After months of hard work Hatchi was finally given his reward in the form of a burning sensation on the inside of about 1/5th of his body. He'd been gifted a reward window from the system saying he could either choose an upgrade to his skins durability or an upgrade to chewing ability. Hatchi had not possessed a single plan on fighting anything so chewing was the way to go! That option allowed him to adapt and be quite similar to an egg eating snake, possessing teeth in his throat that could grind together and crush anything he ate!
Hatchi had grown alot since his last visit to the surface, and he'd grown much more accustomed to his mana sense. Being distracted would cause him to not notice things but that was the case with his old regular eyeballs to, so no big deal! As long as he was focused hatchi could even see behind himself now! Now was the time to explore!
Hatchi decided to take a safer route this time, above ground was totally dangerous and not suitable for a fat worm like himself, so instead he'd venture deeper! He'd noticed that eating things like small bits of rock gave more exp while dirt gave a little less and sand gave almost nothing. So things of higher quality obviously gave him more! He couldn't try the things on the surface yet as most of them wanted to try him to.. but maybe he could try things deeper down.
This wasn't his world so he didn't know if it was even old enough to have fossils, but there should still be gems considered valuable in this world at the very least for him to eat! So down hatchi went, tunneling further and further until he reached rocks. He gently took apart of one into his mouth and flexed his throat muscles, his new sharp teeth broke the rock into pieces that he quickly digested! As long as something could fit in his mouth, hatchi could digest it now!
He continued to slowly burrow through the rock, eventually getting another notification from the system.
[Congratulations you have reached level 2 please choose one of the following evolutions.
1 balanced breathing
2 stronger slimecoat
3 hair]
Hatchi was disgusted, why would anyone ever choose to put hair on a worm? He looked at balanced breathing with curiosity, what would something like that even mean? "System can you tell me more about balanced breathing?" He thought, hoping it would.
[Balanced breathing would allow you to breathe air and water, quite useful for a worm who breathes through his skin.]
Hatchi did not like that face and quickly decided to choose balanced breathing, but first he made himself a room and curled up. He did not want to be out in some random tunnel when he evolved. With rock beneath him and moist dirt on every other side of him, hatchi used his tail to block the entrance before falling asleep.
When he awoke hatchi found himself in a tunnel much bigger than the one he had built, it was made of rock and spotted with some sort of small sharp gem on one side. The other side had small gaps, though he could fit through easily. Looking through them hatchi was amazed, it was hard to see in alot of detail but it was a cavern. It appeared big enough to house an entire kingdom! Waterfalls rained from the ceiling and gathered into lakes at the base of what appeared to be multiple forests. Huge crystal chunks also hung from the ceiling and bathed everything in mana, so he assumed they probably also emitted light.
Hatchi decided he would explore it, but he wanted to level up again first so he began to eat the sharp gems that lined the tunnel and recieved a system notification!
[Proccessing new food: Mana Stone]