Starting Unlimited Evolution from Grinding

Chapter 229: This human is actually quite nice

The morning sun shone upon them, making Finnie's beautiful golden hair particularly dazzling.

Lin Mo gently held the girl in his arms as her emotions gradually calmed down. There were no more sorrowful confessions, nor fiery passion.

It was just simple companionship, that kind of readily available warmth that felt most reassuring.

Not far away, Sherfilia leaned against a tree, remaining silent as she quietly watched the scene unfold.

It wasn't until Ellie got up, rubbing her sleepy eyes as she emerged from the tent.

The chilly morning breeze brushed against her face, making her shiver involuntarily. Her tail drooped down, and she became much more awake.

Thus, the tangled feelings from last night resurfaced in her heart.

Taking a closer look at the scene before her, seeing the two of them snuggled together, she immediately felt even more uncomfortable...

This was bad, she had truly aided the enemy.

Ellie shook her head somewhat regretfully. Though she said that, she didn't actually harbor hostility toward Finnie - she just felt a bit sorry for her friend.So she approached cautiously, and after confirming that Finnie's emotions were relatively stable, she took a light breath, preparing to speak.

However, just as the words reached her lips, they were suddenly covered by a delicate little hand.

Sherfilia stood on her toes and dragged her back to the tent area.

She wouldn't let this fool ruin this rare good atmosphere.

Naturally, Ellie began to struggle, but she couldn't break free from Sherfilia's grip, emitting some faint muffled sounds.

Thus, the two people ahead finally noticed something and simultaneously turned their heads, seeing this awkward scene.

.......

The small interlude wouldn't affect their upcoming journey. After breakfast, everyone set off again, heading toward the second target of this mission - Area 11.

Along the way, Lin Mo naturally hadn't forgotten the information he obtained earlier at the city gate from that carriage storage shop assistant.

There had been recent conflicts between the monsters in Area 10 and the monsters in Area 11.

The monsters in Area 11 were their target for this trip - Petrified Lizards.

Lin Mo had previously seen them in monster encyclopedia books - they were a relatively rare type of monster, not widely distributed across the entire continent. Ordinary adult individuals were about three meters long, not particularly large monsters.

If there was anything noteworthy about them, it was their rather special racial ability - petrification.

This was also the source of the Petrified Lizard's name. These lizards could petrify parts or even the entire body of enemies, and they mostly hunted by petrifying their prey to prevent escape.

They would then often swallow the semi-petrified prey alive, with the petrified parts dissolving upon contact with their special gastric juices, turning into a fine meal.

But this petrification ability certainly wasn't without limitations.

Many years ago, scholars from the Empire's Magic Association had conducted research on this.

The final conclusion was that the success rate of these Petrified Lizards' ability activation was generally related to the levels of both parties. Specifically, it was like a comparison between "energy" fields - if the petrification energy released by the Petrified Lizard was greater than the target's mana or qi and blood energy, then there was a high probability of successful petrification.

Conversely, if the target's mana or qi and blood energy was far less than the Petrified Lizard's own petrification energy, then petrification was almost guaranteed to succeed.

And if the two were close, then there was some probability of success. The specific probability and influencing factors were quite complex, related to many things, and also somewhat dependent on luck. When Ellie had read the book back then, she hadn't paid close attention to the details.

Additionally, this kind of petrification wasn't impossible to remove.

The simplest method was to kill the Petrified Lizard, directly extract its gastric juices, and pour them on the petrified person or body part.

However, the Petrified Lizard's gastric juices themselves were quite corrosive, and this simple, crude method would also cause certain secondary damage, requiring additional treatment for the damage caused by the gastric juice corrosion.

Aside from that, there was the priest profession's "Purification Art" - as long as the priest's mana was greater than the corresponding Petrified Lizard's, they could help remove the petrification of petrified people.

And Finnie naturally knew Purification Art.... but it probably wouldn't be needed.

For one thing, when facing such relatively powerful enemies, Lin Mo wouldn't let Ellie take risks, and neither he nor Sherfilia needed to worry about the possibility of being petrified. For another, somewhat embarrassingly, Finnie's mana energy wasn't actually higher than the Petrified Lizards'.

In short, this was a relatively rare monster with certain special characteristics. For most newcomers, tasks related to Petrified Lizards weren't good choices.

High-level adventurers looked down on them, while low-level adventurers didn't dare to take them, so this task had been posted at the Association for quite some time.

If Lin Mo hadn't wanted to do two simple tasks to warm up, it would probably have continued to be posted.

As for the neighbors of Area 11, the monsters in Area 10 were a more common type of monster.

Bloodmane Wolves, monsters with strong group consciousness that became highly aggressive when forming packs.

This time, the conflict between monsters in the two areas was most likely started by the Bloodmane Wolves.

The individual strength of these monsters wasn't particularly strong, but their reproductive ability was quite good, and they had strong collective consciousness, being quite united. They often moved in groups, appearing in dozens, even twenty or thirty at a time.

Therefore, very few adventurers dared to take tasks related to Bloodmane Wolves. Usually, several adventurer teams would cooperate, or only adventurer groups would dare to take on such work.

As for conflicts between monsters, Lin Mo wasn't particularly concerned.

He just wanted to complete the mission smoothly while grinding some proficiency.

As for unexpected encounters or picking up bargains... to be honest, for Lin Mo who possessed the proficiency system, it could only be said that having them would be nice, but not having them didn't matter either.

The distance between Area 8 and Area 11 wasn't that far. Setting off at dawn, they arrived at their destination around 8 o'clock in the morning.

Compared to Goblins, Petrified Lizards were much scarcer, so finding them wasn't that easy.

After entering the territory, Ellie immediately familiarized herself with the scents within this area.

Ordinary people couldn't really distinguish the subtle differences between various monster scents, but half-orcs like Ellie were quite sensitive about this.

And even among half-orcs, Ellie was considered particularly strong in terms of sense of smell, significantly stronger than Lena.

Sherfilia was still scouting nearby, and Lin Mo once again used the [Shadow Split] skill, sending his clone to search slightly farther away.

But this time, the search process wasn't going as smoothly.

After quite a while, with the [Shadow Split] skill used several times, there still weren't any results.

By now, they had already traveled over 10 kilometers within Area 11.

Lin Mo couldn't help but frown. No matter what, it shouldn't be this difficult to find them, right?

Could it be that they had fought too fiercely with the Bloodmane Wolves from the neighboring area, suffering heavy casualties... or had gathered together, preparing for a major battle?

Just as he was lost in thought, Ellie, who had been sniffing to identify scents, finally spoke: "Found them, over here!"

Everyone's eyes immediately lit up, following behind her as she headed westward.

"Very close..."

Ellie said while leading the way in front.

Lin Mo followed closely beside her, ready to protect at any moment.

Petrified Lizards were inconsequential to him, but they were relatively dangerous for Ellie, so precautions had to be taken.

"That... isn't our current direction somewhat heading toward Area 10?"

To speed up travel, Finnie was directly carried by Sherfilia. Observing their direction of travel, she reminded them.

"It really is..."

Lin Mo reacted upon hearing this - indeed, heading west was precisely the direction to Area 10.

"I smell blood."

Ellie added.

Could they have already started fighting?

Lin Mo immediately became anxious. The mission required collecting Petrified Lizard eyes and tongues - if they were eaten by Bloodmane Wolves, wouldn't that mean they had searched for nothing?

So he made an immediate decision, scooping up Ellie and speeding up: "Tell me the direction, we're speeding up."

"Okay."

Ellie was momentarily stunned, then wrapped her arms around his neck, finding a comfortable angle: "This way..."

Behind them, since Lin Mo wasn't moving at full speed, Sherfilia could still barely keep up with his pace. It's just that the master and servant, or rather the two sisters, looking at the scene before them, felt somewhat uncomfortable.

With accelerated travel, they soon arrived at the scene.

Sure enough, Lin Mo saw over a dozen Bloodmane Wolves surrounding and ganging up on four or five Petrified Lizards.

The individual strength of Bloodmane Wolves was somewhat weaker than that of Petrified Lizards.

Therefore, nearby they could also see two or three already petrified Bloodmane Wolves, probably the weaker ones in the group that had been broken through first.

But the petrification skill wasn't without cost. On the contrary, such relatively special, powerful skills often had unpleasant consumption costs. And the strength gap between Bloodmane Wolves, especially the relatively stronger ones, and Petrified Lizards wasn't that large, with a relatively low probability of being petrified. Combined with numerical advantage, the Petrified Lizard side was clearly in a miserable situation.

One Petrified Lizard already lay on the ground covered in wounds, motionless, while the remaining ones also bore bloodstains to varying degrees.

Lin Mo immediately became anxious, no longer caring about watching tigers fight from a mountain, waiting to pick up bargains. He immediately put Ellie down and charged forward.

"Don't touch my treasure!"

As the words fell, he used Flash, directly charging in front of a Bloodmane Wolf.

The next moment, a powerful "Whip Kick" struck the Bloodmane Wolf's waist.

The characteristic of wolf-like creatures - copper head, iron bones, tofu waist - still applied to monster wolves. Even werewolves from the orc race, including Ellie as a half-orc, couldn't avoid this.

Ellie's figure was actually more of the athletic type. Though she didn't have that much muscle, she was still quite sturdy. Only her waist area was very soft...

Lin Mo's Whip Kick directly sent that Bloodmane Wolf flying dozens of meters.

That Bloodmane Wolf didn't even struggle, becoming motionless upon landing.

Lin Mo's kick had directly shattered its internal organs.

[Flash] proficiency +25

[Whip Kick] proficiency +25

This skill was about to level up.

Yesterday afterward, Lin Mo and the others had dealt with another wave of Goblins. During that battle, the skills he had focused on practicing had gained some more proficiency. For example, Whip Kick, which had just reached Level 4, had gained about half the proficiency needed for the next level.

One more!

Lin Mo attacked again... or rather, kicked again. He flashed to appear beside another Bloodmane Wolf, executing the same Whip Kick technique, killing it with one kick.

[Whip Kick] proficiency +25

Both Bloodmane Wolves were Level 4, giving decent proficiency.

"Skill [Whip Kick] Lv4 (100/100) upgraded!"

"Current skill [Whip Kick] Lv5 (3/180)"

Just one more level, and this skill would also complete its evolution.

After his strength improved, killing stronger opponents meant proficiency gain and skill improvement speeds were much faster than before.

Lin Mo's sudden appearance made the originally clear battle situation suddenly become confusing again.

The Bloodmane Wolves looked completely baffled. Just moments ago they had been fighting those lizards and were about to win - how did a human suddenly appear?

And he killed two of their kin with just two kicks...

The Petrified Lizards were also stunned. What was this situation? Reinforcements?

When did they have human reinforcements?

But regardless, the originally difficult situation had taken a turn for the better because of this.

This human was quite nice..

The Petrified Lizards didn't miss the opportunity and immediately launched a counterattack.

For a moment, the battle became more intense and more chaotic.

[Swift Rushing Punch]!

Lin Mo charged before a Bloodmane Wolf, punching it in the jaw.

His current speed was simply too fast for these Bloodmane Wolves to react to. This punch directly sent that Bloodmane Wolf flying into the sky, letting it experience the feeling of being a "sky wolf."

[Swift Rushing Punch] proficiency +30

Yo, this one was Level 5.

After this Bloodmane Wolf died violently, the surrounding Bloodmane Wolves' momentum clearly weakened. Their expressions weren't as fierce anymore, their fighting spirit diminished significantly, and one or two even tucked their tails and turned to flee.

Could the one just eliminated have been the leader of these Bloodmane Wolves?

This was a bit awkward.

Lin Mo looked at the Petrified Lizards seizing the opportunity to launch counterattacks, becoming increasingly enthusiastic, and scratched his head.

The next second, he quickly stepped forward, thrusting his sword through one of the Petrified Lizards.

His sudden "betrayal" once again stunned both sides.

So he wasn't an ally (from the opposing side) after all!

Thus, the already chaotic situation completely collapsed. Some, caught up in the heat of battle, continued charging;

some had already started running away;

and others...

Others were experiencing the free "sky flying" service.

[Swift Rushing Punch] didn't necessarily have to charge forward - it could also charge upward. This kind of "uppercut" felt quite exhilarating, and Lin Mo found himself somewhat addicted to it for a moment.

As for those trying to escape, naturally someone was dealing with them too.

Sherfilia had long since put Finnie down. After confirming there were no other dangers around, she quickly took position, specifically targeting the monsters that had run farther away, killing them in two or three moves.

In no time, these Bloodmane Wolves and Petrified Lizards had all become corpses.