Chapter 46: Food Issue
After nearly mindlessly scraping his throat out due to the combined poison of the weird flower he ate and the poison finger, Ackster took a break. Fortunately, he found a small stream nearby with clean enough water that he could drink.
Ackster sat down on the ground next to the stream after splashing his face with water.
This spartan training probably wouldn't last very long. He was feeling mentally and physically exhausted after a day of it. If he could endure, he would probably become pretty tough by the end of it. But if he couldn't, he would simply collapse and die in the middle of nowhere without anyone knowing about his fate.
He would have to come up with something more sustainable. But until then, he would simply have to do his best to endure. Maybe if he could find something to eat and fuel his Strong Body with, Ackster would have greater chances of success.
Quenching his thirst and taking a break from munching on poison had only told Ackster exactly how starved he was. With some food and energy in his system, he could probably find it easier to endure the pain and the poison.
When he thought about it, Ackster was almost a little surprised that he hadn't encountered a source of food by now.
Although he was technically in between two relatively major cities of Badhurst, and the forest he was in wasn't special or dense with mana, Ackster was far from the road, and no matter what forest it was, there would still be beasts and monsters in it.
Ackster had been in the forest for the rest of the night following his escape from the Phileam Estate and Degrest and the day following that. And the sun was beginning to set, so it wouldn't be long until he had spent an entire day-and-night cycle in the forest.
However, he hadn't encountered a single living being other than a couple of pesky insects.
If anything attacked him, he would be able to fight back and train his combat skills through live practice while also securing a food source. Being attacked was actually what Ackster had counted on to supply him with a more reliable source of nutrients that could sustain his consumption better than random plants and berries or fruits he found despite his faltering consciousness.
As he took another bite from the third goblin finger, Ackster haphazardly realized why nothing had attacked him.
He was practically a walking poison packet. Even he, with Poison Resistance F, almost died from eating one of the poison goblin's fingers in one go. And until his body fully worked through the poison and eradicated all of its effects, that poison would linger inside his body. There was also the finger he held that reeked of poison and things living creatures shouldn't eat if they wanted to stay alive.
In this relatively low-level forest, there wouldn't be a lot of beings with high enough Poison Resistance to boldly charge and attack Ackster. Even if they did succeed and killed Ackster, if they couldn't handle the poison that his presence exuded, they wouldn't get anything. They might even end up like the hound-like beast that had tried to eat the poison goblin's corpse back at the Degrest Forest.
Ackster was a little comforted since it meant he could rest at ease, knowing he wouldn't be attacked out of nowhere. But he had to reproach himself for that thought. He wasn't supposed to rest and lower his guard. He had to be ready at all times and become as strong as possible.
Good reflexes and a constant awareness of his surroundings that would let him respond to any ambush, no matter what, were vital if Ackster wanted to reach far. Otherwise, no matter how strong he was, he could take one wrong step and enter a pitfall where he could get trapped and starved to death or attacked or something.
However, if no one and nothing wanted to attack him, he would simply have to flip it around and find something to attack, both for food and combat training. The searching would also help him improve since he would have to learn how to find tracks and what traces belong to what kind of being.
It probably wouldn't be easy without anyone to teach him or without a source of base knowledge to extract information from.
But the information and teachings of how to track wild animals and monsters had to have sprung up from somewhere. Ackster would just have to learn it all himself the hard way from the very beginning. Another good opportunity to train and grow stronger.
Ackster did his best to cheer himself up as he stood up and began looking for signs of living beings that he could track down, fight, kill, and eat.
Since he was going to focus on another aspect of his training, Ackster temporarily decreased how much poison he munched. It was just enough to keep his tongue tingling but without interfering too much with his senses and clarity of mind.
Although pushing himself to and beyond his limits would be the quickest way to grow, Ackster had learned from his mistakes by now. Even if it made him, forced him, to grow stronger faster, it would be useless if it only led to his death.
Before he started training his Poison Resistance, he should, at the very least, make sure that he could survive a fight with the local wildlife without debuffing himself. And then, once he had found the limits of what he was capable of, Ackster would slowly start tearing them down, brick by brick.
Maybe it was thanks to cutting down on the poison, or maybe it was because Ackster had a better eye for this thing than he thought, but he pretty quickly found an animal trail with relatively fresh hoof prints. It looked like two sets, so if he chose to hunt the animals down, he would be up against two beasts at the minimum.
'Great.'
Ackster forced an excited grin onto his face as he started following the tracks.
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone