The path back to our base was a swift one, spent mostly by talking strategy about the boss. Halfway in, I decided to finally check out what the description of [Bullet strike] was. The level up was not as great as I thought it would be, sadly.

  [Bullet strike]

  Level : 2

  Type : Active

  This skill mimics the attack of a mantis shrimp - swift, deadly, utterly overcompetent. For a mantis shrimp in the ocean, it’s the same thing as taking a sword to cut butter. But here, in this tournament? It’s going to be one of your only useful tools. For now.

  You might be thinking - but why let me use it only once in 8 hours? I could use it all the time before!

  Our answer to that is simple. Do you know how damn hard it is to balance this thing? Do you think we let all the apex predators keep their strategies from Earth? We don’t want to watch the eagles fly in the air and just swoop in for a kill every once in a while!

  So, just be happy you have something at least a bit usable. It’s more than some of our players can say.

  Oh, to further nerf this, we decided to make it stoppable with armor. Yeah, take that. It’s for saying that we’re weird. Or thinking that. We know you did so.

  Cooldown : 7 hours

  What the hell? Stoppable with armor? What the hell did that mean? At least the cooldown went a bit down, however. Would it be 1 hour per level? If Mark had the answer, he didn’t find it worthwhile to tell me. Classic.

  Soon enough, I saw our base, Crudia and Talisha sitting in front, talking about one thing or another. They spotted us once we got closer. And that resulted in Crudia getting up and sprinting toward me.

  What? Why? I started looking around, trying to see what she was rushing at, just for her to jump on me and wrap her arms around my neck in a squeezing hug. Her momentum also carried us to the ground, where I splattered with an oomph.

  Receiving hugs was still super weird. I’ve never done hugging as a Mantis shrimp - I could not, actually, even if I wanted to. But Crudia’s fur, soft on my skin, honestly made it fairly easy to see the appeal.

  So. Fluffy. Touching the fur felt like touching clouds.

  After a few moments, I convinced her to get off of me, and we all sat next to the campfire from yesterday. I still had more crabs than I could count (though the system did count them - there were 42), and we began cooking our evening meal.

  "So, what did you two find? Any materials? Info?" Talisha spoke, eying the crabs. Did she want some? Too bad for her, I guessed. Missing out on eating would definitely piss me off.

  Mark nodded as he sat down next to me. "Yeah, we found both, actually. There were two biomes that I could see from a mountain that we trekked on."

  Bastard. He didn’t have to take a step. "I trekked. You just levitated."

  "Tomatoes, potatoes." Why the hell was he listing vegetables now? "There’s a biome with black grass, and then there’s a swamp. Couldn’t see any different enemies."

  "Hey, don’t forget the flowers!”

  “Oh yeah, we found some flowers that can be used for healing potions. If you’ve built a furnace, then we can get to it. Also, some metals, though it doesn’t show what they are, exactly.”

  Talisha extended her hand, stopping Mark. “Hold on, black grass? How does that work?”

  Why was everyone so invested in this black grass? What about the swamp? “There’s a boss in the swamp. That’s way more interesting!”

  That finally got Crudia’s attention. “Oh, a boss? That thing that Talisha mentioned before? One with the loot?”

  I nodded, gulping down another crab. “Yup, that one. I say we sleep, and then we head out there. What do you say, Crudia?”

  Interrupting once again, Mark took the tone of a parent reprimanding a child. As if he wasn’t the one to guide me to noticing the boss before. “Hold on there, you two. We are not sure how powerful the boss is. The written guides were, once again, unclear on this part. The boss might be level 5, might be level 20. That’s without taking the fact that the levels increase every day.”

  Talisha nodded. “Well said. You two ought to get prepared first. Preferably you want more people in your… Wait, what did you say about the levels increasing?”

  The four of us spent talking about everything that we’ve done and found out for the next hour, going over all the details. Talking so much was even more tiresome than climbing mountains, somehow.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  The good news was that that Crudia managed to find everything we needed for crafting several types of crafting tables. The word sent shivers down my spine, but that was only before I realized I could finally get some new armor!

  And then I came to the new crafting stations, and yet another new menu opened in front of me. I could not stop the pained groan.

  “Do you want me to help, Shrimpie?” Crudia chimed in, patting my back. I was stumped. How could she enjoy this whole system? Would the other floors be as complicated as this one?

  “Yes. Please.”

  She built three new stations, which were [Furnace], [Armory station] and [Alchemical station]. And each had a separate menu. Crudia tried explaining how each station worked, but I just pretended to listen and let her do all the work, which she did without complaint. Was this what parties were also for? Maybe I needed another party member that would just tell Mark when to screw off. Though Talisha was doing an okay job of that already.

  Most of the material I collected was mostly useless. Sure, the system didn’t implant all the knowledge about what each metal was, but most of them had a description like [Tin - Extremely brittle!] or stuff like that. One material that was worth at least something was one that I collected right at the edge of the crater, though.

  Meteorite ore. It was the only one that wasn’t listed as useless - the opposite, in fact.

  [Meteorite ore]

  It’s a metal. From the sky. What do you want, a tale of where this comes from? Do you have an inkling of an idea how much text we need to write for every damn item in this tournament? A lot.

  So yeah. That’s all you get. You might want to smelt it.

  As I stood there, waiting for Crudia to work the ore into something usable, I got a new announcement, for the first time in three days. That was a new one.

  Hello, dear players and guides!

  We’re happy to announce that the tournament is proceeding as well as we expected! Exceeding our expectations, perhaps! Out of the 8,2 million players that began two days ago, 4,5 million passed away, leaving space for the stronger species to go on and continue! Those of you who managed to adapt are doing great so far, by the way. We are seriously enjoying watching you silly little creatures do your thing.

  As for another good news, 10 players already reached the level limit for this floor! Congratulations!

  Hey! There was a level limit? And someone already reached it? What the hell? Why didn’t Mark mention something like that?

  As a reward, you will be obtaining 20 attribute points, along with an evolution of your choosing.

  Moving on, many of you might have noticed the levels of the enemies increasing. We want to assure you that this is intentional. We don’t want this to get stale, right?

  Anyway, that’s it! Good luck in your further adventures!

  Now go out there and Level up!

  Wow, okay, that was a lot to take in. I did my damn best to ignore the fact that I was not the first to receive an evolution, and instead focused on the other parts. Max level. More than 4 million dead. Holy crap was that a lot.

  Crudia was frozen from shock, standing above the furnace. "Shrimpie? Are we… doing this well? Are we just going to die?”

  Heck if I knew. I was confident in my strength, but there was just so much to learn here. But even taking that into account, I knew what I needed to say. She wasn’t the type to just bounce off of anything. She needed some reaffirmation, and as a great team leader, I ought to offer some.

  “Hell no. I’m going to win this shit. And as long as you stay with me, you’re going to win too.”

  Quite poetic, I must say.

  She gaped at me for a spell, and then burst out laughing. What was funny? My confusion only seemed to stroke her laughter, god damn it. Her laughter sounded like a dying beast, reverberating through the small clearing, which in turn made our two guides appear.

  She finally calmed somewhat after a few minutes, taking in a few labored gulps of air. Her smile was infectious, though. “Shrimpie, that’s such a you thing to say.”

  “And what the hell does that mean?”

  She just waved me away, and Mark stepped in between us. “You two, how is it going?”

  Wow, not even a word about forgetting to tell me crucial stuff for the upteenth time? Classic.

  “Crudia finished her armor, she’s working on mine now. Did you see the announcement?”

  “We did, “ Talisha interjected. She looked as scared as Crudia did at first. I could swear that she was stopping herself from shaking. “Four and a half million, dead. Just gone.”

  Mark, at least, seemed to be somewhat sensible. “That means that you two are not doing badly. There wasn’t supposed to be a max level on this floor, but it appears they did some last-minute changes. Shrimpie should be close then. We need you two to get as strong as possible, and fast.”

  Levitating, Talisha got right in Mark’s face. “And what about getting more teammates? Like we discussed?”

  “God damn it Tal, we don’t know where to find anyone. Do you know how large the map is?”

  Talisha remained silent. Oh boy, I gave Mark shit for not knowing stuff, but she beat him to it somehow.

  “Of course you don’t. It’s large as Earth. It’s a miracle that Crudia and Shrimpie ran into one another. We need to go kill that boss, while we still can.”

  “But there’s going to be hundreds, if not thousands of those Carp men! They barely fought off 98.”

  Mark nodded, and turned toward Crudia, who still stood in front of the crafting stations. “Yes, and they are going to be level 5 tomorrow. In a week, they are going to be level 12. So we either attack them now, while we still have an advantage, or not at all. Crudia, I need you to craft everything I say now, and show me your inventory. You might have picked up something worthwhile.”

  Okay, I got lost. What? “Why attack now, and not later, Mark? So what are we doing?”

  He didn’t bother looking back. “Their levels will keep increasing. Yours won’t. That means we’re in a race against time. Let’s say that your level will stop at 24, since that’s 1 level before you get a class. That means that at level 24, in 11 days, every tengu you’ll meet will be level 18. Those Carp men will each be level 15.”

  He looked at me, and for the first time, I saw genuine fear in his eyes. “You two need to rush through this. Tomorrow, we go kill that boss, and then every other we can find. We have days to do so.”