"I still don't know what horrors lurk on this mountain. I may have gotten lucky so far and the first time almost killed me even though I may have been lucky." Cynthia reasoned "Me and Sebas' growth rate suggests that either the system plays a very large role in growth or all I've been fighting since I came here were newborns. That begs the question though, where are the parents? Theoretically since the newborns are intelligent, shouldn't the parents be too?". "Will they come after me for revenge?" Cynthia worried "all this considered I need more information. Getting that information could kill me though given how powerful higher beings could be. I need someone who is good at stealth… Wait, I have two Human Faced Spiders! Two of their species got the drop on me. The question is can Sebas even use his stealth against higher tier beings?". "In cultivation stories things like divine sense and spreading internal energy around an area for detection are commonplace." Cynthia pondered. "My lady," Sebas interrupted. "What is it, Sebas?" replied Cynthia. "I may have a solution to that," Sebas said. "Have you tapped into your connection with the newborn yet?" he inquired. "I have not. I will do so now." Cynthia replied, ending the conversation. She willed the stat window of the baby spider to open.
Name: None Rank: Baby Exp: 4/100 (Open to see information
on Growth stage type advancement)
Authors note: see chapter 4 Second Meal
Stats:
Strength: 2
Dexterity: 8
Endurance: 3
Skills:
Active:
Spider's Bite: This skill ranks up as the spider ranks up through growth. When the spider grows up it will have access to a number of venoms. Current venoms: Human Face Spider's Paralytic Venom.
Passive Skills:
Stealth: Can negate Search and Detection skills to a certain degree. Only specialized Search and Detection skills will be able to find this creature if the searching creature is on the same level. This advantage decreases the higher the searching creature's level is in comparison to this creature. This creature is virtually invisible to those at a lower level.
Auxiliary:
None
Author note: The paralytic poison not being lesser even though she is a baby is on purpose. She is meant to be a character geared towards stealth and as such incapacitating creatures is one of her strong suits. Same with her dexterity being higher than Sebas' when he was at her level and her endurance and strength being lower.
A blue window popped up as well. "Tip: Statuses can vary even between individuals of the same species and level. Special skills are rare but with the numerous beasts you will encounter they will become common beyond belief.". "That's good to know, system, thank you!" Cynthia said as she made up her mind to be courteous of the system, given all its help and possible sentience. "Let's have the baby spider scout the area and I will follow at a distance. Sebas will wait in the trees and follow near me in case of an incident.". With this the two spiders and Cynthia departed to scout the area. Everything was going smoothly. The group had a rather detailed mental map of the immediate vicinity of the spider cave. "Let's go further out." thought Cynthia "we still need intel on the intelligent creatures in this area.". "We should go down the mountain, northward. The higher up the mountain the higher chance we might encounter something we can't handle." Thought Cynthia. With that they traveled multiple hours north. Cynthia noticed some things about the world now that she spent an extended time outside the cave. One of the things she noticed is that the sun moves much slower across the sky than in her previous world. She theorized that a day in this world could last more than 24 hours. In fact since she came to this world, night had only happened once and it had been roughly 20 earth hours. The sun was about one third along its path so she estimated that one day in this world could be close to three days on earth while one night is less than half that of earth. This world may even have multiple moons or the day and night cycling might differ between days. She had no way of knowing since she hadn't experienced enough time passing since she arrived here. "Even experiencing mundane things like the passing of time will give me valuable information and insights. I should pay more attention to even the mundane things in this world.". Another thing she noticed is the size of the mountain she is on. She can see much farther away now that she is a white tiger and this one mountain is much larger than mount Everest on earth and what's more is that she can vaguely make out even bigger mountains in the distance. As she was pondering the magnificent size of this new world she felt a blow to her side that felt like a punch. 3 ribs were broken in the impact. As she got up off of the ground after being blown away, she looked at her attacker and she saw an ape standing upright like a man. Its body was ugly but it had a humanlike face. It was still unmistakably, not a human though. Its body resembled a gorilla. Then a blue window popped up as well as a black one. "You have encountered a sentient beast. A xingxing" "You have received a quest: This is the second life threatening danger you have encountered. Defeat the xingxing and either make it your servant or eat it to gain some of its power. Reward: 1 servant slot and 1000 Exp.". "Shit, It's strong enough for a quest to pop up, even though I have two servants." Cynthia thought but the xingxing did something she never would have expected… It spoke! "Oooh a tasty looking little tiger!" said the xingxing "if you surrender quietly I can let you live. I'm sure white tigers would be a delicacy, so all you'd need to do is pop out little baby tigers once you're all grown up! They die but you get to live.". "And why would I ever agree to that?" replied Cynthia. "Because I can tell by the energy in you that you are much weaker than me." said the xingxing. "Well there's one piece of information you aren't privy to." monologued Cynthia. "And what would that be?" asked the xingxing. "There's strength in numbers!" answered Cynthia as both Human Faced Spiders dropped on the xingxing on Cynthia's order and likewise as ordered ran back into the dense forest before the xingxing could retaliate. "Funny trick" said the xingxing "but there's information that you aren't privy to either. Us beasts of lower bloodlines have lived longer before we attained our sentience. Being able to attain sentience quickly has downsides as well. We lower beasts have fought more and experienced more. Once we attain sentience we are able to learn how we should have fought opponents and as such we have both more tempered bodies and better strategies against higher beasts.". "Damn I didn't even consider that." thought Cynthia as she attempted to back away. Unfortunately the xingxing didn't let her. With it's frightening speed it closed in on cynthia sending two more punches, one to the face and one at her front left leg.she was able to move both her head and leg in time but something even more concerning happened. The xingxing redirected his blow before she even moved her head so she still got punched in the jaw. "Damnit! I had previous information about chimeras and Human Face Spiders since I had read about them but I've never read about a xingxing before.". But even without prior information the fact that the xingxing was able to understand what she was going to do was a dead giveaway of either experience in fighting creatures like Cynthia or it was future sight. "Given the setting I'm in I think It's more likely he is able to see the future. There are beasts of all shapes and sizes so the likelihood of there being a lot of beasts of my shape and size is low." Cynthia reasoned as she continued to get pummeled. She was now beaten and bloodied but she tried something that might be able to turn the tides. "Sebas! Distract him! I only need 3 seconds, but don't die! You are too important!" Thought Cynthia "System! Heal me with all my energy except 15 then grow me some wings with the remaining energy!". Then Sebas arrived and engaged the xingxing to buy time. As she was healing she saw Sebas do fairly well but he was still receiving a lot of damage especially to his abdomen. Once Cynthia was healed she sprouted wings and flew up. "Sebas! Retreat!" she thought as she started diving down to bite the neck of the xingxing and tackle it to the ground. She made contact but it wasn't enough. "System! Inject all the poison I can without crippling its production!" as she thought that a stream of hemorrhagic poison and paralytic poison flooded into the xingxing. "A white tiger with wings and poison?! What in the world are you?!" said the xingxing as the poison spread. The xingxing's body went rigid a moment later as blood gushed from its neck.