I looked over the new biomorphs that had become available to me. Multi-eyes, Spinner Gland, Necrotic Poison Gland, Toughened Hide and Sex Pheromone. Toughened Hide was out right away it would replace my carapace and seemed inferior to it, especially since the Widows wore armor to make up for it. Multi-eyes was no doubt useful but…it was to spidery, my instincts warned me that looking like a spider would drastically effect my standing with other wasps when I ever found them.

  That left Spinner Gland, Necrotic Poison Gland and Sex Pheromones. Spinner Gland was spidery but it didn’t sound like it would effect my out appearance much and it would give me access to making my own silk. Necrotic Poison Gland was a no brainer since it would just merge with my current venom gland. Sex Pheromones sounded…well I didn’t no what it sounded like but it did seem somehow linked to my main quest I’d spawned with.

  Right now I only had a hundred-and-fifty biomass and upgrading my venom glands would cost seventy-five and the Sex Pheromones would cost forty. I couldn’t even think about the Spinner Gland since it would cost my entire available biomass at the staggering price of a hundred-and-fifty biomass. I needed to hunt again and go back to farming the ants.

  I spent the biomass for the two biomorphs I could take and endured the pain of them upgrading the horrible burning in my arm and antenna as they mutated leaving me vulnerable in the base of the flower.

  This pheromone was weird but looking at it was something vital for my quest and I wondered how I would have acquired it normally; it hadn’t been in my initial list of options. This gave me something to think about, the system had given me a quest but this was a necessary component to complete it so there must have been some other means to get it.

  The change to my venom gland wasn’t big, a minor change to its description and the addition of necrotic damage but no new charges or variant effects.

  Once I was recovered I looked at my stolen loot. I opened one of the bottles, I wanted to store some nectar in them but they were full of something else right now.

  I sniffed it and wrinkled my nose but hesitantly took a sip. Immediately my health started ticking down as I was poisoned.

  “You stupid shit!” I swore at myself searching for a drop of nectar in the flower.

  I paused waiting to drink the nectar but the poison effect reached its end. I looked down at the bottle and took another sip. My health ticked down again and the effect ended, I took another sip of the fowl fermented poison and received more progress.

  I wondered if this was why the Widows had kept this stuff, to train their Venom Resistance. But why had they screamed so when I shot them with my venom? Perhaps the fire damage had done more to them then my own native wasp venom I theorized with no way to really test. Or maybe you just couldn’t train with your own venom? I through about that then extened my stinger.

  “This is stupid,” I told myself then shot myself in the leg.

  My venom struck again the carapace of my leg, stuck there for a moment burning against it. I was definitely taking some damage but not as much as I would cause another creature. Interesting. I kept drinking the bottle my head growing fuzzy. This was likely the real purpose of this liquid, it wasn’t a weapon or training tool it was just booze to the Widows. My hangover started to clear as I polished off the bottle and my Venom Resistance was now level ten.

  I had a skill point to spend and looked over the options. There weren’t as many as some skills but then again how many different ways could your resist poison? There were the ones that reduced the duration you would be poisoned, ones that specified on specific types of venoms but I selected the generic option that was just a straightforward increase to the base damage reduction. I liked my health and anything that did damage to it I wanted less of.

  I looked at my stat points, I had fifty-eight to spend. I wanted to put a bunch into Toughness but paused. I still had a lot of bottles to go through and if my damage reduction outpaced the damage this fermented venom could deal to me I wouldn’t be able to use them for training anymore. I thought then sighed, I wouldn’t invest anything into Toughness for the meantime. Since I’d discovered that there were skills locked behind stat requirements raising all my stats had suddenly become a lot more important to me. I wanted to get them all to thirty but I would still heavily invest in my Dexterity and Toughness.

  Dividing up my points in my head I spent eighteen on my most neglected stat, Charisma, brining it up to thirty. I put fourteen into Intelligence, ten into Perception, another ten into Brawn. All my stats were at thirty now and I invested the last six into Dexterity taking it to thirty-six. I was very balanced but that wasn’t necessarily a strength, a jack-of-all-trades and a master of one might always be better than a master of one unless that one had a Brawn attribute of a hundred and pasted that Jack-of-all-Trades into a fine mush.

  The pain of my stats upgrading was bad but not as bad as gaining new biomorphs. I’d had to drink several drops of nectar to heal myself, the sips of venom did around seventy to ninety damage per second for four seconds. It took about ten sips to empty one of the small bottles. I filled up the bottle with nectar and flew to another flower having emptied this one out.

  I kept training my Venom Resistance until I had about four empty bottles of venom to use as healing potions to use in battle. My Venom Resistance had hit level fifteen, but I wanted to wait on upgrading it, the stronger the skill was the less benefit I’d get out of training with the Widow’s fermented venom.

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  This was what made humanoids more dangerous than beasts and monsters. No dumb bug was out there grinding its skills like this but if the Widows had a way to train their Venom Resistance like this I had no doubt they would be. I needed to get stronger, to get skilled not just Skills. It was time to go hunt my preferred prey again.

  I landed back in the grass jungle and tore into a patrol of fire ants. The surprise attack left no survivors and I began eating them on the spot not dragging them away. Once I’d gotten a hundred-and-fifty biomass from them I flew back to the tunnels I’d been hiding in and tucked myself away.

  A hundred-and-fifty-biomass latter and a short coma and I now had the spinner gland. I looked down where I sensed the biomorphs there were two holes on the inside of my left and right thigh. Going through my notifications I pulled up the description for the Spinner Gland.

  The cost for the silk wasn’t free, my venom theoretically needed biomass to be made but I just needed to not be starving it didn’t have a set biomass per shot. That was game, or life balance I supposed. With a shrug I headed back out, I would resume my hunt for Heavy Carapace later I needed to fuel up on biomass and XP for now. The ants were a slow if plentiful source of both and I had a new biomorph that would help me immensely in creating traps.

  The rest of the day was spent by me creating new traps using the silk cord in place of the plant fibers I’d used previously. I found out the sticky webbing was great for tripwires, I wasn’t a spider making a web but I had my own ways of setting deadly traps and as my skill level with them grew they became deadlier and deadlier as I thought of new and inventive ways to use them. While I set the traps I also trained my venom resistance, it took awhile the levels coming farther and farther apart but once I’d finished the last bottle it was my highest level skill to this point.

  I upgraded the skill once again just choosing the base damage reduction path for the skill for both points.

  While my skill with base melee fighting was still inferior to the Widows at least I felt a lot more confident it just tanking the hits from their fangs. It also gave me pause, I was very reliant on my own venom to do most of my damage, what would happen if I came across someone else with a Venom Resistance skill equal to or higher than my own. All the more reason to train with my stringer I resolved, physical damage, especially if you hit a weak point was a lot harder to negate.

  I began hunting the fire ants in earnest no longer having to worry about my low health due to training my Venom Resistance. I filled my bottles with nectar for mid-battle healing and began to strike at the ants even emerging out of the grass jungle into other zones to attack them before retreating back into the grass death trap. The ants followed every time, they had some intelligence but were still beasts and couldn’t resist the urge to chase the thing that kept killing them even if it meant entering the killing field.

  When night fell I’d already devoured enough ants to gain about a thousand points of biomass in my system. Where that was all stored who knew, the gains to my skill level had not been small either.

  It had been a fruitful day in terms of building strength but I still felt…empty. I was alone with no one to share my triumphs, no hive to use my strength to bolster. I hadn’t always been alone I’d been among brothers I’d fought with once back when I was a… The train of thought ended as it always did whenever I made a conscious attempt to remember. Back to work I needed to upgrade my skills then back to hunting down Heavy Carapace and wasps.

  First stat points, I put all of them into Toughness raising it to forty-six. Next Sneak Attack, one of my most valuable skills and the first one I’d earned myself. I looked over the options, last time I’d taken this I’d chosen the option that let me deal some of my sneak attack modifier when attacking from behind even if the creature was aware of me. My options were all similar to that now as I went down that skill tree. I selected one that would apply a third of my sneak attack modifier when attacking from the front if my opponent was off balance. If I was quick, clever, sneaky or surprising enough I would always do just a bit more damage exactly what every rogue wanted.

  It was hard to train sneak attack since I only got XP from it in the first kill or attack in a fight before it was all base combat. While the benefit I got from it wasn’t limited to that first initial hit it seemed for game balance reasons the XP still was. My stealth skill had gotten another skill point my only skill to reach level thirty-five although I had a bunch of other skills just hovering before it ready for their own upgrade once I gave them another level or two.

  I looked over the options for Stalking-Shadow Stealth then selected one increasing the damage I dealt with my Sneak Attack even further. While it was a one shot attack it was big shot and my traps also benefited from it. My stealth skill boosted my sneak attack by a multiplier not a percentage and my traps applied my sneak attack modifier which ended up being both bonuses.

  The increase wasn’t a lot it only went from point five to point eight multiplier but that was being multiplied by the skills level so it ended up being a ten times multiplier in the difference right there. It was a massive deadly attack but it was a one hit shot and I was sure there were different defensive skills and biomorphs that would let some creatures tank something like this.

  With my tank full of biomass and all my upgrades taken care of I went to sleep for a few hours. When I woke up it was still dark but I headed out anyway. I traveled north east this time to the opposite side of the oak tree as I’d traveled the day before. The brook was visible and there were many deadly aerial predators around but I kept low and didn’t approach the water to closely. At least I didn’t until I spotted a settlement. It was my only way to describe it. Mud huts, a palisade made out of thick branches sharpened to points protecting them flanked by a hollow log that spanned the width of the river with the settlement continuing on the other side. I moved closer being very cautious not to be seen. I looked at the humanoids moving about the settlement there was farmland outside the palisade with various insects moving about them.

  As I got closer I saw that these bugs weren’t Widows, well most of them weren’t I spotted a few moving through the gate but they looked like merchants not residents. The humanoids were beetle like but I wasn’t close enough to identify them and the grass jungle ended before the settlement began and I didn’t want to cross that open distance. I began to circle them, my plans for Heavy Carapace might need to be put on hold for a bit this was something I needed to check out.