Lucius woke up a few hours later, a bit annoyed at himself for falling asleep like that. He wanted to start moving immediately, however, the sun wasn't even up yet so he decided he would let the leaflings rest a little longer.
While he waited he decided to do a few exercises. He wanted to test whether working out would be a viable method for gaining stat points.
After doing pushups until failure -which amounted to about 50- he gained 6 points into strength and another 3 into stamina. He tried sit-ups however they didn't seem to be as efficient, as they only added a few points into stamina and none at all into strength.
~My arms feel kind of stiff,~ he thought to himself as he did different arm stretches in an attempt to soothe the singeing pain that radiated from them.
[+3 Agility.]
~Interesting. So stretching helps increase agility, huh? It only makes sense I suppose,~ he thought before carrying on with the stretches.
In the end, he gained 30 agility points from stretching alone -counting leg, and back stretches as well,- however, he was unable to get anything more than that. Further stretching did not result in any additional agility, it seemed there was a cap to the number of stat points he could get from each movement.
"That feels better," he whispered, before throwing a kick into the air to test his new agility. His movements were a little clumsy, but that was due to the lack of muscle memory in his body. He knew the moves, his body just couldn't properly replicate them.
Feeling a little annoyed at the fact that he couldn't even properly perform simple martial arts movements, he began throwing out a flurry of kicks. The kicks ranged from high head kicks to low sweeping kicks.
[+2 Agility.]
[+1 Strength.]
[+1 Stamina.]
Seeing that he was gaining stat points from these, he began trying more advanced kicks. In between the normal attacks he would throw in spinning kicks, which resulted in him clumsily falling to the ground a few times. However, he noticed that the more difficult the movements were the more agility he would gain, so he endured.
[+4 Agility.]
After a while, he started adding punches into the combinations.
One, two. One, two. Kick, sweep, choke, rip.
[+2 Agility]
[+1 Strength.]
Soon he got into a sort of flow zone, there was a rhythm to his movements.
One, two. One, two, three. Kick, elbow, punch, sweep, stomp.
One, two. One, two. Punch, block, head kick, spin kick.
[+2 Agility.]
[+1 Strength.]
[+2 Stamina.]
After a while, his body grew tired, and he was forced to stop his training session. He amassed quite a bit of stat points, and his body felt that bit stronger and more capable than it had before. He quickly pulled out his player stats to track his progress.
┏━━━━━━༻❁༺━━━━━━┓
─────⋅☾ Player Details ☽⋅─────•
[Lucius Elwood ]
[Level 3: 120/300]
[Leaf Being lvl.4- {10/400}]
─────⋅☾ Stats ☽⋅─────•
[Agility: 5 > 59]
[Strength: 97 > 110]
[Stamina: 75 > 90]
┗━━━━━━༻❁༺━━━━━━┛
"I should hold something similar for the leaflings," he whispered to himself, clenching his fists. Though the variety of movements available to them is quite slim, they would still benefit from the muscle memory gained through training.
***
The sun was just rising when Lucius woke the leaflings up. After giving them a moment to get ready, they moved out.
The marching went on for several hours, and though they stopped in between for a few short breaks, there were no real exciting points during the journey.
They passed by several sites similar to their old camp. Mounds next to the river, however, Lucius wasn't going to choose the same type of location as last time. Though the river proved as a good shield to watch their backs, it also removed a route of escape.
And besides, water wasn't really a valuable resource. Apart from him, the other leaflings didn't really seem to need water to survive.
What he had in mind this time around was a sort of tree base. He was searching for a tree whose branches came close to the ground. He planned to construct a sort of ramp for the leaflings to be able to move to and fro. Removing the construct would be enough to prevent ground enemies from moving in.
He was unsure whether snakes or the like were in this world, but it was probably good enough to assume that there were tree-dwelling creatures. To fight those off, he planned to build certain 'defense' mechanisms.
~Though I suppose it wouldn't hurt to build something inside the ground once the others have evolved. Just so we have multiple options in the case of emergencies,~ he thought as he climbed up a rock to get a better view of the surrounding forest.
The forest seemed to be changing somehow. Before there were mostly shrubs, tall trees, and blades of grass. Now the shrubs seemed to be scarcer, and vines took their place. The ground seemed even muddier than before, and the trees were more bottle-shaped than further down.
~I wonder if we'll find different species here,~ he thought to himself before instructing the leaflings to move forward.
***
It was now midday and Lucius decided to have a photosynthesis session before they moved on. He quickly ran towards the river to their right and absorbed some water before returning.
The overall endurance of the leaflings seemed to have increased, and more and more of them lasted longer than the others. That's to say there were more outliers than before.
After 20 minutes of photosynthesis, only Alpha, Pagan, and two other leaflings were left. However at the 30-minute mark, only Pagan remained. His growth in particular was exponential. In fact, if not for their limited time, Lucius was sure they could've gone for at least an hour.
~45 minutes and he hasn't even broken a sweat? Seems promising,~ he thought to himself as he inspected Pagan. Right now he was just a thumbnail shorter than Lucius, and if not for the fact that he was a leafling, Lucius was certain that they would've had similar volume.
Second to him in growth was Alpha, who although was way shorter, had equal volume and was starting to show an odd amount of density in his legs.
~Perhaps it's because he trains harder than the others?~ Lucius thought to himself, noting down the difference between Alpha's limbs and the others.
Hannibal was the third largest, however, Ghost seemed to be catching up to him. Today it seemed as if he hadn't pushed as hard as he could've, as he was still able to stand while the others were out cold.
~I need to give him a talk,~ Lucius thought to himself as he watched Hannibal sit alone at the outer edges of the group.
~Perhaps I was being too judgmental. I know he isn't a coward, but I don't want him growing up thinking that it's okay to do certain things just because it gives the most efficient results,~ he thought.
~In the end, the bonds they form will be their strength. If they feel they could be sacrificed at any moment, it might weaken the camp.~