I flew for days through the Abyss, but I couldn’t find any flying cities, and the system didn’t tell how I could find them. Considering my new level and strength, I flew a truly vast distance.
Maybe the flying cities are farther away? Or maybe they’re much higher up. All I know is that during my ti flying, I managed to see much more of the Abyss. I even found three more cities along the way.
I also ca across so strange bios, but the real problem is the current bio. It’s a place full of holes and leafless tree trunks; it almost looks like a giant cheese wheel because of all the holes in the ground.
Each hole is about a ter wide, and they’re everywhere, so I can’t tell if it’s sothing made by a creature, or if it’s natural, since the Abyss bios are kind of bizarre.
The real problem, though, is that in the middle of this bio my wings lost strength. It seems the gravity in the sky at this point of the Abyss is so high that it slamd violently toward the ground. Of course, "violently" in this case ant the act of forcing down—I wasn’t actually thrown into the ground.
And that brings us to the second problem: hunger. The spider girl fed every day since I needed to produce milk constantly, and because I ate every day, my body never got used to going without food.
That’s the big downside of the Devourer passive: I’m always hungry. My race was supposed to adapt and stop needing food at so point, but the Devourer passive sses with that.
’Damn, I’m so hungry...’ I retract my wings and make them disappear since I can’t fly in this place. The gravity is too heavy up to about halfway up the trees, which leaves at most a five-ter space where gravity is normal.
"..." I get chills being in this place. I approach a hole and look inside. It seems to be a complex network of tunnels, so I can’t see everything, only until the tunnel curves.
’There’s no way this digging is natural...’ The shape of the tunnels even looks natural, but I lived 400 years underground watching and feeling spider girls dig tunnels.
Unlike humans, demons, or other beings from the planet, Abyss monsters build things by instinct. Their constructions use nature and the environnt itself to build things that last a long ti, leveraging the environnt’s strength.
’But what dug so many holes?’ I can’t comprehend the shape such a being must have, but it probably isn’t very large since each hole is at most a ter wide.
"Parasite... yeah, it must be a parasite..." I leave the ground, climbing a tree. I deduce it’s a parasite because the environnt is so empty, and the first ti I saw an environnt this empty was with that parasite that latched onto my flesh.
"A parasite that lives underground, huh... So it’s obvious it chose this environnt because you can’t fly around here..." This sucks, since I only started noticing I was falling after I’d already advanced deep into this bio.
My wings had managed to keep airborne despite the gravity, but it kept pushing down slowly until I realized it.
"System, could you answer ? If I devour many of these parasites, can I steal a characteristic? Or how exactly does it work for to steal characteristics?" I ask, filled with doubt.
[I cannot answer much about that, but the system can inform you that, should you fail to steal a characteristic of a species by devouring one individual, you will still have a new chance every ti you devour a new individual of that species.
Therefore, eating many beings of one species ans you will have the chance to eventually steal a characteristic.]
"Hmmm, that’s what I thought..." I asked about the parasites because non-parasitic beings around here I usually only find one specin of, like that lightning girl, or the one with giant hands, and even the spider girl I had only seen one until she started having kids using .
"Why does the Abyss have such a scarcity of different beings?" I ask with genuine curiosity about this as I start leaping from tree to tree.
[The Abyss normally does not have many beings of one species visibly close to each other because, lineages in the Abyss branch out rapidly based on abilities.
Thus, if a being has 500 children, those 500 children will resemble it at the start, but over 40 years, those 500 children may awaken abilities or suffer mutations that will change them greatly.
Naturally, this change will make them appear totally different from what they were before. Rarely will they have the sa appearances, and sotis their appearances change so much they might as well have beco different species.]
"Oh, I see... Ah, yes, that makes a lot of sense. It also explains why parasites tend to look the sa..." It doesn’t make sense for parasitic beings to mutate or change appearance.
That’s because their bodies are already made and specialized for that function, and changing would interfere with their parasitic purpose, so they’re all identical to each other.
’Interesting... So maybe I’ve already seen several beings of the sa race, but didn’t notice...’ The mutations and changes in them are bizarre if it’s so extre they seem like a new being.
’Wait, didn’t I also suffer a mutation that changed my body?!’ Now that I think about it, I went through that too. I got bigger, which might not seem like a huge change, but getting bigger ans everything inside my body changed and rearranged, and my appearance changed a bit.
"... System, I... Hmmm!?" As I jump from one tree to another trying to talk to the system, sothing hits my face and knocks from the trees. Sothing grabs my throat and latches onto my face, digging into it violently.
"!!!" It completely bypassed my detection, and that’s irritating. It seems the Mana detection I have is useless in the Abyss, since most monsters here bypass it as if it were nothing.
"..." Sothing pierces my throat, opening a hole, and goes inside, descending through my esophagus down to my stomach. Blood starts trickling down my chest as I grab this thing and pull hard, squeezing it tightly, feeling it cutting inside as it’s pulled.
"...Ghmmmiikkk!!!" I manage to pull this thing off my face and see it looks like so kind of arthropod. It has eight sharp legs with 19 joints, allowing for absurd leg movent. What it shoved into my throat is a kind of stinger dripping purple poison, probably anesthetic since I can’t feel my throat.
"You little worm." I crush it violently against a tree. It writhes, trying to run, but I squeeze, crushing the back of this thing. Its stinger coils around my arm, piercing my vein and trying to inject poison.
My body starts to beco paralyzed, but quickly develops antibodies to cure the poison. After years of being poisoned by the spider girl, Abyss poisons have beco easier to adjust to.
"..." When it stops moving, I bite it, tearing its flesh. The taste is real shit, like everything in the Abyss. Nothing here is tasty, and its blood is sowhat acidic, but I eat it anyway as my throat regenerates.
’I wonder what it was trying to do in my stomach...’ It was going to do sothing, but didn’t have ti because I tore it off . It hurt my face a bit because its legs anchored firmly, but it doesn’t matter since I can regenerate.
"You know, you could have at least tried to shove it in my mouth instead of piercing my throat... that way I could have bitten your stinger off," I spit the blood of this thing on the ground while dropping the rest of the carcass, which dries quickly.
’A pretty potent anesthetic...’
"System, why is it that every parasite I encounter can so easily destroy my defense and inject anesthetics into ?" This is frustrating. My mana armor got stronger, so why was it broken so easily?
[Parasites in the Abyss have evolved so that, despite their low level, they can penetrate any form of unnatural defense. This ans their stingers, tails, teeth, and claws can easily pierce Pure Mana.
Thus, they completely ignore the defense. They simply cannot penetrate natural defenses like scales, plate bone armor, and other defenses the body generates naturally.
This allows these parasites to easily latch onto any predator that relies on Mana and skin resistance to defend their bodies.
In return, the parasites have lost almost all defense, since they focused 100% on the ability to injure their targets, no matter how strong. This ans a level 100,000 parasite can pierce the Mana defenses of a level 1 billion monster without problems.]
"Fuck?!! How the hell can that be considered balanced!!?" It seems I have a weakness against parasites, then, since my body has no scales, natural armor, or any ans of defense, making rely on Mana to defend my body.
"..." I look at the holes all around. Seems I found the owners of these tunnels. Not wanting to be caught off guard again, I climb back into the trees and start paying more attention to what’s in my path while trying to ignore what just happened.
’For now, I’m learning more about the Abyss’s ecology than what I actually want to know...’ It’s not useless, but it’s also not what I wanted to learn. I know learning more about how the Abyss works is useful, but also, most lessons co with a bad surprise.
’They focused everything on attack and abandoned defense... I wonder if I can steal that characteristic from the parasites?’ I think about whether it’s worth going down and eating these parasites to get an ability to pierce mana like they have.
"Maybe..." I’m still not sure. After all, if a single one pierced my throat, then if I’m attacked by several, I’ll have more holes in my body than a piece of cheese. Just looking at the holes in the ground is enough to know they’re not playing around.
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