After defeating the mushroom crab I tried eating it, and I have to say, the taste has gotten even worse somehow. The meat I had before was already almost inedible, but now it has gone beyond that. Still, that didn’t mean that I didn’t eat it, I was just going through something akin to a torture. Anything for a full stomach.

[Proficiency reached. Gained skill [Natural armor lvl. 1] ]

Anything for a full stomach and juicy skills. My [Devour] skill was pretty useful when it came to free leveling. Maybe I could find some meat of super strong dead monsters to feed on later? I could even ask some of my friends… acquaintances… who am I kidding, I know no one. No killing strong monsters with someone’s help then!

Well, maybe Felicia could help, but I’m hesitating to put her in danger. That probably doesn’t matter anyway, if we meet something in this dungeon, then we will have to defeat it no matter what, and if we meet something when we finally leave this place, then it probably wouldn’t be strong enough to endanger us.

Unless it’s that [Doom rabbit] I met at the start of my adventures. Just thinking about that hellish monster gives me shivers, not even that ancient mountain dragon could compare to it. I wonder if it was a part of this dungeon or just some random monster of this ancient forest. Maybe it was one of the first creatures that were created in this world?

I could probably make countless theories about that one single rabbit, but I kind of had more important matter at hand, namely the mushroom fairies. Somehow their number has doubled since I last seen them, and now the swarm was big enough to cover the whole crab without leaving a single square centimeter to be seen.

Should I be surprised at the fact that when they took of from the body, not even the chitinous armor remained? Everything was eaten, to the point that even a small hole appeared in the road, as if they couldn’t stop in their gluttony and went for even the dirt. It was so smooth that I could almost safely assume that they licked it clean.

So, we resumed our running in order to escape as far as possible from these cute little hellish creatures. The road wasn’t entirely straight, sometimes there were rather sharp turns forcing us to slow a bit, but other than that, it was just plain straight road without any forks. If anything, it looked like it has seen much more use that it was supposed to get in a desolate dungeon like that.

[Proficiency reached. Gained skill. [Endurance lvl. 7] ]

Looking at how close I was to running out of breath from the long run, the skill seemed like a godsend, but I didn’t know how long we will have to run until we could lose our tail so it wasn’t all that reassuring. Still, it became a bit easier to conserve my leftover stamina, so it was pretty nice skill to gain in this situation.

I kept looking straight in hope of seeing something resembling the end of this road, but its sides were a bit distracting with all these beautiful blue lights flickering around. Sometimes I could also see some bluish looking animals, which was also a bit surreal sight for me, because all lifeforms I’ve ever seen were either monsters or humans (and gods), so something almost normal like that was a strange sight for me.

Suddenly, between all these blue lights I saw a change, a red flicker suddenly appeared in the distance and seemed to grow bigger as we were running. Since I was quickly starting to run out of stamina, I decided to bet all on this single different flicker, and use all I had to reach it. My limits had nothing to say in this situation, the murderous swarm behind us made sure of that.

But something even more surprising, at least for me happened, namely Felicia tripped and fell flat on the road. She didn’t stand up after that, she was too exhausted to lift herself. I didn’t spare a thought, I quickly spun around and jumped between her and the swarm that caught up to us already.

[Thread shield]!

I didn’t know when two threads appeared in my front limbs, and how I suddenly used a new technique I didn’t practice before without any mental preparation, but that didn’t matter, because I succeeded at protecting us, at least for now. My thread was currently travelling at nearly the speed of sound, rotating around us in a form of a dome, keeping the fairy monsters away.

Some curious fairies tried attacking my shield, but were instantly turned into minced meat. It was a good sign for us, them being unable to penetrate my defense, but there was no saying how long they were going to stay and wait for me to stop my skill. The stamina drain of thread techniques was intense, and after a long run like that, there was no way I could keep defending us for longer than three minutes.

After that time passes, I will most likely collapse, leaving both of us defenseless. I didn’t expect to end up in a situation like that, I guess I overestimated Felicia a bit. With how much energy she had, and how much she was jumping around every day, I didn’t expect her to have any limit in terms of pure stamina. In the end, even if she’s a genius, she’s still a child that has lived only about ten years.

[Proficiency reached. Gained skill [Luck of the heavens lvl. 6] ]

Wait what? Why would a deadly situation like that be lucky? Unless… I looked through the rapidly spinning thread at the deadly swarm and saw that they were no longer focused on us. There was something inside that swarm that gained its attention, but I had no idea what, since it had no aura.

Even these small creatures could be sensed from a small distance, but at the exact middle of the swarm, there was an empty point that I couldn’t recognize no matter how much I tried.

“So annoying. [Disappear].”

As soon as I heard this voice, there was no swarm anymore. In it’s place, was a human.

Not a god, not a monster, but a human.

Somehow, I had this feeling, that there was no one in this world, that could be called as such in his presence.

[True human]