Kaizen glanced back from the corner of his eye and saw that Alice had already slipped behind another tree.
From the looks of it, she perfectly knows how to stay out of the battle.
While a few monsters closed in, his expression turned to that of curiosity.
Or is she so good at staying out of fights and looking from afar because she comes from a family of information gatherers? Hmmm, makes sense.
His thoughts drifted as usual, but his sword did not pause. He swung it cleanly at the snake that darted toward him.
He had noticed earlier that all four monsters were unranked. That was the only reason he dared face them without cultivation skills.
If they had been rank one, even he would not have had the confidence to take on five of them while relying on nothing but basic Qi control.
Sure, he could coat his sword with Qi to increase its sharpness and pump Qi into his arms to enhance their strength, but it was all rudimentary compared to the explosive advantage cultivation skills provided.
Great, all four are green scaled anacondas.
Uniform monsters meant uniform behaviors. Their movements, their attacks, their habits, all followed the same pattern. That made them predictable.
Predictable monsters were good monsters.
Ducking slightly, he slipped under another lunging snake before swinging his sword upward from the ground, cutting straight through the body of the one attacking him from the front.
One of the snakes had managed to coil around his right leg and was quickly constricting.
Feeling the pressure tighten in a way that was definitely not friendly, he stabbed his sword through its skull and immediately popped a healing pill.
He glanced down at the limp body and muttered to it with faint annoyance.
"Why was your hug not friendly?"
With only two snakes remaining, he kept them at bay and glanced at his leg for a second.
It seems I was correct. That snake bit me, but quickly began constricting so that the pain from the latter would conceal the pain from the former.
Too bad that his senses while in battle weren't that of an average rank one.
The healing pill quickly began working.
Antitoxin pills were the usual choice for poison, but this was just an unranked monster. A common grade healing pill was more than enough to neutralize whatever weak toxin it carried.
Since the healing pill was a product of alchemy class, it came under the same classification as other creation classes.
Kaizen registered the actions of the snakes, then swung his Qi coated sword at one snake, while allowing the other to bite him on the back.
Of course, it never reached his skin. Beneath his clothes, he had armor, and the snake's fangs slid off uselessly.
He turned immediately, finishing the first snake before chopping off the head of the second.
As soon as he was done, he heard a sharp whistle and clapping as Alice came out from behind the tree and gazed at the corpses.
"Should I start deploying the concealment formation?"
Panting slightly, Kaizen nodded at her, while he took in the system notifications.
[Killed a green scaled anaconda * 4]
[Experience gained 22000.]
[Spare experience: 27000.]
Before Alice finished setting up the concealment formation, Kaizen killed one more unranked monster. It was far too weak, only giving him 3000 experience, raising his spare experience to a clean 30000.
"There's still time before they arrive, right?"
Kaizen asked Alice, who nodded.
He did not ask how she knew the movement pattern of the group of voyeurs. Instead, he sat down inside the formation and began circulating his cultivation technique to recover his Qi.
While doing so, he also thought about entering 'that' space.
And indeed, as soon as that thought arose, he found himself in space, gazing at a massive tree on a planet.
He checked the prices of the draconic evolution.
Last time when he had tried to pick the fruit, he was only notified about not having enough experience, but wasn't actually shown their prices.
[Tier 1: Draconic Awakening - Slit pupils (enhanced vision) - 15000 experience.]
[Tier 1: Draconic Awakening - Scale armor I(limbs) - 18000 experience.]
…..mmmm
Kaizen hummed deliberately in his mind before speaking to the system in a teasing tone.
You can't actually tax me on this, can you? Else no way the prices are so low. I can't even imagine how many monsters I would have had to kill if you slapped the 100x tax on it.
[...]
Heh. So I was correct.
Kaizen had long realized that his 'system' and the one speaking to him through the interface seemed like two entirely different beings.
The system itself had no consciousness and simply followed rules. The voice, however, clearly had sentience and could adjust a few rules on a whim.
I'll call the former system, and the chatty one system2.
[Hey hey! What's with that bias? I am the original one. Don't relegate me to second position.]
Nope. hehe.
Even though he was bantering with the system2, his thoughts didn't stop.
So the shop falls under the jurisdiction of system2, and the draconic evolution falls under the control of the system. Hmmmm.
During his talks with the system, he had also noticed that it couldn't completely read his mind.
It could only hear what Kaizen wanted it to hear. Therefore, he had never been worried about the privacy of his thoughts.
Will there be any big movement if I choose to get a draconic evolution?
Obviously, he didn't want to evolve openly in front of Alice.
[I don't know.]
…
Are you sulking because I named you system2?
[I am beyond such worldly matters.]
Okay system2.
[Okay smartass, shut up now.]
I may not be an ass, but I sure am smart, you dumbass.
[I may not be an ass, but I —]
Go on please, o' honored one, or should I say, the dumb one?
There was no response from the system2, which elicited a huge grin from Kaizen.
After a moment of thought, he exited the space and glanced at Alice who was tinkering with some object.
He still was not sure whether choosing a draconic evolution would cause any visible reaction, and he definitely did not want to risk doing it in front of her.
It took him around an hour to recover his Qi. Near the end of it, Alice informed him that the voyeuristic group had finally entered the Lyren forest.
As he stood aside to let Alice dismantle the formation, he thought.
I should still be able to hunt some monsters down before heading towards their location.