Chapter 934: The Ripened Fruit (2/2)

On top of that, he took a month to recover from that. So, Krune's pace was slow. Well, to be more exact, he couldn't afford to repeat the same thing every time. After all, he only had one more Water Essence to rely upon. After that, if he still got injured, death would be his only option.

Krune unleashed his Neon Radiance, inspecting his armor to notice that the tear on the stomach portion had closed up at some point in time. ”Does this skin armor have the property to heal itself? Is the water beneficial to its recovery too?”

He then pulled it up once to see that it hadn't stuck to his skin, remaining as the skin armor, making him heave a sigh of relief. ”Whatever, this makes things easy since I don't have to make armors again and again.”

He then arrived at the chamber with the meat and other stuff he placed, situated next to the boulders behind which his berth lay at the top. As he was injured, he hadn't slept at the top. And now that he was better, Krune decided to make a comfy bed first so that his level of sleep would improve.

And while he was using the damaged skin of the Mutant Monster Gecko to make the berth, his line of sight fell on a couple of bone tree branches he had brought with him. They were inconspicuous, looking no different from the bones of the Monster Geckos he had hunted. Though as he looked closer, there was a mild difference in their color.

As he gazed at them for a long time, an idea lit up in his mind. ”Right, since time immemorial, traps have always been the best. As long as I can make the temperature of the traps look no different from the stone floor, I should be able to pull it off.”

Once he got the idea, Krune set out to work on it immediately, creating a couple of traps within a day. All he did was create a flat plate using one of the bones of the Mutated Monster Gecko and embedded pieces shaped into nails from the bone tree branch.

He made it as tiny as possible so that even if it pierced his foes, they would just assume it to be a sharp rock on the ground and wouldn't bother to look at it again. Only then would his trap work. After all, he had to use the terrain to his absolute advantage, targeting the exact things that the Monster Geckos would gloss over due to their habit.

While he was creating them, Krune left his cave, using his abilities to track the Monster Geckos that were on the prowl, collecting fruits from the bone trees. He managed to kill them using his usual tricks that relied on blinding them first before stabbing them dead.

He deprived their bodies of all blood using the bone trees, returning to his cave to stockpile the food. A month later, he had stored enough meat to last him for more than six months. Seeing that he had prepared enough, Krune began to lay down the traps.

It was just a long plate that he placed on a path and situated a couple of rocks on its ends to keep it affixed to the ground. After that, he poured some of the soil that he had ground over from the stone, using that to hide the temperature difference between the bone and the stone.

As he was the one who laid the traps, Krune remembered the places where they were positioned so that he wouldn't step on them by mistake.

And while scouting, as usual, he noticed that a troop of Monster Geckos was still waiting near the mutated bone tree. They had been stationed there all this time. And during one of his scouting missions, a fruit on it ripened, turning as huge as him. The remaining fruits instantly wilted as if they were just present to camouflage the ripened fruit.

The moment it finished forming, all the Monster Geckos in the area were jubilant, looking at each other with vigor. They dragged the massive fruit with them as the mutated bone tree began to immediately wilt, as if producing the fruit took everything it had.

As Krune followed them from afar, only making sounds that wouldn't be audible to their ears but would be enough for him to get a general gist of the situation, he soon came across what seemed to be a village.

He named it a village, but it was protected by a large column of bone. The wall seemed to be made with a different species of bone trees, one that neither bore fruit nor had any leaves, not to mention any branches. They grew to staggering heights, reaching as high as eight meters, spanning almost a meter thick.

They formed a rigid defensive structure. Using his Sonic Radar, Krune managed to get an estimate of the population of the Monster Geckos within, noticing the Monster Gecko King seated on a throne that was placed on one end of a massive ground—situated in the center of the village.

At present, two Monster Geckos, those with statures bigger than the rest, glared at one another, raging to battle. Upon seeing the group of Monster Geckos bring in the massive ripened fruit, numerous screeches resounded as the Monster Geckos seemed to be celebrating.