Chapter 139 - A Herd
That statement stunned everyone. What she meant couldn't get any clearer.
She wanted to give everything she killed to Theo.
"This… This… Alea, you, since when did you turn into a simp?!" Ellen couldn't help but ask with a worried expression.
"Huh?" Alea tilted her head in confusion, wondering where that question came from. She thought about her statement again, chuckled, and explained to them. "No, no. As you already know, my original teammate is Theo. Back then, I promised him that I will support him by giving him equipment, skills, and anything as long as we can become the participants of Grand Gaia."
"…" Theo recalled that statement and nodded, confirming what she said.
"You forgot about it?" Alea glared at Theo while pouting. She had been fulfilling every promise she made and this support came in the form of skills, arm guards, night vision glasses, and these cards.
Theo had realized how much Alea had given him and sometimes refused since he shouldn't use her for granted.
"Now that I think about it… Doesn't this look like I'm a sugar mommy?" Alea asked Theo with an innocent expression.
"…" Theo scratched the back of his head and corrected her. "I think you should call yourself a sponsor? No, wait, we're business partners."
"But you always treated me coldly." Alea acted as if Theo had done something bad to her.
"Not coldly, but logically." Theo shrugged.
"Fine, fine. Anyway, you can get everything. No need to think about it." Alea smiled and said, "Of course, this is only for this competition. After that, there won't be anything like this anymore."
Theo let out a long sigh and said, "I will shamelessly utilize this opportunity."
"Shamelessly? You have shame?" Alea rolled her eyes.
Ellen simply looked at them in silence. She never expected Alea would give Theo all her loot. Even though they didn't need money from these cards, it was still a good way to boost their achievement.
Looking at the shocked group, Alea stuck her tongue out and said, "Anyway, let's have lunch first. I'm kind of hungry. It's already 1 PM too."
"What should I do with you…" Theo shook his head and said, "We are the ones who should prepare it, you know."
"That's right. Let's grab a monster from that place—" Alea pointed at the previous grass field before finding Clone Theo already grabbed a three feet tall chicken. "You've grabbed it already."
"Anyway, here is for you." Clone Theo handed the chicken to her.
Theo then said, "I'm sure you're tired… If I'm not wrong, we've killed around four hundred monsters, so we should rest here first before going to our destination… No, why don't we use this place to increase our levels? We can simply step on the grass and kill them from this side."
"Well, I think we have killed most of them." Ellen shook her head. "There are probably less than a hundred inside. We can't really kill all of them since the grass field will simply not send its monsters to us. There is a need to recover, you see."
"Ah." Theo simplified her explanation. "Like when you fish in a lake, you don't get everything so the rest can multiply again."
"Yeah."
"Well, that can't be helped then." Theo nodded before Alea handed the chicken wing, asking him to dress it. He grabbed it casually as if they had done something like this before while Ellen tugged Sihan's shoulder and pointed her finger at them, telling Sihan they were like that too when preparing a meal.
Sihan remained silent and eventually ignored her.
While eating, Phyrill returned and told them what he had seen.
"I've found a herd. The monsters are Tri-legged mice. Their bodies are quite large, which is half of our average height, and their teeth can easily tear our arms in a single bite. Their levels are 125-130 and the number is one hundred."
Theo put down his spoon and glanced at Ellen, "How many monsters do you need to rank up?"
Ellen calculated the number in her mind and said, "Two hundred? As you know, my level is above them…"
'Well, that's true. The reason for my fast leveling is the fact that my level is so low. For Ellen and Alea, these monsters are not that great.' Theo contemplated for a moment and said, "We will lower our speed to our destination by two days to have Ellen rank up first. After that, we will try to attack the Hero Rank monster to see the gap between us. If it's possible, we will kill it… But just make sure we have an escape route already."
"Understood. It means we will use five days to reach that monster's area. Subtracting the three days we need to reach Art Beats Castle, then we only have seven days," added Phyrill, the only one who would understand Theo's plan.
"Yeah. We can spend the remaining time to level up. With this leveling speed, I believe Laust and I can reach Level 100 within the remaining time easily." Theo nodded in agreement. "And we should be able to reach our mission somehow."
"Indeed. Theo, care to bet with me? How many groups will be able to fulfill the requirement?" Phyrill grinned. "We can start with 100,000 Zils."
Theo narrowed his eyes and shook his head. "I won't. I don't know much about the people in the school, so I don't dare to make an assumption. But without any miracles, it's hard for even five groups to pass the first assignment."
"…" Alea and Ellen furrowed their eyebrows before realizing how hard it was to reach Level 250. They had been leaving everything to Theo and thought no more, but it seemed Theo had been wrecking his brain just to come up with a feasible plan to fulfill all the requirements.
They started feeling bad for Theo, wondering what they could do to help him.
Laust didn't care much since he was a first-year like Theo, so as long as he managed to reach Level 151, he didn't care much. As for Sihan, he never really spoke, so no one understood what was going on in his head.
Theo finished his meal and said, "Anyway, we will rest here until 2.30 PM. Our next target will be the herd."