Unlike other times when they hunted monsters, this time the duo finally had a target of which part of those monsters was valuable to loot.
Neither of them had a knife or anything like that to dissect these snakes, but with Lohan’s [Selective Digestion], the process of removing the Digestive Acid from inside the snakes’ bodies was made much easier.
The digestion process of the first snake was the most complicated, as Lohan had to digest small parts throughout its body to find the exact location of the Digestive Acid in that body.
After discovering where it was, the process became much easier.
Lohan didn’t need to digest the snake completely, he just needed to open a hole in the snakes’ stomachs, drain the Digestive Acid without digesting it, and store the liquid inside himself.
Being a life form almost entirely made of biomass, Lohan’s body was very malleable, to the point that he was able to store the liquid acid in an internal pouch he created, covered by a thin membrane he made inside himself, so that the acid would not be accidentally digested by him, nor would it constantly digest his biomass.
With such a simple way of carrying the acid, not a single drop was wasted from each snake.
And in addition to digesting the snakes’ bodies in search of digestive acid, Lohan also did not ignore the small heads of those creatures, penetrating his jelly through their eyes and digesting all of their brains.
These Snakes were not like the Level 11 Weaver Spider, so he did not bother to recover their memories and skills.
The immersion into the minds of the snakes was smooth, much less aggressive and oppressive than the process with the Weaver Spider.
Lohan felt his consciousness slip into a colorless world, where all he could discern were pulses of heat against the absolute cold of the stones.
There wasn’t much intellect in what he perceived, just basic predatory instinct.
He saw the world through a thermal filter, where Lisa glowed like a white supernova of radiant heat and he himself was a cold, bluish blob of biomass as the recent battle unfolded.
Unlike the previous frenzy, this resonance only refined his senses, without influencing his mind as the spider had done.
Of the four snakes, Lohan received a new skill and four upgrades to skills he already had.
[Thermographic Perception Lv 1]
[Allows you to detect heat variations in the environment through the membrane, mapping thermal signatures of living beings. Facilitates the identification of hidden or camouflaged targets in zero visibility environments through infrared radiation.]
That was the new skill he received.
A little disappointing for someone who expected to receive something related to shadows, given the name of these snakes, but still, something very useful for him, especially when seeing through the snakes’ eyes how practical it was in completely dark environments.
At this point, Lohan was feeling as if he was turning into a living tracker, with so many tracking and perception skills he had accumulated.
The [Thermal Perception Lv 1] in particular did not directly change his combat or tracking power, as he already had a high level in that area, but adding it to the list of tracking skills he already had was very good.
[Thermal Perception Lv 1 → Lv 2]
The first upgrade he received when absorbing another snake was precisely for this new skill, making his thermal perception even more accurate.
[Chemosensory Aptitude Lv 5 → Lv 6]
This was the second upgrade he received, a nice increase in his sense of smell, but another thing that didn’t change his combat power.
[Instinctive Perception Lv 8 → Lv 9]
When he saw yet another upgrade to his perception, Lohan wished he could roll his eyes.
[Efficient Digestion Lv 15 → Lv 16]
The last evolution was an upgrade that left him wondering whether to be happy or sad.
Since he didn’t need to spend Biomass to evolve this, Lohan saved 28 units, which was good, and increased his total biomass gain from 53.13 to 58.40 Biomass per hour, which was a great increase, but considering that he wanted to level up first and only then evolve this skill, he was a little regretful.
"Forget it, it was fate that evolved my skill and I have no reason to be disappointed. That’s the downside of digesting the brains of enemies and using [Memory Resonance] on them... sometimes it can give me a good evolution, other times I’ll have to deal with what I get." He calmed down.
After 40 minutes, Lohan had absorbed everything he needed from these snakes, saving a lot of time by not having to digest everything, and recovered much of the energy spent in this battle.
Lisa had been ready for a while, but considering that Lohan’s presence was essential in combat, since she was having a little difficulty seeing and sensing the spirit of beings with so little intelligence, she waited patiently for him.
"Okay, I’m done here, we can proceed deeper into this crevice." Lohan said as he stretched his gelatinous body as if he were yawning.
Lisa looked at him expectantly, and together they continued hunting these snakes.
Now without having to worry about waking up early, the two decided to hunt for several hours to ensure they would have enough Digestive Acid to sell for a lot of money in Thalendor.
After 15 minutes of cautious walking through the narrow crevice, they found a group of snakes and killed them all, with Lohan storing more and more Acid inside himself during the 40-minute rest they took for his digestion.
During that time, Lohan’s experience bar rose steadily, in addition to the various evolutions he achieved by digesting these snakes.
Unfortunately, he realized that after digesting 10 snakes, the evolutions he received decreased in frequency, with this species ceasing to evolve him after the 15th snake.
With that, the hunting speed became even greater, since now they didn’t have to wait so long for Lohan to digest the skills from the snakes’ brains.
He still didn’t know if this number 15 was the limit of his skills, or if it was because the snakes were too weak.
In short, he received 13 evolutions in total, the previous 4, 1 new Skill, and these 4 subsequent evolutions:
[Thermal Perception Lv 2 → Lv 4]
[Chemosensory Aptitude Lv 6 → Lv 7]
[Body Density Lv 7 → Lv 8]
The new skill he received was not an evolution like the previous one, but a magical skill like Ice Spike and Pigmentation Mimicry.
[Threshold Mimicry]
[While in shadows or dark places, the user’s body absorbs part of the darkness to camouflage itself, making it difficult to locate by conventional low-level means.]
With so much growth in just a few hours, Lohan was extremely satisfied, until suddenly a grotesque smell invaded his senses, putting him on alert instantly!