Strongest Tree

They all decided to enter a forest instead of man-made roads. Roads has a lot of fallens and cars what will make it hard for them to move. Forest on the other hand has a lot of mutated and and fallen animals but there are a lot of tress on it

Trees also some energy on it and their skill [Absorb] can absorb those energy but cars on the other hand are inanimate objects

Also, entering a forest will also give them some idea on the current state of the world outside of safe human cities. They can take this chance to polish their skills and let Ivy train

As a specie of tree, they also has some sort of affinity for forest. However, just like before a swarm of bees decided to attack them

Mutated bees will not attack them if they sense Kence"s aura, fallen bees on the other hand will attack every thing on site

"It seems bees loves us" King joked

If it was before a hundred and fifty bees swarm was enough to give them a lot of trouble but with their current strength all these bees will only serve as their "experience points"

"[Innate Skill: Drill Roots!]" King"s hands tranformed into roots that has leaves on it. The root was spinning fast and it looks like a drill with spikes on it

King controlled his root arms to attack the bees, all bees that were hit by it die without their body fully intact

As he was now in the peak of Warrior Rank, early stages creatures were just too weak in front of him

Even by himself, he can take care of all these bees

"[Magic Skill: Exploding Bullet]" on Calter"s palm a fist size green bullet formed, it flew towards one of the bees. After the bullet hit the bee it exploded into multiple smaller bullets that hit the bees around

"Ivy, help them kill all the bees" Kence said to Ivy who was overwhelmed by the number of bees coming into their way

Hearing her master, she gritted her teeth and calmed herself

"[Innate Skill: Absorb!]" To quickly get used on her newly gained skill she decided to use it

Her arm transformed into roots that attacked two fallen bees

Cesar readied some binding runes in case something unexpected happen he will protect Ivy. While Kence just watched them, enemies at these level can be easily killed by him but he wanted to train his team

Suddenly, a bee that was faster than normal bees flew towards Ivy who was attacking one of the bees. Unaware of the danger coming into her way

"A mid-stage warrior!" One of the binding Runes that Cesar prepared flew and bind the mid-stage bee

Ivy noticed this and she shot Cesar a grateful smile

"Ivy, when attacking enemies do not let your guard down and only focus on the enemy you can see"

Hearing Kence"s words Ivy blushed in shame. With the other Mystics besides her she become overconfident and unconsciously felt that even if she was in danger the others will protect her

She once more focus on the battle but this time she took it more seriously

In just a few minutes the battle ended easily as the bee swarm only has the ratio of one mid-stage warrior every ten normal bees and they don"t have any peak-stage bees

"Give it all to Ivy"

Since the corpse"s of bees at this level only has minimal effect on them it was better to give it to Ivy, after all they decided to make her stronger and reached the peak-stage too

"T-thanks" Ivy felt happy as all these bees will make make her a lot stronger!

She immediately absorbed all the bees, the shocking thing was after absorbing all of the corpse she directly broke through in the peak-stage of warrior rank!

She was astonished, she felt like she was cheating too much

This was actually not a shocking thing as the number of normal bees was enough to push her into the mid-stage while there are more than ten mid-stage bees

Only about five mid-stage bees are needed for her to advance in the peak-stage

This was the advantage of their [Absorb] skill, other supernaturals needed to painstakingly cultivate and risk their life by absorbing Blood Beans but them on the other hand can just absorb a fallen"s corpse to advanced. This skill will make everyone hate them to the bones. However this advantage would only be a "G.o.d-Tier" like skill for the first three ranks of [Supernatural] as they only needed to absorb enough energy to advance but in the fourth rank and above it was different

"H-how can this be?" She still cannot believe she advanced this fast, she even managed to get into the same realm of the Generals back in the city in just a few hours!

"This is our advantage, don"t you feel now that following our master was a nice decision?" King teased Ivy who looked towards Kence with adoration on her eyes

She felt like this was the best decision she ever made in her life

"Master, thank you for taking me"

"As long as you treat us kindly and help each other become stronger that is enough" Kence patted the little girl"s head and continued walking deeper into the forest

---

An hour pa.s.sed and they are now in quite a deep part of the forest. As they continued along their way they noticed that the monsters are becoming stronger

Before it was only early stage warrior and some mid-stage ones but now almost all of the fallens and mutated animals they encounter are in the peak stage

"What is this flower? It looks creepy" Ivy"s curious eyes landed on a certain flower

The flower"s petal was red in color while in the middle of it was color yellow. The flower was quite big as it was the same size as a basketball ball

A mutated bee as big as a head landed on the middle part of that flower to get its pollen

However, suddenly the disk flower at the center of the flower opened while sharp thing like teeth was showned

The flower moved and swallow the fist size fly, crunching sounds were heard and some juice from the fly"s body leaked out from the center of the flower

Cold sweats formed on Ivy"s forehead, if she touched that flower it was possible that her whole arm would be swallow by the mutated flower

"It"s actually a carnivorous flower!" Kence looked at the flower with shining eyes

Another one of the reason why they entered a forest was because they heard about supernaturals with plant growth boosting skills took the seeds of the mutated plants

By using their skill they can quicken the growth of a plant which they can use for various reasons depending on what type of seeds they have

Some grow plants for their food while some used it as one of their attack skills

It was just like how Kence boosted a seed"s growth and used the vines to attack

Kence wanted to breed carnivorous plants to serve as an attack and maybe cannon fodder

Mutated plants has two cla.s.sifications. One is just the mutation of its growth cyle while the other one will make one a bit like some sort of semi-sentient being

Just like these carnivorous plant, these kinds of plants before the apocalypse already has some sort of basic instinct that will attack the prey that landed on it. Thanks to the energy in the surrounding there was a minimal boost effect on their "intellect"

Kence transformed his arm into root sword and cruelly cut down the stem of the carnivorous plant. The plant tried to use its teeth to attack Kence. Unfortunately, Kence was too powerful for it

Green juices came out from the part that was cut, using his sword root he dig in the center part of it until he felt a small hard thing

Kence took the small hard thing. It was a seed shape object however it looks like a rock

Plants who has their instincts upgraded would have this seed rock inside them

Seeing his hand with green juices Kence grimaced in disgust and took a small towel on his backpack to wipe the juices

"Master, try growing it now" Calter was excited to see what the results will be

Those with skills in plant growing would find it easier to make the plants grow and also increasing their durability, taste of the fruits, shelf life of fruits etc

While those who do not have almost need to give their best just to grow a plant that was barely pa.s.sable

Kence may not have plant growth skills but his green energy has some sort of plant attribute on it. Who knows what the result would be

"Being impatient now are we?" Kence chuckled

His treatment with his team become better when the three tried to sacrifice themselves for him and he now talk and tease them more often

Kence hold the seed on his palm and immediately let it absorb his energy

His arm glowed with green light as multiple green particles were absorbed by the seed

The color of the seed changed into green, soon from the small seed a bit of stem with some leaves grew from it

The process continued, the stem wrapped on Kence"s arm while the original seed grew a flower that was also green in color

It looked just like the original carnivorous plant except that the petals of it are green in color while the stem that was wrapped on Kence"s arm was thinner than the original

"This actually used up a lot of energy" before the seed fully matured, a huge chunk from Kence"s energy reserves were used up as if the seed was some sort of bottomless abyss that absorbed all energy

Kence lightly touch the flower as he felt some sort of affinity on it, as if he was the flower"s father. Which is actually a bit true as his energy was the catalyst of its growth

Calter become a bit disappointed, he thought that something shocking will happen to the seed but aside from its color and stem nothing much changed about it

"Let"s go" playing with the flower Kence continued walking

A few minutes pa.s.sed and they spotted a small lake

"Lord, can we hunt some fish to grill?" It was already more than a week since they ate "human food" and King missed the feeling of eating

The others also looked at Kence with hopeful gaze as he was their leader

Kence nodded "I will catch the fish there might be a fallen and mutated creatures that will attack us. You go and start fire"

Although the lake was quite small it was possible that a ferocious animals are living on it and it was safer for him to be the one to catch the fish as he was the strongest

Walking towards the lake, he stopped until he was almost on the water

Thanks to the apocalypse the reproduction of these fishes were greater than before and he can already saw some fishes

Some fish mutated and become bigger than usual but some although retained their former size but their number increases

Kence transformed his arm into a root, he concentrated to make the root as thin as possible as its original size was thicker than some fish and it might crushed the fishes

He used his root and wrapped it on one of the bigger fishes close to him

Without much suspense Kence managed to catch one fish

The flower on his palm lightly move towards the fish as if it wanted to eat

Kence seeing this decided to feed his "pet plant"

Kence don"t know how but the flower that was only two times larger than his arm managed to swallow a fish whole

Where will the plant even digest a fish this big?

After swallowing the fish, the flower rested on Kence"s body again as if it was satisfied by its meal

Kence felt that the energy in the flower"s body increased by a bit

To think that this carnivorous flower will actually be able to make itself stronger