When Rex was carefully analyzing every beast's body, Zakiya spoke.
"Not all of them are from this forest, there is one or two from the upper realm too but I have already taken out their cores and their cultivation base had also been degraded so they are mostly the same as others but their meat is more beneficial compared to others they have fewer impurities and can directly strengthen your body in multiple fields to some extent, that is if you managed to find them," Zakiya said with a smile.
She didn't know why Rex wanted the bodies of strong beasts so much… although they are indeed useful to make blood talisman, refining pills, or crafting purposes, but Rex didn't ask for a beast, in particular, he wanted to choose from all the ones she had, so she guessed he wanted their meet to enhance his physical abilities.
Different kinds of beast meat can have a different effect, like the meat of a strong defense type beast can make a person's muscles tougher slightly increasing their defense. The effect of the meat can be further enhanced if it gets processed by an expert chief but they are very rare in the middle realm and are not that talented.
After keeping an eye on him for a long time she had noticed that Rex was advancing very fast while also maintaining a perfectly stable cultivation base Zakiya could tell that much just by his purity of Qi and checking the state of his Sea Of Consciousness, Rex, of course, was not aware that she already knew so much about him. Laster when she noticed that Rex hasn't advanced after reaching Core Forming Stage for quite a while she thought that he had finally encountered his bottleneck.
And strengthening his body by eating beast meat or monster meat, was part of his preparation for facing the bottleneck head-on.
Rex didn't reply and kept searching, after spending one hour he finally chose the first beast. The body of this beast was complete and it even had its core inside, it's the body just felt a little cold so Rex guessed this one was either frozen to death or face something like a soul attack while he was frozen that didn't damage its physical body even after its death.
Zakiya raised her eyebrow.
"A Red Scaled Millipede? it looks creepy, its meat is hard to eat and has no taste whatsoever, but if you can eat and digest it then it will increase the elasticity of your muscles and will also make your outer skin tougher to provide some defense… not bad," Zakiya said.
Red Scaled Millipede was a gigantic spirit beast, it was something Zakiya found in Misty Maze Forest a long time ago but because she didn't like its taste or look, she kept it for emergency only… for the times like when she doesn't have any more cores to absorb and slow down her cultivation base degradation.
The beast was similar to a normal millipede or centipede in terms of body appearance but his size was bigger then an airplane, as the name symbolized it had more than a thousand tentacles like legs, its whole body was covered into bright red scales. The scales alone were so hard that a normal weapon could not even leave a scratch on it, one would need to use a spirit weapon with good technique to pierce through its defense.
The reason Rex chose the Red Scaled Millipede was not because of its scales but its ability to control all its limbs to divide its consciousness and freely control all its limbs, the beast had this ability because of its brains or the part that act likes its brains to be precise, the Red Scaled Millipede has more than 4000 muscles when in comparison a normal human only have around 629, of course, its 629 after counting all named muscles in the whole body.
Most of the tissue that we would call a brain are not present in its head or at a single part in Red Scaled Millipede's body but divided into nine different parts.
The nervous system of a Red Scaled Millipede is a collection of nervous tissue inside the body, and the nine segments that serve as brains or we can say nine nodes that are present in its body are interconnected with the help of its nervous system, those nine nodes divide the work among them and can control its whole body efficiently when it moves or fights… resulting in the beast being able to use the full potential of all its whole body.
Rex was already capable of multitasking because of his evolved brain, that's why he thought if he could gain the trait that allows the beast to divide its consciousness and achieve a similar effect to his multitasking, then his battle power and work efficiency will soar, he can not only do pre-defined multiple tasks but can also think about other things at the same time.
After he chose the Red Scaled Millipede, Rex kept searching for the other beast.
'How long is he going to take?' Zakiya thought then she snapped her fingers and several black ice crystal grew out from the ground and transformed into a big throne.
Zakiya lightly stretched her arms then sat on it, she lazily supported her chin with the back of her right hand and kept looking at Rex with interest.
'He is really taking his time… but still its the first time I have seen him so serious, come to think of it when I caught him for the first time he looked like the type who would joke and laugh even while facing death.
Let's see... he is talented when it comes to cultivation, an innate trouble seeker but smart enough to save his own life, a little twisted but.. every powerhouse has one or two screws loose in their head, when it comes to comprehension talent… it's better not to mention it, the only fatal weakness I can see in him is….. womanizer?
This single main weakness can result in several sub-weakness, one of those is his calm temperament gets affected when facing a woman he likes, it can also become a fatal weakness in life and death battle, after he becomes my disciple I need to think of something to cover up that weakness,' Zakiya thought.
After looking through all the beast Rex finally chose the second beast.
"Hundred Forms Flesh Eater? you sure about this one?" Zakiya asked after she saw the beast he chose.
"Yeah it has to be this one," Rex looked at the disgusting looking big distorted meat sphere lying in front of him.
The beast didn't have a particular shape, it was a beast that came somewhere between plant type beasts species and flesh body type beast species. This beast had almost none intelligence it only knows how to hunt a beast near it with brute force then eat it… this beast has so low intelligence that if there is no beast around it and it is hungry or lacks the energy to live on then it will keep lying in its place until death.
The current appearance of the beast was like several buckets filled with rotten flesh are emptied at the same place on the ground then someone used their bottom level crafting skills to transform it into a distorted sphere. The flesh sphere had short tentacle-like hair all around its body.
The beast doesn't have a mouth to eat instead it first releases a digesting acid on the dead targets to soften or melt their flesh then it uses its short tentacle-like hair to absorb nutrients from the target's flesh or core just like how the plant uses their roots to absorb nutrients from the soil.
Rex chose this beast because of its ability to alter flesh, this beast is born with special kind of muscles and tissues that forms a special connection with the flesh all over its body and allows it to do some amazing things, it can change the shape of flesh around its body… transforming its flesh into a human-like hand, spikes or sword is a piece of cake for it, furthermore, it can harden its soft squishy flesh to an extent that even top-grade weapons would appear pale in comparison.
Rex wanted this trait of the beast, it can give him a lot of benefits in close-quarter combat, he also wished that this trait can fuse with Remould to make something new and better.
'It's good that this Hundred Forms Flesh Eater is a low intelligence creature, if it was intelligent then even beast-like Red Scaled Millipede will have trouble dealing with it,' Rex thought.
"So now that you have chosen the two beasts we are done, call me when you are ready for the duel," Zakiya said then stood up from the throne, the whole black ice thrown crumbled transforming into black powdered ice that flew away with the wind, she then collected all the remaining beast bodies.
She was slightly disappointed and curious as to why Rex chose this one, even when she hinted that there are bodies of the beast from the upper realm mixed in the heap, although they weren't complete and only had few body parts left they were still useful for someone at his stage.
How would she know that traits are very important for Rex, they are something that brings irreversible change to his body just like evolution that's why he has to carefully think before choosing the right targets for obtaining useful traits.
"Wait, there is one more thing I need, can you give me a little of your…. blood?" Rex asked with a sincere look.
Rex didn't ask for blood essence but for just blood, no one in the right mind would give their blood essence to someone just because they asked for it.
Zakiya stared at him, earlier when she was poisoned he also asked for some of her poisoned blood for poison research purpose, and now that she is cured he still needs her blood… why?
A surprised look suddenly flashed on her face.
"You are too greedy, to think you are thinking of refining my blood to strengthen your body. Although it's not blood essence but now that the poison is removed and I started to regain my cultivation base, my blood is not something someone at your level can absorb…. and it can also leave behind impurities in your blood if you are not able to successfully refine it," Zakiya narrowed her eyes at him.
"I don't want to absorb it for body strengthening purpose," Rex said.
"Then?" Zakiya asked.
"I have some reasons for absorbing it, I can't tell you all but one of them is for research I also want to check if there is still poison in your blood and to confirm if you have permanently become immune to such type of poison," Rex said with a serious expression n his face.
'I didn't lie, I will do that research but…. it needs only a small part of a single drop of her blood to do that,' Rex said.
Zakiya stared at him for a while then sighed.
He already said that he can't tell all the things so it was meaningless to ask, and she wanted to rope him in as her disciple so she was doing him as much favor as she can after all any normal person with some awareness and integrity will understand this fact and will subconsciously give in to repay her… but the more time she spent with Rex the more she doubted if his shamelessness even allows him to think about it.
"Okay, I will only give you 5 drops as before," She said.
Rex immediately nodded his head up and down like he was trying to test the limits of Extreme-Flexibility and see if he can break his neck like that.
Zakiya placed her right hand's finger in front of her lips while still hiding her face with the black fan then she bit the edge of her tongue.
'Why does she always hides half of her face? don't tell me she just acts tough but is actually a…. shy type?' Rex raised his eyebrow.
She extended her hand in front of her chest, Rex could see five small droplets of red blood hovering above her palm. Just the blood drops alone were emitting a faint red light around them, he even noticed that those drops were emitting immense pressure on their surrounding like they were alive creatures claiming their territory.
"No matter for what purpose you want it, it won't be easy for you to subdue them so I will suppress it to make it easy for you," Zakiya said then she slightly moved her fingers, Rex suddenly noticed that her blood-red eyes shined for a brief second then the five blood drops that were acting like tigers claiming their territory were now floating in their place behaving like obedient little cats.
Zakiya pointed her finger towards him and the five blood drops flew towards Rex, he first stored them in a small bottle which had sealing inscriptions on it then stored it in his Inventory.