Chapter 120: Stealth Materials

But... it was useless!

Before the absolute masters of scent, such clumsy tricks by the Snow Alien Scorpion were completely ineffective. As long as you had a scent and as long as you moved, Little Gray and Little White could sniff you out!

"Whoosh!"

The moment the Snow Alien Scorpion poked its head out, its fate was sealed.

"Splat!"

The fire-elemental psionic arrow easily pierced into the Snow Alien Scorpion's body, pinning it to the snowy ground. The creature struggled violently, its green blood splattering like ink on a landscape painting.

Ye Da noticed something...

The outer shell of the Snow Alien Scorpion was cracking open, as if something were shedding its skin to emerge!

"This is..."

The moment a green, boneless, octopus-like creature crawled out from inside the scorpion, Ye Da almost vomited in disgust. It wasn't that the monster looked particularly twisted or sanity-shattering; it was the mere thought of being mounted and infested by this thing...

Ugh!

This was truly unbearable!

"Woof!"

"Woof, woof!"

Seeing this scene, the two wolf pups immediately prepared to pounce and bite, but Ye Da grabbed them by the scruffs of their necks. "Don't go over there!"

"Awoo..."

Little White let out a whimper of grievance.

Ye Da tapped its head. "Can't you see how disgusting this thing is? If you go over there and get infested by it, I absolutely won't want you anymore! Understand?"

"Woof..." Little White responded.

Just as Ye Da prepared to fire another psionic arrow, he and the two wolves witnessed a bizarre sight.

The green octopus-like monster had just crawled out of the transparent shell of the Snow Alien Scorpion when it began to twist and struggle in place. Suddenly, it flipped over like a poisoned cockroach, exposing its lower abdomen.

Ye Da then noticed that, like an octopus, it had a pentagonal opening in the center of its abdomen—likely its feeding port, waste port, or perhaps even a three-in-one waste, feeding, and reproductive orifice!

At this moment, large amounts of white smoke began to pour out of the monster's N-in-one opening, as if something were burning inside it!

The monster twisted even more violently, letting out a sharp, high-pitched "chirp" that sounded like a bug. As the white smoke intensified...

"Boom!"

A wisp of red flame erupted from the opening in the creature's abdomen, rapidly growing from a small flicker into a raging torrent of fire!

In just a moment, the terrifying Snow Alien Scorpion was burned into a heap of ashes, ultimately leaving behind two orbs of light.

Ye Da finally breathed a sigh of relief. This thing was truly dangerous!

However, Ye Da was puzzled: why did monster-type creatures drop rewards when burned to death, while those Giant Phagocytic Trap Flowers did not? It was truly perplexing!

[Snow Alien Scorpion: Black Iron Tier 3]
[Skills: Camouflage, Intrusion, Reproduction]
[Unlocked]

"Huh?!"

Following the death of the Snow Alien Scorpion, an unlocked index card suddenly appeared before Ye Da's eyes!

Was this a new ability of the Beast Tamer? Could he see the unlocked index cards at any time? But... he was already a Beast Tamer; did unlocking these cards have any special significance?

Ye Da immediately pulled out his Monster Index and took a look!

[Monster Index: Collect thirty types of monster entries to upgrade to an Intermediate Beast Tamer and gain the ability to summon from the index!]

Summon from the index?

Seeing this, Ye Da's eyes lit up! This was a great skill! If nothing else, if he could summon that Snow Alien Scorpion, it would be perfect for ambushing people. Otherwise... summoning a Gray Rock Spider and riding it around would be the height of style! These two points alone were enough to make Ye Da look forward to it.

It seemed... he would have to find more monsters to kill!

Ye Da looked at the Monster Index in his hand, a slight smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

[Snow Alien Scorpion Shell +1]
[Beast Core +1]

Seeing these two rewards, Ye Da immediately absorbed the Beast Core. As a warm current flowed from his palm into his body, he felt himself grow stronger, and the thickness of his Stone Skin increased slightly.

However, the door in his left leg showed no signs of opening. It seemed... the energy was insufficient, and the impact wasn't strong enough. It was like a small mound of dirt in a stream; if the water flow wasn't strong enough, the mound couldn't be washed away. But if the stream suddenly surged, not only the mound but even the riverbed would be scoured away.

The energy within these Beast Cores was the water, and the door in his left leg was the mound. If the energy wasn't great enough, the flow couldn't break through the door. It would be best to collect several Beast Cores at once and absorb them together, or simply kill a Tier 4 monster and absorb a Tier 4 Beast Core; that should be enough to break through the door and reach Tier 4!

After absorbing the Beast Core, Ye Da quickly checked the other reward.

[Snow Alien Scorpion Shell: An excellent stealth material. It can be used to craft various stealth weapons or fashioned into stealth rune stones as consumable items!]

Stealth rune stones? He wondered if this could be used on his psionic bow.

But this thought passed quickly, as Ye Da was now concerned about Chu Ping. He hoped Chu Ping was alright! After all, his original goal was to find Chu Ping, but he had been delayed by this Snow Alien Scorpion. Since the creature was so terrifying and powerful, Ye Da couldn't ignore it. Killing the monster had wasted quite a bit of time, while absorbing the core and collecting the loot were just incidental tasks that didn't take much time at all. He could only steal a glance at the details; a thorough study was impossible for now.

"Keep searching!"

With the Snow Alien Scorpion taken care of, Ye Da had the two wolf pups continue searching for Chu Ping's whereabouts. But this time, Ye Da didn't dare to take the lead himself. He let the two masters of scent charge ahead to check for any hidden Snow Alien Scorpions.

Although Ye Da was still looking for Chu Ping, he became much more cautious. He refused to walk on any snow that hadn't been cleared. He had been traumatized by that alien scorpion; the mere thought of being mounted and stuffed full of little aliens made him feel not just mentally uncomfortable, but physically sick!

"Chu Ping!"

Ye Da shouted Chu Ping's name while collecting the surrounding snow. Every time his backpack was full of snow, he would synthesize it into ordinary ice blocks. Once the ordinary ice blocks filled his storage backpack, he would synthesize them all into superior ice blocks.

Unexpectedly, in the process of searching for Chu Ping, Ye Da had unknowingly synthesized a full stack of superior ice blocks—twenty of them, equivalent to two thousand square meters of snow. That was enough to craft two water-elemental rune stones.

But if he had to trade these for Chu Ping, a subordinate who was about to reach 100% loyalty... Ye Da just couldn't accept that!