Chapter 2 - Setting Bait

Chapter 2 - Setting Bait

"Level passed!!

To leave please say:

[Leave Level]"

The Operator prompt.

Kiel swam amongst the floating crap and crawled up the edge of the pool.

He got over the ledge while questioning his life. Throughout his past life, he did not think he had done anything as remotely disgusting as this.

Well except the one time he got swallowed whole by a gigantic tortoise like creature and barely survived by passing through its entire digestive system for a whole week.

Cursing he flipped himself and laid spread eagled at the edge of the pool.

Whatever it takes to survive. That was his motto. 

It took a few minutes to collect himself from questioning his life choices and regain his cool.

Taking a deep breath, Kiel called out.

"Status"

And a blue translucent window pops up and shows him his current status.

#######

Name: Kiel Sinclair

Age: 16

Level: 0

Class: -

Health: 6/12

Mana: 0/0

Stamina: 6

Intellect: 8

Strength: 4

Agility: 7

Equipments: Basic Miao Dao

Skills: -

Experience: 30 / 100

Assessment: Fragile

#######

Not even weak…..

Reality hit him hard. Losing all his stats made him "Fragile" the gods term for mere mortals.

A sneeze from those godly beings and he will die.

Before this, he was just a waiter. His 16 years old body was very weak. A typical body type of a struggling young orphan who had to struggle with multiple odd jobs to survive while eating whatever that was available to fill his belly.

He had loved light novels and had dreamed of the apocalypse. Kiel chuckled as he laughed at how absurdly foolish he was.

30 years had forced him to understand the brutal reality of Climbers, that is how the survivors called themself.

He no longer had foolish ideas of grandeur. 

Saving beauty, showing overpowered skills, parading godlike gears, Money, Power, Fame. Those will kill you real quick if you are not strong enough to hold on to them.

He had seen enough men and even women died chasing those.

Only the persistent and steadfast survive.

Regardless, he desperately needed to get strong. Fast.

Taking a deep breath, somehow, the smell was not so bad. Wait, it was still rancid.

He sat up and called out a simple command that was previously discovered at level 10 which completely changed how the tower is climbed.

'Clear Condition'

Immediately a green display window popped up in front of him and crucial information about the current tower level was displayed in flamboyant writing style.

#######

Tower of Extinction: Level One.

Basic Clear: 

Condition: 

Directly kill 2 Gharl or indirectly cause all Gharl to die or survive for 2 months,

Reward:

None, 

Can leave the stage anytime.

Standard Clear: 

Condition: 

Directly kill >10 Gharls, 

Reward: 

Chosen weapon could be carried out.

Can leave the stage anytime.

Perfect Clear:

Condition: 

Directly kill all Gharls (60 Gharls).

Reward: 

Chosen Weapon upgrade 1 level,

Bonus 1 character Level.

Can leave the stage anytime

#######

Reading carefully through the Level Clear requirement. He scowled. In his past life he got roasted and only managed a basic clear. 

While that African madman should have a perfect clear, why did he stay for 2 months?

But, on second thought, he called out another command. 

"Tower of Extinction: Hell Clear"

A special mode only known after level 42 in his previous life with less than 2% known completion rate.

A window with bright red texts flashed into existence in front of him.

#######

Tower of Extinction: Level One.

Hell Clear: 

Directly kill all Gharls.

Obtain the treasure in the Oasis

Survive for 2 months

Reward: 

Chosen Weapon upgrade 1 level, 

Bonus 1 Character Level. 

Bonus Skill upgrade 1 level

#######

He heaved a sigh of relief, it seemed like it did not deviate too much from the Perfect Clear.

That African might have attempted the Hell clear… but how did he know? Kiel shrugged his shoulders and pushed away the useless thought.

Kiel immediately got up, he then dragged the other dead Gharl and shoved it into the brown coloured pool. 

By doing this he hoped to hide the body for a bit longer before the Gharl packs went berserk when they found the dead newborns.

Any single details that will increase his survival chance must be carefully observed and proper steps must be taken.

Any creature would go berserk when they see their newborns brutally murdered. 

Especially by being drowned in a dung pit.

He quickly dressed his wound and removed the bloodied part of his clothes and shoved those into the dung pit with his sword. 

Looking around and making sure nothing was out of place. He quickly left the area. 

He needed a place to rest for the time being and wait for the night to come to be able to find his destination.

Supposedly the oasis will glow in the night and it is visible if you know where to look.

He will aim to head there first and clean this miserable stench

After running away for 2 hours. Kiel found a burrow with winds gushing out from the inside.

Exhausted, he decided to rest inside while exploring for possible gains. He quietly crawled inside, and heard a loud digging sound and felt the tunnel trembling slightly. 

Checking the wind to make sure his stench is getting blown out of the tunnel, he continued.

Slowly and quietly heading towards the sound, he finally came across a big round body with a green fluffy butt wiggling a massive fluffy tail. He recognised the beast. 

Thabit, a wolf sized rabbit with sharp fangs and claws. Fluffy fur is great to make a coat with and meat that tastes just like chicken. A big ass chicken. 

It was so engrossed in digging it did not even realize Kiel had creeped up behind him. 

Getting into position he rushed forward to put the Thabit into a choke hold trying to strangle the beast to death.

Everything was great except… Kiel had forgotten, he had just reincarnated and his stats were utter rubbish, 'fragile' to be correct.

The Thabit leaped up and smashed him against the roof of the tunnel, knocking the wind out of him.

Then it does a death roll causing his back to be scraped up against the rough rocks. 

Seeing that it did not succeed, it kept slamming Kiel against the wall in hope of crushing him and getting Kiel to let go. 

But Kiel held on for dear life, tightening his choke hold, not daring to let go. He had seen one of these beasts disemboweled a poor sod with its sharp long claws.

After about 3 minutes, the Thabit flopped down in exhaustion and gasping for breath.

Kiel continued to tighten his choke. 

As the beast fainted. He struggled to get up while feeling pain all over his body. His body is now an artwork of mild lacerations and a colourful map of bruises.

He looked at the Thabit thinking about what he should do before finally, he pulled his sword and stabbed it through its eyes towards its brain in one swift motion. 

The beast jerked and then died peacefully. He did not want to cause too much blood yet in case it attracted unnecessary attention. 

"Adult Thabit killed, 20 Experience gained"

Confirming the kill, he flopped to the ground in utter exhaustion. 

He then scraped some dung from his body and shoved it into the wound to stop its bleeding and cover up the smell of blood.

His mind knew there was a lot of work left but his body was weak. Soon he fell asleep.

As he got up a few hours later and felt much better, but his body was still a wonderful map of scars and bruises.

The Green sun will be setting soon. 

Coming to terms with reality and pushing useless thoughts away, he reminded himself that his stat had changed. And he can not keep repeating the same mistake or he will die.

He then got up and searched around under the dim glow of the random glowing stones in the tunnel. Kiel headed to where the Thabit was digging, wondering what made it so engrossed. 

He found a part of a lump of milky white rock that had almost been dug out. Kiel was in ecstasy, 

It was a Mana Lode. It is very rare and at the lover level, there is only demand and no supply for this item. Anyone lucky enough to have this can absorb this and permanently increase their mana capacity. 

It is very simple to absorb this, just use mana to stimulate the rock and it will dissolve into the user.

But he has a big problem, his mana value is 0.

He needed to kill at least 4 more Thabit or if he did not recall wrongly, 2 adult Gharls (35 exp ea from what his peers said).

Debating on what he should do, he finally settled on setting up a trap with the dead Thabit to kill the Gharls. 

He left the burrow and went out to decide on a trap spot nearby. 

Then he spent the night away to fold all the grass in the area into makeshift snares.

The grasses here were very tough. 

While a Gharl might be able to tear one of them with ease, a whole bunch of them would be an effective trap for the big beast. 

Kiel worked throughout the night. By the next morning he had setted countless traps of approximately 200 meter diameter in circular shape. Now all he had to do is to set the bait and wait. 

He scouted around and about 2 km away, he found 2 Gharls frolicking in a small valley.

Target acquired. He returned to his burrow and pulled the Thabit to the center of the trap. Taking care not to trigger any of them. 

Once that is done. He cut the limbs of the Thabit off and proceeded to head towards the valley, leaving a trail of the Thabit limbs bits along the way. 

He threw the last of the Thabit bits to the entrance of the valley and started to head back to the trap. 

Just as he settled into a nice hiding spot with a good view of the trap, he heard the rustle of the grass approaching the trap.