Tacha glanced at her low Hp. She must’ve blanked out for longer than she thought; a bit more and she would’ve found herself being greeted with a death notification.

  The granny didn’t delay any longer and opened her inventory, her fingers quickly scrolling through her choices.

  The Salted Spirit Mushroom dish was the same one that gave her the Mirage effect. It would be a pretty safe bet, if it wasn’t for the fact that the description updated with a list of possible effects. That means she could get another ailment.

  And she really didn’t need a new variable.

  The Wild Berry Salad, mentioning directly a possibility of poisoning, was promptly excluded. If what the description said was true, then she would instantly die.

  If she was going to choose based on description, then the Mixed Salad looked to be the most harmless.

  Granny Tacha held her breath and with fingers crossed she wolfed down the Mixed Salad.

  She was glad that she didn’t gain any bad aliments. Still, Mp recovery was completely useless for her. Unfortunately she didn’t gain any stat boost either.

  Tacha felt as if her body was weighted down by gravity itself. Her current 2 points of Strength showed their full power with her barely getting up. She was never going to let herself have such low attributes. Never again.

  Now that the other player was probably dead, she had one more thing to do: kill the boss.

  The loot was all going to be hers.

  She could fantly see the flourescent purple markings of the boss not far from her. With greedy eyes she got closer and closer, until she was but a few steps behind.

  The ooze creature didn’t make any movements. It didn’t turn around to face her, nor it tried to move farther away. Tacha was trembling in both excitement and nervousness. In one swift motion she took out two dishes of Steamed Spirited Radish, one in each hand.

  Due to her low Str she couldn’t throw them, but she didn’t need to. She was close enough to the boss that she simply needed to stretch her arm to have the dishes make contact.

  The dishes were splattered upon the ooze’s skin. The boss screeched, as if it was being burned alive.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Tacha didn’t stop covering the boss with dishes, no matter how pitfully it was pleading her to stop. Though she was sure it was just her imagination. There was no way that thing was begging her with its puppy eyes. Yes, a Mirage side effect...

  The boss stopped moving and groaning, the purple markings just fading away. Its golden eyes lost their luster, turning dark and slimey just like the rest of the body. The ooze’s bubbling was getting weaker and weaker, until it became an immoble puddle.

  The exp gained from killing the boss brought Tacha directly to level 6. Then that meant stat points, lots of unassigned statpoints!

  In a flash she distribuited all of the points in strength and endurance. She had well realized the effect of low stats, as a low strenght would mean that she wouldn’t be able to move anymore, and a low endurance would mean that she would be more easily affected by negative status aliments.

  Now only looting remained. But she didn’t really want to touch that disgusting puddle. Still, she had to do it.

  For the loot!

  Making use of the few scraps left of Molly’s bedroll by using them as makeshift gloves, she searched through the slimey puddle. The granny grabbed wathever she found and tossed them in her inventory without checking them. She didn’t want to linger for too long with the toxic puddle. If her Voidblight was going to be worse because she took too long to grab her spoils, she would start crying.

  Suddenly a notification appeared, and for fear that it was actually about the Blight she hopped back a few good meters, then looked at it fearfully.

  This…

  She couldn’t believe her eyes.

  Was the slimey boss Layla all along?

  As Tacha worried about the quest, a loud noise of grinding stone filled the underground hall. Then with a thud everything went back to silence. At first Tacha didn’t understand what had happened, then with a trembling hand she touched the wall.

  She hoped that what she thought wasn’t true at all. That it was just an illusion brought by her Mirage affliction. When she reached the stairs at first she went up slowly, but after a while of not seeing even a silver of light she started rushing. Then, at the end of the spiral stairs she banged her head to the closed entrance.

  Tacha touched the cold and smooth texture of the stone layer that blocked her way back. Overwhelmed by a sense of fatigue, she crouched down. With a hand on her face she tried her best to calm down.

  With the way the entrance was designed, the only way to close this passage was by removing the weapon that the statue holds. Then that means that someone came to the ruins and took the sword that she left behind.

  But who would do such a thing?

  Was it a player that stumbled upon the ruins and greeded for the sword, or was it an NPC?