The Avarice System - 22 The Marchlands.
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22 The Marchlands.

'I want to explore marshlands.' Inside of his s.p.a.ce was a small pile of snake carca.s.ses. The boy started pondering, what effects would new traits on his body.

[If host plunders and absorb some traits, unpredictable changes to the body might happen. For example, adding trait Strong fangs or Strong tusks will make a host grow fangs or tusks. Absorbing trait venom gland would make host develop venom glands inside of his body.]

'What about things like string jump?'

[The skills are a different thing. Getting skill tusk attack would be useless until the host grows tusks. The bite will work but it will be ridiculous. String jump is actually possible with a combination of trait Flexible body.]

'That's good to know. How about bloodlines? Can I plunder them too?'

[Current level of plunder doesn't allow plundering bloodlines.]

'How do I level up Plunder? There are no proficiency points.'

[Through quests or with skill points.]

'Let's use one point on this then.'

[Plunder lv.2]

[Allows plunder up to two...]

'I can plunder two traits or skills or talents. Let's put one more point'

[Plunder lv.3]

[Allows plunder up to 4 traits/skills/talents. It's possible to plunder the bloodline.]

Let's plunder from these snakes first.

[Flexible body.]

[Cost: 200 WE]

[Venom immunity(Dark-Green Viper)]

[Cost: 50 WE]

[Poison Digestion]

[Cost: 500 WE]

[Skill: Bite]

[Cost: 20]

'The rest of the traits of these snakes will make me look...' Growing pair of fangs? Getting strange camouflage on the skin? These things were out of option for Aron.

He planned to work with humans and looking like weird human-snake hybrid was out of the option.

The most useful was actually the poison digestion, snakes did consume poisonous creatures like frogs or snails. They weren't immune for poisons, yet they could digest it before it took effect on them.

'I can be immune to the venom of snakes and with plunder, breeding snakes wouldn't be hard.'

A next day, he left at dawn to explore marshlands. There were many different mushrooms and other marsh plants.

'I didn't want to breed weird animals, yet I cannot do it anymore.' He could make fried exotic meals from them as ingredients. Another thing was venom and many internal organs were useful in medicine.

'I might slowly recreate modern medicine here.'

He found 3 different kinds of snakes, with dark-green viper.

[Gra.s.s Snake]

[Traits: a.n.a.l Glands, Flexible body, Weak willed]

[Skills: Pretend Dead!, Stinky Shot, Hiding, Bite]

'So not only skunks use the smelly attack to scare off the predators.'

The smell wasn't so bad, the boy just caught some specimen of this snake and put them small sack and threw into s.p.a.ce. The most dangerous was an actually weird cobra, that he found. It wasn't spitting cobra, yet it had strong venom and most surprising was it was super agile.

[Cishe Cobra ♀]

[Stats: STR 0.7 AGI 3.6 END 1.4]

[Traits: Agile, Venom Glands, Flexible, Strong fangs, Venom immunity(Cishe Cobra),...]

[Skills: Bite, Venom Injection...]

Catching this Cobra wasn't an easy task, he did it with a trick. He watched it, from far and waited for the right moment. Cobra started to hunt and found the prey. It was a small mouse, with fast movement it injected the venom and swallowed it whole.

Aron attacked it, at this moment. The sneak attack while unprepared snake couldn't dodge with its high speed.

'I got you!' He plundered the Agile and Venom immunity. The most problematic was these changes wouldn't happen to his body instantly. He decided to focus on different things as plants and mushrooms.

After adjustments, he caught the cobra and some frogs. It was time to leave the marchlands for now. He didn't explore it completely but many things would stop him. Walking through the unstable ground wasn't easy. Most of his body was dirty and wet.

'Let's head back to the Clay Village for now.'

Before he headed to the village, he entered the s.p.a.ce and inserted new specimen into the ranch.

[New animals added to the database.]

In the Ranch, appeared new terrariums for frogs and snakes.

[Condition met. Ranch level up.]

[New function unlocked. Controlled Breeding.]

'So s.p.a.ce was restricting the animal's instincts to mate. I wonder how more is this ent.i.ty capable'

He left the s.p.a.ce while wondering about the new obtained function.

'I need to get more animals.' The concept was easy, however, the number of species around was limited.

'Let's start with birds. There are so many kinds of them.' This was the first idea and after pondering for a moment.

'I should hunt at night and catch some night hunting specimens.'

He came back to Clay village and came back to Alex to get some spare clothes, however, Alex wasn't inside his hut.

'Where is he? Not home?' The hut of Alex was a normal hut, it wasn't masonry.

'Let's search for his workshop!'

There weren't many people in this village. Most of them were lying in beds, some people are taking care of them. It's problematic, most of these people won't start working in the next days.

Alex was working, he could stop thinking about all the problems inside this village.

"h.e.l.lo!" Greeted him, Aron. Alex was surprised by the appearance of the kid.

His entire body was covered by mud and clay from marshlands.

"Did you swim in the swamp or what?" In Alex's eyes, Aron was a weird existence. Leave him for a moment and weird things will start to happen.

"Can you borrow me some spare clothes?" The boy asked the bulky man.

"There are set of working clothes of my a.s.sistant inside this chest. He is sick anyway."

'I could learn masonry from him.'

"Can I work with you? I want to learn a thing or two about masonry. I can get something in exchange for your lessons."

"It's ok. I needed an a.s.sistant anyway. Don't need to pay me back or anything. You helped my people.."

They worked for some time, and masonry wasn't hard. It required strength to carry materials and use a hammer to chip the stone.

[Masonry skill generated. Masonry lv.0(1/500)]

[Mason profession unlocked.]

[Mason lv.0 (1/1000)]

[Boost: +0.1 STR/END]

His strength was already nearing 3 and getting another boost will make stronger. Professions gave him, precious points and increased his stats. Another thing was a big amount of knowledge related to a certain field.