The plan was quite simple, burrow away from the Rats, and dig back to the surface farther away. Running away? Yes! But he was treating the rats as if they were a natural disaster. When a hurricane is coming for your house, wouldn’t you run away?

 

So he began to dig, shoveling the dirt in front of him, behind him, while also using some to pack the walls tighter as he dug to keep it stable. It was a surprisingly easy process, and the repetitiveness wasn’t as boring as he expected it to be. Almost as if burrowing was second nature to him, most likely because it was. After all, rabbits were good diggers, having to make their own homes.

 

About maybe an hour later he dug up to the surface and ate his fill of weeds, letting out a satisfied burp, he closed it up again, not wanting the rats to find him. Now with a full stomach, he dug for the rest of the day, only stopping when it was turning dark outside. Not because he was tired, no his burrow skill that had reached LV.3 from a full day of digging had made sure he didn’t use up too much energy.

 

The reason he stopped, was because his tunnel had broken into another. He poked a small hole in the wall to peep his eye through, and when he did so what he saw was a tunnel larger than his, maybe being about 3 times the size. And lackadaisically slithering through the tunnel, was a snake. Its scales were the same brown as the soil around it, making it hard to see if not for the fact it was moving. While he had seen the snake, the snake had not seen him and was moving right past the small hole he made in the wall of the tunnel to peak in through, so he took the chance to identify it.

 

 

Like most ambush predators they seemed to go for the 1-hit KO. The high level ‘Fang Strike’ probably being able to deal massive damage.

 

This brought him to a crossroads, to hunt or not to hunt? That is the question. But one that was answered easily. He needed more XP and, with ‘Puddle of Shadows’, he could easily trap and kill them. It seemed like he could probably wipe out this entire colony without much danger, so to hunt it is!

 

Starting the same way as in the fight with the spider, he casted ‘Puddle of Shadows’. A pool of inky blackness consumed the dirt of the tunnel beneath the snake. the snake, reasonably confused about this, turned its head around to observe the tunnel, its forked tongue flickering as it did. Not letting up he cast ShadowBolt, with Fire Magic not being the smartest choice if he wanted to breathe clean air.

 

*Hissss!*

 

The bolt smacked the snake in the face causing it to open its mouth wide, and let out a loud hiss, before slithering quickly towards him.

 

‘What!?’

 

The snake seemed unaffected by the shadows, as its limbless body only sank slightly into the darkness before it quickly left the area of effect. Daron had obviously not considered its lack of limbs giving it an almost immunity to the spell’s effects. Not wanting to get hit by a bite from the snake, he quickly retreated back into his own tunnel, with the snake hot on his tail.

 

What should he do? What should he do!?

 

For the first time in this life, he truly felt as if he didn’t have the advantage in this situation. He couldn’t run forever, and he couldn’t lose the snake in this linear tunnel, but his CC spell did not affect it!

 

I can’t die here!

 

You would think dying twice would erase a fear for death one might have, but rather it seemed only to hyper-realize it for him. Having been confronted with the truth that he could die that most people would ignore in their day to day lives.

 

Biting his tongue with his sharp front teeth, he drew blood, the pain forced him to collect his thoughts. He was limiting himself too much, he was a master of magic! Why is he only using the spells he currently knew?

 

Turning around he gathered the mana in his Dantian, casting the Mana Magic spell, Bubble. Bubble, as you might be able to assume, creates a fixed bubble of mana around the user, having the ability to be charged with as much mana as the caster wants, being able to block a proportionate amount of damage depending on the mana used. Due to the size and shape of the tunnel, instead of the normal dome of faint blue light that Bubble would normally form, the shape of his was more like a cylinder.

 

The snake, seeing the insolent rabbit that dared to hurt it stop, quickly used its finisher ‘Fang Strike’. A glow overcame its four large fangs, biting into the bubble. However, Daron had pumped 20 mana into it. With that much, the bite was unable to pierce through all the way, only the tips of the fangs managing to breakthrough. Even so, when it detached itself from the bubble, hairline fractures appeared on the bubble. The lightest breeze probibly being able to break it.

 

But that didn’t matter, he had already finished casting his next spell. Dispelling Bubble to make way for this one, screaming squeal out loud, he thought the verbal components in his mind.

 

‘[Meta Magic: Overcast]! Scorching Ray!’

 

Blasting from the tip of his horn, a beam of red hot energy shot directly into the surprised face of the snake, burning its scales. And after the eyes had burnt to a crisp, the brain was fried in its skull.

 

Panting furiously, he collapsed laughing his head off. He had done it! He shouldn’t have, but he did! Meta Magic is an intermediate technique that allows the modification of a spell’s effects without changing the spell itself. For instance, [Overcast] allows you to cast a spell above your magic’s level, such as ‘Scorching Ray’.

 

However, the level of his Mana Magic wasn’t high enough to support the use of meta magic. So the efficiency of the spell was garbage. Even now his Dantian was shaking like crazy, under the stress, as was his head. But he survived and that’s all that mattered in the end. As the headache subsided, and his Dantian “cooled down” he went over what he had gained from this fight.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As his status had also changed, he just decided to bring everything up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It had been just over a month, and he had already made such progress. It really showed how powerful the knowledge he had gathered in his last life was. As for what he had gotten in this fight? it was a level in Fire Magic, Bubble, Scorching Ray, and Meta Magic. Along with a title he had barely heard about before. This type of title was something found in people with a high talent for a school of magic, who somehow cast an entry-level spell from it, without learning the school. Such as someone who’s talented in fire magic, and during a house fire, somehow drew the fires into a FireBolt to kill the ones who started the fire.

But unlike FireBolt, Scorching Ray would be the go-to single attack spell for fire magic for a long while, making it much better. Heading to the juncture into the Snake nest, he closed up the entrance so that he could sleep for the night, letting his mana recharge.