I wonder how everyone else is doing. The non-murdering bunch of our group has been home for over a month now. I wonder if they are adapting well. I hope they’re fighting crime already. I want to hit the ground running when I get back. I wonder if they will be as high level as me or if I’ve left them in the dust.

Alex didn’t imagine that they had nearly as many high level foes back on Earth. Would they have leveled up at all? There was no way to know until he could see them in person.

I’m probably stronger.

Alex had been hunting for about three weeks now. He had seen massive gains, but it had started to slow down. The highest level scorpions he had run into so far was level 39. He had barely been able to defeat that one. He honestly didn’t even feel that great about how he had won. He had retreated multiple times during the fight to recover. Alex had found that his recovery speed was much, much faster than the scorpion’s was. He could fight, retreat, and come back at full health while the scorpion was still licking its wounds from the last fight. Even with this advantage, Alex had barely won after retreating three times.

“It was ten levels higher than me. That’s an impressive feat no matter how many times I ran away,” he defended himself to no one in particular. Alex had been talking to himself more and more lately.

Am I going crazy? I haven’t seen anybody else for a very long time. I’m so lonely.

“You will always have me at your side. I am your constant companion,” King Nagaar said to him.

“That’s great. I’m so happy for that. I know it’s getting bad, because I partially meant that,” Alex said with sigh.

“I do not know why you have such animosity towards me. I have done nothing against you in the time that we have been together. All I have done is help you,” the king said.

“I mean you did possess me like right after I absorbed the Eonsteel. I don’t feel like that was a friendly gesture. Friends don’t come inside each other like that…Wait that came out wrong,” Alex tried to backtrack, shaking his hands and head in embarrassment.

“I do not understand your weird turns of phrase.”

Alex decided to leave it at that.

*Last thing I need is to teach him all of this stuff. I slip up like that too frequently. I would never hear the end of it.*

“Still though, I don’t entirely feel like the possession was as helpful as you think it was,” Alex said.

“I will admit, I may have acted rashly. I hadn’t felt power like that in millennia. I got carried away, but I did not cause you harm. If anything, I was able to use your body and power more effectively than you could have.”

“You caused me a lot of harm actually. In case you didn’t notice, I’m an exile now. The only way I can get off this planet is by killing the very creature that killed you. It’s like…” Alex tried to do the math in his head, but couldn’t do it quickly enough and gave up. “It’s super strong. Way stronger than me. I don’t want to fight it. I would have much rather stayed in the camp, fighting the Zotari and eating that amazing food. Instead I get to roam the desert, fighting, quite literally, for my life, trying to get strong enough to fight likely the strongest thing on this entire planet,” Alex screamed.

“If it will ease your anxiety, I do not intend to control you like that again.”

It did not ease his worries in the slightest. Alex still wasn’t sure what the connection this snake had to the Eonsteel, but he intended to find out so that he could remove the snake without damaging the metal. He was worried that if he somehow removed the snake’s connection to it, it would lose either its strength, or it would somehow disconnect from his armor. He didn’t want to risk either of those. If that meant that he would have to endure the snake for a while, he would. That didn’t mean that he was going to trust him. The snake had already proven that it would stop at nothing to achieve his own goals. Heck, he even crippled his own nation just to kill some Sand Drakes for no other purpose than to immortalize himself. He was narcissistic and selfish in life and Alex had a hard time believing he would be different in the state he was in now.

“Sure, I believe you,” Alex responded, realizing that he had been silent for perhaps a little too long.

Alex focused back on the problem at hand. He was still gaining levels from the scorpions, but he would need to find more powerful beasts if he had any hope of reaching the Great One’s level in the next thousand years. The Forge obviously incentivized fighting foes stronger than yourself. When he had fought some of the lower leveled scorpions he had seen some improvement, but not nearly at the scale of the stronger ones. He focused on those ones for the most part. Beggars can’t be choosers and all that crap. He had no way of tracking the stronger scorpions down, so he had basically been playing the largest game of minesweeper in existence. Except Alex was trying to step on the mines so that he could kill/eat them. Maybe not the best analogy.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

It was all luck, and Alex wasn’t having much lately. The last four scorpions he had run into were lower level than him and he could tell that he had gained next to nothing from them.

I wish I had an experience bar or something. It would be so much easier to tell how close I was to leveling up, or even to see how much defeating different foes gave me in experience.

Without any of those tools, Alex decided the best course of action was to focus on tougher enemies, which meant that he would need to find greener pastures. Redder sands?

Alex restocked at alpha site then set out. He decided he needed to go further than he had been. It stood to reason that the stronger beasts would typically stay away from each other so as to not force a fight over territory. Since there was an incredibly strong beast in this canyon, Alex just needed to find the territory of another strong beast. Hopefully, one that wasn’t too strong. Alex had mostly drained his water from the tank at alpha site and he decided that he would collapse it down to take with him. He didn’t know when he would return, so he wanted a reliable source of water nearby. He left the black stone at alpha site so that he could find his way back when the time arose.

Alex picked a direction and set out. Again, he picked the most strategic and calculated direction, and not a random one. He ran into a few more lower level scorpions, but dispatched them quickly. He continued his trek for a few hours before he saw something in the distance that truly caught him off guard.

He saw green. He saw green everyday since the sky was green, but this green was on the ground. This ground green was surrounded by more green. There was a plethora of green. It filled an entire valley. It was an oasis. Alex had seen pictures of them on Earth. Miles of sand and heat and desolation all around, but somehow, in the middle of it all, a thriving ecosystem. Alex rubbed his eyes to see if he was hallucinating. When he removed his balled up fists from his eye sockets, he didn’t see an oasis anymore. He didn’t see anything.

I think I rubbed my eyes too hard.

Alex blinked the stars away and when his vision returned, there was the oasis. Alex was glad that he could still see too, that’s always nice. He needed to be more aware of his increased strength. His body was changing so rapidly lately that he was amazed that he could even walk without launching himself forward too far with each step. His increased stats must have some kind of way to allow a more fine tuned control over his body.

Maybe the AI implanted in my head has a function to take over this kind of thing until I get used to it. Maybe it’s my suit.

Either way, Alex was grateful that he didn’t look like a freshly birthed giraffe every time he increased his stats. Not only would that make it hard for him to fight with reckless abandon all the time, but it would make him look silly. He was a superhero, people should take him seriously. Does he need to be more serious to be taken seriously? Probably not. Cameron was extremely serious all the time. That was not something that Alex was about to start. Cameron had been cool, but towards the end, he had been a real stick in the mud. Alex remembered everyone’s face when he started tearing into them about killing those guys. They looked extremely uncomfortable and Alex didn’t want to be the cause of that. Maybe it was ok to not be taken too seriously.

It was crazy how much of an impact that group had on him. They had only been together for a short time, yet Alex was so excited to see them again. He had grown close to them. Shared trauma had a way of forging friendships. Alex had seen plenty of relationships start that same way. Now that he got thinking about it, everyone that he knew that had shared trauma like that and got in a relationship were in an extremely unhealthy relationship.

So, maybe I shouldn’t meet back up with them? Is it going to be toxic? I’m sure it will be fine, right?

Alex strode toward the lush vegetation, excitement barely contained. There was bound to be all kinds of interesting things in a place like this. Wherever there was a steady supply of water, animals tended to congregate. Where there was an ample collection of animals, a predator had to be nearby. A predator that would likely be high leveled. Alex popped his neck, preparing himself.

This is going to be fun.

Alex first wanted to find a spot that he could use as a base of operations. It needed to have some cover so that he could rest undisturbed. He also would like to be close to whatever water source was supplying the oasis with its lush greenery.

As Alex approached, he began to see the oasis in much greater detail. Trees that resembled palm trees on Earth were sprawled across the entire area. He looked to his right and saw a red plant shaped like an upside down bell. A sort of monkey looking creature climbed the tree next to the bell plant. Alex was about to identify it when the bell plant shot out a tendril from its gaping maw. It grabbed the monkey in an instant, sucking it down into its mouth. The second it was in, the hole sealed itself.

Alex stood dumbfounded. What had he just witnessed? He had heard of carnivorous plants before. He even had a Venus fly trap in his apartment. It was cool to see it clamp down on the different foods he tried feeding it. It moved quick, but this plant moved a lot quicker. It had eaten an entire monkey. His fly trap only ate flies, and even then they were sometimes too big for it.

Maybe this isn’t going to be as fun as I thought.