Reincarnated As A What?

Chapter 5 - The Grind

I had been sporing any monster I could find every time I regenerated enough mana. It took about 24 hours to fully regenerate. And each spore spell would use 40% of my total mana. So for 10 days I did it constantly getting 2 spores every day for 10 whole days. I had become used to the lazy life in the chasm.

I stuck around with the other monadas due to safety in numbers and it allowed me to easily spore them. They weren't smart enough the suspect me. After all I was the same as them. I obviously couldn't fire spores.

At that point, there were 3 days worth of monadas unable to move lying on the ground just about to die with a large cave shroom starting to grow out of them. It seemed that that was how cave shrooms were created. From the spores. The other infected individuals ranged from completely immobile but still living to hardly affected. Generally, the turning point at which they stopped functioning was at around 6 days. And at 3 days they started to limp and whine and other features of extreme pain.

It hurt me to see them like that but it felt necessary. I needed to kill. It was the only way to get stronger.

Then later that day I got a notification.

"10XP POINTS GAINED. YOU HAVE SUCCESSFULLY KILLED A MALE MONADA"

Then again about an hour later

"10XP POINTS GAINED. YOU HAVE SUcCESSFULLY KILLED A MALE MONADA"

This continued swapping genders sometimes adding elderly or baby to the mix until after 3 I leveled up and again after another 3 then again after 4 and again after 5. I continued going each time investing my points into magical power. It didn't really seem to be having an effect so after adding 3 points to it from the 3 levels I decided to ask.

"Why is it taking just as long to kill them?"

"COPIED SKILLS WILL ALWAYS ACT THE SAME AS THE ORIGINAL. IT CAN NOT BE ENHANCED"

So from that angrily I instead invested my point into HP. It seemed to have increased my total by 10%. Making me 10% more durable than your bog-standard 1-week old monada.

I continued like this repeating the process over and over until I had spent a whole month down there. I was sick and tired of every day just being infected with spores and then just spend the rest of the day hoping I don't get eaten. And the entire chasm was brimming the cave shrooms. I had caused a total of 40 cave shrooms to be born by leveling myself up. Which bearing in mind there was probably only a hundred to start I had increased the population significantly and leveling up had become noticeably slower. The rats provided me with double the XP of the monadas and the slimes sat about halfway between them and I couldn't hurt the cave shrooms just as they couldn't hurt me.

Across all of the murders I had committed I had successfully reached level 10.

"What are my stats?"

"YOU HAVE AN HP LEVEL OF 9...A STRENGTH LEVEL OF 1...A SPEED LEVEL OF 1...A MAGIC POWER OF 3."

"What are those as percentages?"

"IRRELEVANT"

"Trust me it's relevant"

"NO"

"I need it to adapt"

"PLEASE PROVIDE REASONING"

"Ummm...It will allow me to understand what I need to improve to adapt most efficiently"

"UNDERSTOOD... YOUR MAGICAL STRENGTH IS ∞% OF THAT OF A TYPICAL MONADA...YOUR HP IS 177% OF THAT OF A TYPICAL MONADA... YOUR SPEED IS 100% OF THAT OF A TYPICAL MONADA... YOUR STRENGTH IS 100% OF THAT OF A TYPICAL MONADA."