12 Chapter 12

"Meet monsters:

- Common earthworm x68 (easy, worthless)

- Common earthworm+ x26 (easy, fangs worth collecting)

- Field mouse x11 (easy, fur worth collecting and edible meat)

- Field mouse+ x2 (medium, fur worth collecting and edible meat)

- Lesser basilisk pup x3 (medium, magic ingredient, worth collecting)

- Corpse-eating fly larvae x23 (easy, worthless)

- Corpse-eating fly x19 (medium, worthless)

- Corpse-eating fly mother x1 (hard, worthless)"

The list keeps getting longer and longer. I left the hidden tunnel and sat down close to the way down. I am dissatisfied with the fact that I have no use for killed flies. The dungeon seems to function in a certain way... The side corridors are home to stronger groups of monsters and contain rewards at the end.

I wonder if after some time there is something interesting waiting in the same side tunnel again? That would be worth checking out.

After a while, I got an idea and started looking for options on the tablet.

I found this! Alarm if something is approaching. The crystal tablet can scan the environment, identify things and count the monsters... It had to have that option too.

I turned this on full of joy. Sadly this is only a 1-meter range... I took my sweatshirt out of my bag and rolled it into something like a pillow. I managed to fall asleep.

Sleeping in this place turned out to be a big challenge. On average, the alarm woke me up every half hour to warn me of the threat. The only plus is that I haven't had any nightmares. After 8 hours of intermittent sleep, I decided to move on. I didn't feel much rested. I started going down the winding tunnel.

It turned out to be quite a long walk. Half-hour! On the way, I met a lot of larger earthworms. Killing them wasn't much of a problem for me anymore. Thanks to this place, I really developed my skills quite quickly. The fire also achieved a nice purity. My only regret is that I haven't had a chance to practice the practical use of darkness.

Downstairs, a slightly different environment awaited me. This place was covered with numerous trees whose branches covered the entire ceiling like a mighty net. Single thin lianas covered with glowing flowers hung from the branches, and the corridor was covered with short grass. Numerous shrubs and taller grasses grew along the walls.

- Nice place... For sure. But also a lot of hiding places...

Since the environment looks different, there are definitely other monsters here as well. I haven't had the opportunity to learn about their behavior yet, so it's an additional difficulty on my way. The tablet also doesn't seem to know what I might encounter here until it gets in my way.

Slowly, I moved into new territory and looked around very carefully. Any abnormality in the environment may herald my future opponent.

I noticed movement on the trunk next to me at the last moment. I jumped away from that spot and now I noticed what was sitting there. A spider whose armor looked very much like bark!

I was about to use magic when I realized it could end badly here. There wasn't as much moisture as above, and there were plenty of plants... But usually, very dry forests are on fire... I swore silently and threw a fireball at the spider. This one, however, turned out to be quite fast, and moved away from my attack at the last moment. He didn't owe it long and shot a sticky spider web at me like a gun!

- Ewww... Disgusting - I said.

My hand was now covered in a spider's web. I dodged another shot and moved closer to this spider. I used my fire magic again and this time fireball reached this spider! I heard a thin squeak. Ha! You don't like it, do you? The tree had only a darker mark from contact with my fire. So it's not that easy to start a fire here. The spider was still alive, so I quickly finished him off with a second fireball.

Baby trunk spider - tablet information. It is medium difficulty and its webs are cheap clothing material! Armour is too weak to be useful. I looked at the piece of net on my hand and removed it after a while of difficulty. It stuck hard. I put it in my bag as a little souvenir.

Of course, I checked the plants I encountered to see if they turned out to be something valuable. It wasn't long before I found another spider. It almost fell on my head. I roasted it crispy with my fire breath. Haha! I also noticed that the speed at which I can attack with my magic has also improved. I felt good about it, maybe even too good?

After a long search, I found lianas with a slightly different color of the flower. Bingo! Edible flowers! According to the information on the tablet, they have quite a pleasant taste. Nothing more, but it's still food! Of course, I checked the taste and it is indeed quite pleasant. I managed to collect most of them, but there were still the highest ones. About 4 meters above the ground.

I decided to try differently. I climbed a tree and soon I was hanging on a branch. They fit pretty tight to the ceiling. I have no other way to reach the flowers. And I could see why the branches grow like that... The mana veins are very dense here.

The branches of the different trees also look like they are in a constant battle with each other. The stronger the tree, the more mana veins it can take... Even the plants are at war here, but that's normal too. In nature, trees have quite a few tactics to survive. For example, infecting the ground with substances that are poisonous to other plants...

I had almost reached the flowers when I noticed that another spider was approaching me! My options here are very limited. I struggled to take a deep breath and blew flame at the approaching creature. The spider fell down but unfortunately was still alive. He's probably going to attack me again soon when it gets close.

I decided to act quickly and simply plucked the lianas with useful flowers and dropped them to the ground. It's the fastest I could do. The spider was already halfway to me. I sighed and jumped down. I felt a little pain in my legs, but I wasn't injured. It wasn't that high.

The annoyed spider looked at me and after a while, it bounced off the tree to jump on me! Unfortunately for him, he collided with a fireball in mid-air. After that, it was just a spider corpse on the ground. I feel a little anxious. Spiders are not a big problem for me here, and it should be getting harder... Most likely, I haven't encountered the main threat in this place yet. Spider babies can be a kind of filler.

At least that's what I had guessed. I put the rest of the flowers in the don't-go-bad container. After that, I sat down to eat my meal. I had some sandwiches I made for the herb hunt... But I'd rather save them for later. I've eaten some flowers and berries now.

In the long run, however, I wouldn't be able to eat so many flowers. They taste good but are specific. Then I remembered something important. Egg!

I checked the pocket in the bag and there was... A larva? A feeling of despair flashed across my face. Will I own a pet that turns out to be a corpse-eating fly? Will I be king of the flies? Will everyone run away at the sight of them? Flies will start terrorizing the area? I shook my head and looked back at the baby larva lying in the moss.

It can't be that bad, right? My next thoughts were to worry about what this creature might eat. Maybe this time the crystal tablet will prove useful. After some analysis, I saw the following data on it:

"Formable Larva. After concluding the contract, the owner has an influence on what it will develop into. It can eat anything offered".

Did that sound like cheating? I know the rules of contracting with a magical animal, but... I'm not sure I'm up to the challenge. The costs will surely be huge. I look at the animal and see that it is slowly eating away at the moss that was served to it as bedding.

I took out a sheet of paper and, following the instructions on the crystal tablet, began to draw the runes. The size of the magic circle depends on the size of the animal, so a simple piece of paper was enough for me. The larva is tiny and weak, so making a pact won't be difficult. It is impossible to make a pact with an animal that is too strong. Making such a pact costs energy proportional to the animal's current strength.

I carefully took the writhing rather desperately worm out of the bag and placed it in the center of the magical pattern. The next step was to use my magic on the runes.

Everything happened more abruptly and faster than I thought. Immediately I felt a powerful drain of energy from my body. I was close to losing consciousness. With the last of my strength, I looked at the three-centimeter-long animal that started crawling toward me and it finally got to my finger and stayed there. It worked! I got a familiar! But why did it make me so tired?

I gave the larva some flower petals. I took out a sandwich and started eating it. When the specter of eating only fruit, flowers, and other plants hangs over me... I really appreciated the taste of the sandwich.