[Your party has slain Azotreh Nightshade]
[Base EXP: 300]
[Grade Disparity Bonus: 1x]
[Rank Disparity Bonus: 0.25x]
[Boosts: Mason's Slime Slayer III grants +15% EXP, Leo's Monster Slayer XXV grants +125% EXP, Maria's Monster Slayer LXI grants +305% EXP, Alabast's Monster Slayer LIV grants +270% EXP, Izia's Monster Slayer XXIV grants +120% EXP, Zinni's Monster Slayer XXV grants +125% EXP, Mason's Monster Slayer XII grants +60% EXP]
[Party has earned 840 EXP]
[You have earned 140 EXP]
The system window appeared in front of them all simultaneously. The puma had appeared seemingly from nowhere, leaping from the shadows without giving away a hint of its aura.
Cat monsters were well known for being able to hide their auras, like most stealthy monsters based on predators. But the monster was underranked and shouldn't have been able to hide as well from the entire party, even if they weren't actively on lookout for a giant feline.
In the aftermath, as the monster dissolved, Mason sat trembling on the edge of the clearing. The original trio of Maria, Leo, and Alabast stood over the corpse with some curiosity, while Izia and Zinni talked in a corner. The siblings had looked rather upset when the message appeared, but seemed to have calmed down a bit in the meantime.
None of the three wanted to talk to Mason right now. The kid had just lost a familiar and come closer to death than he should ever have in this forest. Unless they fought someone at ruby-rank or higher, they wouldn't fear for their lives.
They'd have the talk with him later; for now, what was important to the trio was the monster.
Even during the initial struggle to reach AZ-087 before the event of divine wrath, they hadn't truly fought a single monster. Mostly, it was beasts and some slimes, which weren't counted under the Beast Slayer title, and gave the Protista Slayer title when killed instead.
They'd let Mason kill all the slimes so his next maturation would go better. Even if the little blobs barely gave EXP to the higher-ranked members, if Mason got Protista Slayer and Slime Slayer to high enough tiers, the loss could be mitigated.
But that struggle hadn't advanced their Monster Slayer title at all. During all their time in this horrid forest, they hadn't killed a single monster. It was confusing at first, until Alabast finally figured out the source of the oddity.
The barrier over their heads somehow interacted with the natural wildlife and halted monster spawns. He'd captured a Nightshade Horned Rabbit, and when it had activated a small rune on its head, the mana around it dispersed a bit.
So if this forest didn't spawn monsters, why did the entire party's Monster Slayer title activate when they killed what the system called Azotreh Nightshade?
From the twins' reactions, it wasn't the real Azotreh, confirmed when Leo opened the quest objectives window and found AZ-087 still at the top of the list. Even after the quest had changed to call the target Azotreh Nightshade, it was still clear that they were AZ-087.
They were honestly a bit stumped about them being a monster, too. While the church called most beasts and even the daemons monsters, the trio knew real monsters. It wasn't like a formerly human kid could just become a giant scaled cat either.
Before it dissolved, Maria leaned down to loot the corpse, only to receive a prompt instead.
[Cannot acquire dungeon loot without entering the dungeon]
Dungeon loot? Maria shared the message with her teammates. Leo looked utterly stumped while Alabast's eyes widened slightly. He snapped his fingers, but didn't explain what he'd figured out to the pair. Even as he began to draw in the air with fire magic, some odd collection of equations.
Maria and Leo were well used to the mage's antics, so they didn't disturb him. Right until Maria noticed something drop from the inside of the monster. Three small sacks.
One glowed with shimmering silver light while the other two shone blue. She grabbed the silver bag eagerly and looked inside through the small opening at the top, only to find the bag empty. How could it be empty? Loot bags couldn't…
Then she realized what it was as she tapped her own waist. She looked at Mason to double-check and found the pair of small bags he had been using to carry the slimes they'd captured missing as well.
She called out before tossing the bags back. She assumed they were empty as well.
These weren't loot bags; they were her spatial storage and his dimensional pet storage bags, somehow directly pulled off their persons as they fought the big puma.
She had an assumption about why these were left behind. Even if she had no idea that the puma had grabbed them in the first place, it was impossible to store either dimensional or spatial bags inside the System-standard Inventory ability. How she wished to store her spatial bag inside her Inventory. But it costs an insane hundred skill points to pick up the upgrade that allows someone to do that.
She cursed that the cat had also managed to pilfer everything from her bag.
She reattached it to her hip and stood up with a sigh.
"The puma is intelligent," she said in a monotone.
Alabast only rolled his eyes, "Of course it's intelligent. It still has AZ-087's consciousness."
"No, I mean that it stole the bags directly from Mason and me."
That got raised eyebrows from Leo, while Alabast didn't really seem to care. Dimensional storage bags were dimensional storage bags. No one ever stored something truly valuable inside one.
Leo knew better, though, and when he received a nod from Mason, he groaned. All of their quest rewards vanished like that. Taken by a damn cat. He knew it was partially his own fault for not paying attention as Mason was attacked, but he couldn't help but blame the two druids.
Weren't they supposed to be aware of the forest at all times? How could they not know about a giant cat stalking them? Maybe it was a mistake to pick up the siblings for his party, even if they fulfilled both the sage and savior roles that his party was half-lacking.
This entire trip was a disaster.
That trip was a grand success. Nicholas knew that Errazorrus had mostly done it for his own reasons, but the loot from that alone was great.
The first thing he did was drop a rabbit corpse into the dungeon nexus to get its blueprint. Errazorrus had killed six of the little things before returning
[You have gained a new monster blueprint through unconventional methods! +100DP]
[Consolidating corpse…]
[+3 BM]
[+1 RM]
Well, that was new. But not bad at all. More biomass and raw material were always a boon, considering they still had very few ideas on how to actually accumulate and generate either.
Next up was the loot that had appeared over the dungeon nexus and then bounced off of it onto the floor. It was apparently the loot from the spatial bag they couldn't take.
Mostly, it was several semi-transparent coins, mostly tin, nickel, or zinc-colored. There were a few copper coins atop the pile, and a single ruby coin glimmered in the pile.
There were some deep red cores that Analysis said were monster cores, some potions in red, blue, and yellow, and a weird shield emblem.
Within their inventory were more monster cores, a complete stack of 73 with Hoarder I enabled. The increased level of the inventory increased the maximum stack from 65 to 70, if Nicholas' theory was correct.
There were also some herbs of various species, which each took up their own slot just to annoy, and one strange item. Something called a Slime Core.
[Blue Slime Core - Mythic Core, Tin-Rank, Material]
[The Core of a Blue Slime, created by condensing the entire being of a slime into a single solid object.]
[You have encountered an object compatible with your species: Cerulean Slime. Direct absorption through system skill: Absorption is possible. Would you like to absorb Blue Slime Core? Y/N]
Nicholas turned that down immediately. He felt Fuzem scoff through the bond, but didn't care. While it had caused core instability, apparently, part of the prime avatar and nexus's nature was multitudinous. From what he could tell, the core wasn't supposed to simply become capable of restabilizing through increasing the size of the body. After all, the status sheet called the body and core different things. Even if they were fundamentally connected, would increasing the body's mass repair the soul? Probably not.
He'd have to do more investigating, but that was for later.
For now, he instead tossed the core into the eye of the nexus. He'd already begun to think of the giant beating heart as a kind of garbage disposal, so anything he didn't want went to it.
[Uni- ERR: 2114917215]
[Undiscovered blueprint acquired!]
[Perk: Node Monsters acquired and automatically obtained]
[You have gained a new previously undiscovered monster blueprint through unconventional means! +10,000 DP]
[You have gained a new previously undiscovered node through unconventional means! +12,000 DX]
[You have unlocked new perks!]
[Your Dungeon Faction: Black Dragon has crossed the 7th threshold! +10C to Mana and Mana Regeneration, +10DP, ERR:b1739999]
[You have gained 1 Perk selection!]
[Your Dungeon Faction: Black Dragon has crossed the 8th threshold! +10C to Mana and Mana Regeneration, +10DP, ERR:b1739999]
[You have gained 1 Perk selection!]
Nicholas was startled by the sudden massive gains. Who knew getting a monster unknown to the dungeon would grant such massive boons?
Plus two new perks? That was freaking crazy. So crazy that he wanted to buy them right now. He wanted to consult with the others first, so he called Errazorrus into the body of the orc. Fuzem didn't want to join and insisted on staying as the salamander champion, which was fine.
It wasn't as if the champions couldn't speak, considering that Nicholas had done just that while inside the puma. So they could carry on a vocal conversation even if Fuzem didn't want to join in on their little group.
Nicholas stood up, the orc's head brushing the top of the small cave. Even with the ants hard at work expanding the cave, it was still slow going. The little insects had a hard time cutting stone without sacrificing body parts.
As he approached the exit, tragedy struck. The powerful body of the orc, not watching where it was walking, stepped on a salamander returning with a piece of crystal firmly in its mouth.
Similarly to how they were killed before in the salamander champion after a squirrel clawed into their body, the salamander was killed instantly by the much larger orc.
[Dungeon infighting detected]
[Dungeon monster slain. +1 DP]
[Dungeon monster slain by Orcish Champion. -1 DP]
[You have unlocked a new perk: Champion Infighting]
[Multiple egos detected. Champion Infighting upgraded to: Avatar Infighting]
Well, that wasn't great. Nicholas hoped the perk would be good, at least.
Either way, he watched where he was going as the salamander dissolved into smoke behind him. After ensuring that no stray monsters were sitting in the room just behind the waterfall, he sat down and turned toward the champion salamander.
The list of available perks had expanded by only a couple. They could specialize in slimes, which was an obvious choice considering their new monster was a slime. Every time they'd gained a new monster, it had granted a couple of new specializations.
Among those others were Protista Specialization I and Amoeba Specialization I. Protista seemed to mean something different here, since most protista back on Earth were single-celled organisms, and slimes were very clearly multicellular. Amoeba was even more confusing, since slimes absolutely didn't count as amoeba.
At least it confirmed that microorganisms existed even in fantasy lands. He wasn't sure if that was a good thing. Magic smallpox was not something he wanted to deal with.
The other two specializations were Blue Specialization I and Black Specialization I. None of the three had any idea what that meant. What did it mean to specialize in the color blue?
The group collectively decided to once more ignore the specialization options and focus on something else. Nicholas found both of the others agreeing that Inferior Mutation Specialization was probably good. They had no monster labeled as a mutant, so it probably unlocked a capability of the dungeon itself, which was good, they hoped.
Other than that, they spent nearly an hour arguing about DP Gain, DX Gain, or the new Avatar Infighting. The final was a real mystery. DX Gain was good, and DP Gain would probably do something similar. They were both definitely good choices, but something made Nicholas want to decide on Avatar Infighting.
The other two basically threw counterarguments at him, but he could tell that at least Errazorrus also felt the call of the one-tiered perk attained by killing a monster with another monster and facing a penalty. Would it remove that penalty if they got it? Would they get something else?
Fuzem slowly lost her own arguments as they talked. It was true, this was probably another grand aspect of the dungeon they simply hadn't figured out. Maybe grabbing it would be best.
So, after all of that, the trio chose Inferior Mutation Specialization I and Avatar Infighting for their new perks. Errazorrus returned to the nexus immediately after. He seemed more energetic after being killed by the humans. Maybe it was a good thing.
Fuzem just returned to digging crystals out of the walls, while Nicholas went back to practicing skills. That quest from Beelzebub was noteworthy.
He completely forgot about the more than a dozen slimes stored away in the living storage part of their inventory.
[Inferior Mutation Specialization I: You can use DP during the spawning of a monster to cause it to mutate. Required DP per mutation scales exponentially. Some mutations will cost more than others.
You currently have access to Inferior Mutations and have no mutation DP cost reduction.]
[Avatar Infighting: When an avatar kills a monster, you gain what you normally would from killing said monster. Looting your own dungeon monsters also becomes a possibility with this perk. Your dungeon will not gain any DP from an invader killing a monster.]
[You have unlocked new perks: Monster Death DP Gain I, Monster Death DX Gain I]