Bab 173: Return

Alex called it a day after that and brought the toad monster he decided to name terrantoad back to his temporary nest to get cooked and eaten. The way he cooked the monster was both simple but effective as he simply skinned and prepared the monster with some of the seasoning plants he found while poking the meat full of small holes with his claw and then slowly roasting it whole with his flames. Unsurprisingly there was a LOT of fat on the ambushed predator that got rendered out during this process. The final result was a huge golden brown roast terrantoad that smelled heavenly.

Alex wasted no time at all devouring the thing with gusto despite it being extremely hot since the heat didn't affect him at all. From it he got Two traits , [earthen camouflage] and [lunging muscles] that were both common ranked each. The first required Alex to devour his body weight in stone which was easy while the second required him to literally do fifty squats to unlock. Both of these traits were unlocked by the end of the night causing a small change in his body.

The [earthen camouflage] trait came maxed out and fused with his already existing [shadow camouflage] trait to create the fused trait [incomplete adaptive camouflage]. Interestingly what this did was allow Alex to switch between his two different types of camouflage and should he get more traits like them , those as well. The [earthen camouflage] trait directly shifted Alex's coloration towards that of whatever type of stone he happened to be in contact with including striations making him stupid hard to notice if he remained still. Clearly this trait was intended for wait type ambush hunters like the terrantoad rather than active type like the [shadow camouflage] trait. 'As nifty as this seems it's kinda useless for me.' Alex thought after releasing his hold on the change turning him back into his normal black color.

Alex spent the next week exploring the entirety of the forest while being careful not to get caught. In this time he created a list of the all the monsters he found in this place. Terrantoad , rezzar which was what he called the first monster he found , kremata which was a small bipedal monster like a kulu ya ku that had red skin and breathed fire , ceventus which was a mammal surprisingly enough that was a tall sloth like monster with long white fur and claws like a mole. Alex wasn't surprised that there was only four species in this underground forest that counted as monsters since it was too small for more to live with a healthy population.

'Guess it's time to head further up the everstream since I've wasted enough time here already.' he thought as he slipped under the waters surface at the opposite side of the area from where he entered and swam upstream. Immediately Alex had to deal with the irritation of having multiple notifications pop up from the system telling him that his new [lunging muscles] trait was jumping levels under the everstream's rapid improvement ability. This slowed down once the trait hit level six and Alex stopped getting constant notifications from the system. Alex couldn't help but notice that as he went further and further up the everstream that more and more branches kept popping up leading likely the entirety of the new world.

The energy concentration also increased dramatically the further he traveled to the point that his healing factor simply couldn't keep up anymore and his body began to break down in the current forcing him to call his trip to an early close. He of course spent the nest two weeks bathing in the everstream and collecting samples of all the usual plants that the underground forest held to bring back with him. Alex would be lying if he said he wasn't tempted to go searching for xeno jiiva but had decided not to tempt fate by getting rid of the "final boss" early. Alex was well aware that letting the future play out in as close to the same manner as in the game would be best and resolutely returned to astera.

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