"How many does that make?" Redeem asked.
[Ten]
"Ten!? No way I missed that many!" Redeem exclaimed, scaring a fleet of bullfrogs away from the bank he was stalking on.
[Eleven]
Redeem lashed his tail and glared at the pond. Well there went another few minutes the frogs wouldn't come up for air.
Of course Redeem had never hunted anything before. But even if he had gotten the concept, as a dragon without fire, it wasn't as simple as getting a good aim.
Ambling around the fridges of the pond, Redeem tried to flick away dragonflies as he thought. But he was getting hungrier. His lack of a first meal coiled in his belly like a violent snake, rattling with hunger and impatience.
Redeem had gotten desperate a few failures ago to the point of eating plants. But the taste was like sour taint on his tongue, and the idea of eating plants made his stomach go still with grumbling of hunger and instead rumble with disdain.
Finding a boulder, Redeem thought of a new idea. To use his new glide ability and use it to catch something.
What could he catch? He didn't know.
It took a moment of scrambling, but Redeem scaled the rock and turned toward the pond. The frogs were indeed long gone under the surface of the water, and now the only food seemed to be bugs.
But was he really willing to go that far?
Redeem lunged off the rock, spread his wings, and sailed through the air. Opening his jaws he snapped up one fat dragon fly and then wobbled.
"Ah!" Redeem cried as he tumbled down into the water.
[Dragonfly consumed, +1 EXP]
The nasty green water surged around him, sinking him downward. Redeem closed his eyes, and then thrashed his paws, fighting to the surface.
In the water his wings seemed to weigh him down. At the surface he fluttered them, panicking, but then realized they were only making everything worse.
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Folding his wings, Redeem doggy paddled to the nearest bank and hopped out. The taste of dragonfly was sticky in his mouth, and the burn of pond water stung his nose.
Snorting and shaking off droplets, the hatchling Wind Dragon angrily spoke to his system.
"I thought I could glide?!" He snapped.
[You're [Glide] skill is a low rank]
Redeem flicked off more water, and stared up at the canopy with a glare.
It did make sense. Gliding in a sky full of wind was not the same as gliding across a small pond without an updraft.
Even still, Redeem was hungry, lost, and wet, he didn't have patience to sulk. Sneezing out the last of the gunk, the dragon marched up to the nearest rock, and scaled it.
On the top, he stretched his wings, flapped off moisture, and then leapt forward.
He tried to hold his wings out better this time, and he focused on the bank ahead, trying to will himself to stay in the air.
When a dragonfly crossed his path, Redeem opened his mouth desperately but lost his focus and so one of his wings partially shifted its position.
Slamming into the pond, Redeem wondered, if this was what gliding was like, how hard would flying be?
After paddling back to the shore, Redeem once again shook off the pond water and then prepared himself to glide again. But this time he chose a different rock, one that was slightly higher, but pointed.
With the rough rock digging into his paws, Redeem took in the pond below and then flung himself off.
The rock was slightly displaced from beside the pond, and so if he fell directly downward he had a small chance of slamming into the ground. Luckily, he didn't. Upon lunging off the peak of the boulder Redeem found himself floating gently on air. Gliding downward almost peacefully, Redeem took the chance to gobble up dragonflies.
The experience that he obtained from them quickly dissipated to nothing though, and in the end he was left with a mouth full of crunch exoskeleton.
Swallowing thickly and washing the bugs down with pond water, Redeem swam to a bank and got out.
"So what exactly does my XP do? Because so far I haven't gotten anything cool," Redeem said, flicking his tail to dry it.
[You're [Threat Level] has a unique skill attached to it, allowing your XP to level it up]
"Unique skill? And what's a threat level? I kinda forgot…"
[Monsters in this world cannot level up, and for the most part their [Threat Level] remains stagnant.]
[ A [Threat Level] is a level that helps to determine the strength of a creature, and it is primarily used for other creatures to assess their ability to battle one another. This includes humans.]
Redeem could have sworn his stat sheet hadn't said all of that, and so promptly willed it forward.
Title: Redeem [?]: [Titles are names for monsters, they typically contain skills or achievements]
Growth Stage: UNKNOWN [?]: [Growth of a creature]
Dragon Class: Wind Dragon [?]: [A class for monsters is typical their type or species]
┍Threat Level: 0 [?]: [Threat levels represents strength in monsters. Each level gives you a threatening transformation]
│
┕[EXP Earned] (6/500) [?]: Unique - Information unavailable
┍Dragon Skills: [?] [Abilities acquired via experience & talent]
│
┕[Skill Branches] [?] [Skill categories split into branches]
[None]
Loot: [?]: [Riches are important]
[None]
Miscellaneous: [?]: [Self explanatory]
[None]
Redeem narrowed his eyes at the threat level section.
"Did you… just add that?"
[No]
"Okay, well… what's the transformation thing about? You didn't mention that," Redeem wondered.
[It's unique - what information I have on it is limited. All I can tell you is that you will transform after a certain point]
So was Redeem not just going to be a Wind dragon forever? Either that or he would become a stronger version of his current self.
Redeem felt his belly rumble again, but decided to leave the pond behind. If dragonflies no longer gave him XP, he would have to find it elsewhere. Also, pond water didn't seem to be sitting well on his stomach. He would have to find a better water source and a tastier source of food.
Dark was approaching now, and without fire to light the way, Redeem didn't know if he would survive the night.
Behind him, something scented the air.