Name	Auxentius	Race	Human, male
Age	0	LV	1
Class	Tamer	LV 1	Rank 1
HP	12/12	MP	15/85 (increases by 0.8/sec)
Strength	6	Intelligence	99
Dexterity	7	Willpower	130
Stamina	6	Wisdom	80
Luck	37	Charisma	53
Skills	Mana perception:ability to sense the mana of your surroundings	Analyze: show known information about an object	Mana manipulation: able to alter the shape and properties of mana
Magic mana sense: able to make a field of mana that will detect objects within it, Uses more MP/second the larger the field	Magic connection: links senses with another being, being must either willingly accept the link or first be dominated. Certain skills are buffed when used between members of a magic connection.	Telepathy LV1: allows communication through thoughts, MP cost increases with distance	Tame LV1: ability to tame a monster and enslave it to your will, either by forcing it into submission or by having it agree to serve you by a contract, current capacity 1/2
Titles	Child prodigy: learned 5 non-race skills and has exceeded 50 points in at least 2 stats before age 6, all stats +5
Tamed monsters	common mouse LV4	Linked beings	common mouse LV4

I am relieved that my HP isn¡¯t so low anymore and that magic connection is responsible for that weird feeling. There is a lot more to go over, but first I want to take a look at my new monster and see if it can get me some food.

Name	N/A	Race	Common mouse, female
Age	3	Lv	4
Class	Mouse	Rank	0
HP	20/20	MP	0/10
Strength	5	Intelligence	11
Dexterity	15	Willpower	7
Stamina	8	Wisdom	5
Luck	89	Charisma	5
Skills	Gnaw LV3 Attacks using the mouth gain a slight bonus	Claw LV2 Attacks using claw gain a slight bonus	Hide LV5 has an easier time avoiding being sensed by others
Poison resistance LV2 Takes less damage from poisons	Iron gut LV 4 Less likely to have negative effects from eating poisonous or rotting foods
Titles	Owned by Auxentius: been tamed by a human whose taming rank is equal to or greater than the monsters rank, 15% combat penalty for every rank exceeding the owner''s
Race skill	Compress LV3 is able to compress the body in order to fit through tight spaces

The heck, this mouse has even more luck than I do! I then pieced together something somewhat disturbing. According to the terms the menu is using, I forced a female into submission so that I could enslave her to do my bidding. In other words, I am human garbage and the absolute worst kind of person. OBJECTION, the target in question is a monster right, it isn¡¯t intelligent right, no sentience no crime! Except I don¡¯t actually know if it is intelligent or not¡¡. Well I can reflect on the morality of being a monster tamer after I talk to the victim of my actions. Thankfully I just acquired a skill that will let me do just that. Mouse POV: I¡¯m still alive. The fear I first felt was unlike anything I felt before, I was more sure I was going to die right then more than any time I entered the forest. But I survived, whatever that thing was didn¡¯t kill me, and after a while I felt connected to something powerful. I cannot imagine why a being so powerful would not only spare me, much less do whatever it did to make me feel connected to it¡¯s essence, almost like a part of me.Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. That new feeling seeps into me and I feel much calmer, more composed, and other things I never knew about before. I feel a, what¡¯s it called, determination, a will to not just survive but, thrive, these words I¡¯ve never thought of before fill my head and it feels empowering. No longer a scared little creature hoping to scrape by, but one determined to overcome everything in it¡¯s path and grow to tower over all of them, to be the one other beings need to fear. Then whatever being responsible for this contacted me bringing me out of my thoughts. ¡°Hello, I am Auxentius and I have just tamed you as my monster, and wanted to know your thoughts on the matter¡±. I¡¯m not sure why this being¡..master¡. cares about my thoughts, then again I don¡¯t know why it would bother with someone as weak as I¡ was to begin with, so I decide to respond carefully. ¡°I am a common mouse and am grateful that a being as powerful as yourself would not only spare me, but bestow me with such knowledge¡±. I feel a slight confusion from master, but don¡¯t feel like it is displeased, nor that it plans to do anything bad to me. Auxentius POV: bestow such knowledge? I can tell from the link that the mouse is being sincere, and after thinking for a while I can somehow feel from our link that the mouse was influenced by the link much stronger than I was. I pick up a thing or two occasionally from the link, but she seems to grow off it in a way that greatly alters her being. This could be from the differences in stats, or maybe because she is my tamed monster. For now I contact the mouse again and tell her to move with whatever food she has to the cave I live in. I can tell from the link that the mouse lives alone and isn¡¯t part of a group of mice which strikes me as odd. Mice tend to be more social creatures than other animals, so normally there should be a group of some kind. Then again earth logic doesn¡¯t really apply in a world of levels and magic. I am using mana sense to make sure that nothing intercepts my mouse from reaching my cave, even though it is only a short distance to travel I don¡¯t feel like taking any chances. Being careful will only lower my MP a bit, but that can refill after only a minute or two. This link is a little worrying, while knowing the other sides intent and learning information from them is useful, the fact that it goes both ways is potentially very dangerous. Having my darker thoughts and intentions laid bare even if they are only momentary is unsettling to say the least. This mind that has travelled the internet has some very dark corners within that should not be seen by those who are unprepared. The mouse seems to have put me on a pedestal and began revering me, so I am curious as how she will react to learn that I am a baby that is only a few hours old. Not to mention how she will react to the NSFW section of my mind. [your common mouse has learned analyze] I doubt that was a coincidence¡. I will definitely need to look into to this connection more later. I contact the mouse again, and she seems surprised and confused by the skill, I tell her to try opening her menu to check it out at which from the link I feel her confused for a moment, then amazed by something. I can¡¯t tell if all monsters don¡¯t know about the menu, or just the lower level ones, but I should be careful about this in the future. I can also tell from the link that her stats in WIS, INT, and WIL have also increased by 1 each, in addition to 2 INT from analyze, although she didn¡¯t get the wisdom bonus for learning a skill on her own. I can see her outside the cave, she has brown fur and is about the size of my chest. I call out telepathically to communicate because speech is still beyond me. ¡°So, how does it feel to know that the being you thought was so great and powerful, is a baby who can¡¯t even gather food for itself¡±? ¡°With all due respect master, I can tell from the link that you have memories from another world, and that you would be so powerful at such a young age only serves to bolster my spirits¡±. Even that was revealed through the link?! Looks like I really can¡¯t keep any secrets from those I share it with. ¡°And you are fine with being enslaved by another being, losing your freedom completely¡±? ¡°I feel far more free with my thoughts now than I ever did before, living every day in fear that it would be my last, this is the first time I¡¯ve even considered a way out¡±. Seems like she really does have no complaints for now but, emotions are fickle, and can always change over time. Also now that I think about it that is quite the elegant way of speaking considering I am talking with a 3-year-old mouse who likely hasn¡¯t talked much before. I can worry more about all that more later, but for now, I have confirmed that she is in fact sentient regardless of whether she was or not before. I order the mouse to not tell others about reincarnation, the menu, as well as my high stats, and pretty much anything else she learns from the link until I learn what the intelligent beings from this world are like. She doesn¡¯t say anything, but I can feel her mentally roll her eyes as if what I said is obvious and only an idiot would carelessly reveal those things to a potential enemy. I feel slightly insulted somehow¡. At least she isn¡¯t trembling in fear of me anymore, a capable and willing subordinate is far better than a meek and unwilling one. I eat 2 of the mouse¡¯s berries, and luckily it seems I can digest them despite that a baby would usually be incapable of digesting solid food, even if I can pulverize it with my strength 6 hands beforehand. I give my mouse the name Ratina because I couldn¡¯t think of a good mouse name, and while she had no name preference, she still wanted one.

Name	Ratina	Race	Common mouse, female
Age	3	Lv	4
Class	Mouse	Rank	0
HP	20/20	MP	0/11
Strength	5	Intelligence	13
Dexterity	15	Willpower	7
Stamina	8	Wisdom	6
Luck	89	Charisma	5
Skills	Gnaw LV3 Attacks using the mouth gain a slight bonus	Claw LV2 Attacks using claw gain a slight bonus	Hide LV5 has an easier time avoiding being sensed by others
Poison resistance LV2 Takes less damage from poisons	Iron gut LV 4 Less likely to have negative effects from eating poisonous or rotting foods	Analyze: Able to show information that the user already knows
Titles	Owned by Auxentius: been tamed by a human whose taming rank is equal to or greater than the monsters rank, 15% combat penalty for every rank exceeding the owner''s
Race skill	Compress LV3 is able to compress the body in order to fit through tight spaces

I have Ratina hunt insects within a range of mana sense where the consumption is slightly less than my recovery rate while I test some things. I want to learn water magic, as trying to move water by mouse or getting it all from berries would be quite difficult. I make a ball out of mana above my cupped hands, and try to focus on a cool flowing sensation as I picture water in my head. Nothing happens. I then picture a water fall, with the mana becoming water and flowing down to my hands. The mana begins to circulate, and the feel of it changes slightly, but still no water is formed. I then focus on that new mana feel, and try to condense it into a ball which becomes

Water magic: water ball

Able to form a water ball made of magic to use against your foes, damage, speed, and range increase depending on MP spent, MP can focus on any of those 3 specifically

INT+3 (102) I only make a small amount to drink at first to make sure it isn¡¯t poisonous or something, and then create a few more above my open mouth to quench my thirst. Next I try using the sensation I got from the ground earlier in a compressed magic ball and learn

Earth magic: throw rock

Earth version of water ball

INT+3 (105) I then learn fire magic: fire ball and wind magic: wind ball, each giving me INT+3 (111) after trying out several different things, but no magic other than ball based has worked so far.

Fire magic: fire ball

Wind magic: wind ball

While I want to try more this has taken several hours and I am getting tired. I also unlocked the class options for [Class: Wizard] and [Class: Warlock] but I have no intention of changing my class permanently. I will probably try changing temporarily later once I make sure there are no downsides. I call back Ratina who has killed a few dozen insects in this time, but has yet to level up from it and go to sleep for a while. CH4: The legendary battle of man vs centipede The next day I once again send out Ratina to hunt insects. I tasted a few since they are the safest food source within my sustainable magic perception range, and while they tasted bad, it wasn¡¯t as bad as they looked. It is undesirable, but for now I will live off them. There have been less insects within my detection range lately, likely from overhunting, so I am trying to see if I can move myself. I look over my new class options, and there is no way to make them sub-classes or add them without removing my tamer class, so I stop bothering with them. My higher physical stats still won¡¯t even let me support my own weight, so I resort to magic again. I try to move my mana into the ground, mixing it with the earth and trying to move the earth with it. [learned earth magic: soil manipulation] INT +2 (113) That was surprisingly easy, and also didn¡¯t give as much of a boost, I have a few ideas on why, but none I can confirm yet. Moving the soil allow me to basically surf around without straining my neck, and it is a bit fun. I play around with it for a few hours until I figure out more specifically how it works. The MP consumption is also lower than I thought, it takes a minute of shifting around to use 5 MP if I account for my recovery rate and active mana perception. Unfortunately, it moves slowly, I can move soil very quickly if I use 100x the consumption, but that risks damaging my body and isn¡¯t sustainable. And for some reason there is no in between speed, only when going the full 100x consumption does the speed change at all. I plan to make a burrow much like Ratina used to live in near a body of water or a place where animals frequently visit so that I can snipe them with magic within cover. The cave entrance is a better start then an open clearing, but it is about time I transferred my base of operations. I don¡¯t know my strength compared to other beings of the forest well, but from Ratina¡¯s memories the top predator of the ecosystem is a flying deer that breaths fire and hunts bears. I repeat, a FLYING DEER THAT BREATHS FIRE and HUNTS FRIGGEN BEARS. I would think that she was messing with me if I couldn¡¯t tell she was serious from the link. This is absolutely ridiculous from a normal standpoint, but since I am in a world where magic is normal, I should probably throw common sense out the window and shoot it in the face repeatedly. Other forest creatures are regular deer, rabbits, birds, large birds like eagles, snakes, giant spiders, slimes, treants, giant bugs, wolves, and some kind of trap flower. And not like the gender trap flower, like the loose vine on the ground is actually a snare for a plant with teeth that wants to eat you kind. I asked about things like trolls, goblins, and lizardmen, but none of them seem to live around here, if they exist in this world at all. Ratina seems to be a good candidate for a scout, and I can act as a mage, so having a good tank would help balance the group. I am hesitant to get a deer or bear however, as I don¡¯t want the attention of the top predator of the forest, and slimes are either useless or extremely adaptable and valuable. According to Ratina, slimes are scavengers and she doesn¡¯t know of any variants or higher forms of slimes. I will hold off on finalizing my second monster until I see if Ratina can evolve, or if monsters are stuck at whatever their born as. Unfortunately, there is nothing like convenient racial memories that would allow Ratina to answer many of my questions. I decide now is the time to hunt that centipede I noticed earlier. The centipede is about the same size as me, but has the same mana concentration Ratina used to have. It should be mentioned that my own mana concentration is larger than both of theres combined by a ridiculous amount, I am guessing more MP= greater mana concentration. Mice are known to be intelligent though, so the centipede is likely a higher level as it should have more of a physical focus. I use earth magic to hide under a nearby tree¡¯s roots, and have Ratina hide in a branch waiting to ambush. Then I use fire ball with 50 points of mana while focusing on concentrating it to do large damage to a small area, and fire it at the centipede.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. I levelled up 4 times CHR+12 WIL+8 INT+6 WIS+6 Other stats+4, and got

Title: Dark horse

Defeat a foe at least twice you own level, gives +5% experience for all future battles

Title: Heroic victory

Defeat a foe at least 5 times you own level, gives +10% bonus to all stats when against a stronger opponent

Title: Legendary victory

Defeat a foe at least 10 times your own level, all opponents you face will suffer a 15% penalty for all stats as long as you are in combat

Skill: Assassination

gives a 3% damage buff when you successfully ambush an opponent

STR+2 Choose a skill

Monster buff

Group telepathy

Ease of domination

I choose monster buff as group telepathy is less needed due to my link and I don¡¯t need ease of domination with my willpower already so high. I chose the monster buff skill

Skill: Monster buff LV1

Increases your monster¡¯s stats by 5% of your Charisma stat + 3% Willpower stat+ 2% Intelligence stat MP cost 15 cooldown 25 duration 15

CHR+2 The centipede died in one hit with a blackened section of it¡¯s body. The fire ball wasn¡¯t that large, and the fire didn¡¯t show any signs of spreading. Assassination was probably learned from either ambushing or from killing it in one hit. Ratina is glaring at me, I can tell from the link that she is annoyed that I one-shotted something worth a lot of exp without letting her get any. Actually she seems seriously angry for getting her hopes up for a fight and having her take up an ambushing position, only to defeat the enemy on my own. Next time I will try spending a bit less MP and give Ratina a chance to participate. Though I can¡¯t help but feel that Ratina seems be looking forward to killing enemies a little too much. That may be a bit hypocritical considering how I was getting all excited by setting up the ambush, and was a bit disappointed when I didn¡¯t need to use my preparations. At any rate I should check my menu to see the new changes.

Name	Auxentius	Race	Human, male
Age	0	Lv	5
Class	Tamer	LV 1	Rank 1
HP	24/24	MP	14/91 (increases by 0.86/sec)
Strength	12	Intelligence	113
Dexterity	11	Willpower	138
Stamina	10	Wisdom	86
Luck	41	Charisma	67
Skills	Mana perception:ability to sense the mana of your surroundings	Analyze: show known information about an object	Mana manipulation: able to alter the shape and properties of mana
Magic mana sense: able to make a field of mana that will detect objects within it, Uses more MP/second the larger the field	Magic connection: links senses with another being, being must either willingly accept the link or first be dominated. Certain skills are buffed when used between members of a magic connection.	Telepathy LV1: allows communication through thoughts, MP cost increases with distance	TameLV1: ability to tame a monster and enslave it to your will, either by forcing it into submission or by having it agree to serve you by a contract, current capacity 1/2
Assassination: gives a 3% damage buff when you successfully ambush an opponent	Fire magic: fireball cooldown 5 seconds (cooldowns and durations will always be in seconds unless specified)	Water magic: waterball cooldown 5	Wind magic: windball cooldown 5
Earth magic: throw rock cooldown 5	Earth magic: soil manipulation continuous MP cost	Monster buff LV1: increases your monster¡¯s stats by 5% of your Charisma stat + 3% Willpower stat+ 2% Intelligence stat MP cost 15 cooldown 25 duration 15
Titles	Child prodigy: learned 5 non-race skills and has exceeded 50 points in at least 2 stats before age 6, all stats +5	Dark Horse: Defeat a foe at least twice you own level, gives +5% experience for all future battles	Heroic victory: Defeat a foe at least 5 times you own level, gives +10% bonus to all stats when against a stronger opponent
Legendary Victory: Defeat a foe at least 10 times your own level, all opponents you face will suffer a 15% penalty for all stats as long as you are in combat
Tamed monsters	common mouse LV4	Linked beings	common mouse LV4

\Well it looks like that centipede was at least level 10, and like I exploited the system pretty majorly by being stronger at level 1 than I should be. Legendary victory gives a super op buff that should make my life so much easier. My tamer rank seems to have rose automatically, it may rise every 5 levels, or it may rise at certain increments. Monster buff seems pretty op for now, but depending in how it scales as it levels up it may not be as useful later. I think that the stats that increase more on each level up are from my class, and based on my skill description it looks like all of them will be influencing my skills later. Increasing Ratina¡¯s 5 STR to about 13 even if temporarily should be quite useful. I stay in the hole I made while my MP recovers, and just to be safe I use all my MP to use mana perception on the surrounding forest. When I do so, I notice that most of the larger creatures have about half my mana, but the 3 bears I sense all have over 3 times my mana O.o . Apparently my stats aren¡¯t quite as impressive as I thought. I knew I would be behind the fire-breathing deer, but I wasn¡¯t expecting to be so far behind the second biggest threat in the woods. I abandon my prior plan to find a river, and instead decide that I should prepare some more back at the cave like learning Ratina¡¯s hide skill in case I piss off one of the big-shots of the woods. Or more accurately when I inevitably piss one off by throwing a full force spell at it just to see what happens. I can¡¯t help it y¡¯know curiosity killed the house and everything it a 5km radius and whatnot. Ratina is giving me a serious glare right now, I was just kidding! Nothing serious. Definitely, probably¡. Possibly okay so maybe there is a good chance I would go for it but I stopped myself, I am properly preparing to hide and cower after I whip up a shit storm. It takes a bit longer to get back to the cave as I am bringing the centipede corpse in case I can use it for something. CH5: Good ideas, bad ideas, and wastes of time I¡¯ve spent the last 5 hours trying to resurrect the centipede corpse via necromancy. I figured as someone who has come back from the dead, that I could more easily use magic to influence it. That turned out to be completely wrong. Either necromancy doesn¡¯t exist in this world, or it operates in a way that doesn¡¯t involve that¡.. place that I was in after I died. I exhausted every conceptual interaction of my mana to influence ¡°that place¡± and had no trace of locating or interacting with the centipede¡¯s soul or whatever a dead consciousness is. At least I didn¡¯t completely waste my time as I got 1 new skill, [Astral Projection] WIS +1 (87) WIL+1 (139). Astral projection allows for me to go back into my bodiless form, leaving my living body undefended. I tried to possess insects, trees, and Ratina¡¯s body, but was unable to. The only things I could do were see, hear, and feel mana likely due to mana perception. While this may be useful to spy or give orders to my monsters, I already possess a link and telepathy for communication, and spying can mostly be done via my magic sense, so the only possible use I can see is to spy when I am very far away from the place I want to spy on. The most interesting and useful aspect of astral projection (and reason I don¡¯t feel it was a complete waste of my time) is that my astral projected self can instantly travel between my body and linked bodies. In conclusion, I spent five hours in order to develop a skill that is only useful under extremely specific circumstances and have still not done anything that actually needed the centipede¡¯s body. On the upside, Ratina has not been idle for this time. I would occasionally give pointers as Ratina tried to figure out magic based on the sensations she has felt in the link when I use magic. Ratina was able to learn [Mana Perception] [Mana Manipulation] [Magic: Mana Sense] and [Telepathy] INT +10 (23) WIS +3 (9) Ratina gained intelligence for learning telepathy which I didn¡¯t, potentially because I got it from my class, but monster buff did give me stat buffs for learning from an increase in class rank. There are too many possibilities so I shelve my thoughts, be gone analytical thoughts, I have more important things and it doesn¡¯t bother me. It absolutely does. not. bother. me. . . It bothers me but I can ignore it. I want to get to the bottom of this, I want to make weapons out of the centipede corpse, I want to see if I can teleport based on the astral projection sensation, I want to try and learn light or dark magic to assist hiding, but I need to stop myself and focus.Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. I start getting around to my initial objective of learning the hide skill. I focus on my link to Ratina and try to focus on her memories of the hide skill. The link is far calmer than usual, both of us are normally on edge in the forest and our collective paranoia amplifies each other. But now, we are both trying to calm, and focus, focus¡.. I got sidetracked again by thinking about the link, excuse me one moment as I bash my head into the nearest wall, wait baby body bad idea! Mentally slap myself and move on. It seems like you are in need of a chill pill master, I will let you know the moment I find one. Ha Ha very funny. A few hours later [learned hide] +2 INT (115) +1WIS (88). Now it is starting to get late so I use soil manipulation to cover the cave entrance some and start to sleep. I am woken up sometime later in the night. Ratina woke up first because she heard some larger animals nearby, and quickly woke me up as well. Mana perception shows there are 8 wolves outside, and that each of them has as much mana concentration as I do. I am not strong enough to handle all of them, I could probably take down half of them, but I would run out of mana too quickly. Worse it seems as though they smell us as they are coming our direction while¡.. the centipede. They probably smell the centipede corpse that we have with us in the cave, I usually wash myself and Ratina with water ball, but the corpse of a monster would obviously draw some attention in a forest. The good news is that they haven¡¯t seen us yet, the bad news is that they noticed the cave already and are likely only hesitating in case a strong monster lives inside. So I use soil manipulation to make a separate path in the cave with some air holes, and close it behind me and Ratina. I¡¯m not about to fight a battle at such a disadvantage if I can avoid it, now I just have to out wait the wolves. I should really design some traps or defenses beyond covering up the entrance in the future. A few minutes pass and the wolves are still waiting outside, well speaking of traps if they are going to wait then how about I hollow out some pitfalls and make some stalactites with thin connections to the ceiling that I can cut. An hour later and the wolves begin to stir, it seems like they are now convinced that nothing too powerful is in the cave, although I have no idea how they came to that conclusion. I intentionally avoid triggering the traps as they walk into the cave, no reason for me to allow them an escape route is there? Once they reach the centipede, the fun can begin. The moment they reach the centipede I trigger the pitfall with soil manipulation dropping the whole pack onto dirt spikes. The spikes broke. Funny thing about a world with a level system, objects without a wielder buffing them are basically useless. And now the pack of high levelled wolves is pissed off. It¡¯s a good thing I have most of my MP because of course they can dig, and they just so happen to seem to be able to notice my direction as they all seem to be digging toward me. I try to use the tame skill to dominate one of them like Ratina, but it fails likely due to them having similar mental stats to my own. So I have Ratina put me on her back, we both use the hide skill, and we run. We run out of the cave first through the alternate path, we even make a sizeable lead, but after the wolves get out they run fast. REALLY fast. So we are slower, weaker, outnumbered, and the hide skill doesn¡¯t seem to stop them from tracking us. That leaves only 2 options and since there are no stronger monsters close by to lead them into, I chose the more chaotic one. I use fire ball and start a forest fire. Instead of concentrating it like with the centipede, I just use 20MP worth of fire mana to spread out between me and the wolves. It makes a literal wall of flames, which you¡¯d think would be a different skill, but still seems to count as fire ball for some reason. The flames spread fast, and while I was worried that the wolves would charge through it and ignore the damage, they seem to run away very quickly. While this is quite convenient for me, I wonder why they would ROOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAARRRRR. Then the fire breathing deer arrives. CH6: Making other people solve your problems for you So I manage to solve my wolf problem, only for a roaming boss to become my newest problem. It is staring at the flames like it is pissed, so let¡¯s see what happens when I try talking it out. I use telepathy on the deer and ¡°Hi why is it that you seem so¡¡..¡± (Auxentius) ¡°WHO DARES TO CONTEST THE TERRITORY OF THE GREAT STEVEN, DEER OF BLAZE AND TERROR, WITH MY OWN POWER OF FLAMES¡± (Steven the flying flaming deer of terror) Well what you don¡¯t know really can hurt you, I can work with this. ¡°I AM THE WOLF PACK ALPHA FENRIR AND I SHALL NOT FEAR SOME WEAKLING WITH A PATHETIC NAME LIKE STEVEN¡± (Auxentius) I cut of telepathy and stop myself from laughing as the deer glares at the retreating wolves with a gaze of absolute rage and chases after them. Ratina isn¡¯t surprised I would pull something like this, but is dumbfounded that the most terrifying being in the forest she has feared all of her life, ruler of the whole world she has seen, was fooled with a single sentence. She is however much more focused on using the hide skill and distancing ourselves from the fire. I need to be more careful about using fire magic in the future, lest Steven notice that someone is using the blaze of terror in his territory. Must.Not.Laugh. Need to stay hidden. They wolves are howling in pain in the background, but they tried to kill me first so I have no remorse to spare for them. [Title: Sinister puppetmaster] Okay, I think I know why I got that title, but I really hope people can¡¯t see other people¡¯s menus or I am going to have a problem with this later. As we scurry through the woods, I detect an owl via mana perception charging towards us, its mana concentration is slightly below ratina¡¯s, but owls aren¡¯t usually intelligence oriented so it is probably a higher level. I use monster buff on ratina and roll off of her into a soft soil manipulated mound, and she crouches in a pouncing position. I prepare a wind ball, but give ratina a chance for a 1v1. When the owl is close to having the talons reach her, she jumps off the ground straight for the owl¡¯s neck. The bite skill seems to work pretty well, since she DECAPITATED the owl with a single bite. [Your common mouse learned the new skill assassination] Why does every battle either end in a single moment, or result in running away desperately and needing a hail mary to survive the encounter. "To think I once feared these birds enough to hide in a hole all day" (Ratina) "Well considering that you have over twice the attack you used to when buffed up, you didn''t used to be nearly as strong even if you had the dexterity to pull off that stunt" (Auxentius) "It does feel much better to be the hunter than the hunted, the feeling of power is just amaing ya know" (Ratina) "That I most certainly do" (Auxentius) Ratina leveled up twice, apparently the menu only notifies me to new skills and titles, but not levels of my tamed monsters. Now at least we are even in 1v1 fights and wait a minute¡.. Party invite Ratina. [Ratina has joined your party!]. Of course there is a party system to share experience, I don¡¯t know why having a tamed monster doesn¡¯t automatically count, but being able to alternate should make power levelling easier if I ever need to.

Party Leader	Auxentius	LV 5	Tamer
Party members	Ratina	LV 6	Mouse

Seeing as how mouse is displayed and not common mouse it seems like it displays your name, total level, and class, but not your race or class level. I try to focus on each menu panel for more detailed information, but can¡¯t get more than already displayed. We take the corpse with soil manipulation to a tree near a stream, I bury the corpse this time a distance away from the tree and make a hole under the tree that is mostly covered before going to sleep again. Babies need lots of sleep, and I was already interrupted once tonight. I slept happily unaware that the deer was commit wolf genocide up above for he wasn¡¯t sure he got the wolf who defied his rule, as none of the wolves seemed to fight back with flames. I wake up and do a quick sweep of the area with mana perception and don¡¯t find anything threatening. I use soil manipulation to bring the owl corpse over to the tree, soil manipulation also makes cleaning it off super easy. Necromancy still doesn¡¯t work just like with the centipede, I have Ratina pluck the feather so make dissection easier. I can modify the throw rock spell to make an earth blade to cut the corpse with, but I just let Ratina cut it with her claws. There seems to be normal owl stuff, never dissected one before but none of the organs seem too strange, nor is there any mana reactions. Until there are some copper coins within the corpse. HOW? WHY? Freaking magic raises so many questions that I really wish I had a manual or something. Activate tutorial! Show credits! Open options menu! Save my progress! Load quick save!Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. None of that did anything. I¡¯ll bury the coins for now, and be sure to cut open any other monsters in the future. For now I will check out what my newest title does to me

Name	Auxentius	Race	Human, male
Age	0	Lv	5
Class	Tamer	LV 1	Rank 1
HP	24/24	MP	75/91 (increases by 0.86/sec)
Strength	12	Intelligence	113
Dexterity	11	Willpower	138
Stamina	10	Wisdom	86
Luck	41	Charisma	67
Skills	Mana perception	Analyze	Mana manipulation
Magic mana sense	Magic connection	Telepathy LV1	TameLV1: 1/2 monsters tamed
Assassination	Fire magic: fireball	Water magic: waterball	Wind magic: windball
Earth magic: throw rock	Earth magic: soil manipulation	Monster buff LV1	Hide
Astral projection
Titles	Child prodigy	Dark Horse	Heroic victory
Legendary Victory	Sinister puppetmaster: You have fooled an intelligent being into killing another being for a crime they didn¡¯t commit, People will be more likely to believe your lies based on your charisma stat compared to their charisma stat
Tamed monsters	common mouse LV4	Linked beings	common mouse LV4

That skill seems like it could be very useful, a shame that it won¡¯t help much against higher level opponents. I would like to eat some meat for once with this owl meat, but cooking it may draw unwanted attention. So, I begin some magic testing for a new plan. I hollow out a sealed of area in the ground with soil manipulation and leave a fire ball in there. I can use magic sense and feel the ground to tell that the fireball does persist in a vacuum. I cancel the fireball and spend a few hours making a long stretch of tunnel that will open up much farther out. I stay by the tree and begin cooking the owl meat after moving the hole a few meters away from the tree, and Ratina stays hidden near the hole exit to see if any powerful creatures are attracted by the smell, or if Steven is offended by the smoke. I was hoping that some weaker animals may arrive for Ratina to xp farm, but one of the bears is the first to show up and seems to be guarding the exit so that it gets first dibs on the food when it escapes through the hole. I call Ratina back and pull the owl meat out from the hole after a while, the meat is a bit burnt as I had Ratina smelling on the other side of the whole to guess when it was done cooking, but it still tastes far better than insects and berries. I bury the meat that we don¡¯t eat and bury the hole and collapse the tunnel sections in range of soil manipulation in case anything that can dig tries to follow the source, and I stay extra alert for few hours in case anything smelled the meat that came out of the hole. Nothing ends up coming, so I decide to travel around the river to hunt for animals looking for a drink. We find a hippo after a while. Ratina had never seen a hippo before, but she also tended to avoid the river if she had enough berries or dew to otherwise avoid going to one of the most popular hunting spots around. The hippo only has about half of my mana concentration, so it seems as though I have found my tank for the party. Hippos may be slow on land, but having a mounted mage (me) will make quite the powerful combination. I try to use magic connection and tame without trying diplomacy in case the element of surprise makes it easier, but it fails after a few minutes of mental struggling for both parties. I can tell I have a distinct advantage over the hippo unlike when I tried on the wolves, but it seems like I am still not quite able to overcome its resistance. And the hippo looks real mad, it does not like the idea of giving in at all. So I throw rocks at it, using earth magic of course. This really pisses it off so it charges up on to land, and into a pitfall I mad earlier. I know from the wolves that it won¡¯t deal much damage, but I made it a few meters deep and without much space for the hippo to move in. It is trying to dig out, but hippos are really terrible a digging, and I made small holes around the edges of the bottom that Raina in popping out of to bite at its ankles with continuous monster buff being applied. After 15 minutes or so I succeed at using tame and magic connection and get my second monster to join the party. [Tough hippopotamus subordinated] [Tame Lv up] CHR+2 Wil+1 [Tough hippopotamus is higher rank than tamer, 15% combat penalty applied]

Name	Auxentius	Race	Human, male
Age	0	Lv	5
Class	Tamer	LV 1	Rank 1
HP	24/24	MP	91/91 (increases by 0.86/sec)
Strength	12	Intelligence	113
Dexterity	11	Willpower	138
Stamina	10	Wisdom	86
Luck	41	Charisma	67
Skills	Mana perception	Analyze	Mana manipulation
Magic mana sense	Magic connection	Telepathy LV1	TameLV1: 1/2 monsters tamed
Assassination	Fire magic: fireball	Water magic: waterball	Wind magic: windball
Earth magic: throw rock	Earth magic: soil manipulation	Monster buff LV1	Hide
Astral projection
Titles	Child prodigy	Dark Horse	Heroic victory
Legendary Victory	Sinister puppetmaster
Tamed monsters	common mouse LV6	Hippopotamus LV24
Linked beings	common mouse LV6	Hippopotamus LV24

Name	N/A	Race	Hippopotamus, female
Age	20	LV	24
Class	Tough Hippopotamus	LV 2	Rank 2
HP	210/430	MP	53/53 (+0.48/sec)
Strength	100	Intelligence	55
Dexterity	70	Willpower	51
Stamina	215	Wisdom	48
Luck	102	Charisma	46
Skills	Tough hide LV3: Reduces physical damage taken by 6%	Enhanced senses: Has an easier time detecting other creatures using natural senses	Assassination
Titles	Owned by Auxentius	Biggest fish in the sea: Own a water based territory for 5 consecutive years, gives a 5% buff to all stats when facing opponents of a lower level than your own
Race skills	Crushing bite LV4: Increased damage when biting foes, large chance to break bones	Bulky LV6: Reduces damage taken by foes of a lower weight class by 6%, HP +6%	Swim LV8: Moves 8% faster when in the water

Name	Ratina	Race	Common mouse, female
Age	3	Lv	6
Class	Mouse	Rank	0
HP	24/24	MP	13/13 (+0.08/sec)
Strength	8	Intelligence	15
Dexterity	21	Willpower	9
Stamina	11	Wisdom	8
Luck	91	Charisma	7
Skills	Gnaw LV3	Claw LV2	Hide LV5
Poison resistance LV2	Iron gut LV 4	Mana Perception	Mana Manipulation
Magic: mana sense	Telepathy
Titles	Owned by Auxentius
Race skill	Compress LV3

CH7: Time for the pecking order I use telepathy to talk with our latest party member. ¡°So welcome to the team! I am Auxentius human tamer from another world and Ratina over there is your senpai team member¡± (Auxentius) ¡°I can¡¯t believe I was enslaved by a BABY and a MOUSE, I am the river master, the fear of all creatures who come to drink, at least the baby is at least mentally older than me but to be diffeated in such a manner by such weaklings I¡.¡± (not yet named) ¡°Just who exactly are you calling weaklings? Surely you couldn¡¯t be referring to my master who could¡¯ve snuffed out your life in the hole, nor I who was bleeding you out slowly as you helplessly squirmed in said hole like a worm¡± (Ratina) ¡°I WILL SHOW YOU RESPECT YOU PUNY¡± (not yet named) ¡°Hippo sit¡± (Auxentius) The hippo slams down on the ground due to the order. ¡°Your name is now Nasby; it is short for nasty bitch. It is understandable that you do not enjoy losing your freedom, but you are not in charge, *looks over at Ratina* and neither are you. I am in charge and you two will not be fighting between each other. I decide the pecking order and I said that Ratina is your senpai until I decide whether you have achieved enough merit to be treated better. Do I make myself clear?¡± (Auxentius) ¡°Yes master¡± (Ratina and Nasby) ¡°Good, now Nasby you are free to move again but are forbidden from attacking me, attacking Ratina, or from telling anyone things about me I wish to be secret, which you know from the magic connection, now join the party invite I am about to send you.¡± (Auxentius)

Party Leader	Auxentius	LV 5	Tamer
Party members	Ratina	LV 6	Mouse
	Nasby	LV 24	Tough hippopotamus

Now that the group dynamics have been settled, I use soil manipulation to move me on top of Nasby and lock me in place up there. We hunt around for a bit and kill 4 giant bugs, 2 rabbits, I avoid killing a deer we find as I wouldn''t want to trigger a hidden revenge flags of Steven''s, and finally we locate a bear. I have levelled up 7 times, Ratina levelled up 6, and Nasby has stayed the same level. The bear would be a doable fight if we could have it focus on Nasby, but I know from Nasby''s memories through the link that these bears are smart enough to target the mage and have strong enough muscles to leap out of any pit I could dig, because she has seen one run up a cliff before. I am not even suprised at this point, just know better than to pick a fight with something of the level of absurdity. And bbesides there is a good reason not to take risks at the moment. Ratina has met the requirements to evolve a while ago. Turns out Nasby used to be a fish. I was very annoyed at her for not revealling what she knew about evolutions, but apparently she was trying hard to hide it because she was embarassed of being a fish. Nothing can be hidden forever through magic connection, but you can delay it by not thinking much about what you want to keep secret. As punishment I allowed Ratina to ruthlessly verbally abuse her about it, and told Nasby I would only have her stop if she told me every detail of what she knew about the subject. Nasby had the option to evolve at LV 10 of the common salmon race, why a salmon can evolve into a hippo is beyond me. She had the option to become a stingray, a sword fish, a small shark, a crocodile, or a hippopotamus. She chose to evolve immediately which left her unconscious and undefended until the evolution finished. She doesn''t know how long it took, once again the inability to track time urks me. She woke up at level 1 again, but she kept her swimming racial skill from being a fish and got her Bulky. She evolved again into a tough hippopotamus, this time after hiding herself, at level 20 and once again was returned to level 1 with her past skills, and learned her tough hide and crushing bite skills. Unfirtunately she didn''t check her menu immediately after evolving either time and doesn''t know what her stats were at level one. She got notified she had new skills and was reduced to level one, but just used the skills without checking the descriptions and didn''t confirm her new stats. Ratina unlocked some options at level 10, but I want to see if new options will unlock by waiting until she is a higher level. I have also unlocked options to upgrade my class at level 10, but want to wait until we are at a safe place to seriously consider them. Nasby isn''t very stealthy, but we are far enough away that it hasn''t noticed us yet, so we head back to camp for the night. Right camp isn''t prepared for something Nasby sized yet.... Guess it''ll be a few more hours before I get to sleep. Unfortunatlely my baby body is too tired for that so I just have Nasby go in the river near our tree while I sleep, this can be a tomarrow problem. Babies shouldn''t have to work so hard, or even survive in the woods in the first place so maybe I''m not in a position to complain. Yeah I''m gonna complain anyways, stupid work leave the baby alone. I wake up later and luckily Ratina and Nasby didn''t get killed or kill each other while i slept. Now is a good time to open me and Ratina''s menus and see the changes.

Name	Auxentius	Race	Human, male
Age	0	Lv	12
Class	Tamer	LV 1	Rank 1
HP	40/40	MP	103/103 (increases by 0.98/sec)
StrengthSupport creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.	21	Intelligence	123
Dexterity	20	Willpower	157
Stamina	19	Wisdom	98
Luck	50	Charisma	97
Skills	Mana perception	Analyze	Mana manipulation
Magic mana sense	Magic connection	Telepathy LV1	TameLV2: 2/2 monsters tamed
Assassination	Fire magic: fireball	Water magic: waterball	Wind magic: windball
Earth magic: throw rock	Earth magic: soil manipulation	Monster buff LV1	Hide
Astral projection
Titles	Child prodigy	Dark Horse	Heroic victory
Legendary Victory	Sinister puppetmaster
Tamed monsters	common mouse LV12	hippopotamus Lv 24
Linked beings	hippopotamus Lv 24	common mouse LV12
Class upgrade options	Veteran Tamer LV2 Rank 2	Novice Trainer LV2 Rank 1	Monster teacher LV 2 Rank 1
Monster alpha LV2 Rank 1

Name	Ratina	Race	Common mouse, female
Age	3	Lv	12
Class	Mouse	Rank	0
HP	46/46	MP	24/24 (+0.19/sec)
Strength	19	Intelligence	29
Dexterity	43	Willpower	18
Stamina	22	Wisdom	19
Luck	99	Charisma	15
Skills	Gnaw LV3	Claw LV2	Hide LV5
Poison resistance LV2	Iron gut LV 4	Mana Perception	Mana Manipulation
Magic: mana sense	Telepathy
Titles	Owned by Auxentius
Race skill	Compress LV3
Evolution possible	Rat	Opposum	Giant squirrel
Mouse tribe leader

It looks like every option is level 2, and that rank will only increase by staying on my current path. While reaching Nasby''s rank would remove the combat penalty, the diverging paths seem like a long term investment, and I am quite the fan of investing in long term benefits. For Ratina, I wonder if the rat path is there just because I named her Ratina, or if it was a normal path. If no new options appear, the tribe leader seems promising for a path to rat queen, but changing race is tempting since you keep the old racial skills. And before anything else I want Ratina to learn the rest of the magic skills I have in case they unlock new options. Try as I might, I cannot pull up advanced information on the evolution options, I do figure out how to pull up advanced information on our current classes though.

Tamer

The weakest class focused on taming other races to help your own, you have just begun the path of a tamer and any path on your class tree would be an improvement. Main atrribute Charisma, sub attribute Willpower

Mouse

You are a mouse, you feed on scrapes and hide from powerful predators. Main attribute Dexterity, sub attribute Intelligence.

Tough hippopotamus

You are no ordinary hippopotamus, your toughened skin and high defences protect you from even stubborn foes, your bite allows you to crush your prey mercilessly. Main attribute Stamina, sub attribute Strength.

The main and sub attributes were pretty noticable based on how our stats had been increasing so far. I try to distract myself as I feel Ratina''s seething rage of her class description, I just hope she doesn''t rush to change classes just because the menu is egging her on. The more the system urges me to class up, the more I want to test and see if waiting unlocks new options. While levelling up may unlock new options, first I want to try and see if learning new skills will unlock options first. So today I will focus on teaching my monsters magic, except Nasby has no interest in anything involving thinking and asks for permission to hunt on her own. Looks like I have a blockhead on my hands now, I could force her into the lessons, but instead I will let her go and hunt, I will however leave her in a party with us without telling her of course, she could easily tell from the link that I am messing with her but she actively avoids paying attention to it with a high and mighty attitude. Maybe she''ll learn something after all hehehe. After a few hours of magic lessons ratina learns all of the ball magics and soil manipulation, I also teach myself fire, water, and wind manipulation in between helping ratina learn. Both of us also gain 3 levels from Nasby''s oblioviousness.

Name	Auxentius	Race	Human, male
Age	0	Lv	15
Class	Tamer	LV 1	Rank 1
HP	54/54	MP	55/112 (increases by 1.07/sec)
Strength	28	Intelligence	132
Dexterity	27	Willpower	166
Stamina	26	Wisdom	107
Luck	56	Charisma	113
Skills	Mana perception	Analyze	Mana manipulation
Magic mana sense	Magic connection	Telepathy LV1	TameLV2: 2/2 monsters tamed
Assassination	Fire magic: fireball	Water magic: waterball	Wind magic: windball
Earth magic: throw rock	Earth magic: soil manipulation	Monster buff LV1	Hide
Astral projection	Fire magic: fire manipulation	Water magic: water manipulation	Wind magic: wind manipulation
Titles	Child prodigy	Dark Horse	Heroic victory
Legendary Victory	Sinister puppetmaster
Tamed monsters	common mouse LV12	hippopotamus Lv 24
Linked beings	hippopotamus Lv 24	common mouse LV12
Class upgrade options	Veteran Tamer LV2 Rank 2	Novice Trainer LV2 Rank 1	Monster teacher LV 2 Rank 1
Monster alpha LV2 Rank 1	Elemental Tamer LV2 Rank 2	Necromancer apprentice LV2 Rank 3 (will kill all of your currently tamed beasts and reanimate them to serve you in death)

Name	Ratina	Race	Common mouse, female
Age	3	Lv	15
Class	Mouse	Rank	0
HP	61/61	MP	11/35 (+0.3/sec)
Strength	25	Intelligence	38
Dexterity	58	Willpower	28
Stamina	28	Wisdom	30
Luck	105	Charisma	21
Skills	Gnaw LV3	Claw LV2	Hide LV5
Poison resistance LV2	Iron gut LV 4	Mana Perception	Mana Manipulation
Magic: mana sense	Telepathy	Fire magic: fire ball	Water magic: water ball
Wind magic: wind ball	Earth magic: throw rock	Earth magic: soil manipulation
Titles	Owned by Auxentius
Race skill	Compress LV3
Evolution possible	Rat	Opposum	Giant squirrel
Mouse tribe leader	Magic mouse	Mouse scholar	Rhinocerus

Well necromancer unlocked in a way I never expected it to, but I have no interest in losing my taming route for the skill, I just wanted it as an add on. Elemental tamer could be a class that allows me to tame spirits, or maybe it allows me to give elemental properties to my monster, the latter would be amazing, but the former could be useless as I haven''t seen any spirits or stones with strong elemental properties. As for Ratina I have no idea where Rhinocerus came from, but seeing as how a fish can become a hippo I am not completely shocked, just lightly dumbfounded. Magic mouse seems like it doubles down on magic, but my main stats for my class will orient me more and more away from magic, and my MP may eventually all end up used on buffs. Mouse scholar is intriguing, but is probly a non combat class and isn''t worth the risk. It would be best for us not to both upgrade at the same time in case we both lose consciousness, and I don''t trust Nasby on her own to protect us. I should go first in case I don''t lose consiousness so we dont waste time and class upgrade into...... (cliff hanger!) CH8: A basic understanding of the system [Class changed to monster teacher LV2 Rank 1] Skill options available [xp assist] [skill teach] [battle advise] [Sub attributes changed!] -15 Willpower, +15 Wisdom [Class level up] +3 all stats Monster alpha sounded like it would involve participating in combat myself as a major factor, vetern tamer was too vanilla of an option, and between trainer and teacher teacher sounded like the more advanced option. Elemental tamer was too risky and necromancer was out of the question. I also confirm with Ratina that I didn''t lose consiousness, and tell her to evolve into mouse mage. Charisma and wisdom seem like a good combination for an enhancing class if the buffs are based on charisma, but the loss of will power will make taming more difficult, if you don''t have cheating level base stats that is. All 3 of my skill options are very tempting, an increase in experience will always be useful, but skill teaching can be straight up broken depending on what it entails. Battle advise seems like it will be another buff to gives my tamed monsters, but the other two options are far too tempting to pass up. I go for skill teach as it seems to have the most promising potential. [Skill teach LV1 learned] +1 Wis +1 INT

Name	Auxentius	Race	Human, male
Age	0	Lv	15
Class	Monster teacher	LV 2	Rank 1
HP	60/60	MP	131/131 (increases by 1.26/sec)
Strength	31	Intelligence	136
Dexterity	30	Willpower	154
Stamina	29	Wisdom	126
Luck	59	Charisma	116
Skills	Mana perception	Analyze	Mana manipulation
Magic mana sense	Magic connection	Telepathy LV1	TameLV2: 2/3 monsters tamed
Assassination	Fire magic: fireball	Water magic: waterball	Wind magic: windball
Earth magic: throw rock	Earth magic: soil manipulation	Monster buff LV1	Hide
Astral projection	Fire magic: fire manipulation	Water magic: water manipulation	Wind magic: wind manipulation
Skill teach LV1: allows you to teach one of your tamed monster a skill in thier class they haven''t learned yet, can only be used once per monster MP cost 40x (rank of monster)
Titles	Child prodigy	Dark Horse	Heroic victory
Legendary Victory	Sinister puppetmaster
Tamed monsters	RatinaLV15 (evolving)	Nasby LV 24
Linked beings	NasbyLV 24	RatinaLV15 (evolving)

Dang I should''ve waited to evolve Ratina until I tried this skill to see if there are changes in options before and after,Nasby chose her skills when she evolved the same way my classes do, so I should be able to confirm by using it on her and see if the options of her first evolution show up. I try using the skill on Ratina first but it fails because she has to be consious for the process apparently. Overall the monster teacher class seems like the a good choice, having an extra skill for my monsters that they normally only get after evolving seems real op, not to mention the skill can still level up and somehow get stronger. My tamed monsters are also now listed by Name instead of by their race. The number of monsters I can tame went up after changing class, but didn''t when the tame skill levelled up, I am not sure whether the requirements for that are only based on class level, or if the tame level only allows more monsters if you have also increased your class level. I call Nasby over to see what my options for skill teach are.

Class skills that can be taught	Camoflauge	Burst of speed (Water)
Taunt	Trample	Intimidating roar
Minor regeneration	Rough hide	Bunker down
Counter-attack positioning	Deflecting stance

Camoflauge and burst of speed seem to be from her fish form, and the others options she had when she evolved before are listed, along with some others. I really want to save the skill teach for higher evolutions, but the taunt skill is desperately needed for her to tank properly no matter how awesome regeneration looks like it would be. I still can''t believe she passed up the regeneration option, her reasoning was if your defence is high enough not to get hurt, you will never need to heal. I teach her the taunt skill so that we can have a proper tanker for the party, and just loaf around until Ratina is done evolving. I let Nasby go out to hunt for some food, but I stay back as someone needs to be gurding Ratina until she evolves and my magic sense makes me the better guard, I can also widen the entrance to our hideout to fit Nasby in while I wait. Nasby kills some fish and a boar, another animal I only now learned live around here, but not enough for any of us to gain levels, and then I go to sleep after a quick meal several hours later.Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. When I wake up it seems that Ratina finished evolving. She is larger now, about 2.5x the size, and she has opposable thumbs now. Mice don''t have opposable thumbs obviously so I have an idea where this is going. Ratina looks at her new class window and seems very pleased.

Mouse mage

A mouse who has utilized their intelligence to harness the power of magic. This breed of mouse has far more potential than their cowardly cousins and will give a nasty suprise to any who underestimate them. Main attribute Intelligence, sub attribute Wisdom

Monster teacher

You do not simply show monsters how to serve humans, you teach them how to be them. To harness the power of intellect to find new paths that none have trend on before. Knowladge is a very dangerous tool however, be careful that they do not turn it against you. Main attribute Charisma, sub attribute Wisdom

When did thesedescription get so ominous all of a sudden? At least it seems like we got some good paths. Time to check out the full extent of Ratina''s evolution.

Name	Ratina	Race	Common mouse, female
Age	3	Lv	1
Class	Mouse mage	Rank	1
HP	22/22	MP	22/22 (+0.22/sec)
Strength	7	Intelligence	30
Dexterity	7	Willpower	9
Stamina	10	Wisdom	17
Luck	86	Charisma	7
Skills	Gnaw LV3	Claw LV2	Hide LV5
Poison resistance LV2	Iron gut LV 4	Mana Perception LV1	Mana Manipulation LV1
Magic: mana sense LV1	Telepathy	Fire magic: fire ball LV1	Water magic: water ball LV1
Wind magic: wind ball LV1	Earth magic: throw rock LV1	Earth magic: soil manipulation LV1
Titles	Owned by Auxentius
Race skill	Compress LV3

The magic skills all have levels now! Now it makes sense why I don''t get hide levels and Ratina doesn''t get telepathy ones, skills unrelated to your class won''t level up. Ratina also has options for her evolution skill. [Expanded mana pool] [Increased mana recovery rate] [Magical overdrive] The first two are pretty straight forward, overdrive seems like a skill to increase damage but it will likely have some consequences and be for emergencies only. The only problem is whether the damage is temporary or permanent, it could be useful but isn''t worth risking a skill slot over. We haven''t really been running out of MP, and even if some skills require more MP than we have unlocked at the moment we can always just wait a few levels to do it, spells that cost all your MP will probably leave you vulnerable afterwords anyway. Ratina picks increased mana recovery rate and I use Skill teach on her to see the list

Class skills that can be taught	Burst of speed (land)	Foraging
Expanded mana pool	Magic overdrive	Magic fire wall (conditions not met)
Magicwater wall (conditions not met)	Magic wind wall (conditions not met)	Magic earth (dirt) wall (conditions not met)
Magic fire manipulation	Magic water manipulation	Magic wind manipulation

I focus in on conditions and discover why I never learned some magic spells I tried.

Magic fire wall conditions

Reach at least level 3 of fire ball and level 2 of fire manipulation

Apparently lower tier magics need to be levelled up enough to unlock higher tier magics, in other words my magic skills other than magic sense will become less and less useful as time goes on. It seems like skills that skill teach teaches can be learned naturally, so the main use of this skill is to see the potential skills, learning about the conditions to learn higher level skills alone makes this skill worth it completely. I spend a good hour teaching Ratina the other manipulations skills with assistance from the conection, and I get the pleasant suprise of a new skill.

Lecture LV1: while giving relevant instructions to another intelligent being on a skill, increases skill progess rate by 2%

As useful as this skill is, it is going to be difficult to talk about skills I don''t know much about for an extended period of time. I just hope that conjectures that are wrong still count as relevant instructions, or I may waste my time trying to help them learn a skill the wrong way. Now that Ratina has her mage skills set up, I will check her new menu one last time before setting off again.

Name	Ratina	Race	Common mouse, female
Age	3	Lv	1
Class	Mouse mage	Rank	1
HP	22/22	MP	2/24 (+0.22/sec)
Strength	7	Intelligence	36
Dexterity	7	Willpower	9
Stamina	10	Wisdom	19
Luck	86	Charisma	7
Skills	Gnaw LV3	Claw LV2	Hide LV5
Poison resistance LV2	Iron gut LV 4	Mana Perception LV1	Mana Manipulation LV1
Magic: mana sense LV1	Telepathy	Fire magic: fire ball LV1	Water magic: water ball LV1
Wind magic: wind ball LV1	Earth magic: throw rock LV1	Earth magic: soil manipulation LV1	Fire magic: fire manipulation LV1
Water magic:water manipulation LV1	Wind magic: wind manipulation LV1
Titles	Owned by Auxentius
Race skill	Compress LV3	Increased mana recovery rate LV1: increases MP recovery by 10%

Those stats are a lot lower then before the evolution, but they are a much higher base even when compared to when I met her at level 4 before and will likely make her much stronger by the time she can evolve again. After the less than 2 minutes it takes for Ratina to recover her MP, we head off to where Nasby is hunting at. Once we are all together again, I place myself atop Nasby and we hunt some fish using water manipulation to trap them while either Nasby runs them over (to try learning trample) or by letting Ratina shoot them with magic. I use monster buffconstantly just to try to level the thing as it is my only combat spell, I also use telepathy to send messages as opposed to having the magic connection allow them to read my intentions as it isn''t a tamer skill. I have no idea what skill magic connection is now that I think about it, it isn''t a tamer skill or a magic skill so I really have no idea what class it is supposed to be for. Telepathy levels up twice, Monster buff levels up 3 times, Lecture levelled up 4 times , I level up 4 times, Nasby finally levels up once and she manages to learn trample which gives her a full 3 wisdom and 5 intelligence, I guess she never naturally raised her stats much so any progress is huge, I allowed her to take a less offensive name by now if she wanted but she decided to own it at this point and somewhat enjoys the context. Ratina leveled up 9 times, her water manipulation levelled up 5 times, mana perception 3 times, magic sense once, mana manipulation 5 times, increased recovery rate one, and each ball skill levelled up 3 times as I used teach on her basically the whole time. We head back to base and I check all the stats screens before going to bed, Nasby doesn''t understand why I check them so often, but I wouldn''t expect a simpleton to understand, even if it should be obvious that with a skill like analyze that allows you to remember everything is far more useful when you give it access to lots of data that you can sort through later to look for patterns.

Name	Ratina	Race	Common mouse, female
Age	3	Lv	10
Class	Mouse mage	Rank	1
HP	22/22	MP	12/42 (+0.44/sec)
Strength	18	Intelligence	63
Dexterity	16	Willpower	18
Stamina	19	Wisdom	37
Luck	95	Charisma	16
Skills	Gnaw LV3	Claw LV2	Hide LV5
Poison resistance LV2	Iron gut LV 4	Mana Perception LV4 (effect of levelling still unknown)	Mana Manipulation LV6 (effect of levelling still unknown)
Magic: mana sense LV2 (less MP needed)	Telepathy	Fire magic: fire ball LV4 (all ball skills deal more damage per MP used and have 3 second cooldowns now)	Water magic: water ball LV4
Wind magic: wind ball LV4	Earth magic: throw rock LV4	Earth magic: soil manipulation LV1	Fire magic: fire manipulation LV1
Water magic:watermanipulation LV6	Wind magic: wind manipulation LV1
Titles	Owned by Auxentius	Skilled: levelled up skills more than 15 times in a single day, +5% rate of learning and levelling up future skills	Quick grower: reach the level for the rank your previous form required before evolution on your first day, experience increased by 3%
Race skill	Compress LV3	Increased mana recovery rate LV2 (20% increase)

Name	Auxentius	Race	Human, male
Age	0	Lv	19
Class	Monster teacher	LV 2	Rank 1
HP	78/78	MP	78/146 (increases by 1.41/sec)
Strength	40	Intelligence	146
Dexterity	39	Willpower	162
Stamina	38	Wisdom	141
Luck	67	Charisma	140
Skills	Mana perception	Analyze	Mana manipulation
Magic mana sense	Magic connection	Telepathy LV3	TameLV2: 2/3 monsters tamed
Assassination	Fire magic: fireball	Water magic: waterball	Wind magic: windball
Earth magic: throw rock	Earth magic: soil manipulation	Monster buff LV4 (Nowincreases your monster¡¯s stats by 11% of your Charisma stat +6% Willpower stat+ 5% Intelligence stat MP cost 15 cooldown 25 duration 30)	Hide
Astral projection	Fire magic: fire manipulation	Water magic: water manipulation	Wind magic: wind manipulation
Skill teach LV1	Lecture LV5 (increases by 10% now)
Titles	Child prodigy	Dark Horse	Heroic victory
Legendary Victory	Sinister puppetmaster
Tamed monsters	RatinaLV10	NasbyLV 25
Linked beings	Nasby LV 25	Ratina LV10

Name	Nasby	Race	Hippopotamus, female
Age	20	LV	25
Class	Tough Hippopotamus	Rank	2
HP	451/451	MP	59/59 (+0.54/sec)
Strength	105	Intelligence	63
Dexterity	73	Willpower	54
Stamina	223	Wisdom	54
Luck	105	Charisma	49
Skills	Tough hide LV3	Enhanced senses	Assassination
Trample LV1: runs over your opponent dealing damage equal to your weight divided by their weight times your strength times 1.1, Cost 25 MP	Taunt LV1: forces your target to focus on attacking you for 5 seconds, MP cost 15 cooldown 15 seconds
Titles	Owned by Auxentius	Biggest fish in the sea
Race skills	Crushing bite LV4	Bulky LV6	Swim LV8

CH9: Mini boss battle I woke up this morning and did my normal magic sense magic. And its a good thing I did because Steven seems to be flying around the area. I don''t think he found me, he isn''t flying around where the meat tunnel went and he is''t very close to the base. He is around 50 meters out, if I didn''t extend my magic sense in one direction to sweep around like radar then he would have been out of range. But in the interest of avoiding any risks today is officially cave day, none of me or my monsters will leave the base today and we will only leave tommarow if Steven is further away. We still have a good supply of food sealed in a vacuum room I made in the base, so we can hold up for a few days if necessary. It''ll be a good oppurtunity to focus on using my teach skill, but Nasby just groans at me and tells me to just focus on Ratina instead. "Do not worry about the stuck up bitch master, she isn''t worthy of your attention. Instead focus on improving your most useful and superior commrade" (Ratina) Nasby is clearly mad, but I won''t reward her attitude in this regard and simply glare at her to remind her of the no infighting rule. "Why are you glaring at me when she is the one picking the fight?!" (Nasby) "Because disciplining and motivating the juniors is one of the jobs of the seniors, I approve of her methods of motivating you to compete to get stronger and am dissapointed in your idle complaints without putting in much effort. You are far older than Ratina but it seems as though she already has learned far more in a few days than you have throughout your life. In conclusion quit your bitching and put your money where your mouth is" (Auxentius) Nasby just grumbles in the corner, the thing I literally just called her out on doing too often, and I begin using lecture on Ratina for magic skills. A few hours pass by and we are able to increase the level of the ball skills by 1 each, magic sense by 1 level. increased mana recovery rate by 1,and the elemental manipulation skills other than water by 2 each. I leved up my lecture skill once.

Earth magic: soil manipulation LV3	Water magic: water ball LV5
Fire magic: fire manipulation LV3	Fire magic: fire ball LV5
Wind magic: wind manipulation LV3	Earth magic: throw rock LV5
Magic: mana sense LV3	Wind magic: wind ball LV5
Increased mana recovery rate LV3 (30% increase)

Now Ratina has finally met the requirements to learn the wall skills. We start with water wall, I lecture her with what I am attempting while she uses magic connection to mimic the sensations of what I am doing, occasionally attempting to do different alterations of what I am attempting which I encourage for not blindly following along, but learning the important concepts and reapplying them. Ratina succedes after only about 20 minutes, you basically need to have make the mana have the water property and flow while still sort of pushing it against itself to stay concentrated like the ball spell. Ratina learns [Water wall], but even by doing the exact same thing via magic connection my spell fails. Very interesting however is that when my spell fails I can sense a sort of interferance that disrupts it, I am not yet at a level where I feel safe making an enemy of some foe with world altering powers, but I will defenitely explore that interferance more someday. [Dirt wall] is learned by just making a wall shaped throw rock, [Fire wall] is like water wall but with the fire element and instead of flowing it is more like pushing out in one direction while being surrounded by all other sides, and [Wind wall] needs to circulate without compressing it, but still trapping it within a finite space. These 3 only take a half hour because fire and dirt wall were so easy after learning water wall, my lecture skill also levelled up again.

Water magic: water wall LV1, makes a wall of water that will block enemy attackes MP cost is a minimum of 15, but more MP leads to a stronger effect, MP cost is paid every second that the spell remains in effect. (all wall spells have same explanation but with different elements)

Fire magic: fire wall LV1

Wind magic: wind wall LV1

Earth magic: dirt wall LV1

Lecture LV7 (increases by 14% now)

I use skill teach again to view her possible skills to be taught.

Class skills that can be taught	Burst of speed (land)	Foraging
Expanded mana pool	Magic overdrive

It doesn''t seem like any new options are available, hopefully because like the wall skills it would tell me if there was. I try to get Ratina to learn ice magic anyways trying mixing fire as being a form of temperature to lower it and water to give it form, mixing wind cooling off the water, just using fire on it''s own with the concept of lowered temperature, mixing earth for a solid form with the water property, and severak other attempts for a few hours but none of it works at all. The system never interfered, but I did many similar things to the wall skills before without triggering the system, Ratina also had a slightly different form on the attempt to learn the skill than afterward so one of these methods may be the actual way, we just need the pre-requisite first. I then lecture her to try using all of her MP in one attack, or to race around within the hole as fast as she can, but she doesn''t learn magic overdrive or speed boost. I then go to sleep again after grabbing a quick meal from the vacuum room for myself and my monsters. Ratina and Nasby are having an intense staring contest in the background but the magic connection strangely never gets in the way of sleeping, even if someone you are connected to is full of energy. When I wake up again me and Ratina use our magic senses like radar and neither of us find Steven within range of our camp. We do however notice the bear from before poking around at the meat cooking hole, so I think it is time our party fought our first mini boss. Now while I could try taming the bear to quickly climb the power creep, I already have something else in mind for my 3rd slot. I will be on Ratina instead of Nasby because Nasby will be using taunt but that doesn''t last as long as it''s cooldown yet so I need to be far enough away that the bear can''t target me until the next taunt is ready. Ratina will also be using primarily wall spells to keep the bear in place, whil I will be using most of the damaging attacks while spamming monsterbuff whenthe duration ends on Nasby who will be fighting it head on. I start the fight using hide whith ratina after using monster buff on Nasby, and have Nasby roar and charge at the bear directly. Nasby''s charge doesn''t let her trample the bear, she hardly even shakes the bear''s foundation.Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. She uses chrushing bite on it but the bear doesn''t look hurt much, and it swipes back with it''s claw. It manages to scratch Nasby''s hide, but the cut isn''t deep and her HP only takes about 20 damage, in the mean time I shot a wind ball using most of my mp, but even that with a suprise attack only manages to make a few cuts on the bear''s hide. Nasby has held the bear in her mouth since the first bite, but it is draggingher whilerunning towards me and Ratina before she uses her taunt skill to redirect its attention. Ratina repositions us while using a water wall to block the next swipe of the bear, the attack is completely blocked and the bear looks distressed when seeing water magic. It takes some time for my MP to recharge while still using monster buff on Nasby, Ratina is using walls just long enough to block any claw swipes or bites before cancelling it, and alternating between all walls other than wind because the bear tore right through that one. The water wall seems to block it with the most leeway so it probably has an elemental weakness to water. This becomes more apparent when one of its bite attacks has glowing red teeth that breaks through a dirt wall and minorly burns Nasby. So both the top 2 creatures of the forest are fire attributed, when I scanned Steven I could feel a large resemblance to my fire mana, but the bears didn''t and still don''t give off a strong resemblance. There is a little one in hindsight, but not enough to be obvious unless you know to look for it. This time I use water ball with most of my mana, some is put into speed but most is put into damage, and it manages to pierce into the bear''s side, Nasby then readjusts her bite to dig deeper into the wound. I tell ratina to do a full power and full coverage water wall because the bear looks livid, and that turned out to be the right call. The bear exploded. I repeatTHE BEAR EXPLODED. It still has its flesh in tact, but the fur has burned off completely, and it is still struggling to bite and claw Nasby. Me and Ratina were far enough out to avoid the impact, and the barrier blocked most of the impact but Nasby still took 100 damage even with a blockingadvantageous element. I also have Ratina double up on magic sense with her wall spells, in case our fight just attracted Steven''s interest. We rinse and repeat our stratagy for 8 more full power water balls, and the bear finally collapses and dies.

Auxentius LV upx9, Ratina LV up x11, Nasby LV upx6

Just how strong was that bear?! Nasby leveled up by more than a weeks worth of regular hunting. My monster buff skill levelled up once, Nasby''s tough hide and taunt levelled up twice, and Ratina levelled up her water wall twice and her, fire, and earth walls once each.

Monster buff LV5: (Nowincreases your monster¡¯s stats by 13% of your Charisma stat +7% Willpower stat+ 6% Intelligence stat MP cost 15 cooldown 25 duration 30)

Tough hide LV5: (Now 10% physical reduction)

Taunt LV3: (Now lasts 15 seconds)

I bury the bear corpse and we head back to base quickly after using flame manipulation to stop the forest fire that explosion was begining to start. The bear corpse is eventually dragged back to base by dirt manipulation, and when we cut it open we find aRare quality beast blade. Ever since the owl all the corpses we dissected only had a few coppers if anything, this is the first usable loot we have found.

Rare quality beast blade: A dagger designed to hunt beast type monsters, +5% strength to damage when used as a weapon and an extra 3% total damage against beast type monsters.

I wish I knew how broad beast type was, are insects also beast type or are they insect type? This raises a lot of questions that I currently lack the ability to answer. More importants after that fightall of us can evolve or class up.

Ratina evolutions possible	rat scholar	mouse veteran mage	mouse apprentist elementalist
mouse apprentice sorcerer	mouse apprentice barrier mage	magic blood mouse martial artist disciple	mouse apprentice magic seal artist
mouse beginner archmage	failed magic abomination	hamster	Water mouse

Auxentius possible class upgrades	Monster alpha LV2 Rank 1(WARNING will remove all teacher related skills)	Monster research intern LV3 rank 2	Veteran Tamer LV3 Rank 2
Elemental Tamer LV3 Rank 2 (WARNING will remove all teacher related skills)	Necromancer apprentice LV3 Rank 3 (will kill all of your currently tamed beasts and reanimate them to serve you in death) (WARNING will remove all teacher related skills)	Monster Professor LV3 Rank 2	Novice monster tacticion LV3 Rank 1
Monster sensei LV3 Rank 2

Nasby evolutions available	Hippopotamus knight	Hippopotamus bunker	Hippopotomus wall
Hippopotamus protector	Iron back hippopotamus	Lesser orca	Great white shark
Elephant

So many decisions to be made, but first off why is hamster there, rat scolar at least slightly makes sense but where, why, and how is hamster available now and not in the previous evolution screen. Failed magic abomination makes it sound like I''ve been doing magical experiments on Ratina, I don''t even have the proper tools to pull that off yet! Blatent accusations I say. Some of my previous class change options are available at a higher level, but all but veteran tamer require me abandoning my teacher skills so those can be written off easily. That leaves professor, researcher, tactitician, sensei, or veteran tamer. I would rather stay on a speciallized track so veteran tamer is once again pushed to the side, professor and researcher both seem like they would provide desperately needed information, but speciallizing too strongly in the non-combat classes could become a major problem so I play it safe and go with monster sensei.

Skills available

Discipline

Awaken hidden potential

Assuring arua

All stats +6 Probably the easiest skill choice I''ve had, the other options are no where near as tempting as awaken hidden potential so I learn it

Awaken hidden potential LV1:

Increases stats of the targeted monster by 10%, pick one stat to get an extra 5% increase, MP cost 25 duration 15 cooldown 25

Rip off skill, you can''t name it something like that and have it be a combat skill, it is just a monster buff clone. I''d say I want a refund but the other options don''t look any better. Now for Nasby, I assume the orca and shark are from her fish heritage, but we aren''t planning on going out to sea any time soon. There are lots of tanky classes available and elephant to double down on weight based skills, but hippopotmus protector seems like the most useful tank in a party so I have her take that one. Now to decide Ratina''s path, barrier magic and sealing magic are pretty interesting and magic blood martial artist is disqualified for being a close combat class, but the rest are most variations on standard magic, elementalist probably focusing on attributes of magic. But archmage sounds like a very promising path so I have her select that one, now to just wait around on guard until they finish evolving.

Name	Auxentius	Race	Human, male
Age	0	Lv	28
Class	Monster sensei	LV 3	Rank 2
HP	146/146	MP	215/215 (increases by 2.1/sec)
Strength	73	Intelligence	193
Dexterity	72	Willpower	194
Stamina	72	Wisdom	210
Luck	100	Charisma	210
Skills	Mana perception	Analyze	Mana manipulation
Magic mana sense	Magic connection	Telepathy LV3	Tame LV2: 2/3 monsters tamed
Assassination	Fire magic: fireball	Water magic: waterball	Wind magic: windball
Earth magic: throw rock	Earth magic: soil manipulation	Monster buff LV5	Hide
Astral projection	Fire magic: fire manipulation	Water magic: water manipulation	Wind magic: wind manipulation
Skill teach LV1	Lecture LV7	Awaken hidden potential LV1
Titles	Child prodigy	Dark Horse	Heroic victory
Legendary Victory	Sinister puppetmaster
Tamed monsters	RatinaLV21	NasbyLV 31
Linked beings	Nasby LV 31	Ratina LV21

CH 10: The contemplations of the great Steven Steven POV: I have still yet to find the accursed Fenrir. To think the that beast would be brutal enough to sit by as I committed genocide on its people, I even left some of its injured brethren alive and bleeding, which a wolf would easily be able to smell, but he never revealed himself again after challenging my territory. Worst of all while I was watching over some injured wolves baiting him to come out, he managed to kill one of the bears. The bears are the closest creatures in my domain to be strong enough to still give me any experience, they are my most valuable resource as a local territory lord and losing them to outsiders is unacceptable. But this Fenrir is as brutal as he is crafty, it is clear by now that unlike his normal wolven brethren that he has no compassion for the plights of his fellow species, he hides in the shadows and mocks his foes as they try to trap him with their futile efforts. I can feel that he is plotting something, but part of me looks forward to our glorious battle. It has been a long time since I have felt an actual challenge, I feel as though the last time was when a drake stumbled into my woods. Play your games while you still can Fenrir, but nothing in my forest can escape the notice of THE GREAT STEVEN.

Name	Steven	Race	Draconic mystic elk
Age	341 years	LV	75
Class	Greater draconic mystic elk wizard	Rank	8
HP	3000/3000	MP	1034/1034
Strength	700	Intelligence	541
Dexterity	485	Willpower	362
Stamina	650	Wisdom	512
Luck	400	Charisma	333
Skills	Flight LV10 (Max)	Stable Flight LV5	Fire,water,wind,dirt,ice,shock,light, and dark wall LV10 (Max, unenhanced)
Flamethrower LV10 (Max)	Magic fire ball, water ball, wind ball, throw rock, icicle shard, electric shock, beam of light, beam of darkness LV10 (Max)	Greater added brfore the names of the spells in the previous box LV4	Fire,water,soil,wind,ice,electricity,light,and darkness manipulation LV10 (Max, unenhanced)
Mana perception LV10 (Max, unenhanced)	Mana manipulation LV10 (Max)	Greater mana manipulation LV10 (Max)	Ease of mana usage LV4
Intimidating roar LV10 (Max)	Roar of a ruler LV12
Titles	Drake slayer	Consumer of draconic blood	Dark horse
Lord of the forst Alpindon	Survivor	Impressive speed	Heroic speed
Pioneer of a racial variant
Race skills	Dragon breath LV10(Max)	Intense dragon breath LV8	Burst of speed (land) LV10 (max)
Desperate sprint LV10 (Max)	Desperate charge LV4	Sturdy antlers LV10 (Max)	Piercing antlers LV10 (Max)
Ancient antlers LV6	Drake blooded LV10 (Max)	Purified drake blood LV15 (Max)	Dragon blooded LV2
Mystic nature LV10 (Max, unenhanced)	Camoflauge LV10 (Max, unenhanced)	Tough hide LV10 (Max)	Drake scale LV8
Mage blood LV10 (Max, unenhanced)	Expandedmana pool LV10 (Max)Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.	Efficient mana pool LV7	Higher tier attribute magic level 6
Carnivorous Jaws LV10 (Max)	Draconic teeth LV14

I am waiting for my monsters to finish their evolutions, so in the mean time I do some experimenting. I use soil manipulation to catch 2 small crickets outside, I pu both in vacuum rooms that I also build with soil and wind manipulation. In one room I maintain a wind ball, in the other there is nothing but the cricket. The cricket without a wind ball in the room dies after 3 minutes, the other one lasts for half an hour until I cancel the wind magic and use wind manipulation to remove air from the container, and it dies 3 minutes later. It isn''t suprising considering that I can quench thirst with water magic, but confirmation is always nice. Mages really would have an easy time achieving space travel, you got the thrust, air, and water they need. Heck wind manipulation can prevent the air from leaving even without a sealed container. Just stick some archmages in a box and have them work in shifts and BOOM you''re ready to go to the moon. This planet has 2 moons by the way, but they both look white and boring, but it may be a good idea to check for rare materials when I can identify what qualifies as valuable and arrange several archmages crazy enough to go on an extraterrestial exploration. For all I know they already travel back and forth to the moons, it isn''t too unreasonable that an ambitious king or something already orchestrated one. I get bored again and start building a tunnel system with lots of deep pitfalls to buy time in an emergency, lots of branching paths and all paths are dead ends with a few close to the surface so that we can soil manipulation to escape if needed. Ratina and Nasby don''t finish evolving by the time I feel I need to sleep again, I seal the hole under the tree except for small air pockets and sleep. When I wake up, Ratina and Nasby have finished evolving. I look over the new skill options to see what we¡¯ve got.

Ratina possible skills

Higher tier attribute magic

Minor arch magic

Minor cooldown reduction

Nasby possible skills

Shield aura

Sturdy

First aid

Raising the tier of attribute magic is tempting, it definitely helped against the bear, but arch magic is specific to the class so it feels like it would be a waste not to go for it. Nasby obviously needs shield aura, taunting and tanking a single target is a good strategy and all, but if we have to face another wolf pack or an aoe fighter than me and Ratina would get screwed over pretty fast so we need shield aura. Nasby gives off a complaint about having all her skills used to benefit others, but I felt her smile when fighting the bear and knows that she enjoys feeling reliable. So Ratina learns minor arch magic and Nasby gets shield aura.

Minor arch magic LV1: all your cooldowns for attacks are twice as long, but your attacks are all twice as strong (passive effect).

Shield aura LV1: Allies within a 2 meter range get a defensive bonus equal to 10% of your stamina stat, MP cost 20 cooldown 15 duration 5.

Arch magic makes wall spamming more difficult, but is one heck of a useful ambushing spell. Shield aura requires us to stay close to Nasby, and doesn¡¯t yet give us enough of a buff to take more than a stray hit or two. I use skill teach to pull up the available skills to learn.

Ratinapossible skills	Burst of speed (land)	Foraging	Expanded mana pool
Magic overdrive	Higher tier attribute magic	Minor cooldown reduction	Ice magic: ice shard (conditions not met)
Lightning magic: electric shock (conditions not met)	Light magic: beam of light (conditions not met)	Dark magic: beam of darkness (conditions not met)	Fire magic: burst of flames (conditions not met)
Water magic: torrential downpour(conditions not met)	Wind magic: column of wind(conditions not met)	Earth magic: rupture(conditions not met)

Ice, lightning, dark, and light magic all require higher tier attribute magic to be at least level 1, the enhanced basic magics require minor arch magic level 1, a level 8 ball skill for the same attribute, and level 6 manipulation of the element. It is tempting to use teach on higher teir attribute magic, but that is I skill I want to see if she can learn naturally and save the teach skill for when it is really needed. I can still examine Nasby''s skills even though I used the skill to teach her taunt before, and that is quite a relief.

Nasby''s possible skills	Camoflauge	Burst of speed (water)	Intimidating roar
Minor increased regeneration rate	Rough hide	Bunker down	Counter-attack positioning
Deflective stance	Sturdy	First aid	Body guard
Shield of blood	Provoke aoe(conditions not met)

Provoke aoe requires a taunt skill of at least level 5, I can try and use lecture to get her to learn it while trying to get her to learn intimidating roar. I look away from all the menus to see their newly evolved forms, and Ratina has a human face now. Yea the opposable thumbs before gave away this would probably happen, she is about as large as an 8 year old and her fur is shorter than it used to be, and goes from her feet to her neck. The hands and feet are also human know, and she has brown eyes andsilver hair. Nasby is still mostly a hippo, but she stands upright now, her snout is shorter, and her fingers and toes have elongated with, you guessed it, opposable thumbs. Ratina looks totes adorbs right now though, while having a wizard hat grow out from evolution would be ridiculous, what hasn''t been here? The mage had would make it maximum kawaii. We should get some hunting done since they are level one again, but I end up just having Ratina cuddle up with me and take a nap again. The temptation was just to strong, andher fur feels so fluffy and fuzzy in a really nice way now, as opposed to her silky smooth hair that also feels nice. Yep its decided today is a relax day, no objections allowed. Nasby hesitates as she is about to complain, but is also feeling lazy at the moment and just has me get her a snack from the vaccum storage and also just sits back and relaxes. The next day I feel super refreshed, this baby needed a break apparently from the day to day fights to the death. Ratina is still a bit clingy but I manage to fight back the temptation, it is just a coincidence that I am having her carry me today instead of being attatched by soil manipulation, a complete coincidence I say! I disban the party after finding suitable targest for Ratina and Nasby to kill 1v1 for the dark horse and heroic victory titles, but they are unable to obtain them. Maybe it is a human exclusive title? it could also have something to do with class levels or racial tiers. I reform the party and we meander about killing this and that in the forest, the usual. Then I spot a snake. It is a requrement that a lamia waifu is added to the harem, not every tamed monster needs to be female and a part of the harem, but a lamia is an absolute must. Surely men of culture can understand the reasoning behind this requirement. Nasby and Ratina both seem to be glaring at me with serious disapproval, but at least they agree on something for once. Ratina is holding me more than a little tighter now, if I didn''t have a baby body I would allow it but I have to order her to be more gentle because even with higher stats I worry about the durability of a few days old baby. I easily tame the snake without even fighting, but it was male so I cancel the skill and we kill it immediately. Catch and release would just cause us to waste more time on it if we find it again, also I won''t reject free xp. I notice that my taming skill levelled up before using it on the snake, it must have levelled up while I slept considering...

Skill Tame LV3

Tamed monsters 2/4

I have a strongly suspect that the skill level of Tame will increase the number of total monsters, but only if my class rank is high enough. Well now I can also get a slime for diverse evolution paths to go with the lamia waifu canidate. We don''t find another snake or a slime after a few hours of searching. Ratina''s magic sense can search a very large area, but they really aren''t very common mobs when I think back on it, I''ve only seen slimes in Ratina and Nasby''s memories and snakes aren''t seen every day. Nasby levels up 2 times and Ratina levels up 5 times, Ratina doesn''t have that many more xp buffs than Nasby so it seems higher tier monsters level up slower. We head back to base to sleep until the next day, with me once again cuddling up with Ratina. The next day we head out to search again, this time we are heading out far in a single direction as opposed to patrolling the river or near our territory. Analyze ensures that we can never get lost and always find the way back to base based off memories of distances. We hunt around for a while and eventually discover another snake. This one is female, so she is allowed to join the team

Name	N/A	Race	Garden snake, female
Age	1	LV	2
Class	Small snake	Rank	0
HP	8/8	MP	7/7 (+0.07/sec)
Strength	4	Intelligence	2
Dexterity	6	Willpower	2
Stamina	3	Wisdom	2
Luck	14	Charisma	2
Skills	Bite LV1: bites deal 2% more damage
Titles	Owned by Auxentius
Race skills	Swallow LV1: Can swallow creatures and objects 25% larger than the user, when an opponent is being swallowed the user can spend 15MP/sec to make them lose 10% of all their stats for the duration of the skill

So it will be starting with basically nothing, that just leaves lots of room for improvement, I use telepathy but it seems like she doesn''t know how to properly speak yet. I can get a vague idea from magic connection, but it is like she can''t fully articulate her thoughts yet. I use skill teach to see what she can learn later.

Skills that can be taught	Slither	Lesser venomous fang
Coil position	Constrict

I am tempted to just teach the lesser venomous fang as I don''t know how to naturally learn it unless drinking poison works, but I decide it is probly bettey to save it just in case. I invite her to join the party, but she doesn''t seem to understand the message. I order her with tame, but it doesn''t work. This is worrysome because it implies that monsters don''t have to obey orders that they don''t understand, this could be a real problem with a slime or other certain types of monsters if I am not careful. After a few minutes of intensly focusing on magic connection I am able to get her to accept the party menu, it was a far more strenuous process than I first had anticipated. Even with the new concern over comprehension of orders, I still plan to tame a slime, the evolutionary variety is too tempting to pass up. Off to raise a snake waifu and get me some slime! CH 11: Ratinas bloody decision The slime eludes detection once again. In the remaining time of searching we are able to level up our new snake companion 3 times, and using my lecture skill she is able to learn constrict.

Skill Constrict LV1

Able to bind foes more easily to inhibit their movements and breathing, -5% all stats to bound opponents

Constrict and swallow have a good synergy, especially when combined with my legendary victory title. It does make me wonder what happens if you get 100% stat loss though, couldn''t a swarm of low ranked foes easaily cause a 100% debuff to an opponent? This requires some testing. After waking up the next day I check the menus of all our class descriptions

Monster sensei

You impart guidance and wisdom to your monsters, you have proven yourself worthy of the respect of your monsters, only time will tell the true consiquences of your teachings

Small snake

A small snake with nothing special about it, the weakest class of snake out there that will be lucky if it survives to the next day

Mouse archmage

A mouse mage who has truly honed their craft, most mice mages master one field of basic magic but you have not only learned all of them but even learned their higher forms. You are on the path to harness the true potential of magic, even if patience is required

Hippopotamus protector

Instead of protecting only yourself you have learned the value of defending others, you will be a wall that few can break through as long as you are supported by your allies

These descriptions do like their grandiose wording, if only the menu would always be so forthcoming with the information we need. I have been rushing the evolutions lately, even though only class skills can be levelled ratina only unlocked her class by first learning magic which was not in her class skills. I tell Ratina to gather some lumber, rocks, berries, acorns, tree bark, and fibers while I use lecture and the magic connection to try and teach Nasby magic. I tell Ratina how to seperate the fibers from plants. "I don''t want to learn magic, its too complicated and hurts my head to think about" (Nasby) "It hardly took a few minutes for me to figure out magic when I first got here, surely it isn''t that hard" (Auxentius) 7 hours later "Nothing, 7 hours of pointers and shared senses, how can you not even grasp mana perception when you can literally feel what it feels like from me via the link?!" (Auxentius) "I did manage to learn the analyze skill though" (Nasby) "And even that you only learned 6 hours in! It might be impossible for certain races to learn magic, but I doubt that that is the case... I suppose you get out of more magic lessons for now" (Auxentius) Ratina had arrived back 4 hours in and I had her use magic while focusing on the link with our snake. The snake didn''t learn anything, but Ratina managed to level up her archmagic skill and her wind wall skill once each. I go to sleep again while cuddled up with Ratina and having the snake coiled up on my head. I really shoudcome up with aname for her. The next day I have Ratina hand me and Nasby some of the acorns and berries, I use soil manipulation to drag up some of the feces that were and the bottom of the outhouse a few meters away from the base. I use lecture on Ratina and Nasby while planting some plants with my baby hands while using soil manipulation to move, open holes, and bury them. After a short while Ratina learns the farming skill, followed by Nasby, and I learn it last scince I dont have the lecture buff. Ratina and Nasby learn a skill without levels, but mine is listed under race skills. Apparently humans do have race skills, but why is farming a race skill?Anyone can learn it and it is normally a regular skill, so why is it all of a sudden a race skill when humans do it.

Skill Farming

Plants you raise are more likely to grow

Race skill Farming LV1

When you plant something with the intent to grow it, it will have +1 stamina, luck, and willpower

Plants have stats too, I figured they would based on the trap flower that eats things but its nice to confirm, now that I think about it I can probably tame them to. I tame one of the acorns I planted and check its menu

Name	N/A	Race	Tree
Age	0	LV	N/A
Class	acorn	Rank	0.05
HP	4/4	MP	0/0
Strength	0	Intelligence	0
Dexterity	0	Willpower	1
Stamina	1	Wisdom	0
Luck	23	Charisma	0
Skills
Titles	Planted by Auxentius: +1 stamina, luck, and willpower	Owned by Auxentius
Race skills

The rank is a decimal, I didn''t even think decimal ranks were possible. I tried to get more info from ranks before and nothing happened, but when I focus on the acorn rank, more detailed information appears. I quickly try to do the same with myself and my other monsters, but it doesn''t work for them.

Rank 0.05

This class represents a staged growth, the rank will rise as the life form develops until it grows into its mature form, a decimal rank is lower than rank 0 and will often become rank 0 after reaching maturity. Decimal ranked life forms will not level up and will instead develope more quickly when recieving experience

That was actually very informative, it doesn''t really help much to know, but it explains the level being N/A and the lack of any skills. I don''t know why a decimal is less than zero instead of just being negative, but maybe negative ranks already represent something else. Or maybe there isn''t a reason at all and this system is either poorly designed or designed to infuriateanyone who takes it seriously. I untame the acorn and tame some berries and fully grown trees in the surroundings before untaming them as well, but nothing noteworthy is discovered. Next I begin some crafting lessons using the wood, rocks, and fibers. I need to use throw rock to control an improvised rock nife to cut the lumber into poles, I have Ratina and Nasby take turns using the rare quality beast bladein case using an actual knife is needed to get a skill. None of us get any skills for processing the wood, I take the blade and usie soil manipulation to hold up a log as I very slowly whittle it into a pole, but still don''t get a skill.If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Ihead off to sleep again as between farming and whittling we have spent 8 hours up, and I still can''t stay up longer than that. Ratina and Nasby hunt for a bit, but still stay close to base as they are relatively low level after their evolutions. By the next day Ratina and Nasby levelled uptwicewhile our snake levelled up 4 times.I have us makerope out of the plant fibers, and then tie a rock to attach to the poles to make some basic spears. We each get the tool crafting and weapon crafting skills, and more spears than I know what to do with.

Skill Tool crafting

Tools made by you are slightly more durable

Skill Weapon crafting

Weapons you make are slightly more durable and deal slightly more damage

Low quality spear

A spear made from poor materials with poor worksmanship, +3 attack when wielded

Nasby still can''t hold a spear well, using the knife to simply whittle was quite difficult for her, and Ratina doesn''t really need a melee weapon, but it won''t hurt for her to have one. I also try to figure out how to make a snare out of rope, I happened to know how to make rope from natural materials due to a certain organization of my previous life, but I only know basic knots for them, not full blown traps like snares. I figure it out after another sleep cycle, but don''t get any skills like trapmaking that I was hoping for. I had Ratina trying to make a magic staff while I was working on the snare, but nothing worked on her end. Nasby just sat back and took a break because all of this had been mentally exhausting our muscle brained companion for quite a while. I would try to learn a blacksmithing skill if we had iron, or bow-making if we had string, but I don''t know how to recognize iron even if I was sitting on it in our cave and I haven''t found any giant spiders for string. "Ratina I just had a new idea for staff making!" (Auxentius) "What is it?" (Ratina) "Use your blood" (Auxentius) "....." (Ratina) "Don''t look at me like that, I don''t want you to useall of it, just a small amount" (Auxentius) "And why on earth would it help in the first place" (Ratina) "Your a mouse archmage, you might have magic blood or something that will channel magic better, it will only hurt a little to try" (Auxentius) And try we do, we make10 staffs with differing amounts of Ratina''s blood, one of them I hollowed out to have the blood stored and dried inside, but none of them turn into a special weapon or a magic staff. I then use soil mainipulation to make a huge hole in our base for trying to get a construction based skill. Using the rope and lumber, I have Nasby and Ratina do most of the work while I use soil manipulation to assist building a simple log cabin, which we then dissassemble and reassemble 3 times before Ratina and Nasby get the skill. It takes 2 sleep cycles and 5 more attempts for me to get it.

Skill Building

Buildings you make are less likely to collapse from lack of maintenance

That should enough skill learning for a while, most of this is fairly useless but hopefully it adds interesting evolutionary options. I decide to name our snake Pythana and will focus lecture on her the next time we hunt as she is close to evolving, but she has very few skills and the ones she have are low levelled, I probably won''t evolve her even after she reaches level 10 because her lack of skills will likely prevent any good options from showing up. When I am about to take the group slime hunting again I realize something. "I am an idiot" (Auxentius) "HA you only found that out now stupid master, of course you are an idiot, I already know why.... but why don''t you explain it so that Pythana can understand" (Nasby) "The slimes we are looking for are scavenger slimes, scavengers get food from corpses, we have a storage FULL of corpses and the only predator we have to worry about attracting is Steven, who we can avoid having him find us by leaving the corpse a small distance from our base while monitering with magic sense, we pick off scavengers other than slimes with magic while being ready to ambush anything strong we attract other than Steven" (Auxentius) "How are you an idiot for being able to plan all that out?" (Ratina) "I''m an idiot for not considering it sooner, isn''t it super obvious?" (Auxentius) "I lost track of the plan when you mentioned magic" (Nasby) ".... Just get some corpses out of storage to use as bait and wait in the cave until I give further orders" (Auxentius) We set up the bait and wait. And wait. And snipe a few big bugs with magic. And wait. And thenTIDAL WAVE of ants begin coming out from one side of our senses, most are barely noticable in strength but there are a few stronger ones in the swarm that are a bit stronger than the giant bugs we killed earlier. I had some reservations about leaving a pile of 10 corpses in the open spreading their scent everywhere, good thing they were unfounded and resulted in so much free xp. We slaughter the swarm easily between Ratina''s magic, and well mostly with just Ratinas magic they burnedreallywell. This did however cause a big enough smoke cloud that I temporarily abort mission, and a good thing I did cause Steven shows up again a few moments later with bloodshot eyes. He didn''t look nearly this mad last time I saw him, I guess having your territory contested twice in a short time span injured his pride or something stupid like that. This does mean that I will need to move my base of operations though, so I bury most of the supplies we don''t need like the spears and begin tunneling away from the surface where Steven is searching about. The previous extermination gave me a single level, Ratina 4 levels, Nasby 2 levels, and Pythana 7 levels, Fire ball levelled up twice, fire manipulation once, arch magic once, taunt once,telepathy once, awaken hidden potential once, and trample once. We manage to get away, but I notice that Steven has been smelling the ground near where we collapsed our base. And then he lifts out a crater using what I presume is a higher level soil manipulation based off the sheer scale of earth he lifts, and begins to sort through the things I buried. We were luckily out of range, but that was way too close for comfort, he also found all the tools and corpses we had buried, and if he can put 2 and 2 together he probably now realises there is a human in his territory. I know nothing about the geopolitics of this world, but I assume humans and monsters don''t get along well, especially if one seems to be invading the other''s territory. We are burying the tunnel behind us as we go, so hopefully he doesn''t know where we are headed, but I think it is about time I escaped the territory of the flying flaming deer of death known as Steven. So I take a nap while ratina sets off far away from our old base, while remaining under ground in case of Steven. By the time I wake up Ratina had apparently already discovered the ocean, we continued to circle around like she did while I was unconcious, and using analyze to track our path we reach a bad conclusion after a week. We are on an island. There is no way to know how far away the nearest landmass is, and we already (probavly) have the animosity of the local ruler. Why can''t anything go according to plans without complications arising? "Didn''t your plan to subjugate me go flawlessly? (Ratina and Nasby at the same time) "Fair point but just let me sulk a little, we have barely done anything the past week except feed pythana the occasional kill for food and skill levelling, and the tunneling has gotten sooooo monotonous these past days" (Auxentius) Ratina levelled up soil manipulation to the maximum level, mana perception to level 6, increased mana recovery rate to 5, and magic sense to level 8, and hide to LV6 while tunneling. Pythana learnedslither coil position, and an unlevelable hide skill, and levelled up slither to 5, coil position to 2, bite to 3, constrict to 2 and swallow to 3. Pythana levelled up once, but no one else levelled up in the past week.

Name	Pythana	Race	Garden snake, female
Age	1	LV	14
Class	Small snake	Rank	0
HP	48/48	MP	27/27 (+0.22/sec)
Strength	33	Intelligence	26
Dexterity	51	Willpower	20
Stamina	23	Wisdom	22
Luck	30	Charisma	18
Skills	Bite LV3: bites deal 6% more damage	Constrict LV2: Able to bind foes more easily to inhibit their movements and breathing, -7% all stats to bound opponents	Hide
Slither LV5: spend MP to move more quickly proportional to MP spent	Coil position LV2: whilecoiled, reaction speed and movement speed increase
Titles	Owned by Auxentius
Race skills	Swallow LV3: Can swallow creatures and objects 75% larger than the user, when an opponent is being swallowed the user can spend 15MP/sec to make them lose 20% of all their stats for the duration of the skill
Evolutions available	Corn snake	Gekko	Greater worm
Moray eel	Brown sneaky snake

I am holding off on evolving Pythana until I find some weak enough poison for Pythana to safely injest to hopefully get some poisonous evolutions, the only somewhat interesting current option is the sneaky snake which I assume was gotten due to the hide skill. We set up our new base of operations and take a day off to just rest after so much tunneling, Pythana seems to still be energetic but the rest of us are more then happy to lie down and rest while she circles around the room. CH 12: A flag has been raised! Now that we have a new base of operations set up, I examine Ratina''s soil manipulation in the menu.

Soil manipulation LV10 (Max)

Max level skills will no longer level up, but they unlock the possibility of higher level skills.

I can''t learn the higher level options by regular examination, so I use skill teach to pull up the list.

Ratina possible skills	Burst of speed (land)	Foraging	Expanded mana pool
Magic overdrive	Higher tier attribute magic	Minor cooldown reduction	Ice magic: ice shard (conditions not met)
Lightning magic: electric shock (conditions not met)	Light magic: beam of light (conditions not met)	Dark magic: beam of darkness (conditions not met)	Fire magic: burst of flames (conditions not met)
Water magic: torrential downpour (conditions not met)	Wind magic: column of wind (conditions not met)	Earth magic: rupture (conditions not met)	Earth magic: stone manipulation
Soil magic: enhanced fertilizer	Earth magic: mineral sense

Apparently the skill teach menu is still an incomplete list if certain conditions aren''t met, I assume that stone manipulation allows rocks to be manipulated instead of just dirt, while enhanced ferilizer may or may not be related to the farming skill. mineral sense might have been unlocked by magic sense and max soil manipulation, but could just as easily be a normal option for all I know. I have no plans to spend my skill point on any of those as higher tier attribute magic is still my most likely choice if she can''t learn it naturally, but Ratina has more magic she can try to learn during practice now. As for escaping our island problem, there are four possible solutions to consider. 1. Build a boat and travel along the water in hopes we find another land mass. 2. Tunnel beneath the ocean to avoid fighting sea monsters, will be slower but safer considering the strength of sea monsters is unknown 3. Build a box that we use fire magic to throw around through the air, faster than the other options but requires Ratina to level up more to maintain and may still be a target for sea monsters and other flyers, also difficult to resupply should we run out of food. 4. Tame a monster or evolve one of my current ones to a flyer or swimmer and ride atop them until we find the next land mass. 5. Accomplish space flight like I had considered earlier,after achieving orbitre-enter the atmosphere at the largest land mass you see and hope you land near a human settlement without casualties, so many problems with this one I won''t list them all, but it still an option if all else fails. Assuming we can hunt creatures on the ocean floor from beneath them and avoid water pressure problems with water manipulation, option 2 seems like the best choice as the other options are too risky without more information, and I don''t have the time to achieve option 5 if Steven is actively hunting me. I wonder what he is up to by the way. Steven POV: Fenrir utilized fire in my own territory again, it was near the base of what appears to be a human scout. However I will not let Fenrir fool me so easily, even if a human was in my forest, it would be to difficult for an army of humans to reach here without bringing the attention of the ancient ones, so it is probably an explorer searching for rare monster breeds to catalog. It would still be strange for such a human to come all this way however, so this is probably a misdirection by Fenrir, I don''t know how he changed his wolf scent to be that of a human, but it is probably a skill of his because a smell a weird mix of human and mouse in some areas, along with a hippo and snake smell. A mix between mouse and human doesn''t exist, and a hippo doesn''t live in a cave, Fenrir was truly careless to believe I would fall for such a ploy. And stone tools, please Fenrir don''t insult my competence, humans stopped using stone tools long ago. I will find you Fenrir, and I will not be distracted by such obvious tricks. Auxentius POV: I have ratina begin work on the temporarily named super tunnel while I take Nasby and Pythana to hunt, Nasby and I are really just going to be supervizing Pythana so we can intervene if she needs help while she levels some skills and gets combat experience. I use my lecture skill while Pythana constricts, bites, ambushes, and swallows low level prey that I find with magic sense, and eventually spot a spider. If this spider is venomous I may finally have a way of getting Pythana venom, and getting all of us some poison resistance other than Ratina who already has it. I easily crush the spiders legs with magic, and have it bite me to successfully get poisoned

You have been poisoned by weak venom!

-3 HP/minute for 3 minutes

I thought poison damage would deal a percentage, but that probably isn''t the case considering how little damage it deals to me. I wait for Phythana to reach full health for a bit as she still wasn''t back to full health yet, and when she gets bit

You have been poisoned by weak venom!

-9 HP/minute for 3 minutes

It seems that poison damage scales with your stats the same way other damges do, it won''t help immediately in a fight but the damage will be substantial if the fight drags on for a while. Adding apotential arachne to the team is tempting, but I am still holding on hope for a slime atm and don''t have a free slot, so I bring the spider back to base without taming it just to use as a poison dispenser. "Isn''t it a bit cruel to treat the spider that way, this isn''t like killing for food or experience, it is drawing out its pain" (Nasby) "I didn''t peg you for the type to have a conscious, if it makes you feel better I plan to let it go after we are done using it for training, it gets to level up its skills and not die by dealing with having broken legs for a few days" (Auxentius) "Could you tell it that with telepathy then? The thing looks like it is scared enough to die any minute" (Nasby) I inform the spider of my plans, and get a thank you in response, although I can tell that the spider isn''t much more cognizant then Pythana because it had difficulties conveying that simple thought. Pythana levelled up only once, and levelled up bite, constrict, and swallow once each. She also learned the assassination skill. I still can''t teach Pythana magic yet, but the link seems to have sped up her mental developement as she has already started speaking basic things. "Me eat spider allowed?" (Pythana) "No, there are other plans for the spider" (Auxentius) "Spider pain touch bad" (Phythana) "It hurts, but it is good for you, please bear with it" (Auxentius) "Strength good! But pain bad. Now head hurt, difficult" (Pythana) I continue to have the spider bite us after recovering to full health for the rest of the day, until all of us get poison resistance.

Poison resistance LV1

Takes less damage from poison based attacks

Pythana also finally learned lesser venomous fang.

Lesser venomous fang LV1

Your bites will poison your opponent for 1 minute, dealing damage per minute equal to your strength/their stamina x10

Possible evolutions	Corn snake	Gekko	Greater worm
Moray eel	Brown sneaky snake	Lesser viper	Lesser cobra
Snake assassin

Well snake assassin seems like a clear winner to me, sneaky snake seems to be just a lesser version and it is better to have a class better at all around ambushing then just better at poison.This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience. I let Pythana begin to evolve into a Snake assassin, free the spider, and go to check up on Ratina. Ratina has reached the rock layer some time ago, and suceedes in learning stone manipulationafter two days of using the lecture skill stopping only to sleep. This gets me another level of lecture in the process. Stone manipulation does the same thing as soil manipulation, it just allows you to control different types of rocks and has a greater ability to compress or loosen the earth. Pythana has finished evolving by this time into a snake assassin.

Snake assassin

A snake far more adept at ambushing their prey than their fellow kin, they are experts at killing their prey before they have time to properly react, main stat strength sub stat dexterity

Skills available

Ambush

Camoflauge

Rough scales

I choose rough scales as ambush can probably be easily learned naturally and camoflauge isn''t all that needed when she already has the hide skill, which along with assassinationnow has a level associated with it.

Hide LV1

Harder to be found by opponents based on the difference between your dexterities

Assassination LV1

+8% strength on first attack

Rough scales LV1

Physical contact with your scales deals damage to your foes while this skill is active

That was close..... if rough scales couldn''t be deactivated then I couldn''t be wrapped up by my future lamia waifu, that was quite careless of me now that I think about it more. Pythana has grown substantially larger, she is now about half a meter long and twice as thick as she was before. Even she is bigger than me in my baby body now, I am the smallest one among us once more, stupid baby body why must you grow so slowly. I check up on the skills I can teach Pythana.

Class skills that can be taught	Ambush	Camoflauge	Prepare terrain
Evade detection (conditions not met)	Minor evasion boost

The condition to learn evade detection is to have hide be at least level 5, but none of these skills look worth while enough to use my skill on. I call Ratina back from mining so that we can get pythana the quick grower title and I send Ratina back to tunneling once we get her up to level 10 and she gets the quick grower skill. Ratina levels up 3 times and Nasby levels up twice, Nasby levels up shield aura and trample, Pythana levels all her new skills twice and constrict once, I level up hidden potential and monster buff once each, and Ratina levels up water ball, dirt wall, and wind wall once each. Pyhtana also managed to learn ambush.

Ambush LV1:

When you catch your enemies by suprise you will gain 3% movement speed for 1 minute

The next day I finally found a slime. It wasn''t hard to tame it, much like with pythana it was severely out levelled and no match for our group

Name	N/A	Race	Slime, genderless
Age	12	LV	8
Class	Scavenger slime	Rank	1
HP	40/40	MP	16/16 (+0.11/sec)
Strength	21	Intelligence	11
Dexterity	14	Willpower	11
Stamina	29	Wisdom	11
Luck	65	Charisma	11
Skills	Hide	EscapeLV8: +80% speed for 5 seconds when fleeing a foe, cool down 3 hours (debuff fleeing will last for the duration of the skill)	Detect corpse LV6: can spend MP to detect corpses of animals within a certain range, greater MP=greater range
Efficientenergy usage LV8: Uses less food to survive
Titles	Owned by Auxentius
Race skills	Slime body LV7: reduces damage of physical attacks by 56%, increases damage from magical attacks by 72%	Dissolve LV5: can melt down object within your body, heals HP faster when eating

The fleeing debuff prevents you from attacking or approaching your opponents, having escape, hide, and slime body is probably what makes the slime a good scavenger, although without escape the slime is fairly slow so most of them probably die before they level it up much making them so rare.

Scavenger slime

A slime that feeds off of either weak monsters that fall into it, or corpses. An weak creature that is slow and can barely detect its surroundings, only the lucky ones will survive for very long. Main stat stamina, sub stat strength

I can tell after forming a magic connection with the slime that it has a strange field of perception for about a meter in every direction, it is similar to magic sense but subtly different and doesn''t register as a skill. Without that the only thing the slime could percieve would be corpses, so I suppose it can only start escaping when a predator is a meter away, and will have no way to know if it is running off a cliff or into another predators. Slimes have it tough out here..... no wonder none of them found our base despite the pile of corpses we always have nearby. I name her Slimerene and check what skills she can be taught.

Class skills that can be taught	Enhanced senses	Burst of speed (land)
Sticky grasp	Mimicry

I am very tempted to spend the skill point on mimicry as it could be op, but I will try to get her to learn it naturally first. "Is it okay if I eat half the corpses in storgae master?" (Slimerene) "Go ahead" (Auxentius) She is suprisingly articulate considering the lack of a brain, at least I don''t have to worry about her not understanding orders and trying to eat anyone. I spend amonth in lecture mode, finally having it reach LV10, while Ratina tunnels to teach Pythana and Slimerene new skills. For Pythana she reaches hide LV5, lesser venomous fang LV6, and she learns all of her class skills.

Lesser venomous fang LV6

Your bites will poison your opponent for 3.5 minutes, dealing damage per minute equal to your strength/their stamina x16.25

Camoflauge LV1

Can slightly change color of scales to match surroundings

Prepare terrain LV1

Increases the effects of ambush and assassination by 10% if you prepare the place you attack them at beforehand in a relevant manner

Evade detection LV1

Harder to be noticed by detection skills, greater effect with higher dexterity compared to foes intelligence

Minor evasion boost LV1

15 MP cost, cooldown 15, duration 5, increase reflexive dodges speed by 5%

Nasby manages to learn camoflauge as well, along with

Intimidating roar LV1

A roar to strike fear in weaker foes and provoke stronger ones, effects vary depending on opponent (There is no more specific information when Auxentius tries to find it)

First aid LV6

Can heal 2HP of any target per MP spent, cooldown 1 minute

Bunker down LV1

Reduces movement speed by 95% and increases defense by 25%, MP cost 30 duration 1 minute cooldown 1 hour

Counter-attack positioning LV1

When counter-attacking from a prepared stance, damage +3%

Slimera managed to learn magic perseption,manipulation, and sense along with the fire,water,earth,and wind ball and manipulation skills. She also learns

Mimicry LV7

Learns new skills 14% faster when obseving another using them as a reference

Burst of speed (land) LV4

Spend 15 MP for a 8% increase in speed for 20 seconds, cooldown 10 only works on land

Sticky grasp LV1

Can attatch yourself more firmly to objects based on your strength stat

Mimicry was massively useful for her learning magic, and I spent a lot of the lecture time focusing on levelling that up and teaching her magic. I also learned some new skills by levelling my resistances and teaching Nasby first aid.

Fire resistance LV4

All resistance skills are like poison resistance

Water resistance LV3

Wind resistance LV2

Earth resistance LV2

Poison resistance LV5 (While leving Pythana''s venomous fang)

Title masochistic tendencies

Take 10% less HP damage from self inflicted wounds while raiting full sense of pain

None of my monsters wanted to level up their resistances by having me blast them with magic every time they reached full health, so I just did it alone and got that title in the process. It doesn''t seem like there is a pain resistance skill, I would prefer it if the title also gave one but it isn''t that kind of title. Ratina levelled magic manipulation once, stone manipulation to 3, and increased mana recovery rate to 8. Stone manipulation very clearly takes much longer to level than soil manipulation, likely all the skills requiring a max level predecessor do as well. "Master I found something while tunneling, come down with the others" (Ratina) "Alright, be there in a minute" (Auxentius) The tunnel has already gone deeped than the ocean floor, and it has gotten to be longer than the island''s diameter by a substantial amount, we need to be using air magic while down here if we don''t want to suffocate and Ratina even made some seperate rooms to fill with air so that she can sleep safely. When I arrive where Ratina is, she found an opening while tunnelling that leads to a chamber. There are mushrooms growing out of the ground and even some monsters roaming around. I really hope we just found ourselves a dungeon...... Damnit I just had to raise a flag and jynx it didn''t I? CH 13: History of the enlightened races "Can I eat the mushrooms master?" (Simerene) "Let me check and see if they are poisonous first" (Auxentius) "Oh no you don''t, if they turn out to be poisonous you will complain about it not being potent enough to level up your resistance, and will consume more until I need to use all of my MP to keep you barely alive while we are still in unexplored territory" (Nasby) "Awwwww, so you do care" (Auxentius) "Now I wanna do that to level up my skills, and master you better use the lecture skill a lot on me since you helped everyone else skill up while I had to tunnel for a month!" (Ratina) "Why do the smartest members of our group have the most careless personalities?" (Nasby) "Cause we are smart enough to get ourselves out of the trouble we cause" (Ratina and Auxentius simultaneously) "No using magic connection to speak at the same time! Its freaking creepy" (Nasby) Nasby ends up taste testing the mushroom, it unfortunately wasn''t poisonous so Slimerene ate, well she ate ALL of them. Our slimy friend is one hell of a glutton The cave is rather ordinary at first glance, but with magic sense and mana perception it is clear that the mushrooms feed off mana in the walls to grow, and wind mana creates air spontaneously throughout the cave. Speaking of spontaneous creation, we see a bird literally form out of mana in front of us. We kill it for that bit of xp, and it has copper loot like most mobs. Me and Ratina halt any further exploration to attempt the creation of life through magic the same way as we just saw for 5 days until having the same interferance when I attempted to use higher tier magic based off Ratina''s experience. Stupid laws of the universe interupting my fun with their stupid interferance, all I want is to play god just a little bit, is that too much to ask? Pythana and Nasby hunted a bit while Simerene just ate every mushroom in sight over the past 5 days, and we continued our expedition. The monsters down here aren''t particularly aggressive, which is probably why they are so low level. They are few and far between and seem to mostly live off the mushrooms in order to survive. We go in a mostly linear direction in the same direction we tunneled here to start, ignoring the branching paths and keeping magic sense to see if the land starts rising at any point to indicate a new landmass. There are a few false alarms due to underwater hills, and me and Ratina take a few shots at crabs on the ocean floor, but nothing particularly interesting happens over the next week. Until we find a large open area in the cave, that has a fortress with horned creatures living inside it. Looks like we found a demon fort, and one that has a good number of people at the same strength of our party and a few stronger ones. Assuming any of them have detection skills, they probably also noticed us, but the rest of the group is weaker than me atm and we haven''t indicated that we will approach yet so they probably aren''t too worried about us. I have no idea what human-demon relations are like in this world, but they are usually worse than demon-monster relations so I will have Ratina pretend to be our leader. They may be suspicious of the superpwered human baby in the group, but I can have Ratina make up a story of it being a high level enchantment to keep track of her food depending on how negotiations go. Ratina walks up to the front gate and begins communications via telepathy to one of the guards. "We would like some information, would it be alright if we entered your city and traded some goods for some?" (Ratina) "You can speak beast?" (Demon guard) "My name is Ratina not beast, and yes I can" (Ratina) "An elegant speaker and in charge of some monsters, you are likely a ruler class than considering your humanized features, why do you have a human with you anyway?" (Demon guard) "I believe that isn''t something you need to concern yourself with, you still haven''t given your name nor informed us of if we''ll be allowed entry" (Ratina) "My superior will arrive shortly and handel any decisions on your request, my name is Bulkforv, but that isn''t particularly important" (Bulkforv) The demon guards have been talking amongst themselves as we wait for the approaching superior, who I sense all along the way with magic sense as being one of the few stronger beings, he is weaker than the bear we fought but so is everything else in that fort and enough strong presences are prepared at the other side that running will be the go to plan if a fight breaks out. The demons eye me with slight malice, but not overwhelming hatred or unnaceptance. "My name is Lebtrine and I am in charge here" (Lebtrine) I am holding myself back from laughing at his name because it sounds a lot like latrine, all the dramatic build up is gone as I can only think of the person in charge as a toilet now. Why do the strong people here have the dumbest names? Ratina holds back a snicker as she replies "We would like to trade for information in your settlement, we have food we can trade or we can hunt some monsters in exchange depending on the type of monster of course" "And what type of information would you like to know for example?" (Lebtrine) "What this things race is like *she gestures towards me*, along with basic knowledge of the surface world, I know it exists but not much else about it" (Ratina)Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit. Pretending to be a local who is curious about a strange human should avoid angering them regardless of their opinion on humans, the only risk is if their society tries to cover up the existance of the surface world in a cult like manner. "If that is all you want to know, I''d rather tell you and send you on your way that then let a monster roam in our walls, no offense" (Lebtrine) "That will suffice" (Ratina) "Long ago, humans along with many enlightened races had spread out to live all across the globe, they made settlements and weapons that allowed them to outcompete other animals and while the occasional local or regional lord would destroy a settlement for xp or out of boredom, they thrived nonetheless" (Lebtrine) And here goes the expositional dialog where humanity fucks everything up for everyone else and ends up hated for it. "The enlightened races don''t evolve like monsters, but instead class up and keep their level as they upgrade. The enlightened races often fought one another over territory, us demons included although we were much less advanced than the other enlightened. One day, ,the humans, elves, and dwarves formed the United Enlightened Empire and expanded to cover a massive amount of land. The local lords of regions were pushed back by this, but the regional lords were still unconcerned and allowed the growth and developement of this Empire" (Lebtrine) "What is a local lord and regional lord?" (Ratina) "Local lords rule over a single territory of varying size based on their strength, regional lords are ancient beings who have long surpassed the strength of anything other than other similarly ancient ones. Now as I was saying the empire advanced in strength and techniques until eventually, they discovered a certain higher class of formation magic. Formation magic takes a long time to prepare and connot be moved after it is made, it takes a lot of MP to run but is quite powerful. This higher tier was capable of being powered by several extremely powerful mages, and one day one of these formations allowed a regional lord to be killed. This finally made the regional lords take the empire seriously, but their wrath rained down upon all enlightened races as they were now considered too threatening. The empire suffered serious losses, losing 70% of their territory before their strongest regrouped and fought a decisive battle in a city with a new formation against the regional lords. There were 23 regional lords against 100 enlightened capable of fighting local lords, and thousands of weaker enlightened, 5 regional lords died and 80% of human forces were lost along with the city, but the regional lords considered 5 casualties to be too much cost, and refocused on keeping the enlightened contained than from risking their own lives to fight them head on. Demons were not capable of fighting local lords, much less regional ones, and thus retreated underground to live in mana caves, and that is all the history of the surface that I know." (Lebtrine) "Thank you for the information, and sorry if our presense scared your people" (Ratina) "HA a monster that apologizes, isn''t that something...... and don''t mention it, it is good for an old man to tell some stories from time to time" (Lebtrine) So humans didn''t fuck things up for everyone on this world, we had help. Steven is probably a local lord based off this story, If this entire fort of demons fought him I think theyed have a chance of killing him if they got lucky which doesn''t match with the supposed strength of a regional lord. We also asked if they knew any ways to the surface from here, but they apparently didn''t and only gave me some glares due to blaming humans for the decline of their ancestors. None of them seemed to notice or else they didn''t care that a baby was rank 2, but we didn''t ask in case they just didn''t notice. We go around the fort and continue down the tunnel once more. It takes about 6 months until we discover the first creature strong enough to be interesting. On the ocean floor above us there is a huge manatee, it is about twice the size of a bus and has 3/4 of my mana concentration, which if that isn''t its main or sub attribute than it should be higher level than me considering my rincarnate buffed mental stats and that this value puts it at just a bit waker than that bear we fought some time back. In these 6 months, I leveled up once but still don''t have the option to class upgrade despite being LV 30 now, Ratina levelled up 3 times and had me use lecture on her a lot so she actually managed to level up all her ball skills and manipulations (other than stone) to 10, mana perception to 8, mana manipulation to 10, minor arch magic to 5, and magic sense to 10. She got her wall skills to 7 and also got

Water magic: Torrential downpour LV2

Aoe water magic, base MP cost 30 cooldown 57 (114 after archmagic), blast radius 1 meter

Earth magic: Rupture LV4

The earth version but with cooldown of 51 (102) and radius 2 meters

Fire magic: Burst of flames LV 2

Fire version, same stats as water

Wind magic: Column of wind LV 3

Wind version, 54 (108) 1.5 meter blast radius

Higher tier attribute magic LV1

Can learn higher tier elemental magic at a 90% skill growth penalty rate for higher tier elements that are not of your current attribute (current attribute:none)

Burst of speed (land) LV1

Her new teachable skill menu is

Ratina possible skills	Foraging	Expanded mana pool	Magic overdrive
Minor cooldown reduction	Ice magic: ice shard	Lightning magic: electric shock	Light magic: beam of light
Dark magic: beam of darkness	Earth magic: enhanced fertilizer	Eath magic: Throw boulder	Water magic: tide manipulation
Water magic: moisture manipulation	Water magic:Greater water ball	Fire magic: Greater fire ball	Fire magic: guider of flame
Wind magic: Minor weater manpulation	Wind magic: Gale manipulation	Wind magic: Greater wind ball

I really want her to learn magic overdrive already, but oh well. Nasby also levelled up 3 times, but only levelled up her taunt skill once and intimidating roar twice. Pythana levelled up 6 times and levelled up slither and ambush once each. Slimerene levelled up 7 times and levelled up sticky grasp twice. I have Pythana "prepare the field" by just having her tell Ratina where to make the pit that we will dop this sea cow in. We make a big hole with spikes there basically just as a cosmetic since they wont deal real damage, Slimerene will stick back with me and Ratina as she probly still can''t tank anything this strong yet. Nasby isn''t quite as high health as she was against the bear, but she has new skills to compensate, my own buff skills are strong enough to put her at higher health than she had then, and Ratina is capable of much stronger support now. Pythana is fast, but she will only be attacking when she sees and opening and running away after a hit or two so she doesn''t get hit and make Nasby take damage via shield aura. Theoretically this should be easy, but last opponent near this strength exploded so it is best not to get careless. Me and Slimerene coordinate using magic connection to use water manipulation to push the water pressure such that an air pocket forms around the manatee, and Ratina uses stone manipulation to drop it into our hole and then close it immediately with stone manipulation. Now that we have successfuly beached it..... BOOOM Magic sense warned me in advance that it was using water manipulation, Ratina slowed it for a bit, but the water pressure gave it an advantage in flooding the cave. Pythana sprinted towards me and we used stone manipulation to make a barrier around us so the water doesn''t seperate us. We tried to trap it out of its territory, but it fliiped the tables on us, and now its pissed. Current character sheets after CH 13

Name	Auxentius	Race	Human, male
Age	0	Lv	30
Class	Monster sensei	LV 3	Rank 2
HP	156/156	MP	223/223 (increases by 2.18/sec)
Strength	78	Intelligence	198
Dexterity	80	Willpower	199
Stamina	77	Wisdom	218
Luck	105	Charisma	227
Skills	Mana perception	Analyze	Mana manipulation
Magic mana sense	Magic connection	Telepathy LV4	Tame LV3: 4/4 monsters tamed
Assassination	Fire magic: fireball	Water magic: waterball	Wind magic: windball
Earth magic: throw rock	Earth magic: soil manipulation	Monster buff LV6	Hide
Astral projection	Fire magic: fire manipulation	Water magic: water manipulation	Wind magic: wind manipulation
Skill teach LV1	Lecture LV10 (Max)	Awaken hidden potential LV3	Tool crafting
Weapon crafting	Building	Poison resistance LV5	Fire resistance LV5
Water resistance LV3	Wind resistance LV2	Earth resistance LV2
Titles	Child prodigy	Dark Horse	Heroic victory
Legendary Victory	Sinister puppetmaster	Masochistic tendencies
Race skills	Farming LV1
Tamed monsters	Ratina LV 18	Nasby LV 12	Pythana LV 16
Slimerene LV 15
Linked beingsYou could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.	Nasby LV 12	Ratina LV 18	Pythana LV 16
Slimerene LV 15

Name	Ratina	Race	Magic mouse, female
Age	4	Lv	18
Class	Mouse arch mage	Rank	2
HP	96/96	MP	83/83 (+1.40/sec)
Strength	43	Intelligence	114
Dexterity	43	Willpower	44
Stamina	47	Wisdom	78
Luck	121	Charisma	41
Skills	Gnaw LV3	Claw LV2	Hide LV6
Poison resistance LV2	Iron gut LV 4	Mana Perception LV8	Mana Manipulation LV10 (max)
Magic: mana sense LV10 (Max)	Telepathy	Fire magic: fire ball LV10 (Max)	Water magic: water ball LV10 (Max)
Wind magic: wind ball LV10 (Max)	Earth magic: throw rock LV10 (Max)	Earth magic: soil manipulation LV10 (Max)	Fire magic: fire manipulation LV10 (Max)
Water magic: water manipulation LV10 (Max)	Wind magic: wind manipulation LV10 (Max)	Water magic: Torrential downpour LV2	Higher tier attribute magic LV1
Water magic: water wall LV7, makes a wall of water that will block enemy attackes MP cost is a minimum of 15, but more MP leads to a stronger effect, MP cost is paid every second that the spell remains in effect. (all wall spells have same explanation but with different elements)	Fire magic: fire wall LV7	Wind magic: wind wall LV7	Earth magic: dirt wall LV7
Minor arch magic LV5	Farming	Tool crafting	Weapon crafting
Building	Earth magic: Stone manipulation LV3	Earth magic: Rupture LV4	Fire magic: Burst of flames LV 2
Wind magic: Column of wind LV 3
Titles	Owned by Auxentius	Skilled	Quick grower
Race skills	Compress LV3	Increased mana recovery rate LV8

Name	Nasby	Race	Hippopotamus, female
Age	20	LV	12
Class	Hippopotamus protector	Rank	3
HP	214/214	MP	53/53 (+0.48/sec)
Strength	72	Intelligence	53
Dexterity	56	Willpower	46
Stamina	100	Wisdom	48
Luck	86	Charisma	43
Skills	Tough hide LV5	Enhanced senses	Assassination
Trample LV3: runs over your opponent dealing damage equal to your weight divided by their weight times your strength times 1.3, Cost 25 MP	Taunt LV5: forces your target to focus on attacking you for 25 seconds, MP cost 15 cooldown 15 seconds	Shield aura LV2: Allies within a 2 meter range get a defensive bonus equal to 15% of your stamina stat, MP cost 20 cooldown 15 duration 7.	Farming
Tool crafting	Weapon crafting	Building	Poison resistance LV1
First aid LV6	Bunker down LV1	Intimidating roar LV3	Counter-attack positioning LV1
Titles	Owned by Auxentius	Biggest fish in the sea
Race skills	Crushing bite LV4	Bulky LV6	Swim LV8

Name	Pythana	Race	Assassin snake, female
Age	2	LV	16
Class	Assassin	Rank	1
HP	78/78	MP	36/36 (+0.31/sec)
Strength	68	Intelligence	33
Dexterity	47	Willpower	25
Stamina	38	Wisdom	31
Luck	36	Charisma	24
Skills	Bite LV4: bites deal 8% more damage	Constrict LV4: Able to bind foes more easily to inhibit their movements and breathing, -11% all stats to bound opponents	Hide LV5: Harder to be found by opponents based on the difference between your dexterities
Slither LV6: spend MP to move more quickly proportional to MP spent	Coil position LV2: whilecoiled, reaction speed and movement speed increase	Assassination LV3: +24% strength on first attack	Rough scales LV3
Ambush LV2:When you catch your enemies by suprise you will gain 6% movement speed for 1.25 minutes	Poison resistance LV1	Camoflauge LV1	Prepare terrain LV1
Evade detection LV1	Minor evasion boost LV1
Titles	Owned by Auxentius	Quick grower
Race skills	Swallow LV4: Can swallow creatures and objects 100% larger than the user, when an opponent is being swallowed the user can spend 15MP/sec to make them lose 25% of all their stats for the duration of the skill	Lesser venomous fang LV6: Your bites will poison your opponent for 3.5 minutes, dealing damage per minute equal to your strength/their stamina x16.25

Name	Slimerene	Race	Slime, genderless
Age	12	LV	15
Class	Scavenger slime	Rank	1
HP	136/136	MP	30/30 (+0.25/sec)
Strength	42	Intelligence	28
Dexterity	30	Willpower	23
Stamina	67	Wisdom	25
Luck	77	Charisma	23
Skills	Hide	EscapeLV8: +80% speed for 5 seconds when fleeing a foe, cool down 3 hours (debuff fleeing will last for the duration of the skill)	Detect corpse LV6: can spend MP to detect corpses of animals within a certain range, greater MP=greater range
Efficientenergy usage LV8: Uses less food to survive	Mimicry LV7 (14%)	Burst of speed (land) LV4	Magic Manipulation,Sense, and Preception
Fire,water,wind, and earth ball and manipulation
Titles	Owned by Auxentius
Race skills	Slime body LV7: reduces damage of physical attacks by 56%, increases damage from magical attacks by 72%	Dissolve LV5: can melt down object within your body, heals HP faster when eating	Sticky grasp LV3

There is a box

Inside a box

Building a pointless pyramid

Inside a box

CH 14: Finished battles and new evolutions Nasby has the swimming skill and can fight Rather well in the water, Pythana is slower but can still move pretty damn fast while I have slimerene focus on using wind ball to give them air if they need more. Ratina focuses on blocking with primarily water wall as it appears to be stronger with all the water pressure and she also uses Rupture to deal some damage while adding obstacles to slow down the manatee. Rupture makes a crack in the earth that rises out of the ground and slams the opponent from all sides, with enough MP it can trap the manatee for a few seconds before it breaks loose making a good mixed offense and defence spell despite not dealing much damage due to being an aoe skill. Throw rock deals more damage than Rupture and is used while it is on cooldown. I don''t use any magic other than monster buff and awaken hidden potential in order to prioritize keeping Nasby alive and keeping Ratina''s spell strength up. Nasby only uses her MP to taunt and use first aid as needed, Pythana sticks with the hit and run stratagy to try and accumulate poison damage. The manatee seems to have a trample like skill as it keeps trying to either ram into Nasby or crush her against a wall if she latches on, Nasby needs to save her bunker down skill in case it has an explosive last resort like the bear, but taking a full spped ram can deal up to 75 damage in one go so Ratina''s interferance is a neccesity. The manatee also doesn''t attempt biting at Nasby much, prferring to just crush its opponents. The manatee however can use water manipulation to disrupt Ratina''s water walls if there isn''t enough MP behind them, so I need to occasionally disrupt the disruption with my own water manipulation leading to my and Ratina''s MP reserves gradually decreasing, I only hope that the Manatee has the same problem and that this will prevent its last resort skill from having as much strength behind it. Pythana managed to learn the swimming skill a few minutes into the fight, and she started moving noticeably faster and having no problem biting into any scratches in the manatees hide due to a bite from Nasby or a rupture from Ratina. The manatee will sometimes tries to use water manipulation to trap Pythana so it can crush her, but Nasby just taunts it and it has to re focus on her. After about 10 minutes I begin to run low on MP, allowing the manatee to disrupt more water walls and attack less inhibited, but the amount of earth raised from successive ruptures and a few stray rocks prevent the manatee from building much speed. We are all tense for it to use its final desperate attack, and it reacts in a way none of us were prepared for. It ran away. Ratina tried to block it with earth and water skills, but it used its own skills to escape relatively unimpeded. None of us died so it isn''t like we lost the fight, we gained some skill levels as well, but it is frustrating to have our opponent just up and leave after an exhausting fight and not be able to stop it at all. "All of that effort..... I''m not about to let you get away so easily" (Ratina) A giant ball of electricity discharges around the manatee, Ratina''s MP bottoms out and she loses half of her health in the process of vaporizing the water around the manatee and leaving it with serious burn marks. The manatee however only stumbles in the water for a short while before showing a yet to be seen burst of speed runing away as fast as it can, it apparently does not want to feel another one of those. I pull up Ratina''s skills to see what the fuck she just pulled off.

Magic overdrive LV1

Uses all of the users MP and temporarily allows them to substitute HP for MP to use a spell, Increase the strength of the next spell by 50%, cooldown 1 hr

Electricitymagic: electric shock LV1

Make a ball of electricity from mana, same costs and cooldowns as other ball skills

Water wall LV10 (Max)

Earth magic: Rupture LV6

cooldown 45 (90) radius 3 meters

Earth magic: Throw boulder LV1

Launch a boulder of earth magic to bash your foes, MP cost 65, cooldown 30 (60)

So magic overdrive is one of those last resort skills that fucks over carefully laid out plans like an exploding bear, good to have but bad to rely on, and you only get 1 shot at using it during a fight. Ratina is throwing a temper tantrum by blasting the walls with magic as soon as her MP recoves enough while screaming all sorts of profanities she must have learned form me, and some inventive new ones about how the useless overweight buffet should just lay down and die instead of spreading its image of profound ugliness to ruin the rest of the world''s day. Meanwhile me and Simerene start reparing the cave ceiling so that we don''t have to swim in the cavern for the rest of our expedition, it will already be a pain to find out just how much got filled in our 10 minute fight. I shouldn''t be suprised that the manatee had a way to deal with underground ambushes, other monsters that spawn here have probably tried similar tactics in the past. Suprisingly after we reseal the ceiling the water level begins draining into the walls being converted into magic, it is an intiguing process but not one I can even begin to figure out how to replicate. I begin checking up on everyones new skill levels while Ratina scares of every monster that can feel the shaking caves. For myself

Monster buff LV8

increases your monster¡¯s stats by 21% of your Charisma stat + 10% Willpower stat+ 12.5% Intelligence stat MP cost 15 cooldown 25 duration 50

Awaken hidden potential LV6

Increases stats of the targeted monster by 35%, pick one stat to get an extra 15% increase, MP cost 25 duration 40 cooldown 25

Telepathy LV5

For Nasby

Sturdy LV3

You take less damage from attacks based on your stamina stat (stamina already does this, this skill just amplifies the effect)

Swim LV10

Moves 15% fater in the water

Taunt LV6

Tough hide LV6

Reduces physical damage 12%

Crushing bite LV5

Minor increased regeneration rate LV1

Heals 0.1% faster per MP spent duration is also 0.1 per MP spent (natural HP regen speed is affected by various factors and isn''t constant)

For Pythana

Swim

Lesser venomous fang LV8

Your bites will poison your opponent for 4.5 minutes, dealing damage per minute equal to your strength/their stamina x18.75

Bite LV6

+12% bite damage

Ambush LV3

When you catch your enemies by suprise you will gain 9% movement speed for 1.5 minutes

And poor Slimerene got absolutely nothing, I gave her some extra mushrooms and she was happy though.The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. It impressively takes an hour of us all waiting around before Ratina stops blasting the walls with magic, levelling up has been slow and that was a prime oppurtunity but even with Ratina''s last minute upgrade we had no way to stop it from getting away, it even had a speed skill of some kind and I am not convinced that it didn''t have another skill or two hidden up its flippers. We proceed down the caves once more with Slimerene using sticky grasp to carry me as Ratina isn''t in the mood to carry me right now as she is still sulking, but Slimerene is comfortable in her own way, like having one of those water beds but with wheels carry you around. The strength of monsters in the caves have been increasing over the past week, there are several monsters at least level 10 and the occasional level 20 where all the monsters used to be mostly rank 0 with a few level 10s, there is more mana in the caves now leading to more mushrooms growing and a higher spawn rate of monsters. A level 10 doesn''t give much xp when split between the 5 of us, and level 20s are still rare but we hunt them as we find them. Ratina and Pythana reached level 20, Nasby 14,and Slimerene reached level 19, I haven''t levelled up Ratina learned

Electricitymanipulation LV1

Same as other manipulation skills but for electricity

Electricity magic: electric shock LV2

Earth magic: Stone manipulation LV4

Water and Fire resistance LV 1

Nasby learned

Counter-attack positioning LV2

Bulky LV7

7% damage reduction and increased HP

Pythana

Assassination LV4

+32% strength on first attack

Rough scales LV4

Minor evasion boost LV2

Mana perception

Mana manipulation

Magic: mana sense

Slimerene

Sticky grasp LV5

Dissolve LV6

Poison resistance LV2

Auxentius

Electricity resistance LV3

Reduces damage taken from electricity based attacks

Cooking

Cooked food tastes slightly better

Some mushrooms were poisonous, but Slimerene wanted to eat them anyways and ended up with poison resistance. Pythana has finally reached the evolution level to get rank two

Possible evolutions	Ambush python assassin	Pit viper	Princess cobra assassin
Lesser lamia assassin	Lesser komodo wyvren	Water snake (sea serpent variant) (Water attribute)	Grand worm (Earth attribute)

The sea serpent and wyven options are tempting, even princess cobra assassin is interesting, but lamia evolution is the only viable option. It is important to have the right priorities, and you can never go wrong with waifu power, no matter how tempting an option that aknowladges itself as a variant is. We all take a break and set up base to protect Pythana while she evolves, Ratina practices magic, I cook for Slimerene, and Nasby just naps away. Pythana finishes evolving, and she is still shorter than Ratina bur only by a little bit. She has glistening black scales now that go up to her waist and cover her back, she has a human torso and face, but has lizard like eyes with puruple sclera and a black slit for her pupil. She is still too much on the loli side for my own tastes, but the potential is growing, she is also naked, but all of us are as Ratina has fur covering her important parts and Nasby is well Nasby. First however I need to decide which skill she should get

Dagger weilder

Lesser venom spray

Claw

Lesser venom spray is the obvious choice as the other two should be easy for her to learn naturally.

Lesser venom spray LV1

Shoot venom of equal strength to a set venom skill (default lesser venom fang) up to one meter away, venom effect only applies if the spray enters the eyes, an open wound, or an orifice of the targeted foe.

I have Ratina use stone manipulation to craft basic stone armor for Pythana, Nasby, and herself, something I probably should have thought of without needing to be reminded by seeing a naked child. I also hand Pythana theRare quality beast bladethat we haven''t really used since we got it.

Mid quality stone vest

Magically crafted stone armor to cover the torso of its wearer +5 defence whe attacked wear the armor covers

Mid quality stone helm

same as vest

The vest doesn''t cover the sleeves because stone is inflexible, I use some monster hides to make some leather boots and leggings for Naby and Ratina

Amateur leather boots

+1 defence when attacked in covered area

Amateur leather leggings

same as boots

I apparently suck at leather working, but it is better than nothing albeit barely. I check up on Pythana''s new class description for curiosities sake.

Lesser lamia assassin

A snake that has been influenced by the humanization effect of a master that used to have the monster teacher class. This entirely new race of monster is nimble and stealthy, and this class in particular excels in killing unsuspecting prey. Main stats of strength and dexterity, sub stat none

What the fuck, monster teacher had such a useful effect and didn''t tell me about it! I had suspected based off Ratina''s growth, but how many hidden effects do the classes have, how do they work, and how do I get this stupid menu to answer my mountains of questions. ALSO! 2 main stats and no sub stats, is that rare and op, or is it common at the higher ranks? Now that I look again Pythana did get a new title.

Title: Pioneer of a racial varient

A title awarded when a creature evolves into a race that novother living creature has at the time of evolution. +10% skill growth and +5% fertility

I suppose this means that other creatures have the magic mouse and snake assassin races, but no other lamias are in this world. This world was so tragic before I got here, a magic fantasy world with no lamia waifus. Don''t worry broken world, I will fix you by showing you the glorious splender of monster girls that you have been missing out on. I have Pythana carry me for a little bit, but Ratina is still more comfortable with her amazing fur. Its just so comfortable to sink into. It doesn''t take long for slimerene to hit level 20 as well, so we stop once again to evolve her.

Possible evolutions	Greater scavenger slime	Acidic slime	Rock slime (Earth attribute)
Wet slime (Water attribute)	Magic taster slime	Lesser speed slime	Poison slime
Hidden slime

There are less slime options than I hoped for, I don''t know why wind and fire slime are unavailable, but there are several good options to choose from. Hidden slime likely focuses an ambushing and camoflauge, but Pythana is already our assassin and while what our party needs most now is a healer, that isn''t an option. Speed slime is ruled out on the same basis. Greater scavenger slime is out because the path of a scavenger isn''t very battle oriented. Poison slime would aloow more poison damage, but would weaken our party to foes resistant to it with acidic slime being a better alternative. Magic taster seems like it could lead down a very interesting path as it further evolves. The attribute slimes would be my first attribute based monster, and may gives me more insight for future evolutions and battles with attribute based creatures. I could also hold off until getting her all of the resistance skills Ratina can provide, but Slimerene is as unreceptive to that plan as Nasby and Pythana are. So I decide to evolve her into...... CH 15: On the surface once again I evolved Slimerene into magic taster in order to hopefully get an anti magic monster.

Magic taster

Despite being weak to magic, this slime decides to eat it anyway. A bizzare creature that probably won''t survive long enough too advance again. Main stat stamina, sub stat strength

The description has no confidence in my decision, probably because she still has no magic resistance trained because despite being the actual baby of the group, the rest act like babies when it comes to resistance training, except Ratina she at least does some occasionally.

Slimerene possible skills

Magic drain

Minor max health increase

Minor increased regeneration rate

I choose magic drain as that was the whole point of picking this class to begin with, the other options are nice standard tanky skills but I want a magic tanker that is immune to physical attacks to have the most op blob around.

Magic drain LV1

You can drain the MP of any target you are touching, the rate of drain is equal to your willpower/their willpowerx5 MP per second

That will be nice for draining MP from a tanker, but try it with a mage and slimerene will end up dying before they run out of MP. Nasby''s taunt won''t stop aoe attacks, and Slimerene still takes increased magic damage from slime body. This is still an amazing skill though, next time we have a drawn out fight with an explosion prone bear we can empty its MP pool so that it can''t use super skills, unless it has a skill like Ratina''s magic overdrive in which case Slimerene will be in huge danger. As for Slimerene''s changes to her body, she is still a blob that can shange shape into whatever, but isn''t solid enough to stand up in a human form. I check up the teachable options for Pythana and Slimerene

Pythana skills	Dagger weilder	Claw	Incapacitate
Minor endurance recovery	Silent footsteps (she doesn''t have feet though?)	Charm

Slimerene skills	Minor max health increase	Minor increased regeneration rate	Enhanced senses
Dissolve mana	Evade detection	Taunt	Slime spray

Slimerene seems to have lots of skills that Nasby and Pythana have, I''m not sure if it is just because skills are bound to overlap with 4 monsters or if mimicry has any hidden effects like monster teacher did. My taming skill levelled up when Slimerene finished evolving, but once again isn''t giving me another slot yet likely until I advance my own class.

Tame LV4

Tamed monsters 4/4

We begin to notice the ceiling quickly begin going up after another 3 months, and finally we find an exit to the surface. I only levelled up twice after all that time, Ratina levelled up 7 times, Nasby levelled up 4 times, and Pythana levelled up 12 times while Slimerene only levelled up 10 times as we were unable to get her the quick grower skill. Auxentius new skills/ skill level changes

Wind and earth resistance LV3

Ice resistance LV2

same as other resistance skills but for ice

Battle advise LV3

Positive increase in moral when you are the leader of a party, when giving commands +3% stats to all allies within 30 meters of you.

Ratina

Higher tier attribute magic LV3

penalty is only 70% now

Ice magic: ice shard LV1

same as ball skills

Earth magic: Throw boulder LV3

Stronger and cooldown of 28 (56)

Magic overdrive LV2

Uses all of the users MP and temporarily allows them to substitute HP for MP to use a spell, Increase the strength of the next spell by 75%, cooldown 1 hr

Fire magic: Burst of flames LV3

Same as wind column LV 3 but fire

Water magic: Torrential downpour LV3

Same but water

Nasby

Minor increased regeneration rate LV3

0.3% per MP and 0.3 duration per MP now

Crushing bite LV6

Shield aura LV4

Allies within a 4 meter range get a defensive bonus equal to 25% of your stamina stat, MP cost 20 cooldown 15 duration 11

Counter-attack positioning LV4

Pythana

Coil position LV4

Assassination LV7

+56% strength on first attack

Camoflauge LV3

Swallow LV5

Can swallow creatures and objects 125% larger than the user, when an opponent is being swallowed the user can spend 15MP/sec to make them lose 30% of all their stats for the duration of the skill

Lesser venom spray LV3

3 meter range now

Incapacitate LV1

When using this skill during an attack that would normally kill your foe, they instead lose consiousness for either 1 hour or until you cancel this skill

Minor endurence recovery LV4

recovers from fatigue faster

Dagger weilder LV4

Equipping a dagger increases your strength by 8%

Slimerene

Mimicry LV9

18% now

Magic drain LV3

You can drain the MP of any target you are touching, the rate of drain is equal to your willpower/their willpowerx9 MP per second

Taunt LV4

Evade detection LV1

Slime spray LV3

Cut off a portion of your slime body and shoot it on a foe, damage based on dissolve skill

I had Nasby learn the hide skill so that the entire party has it now in order to hopefully avoid the notice of ther regional lords that are practically at war with humanity in general. Ratina and I have also tested how the attributes of magic interact with each other and figured out the basic type chart. Fire magic has an advantage against wind, wind>water>fire>wind. Earth is bad against all the other basic elements, but is better at dealing damage to non magic creatures that aren''t extra flamable. Ice magic is good against water, earth, and wind, but super weak to fire and slightly weak to lightning. Lightning is better against fire than water somehow, good against water and ice, but does almost nothing to earth and gets hit real hard by earth in return. I was looking forward to seeing the sun after being in mana lit caves for 9 months, but instead I arrive in a haunted forest type place with gray colored mana coating everything and a cloudy, dreary atmosphere. If only Ratina knew weather manipulation already, oh well.

WARNING!You are currently in undead tainted lands, all manners of HP recovery are significantly weakened

Glad the system told me that, and that explains all the gray mana everywhere. So naturally the first course of action is to have me and Ratina mess with it, while Slimerene MP drains it, to see what''ll happen.The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Slimerene starts taking damage, but that is what a magic taster is supposed to do right? I have Nasby on standby with first aid and have her continue while using lecture on her while Ratina futzes with the mana. Shortly after Slimerene gets two new skills before Nasby heals her and she stops for a bit.

Death resistance LV1

Takes less damage from death energy and suffers less while under its influence

Dissolve mana LV1

Eat raw mana and convert it into food to sustain yourself

Ratina is able to slightly influence the mana, but isn''t able to do something even as simple as move it a few inches in any direction, she does get an interesting skill however.

Death magic: decay manipulation

Able to influence decay attribute mana slightly

She is now able to move the mana around a bit, but it takes massive amounts of MP and the skill can''t be levelled so I have her stop for now and see what happens when I let Slimerene eat in an area for an extended time, while Ratina and Pythana hunt some low level monsters nearby. The nearby monsters turn out to unsurprisingly be skeletons, but they only find monster based skeletons and not any human based ones. Pythana has difficulty damaging them as she can''t hurt them with her venom based attacks, she can only stab them with her dagger or constrict them until they are crushed. She tried swallowing one, but it apparently tasted terrible and dealt some damage to her so she canceled the skill. Ratina has no problem because they burn well, and while I am hestant to use fire after the Steven incidents she can use other magic to kill them easily. The undead don''t have a core, soul flame, or anything like that, you just have to hit them until they die again, and the only way we have figured out to tell if they are dead yet or not is to use magic sense to "see" if there is a mana reaction from their bones. After a day has passed Slimerene has managed to clear a 2 meter raidus of land from decay mana, levelling up death resistance once in the process. The cleared area is less gray, but I can tell from magic sense that the decay mana from the surroundings is spreading back to the cleared areas, so I end the experiment so that we can explore the surface again. Ratina has also practiced enough that she can now use wind manipulation to erase any smoke caused by her fire spells so we can hopefully use them without signalling to the whole world where we are every time we fight. The undead are also much less aggressive than I thought they would be, instead of swarming the first living thing, us, most of them don''t pay attention to us unless we approach them, and when we do most of them run. Undead also don''t need visability to detect us and Nasby is pretty slow so we usually need to use Pythana or magic to hunt them as we can''t get the whole group to fight them at once. Skeletons are the most common undead, I see some zombies but we kill them way before they get close, there are also some incorporeal monsters, but mana sense locates them with ease and magic seems to kill them super easily. Pythana and Slimerene put their evade detection skills to good use, particularly Slimerene since she can use magic to deal substantial damage, but Ratina is still the best option to just blast them in one shot before they have a chance to get out of range. I am still on guard though, some of these undead I can sense are up to rank 3 and we have no idea how strong the local ruler is, nor if a regional lord is usually active in this area. I assume that the decay mana that fills this area is due to the influence of the local lord, and to be able to affect such a large area implies that they are probably more than our party can take on at the moment. Though now that I think about it, I have a better alternative to mere speculation. The next skeleton we ambush we don''t kill, instead I use telepathy to interrogate it and tell it that I will let it live in exchange for information. Unfortunately, it is stupid, and I mean can''t even form a coherent thought stupid. I thought they were intelligent for running away, but they apparently do that every time a creature with a strong enough life (or death) force approaches. It doesn''t understand my terms, much less my questions, so we just kill it and move on. I haven''t given up on information gathering though, I avoided chasing rank 3 undead to avoid a drawn out chase that may attract unwanted attention, but hopefully they will be smarter than the rank 0-1 counterparts. A rank 2 might also work, but I really just want the sweet xp of a rank 3 at this point, Ratina is so close to evolving and I am leveling up so slow lately, 3 months to gain 2 levels is just too terrible. The good news is that I found a rank 3 pretty quickly, the bad news is that there is a horde of undead, hundreds of rank 0-1, dozens of rank 2-3 and a rank 6 leading them by my estimates, unless it is a magic main in which case it is probably rank 5. They also just so happen to be headed strait for us. "I haven''t even made a big mess yet, why does the local militia already hate me?" (Auxentius) "You mean besides the fact that as a living creature you have entered undead lands and been killing the locals since you got here?" (Ratina) "Fair point" (Auxentius) "Can I eat the huge buffet down there?" (Slimerene) "The buffet fights back, and even without the op leader the sheer number of ghosts with magic attacks aren''t something I think you could handle" (Auxentius) The leader of the group is a giant skeleton with a crown on its head, it doesn''t really have any other distinguishing features and if it weren''t for the massive mana reaction it wouldn''t seem like anything too special. We start runung away from the army at a diagonal angle, I won''t run directly the opposite way so that we aren''t chased into a trap. "Ratina, their strongest are staying in the back line so blast them with some flame bursts, don''t bother holding back to remove the smoke either because stealth is out at this point. Nasby you are the slowest so just keep moving, if they have any hidden tricks to counter-attack us we will regroup by you. Slimerene and Pythana use evade detection and see if you can''t manage to kill some rank twos in an ambush, Slimerene should use the escape skill to return near Nasby if ever discovered, Pythana is fast enough to get away on her own. I will moniter the battle while providing buffs as needed." (Auxentius) Ratina uses a 3/4 power flame burst while keeping magic overdrive on standby in case of retailiation, leaving a 3 meter diameter hole in their forces. The commander being less than pleased lauches a giant sphere of what feels like decay energy back at us. Havina the boss be a mage class disrupts my plans somewhat, but it is good to know that we likely aren''t dealing with a rank 6. I use both my buff skills on Ratina and have her use magic overdrive and electric shock to retailiate, I also call back Pythana and Slimerene while having Ratina run after retailiating so that we don''t fight an extended magic battle that we don''t have the MP to maintain. The giant masses of mana collide in between us and the army, the magic spheres obliterate each other and leave the forest as a scorching crater several meteres deep near the center. Yeah we might be able to take on the mage if it was all of us vs it, but with the giant army blocking the way we would run dry of MP way too fast. The ghost like undead are the fastest and appear to be charging us in retailiation to slow us down while the army catches up, but me and Slimerene still have most of our MP and can blast them while Ratina recharges enough for a coloumn of wind that makes another whole in their forces. It seems like our opponent is quick to learn however, not only do the ghosts pull back, but all the rank 0-1 creatures appear to retreat so that the faster rank 2s and 3s can chase faster, with the mage leader close behind. I could have Ratina prepare a cave or terrain to hold them off, but thier mage would likely blast it before they do much. I let Pythana set up an ambush on her own, while keeping very close attention in case she needs support, I am however very plesantly suprised. The undead not only don''t detect her before the ambush due to evade detection, but they look as though they can''t "see" Pythana ambushing their allies unless they are within a meter or so. It must be like how Slimerene can only see things within a meter of herself, but the undead are used to "seeing" farther with their life sensing ability, an ability that evade detection evidently counters. Unfortunately the boss seems to be able to see her just fine after the ambush, and she retreats quickly after killing a rank 2 with the help of my monster buff skill, and she can outrun the mages spells from her current distance. Pythana''s ambush forces the mage to keep his forces close to itself further limiting its mobility, but this still isn''t enough for Nasby to outrun them even if they weren''t undead that didn''t tire or sleep. Now that they are more clumped up, Ratina should be able to punish them hard with a good flame burst. But they would likely scatter a bit more after that, so I take a gamble and wait for magic overdrive to recharge so that we can go all in and have Naby bunker down with sheild aura to take the counter attack. In the mean time I have Ratina use stone manipulation to cover the path behind us with obsticles so that our mage isn''t suspiciously inactive. All the obstacles we make are easily flattened by the enemy mage, and when I try to use telepathy to talk with them they somehow block it. Maybe I should have tried diplomacy before blasting the enemy army, but where is the fun in that? Slimerene also uses slime spray on the ground which amusingly causes some of the undead to slip and fall, better yet when their mage uses magic to move it I can feel via magic sense that the mana dissolve skill make it use more mana then normally would be needed to remove it from the path. We continue like this until Ratina has magic overdrive prepped again and begin the plan. I use monster buff and awaken hidden potential on Ratina with the extra boost put into intelligence and Ratina uses her full MP reserves with magic overdrive and 7/10ths of her health to make a massive flame burst skill. The bosses eye sockets widen, something I didn''t know skeletons could do, and it makes a massive wall of decay energy between flame burst and the soldiers. I smile as if it had used a ball skill to block, than Nasby would have to block it when I initiate phase 2 of the plan, and I can tell based off the massive amount of mana in the wall that it wasn''t holding back to make it. Me and Slimerene use fire manipulation to move the spell mid flight in a different direction, it takes far more MP to use a manipulation skill on magic attacks than to use it regularly, but we just alter the flight path to curve around the wall and hit them directly. The boss however also does something unexpected. It launches some of its rank 2s at the inbound flame burst and while the spell won''t prematurely detonate, this does reduce its power before the aoe effect. Some of the rank 3s also appear to have shield aura like tank skills that they activate to mitigate the damage. These all weaken the impact of the spell, but a massive swarm of flames still erupt within their ranks and based on the level ups we get, we did plenty of damage. However a weakened aoe skill even with it having an advantageous element against the enemy with Ratina''s fully buffed force, won''t kill a rank 5 that easily, and Idefinately just made it take us seriously if it wasn''t before. The fight isn''t over yet, but I think we are off to a good start. Stats after the end of chapter 15

Name	Auxentius	Race	Human, male
Age	0	Lv	41
Class	Monster sensei	LV 3	Rank 2
HP	258/258	MP	72/301 (increases by 2.96/sec)
Strength	128	Intelligence	256
Dexterity	126	Willpower	250
Stamina	128	Wisdom	296
Luck	150	Charisma	319
Skills	Mana perception	Analyze	Mana manipulation
Magic mana sense	Magic connection	Telepathy LV5	Tame LV3: 4/4 monsters tamed
Assassination	Fire magic: fireball	Water magic: waterball	Wind magic: windball
Earth magic: throw rock	Earth magic: soil manipulation	Monster buff LV10 (Max)	Hide
Astral projection	Fire magic: fire manipulation	Water magic: water manipulation	Wind magic: wind manipulation
Skill teach LV1	Lecture LV10 (Max)	Awaken hidden potential LV8	Tool crafting
Weapon crafting	Building	Poison resistance LV5	Fire resistance LV5
Water resistance LV3	Wind resistance LV3	Earth resistance LV3	Electricity resistance LV3
Cooking	Ice resistance LV2	Assuring aura LV1: helps allies nearby reamin calm and focussed even in tense situations, you will have a more positive first impression on others	Battle advise LV3:Positive increase in moral when you are the leader of a party, when giving commands +3% stats to all allies within 30 meters of you.
Titles	Child prodigy	Dark Horse	Heroic victory
Legendary Victory	Sinister puppetmaster	Masochistic tendencies
Race skills	Farming LV1
Tamed monsters	Ratina LV 38	Nasby LV 32	Pythana LV 30
Slimerene LV 28
Linked beingsThis tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.	Nasby LV 32	Ratina LV 38	Pythana LV 30
Slimerene LV 28

Name	Ratina	Race	Magic mouse, female
Age	4	Lv	38
Class	Mouse arch mage	Rank	2
HP	31/124	MP	0/240 (+3.85/sec)
Strength	96	Intelligence	275
Dexterity	94	Willpower	107
Stamina	108	Wisdom	214
Luck	169	Charisma	91
Skills	Gnaw LV3	Claw LV2	Hide LV6
Poison resistance LV2	Iron gut LV 4	Mana Perception LV8	Mana Manipulation LV10 (max)
Magic: mana sense LV10 (Max)	Telepathy	Fire magic: fire ball LV10 (Max)	Water magic: water ball LV10 (Max)
Wind magic: wind ball LV10 (Max)	Earth magic: throw rock LV10 (Max)	Earth magic: soil manipulation LV10 (Max)	Fire magic: fire manipulation LV10 (Max)
Water magic: water manipulation LV10 (Max)	Wind magic: wind manipulation LV10 (Max)	Water magic: Torrential downpour LV3	Higher tier attribute magic LV4
Water magic: water wall LV10 (Max)	Fire magic: fire wall LV7	Wind magic: wind wall LV7	Earth magic: dirt wall LV7
Minor arch magic LV5	Farming	Tool crafting	Weapon crafting
Building	Earth magic: Stone manipulation LV4	Earth magic: Rupture LV6	Fire magic: Burst of flames LV8
Wind magic: Column of wind LV 3	Electricity magic: electric shock LV3	Magic overdrive LV2	Earth magic: Throw boulder LV3
Electricity magic: electricity manipulation LV1	Ice magic: ice shard LV1	Death magic: decay manipulation	Greater mana manipulation LV1: makes spells easier to form and generally requires less MP to do more
Fire magic: guider of flame LV1,Easier to influence fire like fire manipulation, and weak changes now require no MP cost (only stuff at the level of blowing a candel costs nothing though)
Titles	Owned by Auxentius	Skilled	Quick grower
Race skills	Compress LV3	Increased mana recovery rate LV8	Expanded mana pool LV2: increases max MP by 20%

Name	Nasby	Race	Hippopotamus, female
Age	20	LV	32
Class	Hippopotamus protector	Rank	3
HP	528/528	MP	111/111 (+1.06/sec)
Strength	169	Intelligence	119
Dexterity	116	Willpower	135
Stamina	246	Wisdom	106
Luck	140	Charisma	97
Skills	Tough hide LV6	Enhanced senses	Assassination
Trample LV3: runs over your opponent dealing damage equal to your weight divided by their weight times your strength times 1.3, Cost 25 MP	Taunt LV6: forces your target to focus on attacking you for 30 seconds, MP cost 15 cooldown 15 seconds	Shield aura LV4	Farming
Tool crafting	Weapon crafting	Building	Poison resistance LV1
First aid LV6	Bunker down LV1	Intimidating roar LV3	Counter-attack positioning LV4
Sturdy LV3	Minor increased regeneration rate LV3: Heals 0.3% faster per MP spent with duration 0.3 per MP spent	Hide	Provoke aoe LV1: Taunt all foes within a 2 meter radius for 5 seconds, MP cost 45 cooldown 30
Titles	Owned by Auxentius	Biggest fish in the sea
Race skills	Crushing bite LV6	Bulky LV7	Swim LV10 (Max)

Name	Pythana	Race	Lesser lamia, female
Age	2	LV	30
Class	Lesser lamia assassin	Rank	2
HP	170/170	MP	82/82 (+0.77/sec)
Strength	192	Intelligence	86
Dexterity	190	Willpower	87
Stamina	84	Wisdom	77
Luck	86	Charisma	72
Skills	Bite LV6: bites deal 12% more damage	Constrict LV5: Able to bind foes more easily to inhibit their movements and breathing, -13% all stats to bound opponents	Hide LV5: Harder to be found by opponents based on the difference between your dexterities
Slither LV8: spend MP to move more quickly proportional to MP spent	Coil position LV5: whilecoiled, reaction speed and movement speed increase	Assassination LV9 (72%)	Rough scales LV4
Ambush LV4:When you catch your enemies by suprise you will gain 12% movement speed for 1.75 minutes	Poison resistance LV1	Camoflauge LV4	Prepare terrain LV3
Evade detection LV6	Minor evasion boost LV2	Swim	Mana perception
Mana manipulation	Magic: mana sense	Minor endurance recovery LV5	Silent footsteps LV1: reduces the noise made while moving by 10%
Dagger weilder LV 6: 12% now
Titles	Owned by Auxentius	Quick grower	Pioneer of a racial varient
Race skills	Swallow LV5: Can swallow creatures and objects 125% larger than the user, when an opponent is being swallowed the user can spend 15MP/sec to make them lose 30% of all their stats for the duration of the skill	Lesser venomous fang LV8: Your bites will poison your opponent for 4.5 minutes, dealing damage per minute equal to your strength/their stamina x18.75	Lesser venom spray LV3

Name	Slimerene	Race	Slime, genderless
Age	12	LV	28
Class	Magic taster slime	Rank	2
HP	344/344	MP	12/78 (+0.73/sec)
Strength	119	Intelligence	78
Dexterity	77	Willpower	96
Stamina	171	Wisdom	73
Luck	111	Charisma	66
Skills	Hide	EscapeLV9: +90% speed for 5 seconds when fleeing a foe, cool down 3 hours (debuff fleeing will last for the duration of the skill)	Detect corpse LV6: can spend MP to detect corpses of animals within a certain range, greater MP=greater range
Efficientenergy usage LV8: Uses less food to survive	Mimicry LV9 (18%)	Burst of speed (land) LV6	Magic Manipulation,Sense, and Preception
Fire,water,wind, and earth ball and manipulation	Poison resistance LV2	Magic drain LV5	Taunt LV5
Evade detection LV4	Death resistance LV6
Titles	Owned by Auxentius
Race skills	Slime body LV7: reduces damage of physical attacks by 56%, increases damage from magical attacks by 72%	Dissolve LV7: can melt down object within your body, heals HP faster when eating	Sticky grasp LV5
Slime spray LV5	Dissolve mana LV5

CH 16: Dying to see how it ends The undead have always existed even long before the enlightened races came into being. However, after the great war against the ancient ones, undead have established a larger territory than ever before in recorded history. After the regional lords wiped out countless human settlements, large swarms of undead took their place and hunted any living beings within the region, enough undead were even able to arise that enough decay mana began to seep into the lands so that normal plants could no longer grow. Low level undead seek nothing but to create more undead and to preserve themselves, but necromancers have proven that higher tier undead retain some memories of their previous lives and can even have their own personalities. After the undead established their territory in a small section of the territory humanity used to occupy, large expeditions of forces have occasionally been recorded to have been sent towards known resting places of regional lords. It is debated by scholars whether this is due to a grudge for what they did to humanity, or if it is simply out of a desire to bolster their ranks with powerful living beings. Regardless of the reasoning behind it, these expeditions often lead to decimated regions in the aftermath of a regional lords rampage and are often the best chance for our scouts to discover more information on the ancient ones. Rumors speak of some of the fallen ancient ones from the seige of Citadel Juhnvoque, but none have been confirmed as any expeditions deep into undead territory are too risky and not profitable beyond the informational value. The corrupted undead lands can be purified and turned back into arable land, but it is difficult enough to expand into territories that are already usable, so there is little intrest in recovering and expanding the undead territories. The undead are even occasionally referred to as a 3rd faction in the war between the enlightened and the ancient ones. -A section from The undead and their influence on modern societyfound in the United Enlightened Empire''s national library. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We all are already running after the magic confrontation, except for Pythana who hangs back to ambush any reckless retaliators. I am suprised to recieve a telepathic communication from our foe. "Well played, I was careless and you managed to take advantage of it, but do not think you will be able to escape mortal" (Giant skeletal mage) "May I enquire as to why your army is so dead set on attacking us?" (Auxentius) "The undead will always gather to repulse mortal invaders in our land, even at its weakest edges, I neither know nor care why you are here, you will die in these lands" (Giant skeletal mage) "Why bother contacting me at all then?" (Auxentius) "Because the magic your little pet their displayed was impressive, and your stratagy earned you a modecom of respect, you will make a fine addition to the undead lands" (Giant skeletal mage) "A little pet am I? Listen up you overgrown piece of pre-processed fertilizer, I am at worst a top tier waifu and won''t be taking any smack from a low level noob who doesn''t know basic PVP" (Ratina) While Ratina engages the boss in a pissing contest where I am fairly sure it doesn''t understand half of the terminology she is using, I use what tidbits I learned from the rant back there. If we are at the weakest outermost territory, than it is likely that the army came from the direction toward the local lord, so it is a good thing we are headed in the opposite direction. It appears as though dieing in the undead territory makes you one of them, and that the strength you had when you were alive influences your strength as an undead. The boss and his minions have left the smoldering crater Ratina just made, those that survived anyways. The tank like rank 3s that used their defensive skills survived, but all the rank 2s died and most of the rank 3s died as well. The survivors, boss included, have several charred bones and some of them can no longer properly walk, much less chase us. The injured will either slow them down or they will abandon them and I will send Pythana to kill them of...... and the boss is throwing the injured at us because of course it is, at least they are tankers instead of mages so they can''t blast us to slow us down. And I was right, they can''t blast us, they can however use skills that prevent us from running from them. "Pythana get back to us, we need more DPS to kill the tanks before they catch up to us." (Auxentius) "Coming, be there soon" (Pythana) When Pythana uses her slither skill, she can move rediculously fast, Ratina would have trouble hitting her with any non aoe spell even at a close range, she manages to make it back to us in a few dozen seconds without bothering to use stealth skills beyond evade detection. Nasby can finally participate in the fight slightly as she taunts the tanks to keep them from hitting us before they are dead, the undead are closing the distance between us though. Pythana is a massive help when she arrives, using assassination on foes that are already severely injured quickly wipes them out and we are able to move again. We could continue this back and forth, but we turn around once Ratina recharges her MP. Between Ratina decimating their forces and them throwing the injured survivors, there are only 2 rank 3 tankers in good fighting condition, 5 clearly injured rank 3s, and the rank 5 boss. "Finally done running from the inevitable?" (Giant skeleton boss) "Yeah I am inevitably going to kill you eventually, I figured I should stop putting it off" (Auxentius) The boss doesn''t reply other than frowning, something that just looks unnatural when a skeleton does it, and begins shooting its magic. Nasby is using taunt on the boss and aoe taunt occasionally on the others, she still has bunker down for an emergency but she should be aable to hold off the boss until we clear out the minions. The remaining rank 3s are skeletons, all the ghosts were too weak to magic and the zombies burned too well. Slimerene seems to be great for fighting them however, she can just dissolve away the tankers who don''t have a way of dealing with her, whenever the boss tries to use an aoe on her Nasby pulls up shield aura and Slimerene has a decent HP pool all on her own. I focus of buffing Nasby to keep her alive and buff shield aura, while using the occasional buff on Pythana to insta gib a rank 3 on its last legs, sometimes literally its last leg when Slimerene eats most of it. The 2 healthy rank 3s try to cover for the reemaining 3 injured oneswho beganbacking iffnow that it is clear they won''t last long, and the boss uses some skill that begins healing the injured undead and hurting us with aoe. Nasby already had a shield aura active, and now that the healthy tier 3s have left an open path to the boss I have Slimerene charge it to magic drain it.Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. The boss seems to notice the loss of mana and immediately cancelled the aoe spell to focus on removing slimerene, something that it can''t do well with nasby''s taunt. Although the boss seems to have decided that a big enough death ball targeting Nasby should take care of slimerene in the aftermath. I have everyone but Nasby and Slimerene back off, Nasby is still under the effects of my buffs so I use them on Slimerene with hidden potential focusing willpower for added magic defense, Nasby bunkers down and sheild aura is still active so Slimerene should hopefully be able to tank the hit, Nasby uses first aid to top off Slimerene''s health and activates minor increased regeneration rate for herself. The first aid skill uses a lot of mana due to the decay mana terrain though, and Ratina doesn''t have enough mana to help substantially at the moment. The blast hits Nasby head on and Slimerene gets hit by the shockwave, Nasby took 580 damage which would have killed her if she didn''t have extra HP due to monster buff and awakened hidden potential, but it is still a bad position to be in considering there is reduced HP recovery in the undead territory. Slimerene was only hit by the residual blast and is resistant to death based attacks, but she still has a magic weakness so she took 220 damage. The boss is out of MP now though so as long as Slimerene stays on him he is as good as dead already, and without the mage to support the tanks are easy pickings for the rest of us. The boss dies in a lackluster manner after that, being just a tasty treat for Slimerene and we manage to kill off the tanks without any more suprises. A rank 5 and some rank 3s give a substantial amount of experience, I reach level 46 and get my skills to

Assuring aura becoming LV6

Awaken hidden potential LV10 (Max)

Increases stats of the targeted monster by 55%, pick one stat to get an extra 25% increase, MP cost 25 duration 75 cooldown 25

Battle advise LV7

Positive increase in moral when you are the leader of a party, when giving commands +7% stats to all allies within 70 meters of you.

Death resistance LV1

Ratina reaches level 44 and gets

Increased mana recovery rate LV10 (Max)

100% increase now

Death resistance LV1

(Ratina didn''t get much skills after using magic overdrive cause she couldn''t help much after that other than hit the tankers a few times.) Nasby reached LV40 and got

Bunker down LV4

100% def buff now

Provoke aoe LV3

6 meter radius 15 duration now

Shield aura LV8

Allies within a 8 meter range get a defensive bonus equal to 45% of your stamina stat, MP cost 20 cooldown 15 duration 19

First aid LV 9

2.6 HP per MP

Minor increased regeneration rate LV7

Heals 0.7% faster per MP spent with duration 0.7 per MP spent

Death resistance LV4

Pythana reached LV40 and got

Assassination LV10 (Max)

+80% now

Dagger weilder LV 9

18% now

Evade detection LV8

Slither LV10

Hide LV8

Ambush LV6

When you catch your enemies by suprise you will gain 18% movement speed for 2.25 minutes

Death resistance LV1

Slimerene reached LV 39 and got

Death resistance LV10 (Max)

Slime body LV9

Reduces damage of physical attacks by 72%, increases damage from magical attacks by 64%

Dissolve LV10 (Max)

Magic drain LV9

You can drain the MP of any target you are touching, the rate of drain is equal to your willpower/their willpowerx21 MP per second

Evade detection LV7

Dissolve mana LV9

I can class up and everyone can evolve now, but I want to wait until we are able to run out of the undead territory and into the neighboring one. Slimerene found a Magic orb while eating the boss and ate that too which gave her the death attribute now which I can only assume was the loot from the boss. We get some low quality stuff from the tier 3s, but the only one interesting enough to hold on to is aMid quality: Grimoire that increases magic damage of the weilder by 5% which is obviously given to Ratina. We weren''t able to carry our food while being chased and Slimerene is the only one who can eat undead so we need to get out of the undead lands quick. The decay mana concentration has been weakening during our chase though so we are probably headed in the right direction. We eventually reach the end of the undead territory, and the new area also seems to have a strange mana. It seems like its pulsating somehow, spiking in intensity for a moment and then gradually fading. It causes noises and the ground will occasionally burts upwards, but all of the plants have strong roots and most of them appear to readjust themselves afterward. We discover a nearby rank 2 monster and head off to hunt it. We find what looks like a big, muscular, blue, zebra but with claws instea of hooves and standing upright with green stipes in the blue body. I try telepathically asking for food first in case this is a bizzare enlightened race, but thankfully it tries to attack us so we can hunt it without reserve. It pushes off the ground fast, slower than Pythana but way faster than the rest of us could move. Ratina is about to fire off a fire ball when "Wait Ratina" (Auxentius) "Why? I can easily kill something like this in one hit" (Ratina) "I want to let it hit Nasby to see how much of a threat those muscles really are" (Auxentius) "Since when am I a punching bag for you to experiment with?" (Nasby) "Since I also want to see how much damage I can do when I hit you!" (Pythana) "It is better to have a living target to train skills on..." (Ratina) "NO! I refuse to be everyone elses target practice and I won''t be your guinea pig for testing the waters!" (Nasby) "Then you better dodge quick" (Auxentius) The zebra like thing hits Nasby square in the face, it seems to magically enhance its muscles through some skill and deals an impressive 100 damage to Nasby, which considering her level difference is quite impressive. Ratina roasts it immediately after and we all eat our fill. Nasby is grumbling in a corner about how she won''t be so easily used as a punching bag in the future. I have Ratina make a cave that goes below the mana infused ground which actually doesn''t take too long, and look through our menus aseveryone can evolve or class up now.

Auxentius class options (old ones are still available)	Farmer LV1 Rank 0 (Will remove all tamer related skills)	Villager LV1 Rank 0 (Will remove all tamer related skills)	Lesser monster chieftan LV4 Rank 3
Wise monstersageLV4 Rank 3	Resiliant monster master LV4 Rank 3	Monster craftsmen LV2 Rank 2(Will remove all teacher and sensei related skills)	Monster stratagest LV3 Rank 3

Ratina possible evolutions	Mousekin dark archmage (Dark attribute)	Mousekin archpyromancer (Fire attribute)	Mage-blooded Mouse archmage
Mouse archmage	Mousekin curse archmage (dark attribute)	Mousekin deathmage (Death attribute)	Mouse grand scholar
Mouse earth bender (Earth attribute)	Mouse fire bender (Fire attribute)	Volt mouse (Electric attibute) [Auxentius inner thought: this is the pk*** option isn''t it?]	Frost mouse (Ice attribute)

Nasby possible evolutions	Hippokin wall	Hippokin Paladin (light attribute)	Giant hippopotamus protector
Unfaltering Hippokin defender	Hippopotamus front liner	Elephantbodyguard	Hippokin crusher
Hippokin mage blocker

Pythana possible evolutions	Lamia assassin	Lamia stalker	Lesser magebane lamia
Lamia deathstriker (Death attribute)	Accursed lesser lamia assassin (dark attribute)	Lesser lamiashadow walker	Poisonous lamia assassin

Slimerene possible evolutions	Enviornmental plague slime (Death attribute)	Magic eater decay slime (Death attribute)	Gluttonous decay slime (Death attribute)
Little ball of death (Death attribute)	Big decay tester slime (Death attribute)	Rotting slime (Undead)	Noxious acid decay slime (Death attribute)

CH 17: Transform! I should first class upgrade myself before having the others begin their evolutions, having all of my monsters be level 1 at the same time is a risk, but I''d rather not have any of them get xp that will be wasted after evolving. Any class options that remove my teacher and/or sensei classes are out of the question. That narrows it to cheiften, sage, stratagist, or resiliant monster master. As far as future evolutions go, chieftan seems like it would be a better path than stratagist, although the stratagist may focus more on my mental stats that have a bonus. Resiliant monster master will likely boost my survivability, something that may be life saving in an emergency and I don''t know if I''ll keep my memories again the next time I die. The wise monster sage will probably double down on wisdom as my main attribute, and may finally give my magic skills some use, or it might simply be a higher level of sensei that focuses on buffing my monsters. Do I play it safe and boost my survivability, gamble on the ruler type class being op, or stay on my path so far and hope for magic? I remember that I can actually consult my monsters for their opinions for once instead of deciding everything on my own like usual "Just pick the sage option and focus on getting me stronger, nothing else is as important" (Ratina) "It would be nice to not have to guard you as much if you had the resiliant class, but having stronger support from the other options would end fights quicker which would also make my job easier" (Nasby) "Monster chief sounds cool! You could steal away the territories from the ruling lords and I would have an army of commrades to play with" (Pythana) "None of those sound like they will make more food, nor make the food taste better. Wait a minute..... maybe the stratagist can stratagize better food! Pick that one." (Slimerene) And this is why I make the decisions, all of their comments are for self-serving reasons. I mean, I am selfish too, but as the leader I am allowed to be. "Why do you get a pass?" (Ratina) "Because I gave one to myself as the leader miss eavesdropping on my thoughts via magic connection" (Auxentius) I end up picking wise monster sage, all of the options other than stratagist were tempting, but the potential to use stronger magic was too tempting. Why? Becauase magic is awesome thats why. +10 all stats +52 Intelligence +56 Wisdom

Wise monster sage

A master of not only knowladge, but a way of thinking. You have decided to enlighten monsters with your wisdom and show them a new way of viewing the world. Main attributes wisdom, charisma sub attribute intelligence

Analyze LV1

Able to have perfect recall and has an easier time utilizing memorized information (Example for readers: likeeasier to make a map after walking through woods and memorizing the layout)

Mana perception LV1

Mana manipulation LV1

Magic mana sense LV1

Skills available

Mana shot

Impart wisdom

Transform to inconspicuously peek on bathing girls!

WTF is with that 3rd option! I know that trope is common, but to have it be one of the class skills to choose from with that much detail is suspicious. This is the first skill with any punctuationAND it is even an exclamation point! Also why bathing girls exclusively, what if it was a straight female sage or a sage who swung a different way, does the menu deny their existance or does the skill have multiple names? For a skill with inconspicuous in its name, it is extremely suspicious, but it is also my best bet at ditching this baby body for something more usable. "pervy master, I can feel what your thinking" (Ratina) "I know, but you also know that your body is too young to be in my strike zone" (Auxentius) "I am already old for a mouse, I have my periods and everything" (Ratina) "I am also looking forward to having fun with master" (Pythana) "You are all a bunch of perverts" (Nasby) "Don''t lump Slimerene in with us, she just likes food, and not in a kinky way" (Auxentius) "For someone who doesn''t get turned on by children''s bodies, you were pretty quick to accept the youngest of us to your group of perversion" (Nasby) "Pythana is a lamia which gives her a pass, and like Ratina said she is already an adult for her race" (Auxentius) "You only say that because it is convenient for what you want" (Nasby) "You say that like its a problem" (Auxentius) "It is" (Nasby) "Is not" (Auxentius) "Is too" (Nasby) "Is not" (Pythana) "Why are you responding?" (Nasby) "The conversation felt like it was about to loop, and looping is a job for a snake!" (Pythana) "I.... I can''t even" (Nasby) "Score one for team perverts!" (Auxentius) "You planned that... I was set up!" (Nasby) "No one likes a sore loser, especially a dumb one" (Ratina) While Ratina and Nasby glare at each other and start another one of their insult competitions, I choose the skill with an embarrasing enough name to even effect someone like me with little to no shame.

Transform toinconspicuously peek on bathing girls! LV1

Able to transform your body for an MP cost of 10 MP/sec, your transformations will not affect your strength or durability and larger sizes will not weigh more.

I test it out and I can finally move about on my own, I weigh far less than someone my size should though which makes moving around feel really weird. The downside is that the MP cost is greater than my regeneration rate by quite a bit, I can only transform for a minute or so at my current level but the cost will hopefully go down as I level the skill. I am super curious about what mana shot is and why it isn''t in Ratina''s skill list, especially since a lot of my magic skills didn''t get the ability to level up from my new class, but I can worry about that more after evolving my monsters. I check the more advanced information on the death attribute from Slimerene before deciding on my monster''s evolutions.

Death attribute

All attacks are 25% more of the death attribute, death attribute damage increased by 75%, increase damage taken by death attribute weaknesses by 100%, decrease damage by resistances by 75%

As for which it is weak and resistant to, the menu will not tell me. The attributes bring both strengths and weaknesses, but if I diversify the parties attributes than it should be an overall benefit. For Ratina''s evolution the difference between a mouse and mousekin option is interesting, and I am going to avoid the drak and death attributes since Slimerene already has death attribute covered now.Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. The mage-blood and higher tier attribute options are tempting, but I choose the mousekin archpryromancer Next up is Nasby, and I quickly decide on hippokin paladin as it not only gives an attribute none of the others have, but also will likely have a stronger healing option than just relying on the first aid skill. Pythana has a lot of interesting options, we already have death attribute so death striker is out, and the accursed option sounds too ominous. Going from a lesser lamia to a lamia will likely be a good upgrade, but there will probably be more chances to do so in the future. Mage bane is intersting as killing mages before Slimerene walling them would be nice, the poison option isn''t helpful against undead but should have plenty of uses in our new area, and the shadow walker sounds pretty cool. Pythana wants the shadow walker just because it sounds cool, and I don''t see a clear reason on why it would be worse so I let her do it. Last up is Slimerene, the undead option does make me curious, but I don''t want a rotting slime around all the time. The enviornmental plauge slime is also ruled out as it would probably make us a huge target in whichever territory we travel to, and may even make humans hate us as well. Magic eater decay slime is the obvious next stage for the magic taster path, but the little ball of death and Noxious acid slime options are worth a second look. Slimerene just wants the magic eater option because it involves eating, magic apparently tastes good according to her, so I let her go with that option. While they all hibernate in their evolutions, I test out if my transformation skill can be exploited. Transforming into something denser or with launching projectiles or poison doesn''t work as something interferes with the skill whenever I try, and I can''t turn into a slime capable of quickly opening and closing holes in my body to avoid attacks. The only useful thing I discovered I can do is instead of picking a form, I can maintain the mid transformation state to make holes in my body to avoid attacks, but I also discovered that when I hit myself with magic while doing so that I take twice as much damage. So for 10 MP/sec, I can make it easier to evade attacks, but take twice the damage for getting hit. Certainly a useful ability, but one that I have to be careful with, especially around mages with aoe attacks.

Tame LV4

tamed monsters 4/5

Everyone has finished evolving now, and I check up on the new class descriptions and skill options.

Mousekin archpyromancer

A master of the most explosive and powerful flames, you burn any and all foes who dare to cross your path. Main stats Intelligence and Wisdom Sub stats none

Hippokin paladin

You guard and heal your allies from the dangers they may face, you also purify the undead and tainted lands to bring life back once more. Main stats Stamina and Willpower Sub stats none

Lesser lamia shadow walker

You move unseen by the world as you strike down your foes, often your opponents won''t even notice your presence after you have already killed in their midst. Main stats Strength and Dexterity Sub stat none

Magic eater decay slime

A decay slime can breakdown any material even if it is inorganic, a magic eater can eat the very essence of mana. You are a slime that can and will eat anything, assuming it doesn''t destroy you first. High stat Willpower Main stat Stamina Sub stat none

Ratina skill options

Fire magic: Explosion

Refined flames

Blaze of glory

Nasbyskill options

Healing aura

Fortify

Light magic: Purify

Pythanaskill options

Shadow slither (So now the menu decides not to call it walking, but not for the class?)

Corpse disposal

Shadow strike

Slimereneskill options

Death magic: death beam

Decay aura

Magebane

Well apparently main stats are not the highest tier as high stats are apparently a thing. Ratina and Nasby both became pioneers of a racial variant, but decay slimes are still not unique enough for slimerene to get it. Ratina grew taller and her hands are less sharp and more round but still pink. Her fur now has red flame like designs mixed in and her eyes now have a red tint in her pupils as well. She also now has bulges in her chest area if you know what I mean. Nasby''s snout has greatly flattened with her figure slimming down in a more humanoid shape (the boobs got bigger though), and she is still various shades of purple. The biggest difference is how she slightly shines all the time now. Pythana''s scales are totally black now and her skin seems to turn black whenever she enters a dark spot, but turns pale when hit by light again, and whenever light strikes her scales it results in a glaring reflection. She has also gotten longer and her upper half resembles that of a teenager now with a slightly expanded chest. Slimerene is gray now, is a bit larger, and thats pretty much it since she can reform her slime to look like whatever she wants. Blaze of glory sounds like an emegency skill, but I don''t know what would happen if it was stacked with magic overdrive, either something pretty awesome would happen or Ratina might explode, but I think magic overdrive is still enough for now and pick explosion because a magic overdrived explosion sounds pretty epic. I am curious about purify but pick healing aura for Nasby. Pythana has more than enough speed skills and she can just use swallow or Slimerene for most corpse disposal so I have her go with shadow strike. All of Slimerenes options are tempting, but I go with magebane as that best fits her role.

Fire magic: Explosion LV1

Decimate a 5 meter radius with an explosion usind at least 100MP, more MP can increase range and damage of the skill. Cooldown 5 minutes (10 minutes)

Healing aura LV1

Allies within a meter radius will heal faster

Shadow strike LV1

This skill can only be used when in a shadow other than your own and will be canceled if you are out of a shadow other than your own before hitting your target, Next attack +30% damage, MP cost 15, cooldown 20

Magebane LV1

Reduces damage taken from magic attacks and silences mages for 1 second when you hit them

I have Slimerene test the magebane skill on me and sure enough the silence skill prevents magic skills from being used, I can still use my buff skills but any skill with magic: in it won''t be usable while silenced. Explosion and shadow strike are greatly useful for DPS, and a magic overdrived explosion would decimate any undead armies we fight in the future. I injure myself a bit to test how effective healing aura is, but it is unfortunately a ver small difference that will only matter in long drawn out fights that we rarely ever come across, though both this skill and the explosion skill would''ve made the undead so much easier to handel if we got them just a bit sooner. I think I may finally use skill teach for blaze of glory and death beam unless any other skills really stand out.

Ratina possible skills	Burst of speed (land)	Foraging	Minor cooldown reduction	Light magic: beam of light
Dark magic: beam of darkness	Soil magic: enhanced fertilizer	Earth magic: mineral sense	Magic: Clairvoiant field	Fire magic:Flamethrower
Water magic: water shot	Wind magic: whirlwind	Water magic: current manipulation	Water magic: moisture manipulation	Wind and water magic: Weather manipulation
Wind magic: gale manipulation	Water magic: Wave barrier	Unabated mana recovery	Refined flames	Blaze of glory
Mage blood	Blaze body (Conditions not met)	Wind magic: greater air manipulation

Nasby possible skills	Camoflauge	Burst of speed (water)	Deflective stance
Body guard	Shield of blood	Fortify	Light magic: Purify
Encourage	Light magic: group blessing

Pythana possible skills	Charm	Claw	Shadow slither
Corpse disposal	Shade sight	Night vision	Desperate escape
Critical strike	Gaze from the depths of darkness

Slimerene possible skills	Minor increased regeneration rate	Minor max health increase	Enhanced senses
Death magic: death beam	Decay aura	Death aura (conditions not met)	Life force drain
Mana resistance

Death aura requires Decay aura to be maxed out, but usually skills that have maxed skill requirements don''t show up so this confuses me. Blaze body requires level 8 guider of flames, level 2 refined flames, and level 5 mage blood. Life force drain is even more promising than death beam and decay aura so I decide to use skill teach on that skill.

Skill teach LV2

Every 5 ranks of your monster you can teach 1 extra skill

Life force drain LV1

Able to drain the HP of your foes to increase your own, drains at a rate of your willpower/their willpowerx5/sec and requires contact to use

I decide to go with mage blood for Ratina as it seems more useful than another skill that will probably damage her to use.

Mage blood LV1

You have become so in tune with mana, that it seeps into your body and alters it. 5% more resistant to magic damage and 7% stronger magic attack

I am curious about Pythana''s gaze from the depts of darkness, but it isn''t worth a skill point from skill teach. It is good that skill teach can be used more than once, now there is actually a chance for it to get to level 10, but levelling up doesn''t reset the number of skills I can teach each time so the number is still very limited. I am happy with Ratina''s and Slimerene''s new skills though, and it is about time that we test out our new skills on some mobs. CH 18: Clash of the kaijuu All the creatures here are like body builders, the squirrels have legs that make up 60% of their bodies and leap around, even the birds will have buffed up necks that allow them to peck at a rediculously fast speed and strength. Most creatures also seem to use the pulsating mana to improve their physical attacks. I am at a point where I can experiment with this mana myself as I walk, although leaping from one object to another is a faster way to transprt myself. Having Ratina carry me is more comfortable though, so most of the time I just travel that way. None of the creatures in the area seem to be above rank 2, and none of us have gained any levels after 4 hours of hunting. That is when the tremors began. The earth shook with a massive sound echoing from further in the forest. It didn''t seem to be approaching but I had Ratina build a temporary base from earth magic just in case. I use my astral projection skill to investigate what is happening further in the forest. The concentration of the pulsating mana in the ground rises the closer I get to the direction, and the ranks of the local monsters rises as well. The trees also begin to become fewer, but the ones that remain are larger and larger. After about 45 minutes of flying and the earth has started to break apart from the tremors, and all the monsters are far stronger than me to a degree where I can''t tell by just how much the difference is. The source of the tremors are 2 gigantic monsters at the center of the clearing. The landscape is decimated and the grassland is littered with craters. One of the kaijuu has a shell like a horshoe crab and a bipedal form with 6 arms that is closer to an insect than a human and has spikes covering the body. The other one is a gigantic lizardman with deep green scales and both of them have absurd muscles for their already over sized bodies. The are fighting by taking turns charging up and punching the other, both are smiling and wait for the other to get up after they fall down. They also seem to use massive amounts of pulsating mana to enhance their physical abilities, sometimes they even move the mana around as a feint to misdirect their opponent. I let my monsters know that the danger is far away and isn''t focused on us so they can relax a bit, and observe the fight for a while longer. Watching them fight is pretty awesome at first, but begins to get boring after a while of them repeating similar moves over and over, so I cancel the astral form and return to my group. It makes sense that we are on the outer edge of this territory after leaving the last one, and now there is a decision to make. Do we stay hunting the weakest creatures that barely give any xp, or do we go further in to hunt things closer to our strength at the risk of getting noticed by the stronger monsters beyond what we can handle? Ratina and Pythana wat to go all in, but Nasby would rather play it safe. Seeing as all my monsters are still level 1, I go slightly deeper to where the level 2s are somewhat common as opposed to few and far between and we hunt there. I also tell Ratina not to use explosion so that we don''t alert the whole forest to our presense. Ratina and Pythana both manage to level up once, Pythana levels up her shadow strike skill thanks to me using lecture on her for the skill, and I get a new skill.

Xp assist LV1

Able to transfer up to 10% of the xp you would get for a kill to another target, xp transferred is based on how much the target would get for the kill instead of the owner

This is useful for training new monsters, but I still need all the xp I can get to catch up to Nasby''s rank and avoid having too much of a penalty for my monster being a higher rank than me. Ratina wants me to constantly use it on her but I deny her request no matter how cute she pouts or adorably she stares at me. They are quite powerful weapons of cuteness, but my defenses ultimately prevail. While I do have a new taming slot, the xp is already getting split quite substantially with a party of 5 and I dislike the idea of slowing it down even more. Instead I come up with an interesting experiment to use it for. I plant a flower seed using my farming skill and tame it, I then use telepathy to leave it a message I doubt a baby plant can comprehend, much less remember, but its the thought that counts. "I am going to leave you with a magic connection, but otherwise you will be on your own. This connection will provide you with knowladge you can use to defeat your foes and rise above your peers. If one day you become strong enough to move, you can seek us out as comrades to reach the pinnacle of this world" (Auxentius) "He went full chuuni...." (Nasby) "A speech to be expected of master, we will become far more powerful than the idiotic masses and become unstoppable" (Ratina) "None will escape the darkness kukuku" (Pythana) "I will be strong enough that no one will steal my food ever again" (Slimerene) "That wasn''t an invitation for the rest of you to start!" (Nasby) We leave the independent little flower who I will let choose her own name, and head to sleep for the night. The flower seed is tamed and has magic connection, but is not in our party.If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. The tremors have stopped by the next morning, I have Ratina carry my body while they hunt as I use astral projection to view the aftereffects. Both fighters are still alive and hanging out, seems like it was more of a friendly competition than a fight to the death. The landscape is still littered with craters, but the grass is already growing back, and the pulasting mana will occasionally kick up a large amount of devastation here so it seems that plant life here is quick to restore dead zones. That actually makes me curious about the border of the undead lands and here, I decide to float my astral body over to look at it in more detail. The flower I planted before still doesn''t have a level yet, but is already a 3rd of the way there so it should be finished growing in about 2 days. The pulsating mana concentration gradually lowers and even bottoms out to the point where I can''t sense it before after a long while traces of undead mana permeate the ground. The border is less a line and more a dead zone of mana between biomes, the few monsters that live (or "live"as the undead ones) in the mana dead zone are all low ranks with a few rare rank 1s among many rank 0s. Undead and muscly are more common, but all sorts of other ones exist with some appearing normal and others having fire or water abilities. After looking around for a while I even discover what appears to be a territorial conflict as a group of rank 3-4 undead battle rank 3-4 muscly fighters, the fighters even manage to punch ghosts with the pulsating mana so that neither side has a decisive advantage. The mana still seems like a dead zone though, so does winning the conflict alter the natural mana concentration, or does it change when certain creatures live there long enough and they are fighting to gradually change it? I initially postulated that the undead mana was spread by a singular powerful lord, but maybe all creatures influence it to a degree. Or maybe they are in a cooperative excerzise to train skills or are part of an agreement among their lords to level up by killing each other. I''ll need to debate this more with Ratina later as the others have little interest in these types of things. I cancel astral projection to return to the others and begin alternating between using lecture on Ratina and trying to figure out mana bolt. I manage to learn mana bolt by the end of the day, Raina levels up ice shard, Slimerene levels up once, and Pythana levels up lesser venom spray.

Mana bolt LV1

Fires a blast of mana at your foes to deal damage MP cost 15, cooldown 15

I use mana bolt for a while to figure out how it works while we finish up hunting. For one thing, mana bolt is even weaker than my unlevelable ball skills, and Ratina''s magic grew in strength when she got levels for them. On the other hand, mana bolt can become any attribute I am farmilar with, it can become ice, electric, dark, light, death, even the pulsating mana. It can''t however be curse magic which I have never seen beyond a possible evolutionary affinity, but any I have interacted with are fair game. I try to make one out of the place I was when I died, but that interferance turns it into death attribute when I try it. I am still hesistant to directly try to break the rules of the world at my current strength, but it is annoying how it keeps interfering with my experimentation. I also notice that using the pulsating mana makes it take less MP to make a ball of the same concentration of other attributes, and that using the base MP cost will have it more concentrated than the rest. This is likely indicated that the enviornment will affect my skill, or there is something special about this pulsating mana. While being weaker than the magic Ratina practices, the versatlity of mana bolt is far greater as I can even mix multiple attributes into a single attack, but Ratina already just learns multiple paths of magic anyway so this skill would rarely be useful for her. She still tries to learn it of course, it could lead to a future evolution and she still doesn''t have any death or pulsating magic skills. I decide to try sending my astral projection up and around to scout as far out as possible while the others all hunt. My astral projection can only travel for 2 hours upward before reaching the maximum range, and considering I fly at a walking speed that means I am about 6 miles up, and from there I can see the size of this forest as well as see quite far into the undead lands. I can see plenty of massive creatures near the centers of these areas, but there is no sign of civilization in sight. I can barely see the surrounding territories other than the undead one, so while we will travel to the closest one I can''t quite tell what they have in store at this distance. I rejoin the others and enter the middle of a fight against a 3 meter muscly spider that is constantly punching Nasby while the others team up on it. I try and teach Nasby to sense magic so that she can try and mimic using pulsating mana to fight, but as usual Nasby has little in both talent and interest in learning magic. Pythana on the other hand has much more success and manages to learn

Ki manipulation

Able to manipulate ki mana to enhance your physical prowess and deal damage to creatures otherwise immune to physical attacks.

The pulsating mana is evidently called ki, and using it allows Pythana''s pounce to have yet another skill making her go increadibly fast for a powerful strike. Even the rank 2 spider we are fighting now only survived her assassinate because she missed hitting any vitals, stacking assassination and shadow strike on a vital hit wither her dagger will one shot most enemies, especially since her dagger does bonus damage to beasts who are the predominant creature type in this forest. Despite Pythana''s insane speed however, the creatures here are used to CQC and are able to react fast enough to block or parry her first attack to avoid an instant loss, some of them even manage to counter-attack even when she ambushes them. However if they don''t notice her when she is about a half meter away or closer, they don''t usually have time to react before their heads are gone or a knife is where there heart was a moment ago. With evade detection even I don''t notice her from a distance, andif she hits a vital point she could deal substantial damage to me even with a rank and 40 levels between us. Ratina can quickly finish off anything Pythana hits, and Slimerene is far more effective tanking here than Nasby because even though ki lets them damage her, it is weaker than it would be on Nasby and her life force drain makes up the difference. By the end of the day Nasby levelled up healing aura, Pythana levelled up silent footsteps, and Slimene levelled up life force drain. I also manage to get a new skill that I think unlocked by maxing out lecture.

Class lecture LV1

Able to use the lecture skill on up to 2 targets at a time with 50% less effectiveness on each target.

In the long term this skill is equivocally the same, but hopefully leveling it up more will make it increase the total rate and not just allow more and more targets at less and less efficiency. By the next day we have another decision to make, if we move to the next area than we will begin going to lower mana concentrations than we are at now meaning even weaker hunting for a few days before entering a new territory. We could head out now, but we are still mostly at low levels from evolutions so it may be better to train here some more, and if we do delay to train more it may be better to go to a higher level area as all the fights here have been so easy we could probably split up to hunt and still be fine. Either way it is best if I scout with astral projection tomarrow while the others hunt so that we have a basic understanding of what the next area has in store. Ratina wants us to just farm this area untill we are strong enough to beat up any local lords that get in our way, but I am against that as it as that is a great way to get the attention of the regional lords and we also can discover new forms of mana and hopefully therefore new evolutionary options by exploring more. We come to a general agreement to at least get Nasby up to level 15 before heading out to the new territory unless the locals are all super weak to our party composition, or the next area is too dangerous and we need to leave this area from a different exit. CH 19: The pink nightmare The nearby area is very... pink. Everything from the ground to the plantds to the animals are all varying shades of pink with the rare streak of purple, neon green, or orange. The trees have cotton candy on their branches, all the creatures are smiling, and it looks peaceful. Anything this whimsical is clearly a hidden deathtrap of some kind, I don''t yet know how or why, but it is unsettling if nothing else. Nothing is this nice without some catch involved or a ritual sacrifice require to maintain it. I can also feel Pythana cringe through the link even though she can''t see what I am, she has a feeling she won''t like this place. The locals in the area seem to be singing cheerful tunes, and then I see the catch my paranoia was expecting, but still wasn''t quite ready for. A spider sings while its prey cheerfuly walks toward its web, and when the spider starts to drain its prey alive it still sings along with cloudy eyes and a smile on its face. Similar scenes repeat throughout the forest, creatures being killed after strolling happily staight into predators lairs and being killed without even a hint of a struggle. The scene is increadibly disturbing to say the least, the creatures don''t even realize anything is wrong asthier bodies shrivel up and die, are butchered, or simply fall out of the tree and splatter across the ground. My monsters all share in my aversion, the idea of dying without even being aware that you should be fighting back is unsetteling. This is my first encounter with mind magic unless telepathy counts, which means I also have no good way of gauging our resistance towards it. At a bare minimumthe first priority of our group is now to learn an unlevelled mind magic along with the resistances and test how it affects the others, and it is probly best to just avoid the pink nightmare if possible. I return to the rest of the party and we establish temporary names for the places we have been so far. We have Steven''s island, the unending cave, the undead lands, punchy woodlands, and the pink trap. Ratina wanted to name the pink trap as kindling, but we don''t know how flamable it is yet and as much as I''d love to test that, the last boss monster I want to piss off is one that can fuck with my mind. I try to figure out mind magic using my experience with telepathy and magic connection as a base, while using class lecture on Slimerene and Ratina while they try different methods to get mind magic as those two have the most magic skills of my monsters. Pythana can track the monsters we hunt and we only stop our practice for a bit whenever a fight starts. It takes a good 5 days before I am able to use a mrthod similar to magic connection that gives a mind magic skill, and I levelled telepathy up to 7 in the mean time.

Mind magic: distracting empathy

Impart an emotion or feeling into your opponents mind, the strength of this feeling is dependent on the difference between you and your opponents willpower

I test it out for a bit using impatience, and it can be quite effective on Ratina while she tries to focus on magic, but Pythana can mostly ignore it and Nasby and Slimerene are affected but not by enough to distract them. The more effective way of using it seems to be using a small foreboding sensation in the back of their minds, or by giving them a feeling of arrogance/confidence that makes them lower their guards slightly. Subtlety is key, enhancing what they naturally feel or altering thier perceptions without them recognizing is both the most effective and frankly terrifying method. So I obviously fill my monsters in on all the details. Slimerene and Ratina pick up the skill quickly once I''ve figured it out and learn it too. Over the past 5 days, Ratina, Slimerene, and Pythana levelled up twice while Nasby levelled up once. I levelled up class lecture twice, Ratina levelled up greater mana manipulation, Pythana levelled up swallow and shadow strike and learned shadow slither, Nasby levelled up taunt, trample, and healing aura, and Slimerene levelled up mage bane and life force drain twice each.

Class lecture LV2

Able to use the lecture skill on up to 3 targets at a time with 66% less effectiveness on each target

Class lecture LV3

Able to use the lecture skill on up to 3 targets at a time with 55% less effectiveness on each target

Shadow strike LV3

This skill can only be used when in a shadow other than your own and will be canceled if you are out of a shadow other than your own before hitting your target, Next attack +50% damage, MP cost 15, cooldown 20

Shadow slither LV1

Enhances all skills that help evade the notice of others while you are in a dark area

So class lecture boosted overall efficiency while decreasing individual effectiveness, a trade off I am happy with but Ratina is against. During a magic training session.... "Alright, most of our training so far has been discovering new skills, while this is useful, I feel like we are lacking a fundamental understanding of our basic skills" (Auxentius) "How so?" (Ratina) "Take wind manipulation as an example. We can alter the air flow with magic, but can we alter other aspects of the air? Air is a medium that sound travels through, we should test whether we can create, amplify, or restrict sound. Also what are magics properties? we can use it to move things, but does it have weight? Does it transfer more smoothly through different media? We have grown quickly and gotten alot of skills, but we have a shallow understanding of how we can apply them." (Auxentius) "If I can uhh repremess the sound thingies, wouldn''t it be easier to sneak up on people?!" (Pythana) "Exactly, we have been gaining so many new skills so fast that we haven''t had time to go over the limitations of the ones we do have. Its fucking magic for Pete''s sake, surely we can do more than shoot balls of it at people" (Auxentius) Creating a sound was easy enough, just compress the air and have a small hole the air leaks out of and you get one of those high pitched annoying sounds that could drive your enemies insane if you followed them around while doing it. Pythana ended up learning wind magic manipulation and her having fun with it didn''t make the others want to kill her any less just to get her to stop after an hour of the screeching noise going off non stop. Pythana has now picked up a habit of sneaking up on some of the locals so that she can blast the sound as loud as she can and see how high they jump when startled, and boy can some of those squirrels jump. Amplifying the sound or silencing it turned out to be far more difficult, while completely stopping all motion should be able to prevent noise from travelling,none of us have ice manipulation. This also begs the question of how ice manipulation is different from fire manipulation. I can heat things up with fire manipulation, but I cannot cool them down unless I am spreading out the fire over a larger area, in which case the total energy is still higher than when I started. If I can manipulate the amount of energy when increasing it, what is the fundamental difference preventing me from decreasing it? But try as I might I just can''t reduce energy with fire manipulation. I focus more on trying to amplify the sound, but even if I understand that I need to increase the amplitude of the sound wave, I still can''t pull it off in practice. Ratina ends up picking up ice manipulation while trying to reduce the noise, but desn''t have any success pulling it off.This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Slimerene has been focusing on better using earth manipulation, I have been using it alot to get around and am ashamed for not thinking of using it to kick up earth in the enemies eye. The stats end up making it so that the eyes don''t get hurt or have to blink from the dirt, but it impedes their vision when you maintain a layer of dirt around their eyes. We spend the next 4 months training since the current area has straitforward opponents and there isn''t any immediate danger here. Nasby to levels up to 15, Ratina and Pythana reach level 22 while Slimerene only gets to level 20. As for me, I level up a grand total of 1 time after 5 months of babysitting, the level up pace is really terrible when fighting things 2 ranks beneath you at a fraction of your level while splitting it five ways in a party. Naby learned fortify, encourage, ki manipulation, and deflective stance. She levelled up her skills that could be levelled up to 4, got trample and bunker down to level 5, and got first aid to level 10 which maxed it out. She also got bulky to level 8 and picked up light magic manipulation, though she has yet to exploit it in all the ways I am thinking up.

Fortify LV4

Increases defense by 40% if you haven''t moved for 1 minute until you move again

Encourage LV4

Remove fear based debuffs and statuses on allies in a 12 meter radius

Deflective stance LV4

Can parry attacks more easily and parried attacks do reduced damage

Light magic manipulation LV2

Ratina got both light and dark beam and levelled them up to 5, got higher tier attribute magic to its maximum level of 10, maxed out her wall skills, got electric shock and ice shard to 7, got light, and dark manipulation and levelled them to 4, got electricity manipulation to 5, got guider of flame to 3, maxed out mana perception at level 10, got mind magic resistance level 5, levelled up rupture to level 8, got column of wind to level 6, got minor arch magic to level 9, got mage blood level 4 and expanded mana pool level 6. Pythana got critical strike LV4, charm LV3, night vision LV8, and gaze from the depths of darkness LV4. She also levelled lesser venom fang to 10 (Max), dagger weilder level 10 (Max), lesser venom spray to 7, minor evasion boost to 5, rough scales to 5, shadow strike to 6, shadow slither to 5, bite to 8, hide to 10 (Max), Ambush to 9, prepare terrain to 5, swallow to 10 (Max), and camoflauge to 6. She has also mastered the ability to annoy foes by making the most irritating noises possible with wind manipulation, even though that skill doesn''t have a level for her.

Critical strike LV4

When hitting a vital spot of your opponent, has a small chance to inflict 200% damage.

Charm LV3

Able to use your appearance to bewitch your foe, for 3 minutes you will appear more attractive to your target and they will be more suceptable to suggestion. MP cost 8, affect will be based on how attractive you naturally appear to your target and is stronger with your charisma and weaker with thier willpower.

Night vision LV8

Able to see more easily in the dark

Gaze from the depths of darkness LV4

Your presence in the shadows will unnerve your foes should you decide to allow them to notice you at all, you can more easily inflict the fear debuff on your opponents when they don''t know your exact location.

Slimerene leveled up taunt to level 7, life force drain to 8, maxed out escape, magic drain, and mimicry at level 10, and got mind magic resistance to level 5. (All of us got the mind magic resistance skill, but only Nasby and Slimerene can level it) Slimere also learned death beam, but only got it to level 2. Death beam doesn''t instant kill whatever it hits, it is more like it causes the target to start withering away while dealing rather substantial damage compared to our other spells. Some testing revealed that if there is any armor, than the beam is blocked, the skill only works if you can directly hit living tissue which means that while it is stronger than the elemental ball skills, it is also harder to use against armored opponents. Granted none of the opponents we have faced so far have had armor, but that doesn''t mean that none ever will. Another side note is that while leather armor protects the wearer, the armor was damaged to the point where it no longer gave a defensive bonus anymore. Stone or metal armor was unaffected even after shooting it 20 times. I scouted around over the past four months and found another exit that lets us avoid the pink woods, but there is good news and bad news. The bad news is that it is pitch black, astral projection is effectively useless for scouting as I cannot see anything nor use magic while astral projecting. The good news is that when I went in person I could still use mana sense to see my surroundings, so if all the cretures specialize in hiding and ambushing, our party can give them a nasty suprise. Ratina can also light up the place briefly with light beam, but it is like a flash of light as opposed to a lasting light source and light manipulation uses up a huge amount of mana when in the dark territory and isn''t a feasible answer. Fire magic isn''t as bad, but has a strange situation where it costs the normal amount and does the same damage, but the light produced by the flame only goes out around an inch around the flame itself before the surroundings are pitch black again. I tried making a small widespread fire to circumvent the issue, but any flame smaller than a few feet in diameter provides no light at all. The main issue with the dark path is going to be finding our destination, there will be no stars or areial views to look for destinations and it will be increadibly easy to get lost. However the alternative is to fight monsters that can mess with my head, so the dark path is the obvious choice. I made sure to leave a trail with dirt manipulation as we stepped into the territory with our magic sense up to find foes. It was a week until we had a fight, and things weren''t as easy as I thought they would be. I figured after a few days of not finding any monsters with magic sense that the are was uninhabited, we found some weird plants in the area that had some food, and only around half of them were poisonus. The strongest poisons came from plants that gave off a glow presumably so that creatures that ate them would die and end up as nutrients for the tree, but Slimerene excels at eating anything and everything without issue. But back to the fight, we were ambushed. We had magic sense up, and still were hit without seeing the enemy coming. I should have predicted that our magic sense could be evaded, WE have magic sense evading skills after all. And it wasn''t just 1 monster, it was a swarm of elementals. there were around 50 of them, dark wispy creatures that all cast a magic at the same time. It was a debuff magic that halved our magic damage and our regeneration rates of HP and MP. As bad as the debuff was, I considered it lucky that they didn''t opt to use damaging magic as if they had chosen to all focus a large group attackonRatina and Pythana, I cannot say for sure that they would have survived. The wisps were fast, hard to detect even after knowing they were around and focusing on them, and they all cast magics that either delt damage, slowed you, or debuffed you. Pythana was like a fish in water though, she could see somewhat even without light and her shoadow walker let her move quick enough that they couldn''t target her with the debuffs to slow her. She can also intant kill them as they are evidently quite low rank and rather squishy. Slimerene was somehow able to eat the debuff magic of of us, I didn''t think that was going to work even with magic drain, but she found a way and once Ratina was at full power she just blasted aoe magic blindly killing everything in every direction. Once the battle was over and I could calm down somewhat, I began to reevaluate just how dangerous our current area is. If the wisps all shot a dark beam at Ratina instead of using a debuff magic, we would need to be able to immediately use a defensive magic for her to survive. I suppose that if they got close enough to hit us before we could do that then Pythana would be able to see them or thier steath would no longer work as the closer we are to them, the easier they are to detect with magic sense. The same could be said for most physical ambushes, but if there is a monster with a build similar to Pythana''s then they could be too fast for anyone other than Pythana to react. This leads to a difficult set up where it would be nice if Pythana could scout ahead for foes, but we need her near the center of our formation to prevent a physical ambusher from wreaking havoc. Nasby cannot constantly be using taunt aoe and she can only use a regular taunt after she identifies a target. I end up setteling for having Slimerene stay attatched to Ratina to easily guard her from ambushes, and having Pythana be on the lookout for dangers. I am overleveled enough that I should be able to take quite a few hits before being in danger, which is long enough for the others to respond. The loot is a bit odd this time, the wisps had coins that I can sense trace amounts of dark magic inside, but the menu only identifies them as copper coins. I have Ratina use dark manipulation on them, but nothing special happens. We already tried using dark manipulation to see better, but that didn''t work. We press onward with our new setup, and hope there are no more unplesant suprises. Interlude: plant life My first memory is that of being bored. The life of a seed is easy, there is plenty of food and the soil is quite comfortable. But something about having an idle mind nagged me. I felt like it was odd that I knew things, but how do I even have a baseline of normalcy without experience. It wasn''t long before I noticed the "link". There is so much information there, and focusing on it there is more than just the one... There are several creatures who I am learning things from without even realising it. I can also feel strange sensations from them, the emotions feel right, but the way they breath just feels wrong and sight is such an alien experience. It is not like I know nothing about my surroundings. I can feel the soil with my roots. The dampness, the nutrient availability, and even the slight acidity can be felt by my roots. My stem can feel the breeze, whether the air is clean or dirty, the humidity, and the temperature. It is distinctly different from the way they percieve thier surroundings, even if there are some similarities. I spen a few days just observing them, feeling the adrenaline when Pythana sprints, Slimerene''s endless hunger, Ratina being enthralled by the power of her magic, Nasby feeling like the sturdy wall that will never fall, and Auxentius enjoying the power but always worrying about dangers he cannot even sense. I cannot get a clear view of what is going on, just trace images or feelings here and there with the occasional idea or concept being grasped. I lose track of the time while watching them, but I eventually decide to try something else. Magic, I already know how it feels to use it by observing them, but as I try to locate my own magic, I feel a familiar interference. Am I really going to be locked out of magic?!

Analyze

Show known information about an object

....Cheeky bastard... Now I see whyAuxentius feels like the menu might be messing with us. What else am I supposed to do, move my roots around? Wait maybe I should try that....

Root maneuvering LV1

Allows roots to move in a burst of motion, damage based on STR, duration based in stamina

This is nice and all, but I am still not level 1 and have 0 strength so the skill is completely useless to me. I use it anyway and I can feel some change in my roots, but can''t move them at all. I try to focus on just what this changed feeling is as it isn''t quite the same as magic, and try applying the sensation elsewhere. I end up getting one more skill out of doing this on my stem.

Harden LV1

Increases defence and lowers mobility of a selected area. Defence increases 10%, mobility decreases 80%

I also end up getting a notification after a few minutes.

You are now LV1! A new world of opportunities awaits you.

I pull up my new menu.If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Name	N/A	Race	Angiosperm, hermaphrodite
Age	0	LV	1
Class	Flowersapling	Rank	0
HP	10/10	MP	6/6 (+0.01mp/sec)
Strength	2	Intelligence	2
Dexterity	1	Willpower	2
Stamina	4	Wisdom	1
Luck	47	Charisma	1
Skills	Harden LV1:Increases defence and lowers mobility of a selected area. Defence increases 10%, mobility decreases 80%
Titles	Planted by Auxentius: +1 stamina, luck, and willpower
Race skills	Root maneuvering LV1: Allows roots to move in a burst of motion, damage based on STR, duration based in stamina

Now that I think about it, trying to use magic without any MP and less than 10 HP might not have been such a good idea... But now that I do have MP I try it again.

Magicperception

Ability to sense the mana of your surroundings

Now to learn the other essentials.

Magic manipulation

Able to alter the shape and properties of mana

Magic sense

Able to make a field of mana that will detect objects within it, Uses more MP/second the larger the field

Finally I can sense the shape of my surroundings, though only in my immediate surroundings for a short while. I only have 6 MP and it doesn''t last long, I use root manipulation next and I can wriggle around a little bit, but not much else. BIT me, tore out a chunk of one of my 2 leaves and started chewing on it. This was my first direct experience with pain and it hurt like hell. I smashed that beetle with the full force of my roots and crushed it with everything I had.

LV up