Chapter 175: Planning Ahead
For a second it almost felt like Zephyr had seen a trace of something more in the eye of the stout monster.
’Sentience?’
He stared at his hand in thought before standing and resuming what he came here for in the first place.
Food, fruits, or anything edible at all.
From what he could see, the stout monsters seemed to also depend on this food source location for sustenance, at least to some extent.
He knew this could only be supplementary for their survival based on the population size of monster lairs he had seen on his way to this western border.
He walked around, uprooting what looked to be the single edible plant here — some sort of tuber crop that Zephyr hoped tasted better than it looked.
It had a deep purple color that was unlike any food he was familiar with.
He harvested a few more than was necessary, intending to see if he could also plant some closer to his Troglodyte home, probably somewhere in his tunnels. Someplace that was closer to the top, where sunlight could still reach the plants.
He suddenly paused, looking back at the bodies of the fallen monsters he had killed.
In particular, he stared straight at their weapons like he was just registering the detail
"They actually had weapons..."
That meant they were smart enough to make tools.
The look he had seen earlier wasn’t false. These monsters were sentient. Zephyr frowned.
It meant that, depending on their societal structure, the absence of these three was very likely going to be noticed.
"Tsk... I should’ve just let them finish up what they wanted and be on their way." Zephyr hissed.
He didn’t want any trouble at this point.
Without further ado, he quickly finished up his harvesting, filling up his earthen-made container with the tuber crop.
He buried the bodies of the monsters neatly, using earth magic to ensure they wouldn’t be found by any party that came in search of them. But not before he properly scrutinized the bodies, checking for weak points, and just an overall understanding of their physiology.
He reached his new abode without any hassle, just as he noticed the traces of another sandstorm.
By the time he was fully settled in, he could hear the furious might of the sandstorm already upon the plateau, though he was safe.
"Seems like a daily occurrence?" Zephyr noticed that it was around the exact same time as the previous day, if only slightly earlier.
"Probably because I’m further west...?"
Going by what happened the previous day, the Voice of The World’s notice would follow right after the sand storm.
Zephyr made himself comfortable on one of the few stone furnitures he had made out of fired earth in his chamber.
He blew lightly at one of the steaming-hot tuber crops he had harvested. They had lost their alien, purple sheen after Zephyr had cooked and roasted them thoroughly, even wafting up an enticing aroma.
Surprisingly, it also tasted good. It was very fibrous and earthy, but once boiled, it had a succulence to it that wasn’t half bad at all.
The roasted ones though... Those were just bland.
Zephyr brought up the ranking panel as he ate, waiting for the storm to settle and the Voice of The World to give its announcement.
And some minutes after the storm settled, the announcement followed promptly.
[Notice. Number of Fallen Champions. Sector 6. Day 2: 173,004]
"Sheesh..." Zephyr whispered. "Has to be mostly from monster lairs." The list of fallen scrolled by as he mused.
The central regions of the desert were already crawling with monsters that had broken out of their lairs. And their quantity was very likely the cause of such a high number of fallen champions despite the fact that most had stopped killing each other...
[Notice: Day 1 Concluded.]
[Total number of Sector 6 champions at start: 1,470,332]
[Total number remaining: 1,135,991]
[Day 2 Commencing]
There was no further announcement beyond that. It seemed like nothing had really changed much.
"Figures. It’s not like there’ll be something new everyday." Zephyr muttered.
So he turned his attention to the top ten rankings instead.
Already, he could see some position changes, but he firstly made a quick run through for any new name, which fortunately, there wasn’t.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Rank No: 1
Name: ZeroOne Sovereign
Rep: Planet 7. J–22. 02–0038
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Rank No: 2
Name: Queen of The Dunes
Rep: Planet 3. B–14. 01–0142
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Rank No: 3
Name: Alyra Ryvelin
Rep: Planet 1. J–22. 02–0031
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Rank No: 4
Name: Lord Supreme Overlord of Absolutely Everything (First of his name.)
Rep: Planet 13. B–14. 01–0153
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Rank No: 5
Name: Fate Defier
Rep: Planet 10. H–19. 03–0292
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Rank No: 6
Name: Harbinger of Doom
Rep: Planet 6. K–11. 05–0275
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Rank No: 7
Name: Seraphim
Rep: Planet 9. F–08. 04–0207
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Rank No: 8
Name: Lightbearer of Ilyros
Rep: Planet 5. D–07. 09–0116
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Rank No: 9
Name: Xyrie
Rep: Planet 12. J–03. 01–0344
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Rank No: 10
Name: Braddox
Rep: Planet 4. G–12. 06–0183
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
"Fate Defier, Harbinger of Doom, and Xyrie." Zephyr noted the changes.
They had all moved at least a step up, with Harbinger of Doom moving the most steps, from the eighth to the sixth position.
The top four remained the same though, with Zephyr still in the lead.
He breathed out lightly, closing the panel. All the basic necessities for his survival had already been settled.
Food, Water, Shelter...
He could now try delving into his mana core space without too much worry about what might happen to his body on the outside.
And he did just that.
He was back in his mana core space after what seemed like a very long time, but in reality, was just a couple of days.
But that was enough time for his second mana node to have reached near-full definition.
Going by the current rate, he would be a Tier 2 awakened within hours.
Zephyr changed his ’view’, feeling out the second mana node.
"Haa... Just like I thought," he sighed.
The mana node was nearly solidified. Going into building transistors on it now wouldn’t provide any major benefit compared to calmly doing so after it fully solidified in a few hours.
He willed himself out of his mana core space after observing for a while more and seeing nothing of note.
"I need to make clear plans from now on." Zephyr sat up from his cross-legged position.
Taking his second evolution timeframe into consideration, it was five months and counting since he’d awakened his mana core till now.
So extrapolating further, all things being equal, he could expect the next evolution to happen in the next... six or seven months, factoring any difference that may come about because it was his third evolution — one that would involve two nodes, bringing his total up to four.
It was going to be a major one. One he needed to take full advantage of.
Based on the history he’d learned, Zephyr knew he was going to be in this trial for a long time, at the very least, a year... or maybe even two.
Within that timeframe he was sure to evolve once, and very likely even a second time too.
He didn’t want a repeat of his failure to maximize his evolution period ever again, so he needed to be particular about it this time.
For the moment, he had solved most of the issues that might prove a hindrance to his goal of maximizing his evolution period, but there were still some that he needed to address.
For example, his rank.
Comprehension periods — or rather, designing periods when he went into seclusion could take as much as fifteen days depending on what it was he was designing.
If he wanted to hold on to a top ten spot, considering his goal to prevent anyone else from taking his perk, he needed to ensure that he held a very solid lead ahead of everyone else.
Such that even if inactive for as much as two weeks, he couldn’t be booted off the top ten rankings.
"If only I could kill more of those worms..." Zephyr mused.
He didn’t know how many points each monster kill carried, but he at least knew the worm was worth a whole lot of points.
He thought about the Expanded Champion Profiles for a moment again before putting it out of his mind. The grading points knowledge it provided would’ve come in clutch at this moment.
His only choice now was to grind. He already had a massive lead on the other champions, so he needed to grind even harder if he wanted to maintain his wide margin.
He needed to do something big.
Killing another worm was not a viable option at the moment. His previous feat had only been possible because of the sandstorm in the first place. And even if he wanted to find them, he didn’t know where to start.
The monster lairs that were visible on the Resource Map he had didn’t show any detail aside from the regular death-skull icon that was used to represent them.
So even retracing his path on the map backwards to the point of the fight, he couldn’t tell which lairs around that area could be the nest of the worm monsters.
Instead, he turned his attention to the lair closest to him.
He already knew from experience that what most lairs didn’t have in individual strength of monsters, they made up for in numbers, so he intended to take advantage of that.
He was going to clear a monster lair...
Alone.