Jackpot! New Habitat
After a dozen minutes he started to get the hang of it, Ling Xu was running through the jungle like habitat looking as if he was flying as his speed had achieved a new height.
After several trial and errors, Ling Xu made less and less.
He suddenly got in front of a tree but he barely moved his feet and he avoided it as he flowed with the flow of air.
Ling Xu was having fun while using his skill as the most he felt was his blood qi being spent, but with his vast reserves of energy it would take a while before he would have to stop running.
This is only because his current level of cultivation is already in the seventh stage of the Blood Qi realm. If he was still in the middle stages it would have become harder and the time he would have been able to use the skill would have been significantly reduced.
...
The night approached and Ling Xu was hiding on a tree in the outer layer, he decided that he would continue sleeping alone as he felt it was too tiresome to group with other people and having to explain himself every single time.
"I think it is time to search for another kind of beasts, the amount of black scale snakes has already decreased so much that it takes dozens of minutes to find a group of them."
Feeling proud of his results after exploring almost the whole jungle habitat, he stopped his killing spree on the black scale snakes after killing several hundred and going through several dens.
Ling Xu found the beasts in different places every time, sometimes they were on a whole like when he found the one between the bushes and sometimes he found a gap between the rocks and trees.
But by now, Ling Xu was tired as the last den of snakes took him an entire hour before finding it. Fortunately, the rays of light started to come less and less so he decided to enter the outer layer and find a tree to sleep and the next day he would search on another place.
[System Points]: 3.354
[Equipment]
[Pills]
[Special Items]
Looking at his new points in the store, Ling Xu refrained from using them on a new skill or piece of equipment as he decided to save them for now. He liked the idea of upgrading another of his skills from middle to high grade.
He still didn't know which to upgrade as he had two skills in the middle grade, his Copper Skin Iron Bones which has proved to have a great defense even able to resist a bit of pressure from his middle grade refined short sword before he upgraded it to high grade. He was very expectant to see if it would be able to withstand a high grade weapon once it advanced to high grade.
Still, Ling Xu's current best defense is his own skin as he had already refined it to the limit after reaching the peak of the sixth stage of Blood Qi and surpassing the limits of his skin and organs.
The other skill he had was Electric Sensory Field which he had gotten on this mission, it was extremely helpful for sensing external objects a few inches before they touched his skin.
He felt very curious about what this skill would become once he upgraded it to high grade, so he wasn't sure on which of the skills to choose from.
"Maybe I should wait and upgrade both skills together, after all the speed at which I am earning the points is extremely fast. If everything goes right I will be able to upgrade them by the end of tomorrow."
Ending his choice, he decided to buy them both together and spend 10.000 points to upgrade both skills. After all, it only took him the second day of the mission, when the store opened, to earn more than that.
"Wait, if the people on the mission have already advanced quite far in the outer layer, maybe by the end of tomorrow they will have already entered the inner layer."
He realized that he didn't have much time before the groups of people actively entered the inner layer to hunt beasts, taking away his points.
Therefore, he decided that tomorrow would be the last day he would be in the inner layer and then he would go deeper and see if there was another more.
...
The sun rose once again and Ling Xu had woken up, he had a hearty breakfast eating several pounds of snake meat and a leg from a charged leopard he had put inside his storage ring.
It took him around two hours to cook everything as he had to make the fire himself and roast the meat piece by piece.
Sadly, the system didn't provide items that helped the survival process in the forest, so not only did it take longer to cook but Ling Xu was missing his bed and the comfort of his apartment.
[You have entered the inner layer of the Deserted Forest.]
As soon as he entered the inner layer he went through the jungle like habitat and entered another forest, but his one was very humid and had several puddles of water around.
It looked like a swamp.
"I wonder what kind of beast I will find this time."
The answer didn't take long, when Ling Xu looked carefully at one of the puddles of water he saw a crocodile looking beast with sharp teeth and impressive scales incomparable to the ones from the black scale snakes.
[You have killed a Ravenous Crocodile (6th stage Blood Qi) +32 points.]
It didn't take more than a strike for Ling Xu though as he was more than capable of killing a beast which didn't even have his own cultivation level.
...
Time passed and several hours had gone by since Ling Xu entered the swamp and started hunting the ravenous crocodile beasts.
He managed to get around 2500 points, getting enough to upgrade one of his skills already. But he didn't do so as he had already decided to upgrade them together.
Ling Xu continued his hunt for another hour before stopping to see his current progress.
[System Points]: 6.454
[Equipment]
[Pills]
[Special Items]
"I have barely gotten 600 points in the last hour, am I doing something wrong? If this keeps up I don't know if I will have the time to get the points by the end of the day."
He activated his skill Swift Steps to the limit and started to run as fast as he could, now Ling Xu couldn't care less about his blood qi reserves draining extremely fast as he had a major preoccupation within his mind, time.
Once the groups entered he would have to compete for points, so to avoid that he wanted to advance as fast as possible to the next layer.
It took an hour of finding not a single beast for Ling Xu to be about to change of habitat as he had started to dislike the swamp.
"Damn, I can't believe I am left with no choice but to go back and hunt charged leopards once again."
Taking a turn, Ling Xu was ready to go back. He started to walk when he realized that he hadn't gone through this place before, he looked in front and saw a huge lake which had dozens of crocodile beasts.
"Jack pot!!!"
He was extremely happy as he realized that he would now be able to earn several points, not being able to see the end of the lake and how many ravenous crocodiles were inside.
Ling Xu was happy but soon found a problem, he didn't know how he would reach the beasts as they were all in the middle of the lake.
"What if…"
An absurd idea came to him. Ling Xu thought of jumping from one crocodile to another and when he could, jumping to a tree near him as there were some inside the lake.
This idea wasn't bad as his current speed far overwhelmed the current leopards, so he was even more confident in getting a step ahead of the ravenous crocodiles and having the speed to not fall to the lake and being preyed upon the many crocodiles inside.
"Let's try this."
He didn't think long as he knew he would regret it and jumped right away.
He stopped slowing down his blood circulation speed and he felt a current of energy traversing through his whole body. His eyes turned red and his speed increased to a whole new level.
After taking a ten-meter jump Ling Xu fell on a crocodile's back as he inserted his short sword in its head very fast, he didn't take even a breath to react and jump to the next one.
[You have killed a Ravenous Crocodile (6th stage Blood Qi) +32 points.]
[You have killed a Ravenous Crocodile (6th stage Blood Qi) +32 points.]
He continued jumping from one to another as he realized he had fallen on a crocodile that seemed much bigger and had a tougher look.
Ling Xu used his short sword the same way as before but he had to use a little more force this time before he received the message from the kill.
[You have killed an Alpha Ravenous Crocodile (7th stage Blood Qi) +64 points.]
He continued doing this for five minutes before the number of crocodiles decreased to the point where he couldn't find any more support in the water, so he had to go to the ground.
After landing on the ground and making sure that he was safe he opened the store.
[System Points]: 13.130
[Equipment]
[Pills]
[Special Items]
"So many points!"
Ling Xu's red eyes opened wide after reading that he had earned almost 7.000 points from just a few minutes of hunting the crocodile beasts. But on second thought it made sense, after all he killed one every second as his speed far surpassed what a normal human could do.
So, after pondering for a while on what to do next Ling Xu went back to the leopard habitat as that was the nearest from where he first entered the inner layer. He could just go to the outer layer from here but he wanted to have a sense of direction as he was more familiar there.
Running straight for almost half an hour he finally entered the charged leopard's habitat.
Ling Xu observed that the charged leopards had started to slowly appear once again, but the amount wasn't comparable to when he first entered.
He expected them to reappear as it would make it easier than to search for them, but reality proved him wrong as he had to wait for the next day before they started to reappear.
"It's time to see how my group is doing, I hope Mr. Sun is doing fine."
Ling Xu thought, he decided to look for his team as it had been several days and although he hadn't formed a very strong bond with them he still cared for his neighbor who he had known for several years already.
Sun Min was the person he had known the longest since he started living alone once his mother died.
...
In the outer layer.
"Finally! We have all stepped into the fourth stage, maybe before the mission ends we will be able to enter the fifth stage and hunt safely in the inner layer."
"Yes! I hope then we will be able to buy something on the store, after all if we had started saving points and sacrificing our experience we wouldn't have been able to enter the fourth stage and advance deeper into the next layer."
"If it wasn't because our stages are extremely low and we can't kill the beasts very fast, I would have already bought that middle grade blade."
"Yeah, me too, I'm really anxious to get that black steel sword but I don't know if we have enough time to get it."
Sun Min was leisurely chatting with the rest of his group when he felt something and his eyes opened wide.
"Stop hiding and show yourself!"