The Exiled First-born of the Noble House. Rising to the Top With the Worthless Skill [Null Poison] - Chapter 226

Search for a New Base

After retreating from the swamp area, by the time I came back to my base, it was already late night.

I wanted to just fall asleep asap but I forced my body to move and fully wash myself, head to toe before finally going to sleep ahead of tomorrow.

To be honest, the East area turned out to be a far more dangerous place than I originally expected.

Rather than a normal swamp, it was more like a submerged forest, and further in, there was enough water that it could be a full-fledged river from what I could tell.

The entrance was indeed a swamp but the rest was beyond anything Henjak had told me, but then again, the fact that the amount of water increased as we went on was information that neither of us could have known without going through the swamp, which was full of dangerous creatures.

Of course there was also the possibility that the info was simply old and the water level had risen in the meantime, so I couldn’t blame Henjak for anything here.

But beyond that submerged forest lies the cave that has me the most curious in all of this great forest still.

I don’t even know if this cave even actually exists or not, and if it did there was even a chance that it was fully submerged now but……….

If there was even a small chance that the Fruit of skill exists there, I have to go and check it out.

I can’t think of a way to investigate that area but, I’ll get some suggestions from Ralf and Esta as well before coming to a conclusion.

Regardless, with the exploration of the East area now postponed till later, I was going to head to the West Area today and start exploring there.

The East was dangerous, and the North area was apparently Demonoid or man-eater territory, which means, the only comparatively safe area to explore was the South area and West area.

While I can’t say I’ve completely explored the entirety of the South Area, I did want to expand the scope of activities and so I chose to head to the West area.

And of course, the first thing on the order of things was to find a new base in the west area.

The great forest of Roza was extremely massive so just travelling from one place to another took a lot of time.

Even yesterday, I only explored the East area proper for just 2 hours, meanwhile the travel time to and fro took almost 10 hours instead.

If I had somehow gotten gravely injured in that swamp, I would have never been able to return back to my base, which would mean spending the night in the darkness of the forest.

When monsters are constantly crawling about and vision is low, and you’re supposedly injured on top.

There is always the risk of falling into such a situation, and only death awaits you in a case like that.

For the time being, I wanted to make a base in all 4 directions of the South area in and of itself, and during today’s exploration I was hoping to build a base in the west region of the South Area.

With that decided, I packed all sorts of things like ropes and strings etc, whatever that might come in handy for building a base, and began walking towards the west.

Reaching an area even further beyond my usual Eggmash harvesting place, I finally entered the West region of the South area.

I wanted to build a good base here but, I needed to find an area that would at least give me a good foundation to work on.

The Orc nest wasn’t a very good choice in the end, so I tried looking for a place that was more similar to my base that I had in Peica forest.

A place where I can stay protected from wind and rain, but one that also didn’t stand out too much in the surroundings.

While being cautious of monsters, I strained my eyes to find a suitable place when——a nice looking cave entered my view.

I couldn’t sense any monsters inside, so as long as there wasn’t anything weird inside I’d make that place my 2nd base.

With all my detection skills, I also activated [Crimson Eyes].

Yesterday, when I was coming back from the East area and was walking through the forest at night, I accidentally figured it out but. [Crimson Eyes] allowed me to see properly even in dark areas.

Using in a well lit area just turned my vision red but, in a dark place like this cave, it made things a lot more easier to see and overall, it turned out to be a very useful skill.

But, like I mentioned last time, the stamina cost of this skill was harsh, so I had to use it very cautiously, only when desperately needed, which was a minus.

——Well, putting my new discoveries aside, I quickly moved to check the interior of the cave.

I walked through the cave easily thanks to the skill allowing me to see clearly, and………I found a big black ball like thing rolling around in the centre of the cave.

I was walking through the cave with ease because my skills didn’t sense any life presence but, this black clump was definitely a monster, and a big one no less.

Looking closely, I could see ten long but thin legs coming out of this clump, and I finally realized that it was actually a giant centipede monster.

It had laid a huge amount of eggs and it had rolled up around them to protect the eggs, which was why it seemed like a ball from afar.

The reason why I didn’t sense its presence was I assume because it was basically in a dormant state to save as much energy as possible, but it must have sensed me after I stepped into the cave as suddenly, I could sense the giant centipede’s life presence slowly increase.

Individually moving each of its big legs, the giant centipede began to move around to fight and protect its eggs.

I wasn’t really interested in fighting this giant centipede just to use this cave as my base but, I doubt it’ll let me quietly go back either………

So if I have to fight, might as well settle for this place as my base then.

Back in my youth, I used to hate bugs and even now, just looking at it still made my skin crawl a bit but, I had mostly conquered that irrational during my stay in Peixa forest.

I had to eat insects in the cave for nourishment after all, not that it means I have any interest in eating this giant centipede or its eggs but, I won’t have issues fighting it either.

I drew my steel sword and aimed it towards the giant centipede that seemed ready to lunge at me at any moment.

Since it was lying completely dormant until just now, it was bit annoying that I couldn’t sense ad tell what the full extent of its strength was but, I should be able to defeat it if I fight at full strength regardless.

Let me fire myself up, and then hunt this giant centipede, shall we?