The Exiled First-born of the Noble house. Rising to the top with the Worthless Skill [Null Poison]

Chapter 73

A Heavy Atmosphere

The next day after I turned the goblin nest into my base.

Finally today, I could focus on collecting poisonous plants, my main objective here.

My main aim was, the ‘apple of death’, the Ongneer fruit.

And also collect as many, Lizaf rfuit, Reizen grass and genpei mushrooms.

Also, I wanted to collect other new poisonous plants that haven’t been found and hopefully find one that can increase my agility or magical power.

I especially want to find one for Agility. It’s a vital stat.

While praying that one exists in this forest, I planned to eat as many new types I could find here.

After having a breakfast of Lizaf fruits, I slapped my cheeks to reinvigorate myself and once again began my exploration of the forest.

.

About half a day had passed since I began exploring.

I had yet to find Ongneer but I did find out that this forest filled with Lizaf fruits.

This forest must have the perfect condition and environment for Lizaf trees to grow.

Right now, the ability I want to increase the most is my physical strength which this fruits offers so I’ll take as much as I can from here.

While making sure that I didn’t take everything and kill the plant, I rapidly gathered Lizaf fruits in huge numbers.

Also, I had found some reizen grass and genpei mushrooms as well making it so that all three ability increasing plants from Peixa forest were available here in this forest as well.

While I was relieved to have found all three here as well, Reizen grass and genpei mushrooms were a lot more rarer here and so I wondered if perhaps they were not native to this forest but could be found in huge numbers in another somewhere else.

While wondering about how to plan my future gathering trips, I continued my current harvesting—–when suddenly, I felt a presence that sent chills down my spine.

While searching for the source of this odd presence, I raised my vigilance and cautiously scoured the area.

This felt somewhat similar to the time I ran into that bear-like monster, but I didn’t feel it coming closer to me…….While wondering if I had stepped into an area with a weird presence, I felt suppressed by the heavy atmosphere.

The ‘strange bird’ that Shantell had told me about ran through my head but, the more I felt it, this was not the presence of a monster.

After a while, to find the source of this I crouched down and began looking around the area when suddenly, in the corner of my eye I caught something strange.

It was too far off so I couldn’t see clearly but I could see something collapsed on the ground.

The weird feeling continued to increase the closer I got to that collapsed thing, so I was sure that whatever was releasing this heavy atmosphere was around that place.

While hiding in the bushes, I continued approaching closer when……..

It was the rotting corpse of goblin.

And——around its chest area , as if breaking out of it, a single young tree was growing out of it.

Maybe because it was using the corpse of the goblin as nutrients to grow, it was jet black in colour, and was truly creepy to look at.

………………Hm? Is that small green fruit growing on it?

Since it was the same colour as the ‘apple of death’ that I had been searching for, I unconsciously dropped all my vigilance and carelessly approached close to it.

Looking closely, it was definitely not a flower bud, but a small fruit instead.

Maybe the fruit was small because the tree was small———but maybe this really was the apple of death?

I wasn’t certain but things were definitely lining up.

If this was actually Ongneer, the talk about this fruit supposedly holding an incredible amount of latent power might actually be true.

“……….So that’s how it is.”

After thinking further, a single hypothesis came up in my brain.

According to Otto, there was great variety in every Ongneer and depending on situation it’s effects would greatly vary according to the book.

And, considering the Ongneer in front of me was using a goblin’s corpse as a host, it must be sucking  nutrients off of its body to grow.

Which means that the supposed individual difference in every Ongneer depended on which thing it was using as a host, or at least that was my personal hypothesis.

If it was not this goblin, and instead was using that bear-like monster as its host, just what would happen——

A truly incredible fruit would grow out of it, I was sure.

It was creepy and terrifying to look at but this Ongneer also made me equally excited as well.

For the time being, I harvested one of the small fruit growing out of this one, and calmly walked away from there.

I don’t yet know the lifecycle and ecology of this Ongneer was, so if it wasn’t a poisonous plant and was instead  a parasitic plant, it could be troublesome for me.

Even if I had [Null Poison], I doubt it would work against parasites so it was a risk even for me.

I felt fear just thinking what would happen if it was a parasitic fruit as I returned to my base.