By spending 303 Biomass, Lohan leveled up his new Evolution directly to Level 7!
[Explosive Steps Lv 1 → Lv 7]
With this evolution, Lohan’s control over it increased tremendously; he could now much better control the power he wanted to use for this skill—lowering the intensity to a point where he could use it even without his artificial tendons, or increasing the power to a point where he had to double the number of magical webs within himself to withstand the resulting pressure!
Sure, at that point the cost of using this skill became almost unsustainable, since creating these magical webs was already expensive to begin with, and after its evolution to [Weaver Mother Lv 2] the cost skyrocketed even further.
If he wanted to keep those tendons within him to improve his close combat, he would have to give up using this evolution for external combat, no longer being able to use it to bind and steal Mana from enemies.
Seeing this, Lohan realized there was no need to spend more biomass on this evolution, so he decided to invest 412 Biomass into the other new evolution he had recently received, which was still at Level 01.
[Sharpened Instinct Level 1 → Lv 7]
[The organism assimilates the synaptic patterns and nervous reflexes of an elite feline predator, increasing reaction speed by 5% per level.]
Increasing the level of this skill by 6 caused Lohan’s reaction speed to increase by 30%!
Unfortunately, Lohan was disappointed when he realized that this increase wasn’t exponential, but considering how weak and common the monster he had digested to achieve this was, it made sense.
Few monsters in the world had great potential, and even fewer were like Slimes.
But this 30% increase was still very good.
Considering that the average human reaction time was 250 milliseconds, Lohan felt that after weeks of killing in Elysium, his reaction time without any active skills had been trained to be slightly faster than the human reaction time.
Assuming he had reduced that time to 200 ms, a 30% upgrade meant his reaction time was now 140 ms!
That was already a very good level! From what he had studied in his previous world, only 1% of the human population achieved such reaction speed, and among those people were F1 drivers and fighter pilots, or even pro players of shooting games like Valorant or Counter-Strike.
To reach this level of reaction speed solely through an evolution he’d achieved in Elysium, Lohan was feeling incredible.
It wasn’t quite as dramatic as saying he could see the world moving in slow motion around him, but the sensation was similar to a delay he hadn’t even known existed suddenly vanishing.
And this improvement in reaction time paired very well with the Explosive Steps he had just acquired, since with a faster reaction time, he could react much better to the high speed at which he was propelling himself forward.
Finishing the tests, Lohan climbed onto Lisa’s back again, and the two continued the hunt.
Even though they had already hunted five rabbits, they would receive only two silver coins and fifty copper coins for them, which, divided between the two, would amount to just 125 copper coins each.
Since the rabbits weren’t as difficult to hunt as the Shadow Serpents and Swamp Slugs, the price for their materials wasn’t as high as the others’, but they intended to make up for it in quantity!
Needing experience to level up as quickly as possible, hunting these rabbits would be a great way to grind.
Lisa then began to move more slowly, while Lohan acted as a mobile radar, scanning everything around them for the slightest sign of rabbits.
Thanks to his keen perception, Lohan picked up new vibrations coming from a denser section of the woods, detecting a pack of six Explosive Rabbits—this time three Level 9 and three Level 10—that were approaching rapidly, drawn by the scent of mana and the heat of the previous battle.
"Lisa, they’re coming in a pincer formation. If we try to fight in open terrain again, the cumulative impact of their kicks will control the pace of the battle once more, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to create enough magic webs to handle this larger group..." Lohan warned in a serious voice through the mental link, using parallel processing to calculate the likely trajectories.
Lisa fell deep in thought, looking around for any sign of the rabbits. "I trust you didn’t bring us here to hunt more rabbits without a plan in mind, right?"
"Hehe... we’re going to use their physiology against them. I’ve observed that they rely on advanced visual perception to calculate the explosive leaps they make... if I take that away from them, we’ll dominate the battle." Lohan said.
Already wrapped around Lisa’s body, Lohan prepared for battle as rigid, black hexagonal plates sprouted from his membrane, overlapping to form the obsidian armor that protected the fox’s body.
As soon as the first rabbit leaped from a branch, Lohan tensed his body and expelled a dense, gray cloud of opaque smoke that saturated the clearing in seconds.
For the rabbits, it was as if the world had vanished into an impenetrable fog. Unable to see the footholds on the trees or even the ground for their kicks, the pack lost its rhythm. Several of them crashed violently into the trunks, disoriented by their own high speed.
However, for Lohan, the smoke was no obstacle. With his heightened perception, he began to see the environment through thermal signatures, visualizing the monsters as vibrant orange blurs amid the cold blue of the scene.
Through the mental link, he described everything he saw in real time to Lisa’s mind, without the delay of speech, allowing her to "see" the targets through him.
"Ten o’clock, Lisa! The Level 10 is frozen, trying to sniff out our position!" Lohan said immediately.
Lisa didn’t hesitate and shot out like a white ghost through the mist.
If she didn’t trust the Slime, this window of opportunity might close, but after so many days of fighting side by side, her trust in this companion was at its peak when it came to combat.
Suddenly she emerged from the shadows and unleashed a burst of white flames directly into the flank of the confused monster.
Lohan didn’t miss the opportunity and fired the translucent threads imbued with Mana just to trap the most vulnerable rabbits trying to jump blindly, avoiding wasting Mana on them.
Now with experience dealing with these monsters, the battle unfolded much more easily than the first time, until suddenly a much louder explosion erupted, blowing the smoke away.
--BOOOOOM!