Chapter 5

The former sorceress awakened to a terrible itch all over its body. ‘Uh, I hate this part of the Skill.’

The creature wiggled its body and–

Crack!

-heard a crack reverberate in its little hidey-hole. It frowned and squirmed even more, hearing more and more cracks run across exuviate. ‘Huh? Why are there cracks this time? There were no cracks last time.’

The creature thought for a moment but did not stop its struggle to free itself. Soon enough, its struggles bore fruit and it was finally out of its shed skin. With a sigh of relief, the creature turned around to study the shell that it had just discarded. The shed skin did not feel like a dried and removed version of its skin. Instead, it felt more like the dried autumn leaves. Its Vessel twitched before it turned away from the shed skin.

After finishing its daily rituals of shitting and dragging the poisonous leaves back to its hideout, it dug into the bitter leaves. What followed after was the usual circus of agony, aches, convolutions, quivers, olfactory hallucinations and nausea. Though, this time it could not hold the bile in and vomited all over the area next to the entrance of its hideout.

The former grimaced. ‘That would stink up the place.’

The creature covered the puke with a leaf while trying to avoid the mess as much as it could. Finishing that, it dug next to the vomit to dump the resulting mud onto it. After all, it did not want to be greeted by the stench of bile every morning. After making sure that the stink of sickness was thoroughly vanquished, the creature started crawling back to its usual plant. Though, it grimaced when it finally came into its field of vision. It seemed like it had already eaten most of its leaves in the last 6 weeks since its birth. And if the caterpillar ate any more, it was sure that the plant would die.

The thought of plant’s death brought on another thought in the creature’s mind. It was the [Reincarnated]’s rapidly approaching death and the concern for its decreasing lifespan. The caterpillar originally had a lifespan of 90 days but now that the 6 weeks had passed, merely 48 days remained. The tiny creature had lived through almost half its life and yet, it had only reached Level 40.

Where had the time had gone? The [Survivor] itself didn’t know the answer to that question. It had eaten, devoured and then consumed some more. Yet, its Level had only risen to Level 40. And now, almost the same amount of time was left. 

In future, even if the little creature maintained the same levelling speed, it would only reach the mid-80s in Level. Nowhere near what it needed to evolve. And that was assuming that the levelling speed remained the same, which didn’t seem to be the case from the way levelling had decreased in the past few weeks.

Thus, the creature had eaten and devoured and continued to eat. After all, what more could a caterpillar do?

The former sorceress sighed and crawled as it searched for another plant with the familiar leaves. It took the creature a little time but it found one quickly enough. The plant was big enough to qualify as a young tree. The tree’s trunk had begun to darken as it hardened. Yet, it seemed to have begun the process only recently, thus it still held the softness and the green look of a plant.

With a small smile, the creature crawled up the rather soft bark to reach the nearest leaf and began munching on the tasteless food. However, while munching on the leaves, it kept its senses hyper-aware.

It was as it was moving onto its 4th leaf that its vigilant state alerted it of a disturbance and the creature turned around. There, approximately 2 meters away from it, the caterpillar saw a snail almost thrice its own size. The shell bearing creature was sliding towards the same branch as the caterpillar at a glacial pace. The snail’s eyes were oddly fixated on the caterpillar as if the snail was eyeing a piece of meat; which, to the snail, the caterpillar most probably was.

At that moment, there were only 2 creatures present. The predator and its prey.

The tiny creature’s blood raced as its mind paced. The former sorceress tried to think of a way to take out the snail before the predator could reach it. But its fragmenting mind struggled.

All its Skills were defensive skills. The only offensive skill that it had was [Venom Creation]. But that Skill secreted venom from the pores on its body and was the caterpillar’s last-ditch effort to take out its devourer alongside itself. The Skill was a suicide attack and the tiny creature didn’t fancy dying again.

If it had still been a sorceress, it would have been sweating right now because it had nothing to attack with. Sure, it had its teeth but its body was soft, so very soft; one slam from the shell of the snail would be enough to flatten it like mush. 

But the creature was not a sorceress. It was not a mortal. It was a caterpillar. It was an immortal. As the reincarnated creature geared itself for the fight, the war within in mind tilted again in one’s favour than the other.

However, the reincarnated ignorant creature remained unbothered. 

The caterpillar gulped. It was not armed in any way to confront the snail that was blocking its exit. There was no escape. But then an idea struck the tiny creature; an incredibly stupid and brilliant idea which would require the creature to time the act just correctly or it would turn into snail feed real soon.

With no other option available, the caterpillar executed the idea and started moving in the direction of the snail. After crawling for quite a distance, it stopped and activated the skill, [Venom Creation]. Venom began to pour out of its pores until all of the minuscule little hairs on its body were dripping wet. 

Satisfied, it rolled around, trying to make a straight patch of venom as it rolled. It rolled and rolled and it rolled. It rolled as if its life depended on it; which, it actually did. Hence, it kept rolling. The venom from its body soon formed a path but the caterpillar kept on using the Skill to secrete more and more of the –hopefully- lethal liquid.

It continued rolling until the branch had a thick patch of poison stretching across its width. Its plan was simple; it just had to create a few thick patches of venom for the snail slid over and absorb the maximum amount of poison to hopefully die.

It just hoped that the snail was stupid enough to fall for it and not try to bypass the patch. It grimaced when another thought struck it; a lot of this plan was based on just hoping. ‘I am going to die, aren’t I?’ 

Shaking its head to clear it of the negative thoughts, the former sorceress crawled back to repeat the process. Fortunately for the caterpillar, its predator was a snail; a painfully slow creature. Thus, it gave the tiny creature enough time to make a few patches and allowed it to move onto the last part of its plan.

The caterpillar moved towards the snail this time and kept on crawling until it was just behind the very first patch of venom it had created. The caterpillar then began secreting venom again. Though, instead of rolling around, it bent down until its mouth was touching its body and sucked; taking in a mouthful of poison. The creature planned on spitting the poison on the snail when it came in its range.

By now the shell bearing creature had made its way to the way too visible trap and fortunately for the caterpillar, the snail was stupid enough to cross it over without a second thought.

The tiny creature knew the exact moment its poison began to work as the snail’s face twisted in pain. And the caterpillar took that chance to spit the venom that it had in its mouth.

It missed. ‘Just my freaking luck!’

It bent down again and sucked before turning to face the snail and spitting. It hit the snail this time and the creature hissed in pain. The caterpillar smiled. ‘This just might work.’

The caterpillar bent down again and spat at the snail as the snail crossed the venom patch; wincing and flinching all the while.

The caterpillar retreated to the second venom patch and continued to spit venom at the snail. As the snail continued to advance at its glacial pace, the caterpillar kept on retreating and spitting venom.

The tiny creature’s heartbeat quickened every time the snail crossed a venom path and it desperately repeated the process again and again. But due to the caterpillar’s lack of skill and the continuous movement, the creature got a mediocre result. At sometimes it missed while at other times it hit the snail.

When the snail crossed the final patch of venom, the caterpillar spat again and, this time, it got lucky. The caterpillar’s venomous spit had hit the shell bearing creature in one its eyes and the snail began thrashing wildly.

Knowing that the caterpillar did not have many options left, the tiny creature crawled over to the thrashing creature and bit at the stalk of the creature’s good eye, the one that it hadn’t hit with its poison. The snail thrashed even more and tried to hit the caterpillar with its shell but, at that very moment, the caterpillar pulled with all its might.

The eyestalk broke off and the shell bearing creature recoiled in pain, causing the attack to just grace the tiny creature, yet, the pain that exploded into the creature was enormous.

The former sorceress retreated a bit and then thrashed the creature with its poison covered body. The caterpillar hit the snail again but at the same time, the snail bit the caterpillar.

The tiny creature winced and thrashed the snail with renewed vigour. If there were ever to be a do or die moment in its new life, then this was it. And the caterpillar did not plan to die. It winced as the shell bearing creature ripped off its flesh but the caterpillar continued to hit the snail with its poison covered body.

The little creature hit the snail again and again until the snail’s struggles grew week. The continuous poisoning from the venom patches, the poisoning of its eyes, the ripping off of its other eyes and the further venomous hits from the caterpillar finally took their toll on the shelled creature and I died.

Ting.

[You have Levelled Up! Level up bonus of +1 HP granted.]

Ting.

[You have Levelled Up! Level up bonus of +1 HP granted.]

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.

.

Ting.

[You have Levelled Up! Level up bonus of +1 HP granted.]

Ting.

[Skill [Venom Creation Lv.2] has levelled up to [Venom Creation Lv.3]. The active time of the venom has been increased to 3 minutes.]

The caterpillar gaped. Its Level now read, [Level: 46] while its HP read, [HP: 22/51]!

6 Levels! 6 freaking Levels and a Skill Level ups from just one fight! ‘Why am it wasting my time eating those stupid leaves, when it can just kill these snails?’

But at that moment its body decided to remind the tiny creature just why it would be a bad idea to fight snails while being a caterpillar.

The bruised and battered pulpy flesh of the caterpillar sent jolts of pain as the caterpillar trembled in excitement, bringing its joy to a grinding halt. The area, from where the snail had bitten off the flesh, was leaking fluids that the creature had no name for. And now that the battle was over, exhaustion was making itself known.

With a wince, the former sorceress gave up eating for the day and made its way towards its hideout as its brain churned. The little creature had a lot to think about after that little battle.

The first of which being, why did the snail give the caterpillar such huge amounts of experience that it transcended into multiple levels? When, at the same time, it had to eat tons of leaves over the course of days just to gain one level. What was the difference? Why were the snails so much more profitable to the tiny creature?

What the caterpillar didn’t know was that the caterpillars had always been prey and the snails had always been their predators. Thus, when the caterpillar killed the snail, the natural order of death had been reversed and the hunter had been hunted. How could such an act not gain massive experience?

But the caterpillar did not know this and it continued to ponder as it crawled and winced. ‘Is it because this is the world of Kill or be Killed? Will death always give more experience than food?’

The creature shook its head. ‘If it is because of the Kill or be Killed thing, then I could surely exploit this in future.’

A smile slowly morphed itself on the former mortal’s face and it shivered in excitement but immediately flinched. It experienced what was called, instant regret. ‘Yep. That’s why I should avoid confrontation. Because I am a freaking caterpillar!’

It grimaced and checked its Status to get the reading of its HP, it read [HP: 20/51]. The creature ad 20 HP initially and it seemed to have lost 2 HP further, most likely due to its injuries and bleeding.

It sighed and stopped returning to its hideout. Because even though the thing that it most wanted to do was to go back to its hideout and use [Moulting] but it had less than half of its HP. In such a situation it couldn’t use the Skill as it demanded a sacrifice of nearly half its HP. Hence, trying to use the Skill now would be, hands down, the stupidest thing that the caterpillar could ever do.

Thus, it carefully crawled, wincing and flinching all the while, back up the tree and began to eat again. Although it couldn’t use [Moulting] at the moment, it could when its HP reached the requirement.

And, although the creature didn’t know if eating would help its situation, it still preferred it to be cooped up inside a hole while both hungry and hurting. Thus, it slowly ate while trying to keep the bleeding area as stable as possible.

It took a few minutes before the bleeding clotted over. The clotting was also helped by the fact that the caterpillar had not been bleeding blood but some other fluid that it didn’t know the name of. Although the bleeding clotted over, the creature could only regenerate 5HP over the course of the entire day.

Thus, the [Survivor] ate for the rest of the day and only used the Skill [Moulting] at the end of the next day.

Ting.

[Skill [Moulting Lv.2] has levelled up to [Moulting Lv.3]. The time required for the skill has been reduced by 4 minutes. Total time required: 5 Hours and 52 Minutes.]

Ting.

[Skill [Crawl Lv.2] has levelled up to [Crawl Lv.3]. Crawling speed has been increased.]

Ting.

[Skill [Pain Resistance Lv.3] has levelled up to [Pain Resistance Lv.4]. Resistance to pain has been increased.]

Despite the various level-ups, the creature did not feel any joy. Instead, it sighed as it checked its Status, only to notice the measly amount of HP left on it. [HP: 3/51]. Apparently, [Moulting] had close to 27-28 points of HP out of the 30 that it had after regenerating HP for 2 days. ’This is just too close. I am just 3 points away from death.’

Today had been the night for using the skill, [Survive], but because of the condition that it had been in, it had to use [Moulting] instead. As its thoughts began to dim and [Moulting] began working, drowsiness overtook it and it fell asleep.

0.0

Over the course of the next week, the caterpillar followed its usual routine or poisoning itself, eating and then poisoning itself again.

And it was during this period that the caterpillar noticed that the effects of the poison had lessened to a large degree. Although the convolutions, the quivers, the hallucinations, the aches and the pain that heralded the effect of the poison, still assaulted its body, their duration had been reduced quite a bit and the circus had been over a lot sooner than all the previous times.

It smiled and began crawling towards the new tree that it had found. Now that it had regenerated 35 HP and had reached Level 50, its HP read, [HP:42/55]. This bolstered the [Reincarnated] enough that it had decided to employ its plan. 

Reaching its new source of food, it crawled up its soft bark and began searching for a branch that was rather new and still tender. Soon, it found what it was looking for and began to dig a hole in the middle of the branch. Once the hole had been dug, the creature began to expand it from the sides, so that it covered the entire width of the branch but left it narrow enough that it could hide it by covering it up with a few well-placed leaves. After the ridge had been completed, the caterpillar filled it with poison.

Today, the caterpillar was going to hunt even more snails.

The caterpillar had given it a lot of thought over the last week. And even though it had been originally against the idea, it had decided to go through in the end for one reason alone. And that reason had been its lifespan.

With the end of the 7^th week, the caterpillar had just about 40-41 days left to live. And even though it had levelled up to Level 50 in the last week, it still required 50 more levels within the next 40 days to evolve and increase its lifespan. Given the fact that it had taken 50 days to reach Level 50 and that included the fast levelling of the initial levels and the levels from the snail, the caterpillar was not too hopeful of its chances if it just relied on its Title, [Hungry].

Thus, it had decided to hunt snails. However, it was no match for a snail. Even though it had won the last battle, it had done so at a great cost to itself. Its HP had been reduced to mere 3 points afterwards! It had been just 3 points away from death!

Thus, this time, it had decided to fight by its own rules and on its own grounds. It was not going to have a straight head-on battle. Rather it would use its intelligence and hunt the snails using traps. It planned to trap the route to reach the caterpillar with pits of venom. So that when a snail tried to make the caterpillar its lunch, it would have to cross through its puddle of poison and, hopefully, die.

Though, the caterpillar would also kill those snails that tried to it their breakfast, for that matter. The caterpillar decided not to discriminate based on eating time.

It was after a lot of effort and time that the traps were complete. Sighing, the tiny creature crawled down the branch and began to munch on the ever-tasteless leaves while keeping its sense hyper-aware.

By noon, it hadn’t had any run-in with any snails, like the one it had encountered last week. But that soon changed as the creature saw a disturbance. Its heart began beating faster and it heard the sound of its own blood rushing into its head as it turned around to observe the disturbance. And sure enough, there was a snail, sliding towards the caterpillar with hunger filled eyes. This one was on the smaller side though, barely twice the caterpillar’s size.

With its heart-pounding, it began crawling towards the trap and stopped at a safe distance away from it before activating [Venom Creation] to soak its body in poison. The [Survivor] planned on repeating its previous strategy, if the trap failed. Not the best plan, the creature knew that, but at the moment, it would have to do.

The caterpillar watched like a hawk, as the shelled creature slid towards it at a glacial pace before finally reaching the trap. The snail ignored the leaves completely as its eyes were fixated on the tiny creature.

And then as the snail continued to slide, its body didn’t find anything solid to support its weight and it fell in its trap. The shelled creature shrieked, thrashed around and convulsed as the poison began working. The caterpillar, on the other hand, waited with bated breath before crawling closer to the trap.

The snail was still thrashing and withering in pain and when the caterpillar made it to the trap, it winced. The tiny creature would not want to be in that situation, ever. But, at the moment, it could not bring itself to feel that bit of guilt. It was ‘Do or Die’ and it, sure as hell, did not want to die.

The snail, still flinching, tried to make its way out of the puddle but as soon as it was within its range, the caterpillar hit the would-be predator, as hard as it could, with its poison covered body, making it fall back in the trap.

The snail shrieked, but it did not give up and, once again while wincing and flinching, the shelled creature tried to make its way out of the puddle of venom. The caterpillar was there though, waiting for the snail, and the tiny creature hit the shelled creature with the tail end of its body.

But this time, the snail had wizened up and tried to bite the tail end as the caterpillar’s body raced towards it. The snail’s teeth grazed the caterpillar and tiny creature flinched back in pain.

The snail, on the other hand, advanced as it tried to make it out of the puddle while the caterpillar was busy licking its wounds. The caterpillar had no intention of letting the snail out of the trap though, and it shook itself and crawled forward. This time the tiny creature was aiming for its shell when it tried to hit the snail.

It struck.

It winced. ‘That was stupid! Incredibly stupid!! Why in the world did I think that it was a good idea!?’

The snail’s shell was as hard as a rock and when the caterpillar hit the shell with its soft and pulpy body, it had been like slamming its face into a wall.

‘Ugghh…’

But then, fortunately, the shelled creature went limp as it died.

Ting.

[You have Levelled Up! Level up bonus of +1 HP granted.]

Ting.

[You have Levelled Up! Level up bonus of +1 HP granted.]

.

.

.

Ting.

[You have Levelled Up! Level up bonus of +1 HP granted.]

Ting.

[Skill [Venom Creation Lv.3] has Levelled up to [Venom Creation Lv.4]. The active time of the venom has been increased to 4 minutes.]

It grinned as it checked its status to find that its Level has risen to Level 56 and its HP had become [HP: 38/61]. It almost laughed. ‘6 Level ups and 1 skill Level up for the loss of just 5 HP! Who wouldn’t want that!’

That caterpillar crawled forward and bit the snail before trying to drag the creature out of the puddle. After all, it still had leaves to eat. Gasping from the effort, it dragged the creature out of the puddle and towards the crook of the branch. There, it turned around and hit the snail, once again, with the tail end of its body causing it to fall.

Thud.

The dead snail fell on its shell and got stuck in the ground, upside down. But the caterpillar cared not and merely shook its head before crawling towards the puddle and filled it up again with its poison. The snail, after all, in all its thrashing and quivering, had caused the poison to spill out of it.

After it had restored the trap, the creature gave it a once-over and found it to be still in good condition as the snail hadn’t managed to damage it much. Nodding, the little creature made its way over to the leaves and began munching with its senses still hyper-aware.

It was in the afternoon that it once again noticed the disturbance, though this time, it wasn’t coming from the back, but from beneath the caterpillar. There was something on the ground. As the tiny creature watched, a large scorpion made its way over to the dead snail.

The scorpion looked around carefully before chomping down on the soft meat of the dead snail and the caterpillar winced. ‘Is that scorpion an idiot? Can’t it tell that the snail is poisoned?’

The caterpillar watched in morbid fascination as the moron of a scorpion ate the complete snail and began to walk off. The little creature waited for its poison to kick in, for it surely would.

So, it waited.

And the creature walked.

And it waited.

And the creature walked.

And it waited.

And the creature walked until walked out of its sight and its range.

Without any ill effect from its poison.

‘What.’ The creature gaped for a moment before feeling embarrassed and angry at the same time.

‘That snail had been dripping to the brim with my poison!’ It fumed. ‘And that scorpion just shrugged the poison off like it was some oriental spice!’

‘F*** you scorpion! F*** you too!’

The rest of the day passed in relative peace for the caterpillar; that is until the sun began to set. The tiny creature felt another disturbance and it turned around to face yet another snail.

Silently, the caterpillar watched as the snail slid towards it. It waited patiently, for the snail to fall into the trap. And when it did fall, the shelled creature screeched but the tiny creature ignored it and made its way towards the hissing and flinching snail rolling around in the venom puddle.

Finally, the snail tried to make its way out the puddle. But as it neared the caterpillar standing guard, the caterpillar bent down as fast as it could and bit at the snail’s eye stalk before pulling with all its might.

The snail almost made it out of the puddle when the stalk ripped off of it and it flinched and shrieked in pain. Taking advantage of its distraction, the caterpillar hit the snail, sending it back rolling into the puddle. The snail hissed and flinched for a few moments before again trying to slide out of the puddle. Though as it neared the caterpillar, this time it rushed forward, trying to bite the little pest.

The caterpillar flinched back when the snail moved. Still, the snail reached the little bug easily and almost bit off a chunk.

Trying to avoid the mollusc’s bite, the tiny creature moved again and bit at the remaining eye stalk before pulling harshly. The green bug’s pull caused the snail to make it out of the puddle as the eyestalk broke, causing it to shriek and hiss in pain.

The caterpillar’s heart raced as it began to panic but, then, common sense kicked in so it spat out the eye and head-butted the snail, causing it to fall back into the puddle. The creature screeched and thrashed around as it rolled in poison before its movement finally came to halt.

Ting.

[You have Levelled Up! Level up bonus of +1 HP granted.]

Ting.

[You have Levelled Up! Level up bonus of +1 HP granted.]

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.

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Ting.

[You have Levelled Up! Level up bonus of +1 HP granted.]

The green bug grinned manically. ‘5 Level ups and not a single HP loss! Brilliant!’

Though, it noticed, none of its Skills had Levelled up this time. Still, overall, the haul had been good enough. Smiling, it once again began dragging the giant ass corpse of the snail as it gasped and did its utter best to make it move.

Finally, it dragged the corpse and threw it down. It left the tree soon after that and made its way towards the poisonous tree for its daily routine of trying to Level up its skill.

After having its fill, the little bug waited for the poison to hit with bated breath. It took the poison even longer than usual to hit and when it finally did hit, it not only lasted for a shorter time period but also had far few effects. Hallucinations hadn’t occurred this time and neither had it experienced nausea, resulting in a vomit-less experience.

Tired from the convolutions, the caterpillar made its way towards the hideout. Reaching the hole, that had somehow become its home, it settled down. The creature thought about using [Survive].

As it calculated the amount of HP required to use the Skill, it came at a number somewhere near 33-35 and let out a laugh. ‘That much HP loss would have killed me just a few months ago!”

-X-

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

-X-

Spoiler: Spoiler