Demonic Devourer's Development

The width and height of the passage wouldn't let me fly around, but there was enough space for manoeuvre that I and my opponent weren't squeezed between the walls. Still, the spider was much wider than me, and I, already feeling the world sharpen under the veil of my battle trance, rushed forward with an intent to use this to my advantage.

I swiped my claws at the spider's head, but it was nimbler than I expected, and more aware of its surroundings, despite the lack of eyes. It jumped back and seemed to hesitate. I knew what that hesitation was about. The insect's tiny brain needed a lot of time to decide if fighting was better than fleeing or not.

I didn't leave the spider a choice by pushing the offence with another swipe of my claws. With an angry click-clack-click of its mandibles, the spider jumped back from me again—only to pounce right back with the sharp claws on its chitinous legs aiming for my body.

It was unexpected—I thought the spider would run, after all—but convenient, since I didn't want to chase after my prey. The spider was fast—as fast as me, and maybe even a little more, but it telegraphed its movements seconds ahead. Thanks to my trance, I knew just how it would move and how to work against these movements. I met its claws with my own, and their edges, made of magic and cold air, cut through chitin with only a slight resistance.

The spider clicked-clacked again when its two front legs fell to the ground, but didn't fall—only staggered. That was more than enough for me to follow up by cutting his head clean off.

As I chewed on the spider, I thought about this fight. Yeah, the spider wasn't stronger than me, but it was fast, and in the future, monsters might be even faster, stronger, but hopefully not smarter. I got the spider thanks to the battle trance and thanks to the fact that the spider was as dumb as a rock as far as fighting tactics went. But one day, all the smarts in the world won't save me.

In Hell, I never spent much time grinding my stats. They went up on their own as I fought for my life. There was much less of fighting for my life in the mortal realm, and while my stats grew, they didn't do it nearly as fast as I was used to. I guessed it was time to change that and to train my stats. To grind them.

That required a lot of time to repeatedly do things that trained them. Good thing that it seemed that I would have a lot of time for that on my current journey.

STR was the easiest to train—all I would need to do was to find some heavy boulder and haul it around. The heavier the boulder, the faster it would train. CON was also easy, though dangerous—it required me to exhaust myself, and that would make me vulnerable. For DEX, I would need to run around, the faster the better. And INT…

INT could wait, really.

The spider didn't give me any abilities I didn't have already, to my disappointment. I guessed that all its abilities were just upgraded versions of ones I already had—like these webs. But EXP was EXP.

After that, instead of simply walking forward, I cut out a chunk out of a nearby stalactite—or stalagmite, I didn't have enough INT to remember which was which. With it on my shoulder, I ran forward, training like that all my physical stats at once!

It was, of course, dangerous. I tried to run quietly, but it was impossible, and the creatures that lived in the dark had amazing hearing. I had my sense of scent instead and used it to scent for any animals or monsters on my way. Old scents, fresh scents, bats and rats and centipedes.

And more spiders. My next one I greeted by throwing my rock at him and his giant web. But spiders weren't the only monsters I've met. Insects, in general, seemed to grow gigantic in these caves, as well as everything that crawled or slithered. None of them were much of a danger to me, but the diversity of monsters in the area was impressive.

In the bigger caves, I could even find out flying creatures like bats. Then there were mushrooms and other overgrown mold that clung to every bit of moisture. Despite what my memory told me, none of them glowed—but some animals sometimes did, attracting their prey with bioluminescence.

A fun ability to have, but if I needed light, I'd order Pest to light one with magic. Underground, though, light was a big sign for everyone to come around and try to eat me.

On my fourth day of travelling underground, I found an underground river, and after that followed it. It was great to have a source of clean water to drink on hand, even if that particular water had a very mineral tang to it, and sometimes fishes that lived in the river tried to eat me.

They all ended in my stomach, but it was entirely not fun to have a giant blind carp—or whatever—to jump at me when I was pissing in the water. And the worst part, I couldn't see them underwater at all, so each attack was a great surprise.

It's been my twelfth day underground by the time I stumbled on something truly interesting. Ruins, just like Yvenna told me—or at least, signs of presence of something smarter than giant spiders and carps. A mark on the wall, carved deep into the stone—some kind of glyph I've never seen before.

Maybe it was left by some adventurers. It was old, that was for sure—weathered, and with no scent clinging to it.

But it was a sign of things to come. What things I didn't know yet, but intended to find out before I went back to the surface.