Propagate: A survival litrpg

Day 5

I know exactly what the modification did even though the system doesn't want to tell me. From now on, I've decided to attribute any weird stuff I just happen to know for some reason to my newest skill; [Sense of Self] which just makes me better in every way, apparently. As for the modification, the integumentary system, which affects my skin, hair, and nails, has effectively upped the quality of everything.

My nails and hair grow faster. My nails are more durable and sharper, but not animalistically, unlike a tiger that has hooked barbs, I still have human nails. My hair is also more.. Luscious? It has the effect of a post hair wash, with just water, no shampoo. And my skin, it's tougher, but also more elastic, and I think I can regenerate (my skin) a little faster.

Anyways, for the past hour, I've been weaving a quiver out of bindweed. I stuff as many arrows as possible in there, as well as a hollowed out stone filled with mashed up poisonous fruit. When I apply the poison to arrows, the effect majorly wears off after like an hour, so I'll just apply the poison fresh, right before I fire.

Today is the day, i'm gonna go on a killing spree. I have my bow, arrows, poison, and some spare frog meat for a road side snack. I'm gonna power level [Tracking], [Dismantling], [Aim], and [Archery].

I take my bow, and sling it around my left shoulder, the rudimentary quiver on my back peeking out over my right shoulder. Then, I activate [Tracking] and take off into the forest. It's a cloudy day today, so the sky is darker than usual.

15 mins or so later, I find a target. I instantly hide behind a tree and poison an arrow. I twist around to see what it is. I see a porcupine, hot rod red, with yellow halfway up its spines, which are huge by the way. Its head isn't cute at all, it looks like a pissed off bear by default, wide open toothy jaw hanging, with rage flaring in its wild eyes.

From what I've seen of other animals in this world, I can guarantee it fires those spines as a ranged attack. It doesn't have armor like the bulwark frog, so I just aim the arrow near its head. For the record, this thing isn't standing still, nor is it small, in fact, this thing's spines are like 5 feet long, they reach up taller than me, and I'm 6 '2. Its head reaches up to my torso, and its body is like 7 feet wide.

My arrow strikes just below its neck, into the bulk of its torso. It shreeks, and its head immediately snaps to my location. It takes a weird stance, its needles, (more like pikes) shift in place and aim towards my tree. Then they eject like a bullet, with an explosive sound, right towards me! Rather than fired at me it's more like in my general direction. Like a gun, the now empty holes the spines shot out of, have smoke billowing out from within.

I don't trust the tree to hold up against them, so I run away with the tree directly behind me. Which was a good call, because as soon as I was 20 feet away pikes pounded into the tree, which then exploded. The tree and ground around it was reduced to ash and rubble, and the beast started running at me. Luckily I wasn't distracted, and I coated three arrows with poison. I fumbled with them in my hand, but I decided to just fire all three at once, which my bow wasn't made for. As one might expect, the up and down arrows don't go straight, but they did hit it. The down arrow lodged into its knee and the up arrow went into its back, between a bunch of its spines. The main arrow goes right between the eyes, and the beast goes down, careening to a halt just a few feet away.

< lv14 Propellent Porcupine Slain 814 XP acquired>

< you have leveled up! x2 LV5 -> Lv7 | +2 SkP +6 StP>

< Experience threshold reached. Acquired skill: [Poison Application]>

<[Archery] Experience threshold Reached. Lv3 -> Lv4>

I dragged the porcupine's body back to camp, before I set off again in search of more prey. Of course, this forest is full of animals, but 90% of them aren't worth the hunt, they're all reminiscent of regular earth animals, all between lv1-3 and the same size as I remember. One time I tried to kill a lizard the size of my index finger to see if I could harvest souls easily, and I didn't even get a kill notification. Only these big mutated ones actually help me grow, which is why it takes me 30 minutes to find things to hunt in this massive forest.

I walk at a brisk pace, Scanning the floor littered with leaves and twigs, searching for any signs of animal trails. I find a familiar sign, and multiple of them. More out of curiosity than bloodlust, I follow the trail and shortly come across a big pack of those overgrown rabbits. I counted and there's 14 of them, all grazing lazely and hopping around. Except for one, a rabbit a bit bigger in the middle, colored an angry dark red with bulging muscle in its legs and jacked arms. Yellow veins course throughout the gym bunny's bulging arms and legs, its ears are doubled, another right next to the old ones, and three horns sticking out between its eyes, and curling upwards.

It's arrow time! I coat three arrows in poison and load them up, despite not getting some kind of [multishot] skill, I've actually gotten alot better at using multiple arrows at once. I put my bow horizontally, so instead of firing all three arrows into one target, they'll spread and go into different ones, which they do. Each arrow strikes its own rabbit, each one going down in kind, as an arrow strikes, and the poison spreads. The whole group goes into panic, until the gym rabbit screeches and they all stand still.

It starts stalking around, its muscles jiggling ever so slightly with every jerking movement. It walks up to the three dead rabbits, opens its carnivorous mouth and starts chowing down on the dead rabbits. I fire another three poison arrows, the middle one set to fly above the red one's head, but it jerks up at the last second into the arrows path. I thought the thing just killed itself, and I silently cursed at it for freaking me out, that is, until it started moving again, the arrow caught in its crown of horns.

I load some of my weaker, prepped poison arrows, and I launch them at the beast. It dodges to the side, its body seems to fall ever so slightly as it blurs and reappears several inches from my face. Its fist, covered in gnarled horns like brass knuckles slams inches away from me to the left, going straight through the tree I was hiding behind. Its fist is poking out of the shattered bark, as its face snarls, and I get covered in its saliva. The gym rabbit lunges at me, its trapped arm making it just barely unable to rip me apart, but I'm already gone. Now 15 feet away, I turn my bow vertically and fire three more arrows. Unable to dodge, they lodge into its stomach. I assume it's pretty shallow though, because the 1st one just falls off its stomach, fur or skin too tough to pierce.

As it desperately tries to rip its arm out of the tree, I fire volley after volley of poisoned arrows, this time at its muscles. My thought process is, If I can literally see its veins, wouldn't the poison spread super fast if I injected poison in there? After a solid minute, the rabbit looks worse for wear as poison consumes it. Blood pours from its eyes and mouth, as it stares at me in pure hatred. It pulls and pulls and pulls. And then, it rips its own trapped arm off. It stumbles, life visibly draining out of it, as it makes a mad dash towards me. as if saying: If I'm going down, I'm taking you with me.

It appears before me instantly, its claws rake across my stomach, making four somewhat shallow cuts. It hurts really bad, but somehow, I keep my voice under control, my head stays cool, and I leap to action. At that moment I say; “system! Put 5 points into strength!” the battle that had once been fought in silence, suddenly becomes riddled with sound. It bellows in rage, and I scream in effort. I lash out with a right straight into its nose. Its body had been falling towards me, and now I had redirected it the other way. Its hulking form crashes to the ground, I leap up and take out my trusty stone knife, and I start smashing it into its head. Over and over, blood covers my arms and face, drizzling over my shirt, cut from the now dulling gashes I received moments before.

< lv15 General Jacked rabbit Slain 659 XP acquired>

< Deep root Rabbit Slain 14 XP acquired>

< you have leveled up! LV7 -> Lv8 | +1 SkP +3 StP>

<[Archery] Experience threshold Reached. Lv4 -> Lv5>

<[Tracking] Experience threshold Reached. Lv3 -> Lv4>

<[Aim] Experience threshold Reached. Lv2 -> Lv3>

<[Poison Application] Experience threshold Reached. Lv1 -> Lv2>

< due to the unique application of skill: [Archery] its evolved form will be suited to the individual, as opposed to the whole. >

I'm exhausted after all that. So I lug the gym rabbit over my back, after prodding it a few times to make sure it was really dead, And I begin heading home. 20 mins later, and I drop it in the pile before I slam onto the grass bed, and stare at my new status.

Class - Survivor | lv 8/25 103/800 xp *

Race - Other World Human m

Name - Maximilian Condition- Bleeding, <[]>

Hp- 1380/1500

SkP- 3 Souls- 4 1 0

Special Skills -

Sense of Self || lv2/10

Skills -

Primitive Crafting | lv4/5

Archery | MAX

Tracking | lv4/5

Dismantling | lv2/5

Sharpening | lv4/5

Poison Det | lv2/5

Poison App | lv2/5

Aim | lv3/5

Deft | lv2/5

Stride | lv1/5

Class Skills-

Desperate Endurance | lv1

Stats-

StP - 4

Strength 20

Speed 15

Stamina 13

Dexterity 23 (+8)

Intellect 25

Sense 19 ( Sight 5, Touch 3, Sound 4, Taste 3, Smell 4 ) (+5)

Vitality 15

Charm 8 {locked}

Okay, I'll put my StP's into vitality for more healing, and I'll spend one Skp to.. ‘Rank up’ [Archery] whatever that means..

Class - Survivor | lv 8/25 103/800 xp *

Race - Other World Human m

Name - Maximilian Condition- Resting, <[]>

Hp- 1795/1900

SkP- 2 Souls- 4 1 0

Special Skills -

Sense of Self || lv2/10

Skills -

Primitive Crafting | lv4/5

Multishot || lv1/10

Tracking | lv4/5

Dismantling | lv2/5

Sharpening | lv4/5

Poison Det | lv2/5

Poison App | lv2/5

Aim | lv3/5

Deft | lv2/5

Stride | lv1/5

Class Skills-

Desperate Endurance | lv1

Stats-

StP - 0

Strength 20

Speed 15

Stamina 13

Dexterity 23 (+8)

Intellect 25

Sense 19 ( Sight 5, Touch 3, Sound 4, Taste 3, Smell 4 ) (+5)

Vitality 19

Charm 8 {locked}

< [1st] Tier [Archery] Has ranked up into [2nd] tier: [Multishot]- Assists in firing multiple arrows at once, as well as an increase in the skills quality >

< [[Rank up]] increases max level and shifts and empowers effect of skill, all benefits of previous ranks are kept and improved with each level, unless stated otherwise. Note: When ranking up a skill, the effect of leveling up will be reduced. >

I have stumbled upon a few interesting fruits. Whenever you mash them, they turn into an adhesive the more you leave them exposed to… air or sunlight, I'm not sure which. Either way, I got some glue. I was going to use the metal plates from the frog to make an axe, but I've reconsidered. Due to the frogs metal plates being armor, they are curved and the edges are blunted. Stone doesn't sharpen metal, so I've decided to glue it together into a chest plate, pounding the rounded armor when necessary to flatten it, and then layering it over each other. The end result was a ramshackle hunk of scrap metal, oozing cloudy liquid dripping from between plates. It just barely resembles a chest piece. Some of the more rounded ones I converted into shoulder armor, pauldrons. These looked much better since I didn't have to add much metal. Rather than string them together like I was going to do, Ill just glue them to my clothes. As I was figuring out how to go about doing that, I got a ping.

<[Primitive Crafting] Experience threshold Reached. Lv4 -> Lv5>

Go ahead.

< 1st tier [Primitive Crafting] has ranked up into 2nd tier [Simple Crafting]- assist the user in creating tools and structures from already thought up plans. An all round skill that can even be used for simple metalworking and repairing. Resource knowledge increased. >

Sweet! That'll help me when I finally make my hut too. The skill feels different now too, instead of the caveman that gave me directions as the voice of [primitive crafting] now it's more like a real teacher. More quizzical, it immediately tells me my chest plate sucks, but it also understands I used a bunch of glue and can't really adjust it all that much now. Regardless, I still adjust the orientation of the plates by a few degrees until the skill quiets down.

Now that that's done. I'll leave the pieces of scrap behind to dry, and go hunt a little more. There's two skills I've been looking at, they'll help me move around, both to track things down faster and help me evade attacks. I'll save my 1 remaining skill point for now, just in case, plus I want to get them both at the same time.

You know the drill by now. I use [Tracking] to find traces of prey, then I run around until I find whatever mob it is, I shoot it, lug it back to camp, and the whole cycle starts again. I didn't run into any big trouble during the whole process. I ran into one of those thorn lizards, except it was twice the size of the last one, a darker green, and had twice as many thorns on its scales as before, as well as another rhino horn under the first one which were both much larger. I killed it even easier than the first one, poison arrows are super effective.

I accidently stumbled on a bunch of.. Foxes? Or wolves, I can't really tell. They have this maroon red that fades into a black gradient at the ends, it looks pretty cool, but they're really ferocious. Their snapping and hissing at this band of snakes that are spitting… are those sparks!? Snakes that have scales resembling jagged lightning bolts colored shades of purple, blue, and yellow, surge forth and weave through the cluster of wolf-fox things. The dogs themselves have some sort of dash or teleport ability, because they seem to appear a few feet forward instantly, leaving a trail of smoldering ash behind.

As the sneaky little archer I am, I take pot shots into the writhing mass of fur and scales, using poisoned arrows to take out the injured, or make injuries for the other mobs to take care of them. Naturally, the foxes start losing, because the snakes are much harder to hit with arrows. Even when I try, I end up hitting a fox. Once the group has dwindled significantly, and I gain a few levels, I leave, vowing to come back later and see if I can loot the corpses. All and all, here's my gain:

< lv12 Thorn Riddled Lizard Slain 289 XP acquired>

< lv7-15 Smoulder Kin Slain x23 1120 XP acquired>

< lv5-14 Stormwise Serpent x8 Slain 572 XP acquired>

< you have leveled up! LV8 -> Lv10 | +2 SkP +6 StP>

<[Tracking] Experience threshold Reached. Lv4 -> Lv5>

<[Aim] Experience threshold Reached. Lv3 -> Lv4>

<[Multishot] Experience threshold Reached. Lv1 -> Lv2>

<[Poison Application] Experience threshold Reached. Lv2 -> Lv3>

< [1st] Tier [Tracking] Has ranked up into [2nd] tier: [Tracing]- Further improves users ability to find and track down prey. Greatly increases range, and perception of faint clues. Ability to track increased if target is specified >

Oh wow. That is a lot of stuff to unpack. First of all, my status.

Class - Survivor | lv 10/25 384/1000 xp *

Race - Other World Human m

Name - Maximilian Condition- Nominal, <[]>

Hp- 1900/1900

SkP- 3 Stp- 6 Souls- 30 7 0

Special Skills -

Sense of Self || lv2/10

Skills -

Simple Crafting || lv1/10

Multishot || lv2/10

Tracing || lv1/10

Dismantling | lv2/5

Sharpening | lv4/5

Poison Det | lv2/5

Poison App | lv3/5

Aim | lv4/5

Deft | lv2/5

Stride | lv1/5

Stats -

Strength 20

Speed 15

Stamina 13

Dexterity 23 (+8)

Intellect 25

Sense 19 (+5)

Vitality 19

Charm 8 {locked}

Class Skills-

Desperate Endurance | lv1

Scamatica 0/3 | lv1

Modularity-

Nervous 125% | Immune 125% | Integmentary 125%

Once I get back to camp the cycle continues. I only brought the lizard back this time, which actually looked more like a crocodile. I don't know how, but I have a theory that these monsters have a system like I do, except they evolve their body Instead. They also might use the modularity that I have, but in a different way. I think I once read a story like that, where monsters ate other monsters to evolve and modify their body parts. Whether or not it's actually like that, I'll be thinking of it that way. Plus these monsters seem to have [tiers] of some kind, And I think the size of the souls I get is dictated by their tiers, and their tiers by their levels.

But for now, my armor has dried. I'm gonna make some more out of the scales of the double thorn lizard, and level up my [dismantling] more.