It has been following the human for quite some time. As it was still the body of a dungeon monster, even though it didn’t count as one, it didn’t need food, water, or sleep making spying easy as it didn’t need to turn away for even a second.
The forest was big and the nearest village far, so it had plenty of time to analyze the human and estimate his stats.
Human lv ~15
STR ~20 VIT ~10
END ~20 DEX ~25
PER ~15 MAG~5
Skills:
[ Swordsmanship lv ~9] [Body enchantment lv~3] [Meditation lv~5]
It also found out the human was male because although it has difficulty guessing gender from the secondary sex characteristic of a species that it hadn’t collected a sample of, you can’t mistake a naked human male for a naked human female.
The Human, who is currently fighting with a Venom Snake, additionally seems to be unable to level up. Even if his level is on the high end of the estimate, with the number of beasts killed, he should have comfortably leveled up 4 creatures ago. Yet he has shown no rapid change in stats.
The only thing the bird could think of, to cause such a phenomenon, was a curse from one of the Gods. But what could a level 18 at best human do to upset a God so much? It couldn’t think of anything.
After all, it was leveling up quite comfortably, so it being a curse that was affecting the area was out of the question.
While The Bird was thinking of more and more outlandish reasons for how the human was cursed, ranging from pissing on a God's statue to killing a newborn demigod, the fight with the Venom Snake was going horribly.
The Human had let itself be bitten at the beginning of the battle and now the poison was showing its effect. He’s growing more sluggish by the minute and the Snake, although much more exhausted, is comparatively in a better shape.
The fear of losing consciousness to the poison must have overridden any common sense as the human started to attack more wildly at the reptile. Something that wouldn’t fly in its dungeon as the other monsters would capitalize on the openings left, the shard of The Core would like to note.
Thankfully for the human, his opponent wasn’t the intelligent type, and coupled with the tiredness it quickly succumbed to the blows. Unfortunately for the human, the loud battle attracted some unwanted attention in the form of the forest rats. The scavengers meant that if he didn’t have a potion on hand the situation would get ugly.
The human quickly searched for the aforementioned potion in his ring and there was a visible look of relief when he found it. Only he took out a green pill and then ate it. The swordsman got on the bloodied grass and started meditating, completely ignoring the corpse of his foe lying right next to him.
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The forest rats were also surprised by the humans' actions, yet that surprise quickly turned to hunger when they got a bit closer, and he didn’t react.
The Bird immediately reacted. Shooting off from the branch it was resting on and piercing through the head of the rat that was the closest to the human. Not the best idea as its beak got stuck in the dirt but it never claimed to be a good fighter and the rats were too confused by the attack to take advantage of the mistake.
At the beginning of its spying mission, it didn't want to help the human for fear of being found out but after he made a mistake that nearly cost it the dungeon's progression it had no choice but to intervene and after that helping him became natural.
The shard of The Core pulled its beak out and opened its wings to seem bigger.
It then proceeded to scream to scare the rest off, it worked as the rats were inherently cowardly. It wasn’t worried about waking up the human from his meditation as one time it needed to kill an ocelot because he didn’t wake in time.
As it felt its power increasing it wondered if it leveled up.
Celeritas bird lv 18
STR 39 VIT 29
END 25 DEX 35
PER 31 MAG 18
Skills:
[Soul protection lv MAX] [Sense sharing lv MAX] [Acceleration lv 1] [Stealth lv2]
[Pierce lv2] [Body enchantment lv1]
It did.
The Bird flew to another branch and activated Stealth. It didn’t want to get caught by the human as that put its plan at risk.
From what it learned some humans were the self-sacrificing types, not going to any settlements if they thought they were being stalked for fear of putting other sentients at risk. But if that happened then what were its chances of accidentally stumbling upon one? The dungeon was so far away at this point that if the human died it would just return because it knew that The Core wouldn’t risk another shard to retrieve it.
The Bird began to think of a plan of action just like all the other times the human began meditating.
The initial course of action was to scout a guild in a nearby settlement and fabricate a mission to investigate a disturbance of mana in the forest, it was scrapped almost immediately because a village in the middle of nowhere wouldn’t house even the weakest adventurers let alone a whole guild. The distance between the dungeon and the community meant that it couldn’t lure the average farmer or even kidnap anyone without some other beast interfering and killing the kidnappee.
What it settled on was simple, it would kidnap people, and kill them in brutal ways deeper and deeper in the forest until the village head had no choice but to file a mission to a nearby adventure guild. Then the adventurers would have to investigate the forest and “coincidently” find a dungeon. Of course, The Bird already had a magical beast in mind to blame for the deaths. After all, if they found out that it was it that did the murders then the dungeon would be filed as one too dangerous to exist and A-rank adventurers would be called.
The shard of The Core was grateful that it read the guidebook given by the System religiously in the beginning otherwise it would be in big trouble on the surface without any common knowledge.
The Human woke up from his meditation. In moments like these, The Bird wished that it gave itself Mana sight to see what he was doing during the meditation as the skill was usually used for mana regeneration and the human never used magic to recover it.
The Human looked at himself, and his bloodied clothes and started to change them, not even scouting the area for dangers first before taking off the magical fabric that would give him protection.
The Bird figured that fact embarrassingly late as all the clothes he wore didn’t tear during fights.
The Human changed into a clean pair of robes, this time green, collected the snake’s body, and went on his merry way.
The shard of the Core followed him dutifully as always.
After a long hour of flying for some and walking for others they arrived at their destination, the human settlement.
The Bird was so happy that it even ignored the weird architecture it could see, focusing instead on the progression requirements going on about their day.