+ Attack hit poison slime. CRITICAL HIT. Damage 69.
+ You've dealt a fatal blow to the poison slime.
+ You've killed the poison slime.
+ You've gained 2400 exp.
+ You've gained a level.
- poison continues to lower your life. Health -40
- poison continues to lower your life. Health -40
- poison continues to lower your life. Health -40
The situation was very bad. Even when the battle had already ended Smoke was still losing HP because he was poisoned. He only has 1430 HP left and he doesn't have a clear path towards the exit.
While trying to fight his way through the poison slimes he was eating the smoked rabbit meat that he had as an emergency ration. He continued eating as many of them as he could to try to raise his HP while walking towards the exit.
He somehow managed to get of the forest but he only had 500 HP left and the poison was still continuing to decrease his HP there were no signs of the poison from fading.
Smoke didn't have any form of antidote on him. If he doesn't think of something fast he was sure to die even before he would get to Nanahuatl Village.
He quickly remembered the gift that Darius gave him before setting out. It was a portable pot where he could make small meals good for 1-3 persons.
He immediately started making a fire and prepared the ingredients required for the medicinal soup that gave the residents of Nanahuatl Village some HP Regen effect.
He quickly gulped down the stew as soon as he completed the 'Medicinal Rabbit Stew' the effects had worked immediately. Instead of losing 40 HP it had become 5 HP. His 'Cooking' ability was still Intermediate Level 3 it looks like he needs to improve this ability quickly.
The HP Regen from the medicinal stew wasn't strong enough to cancel out the poison. None the less it made the needed impact that Smoke was looking for.
He continued to eat some of the smoked rabbit meat to regain his HP. The poison lasted for about 3 hours. While the effect of the medicinal stew only lasted for 20 minutes.
During the time that the medicinal stew still had its HP Regen effect. Smoke was out hunting the horned rabbits. He felt sick to the bone just hunting for the rabbits once more.
However he needed their meat in order to make more medicinal stew. While hunting for the horned rabbits meat. He noticed the carrots among the fields while he was picking up medicinal herbs and decided to pick some of those carrots up as well.
In his next preparation for medicinal stew he decided to add in those carrots. It resulted in 'Medicinal Rabbit Stew+' the effects of HP Regen was indeed higher than before. If his calculations were correct it would mean that he would only lose 3HP per poison attack now.
Smoke gathered some more of the needed ingredients for the medicinal soup before venturing back into 'Mandragora Forest' this time he was prepared for the poison attack.
Keeping track of the time when the effects of the medicinal stew would wear out was the top most priority. He made every effort not to be placed in a situation where in he would be surrounded by poison slimes like before.
Even though he was not surrounded the slimes do sometimes manage to make a successful attack causing him to be poisoned.
He decided on staying within the first layer of the forest before proceeding further in. He wanted to make sure that his HP Regen would be high enough to face any kind of monsters in the inner layers.
This was the hunting pattern that Smoke decided to use. He would fight with the poison slimes for about 20 minutes find a safe corner to make his medicinal soup and continue fighting the poison slimes after wards. Repeating this process for 10 hours until his ingredients would start to run out and then head for the exit of the forest. Hunt and gather for the ingredients for 2 hours before heading back into the forest once again.
Smoke did this for 3 days. He did notice that the breaks for needing to make the stew was longer now. Instead of 20 minutes it was now 30 minutes. This also meant that he no longer needed to hunt more ingredients.
On the fourth day he finally reached his goal of receiving +1 HP Regen even when he is poisoned. As his cooking ability increased so did the bonus to the vitality stat. It was really small at +1 vitality per level increase but that is still 1 point more than nothing.
Smoke finally felt confident to go further inside the forest. Further inside he noticed that there were almost no slimes. He managed not to get poisoned as he had already made a detailed map of safe places to pass through inside the first layer of Mandragora Forest.
On the second layer there were only the colorful gigantic flowers. He looked around everywhere and tried to sense with 'Cunning of the Dire Fox' for enemies but he couldn't feel any. His gut instinct was telling him otherwise. It told him that there was something here.
He tried to continue towards the third layer towards the center. When suddenly he felt a sharp pain coming from his back. It was a deep slashed wound.
- Attacked by orchid mantis. BACK STABBED. You've taken damage. Health -525
What was that. He turned around but couldn't see anything all he could see were the flowers.
- Attacked by orchid mantis. BACK STABBED. You've taken damage. Health -532
Smoke instinctively went to a big tree and had his back covered by the tree. The flowers were slowly moving back and forth as if dancing.
He still wasn't picking up any enemies with the 'Cunning form the Dire Fox' but he could somehow see a figure starting to form from the dancing flowers.
There it was a Giant Orchid Mantis. It stood at about 5 feet tall with long scythes for front legs. From what he could tell with his eyes there were at least 30 of them.
He came to the conclusion that the orchid mantis was somehow suppressing its blood lust causing them not to be registered as enemies.
It almost seemed like a master stealth ability. If those orchid mantis didn't move back and forth so much he would never be able to distinguish them.
Smoke was saved by his medicinal stew once more. With the decent HP Regen he managed to recover most of his lost HP.
He was doing mental battle simulations on how to face the orchid mantis. He was sure that if he could get one he could make a better plan on how to deal with the rest.
He started running towards one of the orchid mantis and got a successful hit in.
+ Attack hit orchid mantis. Damage 238.
+ Attack hit orchid mantis. CRITICAL HIT. Damage 595.
+ Attack miss orchid mantis. Damage 0.
+ Attack miss orchid mantis. Damage 0.
+ Attack hit orchid mantis. CRITICAL HIT. Damage 580.
+ Attack miss orchid mantis. Damage 0.
+ Attack miss orchid mantis. Damage 0.
+ Attack miss orchid mantis. Damage 0.
- Attacked by orchid mantis. You've taken damage. Health -340
- Attacked by orchid mantis. You've taken damage. Health -332
- Attacked by orchid mantis. Miss damage. 0
It revealed a terrifying fact. The life bar of the orchid mantis indicated it to be 8,000 HP and he only managed to make around 580 damage points even with 'armor break of the armadillo' and the scarriest part was that it had a high dodge rate.
If Smoke would continue fighting this monster he would surely die. He quickly headed towards the first layer of the forest and immediately went out to the leave the forest entirely.
In the safety of the plains outside of the forest Smoke was reorganizing his battle plan. If the orchid mantis would swarm him he would surely die in just 6 hits.
He needed to boost his attack damage, his chance to hit, his life and his defense basically he needed to boost everything. In order to do that he needed to level up a lot. He decided it was time to grind in some levels.
Now that he has set an objective on how to deal with the orchid mantis he continued on hunting the poison slimes. He didn't mind being swarmed by them anymore. In fact he welcomed it. Saves him the trouble of looking for them.
He just needed to make sure that he could get enough space to move out of the way in order to prepare his medicinal stew.
After spending another 4 days of hunting the poison slime Smoke's level was now 32 he placed all of his stat points on Dexterity since he wanted to have guaranteed hits rather than high damage hits that would occur only once or twice. He estimated that he needed to be at least be level 40 to have sufficient life and damage to take on the orchid mantis.
It has been almost 8 days since he started on this quest for gathering of root crops. He originally thought that this would be a simple gathering quest. He was gravely mistaken.
Smoke always checks the durability of his knives and this time it's durability was about to run out. He didn't want to have to fight using bare fists again. He knew he had to return to Nanahuatl to have them fixed. As he was about to head for the exit...
+ Gained Poison Resistance
You have accumulated a total of 168 hours in poisoned state.
Due to being poisoned for so long you've naturally gained some resistance to it.
Continued exposure to poison will increase in resistance.
Poison Resistance: 10%
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He was shocked to see the system notification. So you can also gain resistance by this method. This wasn't mentioned in the forums. He was glad about this new found discovery.
He didn't really need the poison resistance because he had increased his cooking ability. Now his medicinal stew could easily over power the poison. He didn't need it but decided to increase his poison resistance once he would get back here.
Once Smoke got back in Nanahuatl Village he immediately went to see Darius to have his knives repaired. He told him about the gained poison resistance and the problem that he was currently facing against the orchid mantis.
"Orchid Mantis eyy... hmm if I recall correctly they can completely hide their killing intent, so your ability 'Cunning of the Dire Fox' wouldn't really work on them."
"Yup I figured that out myself. I could somehow see them with my eyes though but if I try to get close to them then another 4 or more orchid mantis would jump at me right away. If only there was a way for me to attack from a far."
"Ranged attack huh? That's not a bad idea but you would need a high amount of Dexterity in order to do some decent damage."
"Just how much Dexterity are we talking about? I just so happen to have 235 Dex."
"That's pretty good for your level. I think you can manage to use this somehow."
Darius took out a black beginner's bow with a damage (1-4) and a quiver of arrows. He mentioned for Smoke to grab the items and follow him outside.
Outside there was a newly made archery target practice facility. There were eight targets made out of straw with a distance of about 30 meters.
Eight teenagers stood closely together and proceeded to hit the first target simultaneously. All of them manage to hit the target and almost all of the arrows were dead center. They then continued on with the rest of the targets.
All eight of the targets were turned into pin cushions of arrows. The group moved with such precision and unity. These were the teenagers who had taken his place in hunting for the horned rabbits meat.
After seeing such exhibition Smoke understood how they had hunted the horned rabbits. If all of them attacked at the same time then the horned rabbit was sure to die by just one group attack. It was simple and effective.
"Smoke let me introduce to you the newly formed hunting party of Nanahuatl. I plan to send them out to Coatl City to have them get a job change of an Archer then after wards have them apply to be Hunters."
"You guys are amazing. How long did it take you to make such a coordinated attack pattern?"
"It only took them about a week. From your left you have Laernea, Sharanga, Ichaival, Vijaya, Thyrsus, Sharur, Gandiva, and Jinggu."
The young hunting party slightly bowed down their heads to show their respect for Smoke. All of them were inspired by his generosity and kindness. That's the reason why they took up the bow in order to help provide food for the village.
"Darius, I'm suppose to imitate what I just saw right?"
"More or less. Do not be too discourage if you can't perform as well as them though. This is your first time using a bow after all."
Smoke held the bow and placed the arrow, carefully aiming for the bull's eye. Everything felt natural. He rapidly release eight arrows almost simultaneously. His hand movement from taking an arrow out of the quiver that hanged on his back was so fluid that it almost looked like he was using an ability of the advance job 'Sniper'.
Everyone had their mouths wide open. They couldn't believe that Smoke just hit the bull's eye on all of the targets for all 8 arrows. All the audience could do was clap at such a display of skill.
