As Hollow walked off, Aiden complained to Stella that Hollow was far too stuck up for being able to hunt a few monsters. He mused "He is going to die all alone"
As Hollow walked deeper into the forest, him being one of the few people willing to dare such a dangerous area. He saw multiple types of new plants and a few small animals. Their plants were full and iridescent. They illuminated the darkness caused by the thick canopy.
As he got deeper he started to encounter a few green lizards. These were much harder to spot in the darkness, straining his eyes. During this time he continued practicing controlling his mana. Eventually Hollow worked up the courage to attempt to force Mana out of his body. He slowly began able to force more and more mana out of his body till he had a small globe roughly the size of his palm floating in the air. He then attempted to fling it, unsuccessfully as it refused to budge from above his palm. Unsure of what to do Hollow began attempting to concentrate the mana into a small point. Eventually, he managed to consolidate the baseball-sized ball into something slightly bigger than a gold ball. Closing his eye he attempted to force it away from his palm. He opened his eyes as he saw the ball zoom into the ground and explode.
[Skill Mana blast(uncommon) created]
[Mana Control(rare) -->Mana Control(unique)]
The noise shocked all of the animals near him, making the scurry away from him. As Hollow was congratulating himself he was flung into the air and slammed into a tree. [46 damage][2 damage] Never expecting to lose a third of his health in an instant Hollow reacted slowly. He felt something running up towards him at breakneck speeds and used [Block]while shoving mana some mana into it. [10 damage taken]
Hollow responded with a quick [Mana slash][58 damage] knocking the creature back. He then followed that up with a normal attack. [10 damage]Hollow managed to quickly inspect it.
[Blue Mantis level 18]
- Health 49/117
As the mantis started trying to run at Hollow, he managed to chuck a mana blast at it dealing enough to kill it. [64 damage dealt][Blue mantis killed][96 exp][Leveled up]
Collapsing to the ground, Hollow chastised himself for not paying attention to his surroundings. Taking a few seconds to breathe deeply and recover, Hollow looked around.
Seeing the dead corpse of the Mantis, Hollow decided to experiment, he ripped both of its arms off and decided to see if they would decompose with the rest of its corpse. He then looked around to see if there was anything else near him. As the corpse decomposed, the arms remained untouched.
Hollow then looked at the notifications he had received.
[Congratulations for killing a monster that you could not see][Perception stat awarded]{Author's note: The Mantis had barely developed its speed stat. Hollow being able to kill it was considered an achievement. It Mantis was able to move slightly outside of Hollow's capability to see it. }
[Speed:
Increase your capability to move.
[Congratulations on being the First person to receive a new Stat. Title Statistic(epic) is awarded.]
Statistics
+10% to all stats
[You are the first person to get the Perception stat +10 to Perception]
Hollow was shocked by the idea that you could gain entire stat types. He was quite surprised by the Mantasis's high level. This made him quite concerned about what dangers lurked deeper in the giant forest.
After waiting for some time for his health to regenerate Hollow continued to hunt monsters. He encountered multiple Mantis of similar levels and after short fights managed to dispatch him. This pushed him slightly over level 8.
During his journey, he was completing a circle around the clearing. Eventually, the territory started to change and he encountered rocker and rocker locations.
In one of these outcroppings that overlooked the valley, he discovered a small pack of red salamanders. Their base stats were slightly higher than those of their forest cousins, the green salamanders.
After observing them for a few minutes Hollow began to massacre the pack. He encountered little resistance till the two largest salamanders ganged up on him.
[Red salamander level 15
- Health 156
[Red salamander level 15
- Health 156
Hollow immediately used [Mana Slash] hitting one of them.[76 damage dealt] Hollow attempted to follow that up with another attack but was sent flying by the other slash. [41 damage taken] Ignoring the salamander that attacked him, Hollow focused on the low-health salamander dealing.[19 damage dealt] He then finished it off with his [Mana Slash] [76 damage dealt][Red salamander killed][92 exp]. With the other salamanders dead the last salamander should have not been an issue. Except that when Hollow turned and looked toward the cave entrance, he found that it was not alone. There was a much stronger much better-plated version of it right next to it.
[Tough Red Salamander level 24]
- Health 204
Hollow readied himself for the toughest fight yet.