First prey

A "huge" centipede stood a few meters from me and lifted half of his body, watching me closely. To be more precise, it was identical to a nearly one meter long fucking scolopendra . It was a lot bigger than me, so I was a bit scared.

Its body was milky white covered in black stripes, similar to those of a tiger. Its head featured a distinctive pair of rather long antennae, and two prominent nasty looking jaws stuck out of its mouth.

‘What the heck is this, looks like the result of breeding a tiger with a centipede.’

[White tiger chilopod: A rare type of tiger centipede. Despite not possessing great strength, its jaws secrete a paralyzing venom capable of stunning an adult person in merely seconds. They have poor eyesight, but can use their antennae to detect everything around them and guide themselves with precision. Unlike other chilopods, they are quite intelligent.]

Status:

Name: -

Kind: Tiger centipede | Race: White tiger chilopod

Level: 2

HP: 93/93 | MP: 32/32

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‘What’s up with that name? Whoever is in charge of naming these things should get fired… Anyway, it doesn’t look very strong. The slime is a thousand times more powerful. Therefore, Limy, attack!’

I ended up inadvertently giving the slime a nickname… I’m kinda hopeless...

‘Well, it's only level 2, I can surely beat this thing.’

I closed in on the centipede. The slime was very slow and the centipede incredibly fast, so it could have easily run away from me, but it chose not to. It even took the liberty of coming over to inspect me.

‘Alright then, since you have no intention of fleeing…’

I went straight to the attack… or so I’d like to say, but it turns out I didn’t even know how slimes attack, so I needed a minute to plan my next move.

‘What do slimes specialize in? Ah, I know, tentacles!’

By now, I had gotten pretty used to the parasitize skill, so I swiftly extended a thin tentacle like a wip and struck the centipede with all of the slime's might. My attack hit head-on, sending the bug flying. Upon inspecting its status again, I saw that the HP had dropped to 86.

‘Mmm, it did do some damage… Maybe I can tie him using the slime’s tentacles and… hold on, I will not look like a pervert fighting like that, will I?’

“Kyyyyyyyyy.”

The nasty bug let out an unpleasant screech. I had most certainly pissed it off.

‘Oh, didn’t you like it? Then take this!’

I stretched out three more tentacles and, with all four of them, started striking just as I had earlier. The nimble centipede barely managed to avoid them.

‘Ora, ora, ora, ora, what if we add some more?’

I added two more tentacles, which made it impossible for it to avoid my attacks. The tentacles hit all over the centipede’s body, without giving it much time to react or counterattack. Before I knew it, its HP had already dropped to 54. At this speed it wouldn’t take me long to kill it.

Finding itself in a pinch, the centipede decided to retreat to a safe distance, but I was expecting it and thus prepared the mana cannon beforehand.

‘Useless, useless, useless, completely useless!’

I emerged from the slime and fired the mana cannon without hesitation. The bullet flew straight to the target. I didn’t expect it to be so accurate. Unfortunately it was not strong enough to kill the centipede, and it survived with 13 HP.

‘Die already, you damn bug!’

However, it swiftly got on its feet and made a mad dash for the slime, easily avoiding the tentacles. As soon as it closed the gap between us, it stood up on its rear legs and launched itself into the slime, straight in my direction. Once my body was within its reach, it opened its mouth and caught me with its jaws.

‘Eh? Eh? Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat!’

It only had half of its body inside the slime, so it used the countless legs that had remained free to pull me away from the slime with all its might… I was sent flying and fell deeper in the forest, of course, losing control of the slime in the process.

‘How the hell…’

And incidentally, I barely had time to react before I saw the damn bug charging towards me at full speed. I managed to roll out of its first charge by the skin of my teeth, before falling prey to its jaws again.

‘Oh, no…’

Had I been able to, I would have broken into a cold sweat.

‘This, ehm, not… Sorry, I won’t do it again! Let me gooooooooooo!’

I was completely trapped into the monster’s jaws with no way to escape. As soon as the centipede trapped me, it started to run off. I had no idea where it was going and I found myself completely disoriented. Also, I could see a green liquid spilling over me from the centipede’s mouth. However, it didn’t seem to do me any harm.

‘Is this venom? Alright then, this isn’t too bad. It seems you are unable to harm me. Screw you! I am a rock! I’m hard and poison doesn’t affect me!’

Crack!

I froze up as soon as I heard that unpleasant noise.

Crack!

‘Oh, shit!’

I quickly checked my status, and realized that my HP had dropped to 9 in a moment. That damn bug was breaking me!

‘What the hell? This thing is supposed to be weak! How can it break a stone with only its jaws?!’

Crack!

‘This is bad, very bad. I can’t afford to just stand here doing nothing. I need to figure out a way to free myself or I’m toast..’

The bug had me trapped with its jaws, so I could just try to fire another mana cannon to quickly finish it off. However, I knew that some bugs sometimes keep squeezing even after dying or having their heads cut off, so just killing it may not be good enough. Also, I was worried that I could take damage from being inside the blast radius of the Mana Cannon. I needed to force it to open its jaw but unfortunately my only available tool was the mana cannon.

‘If only I could use the mana cannon to create some sort of blast wave instead…’

I had no other chance. I tried mimicking what I felt when I first learnt how to use mana to roll, and quickly covered my entire body with as much mana as I could.

Crack!

‘It's do or die. If this doesn’t work I’m as good as dead… Get away from me!’

I unleashed all the mana I had concentrated around me at once. It was somewhat similar to the mana cannon, but it produced a wave instead. It worked just like I hoped it would. The explosion range was about fifty centimeters around me and luckily it hadn’t affected me… Well, I wasn’t entirely unscathed. I had only 3 HP left and my mana was completely depleted.

[New ability acquired: Mana bomb(Lvl 1).]

[New title acquired: The bomb.]

The centipede’s head was gone and I acquired another ability… and a new title, that, just like the others, seemed to have been designed to mock me.

‘Iosu would either be proud of me… or hate me for getting the title that he would have wanted… Anyway, that was too close for comfort. Better never underestimate any monster again.’

However, I wasn’t done getting notifications just yet. It seems I finally achieved what I set out to do when entering this forest.

[You have gained 1089 experience points.]

[Your level has risen to 2. Due to your kind, your stats can’t go up.]

[Your level has risen to 3. Due to your kind, your stats can’t go up.]

‘Wow, that was a lot of experience.’

It was enough to level up… twice… but my stats hadn’t increased at all.

Status:

Name: Peter Gravel

Kind: Magic stone | Race: -

Level: 3 | Experience: 339/675

HP: 3/25 | MP: 0/50 | Mana well: 0/200

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At least my HP and MP went up, which no doubt would come in handy… but they did not recover… Not even the extra HP points I earned when leveling. They would probably recover over time… or so I hoped…

‘Stones also heal… right?’