After spending five soul points, he obtained the passive skill [ insect devourer ].
After checking the new skill description, Bates summoned the insect demon spear again and stabbed it into the frost wolf’s corpse.
Suddenly, the frost wolf’s corpse reacted like it had been thrown into a pool of sulfuric acid. It withered and turned black at an extremely fast speed. In the end, there was only a pile of gray powder left on the ground.
After several upgrades, the devouring ability of the insect magic spear had far surpassed the first form that Bates possessed.
Finally, he could choose a skill, but different from before, the system had given him the choice to upgrade either his first or second form.
Bates could choose to use the ant form to conduct the skill extraction, further increasing his combat strength in the ant form. Conversely, he could use the heavy knight form to do the extraction, increasing his combat strength in the heavy knight form.
With the appearance of the second form, Bates would definitely put in more effort in choosing skills in the future.
Currently, the skills that Bates possessed could be used in both forms. However, as his strength increased, there would be a situation where a powerful skill could only be used in one of his forms.
This time, Bates chose to choose skills for his second form.
The options were:
[ armor penetration: passive skill. Your attack has a certain chance to penetrate the enemy’s defense, causing armor penetration damage that ignores defense. ]
[ charge: active skill. After using up half of your stamina, you can cross distances quickly, at speeds equal to your agility attribute x 2. Current maximum charge distance: 20 meters. ]
[ thrust: active skill. After expending half of your stamina, you can release a sharp ray of light that deals a physical attack equal to your strength attribute x 2, to the enemy in front. ]
[ inspect: active skill. After expending 50 mana points, you can release a ray of light that can distinguish the enemy’s identity, level, and health. ]
One passive skill, three active skills.
Regardless of whether it was [ armor penetration ], [ charge ], or [ thrust ], they could further enhance Bates’strength.
However, after checking all four skills, Bates did not hesitate to choose the fourth skill, [ inspect ]!
For normal players in the game, [ inspect ] was a passive skill that they automatically had when they started the game.
The identity, level, and health of each monster were the most basic information for them.
Perhaps any other player would not choose the [ inspect ] skill, but Bates was different.
He had grown up from an extremely small level ant, and until now, and he had practically walked in the dark all the way.
He had no way to check the identity, level, and health of the enemy. He could only rely on the aura between the monsters to sense and guess on his own.
Unable to check information on different equipment, he could only vaguely distinguish the general energy fluctuations emitted by the equipment.
The [ inspect ] skill could turn Bates from a blind man, into a normal person! He now also had an advantage that normally only belonged to the players!
Skills that increased strength could be slowly acquired in the future.
However, this skill was rare, and could only appear to him once, and therefore, could not be missed!
As Bates made his choice, the other options disappeared, and the active skill successfully appeared on his skill panel.
After taking a look at his second panel, Bates did not hesitate to add the last bit of his soul points to the [ inspect ] skill.
With the addition of one soul point, the [ inspect ] skill became a brand new skill, [ survey ]!
[ survey: active skill. Consumes 100 mana points and releases a ray of light that can identify the enemy’s identity, level, health, and mana points. There is a certain chance to detect the enemy’s attributes, and a small chance to detect the enemy’s skills. ]
The advanced scouting skill was more powerful than the scouting spell. It would be perfect for when Bates faced an unfamiliar monster.
Closing the attribute panel, Bates looked at the worker ant that was looking up at him and used the [ survey ] skill on him tentatively.
Immediately, he saw the little worker ant’s data.
[ identity ] : Worker Ant
[ race ] : Ant
[ level ] : Level 10
[ attributes ] : Strength 100, Agility 70, Energy 100, Spirit 80
[ skills ] : Rapid Healing, Malicious Perception
After, some more information about the ant popped up. A clear health bar appeared above the worker ant’s head, representing the amount of health it possessed.
Through his attribute panel, Bates was able to see more and more data, but that was because the worker ant was his family.
As for any other information, he would have to use [ survey ] to identify it.
The difference between the two was important.
‘It feels good to know more information in advance, and also to have one of a player’s most powerful skills.’
Bates looked at the corpse, dragged back by the worker ants, in the cave.
They were already at the edge of the Dark Forest, so further ahead lay a new area.
According to the rules of the game, it was a higher-level map.
‘Swamp, or lake?’ he wondered, as he looked at the blue-skinned humanoid monster with fish scales in the cave, Bates muttered.
A noise, like a sharp knife cutting through paper, rang out. The sharp blade of the insect demon spear slashed, and one head after another flew up and fell into the swamp more than ten meters away.
More than ten swamp murlocs (all level 15), were now corpses on the ground.
Without waiting for Bates’ order, the worker ants, who had been waiting at the side, rushed forward and dragged the headless blue-skinned fish corpses together and piled them up.
Bates then used his insect magic spear in the corpses, and they started to wither and turn black. They were swallowed by the insect magic spear and turned into Bates’ experience and evolution points.
This was the poisonous swamp, which was connected to another area of the Dark Forest.
After five days, Bates and the worker ants had gathered all the information they could, about the poisonous swamp.
The poisonous swamp was much smaller than the Dark Forest. However, there were many monsters scattered around it. The two most noteworthy monsters were the swamp murlocs and the venomous flying dragons.
The average level of the swamp murlocs was around level 15, and similar to goblins, they had simple social relationships. They appeared in most areas of the poisonous swamp.
The venomous flying dragons lived in the northern part, and occupied nearly a quarter of the entire area of the poisonous swamp.
This was because the venomous flying dragons had two lord-tier bosses, one male, and one female! Therefore, even though there were thousands of swamp murlocs and only a dozen venomous dragons, they still occupied more of the poisonous swamp.
Three lord-tier bosses, thousands of monsters with levels around level 15, the swap was a dangerous area.
It was much stronger than the dark forest!