The ant colony was huge, Klaus took a bottle filled with poison and sprayed it inside the several holes of the soil mound.
After he was done he stepped back and waited. Soon one by one many ants struggled out of the holes and died on the spot.
The people in the park at first waited and looked at what he was doing out of curiosity but after seeing this scene, they simply concluded that he was a maniac and had a hobby of killing insects.
Once the ants were dead he simply brushed their bodies in a bag.
The rest of the soil mound was destroyed by him with a stick and the bodies were collected in the bag.
He had killed such many ants that the bag was filled up to the brim and weighed some 20 kilos.
After he was done with that he proceeded to hunt many insects including cockroaches, beetles, dragonflies, lizards, and even some chameleons with the help of nets and pesticides.
As an alternative to the shapeshifting ability, Klaus had thought maybe he could get something from chameleons that he could at least use for stealth.
He then visited other public parks in the locality and repeated the same procedure. Everywhere he went people gave him weird looks.
When some of them asked him about what he was doing. he said he was collecting insects to brew Chinese medicines.
Well, china wasn’t a country in this world, but Chinese culture was still prevalent since people knew that such a country did exist before the cataclysm hundreds of years ago. Chinese medicines were not very prevalent but people at least knew about them due to their peculiar choice of ingredients.After his explanation, the attitude of people towards him became much more respectful. Klaus did not mind a thing about what people said, he had only one goal in mind and that was to milk this city of all its insects. He even had plans of how to eradicate a complete species of certain insects.
Some may say he genuinely was obsessed with this activity.
He completed every nearby park and returned to the inn he was staying at, he first kept all the bags in his room and came down to eat.
While he was eating in the dining area he heard people discussing the latest news in town. The main focus of the conversation was the selection of Guardian Academy.
According to his previous memories the Guardian Academy was established to prepare exceptional and genius hunters for defending the blue planet against the invasion of extraterrestrial races.
The Guardian Academy was only of a kind institution and the minimum criteria for joining the academy was having B-rank talent and exceptional genius. However rankers and above were so rare that they were directly admitted into the institution.
According to the chatter, the selection for Guardian Academy was about to start in a month. Klaus did not pay much attention to the news as joining the academy was not in his immediate plans.
Klaus finished his meal and went back to his room, on the floor were sacks filled with insect bodies. He felt safer to absorb in private rather than public so he just carried back all the dead insects and the 2 or three chameleons he had killed.
He started with the ants and tried to absorb the whole sack altogether. Klaus had killed about 3000 ants and the change in the skill panel was quite a lot. Once the 900 count was completed.
HERCULEAN STRENGTH (C>>B)
Effects: physical stats increase by +200% of the current stat.
Klaus noticed that the skill had jumped a rank and also only 900 or so ants had been absorbed till now.
The rest of the ants hadn’t been absorbed. He noticed that a saturation point for the skill absorption had been reached.
He still had a feeling that there was more to it even though the skill was saturated some traits or stats should still be attainable through the absorption.
He focused on the bodies of the ants and a panel opened in front of his eyes, even he was surprised by the things he saw.
Available Skill - herculean strength (c) (saturated)
Available stats- physical (1000:1)
Available traits - null
The panel told him what was left to absorb from the ants.
He just had to will it to open such a panel in front of him.
There was also a conversion rate in case he wanted to increase his physical stats.
Since the rest of the ants couldn’t provide something useful he decided to convert the ants into stats points and they increased by 2.1
Physical stats - 7+2.9 = 9.9 >>29.7 (200%increase due to the b rank skill)
[Auth note:- some people may think a 200% increase of strength may be too much to give at B rank, but I should make them remember that people of this world don’t really have an active leveling method to increase their strength and skills are their only way to grow. So a 200% increase will not be a major cause of effect in the huge scale of this world]
Klaus looked at the rest of the insects. At first, he looked at the chameleons and opened the info panel.
Available traits - Null
Available skills - camouflage (D) (required kills - 100)
Available stats - 1000:1
His gaze focused on the camouflage skill and information about the skill appeared as well.
Effect - able to blend into the surroundings and become almost invisible.
Klaus had expected the skill to be a bit high-ranked but then he came to understand a few things, the skill could not hide his heart rate, breath, and heat signature so it did not provide complete stealth.
He could escape humans but predators would still find him with their keen sense.
Also this time a count did not start at the side of the skill name indicating that it was not upgradable.
So he then proceeded by converting them to stats but since the chameleons he caught were very less in number almost in single digits there was no increase in the stat points.
Next, he looked at a few hundred dragonflies he had caught.
One thing to clear here, Klaus doesn’t absorb camouflage skill because he can’t complete the requirement.
This portion was edited later as I forgot to add the requirement of 100 kills for this skill. It may have caused some misunderstanding earlier.