Erik quickly passed the breach and walked inside New Alexandria's forest. The young man was now accustomed to this view. However, he couldn't stop marveling at it.
The place was a stark contrast to the city, starting from the colors, which were predominantly green instead of the dull gray or black that characterized New Alexandria.
Then there was the atmosphere that seemed more pleasant than that in the urban area. It was something that Erik attributed mainly to its lack of artificial lighting.
Another reason was that the place had no trace whatever of the stench characteristic of most urban centers, the smell of soot and smoke, but also for the freshness and purity that characterized the air.
The feeling of natural beauty was intensified by the fact that everything about the forest, the trees themselves; their foliage; even those things such as fallen leaves or twigs lying on the ground was hardly present inside the city.
Everything became even more astonishing when Erik reached the edge of the woods and saw how far away they really lay on either side: beyond them stretched countless trees with leaves whose shades ranged all along the spectrum, white through yellow into red.
Here and there, some parts of the ground showed patches where the foliage had been stripped bare by the occasional vegetarian thaid.
Above the trees stood a cloudless sky, and in the middle of it, the sun shone brightly down upon everything like a god's benign benison.
It would be hard for anyone who had never seen such an expanse of woodland before to imagine it. All the people below the age of sixteen were only used to the crowded streets of cities and never set foot outside. Only the adults, who had to join the militaries mandatorily, knew what lay outside of the city. But Erik was an exception.
Though he was aware of the dangers lurking out there, as he met them firsthand in the form of dangerous thaids, he even killed several of them.
However, Erik thought this place wasn't the only dangerous one around. If one wanted to see danger, one could look no further than the overcrowded city itself.
There were plenty of thieves and murderers within its walls and little chance of escaping from them because the police force was far too inadequate. At least here, Erik had a chance.
The young man walked several meters inside the forest, searching for suitable thaid to kill and paying attention not to come across something he couldn't manage.
Erik was later lucky enough to stumble across weird creatures he had never seen in the flesh before. Though, since he downloaded information about the thaids inhabiting Frant, he knew what kind of beast they were, Criculs.
These were strange goats-like creatures of massive size. The Criculs' wool was short and thick, more like a bison's fur than a goat's. The color was brown or black, like a brand-new penny or a rich cup of coffee, only a little bit darker.
The most striking feature of the creatures was their horns. They were one or one and a half meters high, broad-bladed, thicker than the average human arm holding a sword, and curved towards their backs.
Their eyes were ruby red, shining as two pools in the shadows. To be honest, to Erik, they resembled some cows with goat heads, but they didn't move like those.
They jumped and moved with agility, so they had to be strong thaids. It was evident they had a strength they shouldn't have based on how agilely they moved their massive bodies.
There was something about them, though, which Erik knew but that he had the unlucky chance to smell for himself. The smell of urine, sweat, and musk hung in the air like a smelly armpit.
This smell came from the creatures; Erik knew it. It was so strong that he could smell the nasty odor from afar; it was powerful and almost made the young man throw up. Was that a defensive mechanism? He wasn't a thaid expert, so he didn't know if creatures usually did that.
Their race had a brain crystal power that allowed them to transform their horns into deadly metal weapons. Still, they also had a strong constitution that enabled them to adapt to any environment. Because of this, they were one of the most common creatures around the globe.
They fought in groups and tended to move as such. The beast was used to find new mates during each breeding period, and it was notoriously lazy.
Their smell still disgusted the young man, who kept observing them cautiously, especially since he knew the creatures were abnormally strong.
In addition to their seeming power, the beast was a herbivore. But Like many other thaids, they did chase you to kill. Plus, the species was highly aggressive.
The number of creatures was approximately twenty, and their size ranged from a meter to two meters tall beasts with ripped muscles and deadly horns.
<Well, at least not all the thaids are man-eating monsters. The only monstrous thing here is their smell,> Erik thought while staying at a distance.
These beasts were Leylarhads' natural prey and usually lived far in the east of the nation, where the wolf-like creatures usually resided.
Erik wondered why both prey and predators were so west of their territories. It was an unnatural occurrence.
He suspected that a pack of Leylarhad had to be nearby since the Criculs were around here. That explained why he saw the Leylarhad cub days before lurking around the breach. It was probably a young one attracted by the Cricul's nasty scent.
Erik had enough energy and a multitude of power to allow him to hunt at least one if he paid attention. However, it wasn't that simple since the first thing he had to do was to make it so that one of them left the herd, and that was easier said than done.
He had to do this while avoiding detection since the Criculs were very aggressive, and fighting against so many of them was akin to suicide.
The first thing Erik did, though, was to scan the creatures with his analysis to find the weakest of them.
<Analysis,> the young man thought multiple times, using the biological supercomputer's power to find the herd's weakest link. It didn't take a lot of time before he found it.
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- Name: Unnamed.
- Brain crystal power: Metallic Horns.
-Race: Cricul.
-Physical characteristics: Approximately 1.47 meters tall. Estimated weight 720 kilograms.
-Approximate level: 16
-Approximate Strength: 25
-Approximate Intelligence: 2
-Approximate Dexterity: 12
-Approximate Energy: 82
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<This is perfect,> Erik tought. The other Criculs were not only much stronger than this one, but also significantly larger, so he couldn't possibly kill them easily.
Erik had a plan in mind to use an insane amount of mana with Logan's power to weaken the creature.
Use Orson's to strengthen his bones to avoid crippling attacks and use the sharpening power to make a deadly weapon out of a branch.
There were more combinations that Erik was thinking about. For example, he could simply throw a bunch of seeds and make countless trees fall down the Cricul as he did against the Densoph. If that would be effective, he didn't know.
Still, the problem was that Erik needed fighting experience above anything else. He needed to learn how to face different creatures with different perks and abilities, so he decided to fight melee against the Cricul and tried to come up with different ways to use his powers.
This kind of tactic was only possible now that he had enough mana to sustain all these powers at once. He couldn't have possibly used it before.
So, Erik started to slowly channel mana. The first thing he did was to strengthen his bones enough to sustain the beast's attacks once or twice, hoping that moment would never come.
Then he picked up a branch from the ground and injected an amount of mana he deemed long enough enough to cut through the beast's tough skin in total safety and then started creating a mana dart imbued with a good chunk of his mana.
As the deadly weapon was ready, Erik aimed at the weakest thaid. After breathing in and out to calm his nerves, he threw the dart to the beast, hitting it on the back leg a couple of moments later.
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