Chrysalis

The Marsh Expanse is teeming with monsters and the constant roar of battle. I have a ton of Biomass that I need to collect and a whole host of skills that I need to grind. With Tiny and Crinis by my side I feel perfectly confident wading into the expanse and beginning to battle.

Monsters are fighting in every tree, on every mound of earth and inside every tepid pool of marsh water. The three of us barrel into the expanse and begin to battle everything that we can see. Tiny is in his element, smashing his fists in every direction, his massive hands thumping and grabbing monsters the moment they fall within his reach. His incredible punches hit with the force of a solid truck and smaller beasts are sent flying out, slamming into trees and splashing into the water as Tiny hoots and bellows his rage and joy.

With her new mana detection sense, Crinis is a menace. No longer reliant on the sense of touch, forced to reach out in every direction to find her foes before she can apply her damage, she know lashes out with precision. Her tentacles reach in every direction, latching onto monsters and binding them before they can blink. Once a creature is entangled by her limbs, it's over already. Inevitably, more tentacles latch on the foe, winding around arms, legs and torsos before she twists and tears, her barbs extending and rending them apart. Those monsters unfortunate enough to get too close, seeking to attack her spherical main body find an even more unfortunate fate, snatched up by tentacles that suddenly unfold from her body and then forced into her gaping maw wherein her frightening teeth gnash and disintegrate them.

For my part, I am intent on training my skills. Both of my sub brains are engaged in maintaining a mind magic transformer and casting mental spells. This involves forming a mind bridge with the foe and then utilising it to send magical constructs that essentially detonate in their mind as false stimulus. With my sub-brains and my even my main mind engaged in this activity, I keep things simple as much as possible with my physical fighting.

Bites, bites and more bites. Shattering bite is a higher level than my other two bite skills, Splintering chomp and Tearing bite, so the latter two and skills I focus on. With my mandibles infused with mana from my core, my mandibles transform into engines of destruction that these newly spawned monsters are unable to stand before.

In this manner we spend several hours battling to our hearts content until we emerged from the expanse and stumbled back into the shortcut, stopping up the entrance behind us and collapsing in a heap. Battered, bruised but satisfied, the three of us cleared out the monsters in the shortcut before taking a quick break. We have battled hard, eaten as much as we could and our relentless focus on our skills have reaped dividends.

you go Tiny?] I enquire

nodded. [I punch

you manage to improve your skills?] I ask,

he shouted, thrusting one

not going to get much more

you, Crinis? All things on the

quite satisfied with my skill progression. I believe I'll

don't really have to worry about how useful you are…] I tried to tell her, [it isn't

[as a pet we must be useful to our Master! It would be disgraceful if I

far from useless. I almost feel bad that I can't defeat monsters much faster than my own pets. I suppose if I was to start dropping gravity bombs everywhere that I would be racking up experience faster, but the unintended side effects of casting that spell are what worries me. For example,

rest, rotating the position of guard to keep the spawning monsters out of our hair, we saddle up and cut our way back into the expanse for the second round. This expanse really has some interesting monsters in it. More of those stupid hippo turtles have appeared, along with some monster types I hadn't really seen much. A few scraggly looking ape things, a plant that looked like it had been crossed with a mosquito took a chunk out of Tiny before we even realised it was there. With a long, ludicrously pointy, needle like barb emerging from the centre of the plant it looked menacing enough, but we didn't expect it would be able to extend that needle out