章節 25: Storming the Central forest (Part 1)

['Swift steps' has reached lv.3]

A lush green scenery engulfed my surrounding. Unlike the other two parts of the forest, this place was the only part that looked like a true jungle.

Vines falling from around the trees, insects buzzing around, howls of beasts roaring through the wind. A typical jungle scene.

However, my reason for coming here wasn't to admire the scenery, it was to finish achieving all my objectives in this part of the forest with the lowest amount of time possible.

As such, to make stuff as clean as possible I decided to go scouting around this part and surprisingly all it took was one week, such was only possible due to 'Mental Map'.

[ 'Mental Map' has reached lv.2 ]

Although this part of the forest was about 2~3 times larger than the swamp sector, it only took me the same amount of time to finish this task.

'Mental Map' was like a unit with data-saving RAM, all I had to do was to check a part once to create that part in the map accordingly. While this was possible using my photographic memory, I would have to check several places from different angles to achieve the same effect.

The unexpected part was the slow growth of 'Swift Steps', as it took me the whole week to barely reach level 3.

Nonetheless, I was able to collect all the information that I required from this part.

The hierarchy in the central forest was quite simple.

At the very top of the food chain was a true monster called the 'Thunder Lion', while a small population of lightning tigers and leopards lived around his lair.

The next on the ladder were wind wolves and battle apes. The battle apes' fighting ability was slightly lower than that of the wind wolves, but in exchange they had larger numbers.

All that was left of my quests were quests that asked to collect wolf pelt. Normally, I would avoid fighting apes and directly target the wolves.

But I had personal objectives as well, while the wolves were also more powerful than I might be able to take on right now, especially that they traveled in packs most of the times.

All of these beasts' information were found in the beast encyclopedia that I found on my house, which was to be expected as my parents were supposedly professional hunters.

As such I decided to hunt the minimum of 100 battle apes, before targeting the wolves. All to prepare and strengthen myself as much as possible, in order to confront them more easily.

There were roughly 300~400 apes in this jungle, so hunting 100 of them should probably satisfy the criteria of the first quest.....?

>>>>

In my new shelter, which was simply a huge tree with an opening to its hollow inside. I camouflaged the opening to appear as natural as possible, as I took it as my last base.

I put on a new suit of armor, as my first suit of leather armor had grown tattered and full of holes.

Thankfully, I had brought more than one suit of armor, I decided to fortify one of the last two suits roughly, before I slept yesterday.

I added light croc scales in the vital parts that needed extra protection to give another layer of safety.

I decided on that as my battle plan this time had a new variable. Although I had the [Lightning Cloud] sword which had enough sharpness to penetrate through the apes' tough muscles, they were a bit too huge to go down with one or two hits.

So, I had to use a new style of battle to achieve the extreme amount of damage I would be able to.

The answer to that was to use a 'Dual wielding technique', the only similar skill I could acquire was 'Dual Swordsmanship'.

Luckily, I had brought a spare sword with me and thanks to my improved stats I was able to use [Lightning Cloud] more easily.

However, although I had already maxed my only sword skill, fighting with a new style was bound to be dangerous especially against monsters who were 'lv.20' at the very least.

Thus a fortified armor was another way of being cautious through this dangerous venture…..