[Congratulations! Your skill Poison Resistance levelled up]

-Level 4 > Level 5

After Eren got a better mood he tried other things but almost all the things so far was pointless.

Great. My body is getting better at not dying from things I voluntarily put in my mouth. What a talent.

The berries all tasted fine but none of them triggered anything.

He was starting to think the electric cat was a one-time lucky thing when he reached the monkey territory.

The monkeys were small. Maybe half a meter tall each. But they were built like tiny bodybuilders with arms thicker than their own heads and grip strength that Eren had once watched crack a stone the size of his fist.

About thirty of them lived in a cluster of trees around a single large fruit-bearing tree in a small clearing around it. It was still dense with the forest fauna but somehow less crowded than Eren’s own sleeping tree area.

The fruits on the top of this one were dark red and about the size of his fist. Each tree had maybe ten or twelve and the monkeys guarded them like the fruits were their actual family members. Even young members of this monkey group didn’t get the same affection and guarding responses like that tree.

I have two hands, so my maximum grab limit is two fruits... One chance before thirty mid sized muscled-gorillas try to rip my hands off and make me with zero.

If these angry creatures captured him after he did something funny to that tree, he wouldn’t just be handless. They would kill him. He even saw some other creatures try their chances in the last half an hour. Too many creatures were coming here for some reason. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

Maybe they smell something from those fruits..

Eren circled the clearing twice to map their positions. Most were in the outer trees. Only two sat near the fruit tree itself and both were eating something, distracted.

He hit full speed and entered the clearing. The first monkey saw him and screamed. The second one jumped but Eren was already at the tree. He jumped, grabbed a low branch with one hand and ripped two red fruits from the cluster as his body swung through.

He hit the ground and rolled once because his landing angle was bad and then he was running again. The monkeys erupted into chaos behind him, screaming and throwing whatever they could grab but he was fifty meters away in four seconds and still accelerating.

Two fruits. Clean getaway. Not bad for a guy who couldn’t win a stuffed animal at a carnival booth two months ago.

He climbed back to his platform with both red fruits in his lap. The colorful bird was on its branch nearby, sleeping or pretending to. Hard to tell with that thing.

He bit into the first fruit.

It tasted incredible. Sweet and slightly spicy like if a strawberry and a chili pepper had a kid. The flavor alone would’ve been worth the theft.

Then the heat came. Not taste-heat but body-heat, like someone turned on a heater inside his ribcage. It spread through his torso into his arms and legs. His muscles started vibrating like every fiber was being tuned to a higher frequency. The vibration lasted about ten seconds and stopped.

[Congratulations! You have learned a new skill]

[Physical Durability - Passive (Basic) - First Evolution League]

-Increases the physical effectiveness of Physical Stats (Strength, Endurance)

-Level 1: +5%

Five percent more strength from my existing stats? So my Strength of 52 would hit like... fifty-four point six? Not huge but it’s free power from a stolen fruit.

He looked at the second fruit.

If one fruit gave me Level 1...

He ate the second one faster. Same heat and vibration but stronger this time. His whole body buzzed and his muscles felt tighter and denser when it faded.

[Congratulations! Your basic skill "Physical Durability" levelled up]

-Level 1 > Level 3

-Physical Stat Effectiveness: +5% > +15%

Level 3 from two fruits. That’s fifteen percent on top of everything.

He did the math. Strength 52 with a fifteen percent boost meant his body was performing like a Strength of almost 60. He punched the trunk of his tree to test it and the bark cracked deeper than he expected.

That was real. He could feel the difference in his knuckles.

He stared at the cracked bark. The cat meat gave him a resistance. The monkey fruits gave him a physical boost. Both were things that other creatures were guarding like treasure.

So basically... the scarier the thing protecting the food the better the food is? That’s how this works?

Twenty-five days of running and stealing scraps. That strategy kept him alive but it wasn’t going to make him strong enough for the long term.

New plan. Stop being a thief. Start being a hunter.

But then he looked at his remaining inventory from today’s raids. Six useless mushrooms, failed vine flowers and one more territory he hadn’t visited yet. The one he’d actually come out here for in the first place.

Actually... maybe don’t stop being a thief just yet.

..

The deer territory was the strangest place Eren had found in twenty-five days.

A small valley between two ridges about two kilometers northwest from the ant battlefield. The trees here were different, paler with leaves that were almost white growing in perfect circles around a single tree in the center that was completely white from roots to crown.

The deer looked like something out of a Studio Ghibli movie. Small, maybe up to his waist with silver-white fur and antlers that looked like frosted glass. About a dozen of them grazing in the valley like nothing in this forest could bother them.

Eren didn’t like looking at them. They were too pretty for a place this ugly.

And honestly nothing could.

He’d watched two of them walk straight through a paralytic spider web yesterday like the silk didn’t exist. Another one had vanished mid-step when a centipede lunged at it and reappeared ten meters away still chewing on whatever it had grabbed. Physical things just couldn’t touch them when they didn’t want to be touched.

So why do they guard this territory? If nothing can hurt them why do they care about this valley?

He watched from a tree at the edge for twenty minutes. The deer carried things. Bits of chitin from the battlefield, glowing stones, plant material. They brought everything to the white tree and left it at the base. Some of the items dissolved into the roots.

They’re feeding the tree. Everything they collect goes to this one tree.

He used Observe on the nearest deer. The skill gave him a vague sense of its level, somewhere around 30 to 40 but fuzzy. His skill was too low-level to give exact numbers for anything much above him.

Stronger than me but not aggressive. Their whole defense is just not being touchable.

The white tree had a single fruit on its lowest branch. Only one. Small, about the size of a peach with a semi-transparent whitish skin that looked like it might glow in the dark.

One fruit on the whole tree. Either it takes forever to grow or the deer eat them all.

He spent ten more minutes watching. The deer didn’t go near the fruit. They fed the roots but left the fruit alone.

They feed the tree but don’t eat from it. That’s either really smart or really religious of them.

His Collector skill was doing something he’d never felt before. Not the sharp screaming pulse it gave for common resources but a deeper slower rhythm, almost like a heartbeat.

Whatever that fruit is my skill really wants me to grab it.

Getting in was easy. The deer couldn’t or wouldn’t stop him physically and his speed let him cross the thirty meters to the tree in about two seconds. His hand closed around the fruit and Swift Snatcher confirmed on contact that it was organic and non-toxic but also tagged it with something his skill level couldn’t read. Just "unknown property" floating in the back of his mind.

He was back in the trees with the fruit before the deer even turned their heads. They didn’t chase him. Just watched him leave with those silver eyes and went back to grazing.

That was too easy. Nothing in this forest is that easy.

..

He sat on his platform and held the fruit up to the fading daylight.

The thing looked like a prop from a fantasy movie. The white skin was thin enough to see faint shapes inside, like the flesh was made of clouded glass. It smelled like nothing. No sweetness, no rot, just clean and neutral like holding a smooth stone.

Do I eat this?

He thought about tossing it to one of the fire birds and watching what happened. Test it on something else first. The smart and safe approach.

But his Collector skill was still doing that slow heartbeat pulse. And today’s results were hard to argue with.

The monkey fruits gave him two skills from two bites. The electric cat was Rare quality. And this thing grew on a tree that ghost-deer fed with magical resources they looted from a battlefield.

If eating dangerous food keeps giving me skills like this then this should be... what? Better than everything else?

Or it kills me and I die holding a pretty peach on a tree branch in a magical forest wearing nothing but shorts.

Both outcomes are better than eating another wet cardboard mushroom for the rest of my life.

He bit through the thin skin.

The flesh was soft and cool against his tongue. Faint sweetness like diluted honey. He swallowed.

Three seconds of nothing.

Then his skull felt like it split open from the inside. A pressure wave expanded behind his eyes and pushed through his entire head. His vision went white for a full second and when it came back everything was different.

The bark of the tree wasn’t just brown anymore. He could see individual wood fibers in the grain. A bird sitting on a branch sixty meters away wasn’t a blur of color, he could count its feathers. The sounds of the forest split into separate layers in his ears, individual insect clicks separating from wind noise separating from distant animal calls that he’d never been able to hear before.

[Congratulations! Perception: 34 > 84]

Fifty points. That fruit just gave me fifty Perception points!

What da hell!!!

His hands were shaking as he read the notification. Fifty points in a single stat from one fruit. That was more than twenty-four levels of grinding had given him in total.

But the system wasn’t done yet..

[Congratulations! You have learned a Rare Skill]

[Invisibility (Rare) - First Evolution League]

-Renders the user visually undetectable. Quality of the skill-effects scales with; Skill Level, Stats, and Outside Circumstances.

-Mana Cost: 10 Mana / 1 second of active use]