Zalia restocked up on Dodge-vine as she travelled, finding plenty around the place. After the additional two silver she had been given she now had eight gold, one silver and ninety five copper. She hoped it was enough for some actual armour, enemies kept getting in close to her and a little protection would be really nice. It was a couple day's journey to the next town so Zalia thought about what she could do on the way to train. She hadn't really done much but with how majorly her strength and dexterity was being affected by the attribute changes, she needed to get used to her body's capabilities. This was especially true if she continued at the rate she was. She wasn't necessarily inhumanly strong but the draw weight of her bow had gone from comfortable to downright easy, well, before she broke it that was.
Zalia's new bow felt similar in its draw weight but smoother somehow. She couldn't figure out how she was going to bond to it but decided on trying to hunt something. It was called Hunter's bow after all. As such, as the few days passed, Zalia kept an eye out for the tracks of any creature that would be worthy of such.
Zalia also thought about how much her Herbal magic had gone up from doing something beyond the ability and involving it. Looking at her stasis and escape abilities she couldn't help but feel they were falling behind. She had an idea on how to level the escape ability but would need someone's help and a lot of rope. As for stasis, she didn't have any ideas yet but kept it in mind.
Zalia was also pretty sure she had gotten lucky with her hunts so far in that the beasts had been mindless. She felt like hunting something properly sapient would be a lot harder, not that she felt the need to do so. She thought about something Juniper had told her just before she left, of a group of mercenaries in the far west of Endaria who called themselves the Morning's Shade, a group who mostly purposed themselves with helping out humanity against monsters and beasts that threatened the lands. Apparently Junipers husband had been a part of the group, the place he had gained his power and prestige as a hunter. She thought it was probably a good place for her to check out, see if she couldn't learn a thing or two from them.
Congratulations! Hunter's Sight has reached Tin 15.
Her constant track observation paid off giving her a level but unfortunately she didn't find anything she felt like hunting that first day. When she camped up for the night she decided on doing some light stretches before she slept, trying to pay attention to how her body moved now.
The next day, Zalia added in some long stretch runs. She tried to take the most complicated course possible, jumping obstructions, climbing etc to train herself to be as efficient as possible. She spent her time switching between that, watching tracks and gathering herbs.
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It was the third day in that she finally found something she wanted to hunt. She had gained two levels in flora identification bringing it to Tin 12 and one each in preparation and harvester bringing them to Tin 14 and 13 respectively.
The tracks that caught her attention, was a large knee height creature that had what seemed like a hundred legs. From what she could discern it was something similar to a giant centipede, crawling its way through the jungle. The tracks were relatively fresh so she decided to give chase. Shortly after finding the first tracks, she found a second point of interest in the creature. She found a section of brush that the creature had chewed on. Surrounding the bite marks, the plants were withered and dead as if the life had been sucked out of them. Her healing presence couldn't heal the damage to the plants, leading Zalia to believe it was almost certainly of a strong rank.
She followed the tracks to where the creature lay asleep. It was curled in a circle in a patch of dead, decrepit old plant matter. The area was indented into the ground forming a small out of the weather area. Looking at the thing from a tree nearby, Zalia could see it had some kind of venom for sure,
? - Silver rank
"Shit," Zalia thought.
She definitely wanted the venom of the beast but it would be a dangerous endeavour to get. She started by emptying her small pouch into her bag, the watertight container being an alright substitute for a more sealed glass vial. She could see the venom was dripping from the creature's mouth where it slept, rolling down its carapace to the earth below. The thing slept with its head resting on and across its tail section. When uncurled she figured it probably was about six or seven metres long.
Zalia quickly performed a Dodge-vine ritual, hoping it wouldn't be necessary but not willing to give up any advantage she could get. Normally, she wouldn't even consider disturbing the creature. It most definitely wouldn't be killable without another mountain willing to drop a landslide on it and she wasn't about to risk that. The only reason she considered taking the risk was the fact she was running quite low on her other poison.
She very slowly and carefully approached the small indent in the ground, reaching the side of where it sloped down. Reaching her foot out she felt at the decrepit almost mush like ground finding it to be slippery but not un-walkable. She chewed her lower lip for a second trying to make a decision. After a moment, she went to a nearby tree and tied her length of rope around it and then went back to the indent. She used the support of the rope to walk down into the nest of the creature. She gently crouched down next to the large centipede like beast and put her watertight pouch beneath where the venom was dripping off the creature's carapace. This close to it, she could see it had six eyes, three on each side and each of them closed. It had two vice-like jaw mandibles with two smaller almost arm-like limbs designed to rip at whatever the larger mandibles held still. It was a truly terrifying creature that Zalia had no doubt would be incredibly deadly. She crouched there for almost half a minute before pulling the drawstring on her pouch and tying it at her waist once more. When she looked back at the creature as she stood, she saw that its eyes, had opened.