While making his way around the volcano at a good jogging speed, Eli was thinking about getting stronger and what was pushing him into fights and moving him forward. He was having to guess at almost everything, he didn't know how to use magic, how skills worked, how to get more skills, how to level effectively, or even how to fight besides basic military unarmed combat training. The whole planet was getting a tutorial and would come out much stronger than these monsters he was fighting. He was going to get passed up in power before they came back if he wasn't an absolute beast before that happened.
However, Eli was a brain not a muscle, he came up with plans and worked with others to achieve a strategic goal. He told the muscle where to go and how to get things done, but now he had to be his own muscle and he was realizing that he only made it this far because of a high pain tolerance and the ability to keep a level head in stressful situations. He began swinging around his mace to get more comfortable with using it and feeling the weight of it. It wasn't much longer until he came upon another monster, but this one was confusing and he really didn't know how to proceed.
"Magma Worm level 6"
"An earthworm that eats volcanic magma"
This was a 10 foot long earthworm with translucent skin and was glowing from the magma it had clearly just been eating from a hole near it that was glowing like there was some magma about 3 feet down. This thing didn't have a face or much magic, it was like a long tube that could move and happened to contain magma. Eli decided to just jump and attack with his mace and go from there, he wasn't going to get much more information just standing here. As he walked forward slowly nothing happened, so he got closer and closer and finally he was close enough to lunge and land a hit.
Eli brought his hammer up and prepared to lunge forward when across from the worm he saw a jackalope come out from behind a tree. He thought that these creatures must not be that rare if he is already seeing another one, but then he noticed its angry eyes and it was holding 2 antlers similar to the ones on its head. Eli froze, realizing that this antlered rabbit must have known that the other one he killed and he wasn't happy his friend was dead. He smacked his forehead and remembered that he had not picked up the antlers. The jackalope stared him down and held up one of the antlers and shook it while making little squeak sounds, then it threw the antler at the worm and took off running away as fast as it could.
The magma worm woke up and spewed lava in a circle around itself in a scared panic clearly not realizing what had happened. Eli was a step too slow to dodge the lava coming his direction so he just swung his bone mace and hoped for the best, which turned out to work better than he thought. It didn't stop everything, his upper body was covered in small fingernail sized holes from the small pieces that made it around his feeble attempt to block a small wall of lava heading toward him. HE actually stopped and stared at his mace cause he was surprised it had worked at all, and he wasn't alone, the worm was also looking at him, or at least pointing at him, it didn't have eyes as far as Eli could tell. It no longer glowed so it seemed to be out of the magma it had collected and it started to make slow movements toward one of its holes that glowed from the magma deep inside. Eli pounced and got a good smash on the worm near the middle of its body which split the worm into 2 pieces with what he guessed was the front end falling over and wiggling into one of the holes.
Eli was holding a hammer and surrounded by holes where a worm could pop up and spray him with lava at any moment. This was going to be one high stakes game of whack-a-mole, he smashed the bottom half a couple of times just to be sure. He positioned himself in the middle of the holes and closed his eyes straining his senses while standing perfectly still, it did not take long for it to pop up and weakly spray him with a little lava. The worm seemed far weaker than before, probably hard to build pressure when its bottom half was an open tube he thought while clenching his fists at the pain.
He focused on his surroundings trying to use all the senses he could to predict where it would pop-up, and he got sprayed again, just a couple more drops reached him. The worm wasn't willing to come up close to him so it wasn't doing much damage, but it still hurts when a marble sized piece of magma melts a hole in your thigh. Finally right before the third attack he felt a small shake in the ground from the direction it came from, and right before the fourth attack he dashed over and swung down right as its head came up. He channeled his pain from the lava attacks into the strike and brought his bone mace down on its head right as it poked up from the ground.
"POW"
The worm popped like a balloon spraying more lava into the area and even starting some fires about 15 yards away, as for Eli, his pants were running out of fabric to be torn or melted. With his shirt long since destroyed he was quickly running into a modesty problem, it wasn't that someone would see him but it was a natural instinct built into humans that they felt vulnerable when they were naked. He was already barely getting by on the seat of his pants and he was steadily running out of pants.
"I really need some durable pants or this is going to get weird." He said out loud to himself with his hand on chin in a thinking pose while his body smoked and sizzled from the fight. He decided to think about it later and read his system windows.
"Combat Completed"
"You have defeated Magma Worm"
"250 Experience earned"
"Congratulations"
"Experience level increased from 4 to 5"
"You have gained 1 free stat point"
"The monster you have defeated has been auto looted due to its level of destruction"
"You have received 250 system credits"
"You have received Magma Worm Skin"
Eli put his new stat point into Resistance bringing it up to 6 as he was hoping it would help him survive more of these volcano themed monsters that kept melting him. Looking down at himself, he knew it was going to be awhile before he felt healed enough to start another fight so he sat down and looked at his new item after taking it out of his inventory.
"Magma Worm Skin"
"The mostly translucent skin of a Magma worn"
"When worn reduces heat damage by 20%"
"Does not offer any physical protection"
It was a strip of mostly see-through leathery material about 6 inches wide and 7 feet long that felt cool to the touch like it was absorbing heat from anything that touched it. Eli knew this would help in this area so he put it on like a scarf at first but it was too long and would get in the way during a fight so he wrapped it around his stomach a couple times and tied it off. This made his stomach go from looking like he had moderately decent muscle definition to almost being out of shape since it blurred his skin and kind of mushed together when wrapped on itself. He wasn't really upset about his new look, but he was happy for the damage reduction since he seemed to be getting burned a lot.
"Time to reach the dungeon: 39 hours."
Finally, Eli was tired and didn't want to stand or start running again. He needed a rest and some food and while thinking of the meat he had in his inventory he also noticed that some of the fires from the fight were still burning. He walked over to one of the fires and poked his beetle meat onto his bone mace and held it over the fire. While he wasn't sure how to tell when it was fully cooked, he was very hungry, so he was going to eat it regardless. The fire didn't seem to be doing anything to the meat, even after he just set it on the burning colas, it still looked and felt the same.
Maybe he was going to need stronger fire. He put the meat back into his inventory and walked over to the worm tunnels where it would dive down and get some magma. He tossed a stick in one and it burned to ash in seconds. This was definitely hotter than a wood fire, but was it too hot? Eli was hungry and didn't want to burn his small food supply, but he didn't have a lot of options, so he tried to cook his meat over one of the tunnels the same way as before and it burned to a crisp faster than a blink. Getting his bone mace hot enough to burn his hand slightly. He quickly pulled it back away from the heat of the tunnel
He stared at it with a grumpy look on his face, wondering if he should try to eat it despite its current level of crispy. It can't hurt me since anything bad in it had to have been burned out and he took a bite, or he tried to take a bite. This meat was a piece of rubber, like truck tire rubber mixed with sand and the taste of the inside of a tailpipe. He pushed past all the bad attributes of the meat and kept biting down harder until he broke through and got a bite in his mouth and swallowed before he could taste it even more. He waited to see if anything would happen for a few seconds, then a minute, then five minutes, and after that since nothing happened he tried to get another bite. With 5 bites in his stomach he felt like he had all he was going to get from the charred meat and forced it off his bone and tossed it into the tunnel opening.
Eli was still quite hungry and was looking at his inventory of the jackalope meat but really didn't want to burn it as well and while trying to think of a solution he noticed the fire affinity gem he had. He reached into his inventory with his mental hand and grabbed the box with the gem in it and placed it on the ground. It was quickly heating the ground it sat on and as he placed his hand over it it felt hot enough so he got the body out and set it on the ground next to it. The problem was he didn't have anything sharp to cut it open with so he just started tearing it apart, removing limbs and scratching at the skin until it started to come off. When he was done he had a mangled corpse of an animal, and even like this it smelled so good he was drooling as he held it with his hands over the gem.
The meat started to cook and so far it wasn't burning, in fact it seemed to be drinking in the heat as it cooked like it was stealing the magic from the gem. When it was done cooking he held the gem in his hand, the colorless and magicless gem, it felt almost brittle in his hands and he put it away only focusing on the small bit of meat. It smelled spicy like really hot chicken wings and he took a small bite which burned his mouth and throat as he chewed and swallowed. It hurt but it was nothing compared to the pain in his chest and stomach. They felt like they were on fire, like he was literally burning on the inside and he even coughed up smoke like a chimney.
The magic in his body was reacting like with the flower, causing his magic to to writhe like chaotic waves in a storm while the fire adjacent mana from the jackalope was moving around looking for somewhere to go. It looked like he had a fire node on his left thigh that liked the magic, but it wasn't absorbing it, it was using it to copy or replicate its flavor. But with the node not having its own magic it couldn't keep the new flavor and the foreign magic eventually got broken apart and absorbed into his other magic. He felt bloated with magic, like after eating a thanksgiving dinner, just too full to move. The good news was that he was not hungry anymore, but he did feel like his insides were recovering from burns and with the pressure from being too full of magic he fell back to the ground from his sitting position.
When he fell back something stabbed his shoulder, he pulled it out and looked at it while laying down, his blood was on the end but otherwise it didn't look damaged or even dead. It was the Jackolope antler that the other jackalope had thrown to ruin his sneak attack one shot of the last fight. Maybe this was magical too he thought and stared at it with some intensity hoping the system would give him more information. No response, which meant it didn't have the information or it didn't want anyone else to have it, either way he wasn't sure what to do with it. It felt like it was magical but he couldn't place the intent or flavor of the magic. It was unlike anything his limited knowledge of magic could make out. He was getting sleepy and decided that he could afford some time for a nap, he started to fall asleep with the morning sun shining on his face. The moment he was asleep he began to dream.