Daron had a big problem… He was hiding in the temporary burrow he built, having collapsed the entrance. He would occasionally dig it back out to get fresh air, but other than that he couldn’t leave. With all the plants in the area right outside of his entrance having already been eaten. he couldn’t get any more food, putting him in a tight spot, but he had a plan.

But if you wanted to understand what was going on, you had to rewind to a few days ago…

After roaming in the forest for a few days looking for the right place to settle down, he had decided to dig a small temporary burrow to use as a base when searching around, he even gained a burrowing skill. However, one day he finally met an enemy he could kill.

While this monster might seem like the exact opposite of his preferred enemy, slow with high Def, that he can kill with magic from a distance. Magic, however, is a very versatile subject and after spending these past few days, spending his mana on nothing but training his ‘NightSight’ spell, leveling it to LV.5, he had pushed Shadow magic to (LV.3), with that level, he now had access to spells a bit stronger than the most basic ones.

So he acted on his decision, and opened with the spell that gave him the confidence to smash this bug! Channeling mana to the tip of his horn, and converting it into shadow mana, he casted a deteriorated version of the high-level spell ‘Swamp of Shadows’, called ‘Puddle of Shadows’.

However, this spell required a verbal component, meaning he had to speak the evocation to cast it, and while there wasn’t a requirement on what language you spoke it in, or even needing to use a language, he had to let out a squeal alerting the spider to his presence.

The spider, seeing a delicious horned rabbit revealing itself to it, dashed at him. However, it found itself unable to move as the ground right below it had turned inky black as if someone had replaced the dirt with... well, ink.

The gooey liquid stuck to its thin legs, in this case, its normally nimble legs working against it not having the Str to pull them free.

Daron, seeing his plan work, began to play just a bit with the spider. Taking this time to cast two new spells, ‘ArcaneBolt’ and ‘ShadowBolt’. As you might guess they were the mana, and shadow equivalent of ‘FireBolt’ and did mostly the same thing, just with different damage types. Other than using them once, he only used ‘FireBolt’ to kill the spider. Maybe because it was a higher level, or because it was fully grown unlike the boar, but despite its weakness being a low HP, it still took more Bolts to kill the spider then it had to kill the Boar.

Nodding his head at the kill, he started to head back to his temporary home as he checked his status. He was sure that this last kill had pushed him to the next level.

Most of this was expected, as he had just leveled up. however, the ‘OverAchiever’ Title was a welcomed surprise, and he brought it up

Ya, this is an amazing title, however, it’s a hard one to get. If he remembered correctly (and he almost certainly did) then you had to defeat an opponent that had a level advantage over you, depending on what your level is, with the condition that you didn’t have a grade higher than them. But if you wanted to get the more potent versions, than you needed to defeat ones with higher grades than yourself. For instance, as he was below LV.10, he only needed to defeat someone with a level higher than +5 of his, and of grade F- or higher. But the spider was grade E and was at least level 7, so he met the requirements for the rare version of the title, rather than the standard uncommon version.

While this was an unexpected windfall, it didn’t change much about his current or future plans, as there were very few high-grade monsters with low levels. So if he wants to set off to get the higher grade version of this title, he would need to level up some more. And thus he continued home, however that was when tragedy befell him.

Getting near the entrance to his home, he heard the pitter-patter of a small creature scampering in the underbrush. thinking this was another chance to get some XP, however small, he snuck after it. And when he saw a metallic gleam, he launched an ArcaneBolt at it, not wanting to catch the bush it was in on fire.

*Squeeeeek!*

He heard a long high pitched squeak of a mouse from the creature that petered off as it died. and when he went to investigate what creature it was he had just killed, he was filled with dread when he saw what it was. What he saw in the bush was a brown mouse, with a disproportionately large knife blade on the end of its tail.

Even without identifying it, he knew exactly what monster this was, a ‘Knife-tailed Rat’.

The ‘Knife-tailed Rat’ was one of the few level 0 monsters. Level 0 was usually given to nonpoisonous bugs, that posed no risk at all, not only would they have no grade, but they would only net 1 XP from being killed. However, most level 0s wouldn’t even be given the descriptor ‘monster’. The Knife-tailed Rat, however, was given one because of the large packs they roamed in. Even not considering that they were known for being quite vicious, being given the name rat despite being a mouse. The reason for such was that they would attack endlessly anyone who killed any member of their species, and he had just done so.

His small Rabbit heart pounding in his chest, he booked it back to his burrow. Just as he got outside his home, he heard the sound of many high-pitched squeaks in the distance. He could only hope they didn’t find any trace of him, after which they would kill everything in the area before calming down. If they did find his trace, then they would be looking for any rabbits without rest.

Regardless, he collapsed the entrance of his burrow, after grabbing a few weeds to serve as rations. Sitting in the darkness, he could only rely on his hearing to determine if there were rats above his den or not.

And now a few days later and we have returned to his current situation, he had gone out to grab food a few times when he thought there hadn’t been any rats above, and luckily he wasn’t caught. On the bright side though, he leveled up both Darksight and Mana Detection, while also gaining a new skill called Enhanced Hearing.

It was at this moment he realized he hadn’t shown the description for Darksight, Puddle of Shadows, or Burrowing. so he decided to bring them up, along with Enhanced Hearing.

All in all, Darksight was a handy spell that was easy to grind. Not only that, it’s what’s known as a ‘Root Spell’. Root spells are spells that advance into other spells such as DarkSight advancing into ‘HeatSight’, the fire spell. Just to clarify, DarkSight wouldn’t disappear but he would learn HeatSight instantly. And even if he were to learn HeatSight naturally, DarkSight would aid in casting HeatSight. And as a degraded version of Swamp of Shadows, Puddle of Shadows would act as a root spell for the following versions of it. He had also invested his SP into Str and Int, but he didn’t feel like bringing his status up just to show that.

As for what he was going to do about the ‘Knife-tailed Rats’? While he would love to just wait them out, the entrance to his burrow had a major lack of plants for him to eat. If he didn’t want to starve, he couldn’t stay here any longer, but he did have a plan.