Before they left the small mushroom-laden area, Nicholas also grabbed some of the variant fungi and carefully pulled some mycelium from the ground. The thin root-like structures between fungi were possibly as valuable as the mushrooms themselves, though Nicholas couldn't be sure of that. Even so, he collected samples.
[Skill: Harvest Mycelium acquired!]
[Skill: Harvest Nightshade Mycelium acquired!]
[Title Gained: Apprentice Harvester I, Harvester I]
The inventory held anything deposited into it in stasis, stopping it from rotting, growing, or otherwise changing. He wasn't sure how, but it was useful.
After finishing his harvest, Nicholas stood up on the puma's feet and moved away from the massive fungus still lingering over their heads. They did come here for a reason beyond experimenting with the inventory, after all.
Using Eye of the Red Dragon to scope out any heat sources, Nicholas eventually found new prey. It was another of those horned rabbits they'd killed so many of when they were starting out. Just as he was about to move in for a fight, his world began to flash in shades of deep black and bright blue.
[You have acquired a Node Blueprint through unconventional means! +100DX]
[You have unlocked Nodes for your dungeon! Limits and safeguards have been removed by the Infinite System.]
[You have unlocked new resources: Biomass (0), Raw Material (0)]
[New Node: Nightshade Grass]
He almost jumped out of his skin when the system windows suddenly flashed in front of his eyes. They kept blinking as if they wanted his attention, even after he'd read and understood the text.
There was a formerly empty space on their status listed as Nodes under the dungeon status. Guess he… still had no idea what they were. Why was grass a node?
The only thing this confirmed to him was the idea that the fungi in their inventory might be more useful than they thought. Unlike monster blueprints, which awarded DP, getting new nodes awarded DX. There might be something there for them.
Unfortunately, as he was interrupted by the windows, the rabbit had leapt away. He cursed under his breath, suddenly confused as he actually heard an English curse word emerge from the lips of a big cat. Cats couldn't speak English. He knew that.
He tried speaking again, managing to recite the alphabet forwards and backwards through the mouth of a monster puma. How, he wasn't sure. But he knew he had done just that. He heard it in his ears.
Just as he was trying to figure out how that happened, he realized that if he heard it, then so did the forest around him. As such, he immediately vacated, moving as fast as his F-Grade legs could carry him.
Considering how fast a puma could move already, capping out somewhere at 50 miles an hour, and the enhancements given by Azotreh's grade, of which he was still barely able to understand, he zoomed through the forest.
But he didn't move fast enough. Just as he felt strong, there were many stronger than him in this forest. Including a rather large snake.
He leapt into a tree, only to feel massive fangs dig into his side. Pain shot through his body as the teeth pierced his fur, and he landed in a furry heap on the ground.
The massive serpent was low to the ground again and moving quickly.
[New Resistance Gained: Poison Resistance]
[Resistance gained to the venom of the Adult Krelli Serpent (0.01%)]
Instead of blood, small amounts of black mist slowly rose from the spots where the serpent had bitten him. The mist itself seemed to have a scale pattern outlined in purple. But he could barely focus on that.
Fuzem pulled in immediately, as he began to use Gelatinous Body to extend their claws across the forest floor. He felt her beginning to pull on a couple of abilities they hadn't used yet. The other two gained from the forced fusion of various draconic parts into Azotreh's body.
He pushed those memories away. Errazorrus and Fuzem didn't share the memories of the experiments, but he did. It was part of the reason he was so lenient on Azotreh. No child should undergo what that kid went through.
The puma's tail was suddenly covered in white scales, and as the snake lashed forward with a second strike to finish them, the tail was brought up between them. One moment, it was the tail of a cat covered in scales, and the next, it was a solid wall of white scales.
The snake's face slammed into the shield with a sickening crunch. Fuzem pulled the tail away to bring forth their claws, only to find the serpent's mouth open. The front of its face was seemingly broken, but its jaws were still wide.
It wasn't lashing out. Why wasn't it- then it struck. Thick green venom was ejected at high speed towards them, sticking to their fur and melting into their skin.
[Acid Resistance has gained a new facet: Adult Krelli Serpent Acid (0.01%)]
If only they'd had that resistance before it spat acid at them. Why the hell could a snake spit acid? Creepy bugger.
Even as the acid melted into the puma's body, lightly glowing slime was slowly spreading across the forest's floor, snaking between the stalks like serpents of their own.
The puma was breathing heavily as it stared at the serpent with warning in its eyes. But the serpent didn't seem to care. Instead, it lashed out once more, biting into their neck with renewed venom and rage.
But even as the monster's body died, and the head began to leak more of the black mist, slime continued to move along the forest floor. Draconic claws and fangs grew from the slime and slashed into the scales of the serpent, to minimal effect. They barely scratched its dark green scales. It didn't even turn its head as it killed the monster it had in its mouth.
[Congratulations! You have slain Ant x48]
[Base EXP: 1]
[Grade Disparity Bonus: 1x]
[Rank Disparity Bonus: 1x]
[No boosts detected]
[You have gained 48 EXP]
[You have gained 52 DX]
[You have gained title: Ant Slayer IV]
[You have gained a new blueprint through unconventional methods! +100DP]
[You have gained a new blueprint through unconventional methods! +100DP]
Two new messages appeared, confusing the dying Nicholas. Well, he knew he wasn't dying. But he was still in a body that was dying. But it didn't feel right.
Nicholas, along with the rest, had experienced death. They even had a title to prove it. But as the snake dug into their throat, he didn't feel that dread that came with the end of a life. He didn't even feel weak. He felt stronger than ever.
He looked to Fuzem to see if she felt the same way, as she had returned to the inside as the puma had taken control of its own body back. But she didn't seem to notice. Her transparent eyelids were closed over similarly transparent eyes. She was concentrating on something.
[You have slain ant x851]
[Base EXP: 1]
[Grade Disparity Bonus: 2x]
[Rank Disparity Bonus: 1x]
[Ant Slayer IV: 20% Increased EXP]
[You have gained 2042 EXP]
[You have gained 2246 DX]
[Your Title: Ant Slayer IV has advanced to Ant Slayer XVII]
[Your Title: Nightshade Ant Slayer I has advanced to Nightshade Ant Slayer XXI]
[You have gained a new blueprint through unconventional methods! +100DP]
[You have gained an extraordinary blueprint through unconventional methods! +1,000DP, +1,000 DX]
What the hell? Just before the duo were returned to the core realm, they gained another two blueprints. One called extraordinary, even. What was that even about? Why would ants grant not just little blueprints but an extraordinary one?
That was also a ton of EXP and DX for… apparently just filling an ant colony with slime and eating all the ants. Apparently, at least a few of the ants were also E-Grade, granting them increased EXP. Suddenly, within the flesh of the core again, tons of new notifications appeared before Nicholas.
[You have reached level 32!]
[SP: 31]
[Your Dungeon Faction: Black Dragon has crossed the 4th threshold! +10C to Mana and Mana Regeneration, +10DP, ERR:b1739999]
[You have gained 1 Perk Selection]
[Your Dungeon Faction: Black Dragon has crossed the 5th threshold! +10C to Mana and Mana Regeneration, +10DP, ERR:b1739999]
[You have gained 1 Perk Selection]
[Your Dungeon Faction: Black Dragon has crossed the 6th threshold! +10C to Mana and Mana Regeneration, +10DP, ERR:b1739999]
[You have gained 1 Perk Selection]
[For the loss of your champion monster, you have fulfilled an aspect of the dungeon and gained 100DX]
[For the consumption of 899 ants, you have been awarded with 8 units of Biomass]
[For gaining five monster blueprints, the Mistress of Gluttony has granted you her Emerald Blessing]
[Blessing of Beelzebub (Emerald) - all cooked objects grant double energy when devoured]
{The Mistress of Gluttony has given you a new task: push 50 skills to the Journeyman tier (11/50)}
{The Mistress of Gluttony has given you a new task: reach SSS-Grade and do not advance to Nickel Rank (0/1)}
[You have been awarded a System Boon (Epic)]
An overwhelming amount of information to receive at once, to say the least. SSS-Grade? 8 biomass for nearly 900 ants? Let alone the level advancement to 32 and the ability to spend an unprecedented three perk choices.
He sighed as he began to brush himself down, the sticky gross of the dungeon core still stuck to his suit. He had been trying to imitate other nice clothes from home recently, in an attempt to make both Azotreh and Fuzem wear something that wasn't weirdly golden denim.
But now wasn't the time to complain about the false clothes those sharing Azotreh's soul wore. Three dungeon perks, eight biomass, and skills. So many skills he had to bring to journeyman.
He was pretty sure that 50 was some other limit to the number of skills they could have at a time. Even if it wasn't, he didn't want to force Azotreh to double their biomass just to sustain more skills. He'd wanted to advance in their other skills anyway. It was why he'd begun the journey to begin with, even if he'd gotten much more out of it than he'd bargained for.
Fuzem was already returning to the soul when he entered the core obelisk. She'd enjoyed pouring mana into their abilities, so he wouldn't stop her from doing just that. Or whatever she was gonna do.
For now, though, he wanted to push their skills forward and choose their new perks.
Perks weren't expensive in any sense, but all provided nice bonuses. Every bonus to their growth was more than worth it.
So he returned to the soul obelisk and made it open their status, before navigating to the perk list. A… substantially longer perk list.
Humanoid Specialization, Orc Specialization, Mammal, Cat, and more now fill out the bottom of the list. The list had more than doubled.
What was worse was that most of the new options were specializations, so they could be bought multiple times. They'd remain on that list until he figured out what the maximum level of any perk could be. Considering that he didn't want to spend that many points, or have that many points to spend, he wasn't willing to invest in finding out just yet.
While DX Gain Boost had apparently helped, since it granted them 10% more DX than their regular EXP gains, he still wasn't sure if that was the right path. Sure, helping them gain more perks in the long term was always wise, but if they died tomorrow, they wouldn't have time for that.
Fuzem's words about high rankers being cruel, almost across the board, rang in Nicholas' mind. The man who referred to himself as Doctor, the goblin, and even Asergia weren't kind. Asergia only cared for his clan, and Azotreh was a way to empower them. The only genuinely nice person they'd met of a higher rank so far was Atu, though Nicholas was partially attributing that to her being lonely.
He'd seen some of what had happened in the few days Azotreh had spent with her. While she was kind, it was also clear she didn't get any visitors from the village proper. Nor did she get any communications from the other apparent rabbit tribes. Of course, the Lord Rabbit she'd mentioned also hadn't shown up, but he was apparently a genuine power in the region.
She was nice and definitely good for Azotreh, but he wouldn't take her condition and kindness to mean that all high rankers were the same, as most evidence pointed in the other direction.
He spent a moment just thinking about how funny it would be to be talking about high rankers with his sister now. About the cruelty of those above them in might, and then simply joke about the term high-ranker. But she wasn't here.
He sighed and turned back to the list.
Even though he was sure that he didn't want to put all his eggs in one basket and invest all the points into DX Gain Boost, he did still want to invest some into it. If they came across something that granted more than 1 DX per kill, or some huge swarm of something, getting more DX would be more than worth it. Especially if it meant more levels.
Irritatingly, he'd discovered that while level EXP requirements scaled linearly, increasing by 5 points per level, the requirements to advance a dungeon faction doubled with each threshold. DOUBLED. They were only at the 6th threshold, and they needed 3200 DX to reach the seventh.
So he invested one point into DX Gain Boost II, granting them a 20% bonus to all DX gains.
Next, he went over the rest of the list. The specializations didn't really catch his eye again. They only provided a bonus to a specific group of monsters. Even if that group was all arthropods, they still only had access to three of those. Maybe it would be something they invested in with thousands of points. Maybe once they had a Scrooge McDuck pool of the points they could swim in, he'd spend on specializations. But for now, the goal was immediate power bonuses.
For the same reason, he passed over the new options related to nodes. They simply didn't know enough about them yet. He wanted to do something with them, but he had plans for quite a few things that he wanted to get done first. So he ignored them.
Instead, he focused on the first three options: Champions and Generals I, Duplicate Summons I, and Inferior Mutation Manipulation I. The first would be an advancement to their champion monsters, which were still their only way to explore around Nightshade, find more blueprints, and everything else without the Prime Avatar.
The second seemed self-explanatory, increasing the number of summoned monsters they produced. He wasn't entirely sure how that worked yet, but he had his theories.
The third, he wasn't sure about. Mutation manipulation sounded powerful, but also complicated and rather expensive in both the time and resources department. Would mutations need biomass or RM? Would it be like real mutations or those only seen in the world of video games, where he could choose how the thing evolved without worrying about the millennia or longer it would take for a species to actually evolve?
Before he could second-guess himself in the choice of the other two, he selected Champions and Generals I. While the improvement was nebulous, improvement was the name of the game.
Then it was just a choice between Duplicate Summons and Inferior Mutation Manipulation I. Without any more information, it was a hard choice. Would the mutations be strong long-term? Would he even live long enough to see the results of his work? Questions he couldn't answer right now. What he did know was that Duplicate Summons I would increase the number of monsters they summoned somehow. He wasn't willing to give up on that possibility. Hopefully, it wouldn't come down to doubling the concentration required or the mana requirement.
[Champions and Generals I: Increases all potens of all Champion Monsters by 10%. This also increases their aura radius, and the control they can show over others of their kin]
[Duplicate Summons I: Every time you intentionally summon a monster using your Dungeon Nexus (instead of a Spawner or other method), there is a 10% chance you summon an additional monster for no extra cost. This additional monster cannot become a Champion]