Zectas Volume I: Enigmatic Village of Nanahuatl by John Nest Page B

attack now.
     
     
Smoke gathered some more of the needed ingredients for the medicinal soup before venturing back into 'Mandragora Forest' this time he was prepared for the poison attack.
     
     
Keeping track of the time when the effects of the medicinal stew would wear out was the top most priority. He made every effort not to be placed in a situation where in he would be surrounded by poison slimes like before.
     
     
Even though he was not surrounded the slimes do sometimes manage to make a successful attack causing him to be poisoned.
     
     
He decided on staying within the first layer of the forest before proceeding further in. He wanted to make sure that his HP Regen would be high enough to face any kind of monsters in the inner layers.
     
     
This was the hunting pattern that Smoke decided to use. He would fight with the poison slimes for about 20 minutes find a safe corner to make his medicinal soup and continue fighting the poison slimes after wards. Repeating this process for 10 hours until his ingredients would start to run out and then head for the exit of the forest. Hunt and gather for the ingredients for 2 hours before heading back into the forest once again.
     
     
Smoke did this for 3 days. He did notice that the breaks for needing to make the stew was longer now. Instead of 20 minutes it was now 30 minutes. This also meant that he no longer needed to hunt more ingredients.
     
     
On the fourth day he finally reached his goal of receiving +1 HP Regen even when he is poisoned. As his cooking ability increased so did the bonus to the vitality stat. It was really small at +1 vitality per level increase but that is still 1 point more than nothing.
     
     
Smoke finally felt confident to go further inside the forest. Further inside he noticed that there were almost no slimes. He managed not to get poisoned as he had already made a detailed map of safe places to pass through inside the first layer of Mandragora Forest.
     
     
On the second layer there were only the colorful gigantic flowers. He looked around everywhere and tried to sense with 'Cunning of the Dire Fox' for enemies but he couldn't feel any. His gut instinct was telling him otherwise. It told him that there was something here.
     
     
He tried to continue towards the third layer towards the center. When suddenly he felt a sharp pain coming from his back. It was a deep slashed wound.
     
     
- Attacked by orchid mantis. BACK STABBED. You've taken damage. Health -525
     
     
What was that. He turned around but couldn't see anything all he could see were the flowers.
     
     
- Attacked by orchid mantis. BACK STABBED. You've taken damage. Health -532
     
     
Smoke instinctively went to a big tree and had his back covered by the tree. The flowers were slowly moving back and forth as if dancing.
     
     
He still wasn't picking up any enemies with the 'Cunning form the Dire Fox' but he could somehow see a figure starting to form from the dancing flowers.
     
     
There it was a Giant Orchid Mantis. It stood at about 5 feet tall with long scythes for front legs. From what he could tell with his eyes there were at least 30 of them.
     
     
He came to the conclusion that the orchid mantis was somehow suppressing its blood lust causing them not to be registered as enemies.
     
     
It almost seemed like a master stealth ability. If those orchid mantis didn't move back and forth so much he would never be able to distinguish them.
     
     
Smoke was saved by his medicinal stew once more. With the decent HP Regen he managed to recover most of his lost HP.
     
     
He was doing mental battle simulations on how to face the orchid mantis. He was sure that if he could get one he could make a better plan on how to deal with the rest.
     
     
He started running towards one of the orchid mantis and got a successful hit in.
     
     
+ Attack hit orchid mantis. Damage 238.
     
+ Attack hit orchid mantis. CRITICAL HIT. Damage 595.
     
+ Attack miss orchid mantis. Damage