Upon hearing Jessica's question, Alex chuckled and raised his wrist, showing off the Sky Serpent coiled around it like a beautiful sky-blue bracelet. "I've been blown up more than a couple of times, but this time I made it through, so I came back in one piece."
"What's this? It's so pretty!" Jessica exclaimed, clearly captivated by the creature. She took hold of Alex's wrist, turning it over to get a better look. When she noticed the small wings tucked in, she couldn't resist playfully poking at them.
"Chirp!"
The little creature, clearly irritated, raised its head and let out an indignant squeak. It then slithered up Alex's arm, disappearing into his shirt and poking its head out from his collar, glaring at Jessica with a look of pure defiance.
"So cute! Where did you get it? I want one too! Also, you mentioned passing a challenge—what challenge?" Jessica asked, still absorbed in the adorableness of the Sky Serpent and perhaps still a bit disoriented from the earlier explosion.
Emma, standing nearby, chimed in sarcastically. She recounted the events of the "Sky Fortress" with some exaggeration, describing how Alex had obliterated everything.
Jessica and Holly stood in shock after hearing Emma's recount. Even though they hadn't been there, the vivid description made them feel as though they had just witnessed the devastation firsthand. It took a while before Jessica, her face full of disbelief, turned to Alex and then at the little creature clinging to his neck.
"So, you're telling me that you not only one-shot the boss but also blew up an entire floating city, and all you got in return was this tiny worm?!" she exclaimed. "That resource point was so beautiful, and you destroyed it—doesn't your conscience hurt!?"
Alex felt a wave of embarrassment wash over him as his face grew hot. "It's not like I did it on purpose! How was I supposed to know the place would blow up that easily? Besides, I'm sure there are other places like it."
Unable to handle Jessica's pointed accusations, Alex left the resource point, intending to find some wild monster zones nearby to help his new companion level up.
Earlier, they had avoided wild monster zones because the rewards were too small and it felt like a waste of time. Plus, their goal had been to turn the occupied resource points into monster lairs, and they needed the monsters to make that happen.
Additionally, although their class had grown considerably strong under Alex's leadership, most of the city's inhabitants were still relatively weak. These wild monster zones, filled with Belos monsters, provided a perfect training ground for them.
Since they were more than ten kilometers away from the city, even the farthest-reaching teams rarely ventured this far out. So, Alex felt no qualms about going all out.
In just over an hour, Alex swept through nearly 50 wild monster zones like a whirlwind, mowing down over 10,000 Belos monsters with ease. Each zone had more than 200 monsters, including a dozen or so purple elites. The Sky Serpent absorbed experience at an astonishing rate, even though it only received 25% of the total. It leveled up 527 times, almost doubling Alex's own level.
---
**Name:** Sky Serpent [Sky Serpent] SR-level Bloodline
Level: 5721% (Gained 5700 additional health)
**Level Effects:**
- +5000 Health
- +1000% Health
- +1000% Damage
- +1000 Bonus Damage
- +1000% Skill Effectiveness
Health: 108,800
...
---
The Sky Serpent's strength was already catching up to Alex's, especially with its staggering 100,000 health points. Alex found the situation both amusing and exciting—his pet was quickly becoming a force to be reckoned with.
Eager to see how far the Sky Serpent could go, Alex continued grinding through the wild monster zones. The stacking level effects were almost like having a cheat code. However, Alex started to regret leveling himself too quickly. Now, lower-level monsters no longer provided any experience for him, and stronger monsters were too few and far between to level up efficiently. He was reliant on SR-level resource crystals, but he could only use one crystal per day, making the leveling process excruciatingly slow.
By the time the Sky Serpent reached level 500, its leveling speed slowed drastically. Where it once gained 20% experience from each blue Belos monster, it now took two monsters just to gain 1%. The efficiency had dropped tenfold, confirming Alex's suspicion that level 500 was a significant threshold.
The leveling slowdown was further confirmed when the Sky Serpent could only gain 2% experience from a single monster, even when killing it directly. With that, Alex decided to call it a day and regroup with Jessica and the others.
After another 10 minutes, the group had successfully completed their tasks at the 10 resource points, and everyone gathered once more at the city's main hall.
However, to their surprise, when it came time to claim the rewards, only Alex seemed to have earned any significant gains. Everyone else only received the basic resource crystal rewards from their occupied points.
After reviewing the task details, they realized that contribution had to exceed 10% to earn a share of the loot. If someone's contribution fell below that, they would only receive rewards once the resource point had been fully occupied.
Even so, it had been a highly productive day. The team had completed 28 resource point challenges, leading to substantial rewards. Of the 18 points they failed to occupy, Alex had purposefully let them transform into monster lairs, which resulted in failed missions. Because Alex hadn't solo-killed any more bosses, his task evaluation had dropped several levels. His final reward was a B-grade evaluation, earning him 5,000 points, four skill points, 70% growth value, but no super skill points.
Despite the lowered evaluation, the cumulative rewards from all 18 tasks were still impressive: 90,000 points, 72 skill points, and 1,260% growth value.
Alex also realized just how rare super skill points were—only S-grade evaluations and higher awarded them. Without Alex's solo boss kills, the rest of the team wasn't able to achieve such high evaluations, meaning Jessica and the others likely hadn't earned any super skill points at all.
Alongside the failed missions were the 10 successful monster lair occupations. With no penalties, Alex's task evaluation shot up to S-grade, granting 10,000 points, eight skill points, one super skill point, and 100% growth value per lair. Multiplied by 10, the total rewards were substantial:
19,000 points, 152 skill points, 10 super skill points, and 2,260% growth value.