His hole felt less comfortable now, he could still fit inside but it was nolonger as spacious as before. ' With three more traits slots, I wonder which traits I should look for.
A defensive one for sure but which creature has the strongest defence? Crocodiles have strong scales, armadillos? No, I don't think those would help'
Trying to remember which animals would give him the most effective traits was really vexing. Although he learnt a bit about animals in his past life it was not very helpful right now.
'Ah, that it, I'm so stupid, it was right infront of me' It suddenly dawned on him, how strong a trait was was measured in proportion to body size like his herculean strength.
Although an elephant or whale were significantly stronger than a beetle if measured in correspondence to their mass the beetle was a behemoth compared to them.
If he was right and traits are measured based on ones mass then even if he gained herculean strength from an elephant it would not be very effective on him since he was smaller and much lighter.
That also meant if he wanted to gain the strongest traits then insect should be his targets. It is a known fact to anybody that insect are the most overpowered creatures on earth, they're only nerfed by their size.
Nature did them dirty there but imagine something with their traits and as heavy as a whale, what could possibly stand in their way?
Now that he knew that, it was time to figure out which insect to target. He once learnt that ants could lift 50x their body mass, he believed they were the strongest insect until he ate that beetle.
So his immediate target should be beetles but he will eat other insects as well incase there's one that possess a trait he likes. The following day, after he had his fish breakfast he went beetle hunting.
He checked up on the rabbits first and the 13 awakened ones had woken up, they each had a spark in their eyes like the first one. This surprised him, even though he knew this world was magical he didn't think a flower could grant wild animals intelligence.
Although he could use the rabbits help finding beetles they had no effective way to communicate. They could understand each other's grunts and squirks to an extent but any complicated communication was off the table.
So he left to carry out his task by himself, he spent almost the entire day searching and he did find a lot of insects but none were beetles or had any desirable traits.
Another thing was the number of rank 1 beast, in just 1 day he had already killed 4 of them. One of them was even a giant jaguar, that thing was fast, like really fast for a rank 1 beast.
Even faster than his current self but it was lacking when it comes to power or defence. It took a single tail sweep to cut it body in half. The bad knews though was that they gave him way too little points now.
Which he supposed made sense since he was an entire rank above them. When the day ended he went to his hole, he spent a bit of time expanding it then went to sleep.
The next day he went fish hunting like always. The river had even more rank 1 creatures than the jungle. By the end of the day he had already gathered over 0.6 evolution point, which was a lot in a single day.
He also noticed his affinity with water had grown significantly. His body felt lighter and faster underwater, he found breathing easier and swimming was more relaxing like he was having a massage.
At some point he had relaxed so much he didn't even notice a 6 metres long catfish next to him. It was only after it swallowed him and he was forced to dig his way out that he woke up.
It was a terrifying experience, not because he was in danger, he was not, the catfish was way to weak to harm him but because if he had done that with a rank 2 creature nearby he might've died.
From that moment on he was constantly in alert, though it was a bit hard considering how relaxed water made him feel. He was forced to get out before he fell asleep.
Instead of going to his hole he went out the other side of the river where those 2 behemoths fought. The devastation from their fight still lingered.
He could feel the lingering aura in the air. He cautiously took a few steps forward. ' What the hell are you terrified for Ved, you're also rank 2 now'
After encouraging himself he continued forward at a faster pace. Even after walking a few kilometres in he still did not feel any rank 2 aura.
BOOOM, after reaching the 20 kilometres mark he felt an explosion and four distinct auras facing each other. ' Uhh a fight, how interesting'
He ran faster and before long he came out to a clearing but it was obviously not natural. The trees were shattered and the ground was filled with craters,some even a dozen metres wide.
At the centre of this clearing was a 2 metres tall red tree with 5 blood red fruits and surrounding the tree in four directions were four creatures staring at each other with obvious hostility.
One was a 30 metres long python wrapped around a tall tree, next to it was a 3 metres talk tiger with fire around it ankles. Opposite them an owl with a wingspan of 4 metres stoop perched on a tree.
And the last one was a black monkey the size of an adult human carrying a long stick. The moment he appeared they all fixed their eyes on him.
The silence lasted for a few seconds then the tiger roared. Flames ignited on it entire body, the others followed, their hostility turned towards him as if they had forgotten each other.
' Yeah, no don't mind me, I'm out' he turned around and ran.