Chapter 137: Nine

Nessa's Millipede entered a deep sleep and slept through the night. But that didn't stop monsters from trying to attack them.

One of the many benefits of the Underworld's contamination of the forest and the effect it had on the monster was that they were too fearless and hungry to care about the stench of blood and piles of monster corpses to reconsider going after Zach. Their instincts also seemed to be sharper, at least when it came to finding and detecting prey.

The underworld energy had corroded their minds and strained their bodies. It reduced their capacity for rationality and increased their need for food. Explore new worlds at m,v l'-NovelFire.net

It was even easier for Zach to hunt than it was before. He still wasn't sure what to feel about how he was a monster magnet, but he couldn't deny the positive aspects. If he didn't want to be hounded by monsters, he just had to bring Alzara with him. It was a simple fix.

However, Alzara couldn't be with him all the time if she was also supposed to craft potions. It might not work against some monsters, either.

So, during the downtime when he was just waiting for Yanael to clear out the swarms of monsters, Zach decided to take his sister's advice and meditate. He looked for the glow she had mentioned and his existence. It was difficult since he didn't know what it meant and because he got sidetracked by his own thoughts.

However, Zach's thoughts were as much a part of his existence as his limbs, his senses, or his smell. By reflecting on them and understanding how he thought was also a way of acknowledging and understanding his existence.

Zach meditated on himself and his thoughts, trying to figure out how he was and why he was. For a couple of moments, he felt wise like an ancient philosopher. The next moment, he felt foolish and got up. He'd rather practice Material Extraction on monster corpses than continue.

So, that's exactly what he did.

It wasn't as easy when he couldn't hold the sources in one hand and extract with the other. He put one hand on to hold against the monster corpses and used the other to pull out lumps of pink, red, brown, green, and dark green.

A few worms also came out mostly white like they were made of bone. When he inspected the corpses of those material worms, he discovered that they were soft and unstructured like they had lost their skeletons.

It was a revolutionary discovery in terms of his skill. It meant he could extract only certain parts of monsters and condense them into concentrated worms. He didn't know how much more useful they would be or what they could be used for. But if he could separate different types of materials from the monster corpses, maybe he could also sort out impurities.

Unfortunately, Zach had trouble telling how impure the worms he extracted were without Alzara's help, so the only thing he had was his gut feeling and Nessa's Millipede's response when it ate the worms.

However, reading a Millipede's expressions when its face was covered in blood and gore was not easy. But Zach and Nessa could still tell when it was a good worm or a bad worm, at least according to the Millipede.

It was better than nothing. With the combination of his gut feeling and the Millipede's judgment, Zach continued improving the material worms while they headed back to the Academy after a long day of monster hunting.

Eventually, they had come so close to the Academy that they no longer ran into any monsters. Zach looked at Nessa

"What level are you now?"

"I reached nine yesterday evening, so it shouldn't be much left now." Nessa clenched her fist, celebrating being so close and looking forward to reaching level ten, when she could summon her next familiar.

"Then again…" Zach glanced at the round Millipede.

"...Right." The millipede hadn't done much killing since yesterday evening. It had only eaten what Yanael killed and Zach extracted. It ate so much it had trouble moving, so it was only natural it didn't hunt much.

"...Should I focus on hunting, then?" Nessa asked Zach with a slightly worried look.

"No." Zach shook his head. "From what I've noticed, higher ranking familiars mean more strength when you level up. I don't know if it works retroactively, so it's best to first focus on evolving your familiar. It also improves the odds of summoning a higher-ranking familiar as your second. Or, at least, I think it should."

"I see. I'll do that then. That means you can invite someone else to tag along and share the monsters you attract."

"...It wasn't like I didn't invite them this time, either. They were 'busy.'" Zach made air quotes with his fingers as he mocked the others' excuses for not tagging along.

"Right." Nessa wondered if Zach was offended that no one wanted to follow him into the forest but ignored it. "Just bring Dukiel and Julius. I'm sure they should be plenty close already, no? It also seemed like they rushed off to the city, so they must have worked hard while we were taking it easy."

"That's true…" Zach frowned slightly. He had hit level ten despite being unable to hunt for a large portion of the first year. Dukiel and Julius should have had more levels than him, even if they didn't kill as much as Yanael did, especially Dukiel since he got the hit on the tiger with the Sentinel's laser. Sёarch* The nôvelFire.net website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

It was almost a little strange that they hadn't summoned their second familiars yet.

Had they not reached level ten yet? Was there something stopping them? Was the principal acting a fool again?

Zach wanted to ask them why they hadn't summoned their familiars yet as soon as he and Nessa returned. But when he entered the club room and saw Dukiel and Julius poring over a map with grim faces, he realized there were more important matters to discuss.