Approximately ninety minutes later, reclined on his bed again on a full stomach, Euri logged into the game and checked on his first familiar.
[ Scout Dog ]
[ Rank- 0 lifeform ]
[ Physique: 0.7 ]
[ Special Attribute: Speed (1) ]
[ Cultivate/Extract ]
The only change after the cultivation session was the numeric marker beside the special attribute. Euri couldn't help but feel disappointed a little.
"I waited a whole night for this? It just shows that I've let the dog cultivate for a single session? How am I supposed to determine the effects of cultivation?"
For a moment, he was tempted to satisfy his prior curiosity about the upgrading process of the well of vitality gas. He could still have the dog killed and sacrifice its core...
"No, no, no, since I've already invested time and resource into this familiar, there is no need to get rid of it before testing out its full potential. It's not as if anything's going out of my own pocket except a few minutes of the day."
The dog in the game had no idea that its owner's gambling tendencies had just averted a big danger for it. It was pacing around the grove in a curious gait, checking the grassy ground, the trees, the well... Wait, was it taking a piss on the well?
Amazed, Euri watched the animated dog take a leak for a couple of seconds before Priestess Sol-wa jumped out of the well and bonked it with a stick; her cute face warped in anger.
A few text bubbles rapidly flickered through the screen, where phrases like 'idiot poop-eaters', 'evil creature', and 'no dogs under heaven, no dogs above earth', were visible.
"This interaction is so fun and detailed! They even included animations for it! The alien game development industry must be nuts!"
In a good mood, Euri made his routine checkup on every icon in the game, rereading every data window before deciding on his next course of action.
"Let's open the hunting season again!"
The moment he moved one of the trees near the well, the familiar warning popped up.
[ This tree is a part of the sacred ground's protective formation. Removing it from its original position will break the formation and allow evil creatures to invade and rob the sacred ground's resources! Beware! ]
After he ignored the warning and placed the tree several units away, Sol-Wa stopped bonking the dog and began preparing the sacred ground for the ensuing hunt. All the trees she touched turned red, and tendrils of green gas were siphoned away by those trees in a frenzy.
"Maybe the consumption speed of these trees forces the well to produce vitality gas beyond its capacity... That could explain why it ends up getting temporarily depleted after a while. Powered up by the gas, the trees, or the tentacles under the ground, hunts the greedy creatures that try to invade the grove for a chance to cultivate!"
Euri felt like he had figured out the game's mechanism accurately. Seeing the [ Hunting Mode ] initiation message blocking the view of the grove again, heavily blurring the view of the grove, he could only wait for the hunt to end.
The wait wasn't long. About twenty minutes passed before the popup disappeared.
[ Invasion attempts: 2 ]
[ Success:Failure: 0:2 ]
[ Core depleted. Hunting mode has been closed ]
"The same as the previous session? Or is it something else? Maybe the Sacred Ground can only defend itself twice before the vitality gas well gets depleted..."
This theory could be confirmed after a few more attempts at hunting beasts. So Euri wasn't in a hurry to jump to a conclusion yet.
After checking the state of the grove, he was surprised. He had assumed that the Scout Dog would be another layer of defense for the sacred ground. But it was actually cowering behind a tree with its tail tucked, holding two paws over its head in despair. And the creatures that had terrified it like this were...
A couple of black rats one-third of its size.
Speechless, Euri once again considered extracting the dog's beast core for the benefit of the vitality well. Sol-wa's slogan, 'No dogs under heaven, no dogs above earth', suddenly seemed reasonable.
Shifting his focus back to the rats that had been tied up by the tentacles coming out of the soil, he went through their data window.
[ Scavenger Rat ]
[ Rank-0 Lifeform ]
[ Physique: 0.25 ]
[ Special Attribute: Hyperosmia ]
[ Brawler Rat ]
[ Rank-0 Lifeform ]
[ Physique: 0.3 ]
[ Special Attribute: Combat Instinct ]
"...What the hell is this?"
The first rat's stats could still be considered normal. Euri had read before that many rat species had a powerful sense of smell. But since this rat had a special attribute of the same category, its sense of smell was probably even stronger than most rats of its species.
Nevertheless, what was up with the second rat? A brawler? Combat instinct as its special attribute? If he let it cultivate, what might it transform into?
In his mind, a ridiculous scene manifested. A six-foot-tall humanoid rat wearing boxing gloves over its front paws, flexing its biceps and shoulder joint as it oiled itself up for a mixed martial arts tournament...
Good heavens, he needed to see this for himself! He needed to nurture this rat!
That meant if he wanted to test the beast core sacrifice mechanism in the game, he could only sacrifice the first rat. But when he clicked on the [ Extract ] option on its data window, Sol-Wa popped into the screen and grabbed the loading circle, trying to stop it from spinning.
[ Stop, you curious Administrator! This is the only beast in this sacred ground right now that can help us identify secondary resources! It is not a wise decision to let it die! ]
"Oh?" Euri's eyes lit up. "There are secondary resources as well? Awesome! It looks like I've stumbled upon an expansion route! Now how do I develop it?"
Sol-Wa could obviously not hear what he was saying. Anxious, she snatched the rat up from the tantacles and disappeared inside the dense trees and shrubbery encircling the well. Unable to see her figure, Euri tapped furiously on those areas, zooming in, attempting to displace them like the trees closest to the well, but nothing worked.
Scanning the whole area of the grove, Euri did some mental math to calculate how large it might be in real life. If the size of the well and the clearly visible trees were ordinary, then the total 'active' area of the sacred ground was no more than 4000 square meters, barely the size of a sports' field.
What other resources could she find here by relying on the frog? Euri had no idea, but he had a lot of time in his hand to wait patiently and watch it unfold.