, this one seems to like chilling around and waiting for food to deliver itself.
The bone density around its resting place is incredibly high, but the number drops sharply the further you are from there.
A bunch of empty patches of ground can be spotted as well.
Hopefully, it wouldn’t break its own rules for little ol’ me...
For the first time in my life, finding food is actually posing a problem!
The creatures around here are just too strong to hunt!
Going back and forth between other biomes is very inefficient as well.
I could travel further beyond the boneyards instead, but it’s highly probable that the monsters over there are even stronger.
I don’t wanna stray somewhere too dangerous by mistake, then get greeted by a Game Over! screen...
That leaves me with only one option.
Moving out of the jellyfish’s range, I rapidly ascend until I reach a relatively shallow depth.
As shallow as I could go without risking being spotted by water dragons anyways.
And here, I find the perfect prey.
Swimming around in sparse numbers, these third-stage water wyrms would not only fix my food problem, but killing enough of them will also grant me the Wyrm Slayer title.
Now that I think about it, I forgot to plunder those magic skills off of the eels, huh?
Well, getting them now wouldn’t affect my situation much.
There are no magic skills present in my skill point shop at the moment, and I don’t have much affinity for the ones that I currently own.
I probably won’t even use them in the future.
I’d rather pursue the extreme in one aspect than become a jack of all trades, so my focus will entirely be on poison, space, heretic, and maybe stealth skills.
There’s a very strong synergy between those, making for a very strong assassin’s skill set.
Although I love exciting head-on confrontations, I wouldn’t base my future skillset around them, opting for a high burst intelligence dependent one instead.
Casually shooting some spikes at the nearby wyrms, I skewer the bodies with my strong attached spikes and head back down.
{Condition Satisfied. Acquired title [Wyrm Slayer].}
{Acquired skill [Life LV 1] [Wyrm Power LV 1] as a result of title [Wyrm Slayer].}
{[Life LV 1] has been integrated into [Life LV 5].}
{Proficiency has reached the required level. Skill [Life LV 5] has become [Life LV 6].}
Wyrm Power is a nice addition, I guess.
Back to digging it is!
Phew, that took a while.
The increased stats did cut the expected time by more than half though, so there’s that.
I didn’t actually pass through the tunnel yet, as intuition evolved into a warning buzzer as soon as I came anywhere close to those tentacles.
For real though, the warning started blaring directly inside my head instead of through my sixth sense.
This can’t be a good indicator, but there’s no way I’ll stop after I made it all the way here.
Luckily, Burrow’s range covers the entirety of my sphere, so I finished the job remotely.
Well, then. Moment of truth!
Activating Wyrm Power and all my mental-related skills, I ask Manger-san to turn off my emotions for a bit and rush into the tunnel with all my might.
Intuition’s danger warning comes back with an intensity higher than a fire alarm’s siren, but it doesn’t affect me now.
The first attack comes from my left side without any prior warning.
Dodging, I quickly search for the source of the attack, which doesn’t take much time as it’s quite obvious considering the huge tentacle moving in my sphere.
1000 meters left.
Seemingly surprised that it missed, the soulless abomination pauses for a moment then proceeds to send two more attacks my way.
I had taken into consideration the possibility of the arms being able to stretch and increased the tunnel’s depth, but it seems that I’d highly underestimated my enemy.
I mean, this isn’t even stretching, this guy is literally creating extra body parts!!
Evading its attacks is fairly easy with my sphere though.
I just hope it isn’t actually able to create entire extra tentacles...
700 meters left.
My successive evasions seem to have triggered the guy, as it starts to drill through the earth with its above-ground tentacles in preparation for another attack.
500 meters left.
Ten deadly tentacles are sent my way in a very complicated formation.
Hey, weren’t jellyfish supposed to have no brains?!!
Why the hell can this guy weave an attack with such finesse?!
My yellow stamina won’t hold out for much at my current consumption rate, so I should really hurry!
Come to think of it, this is actually the first time I’ve fought anything this clever.
My combat experience is quite lacking in this aspect, huh?
300 meters left.
Holy hell, did that fucker just grow five additional arms?!
I try my best to dance around its strikes even if my speed drops down a bit in the process, but my body still gets grazed twice.
Luckily, I had shifted my position beforehand, so the impact was close to nil.
The physical damage I received was the equivalent of only 10% of my health bar.
Unfortunately though, jellyfish are known for their venomous stings, so I still take quite a lot of damage.
In fact, this bastard’s poison actually affects the soul!
This is the first time I’ve felt pain since I had cut my soul to mark the Aiko and the others...
It hurts like fuck!!
I can’t take any more hits!
Realizing the severity of my situation, I order Manger-san to work on purifying my soul as I increase my speed back to maximum.
100 meters left.
I seem to have heard a loud angry roar from aboveground, but I give it no attention as I’m on the lookout for the jellyfish’s final attack.
This time, the number of arms doesn’t increase.
Instead, each tentacle starts branching into a spider-web-like pattern and comes at me from a different direction.
In no time at all, I’m surrounded from all directions except for the bottom!
Hey, what the fuck! I call hacks!!
It’s ridiculous enough that your physical poison can affect my soul, and somehow break through my Heretic Nullification, but this is just too much!
Humph, since everyone around here is cheating then I’ll respond in a way befitting of a future goddess!
... That is to instantly use Burrow to dig another tunnel branch below this one and escape inside.
What? You thought I’d break through head-on?
Hell no!! Do you think I’m an idiot with nothing but fighting in her head?!
I’m walking the path of a goddess of knowledge, not martial arts!
Unreal, man.
The soulless bastard’s perception shouldn’t be strong, as it doesn’t halt its previous attack.
It doesn’t even shift the trajectory.
I can only assume that it can detect life in a certain direction, but can’t sense the accurate position.
Well, I’ve already arrived under the space illusion, so I don’t need to pay attention to it anymore.
As soon as I enter the hole below the illusion, I rapidly descend towards my target destination.
I really hope bypassing the jellyfish was the hard part, otherwise I might really die here.
Here goes nothing...
Light years away, on the blue planet Earth, somewhere in Japan.
Our resident evil god D is still sitting in front of her computer, but she’s sitting on a cloud of dark mist this time.
What’s astonishing though, is that her eternally expressionless face is now conveying rage for the first time.
Yes, you could feel a rage that’s like a volcano on the verge of eruption emanating from her even though her outside appearance remains unchanged.
“What the hell is that woman thinking?! I already warned her about endangering the little fish!”
Skipping the entire key sequence and wholly ignoring her computer monitor, a screen pops up mid-air in front of her.
It shows the same pitch-black area filled with phosphorous floating light, but there’s a very eye-catching change this time.
Those vertical eyes are open and their owner looks as if they had predicted that D would come.
Hiding her emotions, D speaks first.
“It’s bad manners to damage a friend’s toy.”
“Sure enough, you came.”
Quirking an eyebrow at such a reply, D’s rage is replaced by a bit of amusement.
“What might you be speaking about?”
“You actually care about her, that little fish.”
“Care? What a strange word to pair with one such as I.”
“It does not matter whether you acknowledge it or not. What I had wanted to verify is now confirmed.”
Even though nothing but a pair of vertical eyes could be seen, you could easily feel how smug the owner of those eyes is.
Growing more and more amused, D’s mouth mechanically stretches into an eerie grin.
“Ah, it seems I might’ve given you a tad bit too much freedom, little worm?”
“Hehehe, seeing you act this way is quite a novel experience for me. Anyways, you should keep an eye on your ‘toy’ for a bit. Having a reason to give her a free boost would be nice, no?”
“Well, a difficult challenge calls for a corresponding reward indeed.”
Scoffing, the other speaker, Ouri rolls her vertical eyes while replying.
“A ‘difficult challenge’ you say? She practically achieved the impossible. You’ve gotta give her a Champion title at the very least, that is if you don’t want her to hate you in the future.”
“Don’t you think giving Greed to a battle maniac is enough? She might lose her mind and become a lunatic who’s only obsessed with killing, you know.”
“Impossible. Not only does she have a weird skill that maintains her sanity, but she’s also gone through my soul corruption trial. Even you wouldn’t be able to manipulate her mind not to mention some skill.”
Taking a deep look at those vertical eyes, D ends the conversation by closing that floating screen.
Her grin slowly fades away, but so does her eternally expressionless face, as it is now adorned with a shallow mocking smile.
“Heh, you think you can control her? That girl was able to affect even me with her words. To think a whim of mine would bring about such prime entertainment.”
D’s eyes drift back to a window on her screen. Shown inside—is a strange violet lionfish-pufferfish hybrid standing still in the middle of a large room that seems as if it came out of a sci-fi movie.
“Jellyfish out of all things? She and my defective doppelganger are quite the fascinating subjects indeed.”
