Quick Break

The sound of combat had, naturally, caused a commotion.

As such, not long after Mike left the scene, another patrol of Gorillas arrived, and their expressions turned dark when they witnessed the scene of carnage.

The metallic tang smell of blood filled the air, the ground was torn up, but it was the corpses that caught the most attention.

Similar to the now-dead group, this group also had a leader who seemed a step above the rest in terms of power. However, this Greenback Gorilla carried a strange-looking staff.

It shouted some commands, and its subordinates went forward to investigate the scene while two of them retreated, seemingly to go and relay what happened to other teams.

Mike observed all of this with Unseen Hunter active. He could have easily swooped in and taken them out to prevent this from becoming known among the others, however, if he wanted that, he wouldn't have left the corpses.

Not that he'd be able to undo the damage to the environment.

No, he WANTED them to be aware of his existence.

Why? Well, there were a few reasons, by there were three main ones.

The first was, obviously, his desire for a challenge. It was so easy to just go in and take them all out before they knew what was happening, and with his current abilities, he could easily do it before other groups even knew there was something wrong.

That was boring.

If he let them be on guard, though, they would start to anticipate his arrival and make countermeasures, making sneak attacks and general encounters more difficult, which is what he wanted.

Hunting was fun, but it quickly became boring when you could blitz your opponent before they knew what was happening.

Besides, the tougher it was, the faster he would gain 'feats', as he liked to call them, to allow him to level up. Eating creatures to gain stats was nice and good, but if he stagnated too much, that would stop being viable, so he needed to actively level up to allow him to hunt stronger opponents.

The second and third reasons were a lot more tactical.

For starters, there was the issue of actually finding the patrols.

Mike's senses were great, but he would still take too much time sniffing out and tracking each patrol. By letting them become aware of his presence, they would start to group up more since they now knew that normal patrols were no match for him.

With them grouping up more, he wouldn't be so hard-pressed to find them, and he'd accomplish his goal of taking out all the weaker Gorillas before he made his way to their leader.

Lastly, as explained earlier, Mike wanted to hone his ability to fight against large groups, especially in sustained combat as, again, it's unlikely that one would be able to quickly take out numerous people at the same level who had good cohesion.

Mike had taken all of this into account, and now, he was putting his plan into action.

There was still a bit of time before everything started going properly, though, so Mike took a moment to think a bit.

He looked at his furred arms. Specifically, he paid attention to how the fur looked rougher and thicker than usual, as well as how it grew further along his arms than usual.

'Thinking about it, my partial transformation is probably just the first step or beginning of a full transformation, just... controlled. Since my ferocity is rising against my will, the transformation is just creeping along on its own.' He sighed.

With that said, it raised a question. Was it then safe to use his partial transformation?

Well, the system said that his parrial transformation doesn't affect his ferocity, it never said the inverse couldn't be the case... That said, Mike didn't think it made any difference.

He felt exactly the same before and after using the transformation. What's more, his instincts told him that it was fine, so he didn't worry too much about it. The only thing was that it felt a bit... unnerving. It was like watching a real-time reminder of the changes he was going through.

It was one thing to see his ferocity rise as a result of the upcoming full moon, but watching his body change in real-time made it all the more nerve-wracking.

'... Not a whole lot I can do about it, though.' He sighed and shook his head.

'Then again, I wonder how that works.' He rubbedhus chin. The system said he hadnt experienced a full moon earlier because Proxima Centauri D didn't have a moon. Did that mean all full moons did the same thing on different planets? What happened if he was on all moon itself? After all, Klein 4 was a moon.

'Huh, wait a second, if Lupines are intrinsically connected to the moon, and Klein 4 was a moon, and I got that ability orb from Klein 4...' His brows furrowed a little bit.

'System.'

[No.]

'Tch, figures.' Mike clicked his tongue at the immediate refusal. That's kinda how things were. The system had no problem revealing things like Lupine behavior or system-related matters, but the moment he asked for thought about asking it about its origins, it would just shut him down flatly. It was an annoying reality, but he couldn't do anything about it. Not currently, anyway.

With a sigh, his mind continued to run.

'Right, I also need to develop those.' Hhe thought to himself.

He was referring to two things, a movement skill and something more... obscure.

The second thing wasn't going to come easily, so he wasn't paying too much attention to it. But he did pay attention to his desire for a movement skill.

While all his stats were quite high, agility was one of his lower stats. He was still absurdly fast, but that was a fact.

Moreover, with his goal of fighting creatures stronger than himself slowly came true, it was inevitable that he'd fight creatures faster than him.

Heck, a lot of his recent tough fights relied on him to use his instincts and perception at high levels to predict his opponent's movements, as dodging after they attacked wouldn't be viable due to his inferior speed.

As such, he wanted to create a skill that would, at the very least, alleviate that somewhat.

Predicting and dodhing was good, but sometimes, that wasn't possible, and other times, tanking hits directly wasn't the best choice, even if Mike had a regeneration skill, there wasn't much he could do if his heart or brain was destroyed. As such, having a decent skill for movement or dodging would do him good.

Another thing he wanted to do was upgrade Haven Ring. So far, it had served him well as a defensive skill, however, it was rapidly turning into more of a skill to create platforms rather than actually blocking attacks.

Again, it couldn't be helped. Most defensive skills were only effective when you were fighting against creatures at the same level as you. Considering that Mike was someone who saw something as horrific as the Titanic Corpse Flower as prey... yeah, you can imagine the effectiveness of the skill in those situations.

Mike was truly versatile, and be was leaning into that fact heavily. As such, his method of improvement extended to different areas. One might say that such a lack of true specialization would only hurt him in the future, but Mike didn't think that was the case. Not for him, at least.

Not that he didn't want to specialize in specific areas, either. His desire was to also increase his perception a lot more, as the effectiveness of the stat when it came to helping him read his target's and respond accordingly was simply too good.

In fact, more than that, his perception also gave him a great read on his body. It allowed him to read the flow of his own energy better, which was why he was able to do stuff like understand how to send his aura into his target to deal internal damage, control their flow through his energy pathways, and so on.

Perception didn't grant him a direct boost in strength. Instead, it made him far better at controlling his strength, reading his target, and so on.

As he was thinking about this, he suddenly noticed something and smiled slightly.

'There we go.'

Some time after those two Gorillas went to report the situation, a few more groups arrived and merged with the original one, making it bigger.

It wasn't exactly what Mike wanted, but it was a start.

Without a sound, he slowly extricated himself from the area and started to move to another location.

Things were about to become a lot more hectic, that's for sure.

'Hm, I'm not sure how long this will take, though, so I might have to send a message to Kris and Theresa telling them that I might not be coming back this evening.' Mike realized. It was already past afternoon, and the sun was slowly dipping towards the horizon.

'Yeah, I'll do that.' He hummed to himself quietly.

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