Before he could celebrate his victory a much louder cry echoed from deeper in the jungle. The roar was so powerful he felt his ears ring.
Then the ground started shaking as if something heavy was approaching. He didn't wait to find out what it was and ran to the river as fast as his little feet could carry him.
He swam deeper into the river and hid beneath a giant boulder. He was not the only one there, every creature that could fit was hiding in fear.
When they saw him their bodies shook even more but it seems they were more terrified of whatever is out there than they were of him, not that he can blame them.
Then suddenly a giant shadow appeared above them followed by a suffocating aura that covered the whole area around them like a blanket, he found breathing hard as if the oxygen itself had become heavy. Some of the smaller fish fainted or died outright. The water around him felt as heavy as a boulder making even swimming a workout.
Even though every cell in his body screamed at him not to he still peaked his head to look. He saw a shadow resembling the armadillo but was much larger.
From this distance and angle he couldn't tell it actually size but it was probably larger than an elephant. Just looking at it knew he wouldn't last a second against it.
That could only mean one thing, this beast was above rank 1. ' I wonder how many points I could get from that. No no, bad Ved, that a terrifying thought, very bad'
He crawled back under the giant boulder and waited. The beast stayed there until nightfall, he could hear it mournful cries and he felt a deep sadness and guilt.
The one he killed was definitely it child, he couldn't imagine how it would feel to lose a child. ' It was necessary Ved, you don't have to feel bad, it's part of nature. Something else could kill and eat you, besides it was also eating something it killed'
He kept telling himself but he still couldn't get rid of his guilt. He had killed a lot of thing since he reincarnated but he had never felt guilty about it.
But hearing the pain in the mothers voice shook him. He curled up into a ball and stayed there. Eventually he heard the giant mother leave.
He swam up to shore and find the armadillos body laying there motionless. It mother had left it body right there. ' sorry little dude but I've got to survive. The only thing I can honour you with is putting your body to good use'
He dragged the body across the river. It was too big to fit inside his hole so he placed it outside. He stared at it for hours finding it hard to take the first bite.
Everytime he tried he would hear it mothers mournful cries. He felt disgusted at himself for taking a child from it mother. He knew his thoughts were illogical.
They were in the wild and he too needed to survive, if he didn't kill it it would've killed him but deep down he wondered if that was true. If he had just left it alone would any of this had happened?
' Ahhh damnit Ved grow a pair, what done is done, you did what you had to do' he chastised himself then closed his eyes and took a big bite.
It tasted terrible, well that was not true it was delicious, even more so than the catfish and crocodile but he couldn't enjoy it so ate faster.
He was done within minutes. 'Status'
Name: Ved Zhakrii
Species: Poison lizard( 0/223 years)( 68.5 cm/ 100 cm)
Rank: 1
Abilities (1/1): Traits assimilation
Traits (3/3): Poison secretion, Herculean strength, Aquatic
Evolution points:( 6.84/ 10)
' Holy Jesus! so many points, over 3 whole points from just one beast, this makes no sense, system what's happening here?' ( Answer to host question will require 1 evolution point)
(Huh, since when do you deduct points for questions?' ( questions related to truths of the world require evolution points) ' Why?' ( Answer will require ???? points, host does not have enough points. Does host still require the answer from the first question?)
' Nevermind, I wasn't that curious about it anyways' He lied, he was very curious about it. He thought he already figured out how points are calculated and in some way he had.
Higher rank beings give more points and larger creatures also give more points but the armadillo was the same rank as the crocodile and was smaller yet still gave more points.
Curious as he was he was not at the liberty of wasting points, not with his life on the line. However the more looked at his status screen the more relaxed he became, it even reduced the guilt he felt.
If he was able to get that many points from a single creature then his goal didn't seem so impossible. 'A month is a long time, I bet I'll reach that goal in a week'
He was wrong, he was very wrong. He checked the countdown 17:34:43 he had less than 18 hours to reach his goal. During the past month he had not once met a single rank 1 beast.
No matter how hard he looked he couldn't find neither the sharks or the otter, he had even thought about eating the rabbit but stopped himself.
That felt way to low, he wasn't willing to completely abonden his morals, besides, rabbit were too cute, he could never hurt them.
At some point he had even tried to go deeper into the jungle but he felt multiple auras at the level of mother armadillo so that option was abondened.
The only silver lining was the number of fish had increased significantly, all of them swimming upstream. It was either migration season or they were running from something.
But what could drive so many fish upstream? That just sounds ridiculous. Due to that though he was able to increase his points to almost 8 by constantly hunting and eating.
He had probably killed thousands of them by now, while lost in his thoughts he did not notice the fish around him swimming faster upstream as if panicking, when he came to he was met by a giant claw headed in his direction.
' What in Aphrodite underwear is this? Am I cursed?' Then BOOOM.