This source of experience that Dante had spotted was a strange creature that he had never seen before in either real life or media.
It was a small mass of black goo with an eyeball in the middle. The good was moving like an insect with multiple legs, while the eyeball was constantly moving its location around the goo to see as much as possible. When this creature spotted Dante, it let a shriek out of the goop which seemed to vibrate as it made noise.
It then started to crawl over quickly to Dante, and it jumped at him and tried to grab onto him with one of its tentacles. Dante did not know what to do, so he just tried to swipe at the monster.
This was somewhat successful, as despite having no claws which meant no additional damage, Dante's attack managed to push the creature away and cause it to slide for a few seconds.
Dante did not want to run away, as he knew that if he wanted to go back home then he would need to defeat enemies and grow stronger.
He approached the creature quickly to try and catch it off guard while it was recovering, and when he got close enough, he grabbed onto it with one of his hands.
Despite being a bear, as his species seemed to be based off of the mascot character from his original world, Dante had hands like a human, albeit they were very fluffy and when curled up looked like paws.
With the other hand, Dante tried to grab the eyeball of the creature, as it aggressively tried to hit him with the goo that was being used like a whip. The eyeball of the monster moved frantically and erratically, but Dante was able to grab onto it and he managed to pull it out of the creature. This caused it to drop to the floor and crumble into dust.
[ +4 Exp ]
This was the notification that Dante heard ring out in his head, and based off of his status, he would need to defeat two more of these creatures to level up once.
Luckily, he had not sustained any injuries in the fight, so he was fine when it came to the walking which followed the fight, as he continued looking for anything of interest.
While he was walking, Dante thought to himself about naming whatever monsters he encountered, as it would be easier than calling them monster or creature every time. The name for the creature that he encountered was decided solely by himself, as the Crawling Eye. It was a simple name that fit the monster perfectly, as that was simply what it did, it crawled.
After a bit more walking, Dante came across something strange, it was another monster, and it seemed to be related to the Crawling Eye in some way. The reason why Dante thought they were related was due to its appearance.
The monster was an eyeball that was rolling around on the floor, it seemed like black goo was trying to erupt from inside of it, but it was blocked off for the time being.
It tried to roll into Dante, but he squished it as if it had been a bug, and this immediately killed it.
[ +2 Exp ]
It was less experience than he had gained from the Crawling Eye, but this new monster which Dante decided to call the Rolling Eye was also much easier to defeat, and therefore they would be more efficient to defeat.
Dante began to walk again, thinking about the creatures he had encountered. It almost seemed to him like the monsters were the same creature, but at different stages. The rolling eye looked as if it was close to becoming what he could only assume was a Crawling Eye, and who knows what it would become after that.
With this knowledge and theory in mind, Dante made sure to remember not to become complacent.
He had gained six experience, which meant a single Crawling Eye, or two Rolling Eyes would give him what he needed to level up.
The worst part about the entire ordeal was all of the walking, as the monsters were not exactly showing up in abundance, which although meant it was less dangerous, it also meant he was less likely to gain experience.
However, what Dante came across soon after made up for the lack of enemies, as he stumbled into what could only be described as a battle to the death between two monsters.
The first monster seemed like another version of the Crawling Eye, except it had wings and a tail made of the black sludge.
The second monster was completely new, as it was a child-sized stone creature that looked slightly similar to a human, except it was covered in moss and had two green crystals on its back.
The battle was much more intense than what Dante had been engaged in so far, as the Flying Eye was moving quickly around its enemy, which Dante had dubbed the Crystal Troll, and was getting attacks in at the most precise moments which would allow it to remain uninjured. These attacks were performed by the eye itself, as it seemed to be able to shoot a small red ball occasionally which seemed to burn the Crystal Troll.
The Crystal Troll fought much differently, as it was forced to fight from the ground, with only one way to hit the Flying Eye, its crystals. These crystals were bright green in colour and seemed to glow, but the light would disappear from them when the Crystal Troll attacked. This attack came in the form of a green light emanating from its hands, and when it was fully charged, a short beam of green energy was shot from its hands at the Flying Eye. Once the attack finished, the crystals began to fill back up with green energy, charging up for another attack.
Dante recognised that he wouldn't be able to do much in this battle, so he hid and watched as they fought, hoping to pick one of them off after the battle concluded.
Luckily for him, this didn't take too long, as the Flying Eye seemed to have the upper hand with its new tactic. It had figured out that the Crystal Troll was bad at turning and, therefore, staying behind it would allow for as many attacks as it wanted.
These attacks were directed at the crystals on the Flying Eye's previous enemy, now turned victim, and after a few minutes, the crystals began to crack and eventually they shattered.
This caused all of the green energy inside of them to leak out, much more than what was inside them escaped though, as it seemed as though the life force of the Crystal Troll was escaping through the broken crystals too.
However, as it was dying, the Crystal Troll gathered the last little bit of its energy, and shot a small and precise beam that lasted no more than a second. However, this attack did penetrate one of the Flying Eye's wings, and it began to fall to the ground without the ability to use its wings.
Seeing the opportunity, Dante ran towards the injured monster, and threw a punch as hard as he could at the weak looking eyeball. This attack would not necessarily have killed the Flying Eye, but as it was contained to one spot on the ground, the eyeball was against the hard ground.
The punch, although not the strongest, managed to crush the eyeball off of the floor, and juices bled out of the side, leaving a deflated eyeball and a mass of black sludge on the ground.
[ + 16 Exp ]
[ Level Up ]
The large amount of experience excited Dante, and before he checked his status to see his level up, he wanted to figure out the correlation between the enemies he defeated, and the amount of experience they gave.
The Rolling Eye, which seemed to be the weakest enemy so far gave two experience, the Crawling Eye would give four, and the Flying Eye would give sixteen. The trend that Dante was seeing was that the experience was the result of the previous evolution of a monster's experience gain which was squared to decide the amount.
After figuring this out, he checked his status to view his level up.
Name: Dante
Age: 17
Species: Baby Pink Bear
Level: 1 (12exp/15exp) (lvl.1/lvl.25)
Evolution Rank: 0 (0/3)
Stats:
Body: 0
Mind: 0
Free Points: 3
Skills:
Although his status was not a lot different, he noticed that he was almost at level two and wanted to reach it quickly. He also noticed the three free points which he assumed were assignable to either his mind or body stat.
Although there were only two stats, Dante liked the simplicity and ease of understanding with them. He also knew what he wanted to do with his free stat points.
With his small and weak body, there was not much he could do in terms of strength, which meant it would probably be smart for him to invest heavily in Mind in hopes of something like a magic attack being given to him.
However, this was not the route that he wanted to go. Dante did not want to have a weak and frail body forever. He wanted to become bigger and stronger, so at the very least, if he couldn't return to being human, he would be a little less cute, and people would be able to take him a bit more seriously.
He immediately put all three of his stat points into Body, and he immediately felt the effects as his body felt stronger, and despite there being no difference in his size, when he felt his arms, they felt more compact in terms of muscle mass.
Wanting to level up once more to see the further effects of increasing his Body stat, Dante ran through the large area to find more enemies to kill.
He had noticed it before from all of the walking, but he did not seem to get physically tired from anything, nor did it seem like he got mentally tired as he did not feel the need to sleep.
This meant he was able to keep running until he ran into more enemies.