Tracking

STATS

Strength: 51 → 65

Agility: 52.8 → 69.8

Endurance: 56.4 → 62.4

Vitality: 80.8 → 85.8

Perception: 51.2 → 59.2

Allocatable Stat Points: 15

Ferocity: 15% (stable)

(A/N: The protrayed increase is without his gauntlets.)

Mike liked his lips, reminiscing about the taste of the felines as he looked at his stats.

Despite the large number of creatures he'd eaten, the boost he got wasn't that huge, though, it was still a lot since that was no different from leveling several times.

Anyway, Mike was pretty sure the reason he didn't inflate his stats to over a hundred in one go was due to diminishing returns. With each feline he ate, the number of stats he got reduced significantly.

At first, Mike thought it was like that as a balancing mechanic, but then he recalled the system's words concerning how each stat point provided more overall power at a higher level compared to lower levels to ensure their effectiveness.

At first, Mike thought the stats scaling only applied to when he leveled up, that is, he could keep getting stats that provided the same boost as long as he stayed within a level, but when he thought about it deeply, he realized that wasn't quite right.

Stats still scaled as he leveled, but it also happened even if he didn't level up, just at a lower pace, meaning the gap between each stat wouldn't be huge, but it was still there, which is where the diminishing returns part came into play.

It made no sense to get 10 stats for eating something, and getting another 10 stats for eating that exact same thing, but the latter increase is better overall than the former.

This included ingesting the cores as well.

Also, compared to the Atrixa, these creatures were truly too weak. Granted, Mike was a lot stronger now compared to back then. But still, the Atrixa made him struggle. These guys? He was just having fun with them. And since the strength of a creature determined how many stats they gave, it wasn't surprising that their quantity didn't make up for the lack of quality.

That's the theory he came up with, and his instincts let him know that he was right.

Still, all in all, he was satisfied, and he was pretty sure he would encounter stronger beasts worth his time as he continued to progress through the place.

With a sigh, he tapped his watch and opened the map everyone had received.

It was dotted with red, yellow, and green markers, and sadly, there weren't any close to him.

But that was fine.

There was a tiny white dot which indicated his position, and he seemed to have landed on the left side of the map. He wanted to say not too far away from the center, but there were more than a few mountains between himself and the center, so he was still pretty far.

There was also a pretty big red dot there, and he was tempted to go and check it out, but he'd already wasted enough time.

Taking out Theresa's scarf, he brought it to his nose and took a deep breath.

Immediately, his nose was filled with the smell of her. The smell was both familiar and comforting.

Mike took another sniff.

She smelled like some sort of wood, Mike didn't know the name, but it was pine wood. He also smelled something reminiscent of incense and earth.

Even though he wasn't exactly tense, the familiar scent started to relax him, and he almost forgot what he was doing as he nearly sat down right there to continuously sniff the scarf.

However, he quickly caught himself. Now wasn't the time to be lost in her scent, no matter how addictive it was.

Once he was sure he had ingrained her scent into her mind he sighed and tied the scarf around his neck, both so that it wouldn't fall and so that he could quickly smell it again in case he started to forget the scent.

... It had nothing to do with wanting to sniff as he ran.

'Wait, why am I trying to act like I don't like it? The heck?' Mike rolled his eyes at his own shyness and sniffed the scarf again, as though proving a point to to the universe, then he lifted his nose and sniffed the air.

If an outsider were to observe, they'd be pretty weirded out to see a white haired boy just walking around and sniffing the air. But if they were to observe, Mike would probably notice them staring, and he most likely wouldn't care.

'Hm, this is a bit harder than I thought.' Mike's brows furrowed slightly.

The number of smells in this place was... a lot.

It wasn't the same as the academy where everything was pretty organized.

Different creatures with different scents were either moving, dying, or expelling waste. The number of different plants was also dizzying to think about, and all in all, the number of smells was overwhelming, and if Mike hadn't figured out how to drown out unnecessary things with his senses, he'd probably be more overwhelmed than when he appeared on the space station some time ago.

Trying to pick out a single scent that was probably still extremely faint in this mass of tangled smells was difficult. However, Mike simply took it as a challenge.

He smelled the scarf again and concentrated.

Using Aura Modulation, he activated his aura at a low output, then he made sure to enhance his nose gradually.

When he did, he sniffed the scarf again, and this time, the smell was extremely potent to the point of almost being overwhelming. However, he fought the urge to wince as he focused all his attention on that scent and ignored everything else.

Mike kept sniffing while gradually increasing the output of his aura. Even as the smell became so overwhelming that tears started to leak from his closed eyes, he didn't stop until the only thing that filled his mind was that powerful and overwhelming scent.

He didn't even realize when he started walking, it was like his body was moving on its own.

His nose burned, and were it not for his constitution, there would be a pretty gross amount of snot leaking from his nostrils.

'Find it,' He told himself. 'Isolate the smell and locate the source.' His determination was impeccable.

However, this was a situation where Mike's ignorance of a lot of things made things harder than they should have been.

You see, Mike didn't quite understand that smells needed to be diffused through the air to travel around, and considering that the different pods had landed less than thirty minutes ago in such a large area, it was extremely unlikely that Theresa's scent would have been carried around fast enough for him to properly track her.

Mike did not know this. All he knew was that normally, he could tell when Theresa was near his since her smell would usually arrive before she did, and to him, it was simply a matter of expanding the scope of this specific skill, but the issues with that were obvious.

So did that mean that Mike was willingly torturing his poor nose when there were no gains to be made?

'Knowing the scent isn't enough. Visualize her,' Mike's mind was wholly focused on the task. 'No, I need to do more than that.' Without thinking, he gave some of the reins to his instincts, which happily continued where his rationality left off.

Immediately, his aura started to diffuse at a rate far faster than usual. However, instead of simply dissipating into energy, it actually lingered and did something astounding.

'Find her.' It pulled.

The way he started releasing his aura was similar to the small particles that made up one's smell.

It diffused through the air far faster than what normal smells were capable of, and the bits of aura refused to interact with any other smell, as though they were looking for something specific.

By ingraining Theresa's scent into his memory, his aura had also begun to recognize it, and now, unconsciously, his aura diffused like a smell of its own to find and pull Theresa's scent towards him.

No, not just that. His aura had the 'primal' tag after all. It didn't just avoid other scents to find Theresa's, it actively suppressed the others so that it could find its target better.

It had no real combat applications, and in truth, the energy expenditure was immense. While it wasn't as much as him using his aura at maximum output, from an objective point of view, it was simply a waste.

But Mike did not know this, and he didn't care either

He wasn't sure how long he kept at it, but all of a sudden, he 'saw' it.

His eyes were still closed, and yet, in his mind's eye, he could see a... trail.

It was faint, but it was there, and it headed in a specific direction.

Towards Theresa.

[Ding. Through the Host's efforts, he has successfully created a new skill.]

[Primal Tracking...]

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