Viviana woke up staring at the sky in terrarium two. She pulled herself off the ground. The gentle grass and vibrant landscape reminded her of orientation. So did the person next to her.

  “Finally,” Selenne said. “You’re awake.”

  Selenne was sitting on a rock just a little bit away, watching Viviana as she smoked. Smoked?

  Selenne noticed her gaze. “Huh? Want one?”

  “No thanks. I don’t smoke.”

  Selenne chuckled. “These aren’t cigarettes, idiot of Adler-Stern. It’s a stick of… wafer, I think, covered in chocolate.”

  Viviana reluctantly took a piece from the box Selenne held. Infuriatingly, it was pretty good. Viviana took another one. They ate their snacks in a strange silence.

  “You gonna thank me?” Selenne asked.

  Viviana blinked. For what? Doing the bare minimum and piecing me together after you killed me? No, I should be grateful. We don’t owe each other anything, right? Wait, does she mean the chocolate wafer thing?

  “Oh. Thanks, Selenne.”

  Selenne sighed. “You’re gonna have to thank me again. I got you a gift,” she said, pulling out a strange item. It was a mask.

  [Scareye]

  [Passive - Blood Seeker - While wearing this mask, you are able to instinctively sense the location of bleeding enemies you have recently injured.]

  Viviana shook her head. “And what do I owe you this time?”

  “Consider it an advance payment, for protecting my brother.”

  “What’s going to happen, now? Why can’t you protect him yourself?”

  “...The guilds are going to go to war. It’s going to get ugly, Adler-Stern.”

  “So? We’re in the academy. It’s just a mock war, anyways. Nobody dies, not truly.”

  Selenne only shook her head, getting up to leave. “Goodbye, Adler-Stern. It truly was a fun fight. I’ll give you this final warning. Don’t stick your head where it doesn’t belong. And if it comes down to it, protect Lucian for me.”

  How infuriating, Viviana thought. “More cryptic bullshit. And let me guess. You’re gonna disappear now. I can’t even chase you ‘cause I died recently. My mana is still recovering.”

  Selenne was already gone.

  “It’s one-one! Don’t forget!” Viviana shouted.

  The mask was immediately put into use. Viviana wore it everywhere now. People didn’t approach her anymore, which made exploring terrarium two much easier.

  Today was the first day Viviana got a chance to look around and level up.

  Terrarium two wasn’t as large as the others, but it didn’t feel that way. That’s because what it lacked in shear span it made up for in height. Floating islands everywhere, dotting the skies, connected by nearly nothing.

  What made the islands float though, was the most interesting. Little pockets of anti gravity drifted everywhere, like massive, floating bubbles.

  The main mode of transport here was either flying vehicles or automatic grappling hooks. Flying was certainly safer, but grappling hooks allowed for interesting vertical movement, and accelerations that could not be achieved with a vehicle. Not to mention this was one of the only places where grappling hooks were more effective than the far more expensive jump boots, so everyone naturally had one.

  Viviana had bought a cheap grappling system off the academy auction. Someone was selling their old gear, so she had scooped it up for a cheap price. She looked up how to attach the harness to herself, and now, decently confident in her setup, she was willing to test if it worked.

  Viviana fired her grappling hook through an anti-gravity bubble. Curious. Through the bubble it went completely straight, but as soon as it left the bubble the arc started dipped down.

  The hook flew for a couple seconds and then firmly anchored itself onto the base of a floating island. Viviana pressed another button on the grappling hook, and away she went, the ropes pulling her across at her waist.

  Quickly she realized she knew nothing about grappling hook usage, and was flailing through the air like an inflatable tube man in a hurricane. She wasn’t undignified enough to scream, but she was on the cusp of it.

  Then she realized she didn’t know how to stop, and promptly slammed into the top edge of the floating island, her grapples disconnecting as she skidded to a stop on her face. Viviana groaned, rolling over on her back, thankful for her mask. If she hadn’t had it on, she would’ve eaten a meal’s worth of dirt.

  Whatever the case, she had made it to her target. She looked up, where dozens of floating islands appeared. Unlike regular dungeons, the dungeon got ‘deeper’ as you went higher. The students had divided the place into ‘floors’, where the higher number floors had more dangerous monsters.

  The entrance from the academy was considered floor zero, or the ‘academy floor’. Viviana moved up a little, but not enough to be considered floor one. If she wanted to fight some monsters she’d have to continue going up.

  Viviana pulled herself to her feet, taking in surroundings some more. The island she landed on wasn’t big, certainly compared to the other ones floating about, but it was certainly enough to be nice. Rocky, rolling hills, trees, and even a small stream, spilling water into a lake on the academy floor.

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  Then she encountered her first monsters. A large, fluffy snake? With legs? A ferret. The size of an armored transport vehicle. With six legs.

  The ferret looking creature noticed her and charged at her, its long body undulating and folding as it ran. Viviana prepared a stance and placed a lightning sigil below her feet and onto her leg.

  The ferret charged right into her trap. Viviana activated [lightning trap], but was shocked when the monster simply shrugged it off. In anycase, she didn’t let her surprise slow her down, raising her sword to intercept the monster’s paw swipe. Just in time, too. The monster had foot long retractable claws that only came out when hunting.

  Viviana stumbled back as the monster’s strength pressed down on her. It used its front two paws to swipe, and its rear four to balance itself. Viviana noticed this, ducking under a swing and activating [flash step]. She swung her sword at one of its legs, sword driving deep into its flesh.

  Then the monster whipped around, and a fleshy pink projectile whipped at her face. She instinctively raised her sword to block, and the projectile stuck. Saliva sprayed everywhere. A tongue?

  Just then she felt a massive yanking force on her blade. She was nearly torn off her feet as she held onto the blade for her life. She braced her feet, pulling backwards as hard as she could, trying to free her sword from the sticky tongue, but nothing was working. Fine. If it wants my sword, it can take it.

  Viviana activated [flash step] again, darting in towards the ferret-snake-thing with six legs. The force the monster was applying to pull her in only added to the speed of her dash, and she hit the monster faster than it could blink.

  Desperately it tried swiping one of its paws at her, but Viviana simply smashed her non-sword hand into it. It was torn to shreds, but it prevented the paw from tearing into her. That was enough. Viviana’s sword slammed into the monster’s mouth and out the top.

  [You have slain a level 6 slitherret.]

  [+8 exp]

  [You can distribute (2) stat points.]

  Slither + Ferret? Who named this thing? Not to mention, eight whole experience points?

  Viviana remembered she only got ten from the big bird in the dungeon. Terrarium two was an unexpected windfall. If she could consistently hunt these things, she’d level up so fast…

  Now, how do I remove my sword? She yanked on the sword uselessly, the saliva on the tongue sticking to the blade like glue. No matter what she was doing, it just got more and more stuck. Even trying to cut the tongue with the edge of her blade wasn’t working– the tongue just wrapped around the edge as well. If it uses sticky saliva to hunt, it needs a way to unstick its prey. Maybe it's like a glue deactivator, or something?

  Viviana then pulled out her phone, searching online for any tips. Turns out slitherrets had a chemical gland in the back of their throats that unstuck their saliva. Viviana had already pierced the gland with her sword when she killed the monster, but the precious chemical was flowing down the monster’s throat. Viviana picked up the monster and tilted it, allowing the chemical to wash over its tongue and her blade.

  Well, that’s a job well done. I wonder if I can sell slitherret parts for some money? Viviana checked the academy app, wiping down her blade on some grass, sitting down as she contemplated her earnings.

  Slitherret saliva and deactivator were sold as a construction material. Not for much coin, though. Viviana decided that slitherrets weren’t worth the money. The experience points made up for it, however.

  Viviana then looked up from her phone. Two more slitherrets had appeared. Viviana grinned. She was beginning to like terrarium two.

  It didn’t take long for her to dispatch the two monsters. Despite being outnumbered, she now knew how the slitherrets liked to fight, and boiled down the encounter to a science– target the rear legs, and dodge the tongue. The system must have recognized this too, because she only got five experience points for each slitherret.

  She now had three whole unallocated points she could use on her stats. She put two points into WIL and one into DEX. Now that both her abilities scaled with WIL, it was a shoe in choice. DEX was levelled up just to keep things balanced. Plus, she hoped that the DEX points would make using the grappling hook a little easier.

  [Welcome, Viviana Adler-Stern.]

  [Soulbound Lightning]

  [Level 2]

  [Experience: 95/200]

  [Unallocated points: 0]

  [VIG=2; MIN=5; END=4; STR=2; DEX=4; WIL=2]

  [Equipped Skills]

  [Lightning Trap] [Dash]

  [Equipped Items]

  [Scareye]

  [Available Skills]

  Viviana’s stomach growled as she closed her system. She just then realized she hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast back at the Landsknecht home base. Fighting random people, then Selenne, dying, and then fighting three snake ferrets really made her lose track of time.

  She checked if the slitherferrets were edible on the academy website. Apparently they were– barely. They just tasted really bad. Viviana moved to cut off a nice rib off the side of the slitherferret, marvelling at just how many ribs the creature had. It was long, after all.

  Then a massive shadow passed overhead. Viviana instinctively ducked. A giant, bulbous bird flew overhead, massive talons reaching out and grabbing the two dead slitherferrets.

  The bird stunk to high heaven. It was a strange, toxic green, and its body was bloated and transparent in strange places. Its wings were comically short, but its strange, buoyant body cultivated from consuming the anti-gravity bubbles allowed it to fly.

  In short, it was the ugliest thing Viviana had ever seen. What made it even more, ugly, though, was the fact that it was taking Viviana’s lunch.

  She snapped back into attention after being shocked by just how ugly it was. She ran after the bird after its fat body tried getting back into the air, only managing to hop a couple meters. She activated [flash step], surging forward, but she only was able to clip it barely. With a massive hop, flapping its little wings like an insect, it lunged forward and grabbed a third slitherret corpse. The last one.

  Viviana kept chasing it as it grossly flapped around, not even taking off– the weight of the corpses was far too heavy. It was a biblical amount of greed.

  With no choice, the bird hopped off the island. When the stupid fat bird started falling, clearly noticing the weight of its folly, it simply dropped one of the corpses. Viviana watched in horror as her lunch plummeted downwards, smashed into the academy floor and turned into paste. Then she looked up as the bird flew into the sky.

  The effect on her system-recognized mask, [Blood Seeker], activated. Instinctively Viviana sensed where the bird was flying. Far, far above. Way too far to reach.

  She was going to kill that bird if it was the last thing she did. Her stomach growled again.

  With a sigh, she realized she would have to either return to the academy campus, or continue island hopping in hopes of finding an edible monster. Viviana chose the latter, aiming her grappling hook at another floating island. She fired it, watching as the head embedded itself into a neighbouring island, right where she wanted it.

  She activated the pull function, and she zipped along. This time she tensed her core and glued her eyes forward, hoping to stabilize the device.

  Hey, it's working. Wait, how do I stop?!

  She smashed face first into another floating island. I hate this place.