Inside the black frost forest,
Alex and abigale, was following the river to make sure they won't get lost. Even though they had been going for about 10 minutes, there wasn't a single beast in sight.
The only reason he was even sure that he was going deeper was because the density of spirit energy was higher than his previous location.
While walking through the forest, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a tree with yellow colour fruits the size of strawberries.
He approached the tree carefully, knowing there was a high possibility of a beast living on it. He was right, there was a spider the size of rock sleeping behind on a web behind the branches.
Alex speculated that the spider might be using the fruits as a trap to lure herbivore beasts and consume them.
The spider was covered in a black shell like carapace.
He didn't dare to underestimate this carapace and took out a spike like object from his rag, it was the horn of the rabbit he had previously killed.
After quietly approaching the sleeping spider and locating it's face, he striked it's face with all of his strength, successfully piercing through it's body.
After making sure that it was dead, he touched it's carapase and was shocked at how hard it was. He punched it with all his strength but there wasn't even a dent on the hard shell that was about 2 inches thick.
"Man this is hard, I would have been dead if I had just used my bare fists to attack it."
It might have been a different if he had used 'wind slash' or got the help of abigale, but either way, He got really lucky this time. He had previously taken the horn from the rabbit in order to make a weapon , but it came in handy in an unexpected situation.
While examinig the carapace, he found out that even though it was hard, there were weak points in it as well. For example, between the upper area carapace and lower area carapace, there was a gap of about half an inch except the back area which was connected to each other.
When he tried to pull the upper carapace apart from that gap, it came off easily but he had to put a little force into it when he reached the back part. The flesh of the spider was firmly fixed to the lower carapase.
He noticed that, inside of the upper carapace was quite round and there wasn't any blood inside it at all. It seems the only thing keeping the two carapace together was the connecting point at the back area.
He tried to put it on his head like a helmet, and although not a perfect fit, it wasn't so far off to the point it would go off at a strong wind or something.
"With this, im slightly more safer from sudden attacks to the head. Now the question is, should I just go along the river or wonder off from here?"
Even though following the river seemed like the better option, he still couldn't rule out the possibility of Dangerous aquatic beasts living in other parts of the the river further ahead.
Meanwhile the beasts on land would only get stronger gradually and not too suddenly like the beasts that might live in the river, however, he still needed water to stay alive.
After considering all this, he decided to explore the forest instead of following the river but still staying not too far from the river.
Before leaving, he plucked some of the strawberry-sized fruits from the tree and gave some to abigale while eating some himself.
"Wow! didn't think it would be this good."
He couldn't help but exclaim in suprise, this was the first time he had eaten something so sweet, abigale also showed a similar expression. It wasn't truly suprising since he was just a orphan beggar who could only eat from others leftovers if he was lucky, or else , those leftovers would be snatched by other beggars.
He took some more of those fruits from the tree and kept them in his cloth. He decided to head north from where he was facing, which was deeper into the forest.
After walking for about 5 minutes, he encountered another tree with the same fruits from before. He still approached it quietly and sure enough, there was a spider sleeping on it as well.
He took out the horn and pierced through it's body from it's face like he had done to the previous spider.
He then removed the upper carapace area like before and laid it on the floor.
He was going to do an experiment that he couldn't before because he didn't think he would get another carapace so soon.
He activated 'wind slash' and slashed his hands towards the carapace, leaving a scar about an inch deep.
"As expected, even my wind slash was only able to cut about half way through"
Since he was done with experiment, he decided to keep going forward.
Soon, he encountered another spider sleeping on a tree.
"What the heck are these guys trying to do, become sleeping beauty or something?"
He swiftly pierced this one as well, but he didn't even glance at it's corpse and continued forward. There truly wasn't a use for their corpse for him as of now.
This repeated several times until he finally encountered a tree with different fruits. He carefully and quietly approached this tree as well.
Even though it was still a spider sleeping on the tree, it was a bit larger than the spider's he had previously encountered. He didn't think much of it at first and tried to pierce it's face with the rabbit horn. But suddenly, the spider turned to the side in it's sleep, causing his attack to land on an area covered by the carapace and gettting deflected.
Alex almost fell over because he used all his strength when attacking the spider, and when it got deflected, the momentum he had couldn't be stop be stopped and he almost fell over.
"How unlucky do I need to be to have my attack deflected while the damn spider is sleep walking"
Alex stood up while cursing. But froze the very next moment because, there were eight red eyes staring at him