[NR] Effects Of A Monster Nest - Chapter 435 (Patreon)

It took Jason over a week to finally find a monster nest to grind his levels on. This was mostly because more of them matched the recent nest in size than they did the monster nests along his original route. Which would make some sense.

The Adventures Guild doesn't want a lot of dangerous nests all over the place. Sure, the monsters Jason saw in the smaller nests weren't exactly high level, but likely that is one of the things that grows when the nest expands. Though even if it didn't, quantity can have a quality all its own.

Still, they can only do so much and Jason is certain that to at least some degree, nature needs a few of the bigger monster nests to stabilize things. Though they also appear to warp the surroundings as well.

The nests at the start of his trip had been all crammed together and the actual road a decent distance away so Jason hadn't noticed. Now though? It was quite clear that past a certain size nature starts to be defined by the nests instead of the other way around.

All that variety of animals and plants falls off sharply the closer he was to his chosen grinding spot. Except this crash in biodiversity is being held up by more specialized stuff. It almost felt like one of those really old video games where you would enter a new area and everything was the same as the last except color swapped and with abilities to match the new area.

This wasn't too extreme, but Jason is more than capable of connecting dots and so knows he was just in an area where it went all the way. The nine bamboo kingdom is sat directly on top of what was once the swarm bear's nest and even until this day, swarms are the main monster type around it. So not only do monster nests warp nature, it doesn't just go away after you remove the monsters.

Though this brings up another question. Does a human “nest” change nature in NeoRealm? Sure, humans do tend to warp nature around them, but that is through purposeful action. Swarm bears weren’t going around and turning every nearby monster into a swarm. That happened without their direct interference.

Jason sighs, this was an interesting subject, but it wasn't going to kill monsters. Though speaking of monsters, this monster nest felt really out of place. Jason had nothing against them, but ostriches did not fit the area.

Well, they fit their nest because that had changed enough already. However, even with the area around it slowly changing to match, there was still quite the abrupt change. Most of the areas have so far been what Jason would call temperate forest and plains. The nest went right to being a savanna.

So while there were trees, they are spaced such that even when densely packed, the canopy doesn't close up. This meant it was relatively easy to see how many of the birds there were. The answer to that was a lot.

The monster nest was big enough that Jason couldn’t see the center of the area from the edge, but not by much. Compared to the larger nests at the start, it was positively miniscule. It had more in common with the snake and coyote duel nest. A place he could cross, but it wouldn’t be easy. At least with the snakes and coyotes they were fighting one another.

In this nest there were only Ostriches and they weren’t having a full blown war or anything of the sort. More to the point, Jason highly doubted that the highest level birds at the center of the nest would care all that much. While he couldn’t see them, it seemed that the ostriches had broken out into groups and didn’t bother helping one another.

To be fair, if they hadn’t been actively fighting the coyotes, the snakes likely wouldn’t have cared overly much about Jason being in their territory either. In fact, if it wasn’t for the mental pressure the previous area had put out, it would have been the perfect place to grind instead. So many snakes and unlike birds, they don’t exactly have a flocking behavior.

With the ostriches, while at the moment they were dispersed into groups of two and ten. They could certainly form up into flocks over a hundred strong. Though for Jason, that just meant he would have to move around while hunting.

However what really tipped it over the edge for him was their strength. On the edge the monsters averaged a level near or a little higher than his own. For anyone else not being heavily supported by a group or their family, such a fight would be asking for it, especially in a one versus many fight.

Jason had another view of the situation. He had always punched above his rank, similar to those with a strong backer and didn't depend on a resource pool to fight. Whether it was a mage or a fighter, they drew upon a pool of power fed by a small trickle while Jason depended upon a creek. Maybe he can’t put out the same amount of power at once as basically everyone else could, but at least he wasn’t a glass cannon.

Which was perfect for this monster nest and the fact he wanted to train his Strength. This wasn’t just bravado though. When he first found the next Jason did a test run. A quick in and out with some death inbetween, thankfully not his own.

See, an ostrich has one easy to spot weakness. Now, normally this wouldn’t matter. Sure, aiming for their neck is an obvious choice, but the System does its whole weak point protection thing. Good thing there is only so much the System can do. An ostrich's neck is just too obvious and while it has some really well developed muscles, Jason has an assassin title to start the fight and more than enough ways to lay down the damage.