Two figures were sitting with their back leaned against the dark gray wall. At their feet was sand.
Spring-Autumn ripped off an arm from the decapitated lizardman and ate it raw. Loti watched this scene awkwardly. He was still nervous from having a sword pointed at his throat.
"We're not going to cook this?" Loti asked. He was very hesitant to eat the lizardman.
"You're a man. Don't be a pussy. Just eat it raw, we can't go through the hassle of cooking here," Spring-Autumn said with his mouth full of lizard meat.
The stronger the monster, the more nutritious their meat would be. There seemed to be a correlation between nutrition and tastiness. The raw lizard meat was very tasty and fresh. Spring-Autumn could see his stats going up very easily.
"So a bunch of people split up from the main party because you guys couldn't find anything?" Spring-Autumn asked again.
"Yes…"
"You guys dumb or something?" Spring-Autumn asked an honest question, still munching on the meat. Blood dripped down his chin giving him a very barbaric appearance that contrasted his very much refined appearance.
Loti could only put his head down in shame.
"If you're not going to eat, I'll just eat the rest myself. People really don't know how to accept kindness," He tossed away the arm bone of the lizardman he ate and proceeded to rip off another arm from its corpse.
Loti watched this sight in terror and became even more afraid of the man in front of him. He felt that the man was even more scary than Winter.
Spring-Autumn transformed his cloak into a fruit knife and removed the scales from the arm before proceeding to eat it.
"So you got any idea where they are?" Spring-Autumn asked.
He finished eating most of the lizardman. The parts that were left intact were the head, the crotch, the tail, and the feet.
The reason for not eating them was obvious. He was not in the hobby of eating a lizard's ass.
"I can lead you to where we separated," Loti answered. In this short time where he watched Spring-Autumn slowly eat the lizardman raw, he had come to term with the situation he was in.
He was alive. That was all that mattered. At the same time, he was also grateful for the unknown man in front of him.
Loti began to lead the way while Spring-Autumn checked his new stats.
[--]
Title: The First Awakened
*Strength: 45
Perception: 39
Constitution: 48
Vitality: 50
*Attribute: Time
[--]
He had made huge gains from eating the lizardman. The lizardman was a few levels stronger than the minotaur. His leading attribute, [Vitality] had broken the 50 barrier.
His body felt full of life and energy. Each point into a stat acted similarly to a multiplier. If he averaged out his stats, he would be about 45 times stronger than a regular person.
Before the world changed, the world's strongest man was about 10 times stronger than the average person.
Spring-Autumn was truly beyond the limits of what was expected from humans now. All of this was possible because of the change in the world.
Loti led the way without much words exchanged. It would be unwise to make any unnecessary noise when there were invisible lizardmen around. And more importantly, Spring-Autumn was not interested in Loti.
Spring-Autumn gathered mana at the tips of his finger and directed it to Loti.
[Stealth]
He applied Stealth to Loti as well. They navigated by jumping from wall to wall, tower to tower. Sometimes, the bricks that made up the wall or tower would be so brittle that it would turn into dust the instant they landed on it.
It was a way of traveling that required fine control over one's body.
"It was right here," Loti said.
They appeared at what seemed to be a cleared out area. There were less walls and towers in this area and the ground was flat. There was less sand as well. It was an area similar to a parameter.
The towers and walls only returned a few distances over as if to protect this area.
"Footsteps," Spring-Autumn made an observation.
Due to the sand on the ground, it was easy to make note of footsteps. This included the footprint of lizardmen.
"They encountered lizardmen too,"
There were several footprints that belonged to lizardmen.
"They went this way. Let's go,"
Loti was no longer leading the way. Spring-Autumn followed the footprints.
They appeared before a wall. This wall was different from others they had seen where it collapsed and was on the verge of turning into sand.
This one had an entrance that led to a tunnel.
"This tunnel was manually dugout," Spring-Autumn made an observation when he stepped inside, "You be quiet,"
Loti had the expression of someone who was wronged. He didn't even say anything yet…
They reached the end of the tunnel.
There was a huge cave that was dug out extremely deep. In the middle of the dugout cave was a huge firepit that would take at least 20 men to surround.
Surrounding the fire were shabbily made shacks. These shacks surrounded the fire and made a ring. Around the shack was an elevated area that consisted of more shacks in the formation of a ring. These elevated areas acted as stairs that went up all the way to the tunnel where Spring-Autumn and Loti exited from.
They could see green-scaled lizardmen and lizard women exiting in and out of the shack.
As it was a dugout cave, the area was dark. The only source of light was the firepit in the middle that had a fire so powerful it almost reached the top of the ceiling.
They had arrived at the den of lizardmen.