Chapter 39 What Is That?

*

~I guess my hunch was correct,~ thought Lucius as he stared at his updated player stats.

┏━━━━━━???━━━━━━┓

─────?? Player Details ??─────?

[Lucius Elwood ]

[Level 3: 120/300]

[Leaf Being lvl.4- [10/400]]

─────?? Stats ??─────?

[Agility: 230 > 270]

[Strength: 185 > 197]

[Stamina: 156 > 188]

┗━━━━━━???━━━━━━┛

He had been training for nearly half an hour, and even though he had done more or less the same exercises he did yesterday, he only got half the points.

~I plateaued ridiculously fast,~ he realized after trying to do a complex kick and getting nothing out of it. At this point, he had to do longer combinations with way more complex movements if he wanted to get anywhere near a few points. However, that wasn't at all a big issue.

If he had to compare his current self to the one that lost to those shroom-beings, he would say that he had improved by leaps and bounds.

He could probably take on 4 shrooms simultaneously, and that would be head to head. Adding his stealth, if he played his cards right he could probably wipe them out of existence.

A smile crept up on his face as he threw out a barrage of crisp clean punches. He still couldn't believe that this was all accomplished in a matter of days.

~But how strong am I compared to boars?~ he thought to himself as he walked back to the camp.

*

"Okay, listen up. I'll hook you guys up to the sleds and we'll head out into the forest. We have a lot of work to do, so I hope you're all ready," he shouted out. All the leaflings immediately stopped what they were doing and scrambled over each other to get to a sled.

Unfortunately, Lucius had only managed to make 4 yesterday, and with each sled only being capable of accommodating three leaflings, most of them wouldn't get the chance to pull one.

"Hmm. I'll make more sleds later on, for now, you guys will just have to take turns," he said after pondering over it for a moment. A few leaflings reluctantly let their brothers and sisters have the first turn. They watched on in envy as the groups ran around pulling the wooden structures.

~Does this count as child labor? I kind of feel bad for them,~ Lucius thought to himself, unable to comprehend why the leaflings found this even remotely fun.

~I mean, training is way more enjoyable than this,~ he thought as he led them to a section of the forest where he had seen pebbles.

"By the way, have any of you seen Alpha today?" Lucius asked as he led the group past a drape of vines.

"Oh, he said that he and the others were going to search the area," one of the leaflings replied.

"They said they'd be back before the sessions started," another chimed in.

"Hmm, a deeper search huh?" he whispered to himself. It wouldn't be a lie to say that Lucius didn't quite like that idea.

Sure, Alpha had been trained to some extent, but ever since the shroom-beings, Lucius feared that some other creature might hunt them down while they were on patrol duty.

~I wish there was a way to speed up the photosynthesis proces-~ just as he was thinking that he remembered the daily quest he had received a few days ago.

~Is it still there?~ he thought, quickly pulling out his daily quests tab.

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─────?? Daily Quests ??─────?

<Discover new catalyst> 300 exp

─────?? Milestone ??─────?

<Buy 988,680 Evo points> 600exp [Unlock ??? in item shop]

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~Ahh, it didn't update,~ he thought, looking around to remind himself of where exactly he was in the forest. "I think it was past this group of shrubs," he whispered before proceeding forward.

~Anyway, I might have to look into this. Maybe a new catalyst will give higher efficiency rates. Anything to cut down on the evolution time will do,~ he thought, reaching the quarry of pebbles as he concluded this.

"Okay, let's begi-"

"Get back," he said almost immediately after.

"Huh, what-"

"I said get back. Hide behind those shrubs over there," he whispered quickly, practically shoving the leaflings behind the shrubs a moment later.

"Don't make a sound," he whispered once all of them were safely hidden before leaving.

He spotted several footprints around the area, and based on their odd shape, he was confident that they weren't made by a leafling.

~But I searched the area, I don't remember seeing anything of the sort," he thought to himself as he followed the trail that the creature had left behind.

Whatever had left them was bigger than he was, based on the distance between its footprints.

~An insect?~ he thought, noticing that the trail had too many footprints for it to be a bipedal creature.

The trail in question was quite odd, for a number of reasons. For one, there was a trail of liquid meandering at the center, almost as if the creature were spraying something as it moved.

Also, there were times when the trail seemed to disappear in between, almost as if the creature floated off the ground and flew for a distance before landing again. However, the spaces weren't that large, so it was still quite easy to keep on track.

~Should I kill it?~ he wondered. He wasn't going to take chances with the safety of the leaflings. However, if unnecessary scuffles could be avoided he would definitely take that route, but he had to be certain that whatever the creature was would not pose a threat.

N0 v el Next. CoM

After following the trail for a couple of minutes he finally caught up to it. It was indeed an insect or some insectoid-type creature. It looked eerily similar to ants back on earth, except it had a pair of wings on its back and a sort of enlarged abdomen.

~What is that?~ he thought to himself. Had it flown over here? Are there more of them? These were the first questions to pop into mind.

~But why is it alone?~ he wondered, staring at the creature as it walked around aimlessly. It seemed to be limping, and the weird trail of liquid he had seen next to the footprints seemed to be coming from its thorax.

"Zeexop, erop," it stuttered, its dialect sounding nearly extraterrestrial to Lucius.

~The hell is going on?~