Atlas was closing in on the snake's deathplace.
'Huh,' he thought, noticing something, as he continued running. 'I feel faster. Must be a side effect of activating my core.'
At this point, just the residual mana leaking from Atlas's core was enough to elevate him beyond the limits of unawakened humans or Dormants who had never once absorbed mana.
He had truly become superhuman!
Finally, after about fifteen seconds of running, he saw the remains of the snake, and adrenaline coursed even more furiously throughout his body.
Forcing himself to think critically, Atlas hid behind a white trunk, observing to see if any new beasts had arrived while he was absent.
His eyes darted from left to right, scanning every shadow and direction. Only after confirming that the coast was clear did he sprint to the corpse.
Atlas grabbed two patches of scales and wrapped the slender horns in them, and then stuffed as many sharp bits of bone as he could into his pants' pockets.
Holding a horn in each hand, Atlas started running to the ladder that led to safety.
Upon arriving there, Atlas placed the wrapped horns onto a smaller mushroom, pulled himself up, and repeated until he reached the top of the tallest vegetation.
Wasting no time, Atlas headed in a random direction, aiming to escape the scene as quickly as possible. He jumped from cap to cap, fueled by his adrenaline and newly discovered physical prowess.
After jumping for at least a mile away in 4 minutes, he finally allowed himself to take a break. He sat down on the mushroom's cap and breathed out to calm his heart.
'I did i-' before Atlas could complete his thought, he heard the sound of a beast and immediately sprang to his feet.
HISS!
Atlas was able to notice that this sounded much angrier than the one he had heard from the other snake.
Immediately after, a burst of sound erupted so concentrated, that it almost deafened him.
BOOM
Glancing toward the direction of the sound, Atlas saw something frightening.
In the distance, a plume of green fire and smoke extended hundreds of feet high, more than fifty feet in width.
"Gotta run!" Atlas yelled to himself before picking up the items and beginning to leap away in the opposite direction from the explosion.
HISSSS!
Another hiss resounded throughout the area, much more furiously, and the growing tremors on the ground caused the mushrooms to sway violently.
Atlas did not stop moving, for remaining stationary was risking death.
As he continued to jump, the hissing gradually became fainter and fainter, until Atlas could no longer hear it.
Only then did he collapse onto the cap of a mushroom.
"This much stimulation really isn't good," Atlas said to himself before chuckling lightly.
He gave himself a few minutes to just lie and rest, before sitting up with a smile.
"Time to look at my gains!" Atlas said excitedly.
First, he pulled out the bones he had stuffed haphazardly into his pockets. There were twenty-five, with the three largest being the size of daggers, about a foot long, and the rest ranging from two to eight inches.
He sorted them on the ground according to size, then he moved to the other materials.
Atlas used a patch of scales to place the yellow horns on the side. Then, he arranged the snake hide in front of him by size once more.
"I should have enough for a chest cover," Atlas said. By using some of the curved and small bones, he could pierce the skin under the scales and combine the two pieces to make an upper body protector, with front and back coverage.
Finally, Atlas moved on to the yellow horns which, due to these, he had named the snake species the Horned Serpents.
Similarly to the Horned Serpents, he named the bears the Titan Bears for their size and strength, the wolves the Dire Wolves for their vicious behavior, and the foxes the Prancing Foxes due to their agility and speed.
For the avian, Atlas could not create a name because he had not seen it, even though its screech made Atlas fall unconscious.
"I need to be focused for this," Atlas murmured to himself.
Using the scales to cover his hands, he wore them as blanket-like gloves. Next, he held a sharp bone in his right hand.
Holding a horn with his left hand, he cut a fragment off the tip with the bone. Surprisingly, the horn was not very hard, and he was able to slice through it easily.
After Atlas did so, he immediately backed up and jumped two mushrooms away, for he did not know if there were any explosive properties in the horn.
After waiting for two minutes and observing, Atlas returned after he was sure no blasts would occur.
'Better safe than sorry,' Atlas thought to himself before using the scales as gloves once more and holding the horn in place. Noticing a gel-like substance within, Atlas inserted the bone knife into the opening he had created.
As Atlas saw the bone enter the inside through the membraneous horns, something happened that almost gave him a heart attack.
The insides of the horn began to glow orange and the outside started heating up!
Not wasting another second, Atlas stepped and threw the horn as far as he could, channeling all of his strength into the heave.
Then, he immediately went fetal and placed his hands over his head.
Not a second later, a large explosion occurred, shaking the ground.
BOOM
After waiting a few more seconds, Atlas stood up to survey the damage.
Around a hundred feet away, another burgeoning cloud of fire and smoke extended upward. However, unlike the other one Atlas had seen, this was much smaller, about fifty feet high and twenty feet wide.
In addition, the fire was also a reddish-orange. This, he attributed to the color of the Horned Serpent, which was a mottled red and orange.
Therefore, he assumed that not only was the Horned Serpent that caused the earlier explosion much stronger than this one, but it was also most likely green.
Atlas waited until the debris cloud had settled slightly before heading towards the site of the explosion, where he saw something that truly disturbed him.