When the group reached astera they split into three groups with the scholars taking the slag , Zain and the handler going to report to the commander and Alex leaving to go hunt his dinner. Now that he didn't need to stay close to the slow moving wagon he could fly much faster than before making his return trip to the waste much faster. Alex's target was the corpse of the barroth that he couldn't grab before due to the circumstances or the rathian the badly wounded. The choice was made for him when he arrived in the area with the barroth corpse only to see the rathian in question eating it.
'I wonder what you'll give me' he thought greedily from high above the rathian. Flexing the muscles in his wing Alex silently dived towards the wyvern that had obviously thought he wasn't coming back for his prey and was gorging itself on the hearty meal. With a sickening crack and squelching sound Alex slammed the rathians head down from the neck causing it to snap. The monster died instantly from having it's vertebrae snapped leaving Alex with an intact corpse , as for the half eaten body of the barroth Alex ignored it since he refused to eat after someone else.
He wasn't a clean freak or anything like that but as they say old habits die hard and some things from when he was still human stuck with him. Alex carefully grabbed the rathian corpse so that the wings were folded to prevent them from catching the air as he flew before taking off into the air. There was a small stir when Alex showed up at astera with the rathians corpse since it meant that he was stronger than the monster known as the king of the sky , rathalos.
Rathalos and rathian were the male and female members of the same race respectively and as a result could both be used as the same measurement of power. Alex showing up with the corpse of a rathian meant he had either gotten stupidly lucky or was more powerful than a peak species such as rathalos , assuming the stronger versions weren't included of course. Alex allowed the people to dismantle the corpse but insisted on taking the flame sacs as well as the meat much to everyone's confusion. Contrary to popular belief the rathian and rathalos species weren't true fire element monsters since rather than having fire type energy throughout their bodies it was instead stored in the small fire sacs near their lungs.
This meant the only part of the body with the fire energy Alex needed was those sacs while the meat was merely to see what traits he could get while nourishing him. It stung a bit to lose one of the most valuable parts of the monster to Alex but the foreman didn't kick up a fuss about it. Like usual the chef didn't say anything when Alex arrived with the bundle of extremely fresh meat but got to work immediately.
Rathian meat as it turned out was extremely close in texture to a choice quality beef brisket back on earth. It had a soft and tender texture after it was carefully smoked for two hours at a decent temperature. The head chef did this and even made a massive bun that he stacked up with all sorts of vegetables and sauces before carefully stuffing the huge sandwich with the meat. No one blinked an eye at the monstrous sandwich though since it was clear that it was made for Alex alone.
The sandwich was fantastic with each flavor complementing the rich juicy meat that fell apart at the lightest touch. Even better was that Alex generated two traits from the meat , [venomous tail] and [enhanced scales]. Thanks to already having generated both these traits before Alex directly unlocked the first and leveled up the second. All in all Alex was satisfied with his gains for the effort he put in and sauntered off to his nest after thanking the chef for the food. The rest of the night was mostly quiet with Alex doing his usual exercises to try and level up some of his traits.
_____________________________________
my patrons can read an extra two chapters ahead along with using the site as a way to directly contact myself rather than needing to hope i respond to your comments.
pa treon.com/user?u=81578854