Well well well! This water wyrm’s scales seem to cover all angles from attacks.

The only visible weak spots are the eyes and the mouth when it’s open, it’s certain that I’ll be detected if I go for this fight.

The only saving grace is his lack of the Poison Resistance skill. My fighting style’s fully transformed into rapid poisonous attacks in the last couple of days.

Actually, it’s weird for you to have Deadly Poison Attack without actually having the relevant resistance, y’know...?

But this answers a critical question I had about skills. I thought I would need strong enough Poison Resistance to prevent backlash from my own skills, so I have been suppressing the poisonous part of Poison Spike for a while now.

This guy’s weirdly skewed skillset is actually a form of disguised information.

It’s telling me: Common sense and basic logic don’t apply to this world’s system; I can be the most poisonous creature on this planet yet die because of a mosquito bite.

Totally reasonable, I tell ya!

I’ve figured it out! I’ll just lock 99% of the knowledge I spent my entire second life accumulating in some encrypted soul archive and leave it until I’m somewhere in which people need to use their brains.

Scientific facts (which required entire centuries of experimentation to be proven) are for the weak anyways.

Sigh... Okay, let’s get back to planning the fight.

Any form of attack coming from the wyrm has a poison effect that’s 4 levels higher than my resistance. My attacks can’t pierce his defense except for the weak spots.

He has no poison resistance, so I only need to land a shot and then survive until my poison kills him. Lastly, he has unknown magical attacks from the Water Wyrm skill.

That’s about it. You might think the difference in speed stats is important, but my High-Speed Swimming skill makes up for it.

I quickly scan the surroundings through both my sphere and sight, then start circling around him after making sure of the absence of monsters strong enough to interrupt us.

All right, the moment of truth.

Expel x2. Thump.

Hit. GROWWL!

Two spikes loaded with as much poison as they could possibly hold accurately hit the wyrm’s right eye.

A quick look at his status lets me know that his HP bar is decreasing at a moderate rate, it’d take approximately 5 minutes for him to die at this rate.

This guy doesn’t look too happy about this though... I should probably start running, huh?

Fwoop.

HEY, that was dangerous! Don’t just start spewing out water lances out of nowhere, I was almost penetrated (Heh)!

I start swimming away from him with all my might. Both of our speed stats give the same effect after the skill corrections are applied, so the gap between us remains mostly unchanged.

Future Sight warns me of another wave of water lances heading my way. I patiently wait for him to release the spells, then rapidly ascend to dodge them all.

 

{Proficiency has reached the required level. Skill [Evasion LV 6] has become [Evasion LV 7].}

 

Neat.

He shoots another two waves of lances before apparently realizing that this tactic won’t work against me and pausing. A deadly mistake in any battle.

Taking advantage of this lull, I shoot another two spikes at him from my tail. One of them hits the same right eye while the other goes through his mouth right before it snaps shut.

Shooting magic and breaths out of your mouth is cool and all, but it leaves you vulnerable, y’know? You really don’t wanna do that against someone who can shoot behind themselves while fleeing.

But then again, I never mentioned any details about my skills.

His HP loss rate doubles, making him enter a berserk mode of some sort...?

Anyways, he uses two skills in a row, one of them consumes MP and temporarily increases his stats while the other uses red SP to generate and eject air from the thin gaps between his scales, increasing his straight-line speed greatly in exchange for decreased maneuverability.

...He just made this fight a whole lot easier for me to win, what a nice guy.

Diving down, I turn around 180 degrees and go under his right side. There, I’m back in Stealth.

Ahh, this guy definitely regrets using those skills right now. He’s desperately trying to locate me, but I’m constantly moving around while staying on his blinded right side.

Hooh, I didn’t know bullying disabled people was this fun, muahahaha!

Anyways, long story short, he kept on thrashing around for two minutes then gradually lost strength and died due to poison.

I didn’t move closer until I finally heard Manager-san’s notification.

 

{Acquired skill [Probability Correction LV 1].}

{Experience has reached the required level. Individual laethoul ramae has increased from LV 1 to LV 2}

{All basic attributes have increased.}

{Skill proficiency level-up bonus acquired.}

{Proficiency has reached the required level. Skill [Instantaneous LV 3] has become [Instantaneous LV 4].}

{Proficiency has reached the required level. Skill [Running LV 1] has become [Running LV 2].}

{Proficiency has reached the required level. Skill [Expel LV 5] has become [Expel LV 6].}

{Skill points acquired.}

 

I don’t know if Probability Correction can help me even with Sage, but I won’t lose anything by getting it. The only other useful skill he has is Heat Perception anyways, the poison skill would be degraded to level 1 if I steal it.

By the way, since this guy’s intelligent, I should try out the Conquest skill. I got this one back when I became the Ruler of Greed, and I haven’t had the chance to use it up until now.

The description says it absorbs the target’s whole soul which is kinda vague if you ask me. Maybe observing the process with Spiritual Cognition could give me some insight into the process.

Manger-san, absorb this wyrm’s soul using the Conquest skill.

 

{Proficiency has reached the required level. Acquired skill [Divinity Expansion LV 1].}

 

... Let me process what I saw and felt for a couple of minutes.

What the hell was that...? It felt absolutely disgusting.

My soul just... swallowed the water wyrm’s soul. It feels as if there’s something that shouldn’t be there inside of me (Heh).

If any normal human attempts to do this, they would go mad sooner or later. I can cope with it only due to the peculiarity of my ever-expanding soul.

Sage has already assimilated the extra soul and purified the pollution as it prioritizes the user’s sanity above all.

The results only amounted to me gaining the Divinity Expansion skill and my soul becoming an unnoticeable bit stronger. What’s the use of that?

 

{Note: If skill [Divinity Expansion] reaches LV 10, then Conquest would plunder target’s skill points as they are the soul’s stored energy.}

{Skill [Sage] prioritized proficiency gain in [Divinity Expansion] as it would increase effect of skill [Greed} according to host’s wishes.}

 

So that’s what it does, huh...

Although, I never want to experience that disgusting feeling again, but I can grit my teeth through it for strength.

Opening up my status, I start going through my skill shop to distract myself from the problem.

My skill points have been accumulating from before I even evolved, I just can’t find a good skill to spend them on. I have nearly 500 by now though, so some good options should start popping up.

The only useful skill here is Spatial magic, but I’m postponing acquiring any magic skills until I can actually use magic, which doesn’t seem to be soon as demonstrated by the lack of magic perception and operation skills in the shop.

Other than that, I can see the wyrm title skills, but it’s stupid to buy them with skill points when I can get them through the titles later anyways.

Sadly, no ruler skills in there... I regularly check on those, missing out on some overpowered skill would be stupid.

I can work towards Wrath by raising Anger’s level, but my intuition’s still warning me that this will have bad results even with Heretic Nullification, so I’ll just wait until Sage is upgraded someday in the future.

Enough of that, I need to soothe my fragile heart.

And you know what’s the best to soothe a maiden’s heart? Eating crabs, of course!

 

Hi there, random huge crab that didn’t provoke anyone, would you like to talk about our interests? You don’t? Unfortunately for you, you’ll have to listen to me ranting anyways.

Recently, I’ve become addicted to this amazing hobby! It’s preparing and testing sashimi with all kinds of marine life I can get my hands on.

Oh my, and what a coincidence. The crab flavor is actually my favorite. So, I’d like to ask for your help on my next attempt.

You’ll help? Aww, you’re such a sweetheart! Thanks for the meal...

I can see a group of crabs heading my way. Did you call for your friends to participate as well? What a great guy!

 

{Condition satisfied. Acquired title [Poison Technique User].}

{Acquired skill [Poison Synthesis LV 1] [Poison Magic LV 1] as a result of title [Poison Technique User].}

 

You guys came to help me get this title as a gift, huh? Thank you!

Well, I’m off to find some fighting buddies, thanks for the great time.

 

I think I’ll stop fighting and start exploring this ravine, I really don’t wanna get jumped during a future fight.

Fighting that wyrm while relying on nothing but Future Sight’s information was absolutely stupid, but my blood started boiling as soon as I found a decent opponent, and I couldn’t help but go for it.

Ahhh, fighting never gets old, the same old euphoric feeling I felt when I first sparred with Shishou comes back with an intensity relative to the fight’s difficulty every time.

I’ve gotta say, modern world society really was suppressing my inner self. Even if I’m smart enough to learn everything about the world, not being able to vent my violent side made life akin to a tasteless meal.

After I look around for a while, I’ll start targeting water wyrms as much as I can. They make for good opponents, and they offer free titles as long as you slaughter a couple of them. A nice two-for-one deal!

Feel my terror, o pitiful denizens of the ocean!

OOOOOOOO.

Ah, I’m truly utterly really sorry for disturbing you, big guy. It won’t ever happen again, I swear.

Man... The ocean’s fucking scary.