บท 86: Profitable trip

'The power of an elder dragon and the mind of a hunter' the admiral shivered in excitement at the thought. 'We still don't know what part of the world he will effect however' the man thought with a frown. Alex's appearance left the people of astera with the false impression that he was an elder dragon of some kind. Without exception every elder dragon embodied an aspect of the natural world even if that aspect had no physical or visible form. The kirin was lightning , zorah was a volcano , velkhana was winter and even nergigante was balance in the food chain.

There was a bit of confusion as to what Alex represented since as far as they could tell he was too scattered in different areas. Like he spent some time bathing in the extreme heat of the smithy which hinted at something to do with fire before suddenly turning into and underwater expert. What none of them or even Alex himself were aware of was that he could indeed be considered the embodiment of a facet of nature. To be more specific he could be considered the embodiment of adaptive evolution since that was how he grew and survived.

No one knew this however so it would take quite a while for even Alex to figure it out , much less those without his inside knowledge. Alex grabbed the corpse and began to eat it on spot to hurry up and see what trait he got. He was surprised when he got a trait he hadn't even thought possible from the wing drake , [Dense muscles]. This trait did indeed have something to do the muscles but it certainly wasn't the trait Alex had hoped for even though it was way better in theory.

You see if you take the exact same animal with the exact same volume of muscles but one of them had denser muscles and tested their strength the one with denser muscles would win every time. The reason for this was very simple , more density equals higher yield. Denser muscles simply allowed the body to exert more force with every movement or action compared to normal ones. This explained why despite their small size wing drakes could carry people who weighed much more then they did. Each flap of a drakes wings simply had more force behind it than it appeared at first glance allowing their ability to carry heavy objects to be rather great.

Assuming the trait worked the same way for Alex when he unlocked it he would be able to do more for less effort which also included his ability to fly. While it is true his muscles would still be inefficient for flight he would show a great improvement thanks to needing less effort to stay aloft. The requirement to unlock that trait however made Alex groan mentally in frustration as he needed to eat fifty wing drakes in order to unlock it. At most alex could eat a single wing drake a day if he stubbornly stayed at his current size.

Basically unless Alex wanted to waste another two months on nothing but this one trait he had to shelve it for later making this trip out here pointless unless he found another trait to unlock. To be honest that wasn't that hard to do really but it was still frustrating. Once alex finished off the drake he walked around the area looking for anything that may be useful. Inside the hollowed out husk of a tree Alex found just such a thing , a vigor wasp.

Catching the insect was easy for Alex and after forcing himself to eat it despite being full from the wing drake he earned a great trait , [Accelerated healing]. The requirements for this trait were far more reasonable as Alex only needed to consume a hundred healing type items. At first glance this seemed harder but thanks to the fact that potions of all types could be found and more importantly BOUGHT Alex could easily use his sway at the stockpile to complete this requirement. Alex had even managed to generate another two traits before this trip of his was called finished , [Paralysis resistance] and [enhanced ears].

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NAME: Alex/Obsidian

TITLE: N/A

AGE: 2 months , 1 weeks

Generated traits: Dense muscles , Paralysis resistance , Enhanced ears , Accelerated healing

Unlocked traits: Herbivore level 1 , Enhanced scales level 1 , Water breathing(salt) level 1 , Heat resistance level 5(max) ,Compact stomach level 2 , Swimming muscles level 1 , Amphibious eyes level 1 , Bone eater level 1 , poison eater level 1 , poison resistance level 1 , Additional limbs: wings level 3 , Fire resistance level 1 , armored scales level 1

Fused traits: Omnivore level 2

Discovered traits: Carnivore level 1 , Ridged feet level max , Weaponized tail level 1 , night vision level 1 , Sharp claws level 1 , Enhanced brain , Shadow camouflaging

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