CHAPTER 121: NEW SKILL AND FINDINGS

New Skill and Findings

Staying still wasn’t easy.

It was in the nature of most people to move around even a little bit, whether consciously or not. It couldn’t be helped, as it was an instinctive all humans possessed, and usually, to remove such a habit, one would need to undergo some extensive training to circumvent it.

Mike noted this as he occasionally paid attention to the other people who were observing the Corpse Flower. Sure, they possessed stealth abilities that allowed them to remain hidden, but with his keen senses, he had no issue noticing them despite that.

As such, he noticed how, despite their best efforts, most of them would occasionally fidget or shift slightly, perhaps to get more comfortable or something else, but the fact was that they still moved.

So where did that leave Mike?

Well, he was good at staying still, even before he became a Lupine.

It couldn’t be helped, life on Klein 4 was simply that grueling. Sometimes, Mike would have to rest on ledges or precarious spots where falling meant serious injury, or worse.

Other times, he had to stay hidden to avoid being seen by some unsavory people, and situations like those often required him to stay still for hours on end without making a sound.

It was something someone his age shouldn’t be used to, and yet, he was. As a result, he had no problems staying stationary for extended periods.

He didn’t clinch when a bug crawled up his arm or when a sudden loud noise came from the distance. He simply stayed quiet the whole time and observed.

Which ended up culminating into something.

[Ding. Host has created a new skill!]

[Unseen Hunter – Predators aren’t always noisy. Some wait. Some watch. Some learn. With Unseen Hunter, the user can suppress their presence. Every breath, sound, and intent, allowing them to fade out of notice even when standing in the open.

While hidden, the user builds up ’Drive’. A silent pressure born from observation. The longer the user observes a target, the more Drive gathers. Drive fuels the opening strike, amplifying it’s force, speed, and precision. Moreover, the first strike the user initiates while in the Unseen Hunter state is always incredibky difficult to detect, making it so that the first strike always lands. If the user chooses not to engage or loses focus, Drive fades over time.]

The acquisition of the skill had certainly been surprising, but when Mike thought about it a but, he found that it made sense.

Like the system said, it doesn’t just grant him skills based on recent action, but past actions, and he now guessed that included actions from before he became a Lupine, and Mike had a lot of experience at hiding since before then, so it made sense.

Still, that didn’t make the skill any less attractive. It was a passive skill, which was nice, and Mike noticed that all his skills with the ’Hunter’ tag were passive, which made him wonder if there was a pattern somewhere.

Anyway, the stealth aspect alone was great. With the skill active, he noticed his his very presence seemed to almost meld with the environment. He couldn’t say for sure how effective it was since it was his body, but judging by how the small critters crawled over and around him like he wasn’t there, he guessed it wasn’t half bad.

What was very good, though, was the ’Drive’ aspect.

As he continued to observe the Corpse Flower, he began to notice a certain... force within him.

It was subtle, and it continued to stay subtle, as there was no exponential increase the longer it accumulated. Instead, the speed of accumulation depended on how much he understood about his target in a moment. For instance, the increase remained subtle and stable if he kept observing the Corpse Flower on a surface level.

However, if he did something like notice what part of its vines seemed the weakest or where its stem broke off into branches, the rate of accumulation would rise.

Moreover, the amount of Drive he could accumulate didn’t seem to have an upper limit. That, or the ceiling was insanely high.

Plus, he guessed that he could use it in tandem with Hunter’s Resurge against a foe stronger than him to unleash some pretty devastating attacks, and it’s kind of at that moment that Mike realized that passive skills, especially ones that stacked with one another, were quite broken.

He’d need more of those in the future.

Overall? Great stuff.

That said, while the skill was nice, it wasn’t the main reason why Mike was here. No.

He came to learn more about the Corpse Flower, and in these few hours, he’d discovered quite a bit.

The first was that... the name was very fitting.

When Mike entered the Chasm, he noted that the monsters there were of a higher level on average, most likely due to the nature of their environment.

However, something odd he noticed was just how much vegetation there was.

Sure, underground plants were a thing, and if there were indeed massive oceans deep in the ground, then perhaps some vegetation was possible. But not only was there no sunlight, there was also no soil.

And yet, there was a sprawling forest down there.

Why?

Well, Mike now knew.

The forest was simply an extension of the main body. As for how it grew? Well, since the competition down there was fierce, creatures died a LOT.

If their corpses weren’t devoured by the surrounding creatures, the surrounding plants would latch onto them and absorb everything. Blood, muscle, bone, everything. Until there was nothing left.

And that was just while the thing was dormant.

Now that it was awake, Mike saw how its massive vines occasionally surged forward and grabbed an unfortunate creature before it could react before devouring it with ’small’ needle-like tendrils which would dig into the creature and suck it dry.

Wouldn’t want to get caught by those, that’s for sure.

Actually, more on the case of the underground forest being a part of it, Mike, with his perception, also noticed that the massive stem was, in fact, not that big compared to the rest of it.

When he tried to focus on the ground beneath, his senses told him that there was a vast and intricate system of roots that spread deep into the ground for who knows how long.

Even with his senses, he wasn’t able to tell how far they went, but he kinda guessed that they extended all the way to the underground ocean, which was... kinda insane, and it made Mike wonder how he’d even kill the massive thing, since, according to Theresa during one of their talks, plant-type monsters were annoying to kill due to their immense vitality, and a lot of the time, one had to deal enough damage to their roots to properly destroy them, like a lot of normal plants out there.

Mike’s brows furrowed as bit at this. If that was the case, then he didn’t just need to worry about the devastating attacks the thing could unleash, but also its presumed durability and vitality.

’Calm down, this is just the first day. You still have time to find out more about it, and you have time to get stronger, too.’ He quickly calmed down.

Some more time passed before he decided that was enough observation for today. Not that he couldn’t keep discovering more, but if he spent the rest of the month observing the Corpse Flower, he wouldn’t really have time to get strong enough to kill it, and his stalking would be in vain.

As he disengaged, he felt the strange force that was his ’Drive’ start to dissipate rapidly, and he made a face.

’Geez, that means if I wanted to use it on something that isn’t the intended target, I need to be quick about it.’ He shook his head. Then again, it was only fair. Imagine he observed a powerful creature for like, a month, and then stopped doing so, went over to another powerful creature, and unleashed all the Drive at once to one-shot it.

That’d be a sight.

Now, there was the next thing.

Finding suitable opponents.

If Mike wanted to get strong fast, he needed to find creatures that had power similar to the 6-armed creature at LEAST. And that bar would steadily rise as Mike got stronger, too.

Luckily for him, the map showed where all the red markers, which were the spots for different powerful creatures, were located.

He quietly extricate himself from his position, and when he was far enenough, he opened the map.

There were a few changes, with the most obvious being the now massive red marker which signified the area the Corpse Flower inhabited. Other than that, many red markers were missing, as people had been hunting down the creatures steadily.

However, that was only for the smaller markers, like the one for the Verdant Boa. Many of the bigger markers were available, and Mark noticed one that caught his attention.

It was a couple dozen miles east from his position, and it seemed to be situated in a section of the forest that many people didn’t touch.

When Mike say the description, he couldn’t stop a predatory smile from forming on his face.

[Greenback Gorilla Territory.]

’Not just a solitary creature, but one with underlings?’ He equipped his gauntlets and started moving.

’Should be fun.’