The Plan

Shokal had spent the whole day and night inside the white space .

Now, he was checking how the things were doing outside by putting only his head out from the smoky white gate he could manifest.

The things he saw outside surprised him. The result of his odd behavior yesterday gave more positive results than he could predict.

He saw the waste piles were almost gone. Many Ants , were circling up the small piles and collecting the waste.

There were some wastes that were scattered across the grassy ground. Some ants with a team of 2 or 3 were collecting them too.

He also saw some bettles of the same size as the ants, were covering a full rotten corpse with the soil they were digging up around it.

The bad stench of the rotten corpses were more intense than yesterday. Shokal felt bad that he dumped waste in the middle of the serene natural beauty of the lake but he had no other choice.

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As he went further he saw several ant lines were stretching to the path from where had he returned and dumped waste on the way.

There some new dead bodies of various creatures around the area too. Some creatures like big foxes, a couple of large rope like worm and some big lizard were laying dead around the wastes.

They were probably the scavengers that got killed by ants at night because he saw a bunch of ants laying dead in everywhere around them too.

He was happy. He quickly stored the new creature corpses to check their informations and started exploring further down path he used yesterday.

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As he was walking he recalled his yesterdays odd behavior.His initial plan was to use the rotten corpses stench to mask his smell from the goblins.

That's why he ran away yesterday, dropping the wastes here and there and hide away in his white space for a whole day.

He thought at most, the ants would be the culprit of the rotten corpses missing if any goblin followed his tracks to this point.

But he never thought that there would be any other consequences and he would get some new creature informations for free...

Shokal continued his exploration and found many other different dead bodies here and there.

Most of them were small animals like the ants but were still valuable to Shokal for their unique informations. So he continued his search carefully.

Sometimes there were some small creatures that were injured but not dead around the corpses so shokal killed them and gained some shards easily. Most of them were ants.

And sometimes there was some bigger creatures that were eating the rotten wastes like the fox he saw earlier so he avoided them by suddenly going inside Eden.

People might had thought this was cowardly if they saw Shokal but for him it was necessary. He didn't want to take risk to fight a strong opponent.

He collected some things he could eat from the lakeside area too. Shokal was thinking to eat some meat from the fresh kills but he had no fire at that moment that's why he dismissed the idea. He didn't want to eat raw meat and fell sick.

"Maybe I should try to make fire using the primitive way. I really have to eat something good . I'm sick of eating leaves and berries."

Shokal didn't knew if he could make fire as he had never done it but he wanted to try. His instincts were telling him that, deep down he knew the basics...

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Shokal collected some dry wood sticks and sat in a safe place. He had thought about a good plan to use eden to make fire.

" My skill allows me to store everything in it's original form and preserves it as it is. So,what if I do the same here too?."

He took two sticks, one thick and one thin. And he started rubbing the thin one on to the other stick and wanted to use the friction to make heat.

After a long moment of rigorous rubbing shokal saw some smokes. He continued this for some time and when there was some black powder looking things on top of the thick wood, shokal ordered Eden to take him inside as he were.

Soon along with the woods he was grabbing, Shokal went inside Eden. Now shokal stopped rubbing but still could see the smoke earlier continued to rise from the wood.

He poured the black powder to some dry grass and went outside with the two sticks.

He continued this same method for a couple of times and collected a good amount of black powder that he was satisfied with.

He went inside to place the last black powder batch onto the dry grass. Then he took the dry grass in hand and started to tender it with small breath and came outside doing that.

Soon , the whole thing started producing a lot of smoke when he came outside and eventually lit up.

"Oh yeah!! " Shokal exclaimed with joy while the fire was in his hand.

Then he placed it onto the ground and added some wood, some oily flowers he collected earlier. The fire became bigger eventually.

Then he took some half lit Stick that were still burning, and stored them inside Eden.

He couldn't believe he had fire now. He wanted to cook something right away but refrain to do so. As he had some work to do.

"I'll Cook something at night. Right now I'll have to check further."

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Shokal was cautious to not to go near the goblins area. As he was afraid there could be some of them lurking around. So he carefully avoided going far and just explored around the grassy areas .

He saw some waste were dragged inside the forest . Some ants corpse were indicating that they had fought here for food too. Shokal found some mole like creature lying dead there.

After collecting the moles information,he continued his searching deeper into the forest and found two ants, who were busy with a mantis corpse behind a bush. 

The mantis was half the size of shokal in height.Its chitinous exoskeleton was shining like a jade even from little light.

It's frontal two arms were missing and the ants were busy trying to separate one of its back legs with their splinters. Shokal could see that the ants barely made a dent on the strong looking legs and were excreting acids from splinters in order to damage the strong exoskeleton.

He ambushed the two ants with a fast swing of his long stick. One of the ants got divided in the middle on the spot and the other one flew a little away from the impact.

It wanted to run away but was unable to do so with it's broken legs. Shokal quickly bashed it with another swing and its lower body exploded into pieces.

Now that he was closer to the mantis,he could see that there was more than 20 ant dead bodies on the other side where the mantis were laying. 

Every single corpse were cut clean in the middle section where an ant body is the most vulnerable. Shokal understood that the mantis was the one responsible for this massacre.

He looked for the missing front arms but didn't find any.

"Maybe they are already brought back by the ants" he thought.

He was curious to see how sharp the mantis arm were.

"Maybe I'll find some clue from it's description."

Shokal came back to the mantis corpse. Now that he was upclose,He could see there was a ton of acid wound in it's body.

The acids had melted it's head completely and the shiny jade like carapace got holes that were reaching the inside of it's body.

"Good thing I did not get cocky and fought the ants head to head, haha!" Shokal let down an awkward laugh seeing the damage done by the ants together.

"No wonder they control this much large area. There's nothing better than numbers."

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Shokal thought the ants would definitely come back in big numbers to claim their hunt. He can't win unscathed if 5 of them attack him all together. So he wanted to leave the place as soon as possible.

Shokal placed his hand on the mantis body and commanded Eden to store it.

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Nothing happened.

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Shokal was surprised. This had never happened before. He ordered it again and the result was the same.

He took his hand of and wanted to go inside Eden. In a blink, a white gate appeared infront of him. He went inside and checked if everything was okay.

" My skill is working properly so what happened?"

<You can't store living beings without their consent>

The screen popped with two new messages. As usual, some golden threads got sucked into shokals head from the screen.

"So the mantis is alive!"

Shokal immediately went outside and prepared to strike the mantis with his long stick that he was using as a weapon from the start.

Shokal , with all his might, struck the head area that was already mutilated by acids. Its head area got separated from its neck from the heavy blow.

Within a second the screen popped up with the kill confirmation.

<You've killed a 'Veil Stalker Mantis'>

[Congratulations!]

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