In the blink of an eye, five days have gone by. After that emotional and also exciting first day, Lucien with the aide of the blonde woman, Sera resumed his daily adventures into the surrounding forest.
He spent most of his daytime learning the various forms of hunting, furthering his skill with the bow at first, before moving forward to modern firearms. He learned how to shoot, and felt the excitement as he fired the gun and felt the varying levels of the push of the different weapons.
While the shotguns, rifles had a pretty strong back push, it quickly turned negligible after a couple of days. On the other side, he wasn't too fond of using the more… traditional style weapons, the bows and crossbows were just not his style.
He also got used to his new skills. What was confusing and weird about [Sense Prey] at first, turned convenient after a while. He also got quite proficient using his Far Sight to hone in on the target and fire once he felt he got a good aim.
They also moved on from focusing on the small critters to proper wildlife, hunting for the real game, deers. These herbivore mammals, had light green, grass-like fur, with two small oak-brown protrusions at the top of their foreheads.
Today was a very special day, today they would finally move to hand-to-hand combat, leaving the realm of ranged weapons behind!
Lucien literally jumped out of his bed as soon as the first rays of the sun peeked through his window. He quickly rushed to the bathroom, washed up, before spending a bit of time in front of the mirror, admiring the visual changes of his own body.
After five days of continuous absorptions, he had a visible change over his frame. His previously lean, weak build turned bulkier, gaining a considerable amount of muscle mass. His arms, both the left and the right was bulging with power. He had a clearly defined visually pleasing sections of muscles, a visible 'six-pack' which was actually 8 in his case, a toned, smooth chest…
Lucien was looking much healthier than a few days ago, he grew a couple of inches in height, and gained quite a bit of weight as well.
His statistics have also changed quite a bit, through the constant hunts and assimilations his status screen was looking the following:
[…::: ℭ𝔥𝔞𝔯𝔞𝔠𝔱𝔢𝔯 𝔖𝔱𝔞𝔱𝔲𝔰 ::: 𝔖𝔶𝔰𝔱𝔢𝔪 𝔙𝔢𝔯𝔰𝔦𝔬𝔫: 01 - 5.025% :::…]
[…:::
𝕹𝖆𝖒𝖊: 𝔏𝔲𝔠𝔦𝔢𝔫 𝔖𝔥𝔞𝔴
* 𝕾𝖞𝖓𝖈𝖍𝖗𝖔𝖓𝖎𝖟𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓: 19.85% - 𝔐𝔲𝔱𝔲𝔞𝔩𝔦𝔰𝔪
𝕻𝖔𝖜𝖊𝖗 𝕾𝖙𝖆𝖌𝖊: 𝔇𝔯𝔢𝔡𝔤𝔢𝔯 ::: * ℜ𝔞𝔫k: 1 ::: 48.5%
?҉?҉?҉?҉?҉:҉ ҉?҉?҉?҉?҉?҉
𝕰𝕻:: 40
****
* 𝕳𝖊𝖆𝖑𝖙𝖍: 25 / 25 (ℭ𝔲𝔯𝔯𝔢𝔫𝔱 ℜ𝔞𝔱𝔢: +0.01 / 10 𝔰𝔢𝔠𝔬𝔫𝔡𝔰)
* 𝕰𝖓𝖊𝖗𝖌𝖞: 16 / 16 (ℭ𝔲𝔯𝔯𝔢𝔫𝔱 ℜ𝔞𝔱𝔢: -0.01 / 10 𝔰𝔢𝔠𝔬𝔫𝔡𝔰)
****
:ђгɭ ฬﻮєฬгɭรภאɭ๔ ђภคɭ ภเ קฬєן קเ. ๓๓ςɭן รгєเɭן єןɭ
* 𝕾𝖙𝖗𝖊𝖓𝖌𝖙𝖍: 8.75 (+5.49)
* 𝕬𝖌𝖎𝖑𝖎𝖙𝖞: 5.12 (+3.25)
* 𝕾𝖙𝖆𝖒𝖎𝖓𝖆: 9.49 (5.72)
ฬ๔гɭร: ????
ђ๓รг๓ς: ????
𝔖𝔶𝔰𝔱𝔢𝔪 𝔖𝔱𝔬𝔯𝔞𝔤𝔢 ℭ𝔞𝔭𝔞𝔠𝔦𝔱𝔶: 0%
****
𝕾𝖐𝖎𝖑𝖑𝖘:
𝔙𝔦𝔯𝔞𝔩 ℜ𝔢𝔤𝔢𝔫𝔢𝔯𝔞𝔱𝔦𝔬𝔫 (𝔗𝔯𝔞𝔦𝔱 - ℜ𝔞𝔫𝔨: 1)
𝔉𝔞𝔯 𝔖𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱 (𝔗𝔯𝔞𝔦𝔱 - ℜ𝔞𝔫𝔨: 1)
𝔖𝔢𝔫𝔰𝔢 𝔓𝔯𝔢𝔶 (𝔓𝔞𝔰𝔰𝔦𝔳𝔢 - ℜ𝔞𝔫𝔨: 1)
* 𝔈𝔫𝔥𝔞𝔫𝔠𝔢𝔡 𝔖𝔢𝔫𝔰𝔢𝔰 (𝔓𝔞𝔰𝔰𝔦𝔳𝔢 - ℜ𝔞𝔫𝔨 1)
𝔅𝔢𝔰𝔱𝔦𝔞𝔩 ℜ𝔲𝔰𝔥 (𝔄𝔠𝔱𝔦𝔳𝔢 - ℜ𝔞𝔫𝔨 1)
* 𝔏𝔢𝔰𝔰𝔢𝔯 ℭ𝔞𝔪𝔬𝔲𝔣𝔩𝔞𝔤𝔢 (𝔄𝔠𝔱𝔦𝔳𝔢 ℜ𝔞𝔫𝔨 1)
:::…]
The changes were quite stunning, considering he was on his 7th day in this place and still had 3 more to spend before he would be forced to return to the outside world.
What he was most surprised about, was his progress in his rank. He didn't know what would happen once he completely fills that progress meter, but he felt that whenever that increased he felt more and more of this dormant, lingering power brimming inside him, ready to explode.
His life and energy also increased roughly following the growth pattern of his two attributes, Strength and Stamina. Speaking of attributes, he felt the incredible, magical effects of their changes.
Without any further explanations from the system, he could feel the effects of his Strength, Stamina, and even Agility. He was stronger, faster, his reactions were quicker, his sight was much keener… He had much more vitality… much more energy. In short, he felt powerful.
Also, during the course of his hunts, he gained two skills, one that was synthesized after the system combined several together, forming this collective passive skill, Enhanced Senses.
Even before getting the skill, after his awakening, he did feel like his own smell, eyesight, hearing gradually sharpened, but now… it was at a whole new level. He could spot the slightest of movement in the grass, hear the faintest of movements as the soft paws of the animal stepped on the dirt. Although it was a bit disorienting at first, over the last few days he managed to filter out all the unnecessary garbage, and just focus on what he needed at the time.
It was truly a wonderful addition to his skill set, a new type of skill, that he subconsciously referred to as an 'Active-Passive'. Since it was passive it was always 'turned on', but he needed to consciously focus and filter out all the 'unwanted auditory, visual, or another type of sensory noise and just focus on the relevant pieces of information.
At the same time, his Far Sight, which was the gift from Sera, was slowly turning less and less important. While not being completely pointless, it was only useful if he was actively focusing on his aim, trying to hit a distant prey. For normal shots, his enhanced sight was more than enough.
His second addition and the newest active in his repertoire was a skill that he wasn't too sure of. He gained after absorbing his first-ever 'Emerald Grass Deer', the light green-furred, deer-like mammal. Whilst gaining a substantial amount of mass in his storage capacity, the system also managed to synthesize this new skill, which seemed to be some basic version of turning slightly similar to his surroundings, as if gaining the illusion of being invisible.
It wasn't all that useful, at least from a first glance. What made the skill much more interesting was the fact that it also hid his life signs and turned all normal types of scanning and sensing to come up with nothing.
The skill was his first step into making sure that the people from the Facility wouldn't be able to track him quite as easily as before. If he could somehow turn off the visual aspect of the skill and just use this 'Masking' feature of it, he would gain something incredibly crucial to his own survival.
He had been wrecking his brain for ideas and potential solutions trying to figure out how he could use the skill without looking like a chameleon once he leaves Eden.
"What to do… How should I go on about this…" He muttered, looking at the skill.
Thinking about the problem, his eyes wandered towards his statistics once again, turning wide-eyed as he glanced at his own EP once again. Looking at it, he was suddenly reminded of the system feature he was rewarded with and conveniently had forgotten about completely since the first day, came to his mind once again.
"Oh yeah! That Pool thingie… Entropy Pool or Essence Pool… I have quite a bit of EP now, I should at the very least check it out…"
Thinking about it for a second, he decided that even if he didn't have all day to play around, he could, at least spend a few minutes glancing over it, and see if there would be any features of it that could prove useful in solving or assisting his problem.
Looking at himself in the mirror, his expression turned solemn, as he gave a mental command to the system, willing it to bring up this new screen.
[…::: Essence Pool :::…]
Just like with the creature library a welcome message greeted him as soon as the dark screen appeared.
[…::: Welcome host, to the Essence Pool!
Warning: To access this feature, the host will need to be ready to turn inactive for a prolonged period, as his body will turn irresponsive whilst his subconscious will be pulled into this newly unlocked subspace inside his own subconscious. :::…]
Reading through the text, Lucien was shocked. A warning? He would be 'inactive'?! Did the system mean that he would faint?
'System, what do you mean with this message?' Confused by what he was told, he asked out mentally.
The screen in front of him began to change, the letters changing their positions, formulating a response.
[…::: The Essence Pool is a special space, where the host can access his skills and make changes to them using his available Entropy Points. The host can alter, modify, enhance, and even combine multiple skills creating new ones, or just simply edit his currently available set. :::…]
Lucien took a couple of moments reading through the message multiple times before the revelation hit him.
'That is incredible! This is exactly what I was looking for!' However, as he thought about it a bit more, his excitement quickly faded, replaced by a sour expression. 'Now I feel like an idiot for not checking out this feature earlier…'
He sighed at this thought, before shaking his head at his own stupidity and forgetfulness before turning towards the room, and leaving the bathroom.
He now had another goal added to his daily list, turning his afternoon and most likely, his night into quite a busy one.
He was eager to start his training with Sera, and then focus his afternoon on checking out this mysterious new feature.