Chapter 21

The march of time continued and the chill, that had been announcing the arrival of winter, had settled in over the course of the month. As the chill settled in and the autumn arrived in full regalia, the bugs, the insects and the other vermin started appearing less and less. The forest grew quieter and quieter with each passing day as the chirps and chatter slowly died down.

This made hunting hard for the moth. The chill of the autumn had already been bothering the bug and with the decrease in available creatures, the moth had been forced to undertake increasingly harder yet less rewarding fights. As a result of this unpleasant development, the creature had had to escape for its life quite a few times this past month and only had 2 Levels to show for it. Even though its Skills [Night Vision] and [Pain Resistance] had both Levelled up once to reach Level 5 and [Survive] had Levelled up to Level 3, the creature did not care about them.

It was not the case that the [Reincarnated] had not tried finding anything suitable to hunt and Level up. It had. It had even, for the past month, gone around the forest while using [Sense Essence] at a regular interval. It had hoped to find out creatures by their essences but that idea hadn’t worked out either.

Any creature that the moth found was either too high levelled and dangerous or too low levelled and useless. The moth had even tried to go after creatures other than insects but had dropped that idea real fast, once it had seen those creatures and had been reminded of its place in the food chain.

The creature was a moth. An insect. It was not a predator. It was prey. For everything else. Even smaller reptiles like lizards were out of its reach, let alone mammals and rodents. Thus, to say that the moth had been irritated at this turn of events, would be an understatement. The bug had always been a big proponent of caution and safety and with the arrival of autumn, those things had been thrown out of the window. And that had not even been the end of the bug’s problems.

As the autumn arrived and the insects began disappearing, the moth too had felt a sense of lethargy seep into its body. It was a feeling that came from within and not something foreign. The moth knew what this despite was, not knowing anything about the lifecycle of an immortal moth. It knew that before winter arrived, it would have to go into a deep sleep. It would have to hibernate. For if it didn’t, the creature wouldn’t survive the winter.

This realization had not helped the moth’s mood any. Initially, it had thought that it had its rest of the lifespan of 120 days to find a suitable creature to hunt and Level up, but with this newfound lethargy, that time period had been significantly reduced. And by how much, the creature didn’t have any idea.

This had forced the creature into even more dangerous situations. And the creature didn’t like any of it.

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Crawling out of its hideout, the creature flew towards the spider hunting ground and began its nightly ritual of hunting the spiders, eating them and then suffering from their venom. Of the three, the hunting part was the most painful for the moth, despite the venom that it had to consume later, as it could only hunt a spider after numerous tries.

And those tries were growing increasingly dangerous.

Yet, it was something that the creature had decided to do.

The white moth sighed and flew away. With the nightly ritual complete, it was time for it to begin its search for suitable prey. Thus, it flew around with the buzzing suppressed. As it flew, it inevitably crossed the clearing, where the mantis lived, and once again its antenna picked up the delicate scent of the flower. The moth stopped in its tracks and activated [Sense] and the scent immediately intensified.

But with the intensified scent, the creature also picked up the scent of the mantis and flew away without a second thought as it searched for the rest of the night but the creature’s efforts were all for nought and it gained nothing. By the time it had returned to its hideout, the moth had accumulated nothing but irritation as it had flown around in the chilly air.

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The creature had had enough.

Another week had passed and the creature had nothing to show for it. Absolutely nothing. Not even a single pitiful Level. Despite all its efforts, all of its searching and all of its self-poisoning, the creature had absolutely nothing to show for it. On the top of those massive disappointments, the lethargy that had been seeping into it had finally settled in. The creature felt a bit sluggish, it tired easily and with each passing day, it slept more and more.

This scared the creature. It was afraid that if it didn’t evolve soon then this lethargy would cause it to fall asleep and while sleeping, its lifespan would end.

This fear forced the creature to take some drastic steps. It decided it had had enough and even though it absolutely did not want to, it decided to hunt the frogs. That being said, the creature had not yet come up with a plan to hunt the amphibians.

But first, it needed to hunt the spiders. Flapping its wings, the moth took to the air and reached the spider hunting ground. As lethargic as it was, it took the creature 12 tries to successfully hunt a single spider. And it was only after the spider had been hunted, eaten and the moth had gone through the effects of the poison that it was surprised by a sudden notification.

Ting.

[Skill [Poison Resistance Lv.8] has levelled up to [Poison Resistance Lv.9]]

The creature stared at the notification for a moment in disbelief before it laughed. ‘Just one more Level!’

Buoyed by the notification, the moth took to the air and flew towards the clearing. Landing just outside the clearing, the creature used [Sense] to check for the presence of mantis.

The creature didn’t know why it had been coming back to this flower and this clearing again and again. It just wanted to see the flower one more time. To the moth, the flower seemed to be a place of solace in its turbulent life. But why the moth felt thus towards the flower, it didn’t know.

Sensing that the mantis was still present, the creature flew off and towards the place where it had noticed the frogs. And as frogs were amphibians, the [Survivor] suspected that the heavy presence of frog, only in that particular area, indicated the presence of a water body.

Cautiously, it flew towards the territory and as it neared the area, its antennas detected an increase in humidity. With its conjecture confirmed, the creature became even more alert. It twitched at every disturbance and jerked at every sound as it hurried through the foliage. It took the moth quite some time but it finally found the water body which turned out to be a river that ran through the forest.

The creature carefully soared near the water and took the sight in. There were only a few animals and creatures around the river. Some of which were drinking water while the rest where just loitering about. As it looked around, its eyes searched for the species of frog that it had noticed before. But let alone finding that specific species, any species of frogs were hard to find. ‘Did they go into hiding because of approaching winter?’

The creature scowled but kept on searching as it activated the Skill [Sense] whenever it could. Thus, it took the moth quite some time but it finally found a few stranglers in a shallow pond. ‘Now what?’

The creature had no answer.

Now that the creature had confirmed that there were frogs still around, the problem of how to hunt them still remained. It could, of course, use its poison on the amphibian but that was not the difficult task. The difficult task was to deliver the poison without endangering itself.

After all, while the frogs were still small, they were almost the size of a mortal’s finger nonetheless. This made them thrice the moth’s own size. Thus, poisoning them was not something that the moth could easily accomplish.

To be able to poison the frogs, the [Survivor] had to do something to keep its prey in one place. And the only way that the moth could think of doing so was by trapping it. But in the body of a moth, placing even the simple traps was difficult.

At that moment, however, a plan formed in its mind and the creature flew off as it began searching the area around the pond for a rather secluded or hidden location. It decided that if it wanted to hunt the frogs, the moth needed its trap to be somewhere nearby their location but not at just their doorstep.

For the next few hours, the moth searched for the perfect location; one that was neither too far, nor too close from the location of frogs and was nowhere in the immediate vicinity of any other predator that might be lured by the sound of frog’s future agony.

It found the place it was looking for. It was behind the bushes and close enough to the tiny pond that it could easily lure a creature from there. Once the location had been found, the creature began digging. But as the creature didn’t have hands to dig, it used its old method of using its mouth. A method it had not used since it had been a caterpillar.

As it dug, days continued to pass and it was finally a week after that the small moth with its even smaller mouth dug a hole big enough to trap a frog multiples times its own size. The hole was not only had to be big enough but also deep enough so that the frog couldn’t jump out.

After the hole had been dug, the creature searched the forest for the leaves that, even though at the end of their lifecycle, hadn’t completely dried off. It took the creature an entire day to find such leaves and line the bottom of the trap with them.

After the base of the trap had been secured, the creature flew down into the hole and began secreting venom continuously. The creature sat within the trap and continued to pour more and more venom out of its pores. It sat there for minutes, it sat there for hours and it sat there for a night and a day. By the time the creature was done, there was a shallow puddle of poison within the trap.

The next step was obviously hiding the trap. The creature took another day to cover the trap with thin sticks and dried leaves. It was only after the trap had been completely set, that the creature decided to set its plan in action. It flapped its wings and took to air as it flew towards the river. Entering the frog’s territory, it carefully made its way to where it had seen the cluster of frogs. Noticing that they were still in the same position, it immediately backed off.

It picked a small pebble with its mouth before flying back to the puddle. Spotting the frog, it flew over to its target and let the stone drop, which fell and struck its target with a soft thud. The frog jumped and croaked. Startled as it was, it looked around for a few moments before finding nothing and going back to what it had been doing.

The moth grimaced, despite the fact that it had expected a similar outcome. After all, the moth was incredibly small and its strength was not much. Thus, the creature had used a positively tiny pebble, which had been so small that it barely hurt the frog.

The creature flew back and brought back another pebble of similar size and once again dropped it on the head of the frog. The frog croaked again but couldn’t find the creature hitting it on the head and went back to laying around.

The moth sighed. It had not been expecting the stone to do much damage but it had not expected the stone to do so inconsequential that the frog didn’t even consider it a threat. ‘This is going to be a rough night.’

The creature repeated the process a total of half a dozen times more before the frog got annoyed enough that it frantically searched for the bug that kept hopping on its head. At that moment, the moth lowered its altitude just close enough that the frog could see it but far enough that the bug remained out of the frog’s reach.

The creature then beat its wings as fast as it could, creating a buzzing sound that irritated the already annoyed frog. As if attracted to the sound, the frog turned and its tongue lashed out at the moth.

The moth had expected it of course and had already begun dodging the moment the frog had turned towards it. And then the moth began retreating. The creature retreated a few meters and then buzzed its wings again as the frog stopped following. The frog got annoyed at the buzzing and gave chase.

The cat and mouse chase continued and slowly, the moth continued to guide the frog towards the trap. Meanwhile, whenever the frog lashed out with its mouth, the moth barely had enough time to dodge but dodge it did.

It took the moth quite a long time before frog was lured close to the trap. But even then, it was not a direct success. Since the frog moved by leaping and jumping rather than walking, the amphibian kept on landing everywhere but on the trap. This development irritated both the frog and the moth. The frog grew more and more annoyed with each failed leap while the moth grew frustrated that the frog just kept on jumping over its death.

The frustrating dance continued on for quite sometime before the frog finally landed on the trap. As the sticks broke and fell under the sudden weight, the frog let out a croak and tried to jump again but it didn’t find any purchase. There was a thud and a splash before a screech echoed from down the hole. The moth’s venom had begun its work.

As the frog shrieked it tried to jump again and again only to fail each time. The moth had, after all, taken an entire week to dig that hole. The frog kept on shrieking and jumping and the venom kept on getting splashed.

It took quite some time but the frog couldn’t go anywhere and the moth had nowhere to go, thus the moth watched as the shrieks of the frog gradually dissipated until-

Ting.

Ting.

.

.

.

Ting.

[You have levelled Up! The level up bonus of +2 HP and +2 MP granted.]

Ting.

[Skill [Sense Lv.2] has reached [Sense Lv.3]. The active time of the Skill has been increased to 3 minutes.]

Even though the creature had expected a windfall of notifications, when it experienced it again, it could only look at them dumbfoundedly. But it did not take much time for the moth to recover and it laughed. ‘30 Levels! 30! And now I am Level 78!!’

The terror that had developed within its heart started dying a slow death. The moth felt liberated. It felt free. It felt as if the weight of the world had been lifted from its shoulders.

The elation from just one hunt had sent away weeks of irritation and frustration. The creature couldn’t control itself and flew down into the trap. It bent down and bit off a huge chunk of the meat from the frog, right then and there. And the creature continued to eat until it was full. Yet, the predator had been a moth, while the prey had been a frog. How could a mere moth eat an entire frog? It couldn’t.

This left the creature in a conundrum. ‘What to do with this frog?’

The creature tried to drag the carcass out of its trap and failed miserably. As if that had ever been possible. Maybe in another Reality where the creature had the will of an ant, it would have been possible. But in this reality, where it lacked undying will of the ant, it was not.

The creature sighed and began disassembling the carcass. And as the creature had not a single knife, it had to make do with its own teeth. As a result, the creature came to know more of frog anatomy than it had ever wanted to.

The dissembling took most of the night and by the time the creature had flown all the parts out of the trap, the sun had been out for a few hours.

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The next night, the moth arrived at the trap bustling with excitement. It just needed to hunt down one more frog and it would be rid of the lethargy and this body of the moth. It couldn’t wait to evolve and change its Vessel.

Unfortunately for the creature, it was counting its chicken before it hatched. But the moth couldn’t be faulted for it.

The creature neared the trap and, almost immediately, its antennas picked up the heavy scent of blood within. The disassembling of the frog had been just as messy as one could imagine and as a result, a lot of blood had remained within the trap. The creature gritted its teeth. ‘All this work for just one hunt.’

The creature was indeed quite correct. The only thing that this trap was now good for was for getting oneself killed. The stench of blood was strong not only within a trap but also near its periphery. Thus, any creature with a scent-based sensory Skill, similar to its own [Sense], could easily pick up on the blood here.

The creature had checked. Thus, it could do nothing but abandon the trap. The moth grimaced at the conclusion. ‘If I had known this yesterday, I would not have spent the last night cutting through the meat and the flying it away.’

With no other option left, the creature began setting up a new trap. Though with each passing day, the lethargy in its body only increased as winter drew near. Thus, the same trap that it had been originally built in 9 days, took the creature 13 days to build. And the night, on which the moth finally completed the trap, also marked the beginning of the 5^th month since it had evolved into a moth.

Thus, it was on the night that marked the beginning of the 9^th month since the creature’s rebirth that it finally hunted another frog and reached Level 100. This hunt, pushed the creature’s Skill [Venom Creation], up a Level to Level 6.

-X-

Within a desolate desert, inside a dilapidated shop, on a simple chair, a youth seemingly slept.

-X-