Chapter 7

I was in a state of panic. As I kept aimlessly running around, my HP inevitably went down, point by point. Other than the feeling of suffocation, I didn’t feel any discomfort. But I knew that my situation was dire. My MP stood at 0, and if I let my HP drop to 0 too, it would be the end for me.

I had 100 points of biomatter stored within my body. As I already knew, it could be used to heal any injuries sustained in combat and regenerate my HP. However, in order for it to work, I needed mana, which processed biomatter and used it in the healing process. And since my MP was currently at zero, there was no benefit to having biomatter stored within my body at all. Without mana to use it, it couldn’t restore my HP by itself.

As I checked my health bar one more time, I saw I had a little over 60 HP remaining, meaning I had about one more minute to live. The sensation of suffocation intensified as my HP dropped, letting me know I was getting closer and closer to death. But I had no idea what I needed to do. To stop my HP from dropping, I needed to restore my mana, but I had no clue how to do that.

I kept aimlessly running through the air vent system, trying to find a solution but to no avail. I tried contacting the Queen, but she didn’t respond. Perhaps, while she could easily reach out to me telepathically and even read my mind, I myself couldn’t contact her whenever I wanted. It actually made sense, since I obviously didn’t have any telepathic abilities.

Initially, I had thought I had some kind of mental link with the Queen that allowed us to communicate whenever we wanted, but apparently, that wasn’t how it worked. While she could mentally contact me whenever she wished, I could speak to her only when she initiated the conversation. And apparently, she currently wasn’t observing me and therefore wasn’t aware of my predicament.

Or maybe she didn’t really care. Or wanted me to find a way out of my fix by myself. Maybe it was a test. Perhaps she thought that if I couldn’t solve problems on my own, I wasn’t worth her attention, wasn’t worth becoming her loyal servant, let alone one of her protectors.

Anyway, since there was no hope of reaching out to the Queen, I tried doing something else. Without slowing down, I attempted to absorb mana from the surrounding air. I knew there had to be a way to replenish my mana somehow, and since it wasn’t replenishing by itself, the most logical way would be to absorb it from the air.

Or perhaps a certain item needed to be used. But what kind of item could it be? Obviously, not a mana potion. I wasn’t stuck in a fantasy video game, and I wasn’t a human adventurer who could stroll into a shop and stock up on blue bottles.

No, if mana was replenished by using a special item, that item would be something else. But what could such an item even look like? How would I even recognize it as something that could replenish mana? And where would I find it? I had no idea.

There was nothing around me, not just mana items, but no objects at all. Wherever I went, only the metal walls of the empty tunnels met my gaze. So, since I had no hope of finding a mana item in my current location, assuming such items even existed in this world, I tried simply drawing mana from the air.

But it didn’t work. I tried and tried again, giving mental commands to replenish, but my attempts achieved nothing. Still, I was out of ideas and had no clue what else I could do in my situation, so I kept trying. As I continued to scurry through the tunnels, my pointed legs hammering against the metal floor, I kept trying to absorb mana from the air.

Somewhere, there had to be a source of mana. I was almost certain of it. One way or another, there had to be a way to refill my mana reserves. I couldn’t just have been transported into a new world to be reborn as an alien bug with a system and made to rely on mana for sustenance while having no way to replenish it. That just couldn’t be it.

So I continued to concentrate on my senses and kept trying to refill my mana reserves through sheer force of will. I could even feel that there was a source of mana nearby. I couldn’t tell how I sensed it, but somehow I felt more and more certain that I was getting closer and closer to a mana source.

I refused to let myself think that I might just be imagining things, that I could be feeling only what I wanted to feel. No, I didn’t let such thoughts take over. Instead, I kept focusing on the sensation, concentrating fully on it and refusing to think about anything else. I no longer even bothered to check my remaining HP, as if afraid I might lose the trail of the mana source if I stopped to focus on it.

As I reached another four-way junction, a system message suddenly appeared before my eyes.

New Skill Acquired: Mana Sense (Rank I) (Uncommon)

Mana Sense: This skill allows you to locate various sources of mana and absorb magical energy from them. The more advanced the skill, the more types of mana sources you can detect and absorb mana from.

My attempts had actually paid off! Apparently, I could acquire new skills, or at least some of them, simply by attempting to perform special actions. Cool.

I paused at the center of the intersection and made use of Mana Sense. I immediately felt the same source of mana I had detected before, only this time, thanks to the skill, the sensation was much stronger and therefore easily detectable. I could tell it was located somewhere in the tunnel to my right, so I turned that way and continued to run.

At some point, I checked my HP and saw I had less than thirty points remaining, meaning I had only about half a minute left to live. But this time, instead of depressing me, it gave me the strength to run even faster, bringing me closer and closer to my destination.

Mana Sense worked much like the sense of smell. I could feel a whiff of the mana source coming from up ahead, and the closer I got to it, the stronger the “scent” became. Finally, I saw something ahead. It was some kind of blue mist hanging in the air halfway between the floor and the ceiling of the vent duct. It was about three times the size of my body.

As I got close to the mist, I assessed it with a thought.

Mana Cloud: 60 MP

No more information was shown, but nothing more was needed. I tried to use Mana Sense to absorb the mana cloud, but nothing happened. I hoped the issue was that I was still too far away, so I accelerated even more, running now as fast as my segmented legs would carry me.

A moment later, I skidded to a stop just below the mana cloud and immediately attempted to absorb it. This time, it worked. The mist was pulled toward me, disappearing into my body. The whole process took a few seconds, and when it was over, the mist was gone, its mana now stored within me.

You have received 60 MP.

My HP immediately stopped going down, and the suffocating sensation finally disappeared. I also felt that the newly absorbed mana had begun to process the biomatter stored within me, restoring my HP.

For a moment, I allowed myself to finally relax. I had just avoided the clutches of death and deserved a moment to rest. For a little while, I remained still, simply focusing on my sensations. I could tell the biomatter was being used to restore my HP, but where exactly the biomatter went, I wasn’t sure.

I could tell that my overall body mass wasn’t increasing or changing in any way, so the biomatter definitely wasn’t being added to my total mass. When I was injured, biomatter was used to regenerate damaged flesh at an accelerated rate, sealing my injuries shut. But I wasn’t injured right now. At least I didn’t have any physical injuries. So where did the biomatter go?

From what I could tell, my mana simply made it gradually disappear, and in turn, my HP went up. There didn’t seem to be more to it than that, so I stopped thinking about it and focused on other matters.

So now I had a way to replenish my mana reserves. That was great. I now knew how to heal and how to restore mana, so my chances of survival in this new world, populated by giant human beings while I myself was trapped in the body of a small alien bug, had just increased a little bit.

I focused on Mana Sense again and immediately caught a whiff of another source of mana coming from farther down the tunnel. The thought of another mana cloud I could absorb raised my spirits even higher. I set out toward the source of mana, heading down the passage.

For the next half an hour, I was traversing one ventilation duct after another, absorbing every mana cloud I came across. Some of them were pretty small, containing no more than 10 MP. Others were denser and richer, offering 50 MP or somewhat more.

Eventually, my HP regenerated up to 130, which was currently my maximum. After that, I located and absorbed a couple more mana clouds, refilling my inner reserves back up to their current cap of 100 as well.

At last, I could breathe easy.

Most of the biomatter had been used to restore my HP, though. Not that I had any use for it other than healing. Still, it seemed like a good idea to always have a supply of biomatter stored in my stomach, especially considering it was one of the requirements for evolving to the next form.

That meant it was time to resupply on biomatter.

Unfortunately, while I now had a special skill for locating mana sources, I didn’t have any similar skills for detecting enemies, so I currently had no other way of locating roaches other than simply wandering through the ventilation duct system until I happened to run into more roaches.

It took me some time, but eventually I came across a group of level 1 roaches. They looked identical to the previous four I had defeated. This time, though, I wasn’t going in blind. I knew what to expect now, and after surviving earlier fights, I felt much more confident than before. 

There were four of them in the group, and while it was the first time I had faced that many at once, I was sure I could take them on. I rushed toward them, feeling superior to those smaller, inferior creatures.

The fight was fast, violent, and rougher than I had anticipated. Even knowing their patterns, dealing with four at once was definitely more difficult than I had expected. Still, I did emerge victorious.

Multiple Enemies Killed. +200 XP

XP: 250 / 600

I had defeated four roaches, gaining a total of 200 XP. Previously, I had been given 100 XP for a single level 1 roach I killed.

I remembered that the last time I had fought a group of roaches, I had received [Battle Rage], which helped me deal with the remaining ones. During that battle, I had finished off the last roach when I was already level 2, gaining 50 XP instead of 100.

I hadn’t given it much thought at the time, because I had other things on my mind. But now that I had defeated this group of four roaches, gaining 200 XP instead of 400, I couldn’t help but wonder why that was the case.

There was only one explanation. Now that I was level 2, I was clearly being rewarded with half as much XP as before for enemies that were now a level lower than me.

That wasn’t very encouraging. Obviously, with every new level I gained, the experience threshold I needed to cross to level up would only increase, while the experience rewards from defeating weaker enemies would inevitably decrease.

It meant that in order to keep getting good, unreduced amounts of XP, I would constantly need to be on the lookout for enemies that were at least the same level as me or higher. I definitely wanted to keep progressing at a decent pace.

I also couldn’t help but wonder what would happen when I reached level 3. Would the experience reward for defeating level 1 roaches be reduced by half again? Would they be worth only 25 XP each? Or perhaps I wouldn’t get any XP from them at all? I figured I would find out when the time came.

I consumed the bodies of the enemies I had just killed. As always, the resulting biomatter was used to repair the damage I had taken during combat. After I topped off my HP, I also consumed the rest, processing it into biomatter in my stomach and regurgitating the excess. So the bodies of the dead roaches were now gone, replaced by several black lumps of rejected biomatter scattered across the metal floor.

During this process, I acquired four genetic fragments, one from each of the roaches I had killed. I gained three more [Chitin Plate (Shard) (Rank I)] and one more [Fang (Shard) (Rank I)].

It definitely looked like level 1 roaches could produce only one of the two known genetic fragments, either a Chitin Plate shard or a Fang shard. In order to get new types, I clearly needed to look for different kinds of enemies.

Sure enough, I attached the newly gained fragments to the ones I already had. Then I checked my inventory.

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Biomatter: 100 / 100

Active Fragments: 1 / 1 (Chitin Plate (Shard x6) (Rank I): +60 HP) 

Stored Fragments: 1 / 3 (Fang (Shard x2) (Rank I))

Core Fragments: 0 / 1

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So I had found six [Chitin Plate (Shard) (Rank I)] so far, merging them into a single unit, which gave me +60 points to my total HP. I couldn’t help but wonder how many more shards of the same type could be attached to the existing unit. I felt like I probably couldn’t merge as many shards of the same type as I wanted. There should be some limit.

Out of curiosity, I also replaced [Chitin Plate (Shard x6) (Rank I)] with [Fang (Shard x2) (Rank I)] in the active fragment slot of my inventory to see what [Fang (Shard x2) (Rank I)] would give me. I then checked my inventory again, paying attention only to the line that interested me.

Active Fragments: 1 / 1 (Fang (Shard x2) (Rank I): +10 Bite Damage)

So this genetic fragment increased the damage I could deal with my fangs. It figured. The basic damage I could deal with my fangs was only five, so with [Fang (Shard x2) (Rank I)] inserted into the active fragment slot, my bite damage increased to 15.

While having one of my damage types increased was nice, now that I had removed [Chitin Plate (Shard x6) (Rank I)] from the active fragment slot, my basic HP had dropped from 160 to 100. my current health remained at 160, but my total HP was back to 100, meaning that once my current health dropped below 100, it wouldn’t be able to regenerate beyond that mark anymore.

So I gave the matter some thought. What did I want more: having my HP boosted by 60 points or my bite damage increased by 10? Since I had only one active fragment slot available, I could make use of only one fragment at a time. Perhaps after I evolved, I would get an additional active fragment slot, but for now, I needed to choose.

In the end, I decided to remove [Fang (Shard x2) (Rank I)] from the active fragment slot and put [Chitin Plate (Shard x6) (Rank I)] back. Having my HP increased felt more important. Besides, other than bite damage, I had two more types of damage I could deal. Those had higher output, and I mostly relied on those in combat anyway.

After that, I checked the evolution requirements once more. 

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Evolution Requirements

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Level 5 (Current: 2)

Biomatter: 100 / 100

Core Genetic Fragments: 0 / 1

Genetic Fragments: 0 / 2

Genome Stability: above 60% (Current: no data)

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Sure enough, I wasn’t a step closer to meeting the requirements. I needed to get one core genetic fragment, but I wasn’t sure what exactly that was or where or how to get one. Obviously, it differed from the fragments I had already collected.

Also, besides a single core fragment, I needed to get two genetic fragments. Currently, I had zero of those too. [Fang (Shard x2) (Rank I)] and [Chitin Plate (Shard x6) (Rank I)] apparently didn’t count as genetic fragments. Not yet, anyway. It made perfect sense. Those were shards, not complete fragments.

I could already tell that to form a complete genetic fragment, several shards of the same type needed to be merged together. I had already merged six shards of the Chitin Plate fragment. So perhaps a total of ten shards needed to be merged in order to form a single genetic fragment. If that was the case, it meant I needed four more Chitin Plate shards to form a complete Chitin Plate genetic fragment.

Determined to test my theory and see whether it held any truth, I set out to look for more roaches to slay.