[Gained 2346 Exp]
Continuing her hunt through the forest without encountering any especially challenging monsters along the way, Scaly soon found herself within a few percent of reaching level 30, something that caused her to narrow her eyes dangerously as she scanned her surroundings for any prey that would be able to help her breakthrough this final bottleneck and officially reach level 30.
And that was when she saw it...
[Harmless Snake, lvl 87]
A snake more than three meters wide and over a hundred meters in length casually slithering through the undergrowth like it owned the place, something that Scaly could only find herself agreeing to, as this deceptively named snake was by the strongest monster she had encountered so far. Even the dreaded baby kraken that had attempted to kill her several times was nowhere near the level of this massive snake.
As for the reason why, she didn’t panic and try to fly away the second she spotted this terrifying snake...
[Description: An apex predator standing wherever it finds itself with poison potent enough to kill far stronger monster within a few minutes, the harmless snake is far from what the name suggest. Having been named this way in the past because of its poor senses that made it hard for it to detect someone not standing beside it or behind it, a mistake that ended up costing the life of countless adventurers before this error was corrected.
The strength of the harmless snake is estimated to be between the A Rank and S Rank. Not yet at the S Rank, but far stronger than the A Rank. Requires an experienced group of A Rank Adventures or an S Rank Adventurer to kill.]
She currently found herself on the side of the massive snake and as the description explained, wasn’t noticed by the harmless snake. Allowing her to simply marvel at the massive monster as it passed by, something that only ended up making her feel more fired up for becoming stronger herself so she could reach the point where a massive monster like this would be far beneath her.
Although she had no idea when she would reach that point, reaching level 30 and going through her next evolution was at the very least the right step in the direction of becoming strong enough to face off against this kind of massive monster.
After all, even if a part of her wanted to start a fight with the harmless snake here and now, she also understood that there wasn’t really anything she could do to this kind of massive monster even if she had the ability to ambush it.
At the end of the day, it was simply far too large for her to currently do any real damage to it even if she used all her mana to conjure up a single terrifying water blade or lightning strike.
Even if she did successfully damage it, she would have used up all her strength and wouldn’t exactly have the strength to follow up with more after that single attack.
Rustle~
Filled with a profound sense of awe as she continued watching the massive snake monster until it disappeared completely out of view behind the densely packed trees, Scaly soon shook her head and returned her attention to her original goal of hunting down monsters to get the last bit of experience needed for her to reach level 30.
Whoosh~
Of course, to ensure that she wouldn’t end up accidentally running into that massive harmless snake and find herself becoming a potential side snack for the massive monster, Scaly still flapped her small wings while at the same time using wind magic to lift herself high into the sky above before gliding off in the opposite direction that the snake had been moving in.
Admiration for the massive monster was one thing, but she wasn’t reckless enough to linger around the place that it was hunting.
Not to mention, her goal was to hunt down monsters to increase her own level, with that kind of massive monster around, any other monsters would either have been scared off or eaten already.
In fact, she had already noticed a clear decline in monsters she encountered before spotting the massive harmless snake, whose name was really starting to throw her off the more she thought about it. In a way, like the adventures of the past, she also found herself looking at the massive snake in a far more relaxed manner compared to the way she should have normally been looking at a monster capable of swallowing her with little to no effort.
Maybe, instead of harmless snake, it should have been named the great deception snake! Even fooling her pristine danger sense for a short time!
Thinking this to herself as she soon found somewhere to land safely, Scaly once again resumed her hunting efforts-
[Gained 1257 Exp]
[Gained 52 Exp]
[Gained 22 Exp]
[Gained 35 Exp]
[Gained...]
[*Ding* Reached level 30]
This time with far more success, as it didn’t even take her fifteen minutes before she managed to successfully reach level 30.
All thanks to encountering a small nest of monster called tree rats that lived inside of trees. Allowing her to gain the experience she needed to reach level 30 by taking care of the tree rat nest that only really had a single strong tree rat guarding the nest along with hundreds of smaller baby tree rats that were easily taken care of.
Finally allowing her to reach the requirement for going through her fifth evolution!
Name: Scaly
Race: Young Tempest Dragon
Dragon blood: 21% (Common)
Level: 30/30
Mana Heart: First Circle
STR: 617 |VIT: 1107 | DEX: 889 | M: 1612
Magic: [Dragon Water Magic, lvl 6], [Ice Magic lvl 1], [Wind Magic, lvl 6], [Lightning Magic, lvl 2],
Skills: [Dragon Bloodline, lvl 4], [Dragon Flight, lvl 5], [Poison Resistance, lvl 4], [Dragon Claw Strike, lvl 8], [Dragon Breath (Water), lvl 3], [Corrosion Resistance, lvl 3], [Pain Resistance, lvl 5], [Swimming, lvl 4], [Dragon Heart, lvl 1], [Endless Vitality, lvl 1]
[Evolution available, choose evolution now?]: [Y/N]
Filled with excitement, she decided to check her status for what would likely be the final time as a young tempest dragon. Seeing the familiar prompt asking her if she was ready to go through her evolution.
But... Even though she wanted nothing more than to go through her evolution here and now, she also understood that the process of her evolution was taking longer each time she went through it and the hunger she felt whenever she woke up from an evolution grew in a similar manner.
Before she could go through her evolution, she would have to find somewhere safe to hide away and at the same time find a way to solve the food problem for when she woke up after her evolution. After all, her last experience had taught her that she couldn’t just kill off a large number of monsters and store their dead bodies next to her while she went through her evolution, the bodies would rot by the time she woke up. Becoming inedible.
She had to find some way to preserve food for when she woke up again or find somewhere with a lot of monsters ready for her to hunt down immediately after she woke up.
The problem was, the more monsters were around, the less safe it would be for her to go through her evolution, as there was a risk of the monsters finding her hiding spot while she was vulnerable and in the process of evolving, something that could take days or weeks for all she knew.
Preserving food for a longer time on the other hand wasn’t exactly her specialty and she had no idea how to proceed with this to start with. The only way she could think of was switching to eating fruits and plants, but... Doing so wasn’t entirely without its own problems, as she had no way to tell if a plant or fruit was poisonous or not.
The reason for this wasn’t because she couldn’t use her inspection ability on plants or fruits, but instead because the descriptions provided were far from useful. An example being...
[Red Babfla Fruit]
[Description: Delicious tender with a hint of sweetness, highly addictive and poisonous to some while able to improve the eyesight of others. Be warned, the poison is strong enough to overwhelm anything below level 8 poison resistance.]
What does it mean with poisonous and highly addictive to some, while beneficial for eyesight to others? Was she the others that would find themselves with a delicious treat or was she the some that would end up poisoned to death by eating it?
Not just this one fruit, but all other fruits had similar descriptions, making her fearful of eating any of the fruits that grew inside what she just now realized was a forest filled with all sorts of poisonous fruits that could easily overwhelm her measly level 4 poison resistance...