[NR] Determining The Danger By The Plants - Chapter 567 (Patreon)

The duo’s trip hadn’t been filled with adventure, mind you. They will get enough of that, given time. No, what was more exciting was the terrain they had traveled through.

They had set out in the direction opposite of the settlement and within a couple days; it was clear that whatever was stabilizing the area bled off quickly. Or more likely, from Courtney’s perspective, it wasn’t stabilizing things, but literally pushing back the Deep Wilds influence.

After all, even if the terrain did have a tendency to change on you. It still normally kept larger chunks of land connected. However, at the edge of the stabilized land, was an area of chaos. A place full of small biomes all crowded together and while the transition never was too wild, they just happened too quickly.

They had actually found a lake sized bit of water only a few days in. Except it wasn’t a lake. Well, technically you could call it one, but it was salt water, which isn’t what they need. More important for their story, was that it also seemed to mark where they started to find more aggressive critters.

There wasn’t some line in the sand, mind you. It just happened that they had stumbled into a jungle region where something was causing everything to constantly be looking for a fight. And what that something was? Rosha guessed it was a particular red-ish purple mini-berry. They grew all over the area, even on the trees.

Of course, the predators didn’t eat them directly for the most part, but every herbivore certainly did and bioaccumulation would take it from there. As for why Rosha suspected this was the source? Well, it wasn’t very subtle. A film of some sort seemed to grow over the eyes of those affected that was the same color.

Not that the plant was blinding the critters or anything. It at most would tint things. Still creepy as all get out and the pair didn’t even touch any bodies they took down on their way through the area. At least from Rosha’s quick examination, the berry didn’t seem to be spreading and the berry crazed also didn’t seem to be contagious. You had to eat the berries or those affected by the berries.

It was very odd and all Rosha could guess was that the plant limited their area to prevent killing off all the local animals. As for why? Well, her theory was that it used the bodies of the fallen as fertilizer. A pretty standard reason, but that’s because it works.

While within the berries region, it seemed that fights came one right after another. Worse, the denser the berries got, the more dangerous it got. In fact, it almost seemed like once a monster won a fight, it would move a bit further inward. This might have been coincidence, but the pair didn’t want to test it and so charted a path angled out of the region, then on the way back avoided it completely.

Besides that, though, it was mostly like when they traveled through the forest with all the undead. Stuff could just pop up for no reason, but still not too jammed packed with combat. The biggest problem was avoiding the high break threats and that was mostly managed by avoiding any suspiciously empty areas or places with suspiciously similar monsters. Though it likely helped that the both of them were too low-level to actually attract such threats.

While there isn’t some kind of thing where high-level beings need to eat high energy food, if anything they need less food. Most prefer similar level meals, if only because of the texture. For a high level carnivore, a low level rabbit might as well be made of soft butter. Even for those that eat plants, this can be a problem.

Though cattle and other ruminators actually have it easier as their teeth and stomachs can digest the grass even quicker. Of course, this has its own problems, with a single high level cow being able to clear an entire field or even an entire forest, trees and all. That, however, tends to be cleared up by them either moving to more dangerous areas where everything is of a higher level or some high-level predator comes around and deals with it.

At this point, Jason stops Courtney and Rosha. They had been going on about their trip and all of that side stuff for a while, but something they had just said caught his attention. “What’s up with the whole ‘higher level’ grass thing? Doesn’t everything need to level up and breakthrough? It isn’t like living somewhere would just bypass that.”

Rosha shrugs, “Of course there is the fact that bottlenecks differ between beings. Even within a species, not even counting the difference between a local human and a player human. So yeah, grass can level despite our general inability to actually nail down exact levels. Though at least the level 100 bottleneck leaves an obvious difference on a person, at least enough that they can make devices to check if you’re below 100 or not. And no, it isn’t the core as that isn’t specifically a level 100 thing as you very well know.”

Jason, “But grass? I figured stuff like that just had innate properties that made them tougher in some areas. Why would there even be levels on a piece of grass? Like, I’ve seen what sort of connection the System has with them. Even a houseplant doesn’t look like it would merit levels.”

Rosha raises an eyebrow, “I would think that you of all people would realize there is more to this world than the System itself. Though I guess calling them levels is a little bit of a misnomer. After all, we can’t actually detect their levels accurately. Even with monsters, we generally don’t know the level unless the System sees fit to include that information.

“But I guess the biggest thing with small plants like grass, is to grow and photosynthesize. So, in the same way you gain experience from growing plants, even if it isn’t that much, grass gains some for growing itself. Beyond that, danger regions generally have a reason they’re dangerous and just like you would gain a bonus from growing plants while hidden in a dragon’s lair, the grass does as well.

“From what Peter taught me, this experience boost tends to take plants to within about a break of the local danger. It is actually one of the ways he gets a feel for places out here. If all the plants are of a crazy high level, something is wrong.”