Chapter 507 (2/2)

Beating the shit out of these people would draw attention to him if nothing else. If they continued to push, however, Randidly intended to make them regret bothering him so insistently. It had been a while and several hundred Intelligence since he had last exposed someone to the Pollen of the Rafflesia, Randidly wondered if it would be too much at this point, and just kill someone at this level.

The greasy man nodded and then gave Randidly a few more details before leaving. He barely heard the man, just glad to be away. After he was sure no one was watching him, he looked up at the sky.

Almost dusk. Perfect. Randidly walked out of town, and into the growing darkness.

The soft grass felt natural on Randidly's feet. One thing he profoundly disliked about Zone 1 was the constant presence of roads. It made sense in an annoying way, as the infrastructure here hadn't been destroyed. Therefore it was easy for truck and cars to continue to operate, although the people here had been forced to get creative with their fuels. But the more Randidly continued to not wear shoes, the more he felt intimately connected to the world beneath him. Through his toes, he could feel the Earth breathing, albeit very slowly.

Now, there were a few annoying instances where he dropped molten metal on his toes, which made him curse viciously, but that was worth a Skill Level in Fire Resistance, so Randidly didn't feel particularly compelled to change his ways. But he had twisted and crushed that ingot into a useless bit of torn metal, out of principle.

Randidly came tonight out to the nearby forest in order to get in touch with his main goal for coming here: locating the Creature.

The factory complex was Southwest of the main Tier 2 city it was ostensibly a part of, and the forest was a bit further west of the factory complex. Far enough that a normal person without a vehicle would take about half a day to get there, but to Randidly he could sprint that in an almost irrelevant amount of time. Besides, the main rail line that ran East and West was a few miles North. This area was considered a dead zone, population wise. It was common to encounter monsters here, so the average person avoided it. Although they had the tools to deal with monsters at this level, who would take the risk to deal with them? They could get injured, or worse, killed.

The people of Zone 1 preferred to leave these sort of things to the military police.

Meanwhile, Randidly allowed Acri and Sulfur to happily clobber the monsters here, as they were between Level 5 and Level 20. Even Sulfur, who had no offensive weapons to speak of, could use his dense body to weigh down opponents and suffocate them with his carbon plates.

Randidly almost felt bad, releasing these two troublemakers among the monster populations here. But it wasn't really something he seriously worried about. The only directive he gave to his Soul Seeds were to refrain from killing too many, lest they attract the attention of either GHost or the Creature. Or both, if they were related.

This area was also free of the cameras and sensors that Ghost maintained inside the city limits, and the flyovers happened infrequently. Based on his observations, he had an 8-hour window from 11 PM to 7 AM with which to work. By that time, he would be back to the factory complex, slaving away in the heat, with the AI none the wiser. Ghost would know he left the area, of course. But there were smaller hamlets dotting the countryside. It wouldn't be unreasonable for Randidly to be one of the refugees staying in the camps scattered for the population of Zone 1 without any citizenship.

Not that there were rights given solely to those with citizenship, but the way society was structured here, your label was very clear.

It was dark around Randidly, and he stopped, looking at the nearby trees. Then he closed his eyes.

Plant Dominance began to hum softly inside of himself, as he spread his tendrils of will out to the plants in the area. Very soon, the whole forest was covered. Every plant seemed to be invigorated by Randidly's touch, growing at an almost visible pace as his Mana flowed through them.

To his surprise, his 'secret forest' wasn't as empty as he thought. There were multiple farms in the deepest parts of it, likely set up by people looking to escape the notice of the authorities. Hopefully, they realized that the ominous AI Ghost was able to spot the farms with its flyovers, but it was likely too small of an issue for the machine to intervene directly. They were safe, although Randidly was more curious as to why they chose to set up here than anything else. A quick, questioning pulse revealed that the plants were of a grade higher than he had seen anywhere but Donnyton.

”Interesting,” Randidly said aloud, his eyes still closed. Perhaps at some point, he would need to go introduce himself to his new neighbors. There seemed to be about two dozen of them, but they stayed near their corner of the forest.

The other surprise guest was a Tier II Raid Boss, a Black Faced Monkey, which seemed to detect the fluctuations of Randidly's Skills. The monster trembled, gathering its young into the cave that was their main base. This gave Randidly some pause. Obviously, they wouldn't be a threat to him, but they would be something that would catch the attention of the military, should they become known. That might lead to an investigation, which would be unfortunate.

It was too bad he hadn't brought Nathan along with him here, he would be interesting to see how the kid's Class would interact with monsters. He made a mental note to send a message to Dinesh to have them look into it.