Xeno quickly took out of his space the corpse of the lizardman he killed before. Then he removed from it all of the valuable items, leaving it stark naked. He proceeded to cut off the two legs of the three meters brown scaled carcass, since he planned to let them for Vix and Zaha.

Even if tired, the dead corpse was giving off less resistance than when it was alive and his blue empowered tail was enough to do the job. Then he slowly approached the robotic eye, that now wasn't emanating its faint light anymore.

'Ripping it off might not be the right choice, since I may either damage it or trigger some kind of protective mechanism. I'll wait for Dock to wake up.'

Soon after, Xeno headed to the convoy, as much as he wanted to start eating the rest of the corpse, he had to inform the merchant about the situation.

While heading toward the first vehicle a little sweaty head peeked out from one of the windows in the back of the long black cab.

[Mister Zingud, the fight has ended. My team will be ready to depart again in a couple of hours.]

As Xeno got near enough he told the greedy merchant about his current plans, with a stern and emotionless raspy voice.

Initially startled the merchant stayed a few second silent, but soon after his face started to contort, sneering back at the big black alien.

[You! I do not take orders from you, this is my convoy. Do not waste my time anymore!]

The merchant dared such behavior only because he knew that if Xeno really wanted him dead, he wouldn't receive any coins and team points from his quest.

However Xeno understood what the sweaty celidre was doing, bargaining. As it was one of the requirements to handle such job after all.

[Very well, I hope the next group of bandits that will feast on your convoy will at least leave your carcass intact. To let me taste your fatty flesh.]

The stern response received by the merchant let him speechless, as he didn't even have time to comply when Xeno started heading back to the lizardman corpse.

Soon after, he started to voraciously munch onto the big torso of the body. After all he really needed to recuperate back his constitution, that now looked sick and skinny.

A few minutes later Vix and Zaha had been woken up by the incessant of Xeno's little 'snack'. Seeing them up, he materialized the two legs and nodded before resuming his meal. In about an hour even Dock opened his eyes, however only a pile of bones now remained in front of him.

[Dock I have something here for you to work on, it's the bionic eye possessed by the bandits leader.]

Therefore a big scaly head appeared in front of Dock. As it rolled under his feet, he got a glimpse of the macabre conditions it was in.

Its shocked and terrorized expression was still visible into the now dead eyes of the poor creature. Sign of claw marks were present all over the scales, and many parts had been torn off. However what really shocked him was the base of the head, were was supposed to be the start of the neck. As Dock discovered the insides of the skull were almost completely empty, leaving only the zone near the eyes still intact.

He couldn't take it anymore, as this scene coupled with the stench of death that was surrounding him made Dock blurt all out.

Xeno quickly dodged the spurt of vomit and without much waiting started to head to the convoy.

[We are heading to the convoy now. I have already looted the still functioning tools I found on the bandits.]

As such the line of vehicles resumed their march through the seemingly endless steppe and grasslands that separated the two cities.

Inside of the second cab of the convoy the team of four had resumed their activities.

Dock was attentively looking at the big head he had carefully enclosed into a transparent container.

Zaha and Vix were cheerfully absorbed into a telepathic conversation, telling each other their battle feats.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

On the opposite side of the trio, there was a motionless Xeno, he was sitting in a very composed manner. On the surface of his skin one could faintly notice the random appearance of purple looking runes.

Indeed, he was already practicing the compression technique that Aiduth had gifted him.

As she had said it wasn't such a complicated method, in fact it was practiced only by Azoths that hadn't still reached the first evolutionary stage.

'I need to absorb energy from my surroundings, channeling it into my nano-heart and slowly convert it into pure purple nano-energy.'

There are various kinds of energy, that based on power get stronger the more dense and compressed they are. In particular, there are three layers for every tier of energy.

In Xeno's case directly after pure purple energy, there is the deep purple energy.

However nano-energies that go beyond the common tier-1, which can be referred as the crystal blue one, are rarely found in nature.

For example the heart that Xeno gained after his awakening is the organ that enables him to utilize higher tiers of energy. Without it he would need the help of an external source, which is quite rare, even more in defiled planets like his.

Unfortunately this technique could help him only to reach until this very first layer of the purple tier. This was because it was a very rudimentary method, it didn't care at all about the conditions of his still minuscule heart or body constitution.

In fact the problem was exactly that the container of the energy was too weak to carry anything heavier than this.

As time passed the convoy didn't encounter any other dangerous encounters, to Zingud's displeasure.

Kelipso in se wasn't such a spectacle to see, the city was very monotonous. It had only the slum district and an inner circle that one could compare to a shabby version of the middle section of Elkatra.

As tall gray buildings could be seen from all angles, the convoy stopped and Xeno's team got out from their vehicle.

Their first mission had been completed, it was time for the stingy merchant to pay.

Soon after Xeno found before his feet a big leather bag containing the promised 1000 coins. The beg had a clear wet imprint on its upper section. As such Xeno quickly transferred the coins into s digital account.

Then the team got back on their tracks, although they went by foot. Their little journey through the vast plains went on for about three weeks. As Xeno wanted it to an experience to better improve the team collaboration. They hunted packs of beasts, filling their spatial rings and objects to the brim with furs, fangs and some other monster parts.

They were the spatial objects looted from the bandits corpses, as all of them had at least one or two. Not for nothing they wanted to rob a merchant from his goods.

Arrived back at their apartment in Elkatra, Xeno had sold most of their loot, gaining around another thousand coins.

With such a good sum of money he decided to do some improvements to their living space and to get a membership with a food delivery company.

As for the next months he decided to change the targets regarding the team's quests, he needed a steady supply of meat.

About the furniture in the apartment he charged Vix and Zaha to care about, and also Vix presented another one of her silly requests.

Well, it looked rather useless from Xeno's prospective, however his old self would probably think differently.

In fact during the three weeks they passed in the wild, Vix and Zaha reached their adult stage. Although Zaha just increased in height and reached about two meters of height, Vix went through more of a consistent change.

Her body got slim and firm, her skin became of a darker crimson red and her height now hits about 2,2 meters. More importantly her body pended more to the direction of her celidre half, she regained her delicate hands and feet, that lost their claws and became more nimble. At the same time she got back her feminine features, which she 'didn't accept to cover with just random rags and furs anymore'.

Thus Xeno accepted her to go and buy some dresses, however he wasn't as naive to let her such big budget. Most of the coins the team had earned were obviously given to Dock, as the building of the spaceship was more important.

During the following month the team had started their new category of quests, bounty hunting. As the system managed criminality in a rather ruthless way. Often the few desperate enough to violate its rules were little preys that formed gangs, to resist against their persecutors.

To be targeted as criminal by the system you had to actually deliberately go against its interests. For example if a ranker were to actually kill a plebeian or someone of a rank below him, the system wouldn't put a bounty on his head.

It would probably let it slide, as the total worth of the ranker is higher that that of its victim.

But if this ranker had gone mad somehow and started a killing spree, if the total worth of the ones he killed surpassed his own, then the system would act. As this ranker would have made it lose some coins.

This was a totally impartial law, but at the same time it limited the powerful ones to a certain extent too.

The great ambush skill and bursts of power of the trio, as Dock didn't participate, made an actual great deal of work.

The team's position had in fact skyrocketed, surpassing over the thousandth position.

At the same time Xeno had upgraded his occupation to the second rank, becoming now a [Ominous Stalker]. With it he gained another perk, it basically increased the chances to momentarily stun an enemy after successfully ambushing him. This mostly worked against weaker beings, however for a simple rank two it wasn't as bad.

Obviously he now obtained a major discount from the items he bought from the shop, and he could buy more items that were previously restricted to him.

Now after this month he didn't stayed still, about the investigations regarding his 'death'. As inside his apartment, from a little metallic cage muffled and panicked screams were continuously resonating.

With his eyes and mouth covered with stinky rags, bleeding from various cuts and beat all over, a rather familiar figure, hasn't been as scared in his entire life.

Earlier he had heard what brutal and macabre experiences other prisoners and gone through.

[Well, dear Mr smuggler. We encounter again]