Hunting 2

Soon, the group came to an area where they spotted monsters. It was a group of gutsy rabbits, the ones that Alex was interested in. The rabbits were quietly grazing and munching on grass, as the group carefully creeped upon them by the hill.

"Would you like to try hunting them?" The chief guide of the group, a seasoned soldier, asked in an almost whisper as he signaled with his fingers.

The youth who were being carried were optimistically in favor of the plan. Soon, under the guidance of two soldiers, four of them rushed towards the rabbits with the wind forming around them. Like a lot of the children who grew up in Blue Palm Settlement, they were training in the wind attribute skills and cultivation art.

Along the way Alex had chatted a bit with them and learnt that they were hunting Gusty Rabbits primarily for the Wind Attribute Pearl which was an ultra rare drop. Alex seemed to be the only one in the group who was looking for the Accuracy Eye skill pearl, and his strength was also the lowest in the group, while he was the oldest.

Alex carefully took out the Magnolia Purple he rented and like a seasoned veteran positioned himself and took aim at one of the moving rabbits that had hopped away on observing the rushing gusts of people approaching with swords and other blade weapons.

The chief of the group saw Alex's stable gait and his eyes immediately lit up. His first impression was that Alex had spent a long time perfecting his fundamentals and training non monster skills well. Who would tell him.that Alex had only spent a night watching basic tutorial videos.

Alex carefully observed the rabbit and waited until it settled, and then pressed the trigger. There was not a hint of noise, other than a small click of human finger clamping down on the trigger. The recoil was almost imperceptible and the hands were extraordinarily stable. The chief guide nodded when he saw that.

The technology of the future Earth was quite advanced. Guns made no sounds at all. They were extremely lethal weapons, especially when fitted with origin bullets, designed to penetrate and kill monsters. Origin bullets were bullets that had been tempered with all kinds of attribute skills and prepared before hand.

Wind attribute beasts were weak to earth attribute and so Alex had purchased bullets with that attribute.

Without a sound, the bullet blasted away towards the ignorant rabbit, only to find at the last moment, the rabbit sensed the approaching doom and dodged by crouching. Unfortunately, it crouched in the wrong direction, for bullets tend to fall downwards due to gravity, and the bullet ended up striking the rabbit in the head, instantly killing it.

Alex did not move, instead he turned towards another rabbit that was trying to rapidly rush away and shot again. The shot however, missed because the rabbit had already rushed too far away. Alex shrugged. The timid rabbits had already rushed off while the ones who had been surrounded by the other youth could only desperately dodge.

Alex walked to the rabbit he killed and dug tthrough the carcass to find a small pearl. At the outset, a pearl can't be identified because they all look the same. Usually a pearl has to be appraised - the pearl would be put into a machine that would sense the energy within and then describe what it contained based on the database. Those skills that weren't in the data base could unfortunately not be recognized by these machines, and with every new monster field, there would be rise of 'ability testers'. These would consume their skill slot to test the characteristics of the ability. However, not anyone could become an ability tester, an enormous amount of knowledge.and experimental capability was required. This career was only feasible because of the invention of the nullifier potion by a potion expert which could forcefully remove a skill of choice at the cost of a temporary injury.

However, Alex did not have to go through such a roundabout process. He could directly inspect the pearl using his system.

[Speed Attribute +5]

Alex shook his head. From statistical analysis of drops, pearls dropped only 30% of the time with Gusty Rabbit. Of those, only 60% were usually speed attribute pearl, 30% wind attribute pearl and only 10% were Accuracy Eye pearls. With his bad luck attractor effect, Alex realized that the specific pearl he wanted would probably be even less likely to spawn and had already steeled his heart for the eventuality.

As for how attribute pearls functioned, it was pretty bizarre as well. Every person had a base attribute state based on their cultivation technique and grade, on top of that they could get extra attributes from pearls, but at the same time the extra attributes weren't cumulative. On swallowing speed + 6, one would get + 6 speed, but on solving another one with speed + 6 or lower would have no effect. Only consuming a speed + 7 or higher would cause the extra attribute increase from 6 to 7 and not 13. Attribute pearls from higher grade monsters would ofcourse have higher attributes, but an ordinary grade warrior couldn't absorb a pearl from an uncommon grade warrior and so on.

Alex thus did not absorb the speed attribute pearl, because if he found one with a higher attribute he could simply absorb that directly and sell the rest.

After the hunt ended, Alex and company began to proceed further to find a new group to hunt. After a few hours, and over eight successive hunts,the group returned to base. Alex had killed around a dozen rabbits and found only four pearls. Three were speed attribute pearls and one was a wind attribute pearl.

Alex sold all pearls except one at the market, a speed +9 pearl, which was the highest possible attribute stat obtainable from the pearl dropped by an ordinary monster. Along with the pearls, he also sold the carcasses to the food factory. Monster meats were good food products, Gusty Rabbit, being a wind attribute beast would be helpful to stimulate wind attribute cultivation.

After returning the rented gear, Alex realized that from selling and renting he made almost pennies. Having not paid any money for being carried, he saved some costs or his expedition would have been loss making. He decided to go it alone from.next time around.