His earth sense still worked well enough, and during the time he stayed here there were quite a number of times he detected creatures nearby him. Each time he felt a creature was coming too close, he would prepare his radiant energy to activate Radiant cowl.
But the moment he did this, the creatures would backtrack and runoff. He guessed that radiant energy must be something that others could sense as well. Perhaps the creatures assumed that it was the energy reading of some higher-tier being and did not want trouble.
Either way, it was what helped him avoid being eaten for so long.
After two more hours of continuously circulating radiant energy, Lucius felt that he had enough to work with. Now all that was left was for him to let a creature get close enough to hunt without him having to move too much.
It took just over an hour before a creature small enough for him to handle came walking by.
The creature followed the scent that clung to his body, and with him completely halting circulation, it wasn't alarmed by the presence of radiant energy.
Just as the creature was about to inspect his seemingly lifeless body, he activated Radiant cowl. Radiant energy was injected into his 'blood' stream, completely covering every part of his body in a protective layer and enhancing their operations.
'Kill it' Lucius commanded, and with that, his tail quickly thrust out and impaled the creature in the head. Once the job was done, he recalled the radiant energy to save as much as he could.
[Quest complete.]
[+300 exp]
~Aghh,~ he grunted inwardly, fighting the urge to jerk in reaction to the pain. Radiant cowl prevented the injuries from becoming worse, but once it was gone, the pain seemed to be magnified.
Now was the tricky part, eating.
He had thought of a way for himself to eat without making his injuries worse, but couldn't get around to testing out his plan as he didn't want to waste radiant energy before he had the chance to find a meal.
During his time here, he had noticed that the vessels that carried the energy around his body seemed to be very similar to blood vessels. This made him wonder whether the outline of the paths they took drew a picture of how his internals worked. And that was when he got the idea, if he could circulate energy in the areas he needed for eating, he could save as much radiant energy as possible.
Of course, it took quite a bit of circulating for him to find out what each segment of his body did, but using some medical knowledge from his old world he got a rough idea of his bodily systems.
However, that's not to say his system was completely the same as a human's, but they had their similarities. For one, he had a digestive system, which was probably the easiest to spot as it came from the area where he felt his 'burning' hunger.
He also had a sort of circulatory system, with a heart-like organ that seemed to be right in the area his crux was. He could tell this because the beating of the organ seemed to affect the flow of radiant energy.
Apart from that, he got a rough idea of where his nervous and sensory systems were as well.
His idea was to only circulate radiant energy to his digestive system, his jaws, and his tail so that he could eat. It was sort of awkward at first, as he had to find vessels within himself that looped back to the required areas and didn't flow to others, but after several minutes of searching, he found adequate paths.
He then activated Radiant Cowl, and a protective layer covering only the specified areas was brought up.
~Perfect,~ he thought to himself.
He then quickly commanded his tail to feed him, and it used its petals to cut a chunk of meat off the creature and feed it into his mouth. He made sure to take slow careful chews, before swallowing the small chunk of meat.
[Catalyst absorbed.]
[Growth efficiency increased by 20%]
[Photosynthesis efficiency increased by 20%]
[Radiance Production increased by 20]
[Stats increased by 0.95%]
[Quest complete.]
[+200 exp]
[Level 7!]
[Quest complete.]
[+300 exp]
If he had to be honest, he was taking a gamble eating this meat. From what he could see using the radiant light that his body was emitting, the thing he had killed seemed to be a six-legged creature very similar to an ant.
Whether it was poisonous or not was yet to be determined, but if it was, he would be in trouble. So he took the first bites as a test, only taking a morsel small enough to not affect him too badly, but just enough so that if there was poison he would know.
He then deactivated Radiant cowl, and waited. After seeing no ill effects after half an hour, he continued his meal, this time more freely.
~Ah yes, that feels better,~ he thought to himself, now somewhat satiated. Though not a single piece of the creature was left, he had even devoured its exoskeleton.
~Now that I'm not so hungry I can think more clearly,~ he thought to himself. All the while he kept his radiant energy circulating, he could feel that the rate at which he was producing it was slowly increasing, which somewhat boosted his morale.
~Now time to figure out if there's a 'healing' equivalent in this index,~ he decided. His solar energy reserves were still far from being enough to perform even a solar pulse, so waiting for solar cleanse was completely out of the question.
However, if he could find a technique that would allow him to heal, he might have a chance.
~There's always some logic to the way things work. With the solar index, it was visualization of the general idea of what you want your spell to be. Though it doesn't work with the radiant index, there has to be some correlation,~ he thought, before running over how Radiant cowl worked to see if he could reverse engineer it to get something.
