[New Quest. Reach Growth cap.]
~Now that I think about it, this has happened before, hasn't it?~ he thought to himself, remembering the time he had reached a level cap.
~I wonder,~ he thought, pulling out his player stats.
┏━━━━━━༻❁༺━━━━━━┓
─────⋅☾ Player Details ☽⋅─────•
[Lucius Elwood ]
[Level 4: 0/400]
[Leaf Being [Guardian] lvl.9- [19/900]]
─────⋅☾ Stats ☽⋅─────•
[Agility: 462 ]
[Strength: 460>750][Capped]
[Stamina: 613>712]
┗━━━━━━༻❁༺━━━━━━┛
~Why are there two levels again?~ he wondered, noticing that one of his levels had increased to level 9.
~That one increases by accomplishing quests, but how does this one increase?~ he pondered for a moment. The only logical explanation he could come up with was that it had something to do with his growth.
"I'm gonna have to test that theory out la-"
"Captain! Perimeter patrol spotted three worms coming from the north!" a leafling interrupted. Lucius recognized him as one of Alpha's men.
"How far away?" he replied immediately, already grabbing his stone knife.
"Fuck," he grimaced, a massive headache reminding him of all the solar cleanse spells he had just used.
"With how fast they're moving, they'll probably be here in 3 minutes," the leafling replied.
"But there's no way they could've known we had a camp here, right? Is this just a coincidence?" Lucius pondered for a bit.
"No, it's very possible that they have a way of tracking their prey down. Maybe smell or something of the sort. Believing it's a coincidence would be naive," he realized, before galloping towards the area the leafling had mentioned.
*
"They're just up ahead, they seem to be looking for something," one of the leaflings at the site whispered to Lucius once he had arrived, gesturing towards four worms standing still in the distance.
They were lifting their bodies into the air, wiggling them around as if searching for something up in the sky.
"Hmm, suspicious indeed. They're looking for something in the trees... so perhaps I was right. They do have a way of tracking prey, and they're aware that the prey has moved up," he whispered to himself, dismissing the leaflings as he thought about his next move.
Strength-wise, he was certain he could completely obliterate these worms. Though they seemed massive when he was still a leafling, they were now a few centimeters shorter than him even in his quadrupedal stance.
However, the threat they posed was in their numbers and the sharp projections in their wide maws. To make matters worse, Lucius's vision was beginning to blur from mental exhaustion.
"Need to take care of this quickly," he whispered, putting the knife in his mouth, before tree hopping his way towards to worms.
He decided to tree-hop around them, choosing to come from their blind spot. However, this was easier said than done, as he had to focus quite a bit not to trip up in his current mental state.
After gaining an appropriate amount of momentum, he locked onto his target, and launched himself towards it, twisting in the air with his knife ready to strike.
"Fuck," he whispered under his breath. Having missed the worm by just an inch, he looked up at his confused enemies.
It took them a moment to realize what was going on, but the instant they did, they all attacked. Their speeds were nothing to write home about, but they were indeed fast for something of their sizes.
They lunged at him haphazardly, with their maws wide open, snaking in different directions to confuse him.
He let out a sigh, before dodging three of the incoming maws, and slamming the fourth with a fist to the face.
He twisted around, swinging his knife at one of the worms behind him, while his tail wrapped around the one he had just smacked to the ground.
As he stabbed into the worm in front of him, his tail squeezed the life out of the fallen one, its guts splurging out its bottom end due to the pressure.
~I don't even need this, it's just messing up my stance,~ Lucius realized, putting the knife on the ground.
The strength difference between them was simply too high, and the worms caught onto this. Leaving their brethren behind, they tried to flee. But even in his weakened state, it wouldn't require much to catch up to them.
He ran after the closest one, dragging it back by its back-end, before spinning it and slamming it to the ground, bursting its head.
The last one had fled quite the distance, but if he tried he would still be able to catch up to it, however the moment he tried to run, something locked him in place.
"What? Is one of them still ali-" as he turned back to see what it was he got a system notification.
[Catalyst absorbed.]
[Growth efficiency increased by 15%]
[Photosynthesis efficiency increased by 15%]
[Stats increased by 0.5%]
[Quest complete.]
[+300 exp]
"What are you doing?" he sighed, watching as his tail basically slurped up all the juiced within the dead worms. In mere seconds, one of the worms was turned into a dry skin bag, and already it was moving on to the next.
"Wait, wait, calm down!" he shouted trying to pull it back.
~What the? How is it this strong?~ he wondered, straining himself to keep it away from the remaining worms.
~For fucks sake, why does it seem like its stats are even higher than mine?~ he asked as he curled into a ball with his tail at the center.
"Oi, listen. If these worms give this many bonuses then save some for later. We don't need anymore," he tried explaining, but his tail worked on sub-conscious urges. And though his mind was telling him no, his 'hunger' was whispering sweet promises to his tail.
After wrestling with himself for what felt like 15 minutes, his tail finally stopped trying to eat the remaining prizes, and went back to its usual mild manner, swinging from side to side.
"Finally," he sighed to himself, standing up.
