The requirement to unlock the [venomous tail] was to soak his tail in his own poison two hundred times. This wasn't very difficult to do but was very time consuming instead since he assumed that the soak had to be a certain length of time to count. It wasn't a big deal as far as Alex was concerned since he knew it would take a good amount of time for the story to reach a point he was massively overpowered by the monsters that will show up all the time.
The requirement in order to grow however had Alex completely relaxed since he had saved himself a LOT of effort by attacking zorah. This time in order to grow once again Alex needed to officially gain an elemental trait. Thanks to the [variant pyrosis T5] that he gained from the meat of zorah Alex merely needed to decide whenever he wanted to grow. Many people had the mistaken thought that poison and paralysis were elements but in fact they weren't part of the elements. The true elements were {LIGHTNING} , {FIRE} , {WATER} , {ICE} and {DRAGON} set up in a manner that mutually restrained and boosted each other creating an unusually balanced order to the monsters.
Water was restrained by lightning but suppressed fire and boosted ice. Lightning was restrained by ice but restrained dragon and boosted fire. Ice was restrained by fire but suppressed lightning and boosted water. Dragon however was rather unique in that while usually suppressed by lightning it actually boosted every single element including lightning while also being suppressed by itself. As far as Alex knew there was only a single species of monster in the entire world that had every single element , alatreon. That monster however technically had all the elements but in reality it could only ever use two at a time , dragon and any other element.
The reason for this Alex had theorized was because if it ever used all of the elements without restraint the conflicts between them would rip it apart from the inside out. This was merely a theory however until the commission actually encountered the ones that show up in the future and he can check personally. That was far in the future however as right now he was more focused in raising his fire trait to the highest he could before being forced to cash it in.
It had taken Alex the better part of an entire night to figure out that the T5 in the traits name was based on the ranks that the hunters weapons themselves held. In in-game terms T1 to T3 was low rank while T4 to T6 were high rank and T7 to T9 was master rank. Thanks to the zorah magdaros being a technically master rank monster and it's gem also being master rank Alex's trait had skipped low rank power entirely and directly reached the middle of the high rank. To put this into perspective if Alex were to cash in the trait right this instant he would have the literal fire power of a high rank monster like the pink rathians.
Alex hoped to be able to raise the trait up to T7 at the very least before he had to cash it in so that he wasn't defenseless when the events of iceborn happened. The biggest hope for this was ironically the same source he had acquired the trait from originally , zorah magdaros. From his memory Alex knew he had exactly two chances to feed off of zorah at it's best before it died and lost the majority of it's worth.
Alex remembered about the bioenergy that zorah had stored within it and could easily understand that while it possesses that energy the elder was the best fuel for the trait. But without it the value of the elders body dropped dramatically. Alex's plan was to continue gaining traits while reinforcing his strength until he no longer needed to flee at zorah's retaliation but rather could feast on the still living elder safely much like nergigante. It wasn't directly stated but it was implied that the spikey asshole had been eating zorah for a good amount of time.
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