Walking through the forest, nothing really happened for the next few hours. Troy eventually set up shop on a thick tree branch near a river. Using cattails and other reeds he had weaved a crude sack. He had wanted to make some rope to keep him tied to the tree, but couldn't find what he needed. That night he fell asleep hungry because all of his kills were ruined by extracting them.
Halfway through the night, Troy woke up. His perception had caught something near him. Slowly getting up, he looked around and saw an owl-like creature on a branch near him, it had not seen him yet. Taking a deep breath, he carefully got in a stance to throw his spear, making sure to not leave a foot near the edge of the tree branch. Launching his spear at the owl, he saw it turn its head and attempt to fly away. This was its undoing, however, as the spear tore into its outstretched wing, causing it to fall to the floor many meters below. Shimmying down the tree, he found the thing already dead on the ground. From what he could tell, the impact broke most of its bones, one of which pierced its heart, killing it instantly. Because he didn't kill it directly or from something like poison or a trap, he got no EXP. He would not extract this one, as that would cause the meat to shrivel and become inedible. He had tried with one of the mole-rats. It was like sand.
Using one of the assassin's blades, Troy cut the neck to bleed it and removed its internal organs just like the survival classes taught. He tossed them downstream from where he was to be carried away. While he waited for all the blood to drain from it, he used one of the assassin's blades and a rock to create an ember. Eventually, he got a small one, which was a small fire less than ten minutes later. He de-feathered the bird, keeping the best feathers in his makeshift sack. He used the spit method to cook the bird. It was bland, as he had no seasonings.
By the time he had finished cleaning up, one and a half hours had gone by. He would stay awake for another one and a half to complete the biphasic sleep pattern. At the turn of the 21st century, it became the norm to ditch monophasic sleep and sleep in two cycles of 4 hours. This improved health and reduced cases of insomnia by 30%. This also helped in the tower, as it stopped one from falling into too deep a sleep and dying from an attack. Eventually, Troy went back to sleep.
In the morning, after taking care of nature's call, Troy began to move around the area he was in, looking for more prey. Hours later, the first thing he ran into was a black stag 50% bigger than a normal deer and a human corpse in the middle of a clearing.
The Black stags' antlers were very sharp, and from the looks of it, it was the corpses' cause of death. Throwing the spear on an instinctual response, the deer simply knocked it away with its antlers. Looking at Troy with a hostile gaze, it charged, its antlers extended ready to gore anything that got in its way.
Troy narrowly dodged and heard a thunk behind him. Looking back, the stag had gotten its antlers stuck in a tree. Going up behind the deer, Troy carefully made his way to the neck, avoiding the legs. Just as he was about to slit its throat, it broke free of the tree, three of the antler's branches stabbing into Troy. Two of them hit the armor and didn't break skin, but the third got him in the shoulder. Troy stabbed it in the throat, twisted the blade, yanked it out, and ran as quickly as possible. When he was about 10 meters away from the thing, he turned around. There was a massive amount of blood around the beast, but the thing was there collapsed and spasming as blood squirted out every time its heartbeat. While Troy was waiting for the thing to bleed out, he looked at the corpse
Just looking at the thing made him uncomfortable. Tower academy had improved his courage and taught him that this would be a common occurrence, but this was awful. And it was about to get worse as tower academy's lessons on survival had said to always search corpses after dealing with any danger, because a dead man had no use for a sword better than yours.
"I'm sorry man," Troy stated, before starting to search for the corpse. It had nothing on it, and even the clothes were unwearable. Troy took them and cut them up anyways, throwing away the bloody and destroyed parts. They were usable as rags, and it was never a good idea to keep blood on your weapons, as it could degrade the material over time.
Taking another look at the now clothesless corpse, Troy wondered if he could extract attributes from it. Putting a hand on its back, he felt mana leave his body as his hand glowed a bright white this time. After the glow was gone, the corpse slowly shriveled before turning to dust. It seems he wouldn't need to worry about disposing of the corpse, not that he was going to take the time to bury it. Looking at the watch, he saw two notifications
{Attributes to low to extract} {Extracted skill: appraisal-B}
Troy nearly fell over at this. This talent could extract skills. But then something hit him. "Isn't it too early for anybody to get a skill? You need to at least kill a biome boss to get skill books, and even those are D-rank or below at this floor." thinking about it, Troy came up with an idea that shocked him so much that he could not believe it.
"Did it extract his talent and turn it into a skill?" This was shocking because talents had stronger abilities than skills of the same rank, and could come with abilities no skill found in the past hundred years had. Even if the extraction lowered the potency of the talent, it would still be more powerful compared to skills of the same rank. If Troy remembered correctly, when he extracted the earthmover mole-rats, he extracted the skill lump toss 3 times, and the watch said it combined them. Maybe skills with similar abilities would combine to make the skill stronger? He would have to wait to find this out, unfortunately. He was snapped out of his thoughts by a 'ding.'
{EXP gained from kill- 8} {Level up! Gained 8 free attribute points.}
The stag had finally died. Looking at it, Troy knew he couldn't eat the thing. It was too big. He would have to find something smaller or go hungry tonight. Walking up, he extracted it.
{Gained +2 str, +2 per, Black stags antlers- F-rank monster material: antlers from a mature black stag. A bone material, it isn't really good for melee weapons, but could be used as the body of a bow.}
Looking at the antlers, Troy thought that they would be too big to carry around and wouldn't sell for much, if anything, in Checkpoint station. He decided he would use the biggest part for a bow and the smaller parts for temporary tools. Looking around for his spear, he found it broken in half on the other side of the clearing. He knew this would happen eventually, so he wasn't surprised. He took the sharp stone off the end.
Leaving the blood-filled clearing, Troy climbed up a tree and began working on the antlers. First, he used his knives to cut off a few outer branches of the antlers. one of them was flat, so he decided he would make part of it into a chisel and the rest into a small saw. He had no grinder, so he would have to make do by rubbing the flat part against his flat rock to sharpen it. He would leave the chisel for later, as the saw was easier to make and less time-consuming.
Within an hour Troy had managed to carefully carve the shape of a saw, albeit a rather small one, into the antler. This would make the coming work much easier. Now it was time to take the chisel, as it would be needed for what came next. He cut the chisel piece down to a size of about 3 inches, making sure to have a thinner area near the end
Carefully using his knife, he cut into the antler until it was about a quarter through. Doing the same on the other side, he then used a small, sharp fragment left over from the saw making to cut at an angle for about 3 centimeters, until it was cut down to a point, on both sides. Troy then began the long and tedious process of filing the chisel down to a usable point. This took him 3 hours. By the time he was done, the sun was in the middle of the sky, and his watch told him it was 12:47.
Troy then took a 15-minute break, as his hand was cramped, before beginning on making 4 different needles, needed to bore the hole that the string would go through. This took him another hour. It was only at this point that he began on the bow.
Using a natural curve in the antlers, Troy carved the bow into the desired shape. He then used one of the needles to bore a hole in each side of the bow, where he would fit the string. He quickly made the string out of fiber stripped from dry bark and leaves. Fighting it through the two holes, Troy finished the bow with 3 hours left before sunset.
{Crafted bow, 1-star: an attempt to make a bow was made. The body isn't perfectly straight, it's not very well balanced, the rope was poorly made, and the string has too much slack and will most likely break before it can fire a hundred shots. No arrow shot out of this will fly straight. Attack power 1}
After reading this, Troy quickly fixed what he could before reassembling the bow.
{Crafted bow, 1-star: an attempt to make a bow was made. The body isn't perfectly straight, it's not very well balanced, and the rope was poorly made and will most likely break before it can fire a hundred shots. No arrow shot out of this will fly straight. Attack power 2, arrow speed +1}
It was a bit better, but not by much. Using extraction on it, the excess rope disintegrated and a bit of antler peeled off.
{Crafted bow, 1-star: an attempt to make a bow was made. The body isn't perfectly straight, it's not well balanced, and the rope was poorly made and will most likely break before it can fire a hundred shots. No arrow shot out of this will fly straight. Attack power 3, arrow speed +1}
It didn't help very much, not that it mattered, as he had no arrows. He would make those during the night. Putting his tools in his makeshift sack, Troy left the tree to look for dinner.
Traveling through the forest, Troy was unknowingly going deeper in. He had not come across anything in an hour. Soon, he came across the skeletons of something's meals. He had a strange feeling but kept going.
Stepping into a large clearing he saw a bear 50% bigger than any of the ones he had seen in pictures. He used this chance to test out the new skill appraisal. He called it out in his mind and felt mana going to his head. In front of his eyes, the status of the bear appeared
Short-faced bear
Type: biome boss
Level 4
Chance to drop a tin-quality chest upon defeat
Skills: fast dash
Attack: 4
Defense: 4
Health-45/45
Mana-5/5
Stamina-55/55
Strength-24
Vitality-20
Intellect-10
Perception-20
Agility-25
Troy turned around and quietly left. When he was about 100 meters away, he broke into a run, trying to get away as quickly as possible. There was no way he could take that thing on with his current abilities. Because of the nonlinear attribute scaling, while he was only 8 agility behind it, the true difference was probably 13, that is to say, he was far behind it in terms of speed. If the thing activated the skill called fast dash, he would probably die before he knew what happened. Even if he had the same stats as it, he would still need to be careful when fighting it. If you put two of the same creatures with the same stats and level, just with one being a biome boss and the other being a normal mob, in a fight, the biome boss would always win.
He had come so close to death on the second day of the tower. He still had to survive 2 more days to move to the next floor, and It would be a shame to die with his talent.
Walking along the forest floor, Troy had some time to look at his status.
Name: Troy Arginstin
Age: 17
Level 2 EXP 0/75
Talent: SSS-Unlimited extraction
Base attack: 3(+1)
Base defense: 2
Natural abilities: ambidextrous, cool and collected
Skills: lump toss-upper F, Appraisal-B
Free attribute points: 8
Health-17/20
Mana-9/36
Stamina
18/37
Strength
21(+2)
Vitality-15
Intellect-14
Perception-23(+2)
Agility-17
Luck-53
Looking at this, Troy looked through his experience over the past two days, planning how to distribute his points in the future. So far, no extraction had given him intellect or luck, and after looking at the biome bosses' stats, he didn't see a luck attribute. He would need more than one sample, but he assumed that the tower's creatures had no luck attribute. He should be able to get it from humans, but coming across a dead human wasn't something he was counting on, and while he may kill other humans in the future, it would definitely be something he was unwilling to do as often as killing a creature.
He decided to put 3 points into intellect and keep the other 5 until he knew what he could and couldn't get from extraction.
For the next hour, Troy wondered around the forest until he found a giant hill. This hill had so many openings that someone with trypophobia would break down crying. He could see ants the size of flesh-eating hares crawling in and out, some coming back to the colony from outside carrying food. Using appraisal on one he got:
Forest ant
Type: mob
Level 2
Skills: none
Attack: 2
Defense 3
Health-18/18
Mana-0
Stamina-21/30
Strength-13
Vitality-9
Intellect-2
Perception-5
Agility-6
It was one of the most common and widespread pests. From what Troy had heard, they were a problem on floor 5. But to Troy, they were the perfect test subjects.
Picking up a stone, Troy threw it at a lone ant and ducked behind a tree. The ant came over to find the source of the stone, most likely at the prospect that it was food, and Troy stabbed it in the head with the left blade, triggering the special effect and killing the ant instantly. He dragged it away to avoid the other ants coming to investigate the smell and used Extraction on it.
{EXP Gained from kill: 3} {Extracted: 1 str}
He usually got 2 different attributes from an extraction, but he did get to confirm that extraction extracted the highest attribute, and probably the second-highest too. Of course, this could only be the case with mobs, and when using extract on a biome boss or floor boss he could get 3 or more.
Looking at the dead ant, it had not shriveled like other creatures he had used extract on. Troy decided to take the back of the carapace and the legs. He could most likely use them for something.
Troy proceeded to lure away and kill 20 more ants before the queen realized something was strange and recalled all of the ants to the nest. He had managed to, besides the first ant, kill 11 level ones, 6 level twos, and 3 level three ants. He had gained 26 strength, 3 vitality, and 93 EXP. The vitality came from the level 3 ants, all of which had a vitality of 10. He didn't know what the stats of the Earthmover mole-rats, flesh-eating hare, or black stag were, so he couldn't make any comparisons. He had leveled up, and put 3 of the points into intellect and kept the other 5, making his status screen look like this:
Name: Troy Arginstin
Age: 17
Level 3 EXP 18/113
Talent: SSS-Unlimited extraction
Base attack: 5(+2)
Base defense: 2
Natural abilities: ambidextrous, cool and collected
Skills: lump toss-upper F, Appraisal-B
Free attribute points: 10
Health-19/25
Mana-23/31
Stamina-25/43
Strength-47(+26)
Vitality-18(+3)
Intellect-20(+6)
Perception-23
Agility-17
Luck-53
He had a strength that only those with B-tier or higher strength-enhancing talents would have in the beginning, yet because his agility was too low, he wasn't able to use it to its fullest potential. He had to find beasts that could increase his agility. He had decided to set killing the biome boss as his goal on day 4. He didn't choose the floor boss because of the same issue with putting a biome boss and a normal mob in a fight together. If you put two of the same creatures with the same level and stats against each other, the floor boss would always win against both a normal mob and a biome boss. Also, he didn't know where the floor boss was.
Tomorrow, he would leave the forest and go to a flat plains area, as that was where the flesh-eating hares stayed most of the time. In order to raise his agility up as much as possible, he had to go there, as he wouldn't find more than the stray hare in the forest.