All the seemingly mocking or amused looks Alex gave them were in fact exactly what they appeared to be which made the people of the third fleet feel rather foolish. The handler was rather confused to find out that the dragon she was telling the third fleet about had in fact been at their base for longer than she herself had and had been letting their imaginations run wild. She laughed when Alex began to tell her all the frankly hilarious ways they tried to get him to leave while she waited for Zain to wake up.
The sheer embarrassment that the people of the third fleet had listening to the open telepathy tale Alex was telling made most of them have funny expressions. While they knew that it was entirely their fault for making assumptions based on their own knowledge , how were they supposed to guess he was sapient without him telling them? Everyone knew that even if he did tell them it was unlikely they would actually trust him without a normal person verifying it. This knowledge pointed out the fact that he somehow already knew that Zain and the handler would end up at the base eventually.
When asked about this he explained how he had carefully came searching for the two of them after dispatching the legiana and saw the wanderer rescuing them. He explained that he knew that she would more than likely take one of two options , the first was bringing them back to the base. The second was that she would find a nice place to hide before waiting for them to wake up on their own since they were mostly fine. Knowing this all Alex had to do was find the base before waiting there patiently for the her to arrive with them.
No one could really argue with this line of thinking since according to the wanderer she had in fact thought exactly like this. The handler asked what he did with the body of the legiana but Alex merely shrugged and said he ate it. The third fleet members shivered at the thought of how he hunted a legiana since like rathalos was in the forest it was the ruler of this area. They may not know exactly how the hunt went but from the lack of damage on him it was clear that he massively overpowered it.
Eventually Zain woke up with a migraine and drew some of the attention away from Alex for a bit of time. Alex took this opportunity to leave the base since he still had oh so many new things to try. A few of the scholars were disappointed about this since it meant they couldn't study Alex anymore. Things had calmed down in the highlands during the time Alex had spent waiting at the base and the various wildlife came out again. The most interesting thing Alex found on this new trip was the sleep toad that directly let him level up his [tranquilizing poison].
From his estimation his version of this stuff was only half as strong as the bombs made by the hunters but it was not the immediate benefits that had made him want the trait but it's potential. It will take a good long while but eventually his poison may be able to even keep elders sedated long enough to be studied. That was actually the reason it was considered impossible to capture one as even if you dosed it to the gills with tranqs their own innate resistance would burn through the drugs too fast to keep them unconscious for any real length of time.
If Alex could raise this trait high enough however he should be able to overpower this resistance rendering them study able. With a bit more careful searching Alex found a large deposit of aqua core ore that he wasted no time devouring to get the [water resistance] trait that brought up his elemental defenses ever so slightly. The local abalone population was devastated however as he grabbed every single one he saw until he unlocked the [layered horns] trait.
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