Chapter 308 – Pentaband Krait King

During his mission in the Holy Spirit Island, Fatty killed several thousand Dark Unicorns, but only gained several dozen pet and mount eggs out of them. This showed how low the drop rates of these eggs were.

Over forty pet eggs and ten-something mount eggs were sold in a whole package to Liu Lan at 60,000 gold coins per egg.

In fact, what was more important to a guild were not pet eggs, but mount eggs. A powerful cavalry unit would hold an absolute advantage in large-scale battles such as guild wars.

Fatty had plans to assemble a cavalry regiment of his own. Reck also once mentioned this to him, saying they could use the Holy Unicorns in the city to be the mounts. However, the current number of Holy Unicorns was insufficient with only less than a hundred of them, not to mention Fatty had no source to pick suitable candidates from. Therefore, even though this plan was on the agenda, it was on hold.

Over six thousand miles to the south of the Imperial Capital, there was a forest called the Demon Forest, covering an area of about 10,000 miles in radius. The rulers of this forest were the demonized monsters that roamed about everywhere, hence the name.

Fatty pocketed the Violent Ox King and summoned his two pets before slowly entering the Demon Forest.

The Violent Ox King’s level was far higher than Fatty’s. If he relied on it to farm monsters, the experience points earned would be too meager to outweigh the safety and quick speed it provided.

Moreover, Fatty currently had no mission, so he could take his time here to grind. The trip to the East Ocean and beyond had greatly stimulated him. Before, he might have had ideas about doing this and that, but now he all he could think about was leveling.

Hiss…

A colorful venomous snake as thick as an arm and over a meter long swayed its tail as it stared fixedly at the approaching Fatty. This snake was a native of the Demon Forest – the Pentaflower Snake, a demonized monster over level 50 and very poisonous. If a knight of the 4th class enhancement was poisoned by it and slow to replenish their health, they’d die from the venom alone in seconds.

“Yes, it’s you!”

Seeing this snake, Fatty wasn’t scared. Instead, he was delighted. He was more than pleased to collect some medical materials while leveling, and the gallbladder of this Pentaflower Snake was one of the materials needed for the Hundred Poison Pill, a recipe given by Reck.

“Wheat, pounce!”

Of course, one's pet should be at the forefront of any battle. Upon Fatty’s order, Wheat rolled its eyes in contempt before sinking underground and shot a Howling Bullet at the Pentaflower Snake.

Whoosh! The snake immediately straightened up its body and rapidly flicked its tongue. However, as a ground traveler, there was nothing it could do to Wheat while it was burrowed.

Bang bang bang!

A series of stone spikes shot out from underground and struck the snake’s belly. The force sent the monster flying.

Crackle!

A flash of lighting landed on the flying snake, which convulsed briefly, paralyzed as expected. It was Inky’s Electric Bolt.

“What do they say again? Skinning, tendonectomy-ing and deboning must begin from the heart…” Fatty muttered nonsense as the Elemental Sword flew out and hurled itself right into the wide-open mouth of the Pentaflower Snake.

Schhhzzz…

Piercing through the neck of the snake, the Elemental Sword nailed it to a tree behind. The creature’s health sharply dropped but was unable to even utter a scream with the sword in its mouth. After some desperate twisting, its tail limply drooped, marking the snake’s easy death.

Thud!

A pile of items dropped on the ground. At the top of the pile was a dagger with the hilt shaped like a snake tooth and the blade glowing green. This dagger was obviously poisonous.

Fatty picked up the dagger and cast several Appraisals until the details were displayed.

Poisonous Fang Dagger

Gold weapon

Level Requirement: 45

Attack: 85 – 100

DEX +18

Active – Poisonous Fang: After a successful hit, the opponent loses 150 health per second for 5 seconds. The effect cannot be superimposed.

A good weapon, I can probably sell for 20,000 gold coins. Too bad it’s only Gold-grade, if it was Violet and had a bit better stats, it could at least sell for 50,000 gold coins.

Aside from this Poisonous Fang Dagger, the rest were trash. Fatty threw them all to the Elemental Skill Book. Currently, the Elemental Skill Book no longer gained anything from absorbing equipment, but this act could still feed energy to the Elemental Mystery Realm.

Tossing several Harvests on the snake’s corpse, Fatty gained a snake pelt, two poisonous fangs, and a gallbladder.

Pentaflower Snake Gallbladder

Intermediate ingredient

Highly poisonous. Can be used in refining poison.

As its name suggested, the Hundred Poison Pill, which Reck researched for years to create the recipe, required a hundred types of snake gallbladders to concoct. While it was only an Advanced recipe, if the pill was concocted from purely high-rank Yao snake gallbladders, the poison in the pill could easily kill even a dragon, according to what Reck had noted.

Regardless of the credibility of Reck’s words, the toxicity of the pill was unquestionable from its complex ingredients alone.

Stowing away the loot, Fatty looked towards another Pentaflower Snake and snapped his fingers. Wheat instantly understood the signal and sank underground while Inky slowly flew in the air. As for Fatty, he entered Stealth and lay in wait nearby.

The Pentaflower Snake was only some levels over 50 and not much higher than Fatty’s level. It made an easy opponent as long as Fatty was careful enough to not get poisoned. After less than one hour of farming, he had gained over a hundred gallbladders.

Fatty decided it was enough farming of the Pentaflower Snake for now and prepared to switch to another area. Since the recipe required a hundred types of snake gallbladders, the priority was to find enough of all one hundred types first.

“Hmm?” Fatty squinted and suddenly bent backward. At the same time, his legs quickly side-stepped.

Woooo! A shadow narrowly whizzed past his face and cut off a tree as thick as a bowl, shocking Fatty into a cold sweat.

Whoosh whoosh! The bush parted, and before Fatty was the raised triangle-shaped head of a snake. It was as thick as a bucket and over a dozen meters in length, with circular patterns on its skin.

Appraisal!

Habitually casting the skill on reflex, Fatty received the monster’s information.

Pentaband Krait King

Low-rank Yao boss

Level: 62

…

Notes: A monster living in the Demon Forest. Being tainted by the demonic miasma of the Demon Forest since birth, the Pentaband Krait King was born cruel and aggressive. Extremely venomous, it once poisoned a high-rank Yao to death.

Fatty smiled after reading the krait’s information. While he didn’t lack inner cores for his equipment thanks to the Black Dragon King, he didn’t mind having more. After all, who would complain about having too much good stuff?

The patterns on a Pentaflower Snake was colorful and varied, but as it leveled up, those messy patterns would gradually turn into circles, and its name would accordingly change into Pentaband Krait upon reaching a certain level. That was a way to judge the strength of a Pentaflower Snake.

The Pentaband Krait King before Fatty was staring at him with glowing red eyes and two fangs dripping with some sticky liquid. The long tail of the creature was sweeping left and right on the ground. It had been exactly this tail that tried to assault Fatty. One could imagine how powerful it was to be capable of breaking a tree.

Whoosh! The Pentaband Krait King suddenly spat a mass of green big enough to enshroud both Fatty and his two pets. Obviously, it also knew of the principal 'making the first move is an advantage.'

"Makes sense. The higher their ranks the higher their intelligence, not to mention, monsters from Yao level above all get bonus AI to some extent." Fatty recalled all of the Yao monsters he'd run into in the past. Some of them could even talk, having the intelligence of a human.

Despite thinking a bunch of thoughts, Fatty's movement wasn't delayed one bit. In the face of the poison that once killed a high-rank Yao, he didn't dare to let it touch him in any way. He quickly slid back while ordering Inky to fly high up.

As for Wheat, the rodent had already fled underground.

Wheat's Earthwalk was truly a useful skill. When performing sneak attacks, Earthwalk; when losing out in a fight, Earthwalk; when lazy, also Earthwalk. No matter what the situation was, the first thing this fellow used was Earthwalk.

Fatty's eyes glowed green with envy, but that was all he could do – envy. His Elemental Movement Arts was at Novice level, only allowing him to do something akin to teleportation. He needed to rank up the skill to Intermediate before he could use it as naturally as Wheat.

It was not Fatty's habit to be attacked without retaliating. The instant he escaped the poison range, he disappeared into Stealth. With the God Slayer Crossbow in his left hand and the Elemental Sword in his right, Fatty quietly crept around.

At the moment, the Pentaband Krait King was being aggro-ed by Wheat, who was casting a slew of attacks from underground. Refusing to show any weakness, the Pentaband Krait King repeatedly smacked its tail at the ground and was able to deal damage to Wheat while rupturing the area around it.

"Squeak squeak!" Wheat frantically leaped out of the ground. Per Fatty's command, Inky quickly healed Wheat to full.

Zoom! Fatty appeared right near the Pentaband Krait King with a buzz from the God Slayer Crossbow. Like lightning, a black streak impaled one of the boss' eyes.

"Hssssss!" The Pentaband Krait King writhed in pain. As its huge body thrashed about wildly on the ground, some trees and stones were crushed to pieces.

"I wonder if its inner core is poisonous too. If it is, maybe I can try to refine a Hundred-Poison Pill from a hundred types of poisonous inner cores and see if it can really poison a dragon to death." While making future plans, Fatty took advantage of his injured opponent to unleash all sorts of attacks.

Assassinate, Shadow Kill, Ambush,… Everything was thrown out in one go. With the two pets’ assistance, Fatty saw the health bar of the Pentaband Krait King plummet to less than half in seconds.

While the krait king's venom attack was dangerous, its health and defense fell short. This was a kind of balancing from the system.

"Hiss…" When the creature finally stopped rolling, its upper half body erected and it glared viciously at Fatty.

"What? Unwilling to concede? Then, come again." Fatty crooked his finger at the Pentaband Krait King.

Zoom! His response was a poison arrow, which arrived at his face in a flash.

Bam! Making no movement to dodge, Fatty sent out the Elemental Skill Book. Like a shield, the book blocked the arrow, then absorbed it. The Elemental Skill Book could suppress all five elements. The poison arrow was only water with poison matter, so the book devoured it without a problem.

Zoom zoom… The Pentaband Krait King spat out several consecutive poison arrows to no avail. Seeing that its poison was useless, the creature coiled its tail around a nearby tree a meter tall, uprooted it and flung it at Fatty.

Fatty's face abruptly changed. It was really too perverse for a low-rank Yao to have this kind of AI.