ã€ŠSpores Controllerã€‹ Chapter 1: Arrival ¡°Eh¡?¡± ¡°Where am I?¡± ¡°This place¡ it¡¯s dark and feels so empty, yet...something feels weirdly solid about it¡± ¡°Wait a moment¡¡± ¡°Who am I?¡± ¡°What am I?¡± ¡°Eh¡?¡± ¡°What was that, was that someone asking me something?¡± ¡°What do I want to do you say¡¡± ¡°I¡ I want to control¡± ¡°I want the power to control my own life and those around me!¡± And then I lost consciousness. ----- ¡°Argh...my head hurts, where am I?¡± ¡°This thing under my hand, is this grass?¡± I opened my eyes and start to take in the view around me with some difficulty as my eyes wasn¡¯t used to the bright surrounding. What I saw seemed both familiar yet alien to me, there were trees and other flora all around me, I seemed to be in the middle of the forest. I stood up and looked down, towards my hands and below them, towards my feet. I have a pair of arms and legs that felt kind of short, my stature doesn¡¯t seemed much either. I supposed I looked like a child right now, except that I was stark naked. I started to think about who I am and where did I come from but suddenly a question interrupted my thoughts on that; Why did I not have a HUD? What is a HUD you ask? It refers to a ¡®Heads-Up Display¡¯, something that shows information that are critical in a game, I should have something like that¡ Wait, how do I know that I should have those in the first place? I had no idea on how I knew that, but I felt that I should say out loud the word [Status] and I did just that. ¡°Status¡±

Status
Name:	???
Title:	???
Race:	???
Gender:	???
Level:	1
Experience:	0%
Class:	Spores Master
Health:	100/100	Mana:	100/100
Health regen:	1/s	Mana regen:	1/s
Strength:	10	Intelligence:	10
Dexterity:	10	Wisdom:	10
Vitality:	10	Willpower:	10
Attack:	8-12	Defence:	0

Skills

Class Trees Spores Controlling [lvl 1] -Spores Emission(Active) -Spores Detection(Toggle/Passive)

Other Skills Unique Passive Information Processing(Passive)

¡°Hmm¡¡± Some stuff did appear, and it does seem very game like, but what¡¯s with the ¡°???¡± in my name, title, race, and even gender? ¡°What is that even supposed to mean!?¡± Leaving that aside, my stats were all the same, currently at 10. I wonder if that was supposed to be good. ¡°Oh well, even if that is bad, I have to start somewhere¡ ¡° Now, let¡¯s look at my skills first. I seem to have 1 class tree that has 2 skills under it and a unique passive skill!? ¡°Since it is a unique skill, I sure hope that it is strong!¡± I pressed on the pop-up screen to display their information.

Spores Controller[lvl 1]

The tree that encompasses all skills that directly makes use of spores. The level of the skills will all be shared and their effect will change accordingly to the level of the main tree.

Spores Emission(Active)

Enables the production of spores into the surrounding. Spores will enter the bodies of living beings once in contact. Enables usage of other spores related skills on target(s) that contains active spores. Spores stays within the body permanently as long as the body remains alive. Cost 10 mana/second. Has a radius of 1 metre from the caster.

Spores Detection(Toggle/Passive)

Enables the caster to know instinctively the location of the beings that contain spores within them. Possible to make the spores within those bodies to become inactive. Can be reactivated at anytime telepathically.

Unique Passive Information Processing(Passive)

You are able to process large amounts of information easily, but with drawbacks. Unknown Effect Unknown Effect Unknown Effect

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. I do not know what kind of reaction I should be making for my skills. For one, they don¡¯t seem to be very useful. Another would be that I didn¡¯t even know what the unique passive did, since it is listed as having unknown effects. At least there is a level for my class tree, allowing me to see my progress with it, which will probably unlock more skills later on. One point that I¡¯m baffled on is the description on the skill [Spores Detection]. It says that I can turn the spores inactive, but my skills seems to only work if they are active, so why would I turn them inactive? Maybe there is a reason for that, but for now I wouldn¡¯t know. I decided to switch on my spores emission whenever I could to improve my [Spore Controller] mastery and also to make use of spores detection as a way to mark my path, so that at least I could know that I¡¯m moving away from where I appeared from, and not moving in circles. I moved slowly away from the sun and kept my spores emission on. With my current mana and regeneration, I can only keep it up for slightly more than 11 seconds each time before I have to stop to rest. It feels weird to be using a resource that I do not have any experience with, yet it feels so good. That only lasted until I was starting to run out of mana. At which I would feel somewhat dizzy. I stopped to rest while leaning on a tree trunk before setting off once more, repeating the usage of the skill until I felt sick and then rested to fill my mana before moving off again. After a short while, I heard the sound. ¡°Ding!¡±

For the continued usage of spores controlling skills, you have gained a level in [Spores Controller]. [Spores Controller] is now at level 2.

That...was fast. I don¡¯t think that I have drained my mana that many times, and I have already leveled up the class tree? Ah, it doesn¡¯t matter, it just means that I¡¯m a step closer to unlocking a new skill for my class. Hopefully. I continued my journey the same way as before and shortly afterwards, the sound rings again, but this time twice at nearly the same instance. What popped out was these:

For the continued usage of spores controlling skills, you have gained a level in [Spores Controller]. [Spores Controller] is now at level 3.

For the repeated usage of mana from full to none in a short period of time, you have gained a permanent increase of your mana by 20% and mana regeneration by 1% of your max mana.

Ah, that second message was somewhat surprising. Although I had expected to reach level 3 in [Spores Controller] quite soon due to how little time it took for it to reach level 2, I didn¡¯t expect another passive like thing to appear so soon. Heck, I wasn¡¯t even thinking that this kind of thing would happen. But mana regeneration increasing by 1% of my max mana? Does that mean that my base mana regeneration had something to do with max mana? Looking at the status screen again, it seems like what I inferred was true, despite my max mana being only 120, my mana regeneration was already at a notable amount of 2.4 mana/second. I proceeded with my journey, walking in that one direction for the next few hours. It was mainly uneventful, with no monsters attacking me or anything interesting happening, though I did see a few small creatures roaming here and there. The only event that happened was another pop-up box that appeared when I reach level 5 in [Spores Controller]:

For the usage of spores controlling skills, you have gained a level in [Spores Controller]. [Spores Controller] is now at level 5. For reaching level 5 in [Spores Controller], your [Spores Emission] base mana cost have been reduced to 5 mana/second. You are also able to increase the range of the emission at the cost of higher mana.

After testing for a bit, I found out that it works kind of exponentially with 5 mana/second for a 1 metre radius and 25 mana/second for a 2 metre radius, which is quite a drastic increase in mana if you asked me, but it does help me reach higher and further with less movement. In my experimentation I also found out that it can reach further than the fixed radius with the aid of wind, although the spores disappear a short while later if it isn¡¯t able to find bodies of creatures to enter. Maybe they behave like leeches, sucking in the life force of the creatures that host them, explaining why they can only work on living creatures. I¡¯m also at level 10 with [Spores Controller] right now, and from the rate of leveling, I believe that I should be leveling to 11 for [Spores Controller] soon. Please tell me that I have some new skill, possibly a new attack, or else I might not be able to survive once I encounter some strong monster. Just as I was thinking about that, the familiar sound rang in my ears once again. ¡°Ding¡± ¡°Oh yes! Now tell me...ah!? ARGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!? MYHEAAAAAAADARRRRRRRRRRRRGHTHEPAAAINNNN¡± Just like that, my world turns black. ----- Chapter 2: Encounter Chapter 2: Encounter ¡°Argh¡¡± I woke up with a strong headache, though it is so much better compared to the pain that I felt before passing out. I remembered that I heard a ¡°Ding¡± before I got that headache, maybe that has something to do with it? I looked at the messages that popped out before me, and yes, messages. There was more than 1 message in front of me.

For the continued usage of spores controlling skills, you have gained a level in [Spores Controller]. [Spores Controller] is now at level 11. For reaching level 11 in [Spores Controller], you have unlocked a new ability [Spores Identification].

For gaining the ability [Spores Identification], the amount of information gathered through [Spores Detection] have been drastically increased. The effect of the skill [Information Processing] have been activated.

For exceeding the limit of information that can be processed by [Information Processing], you have triggered the backlash from it. You have gained the status {Unconscious} for 6 hours. All spores have been rendered inactive due to the extreme backlash that was received.

Eh? 6 hours? I looked around myself and found that what was once something similar to the morning glow of the forest have changed quite a fair bit. The position of the sun had already went from one side of the sky to the other, seemingly that it will set in just a few hours more. I had probably wasted half the daylight or even more being unconscious. In order to figure out what happened, I need to check the effects of the skills that I just gained, so I proceeded to press on each of them.

Spores Identification(Passive)

Enables the gathering of information on targets with active spores within their bodies.

Unique Passive Information Processing(Passive)

You are able to process large amount of information easily, but with drawbacks. For every 10 creatures that contains your active spores, you will gain 1 wisdom For every 5 wisdom gained through this method, you will lose 1 intelligence For every point below half of your base intelligence lost due to this effect, you will receive various debuffs and status

¡°Oh, [Spores Identification] sounds useful, but I guess that was what brought about that huge influx of information.¡± From mere detection of the location on where the spores are to providing information of the creatures the spores are all in, I could see how much more the information could have increased. I reactivated a few of the spores near me to see how it works.

Name:	Common grass
Type:	Plant
Rarity:	Common
Description:
The most common type of grass. It can be found anywhere as long as there is decent amount of sunlight and water.
Usage:	None discovered
Identify:	100%

Name:	Earthworm
Type:	Insect
Rarity:	Common
Description:
This tube shaped worm are commonly found in soil, feeding on minuscular matters. They are able to regrow their body easily given the time to do so
Usage:	None discovered
Identify:	100%

¡°Not bad, it gave quite a bit of information on the creatures that contained the active spores. I suppose that it is quite obvious why I will suffer that headache with the sheer amount of data entering my mind.¡± The [Identify] percentage probably means that it will take time for the information to be fully researched before I can find out everything about the creature; And even longer for more complicated or less common creatures. Next will be the unique passive [Information Processing]. Being able to gain stats through a passive is pretty nice. 10 creatures with active spores within them to gain 1 wisdom? Sounds pretty cheat-like with how easy it is to insert spores into the bodies of other creatures, as long as I¡¯m close enough, that is. In order to test it out, I activated spores from another 8 creatures making a grand total of 10 creatures with active spores. I didnt want to flood my mind with too much information at a single time; Don¡¯t want myself losing conscious again. Having 10 creatures with active spores, or Spore Creatures for short, increased my wisdom by 1. After checking the status screen, I see that my mana increased by 10 points as well. 1 Wisdom is equivalent to 10 mana, 10 creatures gain me 1 Wisdom, 5 Wisdom reduces my Intelligence by 1 so using basic mathematics, 50 creatures would reduce my Intelligence by 1. Got to keep track of these stuff if I don¡¯t want to receive the negative effect from the passive again. From having found out about this, I increase my Spore Creatures count to 200 to reach closer to the max count, in order for me to have ample time to remember to switch some off while spreading spores and thus increasing my wisdom by 20, mana by 200, and reducing my intelligence by 4. If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Status
Name:	???
Title:	???
Race:	???
Gender:	???
Level:	1
Experience:	0%
Class:	Spores Master
Health:	100/100	Mana:	360/360
Health regen:	1/s	Mana regen:	7.2/s
Strength:	10	Intelligence:	10(6)
Dexterity:	10	Wisdom:	10(30)
Vitality:	10	Willpower:	10
Attack:	8-12	Defence:	0

Skills

Class Trees Spores Controlling [lvl 11] -Spores Emission(Active) -Spores Detection(Toggle/Passive) -Spores Identification(Passive)

Other Skills Unique Passive Information Processing(Passive)[200]

Nice! With the increase in wisdom, my max mana increased too, same goes for my mana regeneration, allowing my [Spores Emission] to be permanently on, as long as I kept it to a 1 metre range. Other than the reduction in intelligence, I don¡¯t see any more negative effects that can affect me. ¡°Please tell me that will remain the same in the future, and if it does, my unique passive will be a free wisdom increaser!¡± *Gurgle* Ah, come to think of it, I haven¡¯t eaten anything since I arrived here, no wonder my stomach is growling. I have to get something to eat or I will die of starvation. What do I do? Where can I get food here in the middle of nowhere? Wait, I can use my spores to look for edible plants to eat. Or I could try using it to hunt down some animals In order to do that, I first activated my [Spores Emission] by spending in a 3 metre radius of spores and proceeded to run for 3 seconds in a straight line in order to fully spread the spores that came out. I felt both dizzy and tired from running while in that state and had to sit down for a short while. I then turned on the spores in plants scanning the area for edible plants while keeping the limit of 250 in mind. I proceed to pick the plants that I detect as edible with my [Spores Detection] ¡°I¡¯m going to eat my own spores, feels kinda weird if you ask me, but I got the make full use of my skills in order to survive.¡± After picking a sufficient amount of plants and gathered them at one spot, I moved on to do the same for animals. Scanning through the animals with the assistance of my [Spores Detection], I picked the ones that would be easier to capture and proceeded to catch them by hand whilst keeping them on my radar. It still took quite a while to gather them as physically I am neither fast nor strong and the animals can run away pretty fast once they sense hostile intention from me. In the end, I managed to secure enough meat and plants to last until breakfast. I went on to set up camp for the night. After eating, I kept my [Spores Emission] turned on while I slept, making sure that I didn¡¯t overload my limit for the number of spore creatures. Doing so enabled me to sleep in peace as I will be able to detect creatures within a 1 metre radius from me. No matter how small a range that is, it is more easing than to sleep with no precaution at all. ----- 3 more days passed. The rate at which my [Spores Controlling] mastery progressed has definitely been reduced, but that is to be expected. The good news is that I¡¯m already at level 20 in [Spores Controlling] since last evening, so I¡¯m expecting it to reach level 21 by this afternoon and possibly unlock a new ability. It¡¯s the morning and I¡¯m moving at an unrushed pace as I have been doing the past few days. By now, I still haven¡¯t encountered any monster or other things with hostile intention. I think back to when I reached level 15 in [Spores Controlling]. When the ¡°Ding¡± sound rang, I was thinking that I would get another reduction in mana cost for [Spores Emission] to maybe 3 mana/second, looking at how it got reduced by half when I reached level 5 but it wasn¡¯t exactly what I expected. The base mana cost still remained at 5 mana/second but the mana cost for 2 metre of spores had been reduced to 10 mana/second, 3 metre to 50 mana/second and so on. I am now able to use 250 mana for a 4 metre radius of spores, which I wasn¡¯t able to before, although I don¡¯t think that I will change what I have been doing thus far. While I was deep in thought, something appeared in front of my vision. Finally something I haven¡¯t seen since I woke up, a Human! Or that was what I thought until I noticed the sharp pointy ears. He was wearing a mixture of leather and cloth armor and had a sword sheathed inside the scabbard tied to his waist. He was staring wide eyes at me for the duration that I was looking at him before suddenly wiping off his shocked expression, drawing his sword and charging at me. ----- Author¡¯s Notes: Thanks for reading the chapter 2 too(I don¡¯t think you would have read chapter 2 without reading chapter 1, would you?). I¡¯ve had chapter 2 written, edited, and proofread before I¡¯ve even posted chapter 1(with the exception of tables). That¡¯s the reason for the somewhat fast update. I already have chapter 3 written, but it haven¡¯t been edited or proofread yet, so it will be better to expect it to be posted tomorrow. Constructive criticism will be appreciated :D Chapter 3: First blood The sight of him dashing towards me with a sword stunned me. I stood there staring at him without realizing what was going on until he was merely a step away. I almost managed to voice out a single word while stepping back. "Sto-" Instead of stopping, my voice seemed to make him feel more fear towards me as he swung his sword a bit faster, aiming for my neck. I barely managed to dodge it as I stumbled upon a rock and fell on my back, with the sword slashing right above my head. That seemed to surprised both of us. Seeing that he wouldn''t stop his assault, I thought of the only skill that I could use on him.

Status
Name:	Chris Bleufost
Title:	None
Race:	Elf
Gender:	Male
Level:	7
Experience:	37.8%
Class:	Swordman
Health:	130/130	Mana:	130/130
Health regen:	1.95/s	Mana regen:	1.95/s
Strength:	24	Intelligence:	12
Dexterity:	16	Wisdom:	13
Vitality:	13	Willpower:	12
Attack:	14-26	Defence:	15

Skills

Class Trees Swordsmanship[Level 13](locked) -Sword Mastery[Passive] -Slash[Active] -Stab[Active] -Parry[Active/Passive]

Racial Skills One with Nature[Passive](locked)

Looking at his stats, he doesn''t seem very strong. Although he was still stronger than me in every aspect with the exception of my passive enhanced wisdom. He also has a passive skill to aid with his attack skills which I am sorely lacking in. I was also interested in his Racial Skill, but did not have enough time to check it. I figured that I couldn''t possibly win upfront against him due to the stats different and my lack of experience. I also ruled out the option of running away as I knew that I couldn¡¯t possibly outrun him, which was why I had to think of a way to reverse the situation. His sword definitely has a larger reach than my bare fist, so I first need to get rid of that range advantage. Getting rid of his weapon seemed possible as it wasn¡¯t easy to swing a sword at full strength without hitting the trees in this dense forest. I set my plans to motion as I scrambled towards the tree behind me and faced him after standing up. He rushes towards me for another slash but I dived towards his right, causing his sword to miss me and cut deeply into the tree. While he tried to get his sword out of the tree, I scrambled to his front and gave him a headbutt to his face by standing up. He stumbled backwards and tripped on a rock like what I did before and fell flat on his back. Before he could get back up, I jumped and did a body slam on to his guts and he roared out. "Uugh!" I got off him and prepared myself to face him once more but he seemed to have been knocked out, unmoving on the floor. I went closer to take a look just in case he was faking unconsciousness. After determining that he was really knocked out, I opened my status screen to check on my body¡¯s current condition

Status
Name:	???
Title:	???
Race:	???
Gender:	???
Level:	1
Experience:	79%
Class:	Spores Master
Health:	87/100	Mana:	360/360
Health regen:	1/s	Mana regen:	7.2/s
Strength:	10	Intelligence:	10(6)
Dexterity:	10	Wisdom:	10(30)
Vitality:	10	Willpower:	10
Attack:	8-12	Defence:	0

Skills

Class Trees Spores Controlling [lvl 20] -Spores Emission(Active) -Spores Detection(Toggle/Passive) -Spores Identification(Passive)

Other Skills Unique Passive Information Processing(Passive)[200]

¡°Oh? I got some experience points from defeating him, I did not think that that would happen considering he is still alive and all. That helps though. It was the first time that I got experience points since I woke up in this body.¡± I decided to tie him up for questioning after searching his body for items which could be used to escape or attack me with. Just as I was reaching towards his unconscious body, two sounds rang, followed shortly by a shout. When I turned towards the shout, I seemed to have vision of myself jumping down from a tree, axe raised, aiming for some kind of humanoid creature with a very weird head. The head looks something like a mushroom that opened up in middle to form 4 sections, spreading some mist-like particles into the air. The axe then went into the mushroom¡¯s head, cutting the head cleanly into two. I experienced a sharp pain and started losing consciousness. ----- "...Hey, wake up" "Chris, wake up" I woke up to the sound of a dwarf in front of me and replied subconsciously. "Hrmm?" "Oh Aston, what happened?" The dwarf in front of me is Aston Redhill, a companion that I had been travelling with since I left the forest I grew up in. We had been together for so long that I had total confidence in leaving my back to him even if we are totally surrounded. A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. "That''s what I want to ask you, stupid. What was that thing attacking you and how did you get knocked out like that? Are you alright?" I looked over at the corpse of the mushroom headed man and remembered what happened. I then said to Aston, "Oh, I''m fine. No other injury beside this bleeding on my head, which was what caused me to lose my conscious. I don''t know what that thing is. I stumbled upon it and in my shock, stepped back and tripped. Did you kill it?" "Yeah, I believe so, I cut it right in the middle of it''s head. If it can survive that, it must be a monster. You sit down and rest here while I go over to take a look at it''s corpse." "OK, be careful" I said that as I thought, ¡°Yup, that is a monster alright¡±, since it was me. When I regained consciousness just now, my mind was in a mess and I couldn''t think back clearly on what happened; Words just came out of my mouth. I suddenly remembered experiencing a sharp pain, before arriving in the weird dark empty space. I woke up shortly after feeling a strong desire to control. Looking back, I didn¡¯t find the elf¡¯s reaction weird anymore. From the dwarf¡¯s vision that I saw, there was no doubt about how creepy I looked. That could easily explain why I was attacked right after he saw me. Thinking about it, I must have experienced the same thing now and then, meaning that the body that I was in wasn''t mine originally. I opened the windows that I didn''t managed to read before dying and noticed the following changes:

For the continued usage of spores controlling skills, you have gained a level in [Spores Controller]. [Spores Controller] is now at level 21. For reaching level 21 in [Spores Controller], you have unlocked a new ability [Spores Identification].

Spores Senses(Toggle/Passive) Enables the caster to receive the five senses of the target(s) as if it was his own.

You have taken fatal damage and died.

For having died yet still having a strong desire to control, you have temporarily gained control of a creature with active spores in it. As you have not unlocked the skill, there will be limitations. As your level in the skill is too low for the creature you possess, you will not be able to use the skills that the creature controls and a stat penalty will apply.

Status
Name:	Chris Bleufost(???)
Title:	None(???)
Race:	Elf(???)
Gender:	Male(???)
Level:	7(1)
Experience:	37.8%(79%)
Class:	Swordman(Spores Master)
Health:	100/100	Mana:	100/100
Health regen:	1/s	Mana regen:	1/s
Strength:	24(19)	Intelligence:	12(10)
Dexterity:	16(12)	Wisdom:	13(10)
Vitality:	13(10)	Willpower:	12(10)
Attack:	9-22	Defence:	15

Skills

Class Trees Swordsmanship[Level 13](locked) -Sword Mastery[Passive] -Slash[Active] -Stab[Active] -Parry[Active/Passive]

Racial Skills One with Nature[Passive](locked)

Effect Possession(3 hours 18 minutes)

Not bad, although my strength and dexterity only changed by a bit, it is still higher than before. I pressed the possession effect on the pop-up screen to see what it said. The person is currently possessed. Depending on the strength of the possessor, the stats and skills of the person may change accordingly. I felt sad that there are limitations to the possession, but that should be expected. Furthermore, I should be happy that I¡¯m still ¡®alive¡¯ although I ¡®died¡¯, though I still couldn¡¯t figure out if I¡¯m actually dead or alive in the first place. Next, I opened up the information window for the racial skill [One with Nature], as I have the time to find out what it does now. I¡¯ll leave the rest alone as they seem easy to figure out.

One with Nature[Passive] For having a high affinity with nature, you¡¯ll have increased life regeneration and mana regeneration within a forest.

¡°Ah, that explains why he had more than average regenerations.¡± After satisfying my curiosity, I looked over to the dwarf and saw that he is still examining my previous body. I took that opportunity to search my current body for items for things to use in the current situation. What I found was some ropes, which I''m guessing is either for climbing purposes or used to tie things up for easier storage. There was also some dried meat, some variations of metal coins, and a few bottles of liquid which I assumed was potions. A plan formed in my mind regarding what I could do with the items and I smirked. ----- Author¡¯s Note: Now, with this chapter¡¯s end, the time that will take till the next chapter will be slightly longer. That is because I¡¯ll be busy for the next few days and also due to me only having a rough idea on what the next chapter should be. Although that have been said, I¡¯ll keep to my promise of 1 week/chapter at the bare minimum. Do keep a lookout for when the next chapter come out and thanks for reading the chapter :D PS: The ''Class Trees'' thingy is supposed to mean something like skills within skills, skills will be unlocked as the ''Class Tree'' levels up. That is what the ''Class Trees'' are supposed to mean, since there might be more than 1 ''Class Tree''(possible spoiler?). Constructive criticism will be appreciated. Chapter 4: The Plan In order to make sure the plan was workable, I need to first confirm the stats of the dwarf, Aston.

Status
Name:	Aston Redhill
Title:	None
Race:	Dwarf
Gender:	Male
Level:	7
Experience:	41.2%
Class:	Berserker
Health:	240/240	Rage:	0/100
Health regen:	2.4/s	Rage decay:	1/s
Strength:	28	Intelligence:	11
Dexterity:	11	Wisdom:	10
Vitality:	16	Willpower:	14
Attack:	8-33	Defence:	20

Skills

Class Trees Berserk[Level 15] -Rage Control[Passive] -Rage Cleave[Active] -Pure Rage[Active]

Racial Skills Iron Heart[Passive]

Berserk[Level 15] This tree converts your mana into a resource call ¡®Rage¡¯. ¡®Rage¡¯ needs to be built up, either through hitting things or getting hit. It is still possible to use skills without enough ¡®Rage¡¯ resource, but the amount of damage done will be reduced accordingly, up to 50%.

Rage Control[Passive] This ability increases your attack by an amount depending on how much ¡®Rage¡¯ you have.

Rage Cleave[Active] By using the skill, you will be able to attack 180 degrees in front with greater damage, based on the amount of rage you have. The cleave will affect all targets within the range and it cannot be blocked. Costs 40 Rage.

Pure Rage[Active] When the skill is activated, the amount of damage increased by [Rage Control] will be doubled. At the same time, the amount of damage taken will also be increased by 50%.

Iron Heart[Passive] Being born and raised in an environment that is as hard as iron has enabled the person to have the durability of one. Increase the amount of health gained per vitality. Resistance to effects due to willpower is also increased.

¡°Damn! His strength stat sure is high, but I suppose that is right for a berserker who cares more about strength than anything else. But his defence is too high for my plan to work, unless I¡¡± ----- From the viewpoint of the dwarf, Aston: I am now standing in the middle of a lake, totally drenched and fully naked. As a dwarf that grew up in the mountains, where there wasn¡¯t much water bodies, I didn¡¯t bother to learn swimming. Thank god that this was a shallow lake, enough so that it barely reached my chest even with my height of 1.5 metres. While I am being grouchy here, there was an elf standing at the lake bank laughing at me, my pile of equipment and clothes by his side. How did it come to this? Let¡¯s look back to an hour ago. ----- I was travelling with my friend Chris, an elf, through the forest. We were here to complete an extermination request for wolves that had become too plentiful on the other side of this forest. Normally people wouldn¡¯t bother to travel so far just to do such a simple request as it takes too much travelling time; We chose it since we knew the forest like the back of our hands and could travel at a fast enough speed to make it worth the time. The reason we knew this forest so well is due to the amount of time that we had spent here. We met each others a couple of years back, here in this forest, when we were just starting out with our adventuring career. To be honest, I was too arrogant back then. Although I didn¡¯t have any battle experience, I immediately picked out an extermination request for a swarm of goblins in the forest as my first job. I didn¡¯t want to do all the other jobs that seemed suitable for a novice adventurer as I deemed them to be too easy. It wasn¡¯t as if the guild didn¡¯t try to stop me from picking up the request, I was too stubborn and fully ignored all their advice. There wasn''t any veteran adventurers there to knock sense into my head, so I just went into the forest, ignorant of the danger that I was about to face. The forest was considered big, but it wasn¡¯t hard to spot the group of goblins when they were so plentiful. I found them within an hour and immediately dived into them. I was expecting the swarm to be easy to kill off but I overestimated myself too much. Instead of finishing off forty plus goblins without feeling too tired, by the time I finished off my 10th one, my endurance was already barely keeping me standing. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there. I realised then that I should have heed the sensible advice that was given and not work on this request alone or even at all. Just as I had begun giving up hope of surviving, someone dropped down from above, taking down 2 goblins at the same time. To me, he was like a hero, appearing in my time of need. My expectations was betrayed when I saw that he was just a novice like me, judging by the way he swung his sword and wore basic novice equipment. Still, him being there meant that my chances of survival had increased. I joined him and fought back to back with him. By the end of the battle, we were both filled with bruises and cuts, but at least we still had our lives. Later on I found out that he saw what happened at the guild and was worried about my safety. He decided to follow me and watch, helping out only when needed. I assumed that he did not want me to think that he was out there to steal my request. The fact that he was willing to risk his life to help me, a stranger, earned him my total trust. I suggested forming a party with him and he readily accepted with a big grin. Since then, we had mostly been accepting requests that were in the vicinity of the forest, like the current request. We reached the lake nearing the middle of the forest and sat down for a short break. Even before I had sufficient rest, Chris was already raring to go. He is an elf in a forest after all; He recovers fast. Thus he decided to proceed first, I will catch up in a short while. Once I was well-rested, I walked towards his direction. I heard his pain-like roar shortly after. I quickly ran towards him. What I saw there was something that we had never encountered before. There was some humanoid creature standing over Chris. Other than the body, which looks like that of a young child, it''s head was something grotesque. To save Chris, I had to fully make use of the element of surprise that I have, since I had no idea what that thing was capable of. I then remembered how Chris saved me when we first met and decided to use the same tactic. I creeped up to the tree towering above the creature and climbed it, hoping it wouldn¡¯t notice me. I managed to get above him while it was standing still and readied my axe. I shouted while I jumped down to provide myself with the courage to stare at the creature until the last moment; I didn¡¯t want to waste my only chance for a surprise attack and miss. The creature turned due to my shout and I felt stupid for alerting it of my attack. It did not dodge though, as my axe landed cleanly into his head, cutting it in half. It fell on the ground right there, no longer moving. I was worried about Chris but after waking him up and finding that he was alright, I started to examine the creature. Like what I saw before, the body is that of a young child. The head is bloated in such a way that it resembles a mushroom. There were also cracks on the head itself, splitting itself into 4 sections even before my axe went in. Chris then suddenly shouted, "Wait! You didn''t touch that thing did you?" "Yes I did?" "I remembered seeing something similar to that creature in the books back in my village. Remember the lake before? You¡¯ve got to quickly get there and jump into the water, or else you''ll die! Take off everything before you jump in, or else it wouldn''t help!" Having complete trust in him, stupid me decided to follow his instructions word for word. After jumping in, I felt that something was wrong. My suspicion was confirmed when Chris started laughing. That brings us back to the present. ¡°Dammit Chris! How can you take your joke so far, I really thought that I was going to die there!¡± ¡°But this isn¡¯t a joke. I¡¯m serious.¡± ¡°What?¡± ¡°If I didn¡¯t make you strip naked and jump into the lake, you¡¯ll really die. To me, that is.¡± I immediately went from anger to confusion. ¡°Oh, don¡¯t look so confused, you just need to do all I say and you¡¯ll live. Come over here, out of the lake, and let me tie you up.¡± His command left me even more baffled. Why would Chris be doing this, I¡¯ve fought alongside him for so long that I knew him inside out. It shouldn¡¯t be possible for someone to hide their real personality for so long. I have total trust in him, it still doesn¡¯t change now, so I didn¡¯t know how to react to this. What he said next cleared all my doubts, ¡°It¡¯s okay, Chris wouldn¡¯t be doing these to you right? I expect you to be thinking these things, so let me clarify your question; I am not Chris. If you want Chris to be safe, do as I say, NOW.¡± I didn¡¯t know if following his commands would keep Chris safe, but in the current situation, I think that that would be the best thing that I could do. Even if I ran away, without any equipment, I wouldn¡¯t be able to survive the journey back to the city. Thus, I listened to his commands and hoped that Chris and I will both be safe in the end. And that was how I was captured. ----- Author¡¯s Notes: Thanks again for reading this chapter :D. I actually had this chapter done on Sunday, but it wasn¡¯t proofread then, so it couldn¡¯t be published. And I had been busy the past few days(till today) while having a lack of internet. Thus I¡¯m only able to post it now. This can be said to be caused by something work-like that I¡¯m doing and there will always be this 2 or 3 days break every 2 or 3 days. I also have written chapter 5 and 6, but they are neither edited nor proofread yet, but I should be able to publish them later today(chapter 5) and tomorrow(chapter 6). Chapter 5: Experimentation "That took less convincing than I believed was necessary." I thought to myself as I was tying Aston up. After my last command, he shut up and did as I said. He didn''t even try to resist, he just turned his back to me and gave me his arms. He must really had valued Chris very highly to willingly risk his own life for him. Chris did the same a few years back for Aston too; I discovered that by accessing Chris''s memory. With how cooperative the dwarf was, I doubt that tying him up was necessary. He wasn''t going to escape until he freed Chris from my grasp. Having him bounded had merits to it made it easier for me to carry out my experimentations. After making sure that he couldn''t escape from his bonds, I added a collar and tied him to a tree. Next, I used a cloth storage bag as a makeshift blindfold. With that done, I walked over to the lake and looked at my reflection through the water. In my current body of an elf, I''m not lacking in the least for my attractiveness. There aren''t any visible wrinkles on my skin at all. That would likely change when I used [Spores Emission]. I went ahead to test my theory. It was just like I had speculated. Cracks started forming across my head, splitting it into four sections. Soon after, I could see mist-like particles escaping from the top part of the head. I toggled off [Spores Emission] and the horror that I witnessed disappeared within the second. "That''s good, I don''t need to worry about not being able to use my own skills while in a different body. There isn¡¯t any visible harm to the body as far as I can see." With the first experiment concluded, I untied Aston from the tree. I lead him back to where my previous body was while carrying his equipment with me. I tied him to another tree as soon as I got there. The second experiment deals with finding out if I could still use my previous body. I examined the wounds on the head. Just as I believed, it was cleanly cut into half. I couldn''t use [Spores Identification] on it as it wasn''t alive. The only thing I could think of was to use spores in concentrated amounts. By increasing the density of spores, I was hoping that it would rejuvenate the spores within the body, making it workable again. It didn''t work as the spores had long withered. I was desperate. There was less than 2 hours of possession remaining and I was still unable to return to my previous body. I was left with one last experiment. If it failed, I might lose my existence as a whole. I towered over the dwarf, whom by then had already grown anxious. I had left him alone for around an hour while blindfolded without making a sound. He could have known what I had been up to nor what I had planned for him. When I started speaking, his body language expressed a mixture of relief and fear. "Aston, now I''ll need you to answer all my questions. Where is the nearest town from here?" I started probing him with questions that I already knew the answer to, making it possible for me to see through his lies. He answered truthfully to all the previous questions. That made me believe that he was trustworthy enough to ask the questions that I was unsure of. "What about the creature that you killed? Do you have any idea what it was?" "That was the first time we saw something like that. We haven''t explored much outside of this forest so I don''t know if it exists elsewhere." "Oh, that''s fine. For answering so honestly, let me give you a clue; I am the creature killed by you." His face immediately went pale. He couldn''t have known that the person he surrendered to was the creature he killed. Things that died stayed dead, unless necromancy was involved; Though they were technically still considered dead. "Now, I''ll be taking over your body like what I did with your elf friend!" With that said, he finally tried to struggle. Although he had higher strength than the elf, with the aid of the bonds, he couldn''t escape from me. I turned on [Spores Emission] again and tried to direct the spores to invade the insides of the dwarf through his mouth, which I forced wide open. Desperateness showed on his face. He started to gag on the concentrated spores. It had gotten so bad that his health started dropping due to asphyxiation. That didn''t stop me as this was my last-ditch effort. As I continued my contamination, I soon noticed that more effects had appeared on his status screen. Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Status
Name:	Aston Redhill
Title:	None
Race:	Dwarf
Gender:	Male
Level:	7
Experience:	41.2%
Class:	Berserker
Health:	117/240	Rage:	0/100
Health regen:	2.4/s	Rage decay:	1/s
Strength:	28	Intelligence:	11
Dexterity:	11	Wisdom:	10
Vitality:	16	Willpower:	14
Attack:	8-33	Defence:	20

Skills

Class Trees Berserk[Level 15] -Rage Control[Passive] -Rage Cleave[Active] -Pure Rage[Active]

Racial Skills Iron Heart[Passive]

Effects Asphyxiation(Indefinite) Infected(Indefinite)

I opened up the pop up window for the effect {Infected}, hoping that it was what I had in mind.

Infected(Indefinite) The target had been infected due to exposure to high concentration of spores. This allows the [Spores Master] to have the ability to freely possess the target until the status was removed.

"Oh right! That worked better than I had intended. Now I just need to secure more bodies with this effect." Once I dropped him onto the ground, he started having coughing fits and wasn''t able to breathe properly for a couple of minutes. During that time, I contaminated my own body. That lasted until the effect appeared. During the process I didn''t feel suffocated but my health was decreasing constantly. I tried to spread my influence soon after to other creatures around us; But it didn''t work. They all died before being able to become infected. It left me quite disappointed that I wasn¡¯t able to control an army of critters to do as I command. I would be able to contaminate and command an actual army if given the time and opportunity to do so. Deciding that I had already accomplished what I had in mind, I removed the bonds on Aston. He wasn''t able to react properly as he laid weak on the ground, trying to regain his breath. I whispered a line into his ears, before releasing my possession of the elf. "You may think that your nightmare is over... but actually it has only just begun." ----- Author¡¯s Note: For the time being, I haven¡¯t started on editing of chapter 6 yet. I¡¯ll do that tomorrow. On a side note, I¡¯ll try to go back to previous chapters and rewrite them(due to the suggestion of the friend proofreading for me). I¡¯ll still release new chapters regularly(-ish?) like what I¡¯ve been doing. I don¡¯t know how much changes will be made though, mostly grammatical and maybe more description? Do help to comment on the changes when I do make them though. Thanks for reading like always. :D Chapter 6: The Beginning of a Nightmare "Chris..." "Chris!" Aston shouted as he shook my shoulders. This somehow felt familiar, but I couldn''t quite put my finger on what it was. I opened my eyes and turned to looked at him. Before I could actually get up or open my mouth, he grabbed me for a magnificent bear hug. "Thank god that you''re alright Chris! I was so worried that you will never wake up again. Are you feeling alright? Do you feel weird in any places? Do you remember what happened?" I couldn''t answer his bombardment of questions, so I took my time and asked one of my own, "Calm down, let me first ask you; Why are you naked?" My question caught Aston by surprise. He became slightly flustered before deciding to ignore my question and made me answer his first. "You don''t remember what happened?" Just before my voice could escape my throat, I heard a voice in my head, "Here is a little parting gift. Enjoy." I couldn''t understand what the voice was talking about. What gift could it be? Instead of obtaining an answer to my question, a terrible headache was what I got. "Huh? Wha- Argh!? My head!?" Aston kept me from falling back to the ground as I tried to stand up. He had became more worried as compared to before. The headache eased when the memories of what happened stopped flowing in. Tears flowed down my face as I turned to Aston and said, "I''m sorry. I remembered what happened now. Everything happened because of me and you had to suffer so much for it. You even risked your life for me." Aston¡¯s expression softened and he replied, "You did the same for me too." I hugged him as I cried, my gratitude towards him overflowing the bounds of my heart. After I cried my heart out, I helped him to re-equip his armor and started discussion of our next step. "He just up and left after torturing you and telling you ''the nightmare has only just begun''? Does that mean that he will appear again?" "Highly probable. I was blindfolded most of the time after being bonded. I don''t have a clear idea on what happened. Could you look back at the memories that was given to you for any clues?" "He seemed to be using us for his experiments and had succeeded in it. Could it have something to do with his body since you killed it?" I inferred and my theory was accepted by Aston. We decided to continue with our extermination request and redecide our plans once it was completed. The only preventive measure we had was to look out for each others, hoping to not fall into his control again. ----- From the viewpoint of the MC: I released my control of the elf after I was satisfied with my experiments. Now that I''m no longer in control of a single body, I could not make use of my [Spores Emission] skill anymore. Other than the [Spores Emission] skill, all my other skills within the tree remained usable. My spores creature limit was lifted as there were neither intelligence to reduce nor wisdom to increase in this state.

Status
Name:	???
Title:	???
Race:	Parasite
Gender:	???
Level:	2
Experience:	23%
Stats Point:	5
Class:	Spores Master
Health:	NIL	Mana:	NIL
Health regen:	NIL	Mana regen:	NIL
Strength:	NIL	Intelligence:	NIL
Dexterity:	NIL	Wisdom:	NIL
Vitality:	NIL	Willpower:	NIL
Attack:	NIL	Defence:	NIL

Skills

Class Trees Spores Controlling [lvl 23] -Spores Emission(Active) -Spores Detection(Toggle/Passive) -Spores Identification(Passive)

Other Skills Unique Passive Information Processing(Passive)[2793]

For the continued usage of spores controlling skills, you have gained a level in [Spores Controller]. [Spores Controller] is now at level 22.

You have gained a level, giving you 5 stats points to spend.

For the continued usage of spores controlling skills, you have gained a level in [Spores Controller]. [Spores Controller] is now at level 23.

I didn¡¯t noticed that I had leveled up. That could have been due to the contamination of Aston. It seemed the most reasonable for that to increase my skill level by two. There was also stats point gained through levelling up, but there wasn¡¯t an options to make use of them. I noticed that my race had changed its display from ¡®???¡¯ to ¡®Parasite¡¯. I could¡¯ve made a good guess that that was the case since I figured out how my spores worked. "What should I do now? I guess I could make use of all my spores to have a better view of the world." I spent half of the day doing that and found out interesting information regarding what was going on within the forest. There was a party of 3 to the north of Chris and Aston, heading in the same direction as them. They would meet soon after as Chris and Aston were moving faster than the party. Since I wasn''t able to use [Spores Identification] to confirm, I could only guess what they were from their looks. One of them wore leather clothing with daggers on his belt. The second one don heavy armor and held a long sword. The last one was totally covered from head to toe with a black robe. From what I had seen, they seemed to be Human. To the far south of the forest, a short distance from the cities, there were a group of lumberjacks. They seemed to need the wood urgently considering how fast they were cutting the trees down. I set my point of interest onto these 3 areas, closing off my senses to spores creatures in other areas. I decided that it was about time for me to possess a body again, so I focused my attention back onto the party of 2. They were continuing their journey undaunted, unknowing to the fact that their every movement were being watched by me. My target to possess was Chris since I had taken over him once and could get used to his body better. While concentrating on possessing him, a message popped up,

As the willpower of the target is stronger than your intelligence could handle, you are unable to successfully possess him.

I stared at the message in shock for a few moments before trying again. I had not succeeded even after ten minutes had passed. Every single attempt failed and the same message appeared each time. I turned my attention to Aston, whom I believed would be harder to possess due to his racial passive. I didn''t manage to take control of him either. "Shit! The nightmare that I spoke of was for myself! Argh, how do I get a body when I had only contaminated those two and I couldn¡¯t even take control of them!?" "Damn, maybe I have to wait until they are feeling weak mentally. Maybe it would be easier when they are asleep?" That was my only idea on a possible reduction in willpower from them. Night was only 3 hours away so I bid my time and gathered more information with my spores creatures. By the time they were asleep, I had already ran out of patience. I tried to possess Chris before turning to Aston. Like before, it didn''t work. Before I broke down into frustration once more, I noticed something abnormal happening at the party of 3¡¯s campsite. The dagger and sword wielding men had fallen asleep. The man in robe was kneeling beside the roguelike equipped man. From within his robe, a single dagger that shined like black jewel was produced. He raised it high above the sleeping figure before stabbing it down, through the guts of the sleeping man. For unknown reasons, the stabbing motion produced no sound. The other man continued his sleep, unaware of the murder that was committed. After ensuring that the rogue had no chance for survival, the robed man did the same for the warrior. It wasn''t difficult to kill him when he had no chance of retaliation. This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. The weirdest part to all this was that he just up and left, taking nothing other than himself and the obsidian dagger he produced from his robe. For what reason would he have killed his companions? He was an element of danger and needed to be taken note of. I responded accordingly and changed the target of observation from the party of 3 to the robed man as he was the only one left alive. I ignored him temporarily and continued seeking for success in the possession. It never worked thus far but the action gave experience, increasing the level of [Spores Controlling] to 24. I noticed shortly after the level up that the robed man was walking towards where the elf and dwarf were. He had a clear purpose in his directions. I worried for what could happen. If he were to kill the two just as he did his companions, would I never be able to obtain a body forever? I didn''t want to take that risk and so I strived harder than before for the succession of possessing Chris. I thought that it was already too late when he walked out of the treelines, towards Chris. My possession finally worked when he was towering above Chris.

You have succeeded in possession of your target. As this was not the first time you possessed the target, your stats penalty have been reduced to 10% from 20%.

Status
Name:	Chris Bleufost(???)
Title:	None(???)
Race:	Elf(Parasite)
Gender:	Male(???)
Level:	7(2)
Experience:	37.8%(23%)
Stats Point:	0(5)
Class:	Swordman(Spores Master)
Health:	110/110	Mana:	110/110
Health regen:	1.1/s	Mana regen:	1.1/s
Strength:	24(21)	Intelligence:	12(10)
Dexterity:	16(14)	Wisdom:	13(11)
Vitality:	13(11)	Willpower:	12(10)
Attack:	11-25	Defence:	15

Skills

Class Trees Swordsmanship[Level 13](locked) -Sword Mastery[Passive] -Slash[Active] -Stab[Active] -Parry[Active/Passive]

Racial Skills One with Nature[Passive](locked)

Effect Infected(Indefinite) Possessed(5 hours 39 minutes)

I waited while acting asleep and observed the robed man with my spores creature¡¯s eyes. Just as he was starting his stabbing motion, multiple actions was done. I used my left palm to stop his hand holding the dagger, right hand to grab the sword next to me, and toggled on [Spores Emission] for the moment. He jumped away after I slashed at him with the sword in my right hand. The attack was dodged but the spores I released earlier succeeded in infiltrating his body. My slash hit the dirt as I put in too much strength, producing enough noise to wake Aston up. I looked at the status of the robed man while he was planning his next move.

Status
Name:	Cliff Blakesh
Title:	Sandman
Race:	Human
Gender:	Male
Level:	10
Experience:	97%
Class:	Shadow
Health:	140/140	Mana:	120/120
Health regen:	1.4/s	Mana regen:	1.2/s
Strength:	20	Intelligence:	18
Dexterity:	39	Wisdom:	12
Vitality:	14	Willpower:	17
Attack:	31-31	Defence:	15

Skills

Class Tree Assassination[Level 27] -Backstab[Passive] -Gouge[Active] -Sneak[Passive] Shadow Manipulation[Level 3] -Blend In[Passive]

It seemed that the reason for him to step back held more meaning than to gain distances. He wanted to make use of [Blend In]''s effect, which I could easily guess. It didn''t work on me as I was able to sense his location with my spores. By now, Aston could roughly figure out what was happening. He quickly don his armor and picked up his axe. He couldn¡¯t spot the assaulter due to the effect of [Blend In]. I shouted to Aston my plans, "Just stand still. Move when I shout!" He nodded. The assaulter did not know of my abilities, but he was wary of me. Deciding that the dwarf would be the easier target, he dashed silently to the dwarf''s right while remaining in the shadows. I acted like I was unaware and continued staring at the spot he was in. "Right!" In response to my command, Aston swung his axe towards his right. Due to inertia, he couldn¡¯t stop in time to avoid the axe. He used his dagger in an attempt to parry only to get knocked back. Knowing that that would happen, I ran towards where he was getting knocked back to before it could even happen. I reached him and did my best to pin him down. I had some difficulty in keeping him pinned as he struggled till Aston arrived. His struggles had became pointless. Two people who were stronger than him individually were more than enough to kept him from moving. "Hold him there Aston, I''ll infect him. Then it would be over." "Infect? Wait, you''re-! Never mind. We''ll talk when this is over." I proceeded to concentrate spores into the assaulter''s body. He went from anger, to shock, then fear; All in the short moments it took for him to choke on my spores. I didn''t stop forcing spores into him even after he was infected. I kept on feeding it to him until his health reached zero. And then a message popped up.

For exposing an infected target with spores until death, you are able to take over the body.

Ecstasy colored my face as i concentrated hard on taking over his body. I succeeded in barely a second with Chris waking up in his own body. "Unhand me Aston" I commanded with my deep rumbling voice. Seemly shocked by the changed situation, it took him a moment to comply. Chris had fully woken up by then and did the same. Letting go of the arms that now belonged to me. ----- Author¡¯s Notes: Thanks for reading another chapter :D. Does the chapter answered some of your questions? If anything needs clarification, please do ask(I¡¯ll try to avoid spoiler though). The next chapter will be up either by next Monday or Tuesday. Constructive criticism will be appreciated. Chapter 7: Deal with the Devil PS: Does anyone knows if I need to add a ¡®Mature¡¯ tag if I¡¯m only doing it for a sidestory(ish) and putting it within spoilers? ----- "So, you''re t-the creature?" Aston asked with hesitation. I replied, slightly amused at how he reacted towards me. "That would be the truth, but I''ll rather you not call me that; It is quite rude and unfriendly. You may call me Cliff, Cliff Blakesh. That was the name of the previous owner of this body." Aston shuddered as I smirked. Yup, this had become interesting. "Thank you for saving us, but why would you do that?" "Ah, I didn''t think that you could''ve stayed so calm. You cried so much after I last possessed you. Well, it doesn''t matter. The answer to that is quite simple; It benefits me to remove him." I explained to Chris as I pointed to myself. Looking at their confused faces, I continued my explanation. "The two of you were, well, actually still are the only ones contaminated by me. Without one of you left alive, I couldn''t possess anyone else. That would be until I used either of your bodies and contaminate more people. That was the reason, simple? Gaining this body was an unexpected bonus." "Gaining it? It''s permanent?" It seemed like Aston had finally calmed down as he questioned me. "Yes, I murdered him and unexpectedly gotten control of the body. Without me, this body is already dead." Aston gulped. I believed that I had traumatized him. He had experienced first hand the method I used to murdered Cliff. Each of my actions were causing it to become worse. "What are you going to do now, since you have obtained a body? Kill us?" Chris questioned as he stares at me, prepared to draw his sword and cut me down in a single moment. "No. For now the two of you are important resources. I would like to spread my influence and that would require your assistance. Cutting me down is useless Chris, unless you''re also willing to cut Aston down. I hold the power to possess either of you at anytime. You can''t stop me from doing so." Of course that was a lie, but they didn''t know of my limits. They don''t need to. "What I need you two to do is simple. Allow me to travel with you as part of the party. You will not reveal my identity to others unless I allow it. Also, you will do as I command for situations that I deemed necessary." They seemed to relax a bit as I wasn''t showing hostility. They weren''t sure on what to do with the offer but hadn''t dare to discuss it in front of me. Thus, I said, "Of course, I don''t expect you two to make a choice without discussing with each others. I''ll head over to that willow tree so that you could have your ''privacy'', or lack of it. If you run away, I''ll just take it as you rejecting the offer. As long as the offer wasn''t accepted, I''ll not treat you two as allies in any sense anymore." I ended my speech and walked over to the willow tree as I had promised. While they were discussing, I decided to check out my status and skills.

Status
Name:	Cliff Blakesh(???)
Title:	Sandman(???)
Race:	Human(Parasite)
Gender:	Male(???)
Level:	10(3)
Experience:	97%(67%)
Stats points:	0(10)
Class:	Shadow(Spores Master)
Health:	140/140	Mana:	300/300
Health regen:	1.4/s	Mana regen:	6/s
Strength:	20	Intelligence:	18(16)
Dexterity:	39	Wisdom:	12(25)
Vitality:	14	Willpower:	17
Attack:	31-31	Defence:	15

Skills

Class Tree Assassination[Level 27] -Backstab[Passive] -Gouge[Active] -Sneak[Passive] Shadow Manipulation[Level 3] -Blend In[Passive] Spores Controlling [Level 25] -Spores Emission[Active] -Spores Detection[Toggle/Passive] -Spores Identification[Passive] -Spores Sense[Toggle/Passive]

Other Skills Information Processing[Unique Passive][137]

Additional Bonus +20% max mana +1% of max mana to mana regen There are additional bonuses that you may purchase with your stats point.

"So the stats point are used for purchasing of bonuses. I''ll look at them after getting a more detailed description of the new skills."

Assassination[Level 27] Stolen novel; please report.The tree that contains skills which are beneficial to the art of sneak attacks. The level of the skills will all be shared and their effect will change accordingly to the level of the main tree.

Backstab[Passive] When the target''s back is exposed to you, any damage you deal to him is increased to 250%.

Gouge[Active] When activated on a target, it will get damaged for 200% of your attack power. Bleeding debuff will be applied until cured. The amount of health bleeded per second depends on the damage that caused the bleeding. If a vital organ was targeted, the amount of damage inflicted may be doubled. Other debuffs may apply.

Sneak[Passive] Your presence is harder to detect, you also produce less noise. Equipped armor and weapon type may increase or reduce the effectiveness of the skill.

Shadow Manipulation[Level 3] The tree that makes use of shadow for a variety of purposes. The level of the skills will all be shared and their effect will change accordingly to the level of the main tree.

Blend In[Passive] You are able to mix into the shadow like you belong there. Effectiveness of the skill depends on the brightness of the area.

"Nice, the damage dealt by the skills are really nice. Most requires the situation to be correct for the damage to spike up. That was expected though as that is what an assassin should be doing. The other passive gives utility that allows the situation to come easier. They really compliment each others." Believing that I understood how the skills worked, I moved on to find out the purchase options using stats points.

Learn skill tree

Learn a new skill tree for your body. Trees lost upon death of body. Gains back stats point lost over 10 level ups in a different body.

Cost: 20 points

Unlock spores type

Unlock a new spores type to be used along with your skills. Each type has their own traits. Currently there are 3 new types of spores to unlock.

Cost: 25 points(locked)

Bind skill tree

Permanently bind a skill tree from the body to you. You are able to use the tree as long as the requirements are met.

Cost: 50 points

"Hmm, the defense part bothers me. So does the attack actually. I noticed that although the defense differs between me and Aston, it remains the same for me and Chris. It doesn''t make sense that different armor types can have such similar armor ratings. Maybe the attack and defense stats are modifiers?" I stabbed the obsidian dagger into the willow tree and looked at my stats again. Nothing was changed. "I guess I got that right. At least if defense and attack stats work the same, otherwise it wouldn¡¯t make sense." "For the upgrades, I''m most interested in spores type. I don''t know what is the requirement to unlock it but I really want to find out what the other spores type do. I also found the ¡®Learn Skill Tree¡¯ and ¡®Bind Skill Tree¡¯ very interesting.There will be situations that I need to use skills that I don''t have. By having more versatility, I¡¯ll be able to handle those situations easier. If I really can¡¯t handle the situation with what I have, I can just change my body. I''ll like to keep that to a minimum as doing that will lose the skill forever if the body dies. The skill that a body possess may be rare and I don¡¯t want to lose them especially if they are useful. [Shadow Manipulation] sounds like one of the rare trees and I am unwilling to lose it." I walked back to them as I saw their discussion had ended. I could hear everything that they had spoken about due to [Spores Senses] since the start. I asked them for their answer while showing a grin. I already knew what they were saying next. "We accept the deal." ----- Author''s Notes: This chapter took a while to write as I only had a brief idea on how I wanted to steer the plot towards. The usage of stats point for purchasing was the hardest. I don''t want it to just be a stats enhancer as I don''t intent to throw too many numbers around(I already did that for certain parts though). Another reason was that i was having a headache and mild fever then, which developed into a high fever the next day. Thanks for reading the chapter. Constructive criticism will be appreciated. Please do ask for clarifications if needed. PS: I may want to just scrape the whole thing and redo from the start since the proofreader friend of mine believes that the story is not working well enough. I don¡¯t exactly agree with him but I can see his points. I¡¯ll continue this story for now but I¡¯ll try to develop characters before I restart it. (He suggested that having characters developed before writing a story will help greatly in making the plot move along easier and feel more real. Not the only suggestion, but the one I¡¯m trying to make the most point out of.) Chapter 8: Start of a New Journey "So, what now? Go back to sleep?" Aston asked Chris. The night was still young as the low-hanging moon just came up a few hours prior. I answered Aston''s question before Chris could reply. "I doubt that either of you could sleep after what had happened." "But it''s still too early to set off now. By the time we reached the habitat of the wolves, it will still be long before dawn. They will still be in their homes and it isn¡¯t an easy task to take them on when they are so concentrated." "If you would, we could take a slight detour." "To?" They acted cautiously to my suggestion. They still didn''t believe that I lacked the intentions to harm them. At least for the time being. "Where he came from." I said as I pointed to myself. Their interest seemed to be aroused. I pushed them over the cliff by saying, "It is towards the northeast. Aren¡¯t the wolves directly north of here? This little detour will allow you to see something interesting. I promise." "Fine, we''ll follow you. Lead the way." Aston fell to my bait and Chris didn¡¯t voice his objections. I cheerfully lead them to the campsite of the other party, knowing that I had succeeded in my attempt to lure them. They followed me cautiously while keeping a lookout for any possible danger. I doubt the chances of there being beasts that we couldn¡¯t handle. I spread my spores all the same as a precaution. When we arrived at the campsite, they figured out my definition of interesting. There were two men lying down there, brutally murdered with multiple stab wounds spread across their torso and neck. Chris stared at me accusingly. I answered back with a friendly smile, "I hadn''t possessed him at that point in time yet. He murdered them during their sleep willingly. I also don''t know the reason for him doing this." Frustrated by the murders which seemed to lack reason, the two of them were feeling anger for the deceased. Looking like they might be motivated to help find out the truth, I got them to assist me. "This is why I bought the two of you here, to find out what happened. Search for clues as to who Cliff and these two really are and the reason for killing them. Loot their bodies at the same time as their equipments might be worth something. I don¡¯t think either of you are against looting the dead?" I had to get this done as soon as possible. I didn''t want to have an unknown factor which could mean danger for us. It gotten even more urgent to solve this mystery since I am using his body. I couldn''t access Cliff''s memory to find out the answers that I seek as possession and taking over a body has it''s differences. Possession is more like influencing the person to do what I wanted him to do. That was why I needed to overpowered his will in order to possess him. Take over works in the sense that there are no will requirements. The mind is already dead, I don''t need to fight any will to take over the body. I don''t know if there are any other requirements for taking over body at the moment. They wasn¡¯t against looting the dead. They must have had their fair share of experience and were not so ignorant to put respect over the dead over items that could be reuse. We started our hunt for clues and found a note within minutes. Chris motioned us to go over to him as he read the note. "Eh? Wolf extermination request? It''s the same as the one that we have. How could that be possible?" Aston asked, more to himself then to actually seek for an answer. I questioned back, "Why not?" "The same request wouldn''t be given out more than once unless at least one requirement was met. Passing the given deadline, death of request receivers, too hard for a single party, or repeatable material requests. The deaths are proven by giving their guild cards over to the guild.¡± "Let me guess. The third one doesn''t work as the wolves are too weak. Fourth doesn''t work either as this is an extermination request. Lastly, they were only slightly ahead of you, the deadline shouldn''t have past so fast, ruling out one. Leaving it with number two as a possibility." If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. "Or the guild could have messed up the request somewhere, which was unheard of." Aston added on to my explanation. "The simplest method to find out is to check if they still have their guild cards." I suggested after taking out Cliff''s card from my pocket for reference. They agreed to my suggestion and 15 minutes later, the cards still weren''t found in the surrounding. I took the opportunity to search my own body for a clue instead of the surrounding like the other two. I could have missed out something earlier as the man was an assassin. He could have hidden weapons and other items on himself that couldn''t be easily found. "My best guess would be that these two wanted to fake their death, so they seeked the assistance of Cliff. Not knowing that someone actually wanted Cliff to kill them." I spoke the ''guess'' that I had casually. Chris questioned, "How are you so sure?" I waved a small piece of letter in my hand and then read out the content. "To C, I will be sending your way two targets. They believed that they are being assisted to fake their death but you''re going to kill them. You don''t have to make it seems natural, you just have to kill them deep within the forest. Let it take time for others to verify the information. By M" "That sounds, a bit, err..." Aston didn''t know to react to the information. Chris seemed more calmed. "So that means Cliff is either a freelance assassin or has this ''M'' person as his boss. These two were just targets which we don''t have information on." "Well, duh. Cliff does have the [Assassination] skill tree after all." I answered, a bit surprised at the need for such inferring from Chris. "Wait, you could see what skill tree Cliff has!? Can you tell his stats too?" Suddenly Chris went from like the calm sea breeze to a raging thunderstorm. I was shocked by his changed in attitude. I could only answer him obediently. "Yes? His strength is 20, dex- Wait a moment, why do I even need to tell you this!?" "Oh my god, that is so awesome! Other than the statues crystals in capital cities, there are only a handful of people that could see full statues! Obviously th-" Seeing Chris fanboying until that extend, I really didn''t know how to react. I turned over to Aston and saw that he had face palmed. Sensing that I couldn''t stop Chris while he was in the middle of his speech, I turned over to Aston for an explanation. "He becomes like that whenever he found anything rare or unique. Your ability to view full status is shared by less than 10 in the country. Those that are recognised that is. There are a lot more of the incomplete ones. The number is still below a thousand." "That explains a lot. Do you think it is possible to stop his rampage?" "Not for the next 2 hours from my experience." Aston and I could only sigh and continue our journey to the wolves¡¯s habitat while Chris remains in that state. ----- Author''s Notes: I wrote the whole of this chapter while I''m still having the headache and fever I mentioned on chapter 7. I don''t know if I had went crazy but I decided to change the serious mode(or at least to me) to something comedic(or maybe stupid to some?). I may not be in my right mind when I wrote this but please do tell if it''s good. The main reason that I tried to keep the story on serious mode most if not all the time is due to my humor. Some found me funny(when I wasn''t even trying), most found me not(when I am trying). I may have a natural sense of humor that gets destroyed when I attempt to be funny. Anyway, thanks for reading the chapter. Constructive criticism(on the story, grammar and even humor) will be appreciated. Chapter 9: Lurking Shadow After the shocking revelations and lack of that, respectively for the identities of Cliff and his two companions, we decided to go back to our original objective. Although it was a cause of concern to have some of these unknown factors, wasting time at the campsite without any clues left wasn''t a brilliant idea. It had turned into dawn as the soft morning glow lay softly on the now less dense forest. The environment had changed from one where you would have trouble walking through without tripping on the roots to one in which that wouldn''t happen unless you''re really careless. The dense forest undergrowth had been reduced to a sparse one, where there are occasional shrubs. This is the habitat for the wolves. The land was uneven with occasional hills and some of caves. Those caves were mostly inhibited by wolves. As the sun spread its warmth across the land, the wolves lazily walked out of their dens, ready to start their hunts. So were we. We ambushed the wolf as it exit the cave. Aston and Chris had stood on tree branches while I hid within the shadow of a nearby shrub. When the wolf strolled into our kill zone, Aston jumped before Chris did the same. They landed behind the wolf and both of their weapons cut deeply into the wolf''s hind. The wolf cried out in agony but it wouldn¡¯t go down so easily. It turned towards the enemies and growled in anger. I appeared from beneath the shrub and backstabbed it. Wounding both of its hind legs in quick consecutive thrust before it even had a chance to react. The legs that were punctured gave away just as I jumped away from the wolf. The wolf couldn¡¯t even howl in surprise from my attack before both Chris and Aston pounce in again. They continue their fight with the occasional swipes from its claws drawing some blood from Aston who couldn¡¯t dodge in time. I attacked the wolf whenever it wasn¡¯t focusing its attention on me, landing more major wounds each time. The wolf dropped down lifeless within minutes from our constant assault. The fight ended with only minor injuries on our side. I gained decent amount of experiences through the fight, both on actual combat and also experience points to contribute towards my leveling. We moved on to the next wolf following the same tactic without the ambush. It took more time as we didn''t have the element of surprise to land a powerful first strike. The rest of the day was spent on hunting the wolves in a similar method, with our hunting efficiency increasing with each success. We killed off more than fifty wolves by the end of the day only with injuries that could be healed within a short time. We moved away from the hunting ground and moved back into the dense forest as dusk arrived. Although it wasn''t common for wolves to stray from their homes at night, there were still some wandering ones. We could rest easier knowing that there were less chance of needing to fight while we sleep. After getting a good night''s sleep even with rotating shift for lookout duties, they decided to go back to the guild in the city to report the completion of the request. I told them that I would join up to them mid way as I had a side job to do. They gave me somewhat confused looks as they wondered where and what would I be doing. They also wondered how I could catch up back to them when they had a better understanding of the forest. I left them while they remained clueless. Using my abilities, I dashed through the shadows of the tree line as I saw everything around me. That enabled me to move faster than Chris could within the forest. The action also gained me experiences in the [Shadow Manipulation] tree. My sight was set on the group of lumberjacks. Although I moved faster than what Chris believed was possible, I still only managed to reach my destination in the dead of night. Chris might have needed two whole days to travel the distances for what took me nearly one to reached. The feat rewarded me with multiple level ups in [Shadow Manipulation], allowing it to reach level 12 and unlocking [Shadow Movement] in the process.

For achieving some mastery in shadow manipulating, you have unlocked [Shadow Movement].

Shadow Movement[Active] You are now able to walk through shadow as if it is another dimension. As long as two locations are connected by the same shadow, you are able to move to the other location nearly instantly. Cost: 50 mana

With the usage of [Shadow Movement] in mind, I proceeded towards my first target. I had went through the whole area before that and identified each and every single person before setting my mark. The one that I aimed for first was the leader of the lumberjacks. Unlike others who slept in longhouse where it was crowded, he lived in a log cabin of his own. That was one of the main reason I had targeted him; he was isolated. I observed the surroundings of the cabin for movements. Finding none, I sneaked towards the windows. Although the windows were opened, the opening that was available was too small for a person to fit through. There were crisscrossed patterns on the window to prevent creatures from entering the house yet still allowing air and sunlight to enter. It wasn''t hard to enter as I used [Shadow Movement] to get across the window. It felt different from not having a body. I still had my sense of touch while moving through the shadow, it just felt weaken, like through a layer of water. I appeared inside the house while experiencing this feeling. The house was made from oak, like what I had saw outside. There were some simple furnitures that were made from other type of trees native to the area too. The room that I was had four chairs placed around a square table. There was also a bookshelf filled with books with covers that had multitude of colors. I couldn''t tell what they were about as I didn''t understand the written language. There was no other furniture. The decoration was limited to a tall floor vase with flowers placed within it. That gave the room a feeling of simple elegance. I took a mental note for myself to learn the written language. I could speed that up by spreading my spores to educational institutions. I decided that there were nothing interesting within the room and walked out the door leading to the corridor. I arrived at the hallway that leads to two other rooms and the entrance of the house. Deciding that I shouldn''t be spending so much time on a single person, I went directly towards the bedroom. The bedroom only had a bed and a wardrobe, a simple design like the previous room. It was quite small, having only barely enough walking space left after the bed took up about a third of the room. The window leading out of the house was closed, causing the room to contain an impenetrable darkness. I walked in without a sound and close the door, doing what I came here to achieve. I focused my newly emitted spores over the sleeping man''s head. This time, I inserted the spores through each and every holes on the man''s head instead of just the mouth. I hoped that it would reduce the time necessary to contaminate him. It showed its effectiveness shortly after as the man''s face distorted in pain. He opened his eyes wide awake and tried to breath a deep breath to relieve the pain, but it only sped up the contamination. Within seconds from the start of the process, he had already been contaminated. I loomed over him as he chokes. As a shadow whom he couldn''t focus on due to his current pain, I knocked him out by hitting his temple with the blunt side of my dagger. He stopped moving with that single hit. I exited the house the same way I entered, leaving no trace of me having entered the house. Confident that I could cause the intended terror within a short time, I moved on to the next closest house. The longhouse was built with oak wood like the previous house. It was a lot bigger but also way more crowded than the cabin from before. There were two entrance which stood at opposite ends of the longhouse and I entered it via the previous method. Within it, there was only beds, wardrobes and chests placed in an orderly manner. Each bed had a chest by its feet and a wardrobe to its right to pair them up. There was no decoration at all, giving the room a simple feeling but none of the slight elegance the cabin had. The various men who were asleep didn''t consist of just human. There were a small mixture of other races that could be seen from their physical differences. It didn''t matter to me what race they were, they were just channels for me to expand my influence. I flooded the room with as much spores as I could produce, increasing the density of spores in the air every second. Although it took longer to reach that point as compared to a single target, it still managed to color each and every men in the room with pain on their faces within minutes. It included myself as it wasn''t easy to spend exert so much mana constantly. Furthermore, I felt the pain of every men in the room as an effect from my ability. Needless to say, the pain wasn''t something a normal human could survive from but I wasn''t one in the first place. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. I had hidden myself in a corner of the shadow since I started, making it impossible for them to notice my presence. The men were smart enough to still notice that the situation was unnatural even without knowing that I was there. They realised that the air was the cause for their pain and many tried to open the windows. They failed to overcome the pain to do so. One achieved what others weren''t able to; A person who displayed bulging muscles as he struggled against the pain to move closer to the window. I knew that I needed to stop him or my plans would fail. I couldn¡¯t move due to the pain that I was experiencing and could only stare as his hands reached towards the window. I went beyond my limit momentarily and increased the spores output, giving my best effort to direct even more spores towards him. He managed to opened the window before dropping down on to the floor. I felt anger and disappointment as he had messed up my plan, only to realise a bit late that I had managed to contaminate everyone in the room before fresh air flowed into the room. I escaped outside with [Shadow Movement] the moment I gathered enough mana. That little action drained what minute amount of energy I had left and it took all my willpower to prevent myself from fainting. I knew that I had to complete my job here as soon as possible or it would become more challenging rapidly. I could only stagger towards my next destination. It took a lot out of me to contaminate the remaining longhouses but I somehow managed to do so without knocking myself out. The people from the first longhouse also didn''t managed to warn the other people about my unnatural existence in time. I sneaked back into the forest as dawn arrives and took a rest before deciding to join back with Chris and Aston. While resting, I took a peep as a conversation unfolded between two lumberjacks that I had infected the night before. "Damn! I don''t know what attacked us last night, but it actually managed to take down Gracia!" "Haha, calling out her name made me laugh everytime! That sack of muscle which doesn''t have the least bit of grace actually having that name." "Shut up! You''re always being so rude towards her, you should stop. She did save us last night by opening the window after all. Even if she had not done that, she still deserves our respect for how much she had helped us over the short stay she have with us. Unless you have a thing for her and wanted to deny it?" "W-what!? H-how could that be possible!? I''ll never fall in love with someone like her!" "That was unexpected, it was only meant to be a joke. You actually really like her huh?" "Shut up!" While listening to the exchange on how that muscle bag was a she, I could only be shocked. I would never expected that to be the case and wouldn¡¯t have believed it if I hadn''t checked her status the next moment. After seeing her status, the mystery was finally solved. She is a Valkyrie, a race of battle maiden. That explained why she could do what the others weren''t capable of and why she could remained safe from the men even as the sole female in the camp. The attack on the camp was a good experiences for me. I discovered the existence of Gracie who could last longer than normal people against my spores. I had also gained levels for myself, multiple trees level ups, and most importantly a new group of infected.

Status
Name:	Cliff Blakesh(???)
Title:	Sandman(???)
Race:	Human(Parasite)
Gender:	Male(???)
Level:	12(6)
Experience:	17%(58%)
Stats points:	10(25)
Class:	Shadow(Spores Master)
Health:	140/140	Mana:	684/684
Health regen:	1.4/s	Mana regen:	13.6/s
Strength:	20	Intelligence:	18(9)
Dexterity:	39	Wisdom:	12(57)
Vitality:	14	Willpower:	17
Attack:	31-31	Defence:	15

Skills

Class Tree Assassination[Level 29] -Backstab[Passive] -Gouge[Active] -Sneak[Passive] Shadow Manipulation[Level 17] -Blend In[Passive] Spores Controlling [Level 28] -Spores Emission[Active] -Spores Detection[Toggle/Passive] -Spores Identification[Passive] -Spores Sense[Toggle/Passive]

Other Skills Information Processing[Unique Passive][450]

Additional Bonus +20% max mana +1% of max mana to mana regen There are additional bonuses that you may purchase with your stats point.

Status
Name:	Gracie Strunrm
Title:	Iron Maiden
Race:	Valkyrie
Gender:	Female
Level:	15
Experience:	13%
Stats Point:	0
Class:	Weapon Master
Health:	450/450	Mana:	80/80
Health regen:	4.5/s	Mana regen:	0.8/s
Strength:	35(52)	Intelligence:	10(8)
Dexterity:	25(30)	Wisdom:	10(8)
Vitality:	30(45)	Willpower:	20(24)
Attack:	22-65	Defence:	30

Skills

Class Tree Sword Proficiency[Level 27] -Sword Mastery[Passive] -Shortsword Mastery[Passive] -Longsword Mastery[Passive] -Rapier Mastery[Passive] Shield Proficiency[Level 34] -Shield Mastery[Passive] -Buckler Mastery[Passive] -Kite Mastery[Passive] -Heather Mastery[Passive] -Scutum Mastery[Passive] Blunt Weapon Proficiency[Level 18] -Blunt Weapon Mastery[Passive] -Mace Mastery[Passive] -Club Mastery[Passive] Polearm Proficiency[Level 9] -Polearm Mastery[Passive] -Spear Mastery[Passive]

Racial Skills One who Battles[Passive]

Effects Infected(Indefinite)

----- Author''s Note: There you have it, a female character! Woohoo for muscle bag! Who says that female characters needs to be some beautiful feminine person(not saying that she isn''t, that will depends on how good I can describe her)? Gracie will prove you wrong as she can be manlier than manly men! Yeah, you get the idea. She is someone who shows that the MC isn''t fully omnipotent (for now, *evil smirks*). She will probably appear again in the future as she joins the team(harem). *cough* I mean, er, it wouldn''t go THAT way, other than probably in side stories where I will twist stuff here and there. So there you have it! I''ll just not care about keeping it nearly fully(?) serious mode and start to go quirky. Thanks for reading. ;D Chapter 10: City I had waited right outside the forest for Aston and Chris. While leaning against the trunks of a young oak tree, I had my eyes kept closed and arms folded. I was observing the surroundings of Aston and Chris as they made their way towards me. I didn''t had to keep my eyes closed, I could still ''see'' without doing it; I just felt like it. As they approaches, they could barely see my outline. Chris was being cautious on seeing a man covered with a robe waiting outside the forest. He drew his sword in preparation for an attack. Meanwhile, Aston felt curious on the identity of the man, wondering if he could be me. I reacted towards their advances by turning to face them and took off my hood. Looks of cautiousness changed to that of relieved for Chris while Aston''s curiosity grew. "Hey. The two of you have finally reached." "Yes we did. How did you get here so fast? You had some job to do right? We even had Chris to lead the way." "Skills." The one word answer left Aston baffled. Chris seemed less surprised. "He meant the skills he had. They were the one that allowed him to know where we were heading towards as well." "I could understand that part but-" "No buts. Let''s not waste anymore time and proceed to the city. I want to see how a city is like." I cut Aston off and he sulk in reaction to that. Looking for a way to return the favor, he answered back teasingly. "Aww, someone hadn''t been to a city. What a country bumpkin. Hah!" I gave him a look that could kill as he ''Hah''. He immediately regretted his decision to fight back and cold sweat flowed down his face as he paled. He remained silent on the remainder of the journey to the city as Chris gave me a quick run through on what the city is like. The city is called Flussufera. It is part of the Bauenza empire and is one of it''s manufacturing hubs. It produces many different type of raw materials and process them before exporting it to other cities. Flussufera was built in the middle of the plains to allow more time for detection of invasions from both human and monster alike. Its location also took into account of the many different rivers flowing down the mountain, making full use of them as fresh water sources that could easily be defended. To its north is Taura Forest, the one that we were in. To the west is a well-pathed stone road connecting to the other cities, with the Vuca mountain range providing the previously mentioned water sources blocking off the eastern and southern side of the city. The journey took quite some time as we strolled leisurely towards what we could see as civilization. As we approaches, I could see the fields and fields of golden wheat shining under the sun that had reached its peak. The farms were situated by the sides of many different rivers, aiding in the irrigation of the fields. There were also other variations of crops, but wheat remained the majority. Flussufera didn''t really seemed like a city at first glance. There were no city walls to speak of. That surprised me greatly as Flussufera was supposed to be a manufacturing hub according to what Chris spoke about. That should had given enough importances for it to priorities defense. Chris gave me an explanation on the reasons behind that. "Flussufera used to be a pretty small town when we arrived here a few years back. It wasn¡¯t significant enough as a town for it to build walls and it had been peaceful and was far away from danger too. That changed when they discovered the abundant amount of raw material in the surroundings of Flussufera, mainly the metals within the Vuca mountain range. The discovery changed how the empire view Flussufera and thus Flussufera was given the priority to expand and become a city. A city that could provide the manpower and facilities to gather raw material before processing them and then exporting it to other cities. It was one of the main reasons for building the city near the mountains." He continued on with the explanation of how the city was expanded and had still been expanding rapidly. They would put their focus on expanding the city before rushing out the city walls. That gave enough reasons for the lumberjacks to be in such a rush. They are one of the factors that determines when the city would become safer with the building of walls. Going past the last field of crops, the number of houses gradually increased. The bustling of city life grew louder as we got closer to the city centre. We headed towards the adventurer''s guild as we moved through the streets that were packed with traffic and there were also many peddlers by the side, leaving even less walking space. The guild building was decently large. It was not longer than the longhouses back in the lumberjack camp but was definitely wider. Compared to the inn beside it, it was more than four times bigger. Unlike the surrounding building that were a story high, with the occasional two, the guild was three stories high too. Due to the differences in height and size of the guild as compared to the other buildings, it wasn''t hard to tell from afar where it was. We entered through the large wooden double doors that was at least two metres tall and wide. It swung inwards and we could see the large number of adventurers gathered within. There were some that were having their lunch, some drinking alcohol, handing in requests or even just looking at the notice board. Most if not all of them turned towards us when we entered. The sudden stop in clattering gave me the impression that time had been stopped momentarily. Time continued flowing when the bustling returns and nothing seemed to had happened. They went back to what they were doing, except a small number that continued to monitor us. Which in truth was just me. I noticed that I was still wearing a robe, drawing suspicious glance from those individuals. Taking a mental note to buy less suspicious clothings, I walked towards the corner of the room that was darken by shadow instead of following the two to receive the reward for the request. I activated [Blend In] and put on my hood. As I confirmed that it prevented a clear view for those spying on me, I started spreading spores into the room. Within seconds, messages started to pop out like crazy, with all of them being the same one.

Due to your intelligence being too low, your spores had been resisted.

I could only curse silently under my breath on how little adventurers that I could turn into spores creatures. I hadn''t even tried to contaminate them yet and it had already failed so badly. I could only reduce my wisdom bonus until there were no intelligence penalty and tried again. This time, I managed to get passed the resistance of half the people in the room. It did took quite a while as I didn''t have as much mana regeneration to keep up with my emissions. Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. Being only able to convert half of the adventurers after getting back to full intelligence also told me something; Aston and Chris are pretty weak willpower wise as compared to most of the people in the room. I didn¡¯t even had to remove my intelligence penalty to infect them easily, it was even a low five then too. I suppose my plans to spread my influence far and wide wouldn''t be as easy as I thought. I joined back to Aston and Chris after they collected the reward from the extermination request. They saw me walked over and handed me a leather pouch which contains a third of the reward. I just gave them a nod and asked a question. "Are we going to look for a place to rest at now?" "Yeah. The inn next door may not be the cheapest, but they do provide good food and lodging at a decent price. I can''t wait to eat their rabbit stew again, thinking about it had already made me drool." Aston spoke as his facial expression changed to that of perversion instead of hunger. We pretended that we didn''t know him and proceeded to the inn which was mentioned and rented a room each. We had a quick lunch of bread with stew before we went up to each of our room to rest. It was decided during lunch that they would be going to stock up on necessity in the city after a short afternoon nab while I would go solo and get myself some new clothes instead. I sat on the soft single bed in the middle of the small room. It was small but yet sufficient with the bed, a wardrobe, a lockable chest, two chairs and a table. I took this opportunity to review my status as I rest on my bed, remembering that I had just enough stat points to spent on getting a new spores type.

Blood Spores

By infusing blood into your spores, they are able to feed on the life force within to last a long duration. It also allow easier contamination of other creatures through the power within your blood.

Cost: 1*health and 1*mana

Microspores

You use more mana to produce microscopic spores. These spores are able to pass through places that are usually not penetrable.

Cost: 3*mana

Sporeling

By spending your health and mana, you are able to create a separate existence. It can only use [Spores Emission] but other spores type may be used if you have the access to it. It''s stats are determined by the amount of health and mana spent on it.

Cost: Varies

Although all three types are extremely useful, I chose the first option without hesitation. It helps with what I was lacking the most at the moment; the ability to contaminate. I might not need to worry about the intelligence requirements with it and contaminate others straight away. Even if I the requirement wasn¡¯t removed, it still greatly reduces the time needed to contaminate others. Feeling extremely satisfied, I went out of the inn to search for a store to buy new clothings. I really wanted to test the new spores right away but I didn''t want to remain so conspicuous. I turned right after walking out the front door of the inn, past the guild and down the street. I spotted a clothing store soon after and went in. The shopkeeper was a slightly muscular man in his thirties. He was slightly tone and had short black wavy hair. He grew a moustache that joined with his short beard, barely covering his chin. A tunic that was dark green with dull yellow outline covered half the length of his arms. He didn''t seemed pleased when I entered the store, probably thinking that I was a thief or someone looking for trouble. I couldn''t blame him for believing that with how I looked, so I approached him to tell him of what I needed. His annoyed expression instantly changed to that of a businessman and he gave a big smile. He quickly took down my measurements and got me what I asked for. It cost me pretty much all my money but I believed that it was worth the cost. There was a set of clothings that was dedicated to stealth which consist of one each of leather hood, long sleeve leather tunic, linen breeches with some leather layering, leather boots, leather gloves and a leather buckle belt. Needless to say, they were all black or at least dark brown to aid in staying unseen. There were a different set for typical adventuring. They were the same design as the stealth ones, with the only exception being the differences in color. They were dark brown hood, dark green upperwear, pale yellow linen with dark brown cladding for the leather lower wear, brown boots, gloves, belt and an additional leather sack for item storage. Other than these, there were also two pair of casual wear. Linen tunic and breeches of two different shades of green and grey respectively in addition to six pairs of white cotton braies. The quality of the clothings weren''t bad, they seemed like they were suitable for fights and adventuring with it''s durability. They also felt comfortable on the skin, not as smooth as silk, but not rough enough to cause rashes or discomfort either. For the amount I brought, the price I paid was a bargain for sure even though I didn''t know of their market prices. I changed into one of the casual clothings before exiting the store. I put on the adventuring hood which didn¡¯t fit too well with what I wore and walked into a narrow alley. Although the sun was still high in the sky, shadow covers the alleyways. I decided to use this chance to test my new spores. I concentrated and used [Spores Emission] to emitting blood spores instead of normal ones by directing my blood into them. The feeling of health being drained was vastly different from that of the usage of mana. I realised too late that I had used too much health when I saw that my vision had turned red. I felt dizzy and dropped on to the ground, still hidden from the view of the streets. As my consciousness leave me, I could see tints of red spreading into the streets and screams echoed into my brain. ----- Author¡¯s Notes: Nothing much to say here, other than maybe my attempt at describing? It might not have been good enough, but I tried. :3 Side Stories: What If? 1 Author¡¯s Notes: An apple a day keeps the doctor away. So does a side chapter a day keep the main chapter away. Not like I throw out a chapter a day anyway but still¡ Anyway, I¡¯d wanted to do these stuff for quite a long while but just never got to it. Now, I¡¯m going to finally do the ¡®side stories¡¯! These stories are all canon. They are things that I thought of that could happen, but was a bit too farfetched for the way the story is going. Which is why I''m going to put them here. I''ll place some tags above each stories so that you could be warned about the content. ----- Story 1: Chapter 4 Warning, mature content involved. Tags include: Yaoi, BDSM, NSFW-ish?, Engrish Spoiler : ¡°Dammit Chris! How can you take your joke so far, I really thought that I was going to die there!¡± ¡°But this isn¡¯t a joke. I¡¯m serious.¡± ¡°What?¡± ¡°Actually, that is true. I am joking. You¡¯re going to die anyway, to me.¡± I immediately went from anger to confusion. ¡°I¡¯m going to make you feel so good that you thought that you¡¯re in heaven.¡± It took me a moment to connect the dots, and when I finally did, my face turned as red as a tomato. ¡°Seemed like you understood what I meant, so why not come up and I¡¯ll reward you with a kiss?¡± Chris¡¯s smirk had an odd sense of charm to it. Being unable to turn any redder than I already was, steam rose from my head. The water near me seemed to be boiling too, but that could be my imagination. I moved awkwardly over to Chris and stole a few glance towards him at the same time. The smirk never left his face the whole time, with each glance that I stole making him seemed more charming. I climbed back to the bank, still wet and fully naked and was rewarded a kiss to the forehead. It was different from what I had expected and I pouted. ¡°No worries, thats not all I¡¯m going to do to you. That couldn¡¯t have been enough to send you to heaven could it?¡± I could only wait in anticipation on what he was going to do next, but was confused by his commands. ¡°Turn around. Good. Now raise your hands up and keep it there.¡± I did as I was told and I saw rope appeared from behind me, going by the sides of my head and on to the front of my neck. It was tightened and tied at the front, forming a loop. It felt restricting but didn¡¯t obstruct my breathing. Five knots were then tied, above my beast, below it, at my navel, above my groin and above my buttocks. Each of the knots were tied slightly loosely compared to the one on my neck. The rope then was passed through the loop at the back of my neck to the front again, going through the hole in between the knots at my the top of my breast and those below it, forming a diamond shape. It was then passed through the rope at my back before looping forward towards the middle of the second and third knot, forming more diamonds. It was repeated once more but it was tied at the back instead. I couldn¡¯t see how he tied the ends of the rope which was originally used for grouping and easier handling of our inventory, but the rope became a lot more restricting after the diamonds was created. At this point in time, my hands were starting to feel uncomfortable for not having the blood circulating through them but I still kept them up. I only put them down after I was allowed to do so. My arms didn¡¯t stay free for long as Chris used a different length of rope to tie my arms together at the back and joined it to the rope harness that my body was in. The end result had became something similar to a form of art. I was already feeling it more and more into it as I felt the rope restricting my body, putting myself more and more reliant on Chris each moment. Chris took noticed of my reactions and made full use of it to tease me. ¡°Looks like someone couldn¡¯t wait eh? You¡¯re already so hard.¡± If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. He suddenly pulled me towards him while I was still facing away from him and hug me. I could only groan in ecstasy due to that. --- More descriptions that will probably violate the rules, and I may not be able to describe it well enough either way, so¡SKIIIIP! --- After we had finished our fun and games, Chris untied me and I lean within his embrace. We shared a passionate kiss as we enjoy the view of the setting sun shining on the surface of the lake. We lived our lives happily after. ---- Warning: proceed at your own risk. Contains a tragic end and some wall breaking. --- "Obviously that wasn''t the way things ended. This isn''t some stupid fairytale." "I know, I know, I was the one who wrote it, so I know." "Well yes you do! You could have made it better, but you just had to do that to me! Why!?" "Because I felt like it." "Fuck you." "Calm down. You should at least try to tell the reader what happened next." Aston sighed and continued the story that happened to him in his youth. "Before the last kiss that was mentioned, Chris just fell unconscious. When he woke up, he didn''t remembered what happened. He even tried to get away from me, finding myself disgusting for doing that with him. Only after finding out from him what happened from what his last memory was that I figured out the one that I had made love with wasn''t Chris. I should have known, considering the way that Chris was acting differs so much from the Chris that I know of. I hated myself for believing that I loved Chris yet not knowing that that wasn''t Chris at all. The hatred grew when I found out that I actually loved the one acting as Chris more than the Chris I had admired for years. The realization came too late as the one whom was in Chris at that time no longer exist. The moment he left Chris''s body was when my love died. Since then, I''ve not been able to forget him. Every relationship that I tried to enter, it just didn''t feel right. I never felt love again, ever. It is all your fault, author! Why do you have to make me suffer so!? WHY!?" I looked down and saw a knife stabbed straight into my abdomen. Blood was gushing out rapidly as my conscious fades. I looked up at Aston and in my last moment, I saw his. He slid his throat. ----- Story 2: Chapter 10 News flash: "We have just received a report of a sighting of red cloud spreading in the middle of Flussufera. According to witnesses, there wasn''t anything suspicious before the incident occurred, other than a hooded man with mismatch clothings entering the alleyway where the incident happened. Before it happened, everything had been normal. Suddenly, passerby and peddlers alike saw red clouds spreading from the darkness of the alleyway. Needless to say, chaos ensues as the people wondered if it was a biological attack. There had been many recent cases of acts of terrorism all around the world. That had cause people to be more aware of their surroundings. The red cloud spread slowly, but some people still wasn''t fast enough in getting away from it. Some had inhaled it in their sleep as it spreaded into their homes. Those that were near had been diagnosed by doctors but there haven''t been any effect from the smoke so far. There were suspicion of it being a bad prank but the matter is still under investigations. The citizen is advised to remain vigilant and call the police whenever any suspicious object or person was found." End of news flash. Let us go back to the show- ----- More Author''s Notes: Honestly I don''t know how much of this is actually acceptable(the NSFW part), so please do tell if it still has a been too much content, then I''ll have it removed. Also, this is sorta a try out at other genre(tragedy/4th wall breaking/this is a fantasy, wtf is there a news flash?) so..... is it good? or bad? Please do let me know :> Chapter 11: Savior I woke up to the sound of someone¡¯s footsteps. It got louder before it went softer as the person walked towards the other direction from where he previously came from. I was going to fake being asleep but it wasn¡¯t necessary in the end. I open my eyes and found myself lying on a soft bed. The bedsheet was pure white and the bed was soft yet firm. It laid on a sturdy wooden frame that was near the middle of the small room. There was a wooden chair placed beside the bed, which was a step away from the wide open windows. A girl was sitting there, sleeping soundly. The other side of the room had nothing blocking myself from the wooden door which I heard the footstep from previously. I found myself in a dilemma as I didn¡¯t know where I was and the reason for being there. I also had a splitting headache and my whole body felt weak. I knew that I had forgotten important things but I couldn¡¯t quite put my finger on what they were. I tried to sit up on my bed but my arms wasn¡¯t able to support my weight so I fell back down. The noise of my attempt to sit up woke up the girl in the chair. She was a slender girl that looks to be in her teens. Her skintone was fair and she had straight hair that barely reached her shoulders. Her black eyes were a contrast to the blond hair that she had, and using that pair of eyes that looks surprised, she stares at me. Her mouth opened but no words came out, or at least that was supposed to have happened. ¡°Eh? He''s awake! I need to inform brother, erm, the bell!¡± I knew that there was no voice that came out from her mouth but I could somehow ¡®hear¡¯ her. And only after ¡®hearing¡¯ what she said did I noticed the small coffee table beside her chair. There was an ornate bell sitting on top of it, which she picked up and rang. The sound of the bell ringing reminds me of alarm bells which warn me of danger, but the threat of this girl here seemed improbable. I laid there looking at the girl as I waited for whoever the bell was calling to arrive. A similar footstep to the one I heard from before sounded. It was much heavier and faster, almost seeming urgent. The owner of the footstep soon opened the door to the room wide open and stepped in. ¡°He¡¯s awake!¡± I heard her voice within my head again as she stood up and pointed towards me. I could only turn my head to look at the new arrival. His had similar features as the girl, but looked older and more masculine. The significant differences was that he looked a lot stronger than the frail girl with his well-trained muscles that he had and was taller than her too. He had no facial hair and had medium length hair that reached slightly below his ears. It also had golden blond hair like the girl that was in the room, which seemed to be his sister from the voice I heard from her. He looked at his sister with panic but after confirming that nothing was wrong with her, his face turned expressionless. He looked at me with disinterest before proceeding to turn around, intending to leave the room. The girl quickly went to stop him by standing between him and the door before pouting. I could feel that he had turned panicky again and he spoke. ¡°Eh!? Ok, don¡¯t be angry, I¡¯ll take care of him. What do you want me to do?¡± The girl¡¯s attitude changed like a storm and was all smiles again as she tried to describe what she wanted him to do with body actions. ¡°You can help him sit up and feed him food! Also, perhaps you could change him out of his clothes and wipe him down. They seemed stuffy. I¡¯ll go and cook our dinner now.¡± I figured that they aren¡¯t bad people and I should trust them. I should also not give them much more trouble that I already did. ¡°Erm, thank you. I think I can wipe myself down. I shouldn¡¯t trouble you more than I already did.¡± They turned to my unexpected voice in surprise and the brother asked. ¡°How did you know what she was saying?¡± The reason he asked that was simple. Her actions differs totally from what she was thinking. It simply made no sense to anyone other than perhaps her brother. Or it could be some sort of sign knowledge that I have never seen before. ¡°I could somehow ¡®hear¡¯ her in my head. I don¡¯t know how but I do.¡± ¡°You can hear me!?¡± ¡°Yes I can?¡± ¡°Amazing! No one could understand me other than my brother for the past few years, now someone can hear me and understand what I¡¯m saying!¡± ¡°Er...Okay?¡± I could only reply with that to what she said as she made so many body actions that made her looked like she was possessed or something. I then felt a chill down my back and saw that her brother was staring daggers at me. I gulped. Before I actually died to his constant barrage of daggers shooting out from his eyes, I need to change the conversation topic. The only idea I could think of was to get the girl to do what she wanted to before she was interrupted and hope that I could survive being in the same room as the brother. ¡°Anyway, thank you so much for your hospitality. Maybe you should go back to what you were going to do?¡± ¡°Oh right! Cooking dinner! Yeah, I¡¯ll be on my way. Bye brother and the guy who could hear me!¡± She ¡®said¡¯ as she exited the room, closing the door to my sole escape route. The windows was not a viable choice as we are not on the ground floor. I was still weak either way, so I would not be able to prevent my death if the brother really decided to murder me even when I have an escape route. The room turned silent as there was no more conversation and the man¡¯s staring intensity rises. It got to the point where an average person might have peed his pants. He suddenly approached the chair that the girl sat on before and sat on it, turning the chair to face me. ¡°So who are you?¡± His tone had changed to one that contained warmth and concern. The sudden change in attitude caught me by surprise. I suppose the storm like behavioural change runs in the blood. I could only stare at him for a moment before I replied, close to a mumble. ¡°I-I don¡¯t remember. Who was I and what I was doing.¡± It was soft enough to miss if one wasn¡¯t paying attention but he caught it. He became silent as he thought things through for a moment. ¡°Hmm. Maybe telling you where you were before you collapsed might give you a hint to who you were?¡± He asked himself out loud before continuing. ¡°You collapsed in a dark alley near the centre of the city. There was some kind of disturbance slightly before we found you there, it had something to do with some red smoke? Maybe you were one of the few to actually be affected by it. Yeah, probably.¡± Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. I could only remained confused to what he said. What could the red cloud be and could it actually have something to do with me? That I don¡¯t know, nor do I know who I was. The stormy man changed once more as he suddenly declared. ¡°Right! Doesn¡¯t matter who you were and what you did to get yourself collapsed there. As long as you DON¡¯T TOUCH OR HARM MY SISTER, then all is fine.¡± I could only nod repeatedly before his stares pierce a hole through me. His sister soon returned with the dinner and helped me to sit up on the bed. It was done with her brother¡¯s assistances and I was soon fed by her. It was painful to eat the dinner which seemed to be some sort of porridge as the daggers continued shooting out from the brother¡¯s eye. The jealousy is strong with this one, it wouldn¡¯t be an exaggeration to call him a siscon. ----- A few days went by as I remained on bed, being taken care of by the siblings. I regained my strength slowly and was able to walk slowly without help by the end of the second day. I didn¡¯t leave the house that was two stories high and only walked out of my room whenever there was a need, for the toilet or for food during meals downstairs. There was only the two of them in the house and I never did saw anyone else entered. They do went out once in a while to get grocery but I was never left alone in the house. I believed that my relationship with the siblings had became quite good by the third day, other than the fact that the brother seemed like he would kill me whenever I interacts with his sister. The brother¡¯s name was Raoul Rivera and the sister Slyvie Rivera. They were quite wealthy previously but after having lost their parents, they started living here. Not like they were no longer rich, they just had to make full use of the money inherited by their parents to continue living. Slyvie didn¡¯t have a job while Raoul wasn¡¯t willing to leave his sister alone at home to go to work. Raoul was also the one who single handedly carried me back to their house after Slyvie found me in the alley collapsed during her grocery buying. He seemed to be some kind of martial artist from what I saw of his practice in their mini-garden behind the house. I wondered how long it would take for me to fully recover and pay back for their kindness. how long will this situation last? It didn¡¯t last long. On the fifth day since they found me, I went up to my room after helping with dishwashing from dinner. As I opened the door to my room, I could hear people knocking on the front door to the house. Wondering who it was, but not wanting to disturb the possible guest for the siblings, I stayed in my room. I listened intently for what went on downstairs and could only made out some words. ¡°Your father¡ money¡ pay¡ sister¡¡± ¡°What! Sister¡ No way¡¡± Finding the situation weird, I took a peek through the open windows. I could barely see the front door from there. Standing over there was a couple of shady looking men. Raoul was surrounded by all sides by the men except the back, which stood Sylvie by the door. They then each took out a knife and started attacking Raoul. Raoul fought against four knife wielding men barefist but was still able to match them, dodging their slashes and even hitting some of the wrist to disarm them. I watched in wonder as they fought. There was another man which I assume to be their leader watching by the side. I saw his eyes moved to Sylvie instead of Raoul and noticed that a man had sneaked in from the side to get her. ¡°Stop your resistance! We got your sister, now hand it over or she dies!¡± Noticing that Sylvie was taken hostage, Raoul could only stop fighting, only to be met with multiple slashes him from all sides. They were not deep wounds, but were meant to punish him for resisting in the first place. Some of the cuts were still deep enough to leave scars after they healed. ¡°Let her go!¡± ¡°We¡¯ll do it as long as you hand the thing over to us. Or would you rather us have fun with her in front of you?¡± ¡°You bastards! Unhand her now!¡± As I watched the scene unfold below, I knew that I wanted to help them, but didn¡¯t know how. I suddenly felt a surge of confidence that I could change the situation as my memories resurfaced. With what I was and the powers that I had, it wasn¡¯t so hard. I spread the terror that caused panic a few days earlier in the city. It was late in the evening and was dark, making it hard for the thugs to notice the blood spores before it entered their bodies. They were shocked at the sudden appearance of the red mist that befalls them and wondered who had interfered with their coercing. Their eyes finally landed on me once I spoke. ¡°Hey Raoul, can I kill them?¡± They radiated hostility towards me and the siblings became confused. ¡°What? Do you even know how to fight? And they got Slyvie, they will harm her if we do anything!¡± ¡°Answer me. Yes, or no?¡± ¡°If possible, don¡¯t kill them.¡± ¡°Okay.¡± The thugs didn¡¯t wait patiently during our conversation. They were preparing themselves for what I was going to do. The leader had even took out prepared to throw hidden darts. I stepped back into the shadow of the room and momentarily, the thugs wonder if I had ran away and the conversation before was just a buff. As their eyes were still focus on the window I popped out from, I used [Shadow Movement] to appear behind the man holding Sylvie hostage. Unluckily for him, he was standing away from the light coming from the internal of the house, making it easy for me to get to him. My reappearance was met by shocked eyes from each of the men, with the captor still unaware of my presences. All it took was a palm strike to the back of his head and he was knocked out. With Sylvie no longer under direct danger, Raoul could act. He went on to fight the four opponents again, gaining more advantage over the four over time. Knowing that the leader of the group had darts that he could throw, I used [Shadow Movement] once more to appear behind him and pressed my dagger into his throat. He had saw my attack coming but wasn¡¯t able to react in time and was thus checkmated. ¡°Now now, surrender yourself. Your boss is already captured and if you all want to die then please continue.¡± One of them dropped his knife and surrendered while the other three ran away. That left us with the leader at knifepoint by me, a knocked out goon and one that surrendered. ----- Chapter 12: Friends We waited for the constables to come as Sylvie went to called them. The thugs were tied up while Raoul and I kept watch of them. We had a chat while Sylvie was gone. "Thank you for helping out, we might have been killed without your assistances. It seemed like you had regained your memories, so how do I address our savior?" "You can call me Cliff, Cliff Blakesh." "Okay Cliff, sorry if this sounds a bit rude. Have your personality always been like that?" "What? How? The demanding part? I guess more or less so." "Er, that wasn''t really what I was thinking but it answered my question so its fine." "Now that I have answered your question, you should answer mine. What is this thing that they wanted so badly from you?" "You go straight to the point huh? But sorry, I cannot answer you. All I can say is that it was something given to us by our parents." "So a family heirloom?" "S-something like that." Unknowing to him, I could hear his inner thoughts. "Even though he saved our lives, I still shouldn''t trust him enough to tell him the secret of the thing." Even without being able to read his mind, I could still tell that he was lying. Or at least not telling the full truth. The atmosphere turned awkward while we waited for Sylvie to return. I did not waste my time as I could finally see what the messages that I missed for the last few days were. They were mainly messages that told me of my contamination of others, my losing of conscious due to the large health consumption, gaining a debuff that weakens me which reduces its effect over time, multiple skill level ups, two new skills and a message that made me extremely annoyed. Due to your stupid usage of health for your skill until you lost your conscious, you have unlocked a new function to the skill [Information Processing]. You are now able to convert intelligence to strength at the same ratio as that for wisdom. I was so annoyed at the message that it showed clearly on my face. Raoul even asked if anything was wrong. Ignoring the way I gained the new function, it meant more versatility to my stats. "I could convert my brain to braw- Goddamn it! I am NOT stupid! You hear me!? You are the stupid one author!" Raoul and even two of the three thugs stared at me. I had unintentionally spoken out loud my thoughts. I noticed the pitying within their eyes and I could only turned away from them, preventing them from seeing my face which had flushed red from embarrassment. Once again, I am NOT stupid. Our wait had lasted quite a while and we wondered why Slyvie wasn''t back yet. "Hey Cliff, why is it that Slyvie isn''t back yet? Could something have happened to her?" "That seemed possible. Maybe they had more men lying in ambush and had gotten her hostage again. You could beat the answer out of them." The thug leader''s face paled as he struggled against his bonds. With cold sweat rapidly flowing down his face, he figured that he couldn''t escape and literally screamed out his answer before Raoul could break more of his bones. PS. The torture was not shown on scene due to the nature of the violence inflected by the siscon. The thug was sure to be scarred for life due to that. "No! Don''t come nearer! There are no other people working with us! Please, don''t hurt me anymore." I could only feel pity for him this time and as a thought ran through my mind, my face changed from sympathy to seriousness. "Wait Raoul. He is telling the truth. I believed I know the reason why she isn''t back yet." Noticing the change in my atmosphere, Raoul waited intently for my answer. "She... couldn''t speak..." When my reasoning sinked into his head. We could only facepalm ourselves. After our palm stayed on our faces for a whole minute, we decided to dig a hole to hide ourselves into. We ARE stupid. At least it turned from I to we, so it wasn''t all that bad. What saved us from burying our heads in shame was the fact that Slyvie came back with four constables before we could start our operation. She somehow managed to get them over without their understanding of the situation. We found out from them that they knew something was wrong by Slyvie with frantic body language. They decided to follow her after she constantly tried to drag them along instead of getting the answer from her actions, which was impossible. If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. They were efficient as they got the whole story from the brother of the mute sister and dragged the men away within minutes. The siblings then asked me what I was going to do know that my memories were back. That was when I remembered about the two new skills that I had obtained. I had totally forgotten about them due to my annoyance of the previously mentioned message.

Spores Mind Reading[Toggle/Passive] Enables the caster to receive what the target(s) is thinking of at the moment.

Spores Suggestion[Active] Enables the caster to make voices appear within the head of the target(s). Depending on the target(s)¡¯s willpower, they may believe that the voices are their own thoughts.

They were both obtained when I reached the same level and acted like a pair. Basically, they were thought manipulation with one acting as a signal sender and the other as a receiver instead. I told the siblings that I had people waiting for me and were probably worried about me. They felt sad that I had to go but I told them that I would stay the night and return in the morning. That improved their mood by just a bit. I walked back to the room that I could call my own even though it had only been five days. I used a combination of [Spores Suggestion] and [Spores Mind Reading] to hold a conversation with Chris. "Hey, Cliff here. I''m fine and will be back tomorrow morning." "Huh? Was that my imagination? It sounded like Cliff." "No it wasn''t. I''m conversing with you through your mind." "I must have went mad from the stress. I could still hear him talking." "Stop! I''m real and speaking with you through your mind! Go find Aston and I''ll proof it to you. He is in his room now, sleeping." "Eh? I guess no harm trying. The worst that could happen and would happen is interrupting his sleep." I could see Chris walking over to Aston''s room from his own and waking him up. "Hey Aston, I just had the wildest thing to tell you. Wake up and be amazed!" "Argh, what could it be? Something rare again?" "Cliff told me that he is fine and will be back tomorrow morning." "Huh? How do you know that?" "He told me in my mind. I think that I might have went crazy but he told me I could proof it to the two of us at the same time. He want you to think of a sentence and say it out after I did. The hell?" "The hell? How did you know that I was going to say that!?" "He read your mind and told it to me." It took a while to convince Aston, but they believed me with Chris¡¯s help. I then decided to have a good rest on this bed which was way better than the one at the inn. I''m going to miss the bed. When morning came, I was welcomed by the alluring smell of breakfast. Slyvie had made it personally for me as a sort of farewell gift. Raoul was in a dilemma of wanting to murder me for receiving this treatment from his sister and feeling sad for my departure. With my memories back, I was no longer afraid of Raoul, but I still act that I was scared for his sake. It was nice to have made friends with the siblings. With the meal over, they prepared to send me off. I told them that I would visit them again and should they need help, I will appear for them. The farewell was a little dramatic with how they cried considering that we would still be in the same city. I did felt sad though. ----- Chapter 13: Dungeon I walked into the inn that was experiencing the lunch rush. Within the crowd, I could see the figure of a dwarf waving at me. There was also an elf sitting next to him on the small squarish table. I walked over without waving back, inciting a frown from the dwarf while the elf spoke. "Glad to see that you are fine. You went missing without telling us, we were worried about you." I sat down on the chair across the table from Chris and replied. "Well, there was a bit of an accident and I wasn''t able to complete my experiment correctly. And I know Chris, that you''re worried about me more because of my rare skills rather than my well being." "H-haha, what a good joke you have there." The waitress noticed that a new guest had arrived and came over to get the orders from me. After I ordered for myself, since the other two were already consuming their lunch, the waitress went off to get my order. Aston chose this timing to speak his concern. "Now that Cliff is back, shouldn''t we choose our next request Chris?" Giving a nod and a "Right.", the elf continued explaining Aston''s idea. "Aston and I were thinking that since we had you joined our party, we could go for something stronger than what we have been hunting. We were thinking of going into a dungeon that our skills could handle." I Felt curious at what they mentioned since I had no personal experience of it. I also wanted to tease them both at the same time. In according to that, I said, "What kind of dungeon could that be? And would the two of you drag me down since you''re lower level than me?" "Don''t worry, we wouldn¡¯t drag you down." Chris spoke that with a rare hint of agitation within his voice. So he could get angry. "Haha, its okay! I can easily slash goblins into two with my axe!" I felt annoyed that I garnered a different response from the happy-go-lucky dwarf. Deciding that I could always tease him again later, I voiced out a question instead. "Goblins? Aren''t they way weaker than the wolves that we fought?" "It is true that goblins are weak, but the dungeon that we are going into are full of them. Furthermore, each of them are armed. Which means that there is an increased in their strength and possibly intelligence too. There could be someone leading them which caused this abnormality. We could also salvage the equipments from them for more money." The conversation stopped momentarily as the waitress came back with a rabbit stew with some bread. That was the only thing that was better than those from the sibling''s home. I took a bite of the bread after dipping it into the stew and then continued the conversation at my own pace. "Too easy. That''s what it sounds like. But I''ll go along with your plans until I could do something better." Taking that as my approval, they continued their lunch and we had some chitchats while having our meal. We set off for the dungeon after grabbing the request from the guild. The journey towards the dungeon was uneventful. We just had to head south into the Vuca mountains range to find it. It was so quiet that it gotten to the point of it being weird. There were no wild animals at all. Only the occasional sound made by the wind disturbed the silence of the mountains. While my party members paid it no mind, I tirelessly spread my spores to act as a warning to us should anything approaches. With a cave that had its entrance protruding out of the mountain in view, we arrived at our destination. The only information that was given to us by the guild was where and how the entrance of the dungeon looked like and it containing swarms of armed goblins. I only realized when I reached there that the information provided was suspiciously too little. Along with the endless silence, it gave me a premonition that we would regret entering the cave. Before I could stop them, Aston suddenly dashed in, with Chris following soon after. Not willing to leave them for no definite reasoning, I pushed aside my feelings and gave chase. I soon came to an abrupt stop as I noticed what shocked or astonished Aston into running into the dark cave. It wasn''t dark at all. There was a dim glow of blue to purple hue throughout the wall of the cave. It was some type of plant which I identified as glowing moss.

Name:	Glowing moss
Type:	Plant
Rarity:	Rare
Description:	???
Usage:	None discovered
Identify:	5%

The sight before us could be considered a wonder of the natural world. We walked slowly down the tunnel within the sight to behold and momentarily forgot what we came here for. By the time I remembered, we were already surrounded. A swarm of armed goblins had us surrounded while we were dazed by the glowing moss that covered the tunnel. I removed both of them from their trance with a hand chop on to each of their head and they woke up to the sight of goblins attacking. We each drew our weapons to mow down the swarm before they could overrun us. When the tunnel was littered with corpses of goblins, we could finally have a chance to rest. We had all became ragged and were out of breathe from the onslaught of the goblins which had seemed to never end. Scratches and minor wounds covered our whole bodies in a similar fashion to how corpses covered a battlefield. Aston asked as I tried to confirm my suspicion. "What was that? How did they suddenly appeared in front of us without our knowledge?" "We were dazed, it was the moss." I told of my findings after confirmation with [Spores Identification].

Name:	Hallucinating moss
Type:	Poisonous moss
Rarity:	Very rare
Description:	These moss are rarely found in caves deep within the mountain. They could cause effects ranging from daze to mental disability when exposed to.
Usage:	Used in drugs creation to produce a varying daze effects.
Identify:	85%

"And that doesn''t seemed to be all the moss could do." Chris said that as the illumination provided by the moss turned a gradual red. The corpses having their red blood drained out of them soon turned so dry that they looked likely to crumble to dust once disturbed. My foreboding feeling grew and the source for it appeared. A humanoid appeared before our eyes. It stood high, well over two metres tall. With its dark red skin, it looked like an entity from hell. There were even protruding horns and glowing red vertical slits eyes to go along with that. With its muscular body that could put many bodybuilders to shame, it lumbered towards us, creaking of its full plate armor followed.

Statues
Name:	Lord Hallucinator
Title:	Procurer of Hallucinatory
Race:	Hobgoblin
Gender:	Male
Level:	?
Experience:	?%
Stats Point:	?
Class:	?
Health:	?/?	Mana:	?/?
Health regen:	?/s	Mana regen:	?/s
Strength:	?	Intelligence:	?
Dexterity:	?	Wisdom:	?
Vitality:	?	Willpower:	?
Attack:	?-?	Defence:	?

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Skills (Unidentified)

Effects ???

Identify:

"Oh my god, a hobgoblin! Got any information to share, Cliff!? We need all the advantage we could get to win that thing. My blood is boiling to fight a strong opponent like him though!" "Sadly I couldn''t see anything other than his title and name right now. Everything else were left with question marks. I might be able to discover more of his statues with time. Too bad we don''t have any!" I immediately jumped back as he swung down the huge broadsword towards where I stood a second ago. The ground was destroyed as shrapnel of rocks flew from where the sword hit, adding more wounds to my body. The shrapnel had no effect on the big guy as he taunted me. "Okay, we will get decimated by him in one hit huh? Let''s just go with the usual plan, just parry or dodge his attacks if you don''t want to be crushed." Nodding to my plan, Aston and Chris faced him from two sides and attempts to land hits on it without getting hit themselves. I hid in the shadow and waited for the opportunity to strike. With a wide swing of his broadsword being barely parried by Chris, I [Shadow Movement] to his exposed back and stabbed my obsidian dagger into the back of his right elbow. It went through the gap within the armor, but no blood came out from my action. I was met with by an elbow to the face instead. Generally speaking, crushing weapons worked better against heavily armored opponents as the impact could get transmitted through the armor themselves. But what I did just now went past the armor, yet it did not disabled or injured his arm like what I had intended. Sword would not fare much better than a dagger in this situation and we didn''t have mace user. Our only hope lies in the strength of the berserker''s axe to cleave through him, armor included. Conveying my idea through thoughts transmission, we changed our tactics. I swapped my position with Aston and tried my best to accomplish his previous job. It was no easy task to parry the giant with his huge strength so I could only rely on my dodging skills. Each dodge still damaged me as shrapnel from the destroyed tunnel flew my way. Bidding his time, Aston waited for the perfect opportunity to attack. He used all the power he had garner along with the skill [Rage Cleave] to strike the giant when his strike missed me. The axe cleaved through the air while producing a shrinking sound but came to an impossible stop at the giant''s wrist. The strike landed and cut through the armor and muscle but was stopped by the bones. The hobgoblin growl in rage and launched a punch with his other hand towards Aston. He couldn''t move away in time and was going to be smashed by it. All he could do was an attempt to weaken the blow with his axe. The fist landed, but not on just an axe. An elf flew in with his sword and both of their weapons shattered into millions of fragments as they flew towards the wall from the impact, the weapon taking the brunt of the hit. Taking this lapse of his concentration on me, I looked at his updated statues in hope of finding a weakness.

Statues
Name:	Lord Hallucinator
Title:	Procurer of Hallucinatory
Race:	Hobgoblin
Gender:	Male
Level:	27
Experience:	?%
Stats Point:	0
Class:	Drug Lord
Health:	344/420	Mana:	80/80
Health regen:	2.1/s	Mana regen:	0.4/s
Strength:	60(90)	Intelligence:	45(36)
Dexterity:	20(24)	Wisdom:	10(8)
Vitality:	35(42)	Willpower:	20(12)
Attack:	28-108	Defence:	40

Skills (Unidentified)

Effects On Drugs(17 hours 29 minutes)

Identify:

67%

On Drugs Current drugs consumed includes: Mind to Body: +50% Strength +20% Dexterity +20% Vitality -20% Intelligence -20% Wisdom -40% Willpower

"That attack only took 20% of his health!? It took everything that we had to land it too." There was no reply to my monologue as both Aston and Chris had been knocked out. All three of us would die if I this continued. I attempted to use my trump card against him earlier. It didn''t managed to contaminate him even when I had to sacrificed my health to hit him with my blood spores at point blank range. I doubt that I could possess him in the first place due to the level differences though. Using the only card I had left, I called out to him. "Hey, you ugly thing." He turned to where the voice came from, ready to swing his sword down. Only that there was nothing there. He became confused and using this opportunity, I jumped up to his face and used [Gorge] into the shadows of the eye socket on his helmet. I didn¡¯t have a vulnerable spot on his back to trigger [Backstab] with, so I had to choose a different spot instead. To my surprised, [Gorge] still triggered [Backstab]''s effect since I was considered unseen. What actually happened was that I was in his vision all along. The usage of [Spores Suggestion] made it seemed like I wasn''t there. It was a gamble that I had to make as I wasn''t sure if the skill could actually made him lost sight of me. With the stab into the eye, the drug lord bleed profusely and went berserk, swinging his weapon wildly at his surroundings. I moved around him, tripping him into the holes that the effectively blind hobgoblin made to tired him out. I also looked for other vulnerable spots that I could attack through without being hit by his wild swings. He ended himself before I had the chance to as he destroyed a part of the tunnel wall and it fell on him, burying him alive. We were lucky that the cave was still stable enough and did not collapsed as a whole, burying us alive with him. I slowly dragged the two who were still unconscious slowly out of the cave before more enemies could find us. ----- Author''s Notes: So, a boss fight kinda chapter! What do you think? Epic? Boring? Not enough descriptions?(probably the case, q.q I''m bad with descriptions) Chapter 14: The Next Step "Arch, my head hurts. The light, so bright! Did we died and are we in heaven?" "It sure does resemble one with the surroundings. Wait, I see Cliff. We must be in hell then, he couldn''t possibly have went to heaven with that personality of his." Chris woke up with a headache, followed shortly by Aston. "Oh? This is hell? That''s fine. I''ll make sure you''re experiencing hell then." I spoke menacingly while feeling annoyed at Aston. He quickly corrected himself when he saw me walking towards him while cracking my knuckles. "N-no! I meant that even hell is like heaven with you there!" "Then please enjoy the treatment from heaven~." I proceeded to punch him to oblivion while he screamed for help from no one in particular. There were no one to hear him other than Chris whom believed that he deserved it. Chris cared more about the situation instead and opted to ask some questions. "Why are we out here? What happened? Did you defeated that hobgoblin?" "I half drag and half carried both of you out of the cave. I managed to injured his eyes and in his fury, he destroyed a wall which collapsed on himself. I got us out as I wasn''t sure if the cave would collapse. Ah, it just did." I left out the details as it wasn''t necessary. The dungeon also caved in with a huge rumble and a minor earthquake during my explanation. Thank god that we escaped before it did so, else we might not be able to get out from there even if we weren''t crushed by the initial collapse. "So once again we were saved by you huh? Thank you. And you should probably stop punching him or he will really die." "Eh? Its fine. I can clearly see that my punches deal insignificant damage to his health, it will probably take a couple more hundred punches for him to actually die. I''ll leave him a punch away from death." "Stop! Seriously stop! I''ll do anything you say as long as you stop punching me! Please!" "Eh? Really? Then let me kick you to death then." "No!" Of course I didn''t do that. If I wanted to do so, I would have left him in the cave and not waste my energy getting him out. He also managed to helped out in the previous fight. Even though it wasn''t a determining factor, it still gave me enough time to plan for what I had done somewhat. I turned my attention away from the cowering dwarf to the elf that was seemingly focus on thoughts. He spoke when he noticed that I was looking at him. "Sorry. We were unable to do anything against the hobgoblin even though we were the one who suggested to explore the dungeon." "Don''t apologise. I was unable to do much against him too. Furthermore, the request never mentioned anything on the hobgoblin. He was level 27 too, more than double of our average level. It could be considered a miracle that the fight ended with something similar to a draw." "Wow, that''s high. So erm, what''s our level?" I facepalmed before confirming our status. I then answered. "I''m level 13 while both of you are level 12. You two were level 7 when we first met by the way." "What!? Our almost three years of training only got us so far compared to what we did in a week!?" Aston recovered and screamed out the facts. I suppressed my growing urge to attack him again. "Yes. So stop screaming. Please. Your face will meet my fist otherwise." Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. He held my threat in mind as he continued, softer this time. "Okay, so how did we advance so fast as compared to before? Although it''s true that having you in our party helped our hunting speed, it wasn''t to that extend." "That''s something that I don''t have the answer to. Maybe it had something to do with your past?" Chris chipped in his own theory to Aston''s questions. He continued with another question after what seemed like a revelation. "Maybe we could find out from Mavic Schooler! I heard that he will come over to Flussufera to oversee the development of the city and where it could be improved!" "Why would that help?" Both Aston and I didn''t recognise the name and could only wonder how a man can solve the puzzle to the mystery surrounding the experience spike. "Because Mavic Schooler is a well respected scholar who had dabbled into many fields and caused breakthrough in each of them! He is also one of the rare few who has the ability to view statues!" "Okay, I understand the knowledgeable part, but why does he having the ability to view statues have anything to do with this? I am already able to view my own statues." "That''s the point! What you see from your statues are some basic informations and battle stats and skills right?" "Yes?" "From what I know, what he can see isn''t things related to battle. There''s a chance that he could see into your past or provide a clue to your existences!" "That... Might help. But from the way you said it, he does sound like some influential person. How do we meet him in that case?" Aston butted in for the first time since the conversation between Chris and I switched topic. Chris looked sad as he understood Aston''s point and I believed that he knew it beforehand, which was why he hadn''t mentioned the idea earlier. "I think that I know a method." My proclamation stunned them both. Chris could only stutter as he thinks about my method out loud. "You can kidnap him, no! That''s disrespectful! But you''re special too. I also want to meet him. Argh! Maybe..." I interrupted him before he could go further. "Okay stop. I can resort to kidnapping as something like a last resort. But my method has nothing illegal to do with it. I have contacts that I can try to use to get the chance to meet him." Chris''s eyes were opened so big that they seemed like they would popped out from their sockets anytime. He screamed "Really!?" so loudly that the anyone near to the mountain could have heard his voice. He seemed like a child that was excited and restless to go on his first trip. "I can¡¯t really promise that, but I will try. They are in the city so we have to go back first either way." "What are we waiting for!? Let''s go then!" Then it hit him while he turned to walk away, while intending to be the one leading the way back. He was so excited that he forgot about his own injuries. Like how they say that idiots don''t catch cold, the dwarf didn''t seemed to be in pain, unlike the elf. Wait, they are both idiots. I moved over to lend a shoulder to the struggling elf and hype him out even more. "We can go straight to the contact straight. They have a healer there too." ----- Chapter 15: Scholar The sound of knocking could be heard from the front door in the late evening. The Rivera siblings were busy with each of their own things when it sounded. The brother was training his martial arts in the backyard after dinner while the sister was washing the dishes. Noticing that the brother couldn¡¯t possibly have heard the knocking on the door, the sister went over to see who the visitor could be. ¡°Hey. I¡¯m back already.¡± Hearing the words spoken by the unexpected visitor, Slyvie¡¯s face beamed. ¡°Cliff! You sure are back fast, not that you aren¡¯t welcomed. A day haven¡¯t even past! Are those two the companions you spoke of?¡± Sylvie finally noticed the one that were half-carried by me and the other one that was behind me after her initial excitement. The color of her face glowed as if it had became warmer as her eyes darted to a certain person. ¡°Yeah, certain things happened. I remembered that you were a healer and we got injured, so I was wondering if you could fix us up? I also had another favor to ask for.¡± ¡°Eh? Of course, come in, come in! I¡¯m sorry for making you all wait outside and not noticing your injuries. Quickly come in and sit down. I¡¯ll get Raoul to come over and get some tea at the same time. Then I¡¯ll fix all of you up.¡± ¡°Thanks.¡± Only after Sylvie went off did Chris spoke up. ¡°How did you get to know her? Was it during the time you were missing?¡± ¡°Yeah, that¡¯s the case. The siblings took care of me after the accident that I had. I also helped them with one of their problem that occurred before I returned.¡± Sylvie came back quickly with Raoul in tow. He was still wet with sweat from his training. The glistering sweat that covered his half naked body with the light provided by the lamps created the illusion that he was sparkling. He had a towel which he used to wipe his sweat in a useless attempt to prevent them from dripping towards the floor. ¡°Cliff, nice to see that you¡¯re back. I apologise to the two guests for seeing my current appearance. Mind for some introduction and explanation, Cliff?¡± I gave the introduction of each members to both sides. I then proceeded to explain the circumstances for our injuries and the accident that I had. While all of these were going on, Sylvie was doing her best to heal each of us with her abilities as a healer. ¡°That does explain certain things, but how did you know that my sister was a healer? I don¡¯t think that either of us had mentioned that during your stay here.¡± ¡°Well, you see, I do have this ability to view statues. I just happened to noticed that her class is that of a healer and you of a martial artist.¡± ¡°That, that kind of ability is rare. No wonder you were able to take out those thugs so easily. You must have knew before hand what kind of tactics or moves they were limited to.¡± ¡°Not really. I was just confident that I could overpower them just based on the stats differences.¡± ¡°...Okay. Putting that aside, what¡¯s the other favor that you¡¯re asking from us? We¡¯ll do our best to help you.¡± ¡°Yeah. Although we probably don¡¯t have much ways to help you in, we really want to help you in whatever you¡¯re doing!¡± ¡°The thing is, I don¡¯t really know my past. I only awoke to my current self around a week ago. Things have been kinda weird for Chris and Aston since I joined them, so we were wondering if it had something to do with my past. I heard from Chris that Mavic Schooler would be coming to the city soon and wish that he would be able to explain the mystery of my past. I was hoping that you two could somehow get us to meet him with your status as a fallen noble.¡± ¡°N-noble? What are you talking about? We¡¯re just orphans of merchants. Y-yeah, rich merchants.¡± Although surprised by my revelation, Raoul was too busy trying to cover up his noble lineage to question it. ¡°You know that you can¡¯t lie well Raoul. Even if you could, with the exchange between you and the thugs, I could¡¯ve easily guessed. And as for the getting to meet Mavic part, it probably wouldn¡¯t be easy as you two are no longer actual nobles.¡± Raoul sighed while Sylvie continued to stay silent and focus on her task of healing, which had now moved on to Aston. I declined her earlier as my injuries were minor and had almost recovered by itself. ¡°Yeah, we were nobles. I guess I just couldn¡¯t lie to you so easily. On the part of Mavic Schooler, I think that we might still have enough influence to enable us to meet him. If I didn¡¯t remember wrongly, he used to frequently visit Flussufera back when it still wasn¡¯t a city. Our family were quite influential back then so I supposed he would have heard about us. He may allow the meeting if we go along, though I cannot guarantee that.¡± ¡°Alright then. That is already good enough. Thank you, my friend-¡± A gurgled interrupted our conversation as I turned towards it¡¯s source. It came from the dwarf which tried to look away to hide his involvement in the creation of the sound. For some reason, Aston wasn¡¯t the only one with his face red. Slyvie¡¯s face had turned red too. ¡°S-sorry! I didn¡¯t noticed that all of you haven¡¯t had dinner yet and made you wait. I¡¯ll go make dinner for you three now!¡± Sylvie dashed off in a hurry before I could stop her. I turned back to Raoul and asked him a question. ¡°Ah. There she went. It wasn¡¯t her fault that we haven¡¯t had dinner yet, but I do appreciate her concern. Also, is it just me or is your sister not acting like herself?¡± ¡°THAT! THAT CANNOT BE!¡± He spoke that out loud and stomped off. We could only wondered why the siblings had such reactions. The three of us had dinner soon and the food was even better than the usual. The two siblings joined us at the the table with the previous mood. When Sylvie¡¯s food was complemented by the other two, she blushed once more, prompting anger from the brother again. We were then offered to spend the night there as it had became late. We graciously accepted the offer and went to rest. I slipped out in the middle of the night while the others slept to spread red cloud of terror in moderation instead. Morning arrived and we suggested to help with the chores that they had to do to repay them for the meal. Chris stayed behind with Raoul to clean up the house and proceeded to exchange pointers in practice fights while Sylvie, Aston and I went to get the grocery. On our way back, we heard news from the marketplace that Mavic Schooler had pushed his schedule ahead and will be arriving on the same day instead. He would be resting in the best inn in the city, ¡°The Honey Lantern¡±, and would be provided with many experienced guards during his stay there. We rushed back to inform the other two of the news. This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. We prepared for the meeting with Mavic Schooler and ate our lunch. Most of the preparation involved getting dressed in appropriate clothings while the remaining involves teaching etiquette to the three of us. In the late afternoon, we set off towards ¡°The Honey Lantern¡±. It was in the noble district which the siblings live in, so the walk only took us around ten minutes. ¡°The Honey Lantern¡± was an inn that gave off the warmth and sweetness like honey. It was way larger than the other buildings surrounding it and was painted in shades of gold, with most of it in golden yellow. It was already a feat to keep the color from dulling due to time and weather. I suspected that magic was involved. The shades of gold painted on the brick wall of the building made it hard for people to stare directly at it during the middle of the day while it remains brilliantly bright during the night as well. There were knights wearing shiny silver armor which harmonize with the gold from the building surrounding it at the same time. Undaunted by the knights in silver full plate armor, Raoul and Slyvie both stepped towards the entrance of the inn, the three of us followed behind them. A short distance before they could actually reached the door to the inn, one of the knights pull out his sword and pointed at Raoul. He uttered, ¡°Halt! Who are you and how dare you attempt to enter this place!¡± Raoul spoke out, each word flooding with etiquette befitting that of a noble. ¡°I have come to request a meeting with Mavic Schooler. I am Raoul Rivera and this is my sister Sylvie Rivera.¡± The knight responded rudely to Raoul and stated, ¡°I don¡¯t care who you are! No one gets to meet Mavic Schooler unless given the permission by himself or the governor of Flussufera!¡± ¡°But-¡± ¡°No! If you still insist on seeing Mavic Schooler, obtain permission from the governor. Else, if you were to take one more step forward, we will treat you as hostile and cut you down!¡± Feeling stuck in a corner as he knew that trying to meet the governor will result in a similar scene, Raoul desperately thinks for a solution. It was cut off by a voice from within the inn itself. ¡°You said that your name is Raoul Rivera and the one next to you is Slyive Rivera?¡± The voice came from a figure looking out the window of the third floor. We were unable to clearly see how he looked due to the reflection from the golden bricks of the building. Raoul could only answer back and hope that the interrupter could help with the situation. ¡°Yes, that is so sir.¡± ¡°Okay. Slyvie Rivera may enter. The rest will wait outside.¡± The knights replied with a ¡°Yes, Sir!¡± We wondered if it was fine for just Sylvie to enter by herself but she didn¡¯t mind and went in by herself. I looked through the same eyes as Sylvie did and thought that I would rush to save her if she ran into danger. She was led up the stairs swiftly on to the third floor and was brought in front of the door which led to the room that the window was connected to. She gave a knock and a man which sounded ancient allowed her to enter the room. An old man that was around the same height as his brother was in the room. He looked pale and had long straight hair that reached way below his shoulders. His moustache and beard were thick and covered the lower part of his face, reaching near his chest. His hair were a dull silver and he had black eyes with silver iris that seemed to pull people in. He wore a blue robe that covered most of his body and had a cane to balance himself. It seemed like he lost his lower left leg and the cane was a sort of replacement for that. ¡°Come here and sit down, you young brat.¡± Sylvie obeyed obediently, unwilling to anger the old man before her. They sat on the chairs that surrounded a table in the middle of the room. They were seated facing each others and Sylvie couldn¡¯t helped but be nervous. ¡°Now, Slyive Rivera right? Give me your hands.¡± ¡°Eh?¡± A sound of surprise escaped her lips as that wasn¡¯t something that she could¡¯ve expected. Ignoring the confusion on her face, the old man commanded, ¡°Just give it to me!¡± I wondered momentarily if I should force my way into the room as he could meant harm towards Sylvie but decided against it. Sylvie obeyed meekly and the old man held her eyes, before closing his eyes. He opened it a second later and a smile appeared on his face before he let go of her hands. ¡°You may not remembered it but we had met before, same goes for Raoul down there.¡± ¡°Eh? EH!?¡± ¡°No need for the surprise, you were both fairly young then and probably don¡¯t remember it. You two brought some companions over right? There is probably something that you¡¯re asking from me and you¡¯ll want them inside here too right?¡± Before Sylvie could answer, Mavic had already stood up and walked towards the previous window with the aid of his cane. He commanded the knights to lead the remaining of us into the room. We were invited to sit down on the chairs surrounding the table and he said, ¡°So what do you want?¡± He shot a straight ball and I decided to do the same. I spoke up before the others could react. ¡°View my statues with that ability of yours.¡± Everyone was surprised at me being so direct at it while the old man felt curious instead that my request was so simple. ¡°That¡¯s all?¡± ¡°Yes. That¡¯s all. You¡¯ll need to hold my hands right? Here, get on with it.¡± The old man was a bit stunned at me knowing about the need to hold hands but decided to ignore it. He proceeded to held my hands and closed his eyes, just like how he did so for Sylvie. Instead of keeping it closed for just a mere second, this time he continued for roughly half a minute. As each second past, his expression kept on getting more serious and strained. The others were worried about why he looked so strained, even more so was Sylvie who knew that it only took a second for the ability to work when used on herself. He suddenly broke contact with me as he pretty much threw my hands away from himself and opened his eyes wide. The aura of importances and uncaringness from him was replaced by that of worriedness and doubting. Only one word left his mouth, ¡°Impossible¡¡± ----- Chapter 16: Tale There was once a boy who lived an average life. He had a happy family without any actual problem. His family consist of his father, mother, an elder sister, and a younger brother. His father was a typical office worker who would be welcomed back home by the whole family every weekday. His mother was a normal housewife other than the fact that she could be considered a professional chef within the district that they lived in. His sister was a year older than him and would sometimes annoy the hell out of himself, but whenever he needs help, she would no doubt do her part as an elder sister. His younger brother was four years younger and was fairly naughty, but it couldn¡¯t be helped as the whole family doted on him since young. The family lived in an apartment building near the town central. It was a place that was filled with whatever needs they could think of, schools, train stations, shopping centre and many more. The boy¡¯s studies wasn¡¯t exceptional but it was above average. He also had many friends in which some of them often visited his house in order to play together. They came so often that all of his family members knew each of their names. He lived a simple but enjoyable life till he reached the age of twelve, with nothing abnormal happening. On his twelfth birthday, his family set up a birthday party for him. He had invited three of his closest friend to celebrate the occasion with him. The party was to started in the early afternoon and last till the early evening. They would have fun and enjoy their games and snack till early evening, where they cut the cake and eat it before going back to their respective homes. The birthday song had been sung and the birthday boy was going to blow out the flames on the candles of the birthday cake. It was at this point in time that the abnormality started. One of his friend, a boy which was on the short side, started making grunts of pain. Everyone heard it and each of the participators of the party showed concern for him and asked him what was wrong. He told them that his head hurts, it hurts so much that he felt like it was going to explode. He fell down on the floor before anyone could react. Soon after, another of the boy¡¯s friend complained about her aching stomach and collapsed too. One by one, each of the participators of the party fell, becoming more rapid each time. The boy was afraid and confused. Why did they collapsed? What should he be doing? His mind was blank and he couldn¡¯t make up his mind. It took him a while before deciding to call for ambulance. While the call was connecting, he was thinking in his mind on what he should tell them. They had a birthday party and everyone collapsed except for himself? The voice from the other side of the call interrupted his thoughts. His mind became blank once more and a shriek on his side made him dropped the phone. The friend who had first fell was the one making the noise. He rushed over to him and discovered that he was holding his head with both hands while curled in a fetal position. He tried to calm his friend down but the boy fell on his back instead. He saw something sharp protruding out of his friend¡¯s head. Blood rushed out at the same time as the object continued it¡¯s growth. Soon, a single horn had grew out of his friend¡¯s head and the blood had stop flowing out. By that point in time, the blood puddle on the floor was enough to drenched the carpeted floor. He was no longer feeling worried for his friend. All of his emotions had changed to that of fear. What was the creature in front of himself? What would it do to him and his family? He asked himself many questions which were not answered. More screams and shrieks erupted around him as the other collapsed people experienced a similar pain to the first changed. Some grew tail, some wings, others even had scales. The boy could no longer stay in place. His fear of the unknown had long covered over his concern for those who he cared about. He ran out of his house. This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. Shouts, screams and shrieks was ranging up everywhere he ran. He just wanted to run away from those noise that reminded him of his changed friends and family, but he couldn¡¯t escape from them. Noise of different type erupted all around him, car crashed into crowds, people collapsed everywhere, he even saw a plane dropping down into the horizon. All of these were things that a twelve year old couldn¡¯t understand. Even if he was older, he probably wouldn¡¯t be able to make any sense of anything that was going on. He came to a stop from his run at a road junction. He had ran for so long that his heart was beating rapidly within his chest, threatening to stop suddenly if he would continued his run. He looked up and saw a picture of hell. Some people died when they first experienced the pain and fell unconscious. Those unlucky enough to get past the pain was changed. Each and every one of them. They had became creatures and things that the boy couldn¡¯t describe. The best he could think of them would be the horrors from some of the storybooks that he had read. He felt joy when he noticed that there were still some unchanged. His joy was turned into despair immediately as he saw them being slaughtered by the changed. He knew then that he had nowhere to run, those things would hunt him down even if he tried to escape. His knees dropped on to the ground and he knelt there crying. He stayed in that position crying for such a long time that the sun had set. There were still some of those monsters around, but somehow they didn¡¯t acknowledged his existence. He was curious on the reasons behind it, but the despair within him prevented him from gathering enough energy to find out. He just couldn¡¯t find a reason to live anymore. Not when he had already abandoned his friends and family. Not when the world had probably already fell into control of the changed. He then heard the sound of gunshots. He had never heard them before, other than on television, but it sounded near. The thought that there could be other survivors, that the world might not totally be gone, gave him the push he needed to sprung into action. He ran towards the gunshots. What he found was a group of people that were gathered. They were holed up in the shopping mall that he often went to with his family. There seemed to be the military protecting the civilians there. He needs the presences and comfort of people after what he had been through, so he ran towards them. Some of the soldiers took aim at him, but after noticing that he was just a child, one of them rushed over to hug him and brought him to safety, into the presence of the other survivals. They were surprised at how a child like him could¡¯ve survived for the few hours since the change happened, but they didn¡¯t question his humanity. That was the wrong choice. Within minutes of his arrival, people within the mall started collapsing. Each of them changed so fast that the soldiers protecting them couldn¡¯t react and were all slaughtered. The boy knew then that he had changed. He was no longer human. Or at least he was the one who caused the changed. He despaired. Even more than he could previously. He was the one that caused the tragedy. He thought of suiciding, to disappeared into the wind, so that no one could be changed by him anymore. He reached for one of the broken piece of glass on the floor near him. He stabbed himself, only to found out that there was nothing where he had stabbed. ¡°Ahh, my wish came through. I¡¯m disappearing into the wind-¡± And just like that, the boy was no more. ----- Author¡¯s Notes: Cliffhangers are fun! Though I do understand the pain of them :3 So, here is the next chapter which seemed vastly different, enough that it looked like a different story. Chapter 17: Past ¡°What¡¯s wrong!?¡± On hearing the shout of Mavic Schooler, the knights rushed in. They had their weapons drawn and were prepared to attack us should he commanded. ¡°It¡¯s fine, stand down. I was just surprised.¡± ¡°Yes, sir.¡± With that said, the knights rushed out as quickly as they did when they entered, making it seemed like their entry never occurred. Curious about his outburst, we were waiting for his explanation. In an attempt to get him out of his current state of murmuring, I asked him, ¡°Did my past revealed something shocking? Something to the extent that the man who caused so many breakthroughs to find it weird or unusual?¡± ¡°Don¡¯t bother trying to get into my good shoes with those sweet talks. I don¡¯t care about those kind of useless stuff! It¡¯s just that your past-¡± He cut himself off mid sentence and went back to his senseless murmuring. I could attempt to read his mind if I had infected him but I hadn¡¯t. I didn¡¯t want to show my skills openly either. My only choice in this matter would be to get him to talk it out. I tried to poke him to get his attention and he jumped in shocked. ¡°Argh! Don¡¯t interrupt me when I¡¯m thinking! Damn, nevermind. Answer my question, what was your first memory?¡± Feeling unsure to the reasoning behind his question, I thought for a moment to answer his question with a question. I decided in the end to just answer him so that he would tell us when he found out. ¡°I woke up in the forest in the body of a boy. That was slightly more than a week ago.¡± My answer made the Riveria siblings shocked, with Raoul asking while still not really believing it, ¡°H-how can that be? You must be joking right? There¡¯s no way for your body to grow to that of a man such as yourself with just the timespan of a week. H-hahaha-?¡± Noticing that I was serious when he stared into my eyes, his laughter dwindled off into silences. Taking in the answer that I provided him with, the old man processed his thoughts. We didn¡¯t have to wait long this time as he already had a clue the answer and just needed the confirmations. ¡°Your past. That is, you don¡¯t belong to this era.¡± My head started throbbing slowly. We didn¡¯t exactly get what he meant and waited for him to continue his explanations. ¡°What I saw from your memories were things that don¡¯t belong to this world. Or at least no longer so. You were the one that made the change in the previous world into that of this world. You were the one that caused the change and disappeared for probably more than a thousand years and are now back.¡± As he explained, the throbbing in my head before increased in frequency. Memories of my past flooded in as if the dam that hold off all my past memories was destroyed. Sylvie spoke slowly while she tried to understand what he meant, ¡°Then do you mean-¡± ¡°I-I remembered. The scene of destructions caused by my presence. The cause of the change being me. My wish of disappearing along with the wind. How I had scattered into the wind as my wish was fulfilled. I see. So this is the result of what had happened. Now I understand the reason for my power.¡± This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. ¡°What do you mean by destruction? Why were you the cause? And what is the ¡®change¡¯ that you¡¯re talking about?¡± Chris spoke out with a tone of cautiousness in his voice while the others remained in either shock or confusion. I explained to them as my voice spoke of a time long lost as nostalgia and sadness overtook me, ¡°A power woke up within me. I didn¡¯t knew of it nor did I knew how to control it. It caused something similar to an apocalypse in the world that I lived in. The current world was created in the aftermath of the apocalypse.¡± Before they had time to question me, I continued, explaining each detail as much as I could. ¡°In the world before, there doesn¡¯t exist much sentinel creatures. It was a society ruled by human. The Science was well developed and buildings were hundreds of stories tall. People were able to fly from one end of the world to the other side in a day with the help of machineries. There were no such things as monsters nor magic. My power awakening turned humans into monsters and other creatures that you can see nowadays. Dwarf, elves, ghouls, and even dragons. It changed the human and other creatures to things different from themselves. Though probably not all were changed, many new things came into existences, such as magic.¡± ¡°Okay? That¡¯s all? It just meant that we¡¯re going to become stronger by staying with you right? There¡¯s no need to worry about things like that.¡± Aston replied with his thoughts that was just looking at one side of things. His thoughts didn¡¯t think about the other consequences that will come along with growth in strength. Mavic Schooler had been listening closely to each word that came out of my mouth and had been thinking. He analyzed the possibilities on the effects of my power and concluded. ¡°Although there is more to it then what the dwarf said, I wouldn¡¯t say that that is too far from the truth. It¡¯s true that your presence might cause change to occur like before but it may not be all bad. I¡¯m sure there are many useful things that can come out of it. That is something that I will like to know more about.¡± With the return of my memories, my personality from before had also came back to me. The merging of my old and new personalities could be said to made me more weak, more feeling, more human. It¡¯s odd that it made me more human considering that that me was the one that caused the end of the world. The depression that I felt as I was telling my story was washed away by the kindness that Aston showed for being able to accept me for who I am. It was a warmth that exceed those that came from the Riveria siblings which I could considered friends. It was the warmth of accepting me that the me from before wanted but couldn¡¯t at the same time. The acceptance and forgiveness of me who had used that power. I broke down and cried. Chapter 18: New Members It took some time before I calmed down and my tears ran dry. The others just stood on their spots, unwilling to disturb me who was crying. Mavic was the brave soul to interrupt the silence that had took control of the room after my sobbing stopped. ¡°What¡¯s your plan now that you found out your past? If you don¡¯t mind, I have a suggestion for you.¡± ¡°Say it.¡± ¡°Personally, I don¡¯t believe that your power will cause catastrophic events as it did previously due to the nature of the current world. I¡¯ll like to ask of you to allow me to carrying out experiments on you and your power.¡± With the mention of the word ¡®experiment¡¯, the expression of the other people within the room darkens. Noticing it, Mavic gave more details on what he meant. ¡°No, it isn¡¯t the experiments that you¡¯re all thinking about. I just want to see the effects of how you and your influence can affect the world. You may continue your life as you wish while reporting on your findings to me. Or you may follow my suggestions on where and what you will be doing to allow me to get more specific results on more controlled experimental variables. Those are the offers that I provide to you in hopes on finding out more about your power. What do you think?¡± ¡°To be honest, if you guys hadn¡¯t accepted me like you did earlier, I would have agreed to anything as I don¡¯t want history to repeat itself. But with your confidences that it will most likely not happen, I¡¯ll accept your offer. For the offers you provided, either are fine, though I prefer the earlier one as i wish to continue travelling with my party for the time being. Thank you.¡± ¡°That¡¯s fine. You can always inform me when you decided to get a goal from me. Here, take this. It will allow you to communicate with me.¡± Mavic said as he tried to pass me a pair of earrings. I pushed the earrings back to him and he was shocked. ¡°Didn¡¯t you said that you will accept my offer?¡± ¡°Yes, I did said that. It¡¯s just that I don¡¯t need those earrings. If you would allow it, may I use my skill on yourself? I apologise for the scare that I¡¯ll cause.¡± He nods slowly while showing an expression of curiosity. It soon turned to a mix of shock and fear when I released my blood spores into the air. The sight of my head splitting into four parts stunned Mavic, Raoul and Sylvie so much that they couldn¡¯t scream. Chris and Aston had a face of disgust instead. It wasn¡¯t a sight that should be seen while consuming food. I returned to normal a second later as the blood spores had already entered Mavic; The other people in the room were already infected before this. Sylvie¡¯s knee buckled and she fell back on to her chair, the others remained standing as they had seen sight worse sight for the heart and mind. ¡°Now that that was done, I can converse with you anytime telepathical.¡± ¡°How-No, What was that!?¡± Raoul questioned while feeling shocked. He only turned his attention to me after making sure that Sylvie was fine. A true sis-con indeed. ¡°That was my skill just now. I produced spores within my body before I spread them into the air. It then entered the bodies of people nearby and is the intermediary to my other skills. From what I¡¯d seen in my status screen, I¡¯m also no longer human.¡± While Mavic seemed deep in thoughts, Raoul and Sylvie were glad that nothing bad had happened to be just now. They didn¡¯t mind that I was not human. The current world where non-human were plentiful probably helped with their acceptance of me, but I¡¯m still glad they didn¡¯t shy away from me. They were after all the first two friends, no, next two friends after Aston and Chris. Although how we met were under a different circumstances, Aston and Chris had already grew closer to me and I could call them friends too. ¡°I see. Could you tell me your other skills too? They will help with my planning on your experiments.¡± After I told him of each of my skills, we bid our goodbye to Mavic and thanked him for his aid. It wasn¡¯t the end to our relationship as I had accepted his offer and I could speak to him telepathically anytime anyway. As we exited the building, the sky had already darken due to the time that we had spent within the inn. Taking the opportunity that the siblings were still here, I extended my invitation to them to join our party. We had our share of damage dealers but were not versatile enough and that was one of the reasons for us failing the dungeon before. With the help of Raoul who could act as a semi-tank and Sylvie a healer, our party could become more balance and stronger as compared to before. This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. Although they could continued living their life with what they inherited from their parents, the money still wasn¡¯t enough to last forever. Raoul had his doubts on joining the party but was convinced by Sylvie who was raring to see the outside world. We decided to rest the night back at the siblings¡¯ home before preparation for our next journey and settling some matters. It was only when I was back in my room did I had the time to notice that there were notifications. I finally understood why they felt familiar as they were a trace that links me to my past. I opened them with a slight smile as I viewed the content. For discovering your tragic past and recovering your memories, you have gained back the informations on your status screen. You have also gained the titles ¡®World Changer¡¯ and ¡®Tragic Child¡¯. World Changer For having been the cause for a huge change to the world you live in, you have gained the following stats: +10% to all stats. Tragic Child For experiencing a tragedy as a child and recovering from the trauma, you have gained resistances to further pain. +5 Vitality, + 10 Willpower. ----- Author¡¯s Notes: A little status after maaaaaaaaany chapters of no status screen :3 Spoiler :

Status
Name:	Cliff Blakesh(Jess Arlie)
Title:	Sandman(World Changer)
Race:	Human(Parasite)
Gender:	Male(Male)
Level:	13(7)
Experience:	23%(11%)
Stats points:	0(5)
Class:	Shadow(Spores Master)
Health:	200/200	Mana:	696/696
Health regen:	2.0/s	Mana regen:	13.9/s
Strength:	30(53)	Intelligence:	23(12)
Dexterity:	39(42)	Wisdom:	12(58)
Vitality:	14(20)	Willpower:	17(29)
Attack:	53-63	Defence:	15

Skills

Class Tree Assassination[Level 29] -Backstab[Passive] -Gouge[Active] -Sneak[Passive] Shadow Manipulation[Level 17] -Blend In[Passive] Spores Controlling [Level 31] -Spores Emission[Active] -Spores Detection[Toggle/Passive] -Spores Identification[Passive] -Spores Sense[Toggle/Passive] -Spores Mind Reading[Toggle/Passive] -Spores Suggestion[Active]

Other Skills Information Processing[Unique Passive][650]

Additional Bonus +20% max mana +1% of max mana to mana regen +10% to all stats(World Changer) +5 Vitality(Tragic Child) +10 Willpower(Tragic Child) There are additional bonuses that you may purchase with your stats point.

Chapter 19: Premonition The following day, we went to the guild to search for a request that we could take up. Since it was the first time the siblings were participating as adventurers, we had to familiarise them with the procedures. Many of the requests surprised Sylvie as she didn¡¯t knew of many things out in the world. She remained excited throughout our process of choosing one request that suited us. What we picked was actually a bit too easy for our group of five. But we picked it as Sylvie had zero combat experience while Raoul¡¯s mainly came from training, which was why we had to get them to adapt to life as an adventurer. The content requested us to cut down the trolls that had been rampaging in the villages to the north of the forest. The villager chief was the requester and believed that the trolls had came from a nearby cave. Although trolls were aggressive by nature, they don¡¯t often go out of their way to attack the villages, which was why they were unprepared for the attacks. Other than the reason mentioned before for introducing the siblings to adventuring life, the other reason would be that Sylvie wanted to help the villagers that were injured during the attacks. Her belief as a healer prevented her from not helping them as she knew about their conditions. Her reasoning was right and just, thus we chose it although there were better choices. We proceeded swiftly through Taura Forest as I made used of my skills and scout ahead, alerting the party of any dangers that lies ahead. That allowed the rest of the party to be prepared for battle early and enabled us to swiftly and decisively cut down our foes before they could ambush us. With the knowledge of myself, Aston, and Chris, we crossed to the northern side of the forest just as night falls. It was a time breaking record for Aston and Chris and they were amazed by my knowledge of the forest although I spent so little time as compared to them here. Meanwhile, for the siblings who desperately chased after us, they were too tired to feel amazed and went straight to sleep after dinner. We didn¡¯t blame them for not helping out and split the night watch among the three of us. On the first light of dawn, Raoul was the first one to wake up among the others. I was the last night watch and was therefore earlier than him. He saw me and walked over to have a conversation. ¡°Er, sorry about last night. We were too tired and just dropped down and fell asleep. I should have volunteered for the night watch.¡± ¡°Nah, it¡¯s fine. We did pretty much rush all the way across the forest. Normal parties would have probably needed three days to cross the distances we did in one.¡± ¡°W-What!? Damn! That¡¯s fast!¡± ¡°You should probably stop shouting, you¡¯ll wake your sister up.¡± ¡°Oh, right, sorry.¡± His voice went so soft that most people might have thought that he was mumbling to himself. He really cares about his sister. I continued in a slightly softer voice too, ¡°You know, I know that the thing that the thugs wanted from you wasn¡¯t a family heirloom.¡± Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. His body tensed up as I said that. I continued as he stared at me suspiciously. ¡°I could hear your thoughts, and you also suck at lying. And no, although I¡¯m curious about what it is, I¡¯m not going to steal it from you.¡± He relaxed as he heard that I wasn¡¯t going to steal it from him, and tense up again as he comprehended what I had just said. His face turned red and turned away in an attempt to hide his embarrassment. I decided that a tiny bit of teasing is fine, there¡¯s nothing bad that could happen from it, but I shouldn¡¯t continue too much. I need to find out where the limit is, but that can come later. I switched the conversation topic to a serious one. ¡°Have you ever fought trolls before?¡± ¡°Eh? No, I¡¯d fought a few weak monsters when I was still a noble and went out hunting. Other than that, I don¡¯t have much actual combat experiences with non-human. Well, add the normal non-human you see within cities into the ¡®human race¡¯ in this context.¡± ¡°Okay. I don¡¯t think I need to tell you this, priorities the protection of Sylvie. Not just because she is your sister and you¡¯re a sis-con, but because she is the healer of our team. If she were to go down, no one would be able to heal her. Also, I¡¯m worried that there may be something that chased the trolls out of their habitats. Which would be why the trolls that generally don¡¯t attack villages do so now.¡± ¡°Although that may be true, I doubt that there will be monsters much stronger than the trolls within this area. Even if they are, with the regenerativity of the troll bodies, I don¡¯t think that it would be enough.¡± ¡°I may be just overthinking it but we encountered a strong monster when we went to the dungeon beside the city the other day. We wasn¡¯t able to defeat the hobgoblin that appeared there. He was backed up by swarms of goblins but he was still too strong for a hobgoblin. In the end, we couldn¡¯t defeat him and could only escape after I blinded him and he buried himself into the wall.¡± Raoul hesitated for a moment as he tried to calculate the possibilities of danger. ¡°Okay. I¡¯ll be more careful. We¡¯ll need to be careful anyway as we have neither battle experience nor fought alongside with your party before this.¡± We were then interrupted by the rustling sound of the others waking up. We had a quick breakfast of cold bread with ham as the campfire had long burned up and what remained was just warm ashes. We then proceeded to our requester and confirmed the information and gathered further details from the rest of the villagers. We then proceeded towards the cave that the trolls were supposed to inhibit. ----- Author''s Notes: BloodKingx, to your reply from the last chapter, yes he did. And yes, I had forgotten about it. I''m new as an author but like what maskedcerf had said "he wanted to control what happened at that time", that''s what I had in mind as well for his reasoning after reading your comment. Chapter 20: Ancient The cave that we arrived in was quite easy to find even without the instructions given by the village chief. It was a huge cave that could easily fit ten people into the entrance at any point in time and the clearing before it was also pretty wide. Other than the large entrance size though, there were no other clues that pointed to us that the cave could have belonged to the trolls. We could only proceed cautiously with our weapons drawn. We made our way slowly into the cave and had to light up a torch when it gotten too dark for us to see properly. There were no glowing moss to help us with the lighting of the cave this time round. The temperature within the cave drops slowly with every step that we took, and soon our breath could clearly be seen. The only thing keeping us warm was the single torch that lighted our way at the same time. The cave widened at the point when we started to feel cold. It spreaded out endlessly as far as our eyes could see with the limited light provided by the torch. Stalactites and stalagmites decorated the area and this caused strange shadows to be created by our flickering torch. That made it harder for us to observe our surroundings. We tried our best to keep calm and proceeded forward, whichever way that would had meant as the cave had spread into every directions. The only sound that we could hear was that of the constantly dripping water from the stalactite, our own breathing, clattering of our armor, and the flickering fire. Otherwise, it was a dead silent. I found the situation too strange and had to break the silences. ¡°It¡¯s too quiet. A cave this big should have something living within it right?¡± ¡°Yeah, there should at least be some bats living within the cave, they are probably sleeping. Should I shine my torch up?¡± I gave a nod towards Chris who was holding the torch and he held his torch high above his head. We stopped moving and concentrated our sight on to the roof which couldn¡¯t be seen clearly. What was seen instead was the silhouettes of multiple creatures hanging upside down. The silhouettes were unmoving, but the dancing flames from the torch made them looked like they were moving rapidly. That also made it harder for us to determine the actual size and shape of those silhouettes. They screeched and moved. The light and sound might have disturbed them and immediately we were swarmed by the bats that those creatures were. They were larger than the average bats but were not big enough to be considered abnormal when I first saw them. Only when they flew closer to attack us did I realised their size. They each had at least two metres wide wingspan and were one metre tall. Sylvie dropped down to the floor to decrease the possibilities of her being attacked while Raoul moved to her side and held his fist high, ready to punch each of the oncoming bats. The three of us gathered near them and Chris dropped his torch so that he could exert more strength with each of the sword swings. Sylvie held on to the torch instead. All we could do were to swing each of our weapons wildly at the air as they approach us. They couldn¡¯t dodge as there were too many of them and they were too large too. Although many of the bats were sliced or smashed by our attacks, we also suffered gaping wounds due to how sharp and long each of their claws and teeth were. Sylvie had to constantly heal us while lying flat on the floor in order for us not fall dead due to lack of blood. At first, we fought with vigor as to protect Sylvie who kept us alive but the amount of bats didn¡¯t drop as each bat we killed was replaced by a new one from elsewhere. Soon, our stamina dropped to a point where we had to focus our mind on each of our attacks to make them strong and fast enough to hit the bats. Sylvie¡¯s constant healing on all four of us had also taken a toll on her body as she started running out of mana. While Sylvie was making full use of her mana to aid us, I wasn¡¯t slacking off with my mana either. The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. While I had converted as much intelligence to strength as I could for the battle, what spare mana that I could regenerate was being used to spread spores into the air. The spores were used to help me determine the locations of the attacking bats with the low light conditions that were in and were also used to give me a better idea on the possible strengths and weakness of these bats. That and for me to figure out if there were something else other than the bats here. What I found out was that each of the bats had a skill [Swarm Mind] which allowed them to coordinates their attacks together easily. There was also another entity that was hidden within the shadows as the bats swarm attacked.

Statues
Name:	Camazotz
Title:	Ancient
Race:	Bat
Gender:	Male
Level:	?
Experience:	?%
Stats Point:	?
Class:	?
Health:	?/?	Mana:	?/?
Health regen:	?/s	Mana regen:	?/s
Strength:	?	Intelligence:	?
Dexterity:	?	Wisdom:	?
Vitality:	?	Willpower:	?
Attack:	?-?	Defence:	?

Skills (Unidentified)

Identify:

Camazotz was just watching us silently as we took down the bats one by one as we fought hard for our lives. Eventually, the bat swarms trickled to a stop. It wasn¡¯t because there were no more bats, but rather the bats stopped attacking us and went back to their resting place. Each of us fell on to the floor on our back in an attempt to recover our spent stamina. With the help of Sylvie who tried her best to heal us, we were left with no life threatening wounds and only minor scratches. She couldn¡¯t heal everything as she would have fainted due to using too much mana. We let ourselves rest while keeping our eyes attached to the swarm of bats that still remained on the ceiling of the cave. Chapter 21: Retreat A deep voice resonated throughout the cave as our eyes were still glued towards the ceiling. ¡°Tell me. Who is that one?¡± Hearing a voice coming out but being unable to tell where it came from, the others panicked. I knew about his existence and could also tell that he was the one speaking, but I remained silent. Aston was the brave soul that dared to answered back. ¡°Who are you? And where are you?¡± Camazotz replied back with an annoyed tone in addition to his already commanding tone. ¡°Answer my question and speak nothing else. I only let you live to answer my question.¡± Noticing the power coming from the voice and that he was the one commanding the bats that attacked us, Raoul stopped Aston from speaking. He spoke out respectfully instead. ¡°Who could you possibly be asking about, Sir?¡± His response did not calm Camazotz down and instead angered him. It wasn¡¯t that Raoul had spoke the wrong words, instead it was that Camazotz misunderstood the tone that he took. ¡°How dare you! Isn¡¯t it obvious! Are you trying to make a fool out of me!?-¡± I cut him off to prevent his anger from boiling over. It was a risk that must be taken. ¡°That would be me.¡± I spoke it out as I stood up, staring towards where he was. He seemed to figured out that I knew his location as I was looking directly at him. He also accepted being interrupted as I was providing the answer that he seeked. ¡°Then young lad, who might you be? Why do you feel so¡ unnatural?¡± ¡°Because I am, Camazotz.¡± He looked stunned for a moment, before he regained his posture and continued to speak. The other party members had questioning expression instead. Wondering who ¡®Camazotz¡¯ was and how did I arrived at that name. ¡°I see. You are one of the rare ones with that kind of power. But that doesn¡¯t meant that I would necessarily feel that way towards you.¡± ¡°Feel how towards me?¡± ¡°Something similar to nostalgia, but that couldn¡¯t be possible. Familiarity might be a good way to describe it.¡± With how he felt towards me, I found the situation slightly more positive. But his attitude from earlier meant that he treated our lives as nothing worthy. Knowing that I had to figure out his weakness, I continued with identifying Camazotz. I had to delay him for time as the progress continued. ¡°Nostalgia wouldn¡¯t be too far away from the truth. You would¡¯ve been alive for a couple of thousands years, I suppose.¡± Adding in a slight delay for the suspense, he waited for me to continue. ¡°You see, I was born in an era from more than a thousand years back. Though not as far back as yourself, I would¡¯ve considered myself abnormal here too.¡± He looked disbelieved and was going to put down what I had just said, but I continued speaking before he could do that. ¡°In your times, you were worshipped as a god by the Maya civilization. They lasted for quite a long time but they didn¡¯t survived until the time I was born. I was born hundreds of years after they were gone. It was an era of technology where you could get from one side of the earth to the other in roughly a day. An era where information can get across the world in seconds and an era where the population reached more than seven billion. Although you probably had secluded yourself most if not all of the time in cave, you would have heard stories from your children and servants about such tales, no?¡± I poured information into his head in an attempt to confuse him and made it longer for him to calmly think things through. It didn¡¯t worked as well as I thought as he answered shortly after I finished speaking. But the conversation until now had managed to buy enough time for me to identified him to 56%. ¡°Young child, you speak the truth it seems. But how could you possibly had survived that long in that weak human body of yours? That, I do not believe.¡± ¡°It was as you said. This body did not survived all those years. Though I was human when I was born, I am no longer so. I took over this human body only a short while back.¡± The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. ¡°You had wasted so much time on the runabout way of explaining. You still have yet to answered my question. Who are you?¡± ¡°A man in body, a child in mind, a parasite in form.¡± I knew that I had to tell the truth. Delaying his answer or faking it any longer would have definitely lose his trust, or at least in his curiosity to find out the answer. ¡°Parasite!? YOU! KILL THEM!¡± The words he shouted seemed to shake the others from the trance that they were in as they tried to comprehend the conversation that Camazotz and I just had. They were not fully rested but they were definitely no longer out of breath and stood up immediately, readying their weapons. I was also more prepared than before as I managed to stalled for enough time to raised the identifying of Camazotz to 63%.

Statues
Name:	Camazotz
Title:	Ancient
Race:	Bat
Gender:	Male
Level:	59
Experience:	78%%
Stats Point:	0
Class:	Ruler of the Night
Health:	700/700	Mana:	560/560
Health regen:	7/s	Mana regen:	5.6/s
Strength:	80[112]	Intelligence:	50[70]
Dexterity:	90[126]	Wisdom:	40[56]
Vitality:	50[70]	Willpower:	30[42]
Attack:	100-134	Defence:	45

Skills

Class Tree Ruler of Night[Level 53]

Other Skill Once Worshipped God[Passive]

(There are other Unidentified Skills)

Identify:

63%

Noticing that it was impossible to win against him after confirming his status, I shouted out loud. ¡°Retreat!¡± The others readily agreed and we tried our best to move back towards the entrance of the cave while swarms of bat that were easily larger than ourselves attacked us from every direction. This time, we abandoned the idea of laying low as it would reduce our movement speed. We had to get out of the cave as soon as possible. We would have no chance of surviving if this turned into a long lasting fight, we wouldn¡¯t have the stamina nor the mana to last until we got to the last bat. Furthermore, we had a bat god that we would have zero chance of winning in a fight even if we were at tip top conditions and only had to fight himself. Luckily for us, Camazotz didn¡¯t personally join into the fight and we could barely handle the bats that swarmed us while still moving slowly but surely out of the cave. ----- Chapter 22: Damsel in Distress The way back seemed so much longer as compared to our trip here. Although we were half running on our way back, we were still swarmed by bats. That had caused our progress to be slowed considerably. We did our best and didn¡¯t give up hope, and soon, we saw the light from the entrance of the cave. Blood spilled from many of our wounds but we had to continue struggling towards our hope which was just right in front of us. Knowing that they would lose their advantage of the darkness once we reached outside, the creatures of darkness made it a point to block our escape route. As we fought our way towards the outside world, the number of bats in our path didn¡¯t dwindled. In fact, it only gotten more and more crowded with each passing second. That didn¡¯t just occurred in front of us, it was happening all around us. Their enclosure of us had tighten so much that we were literally fighting back to back. Our hope seemed as minute as that of a flame on a flickering candle in a snowstorm. A roar from outside the cave shattered the atmosphere. It wasn¡¯t just us that were stunned by the roar, even the bats themselves slowed their attacks due to the shock that they received. The source of the roar is that of a figure standing at the entrance of the cave. A Valkyrie, Gracie. Another roar came out from her as she ran into battle. Swinging her heavy mace like it was paper light in one hand and a gigantic tower shield in her other hand, she took down multiple bats with each hit and stopped every bat aiming for her in their path with her shield. Being lured into her momentum, we snapped out of our stunned state and continued our desperate struggles against the giant bats. We did not forget our plan of escaping this cave as we made our way towards Gracie, who was clearing her way towards us. Figuring out that the Valkyrie was more of a threat than ourselves, the bats focused their attacks towards her to no avail. She was like a moving fortress, they couldn¡¯t even hoped to move her against her will. She also had the firepower of one. The focusing of attacks on her instead of ourselves eased the effort we needed to getting ever so closer to the exit. When our group and herself finally met up, she just shouted out over the screams of the bats, ¡°Talk later, let¡¯s get out!¡± That had been our plan since the start, so we just nodded and fought alongside her to get out of the cave. Our efforts on defending ourselves seemed minute compared to hers as her reached was so much further than ours with the giant body of hers. She took out most of the bats that came attacking before Aston and Chris who were standing by her side could hit with their weapons. Myself and Raoul was on the other side of the circle, enabling us to get our share of the fight. The ten metre or so of distance to the outside world still took us more than a minute as we were constantly assaulted by the bats, which dwindled with each step that we took towards the light. Their strength were also reduced the closer we were to outside, making it easier for us to move out of the cave with each additional step. We weren¡¯t in a good shape to rush things out though, it was still a fight that we had to put our lives on. When the last of us were finally out of the cave, we heard a roar. This time it came from within the cave. With the command, the bats stopped their assault. Only a few defiant ones continued chasing us outside the cave, who were instantly struck down as they lost both the advantage of darkness and number. We each turned our backs away from the cave and backed off slowly, in case there were more of such cases. We continued that until we could barely see the red eyes of the bats glittering within the cave through the forest. From there on, we did our best to run away, expanding the distance between ourselves and the cave as much as possible. Only after five minutes of running did we stopped. We then each fall on to the ground and tried our best to get our breath back, with the exception of Gracie, who was looking as fit as ever. ¡°Th-Thank, you.¡± The thanks came out of my mouth as I was still gasping for breath. It was directed at the Valkyrie who just gave a nod in reply. I continued after I¡¯d gotten my breathing under control, Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit. ¡°Thank you again. But why were you there at the cave?¡± ¡°Because I heard from the village chief about the situation of the cave. He was worried about your party as it didn¡¯t looked strong, so he asked me to help checked you guys out.¡± She gave a wide smile after saying that. If people didn¡¯t know her, they would have treated that as an insult. She didn¡¯t had that intention though, she was just straightforward in that sense. Neither myself nor the others got angry as they saw the differences between herself and us, she also helped us out. It was significant enough to say that she had saved our lives. Thus the others didn¡¯t react to what she had said even if they thought that it was an insult. It had been some time since I last saw her so I wanted to find out how much she had grew, even if I was the only who knew of our meetings.

Status
Name:	Gracie Strunrm
Title:	Iron Maiden
Race:	Valkyrie
Gender:	Female
Level:	33
Experience:	72%
Stats Point:	0
Class:	Weapon Master
Health:	450/450	Mana:	80/80
Health regen:	4.5/s	Mana regen:	0.8/s
Strength:	75(112)	Intelligence:	10(8)
Dexterity:	35(42)	Wisdom:	10(8)
Vitality:	52(78)	Willpower:	38(45)
Attack:	33-134	Defence:	52

Skills

Class Tree Sword Proficiency[Level 33] -Sword Mastery[Passive] -Shortsword Mastery[Passive] -Longsword Mastery[Passive] -Rapier Mastery[Passive] -Sabre Mastery[Passive] Shield Proficiency[Level 45] -Shield Mastery[Passive] -Buckler Mastery[Passive] -Kite Mastery[Passive] -Heather Mastery[Passive] -Scutum Mastery[Passive] -Tower Mastery[Passive] Blunt Weapon Proficiency[Level 29] -Blunt Weapon Mastery[Passive] -Mace Mastery[Passive] -Club Mastery[Passive] -Morningstar Mastery[Passive] Polearm Proficiency[Level 14] -Polearm Mastery[Passive] -Spear Mastery[Passive] -Halberd Mastery[Passive]

Racial Skills One who Battles[Passive]

Effects Infected(Indefinite)

¡°What!?¡± That unconsciously came out from my mouth as I saw how much stronger she had gotten over the past week. I could only tried my best to act as if nothing happened when everyone looked towards me in surprise. ----- Author¡¯s Notes: Seemed like ¡®damsel¡¯ can also be used for male. Couldn¡¯t find other words that could¡¯ve fit into it and still sounded good though >.>. Chapter 23: Training I put on my best poker face while failing miserably. My thoughts were in chaos as I wondered how it could be possible for her to level up so many times over the short duration of a week. The others were looking at me, wondering why I had shouted out and Aston asked helpfully, ¡°Is something wrong?¡± My mind wasn¡¯t working properly and I spoke out what was in my mind, ¡°Gracie was just level fifteen a week ago! How could she have gotten to level thirty three in such a short time!?¡± Once I realised what I had spoken out loud, I quickly covered my own mouth, unable to take back what I had said and pretend that I didn¡¯t know of such a thing. They reacted differently; Shocked at how fast the leveling was, and suspicious on my knowledge on her. ¡°How did you know?¡± Gracie said that with a clear display of wariness, she had also put on her hand on her mace, ready to swing it at a moment¡¯s notice. Knowing that I couldn¡¯t hide the truth from her forever if she were to continue helping us, I decided to reveal the facts. ¡°I was the one last week.¡± ¡°The one? Which one?¡± Although she said that, she seemed even more cautious than before. She must have guessed what I meant. ¡°The one to attack the lumberjacks.¡± With that said, Gracie unleashed her rage aura at full strength. While Aston and Chris had some idea on what could be going on, the siblings were clueless and worried that our saviour was going to turn into our enemy. ¡°Wait a moment! What¡¯s going on!? Please do not fight! Can¡¯t we talk this out? Or can at least someone tell us what happened!?¡± Ignoring what Slyvie said, Gracie confirmed my answer with other questions. ¡°So you were the one, but how did you do it? No one saw your presence.¡± ¡°I was hidden under the cover of the shadow in the corner of the room. I have an ability that allows me to move swiftly. I did what I had because I wanted to expand the influence of my ability.¡± ¡°Ability? What¡¯re you talking about?¡± ¡°I¡¯m a parasite. I spread my spores to others to make use of my abilities.¡± ¡°Does doing that harms the people? Are there any effects?¡± ¡°They don¡¯t seemed to harm the host, but they seemed to do something.¡± ¡°That is?¡± ¡°Mutation-¡± ¡°What!? How would that not be harmful!?¡± Gracie shouted, cutting me off as the first word came out. I continued, giving her a satisfying explanation. ¡°That is a possible outcome. It may just stop at larger growth rate, meaning easier to level up. Like how Aston and Chris leveled five times within a few days time-¡± I checked Aston and Chris¡¯ level as I was speaking, ¡°-and now they had already leveled six more times!? Still, you leveled eighteen times in a week. I doubt that you fought such a huge amount of monsters as we just did at a daily basis.¡± ¡°I just fought in some cave that had these hobgoblins that speaks too much.¡± You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. ¡°What!?¡± Now, it was our time to be shocked. How could she have defeated hobgoblins by herself when each of them averaged over level twenty, with some having levels as high as forty. As our jaw stretches towards the floor, the murderous aura that she had been releasing diminished to nothing. We remained too shocked to notice the change in aura. ¡°Well, if that was all you did, then I¡¯ll forgive you. But if you were to harm anyone-¡± Her aura returned, even more intense than before. I cut her off as I knew what she was thinking. ¡°You will roast and skin me alive before cutting each piece of my muscle and force me to eat them till I die.¡± Her face distorted. ¡°That-¡± ¡°That¡¯s one of the benefit of my ability. And yes, I know you didn¡¯t really mean it.¡± Her face continued to grimace but she decided to say nothing. Taking her silence as her willingness to let me live to see another day, I let out a sight. Believing that it was already safe to ask for her help, I questioned, ¡°Are there any chance of us winning if we were to go back and fight them again right now?¡± ¡°What are each of our levels?¡± ¡°You¡¯re thirty five, I¡¯m twenty two, Aston and Chris are both nineteen, Raoul is eighteen and Slyvie sixteen.¡± ¡°What about the enemies?¡± ¡°The bats average thirty and the boss is fifty nine.¡± Although the party didn¡¯t question my decision previously, confirming the level of the boss had made them understood why I made them ran immediately. ¡°No chance. Not with that swarm of bats. If I were to solo the boss and nothing else, then I might be able to win him.¡± We could only stay silent on her declaration. She had fought with enemies that were up to level forty when she was just fifteen and won. ¡°Then, when will we be able to win him?¡± ¡°In three days.¡± ¡°Huh?¡± That leaked out from the others. I already knew what she was going to said as I could read her mind. There was no escape. ¡°You¡¯re all going to undergo some training.¡± The fearless smile that she displayed wasn¡¯t anything short of that of a devil to us. It felt like we had sold our souls to the devil and that she holds the fate of our lives in her hands. She could do whatever she could to us and we would have no choice but to follow it through. It might really help us out in the future but we would regret every moment of it. Sweat poured profusely from every spores of our bodies and the air freezed. I asked the dreaded question that the others were avoiding. ¡°What kind of training?¡± The smile that had turned our hearts cold changed to something that came out of another world, even more scary than it was before, which should have been impossible. ¡°Hell.¡± ----- Chapter 24: Entrance to Hell ¡°I will not be so unreasonable and ask all of you to start your training right away. Not with the amount of injuries on your bodies. But that doesn¡¯t mean that I will be going easy on you all, the whole training will still only last for three days. Which means that the amount of rest you get will be determined by how well you perform.¡± The fearless smile on Gracie¡¯s face hinted to us the future that she holds for us. We couldn¡¯t reject her though and quickly moved ourselves to a spot which we could guarantee our safety before we rest and recovered as much of our depleted health and stamina as we could in the half day rest we all agreed on. We didn¡¯t want to think too much about the future that would be us doing the hellish training that Gracie suggested and relaxed as best as we could for that moment. When it comes the time for our training to start, we all worn worried expressions. What Gracie said changed our minds soon enough, ¡°It¡¯s not like I¡¯m forcing the training on you, you can deny your participation in partaking in the training if you would like to. It just meant that the others would be growing at a rate that you could never hoped to achieve without the training. Or you could always continue to relax for half more day, and squeeze the three days training into two instead.¡± None of us were willing to remove ourselves from the training, we each knew that it was a necessity to get stronger. This was a prime opportunity to do so. Trying to squeeze the training program into a shorter period would make it worse than what it could already be, causing no one to express their interest in extending the period of calm before the storm. When Gracie confirmed that no one wanted out on the training, she brought us to another cave that we have not been to. The cave didn¡¯t seemed much different from the other two caves that we had been to; Dangerous creatures lived within it. We could smell the danger in the air that entering the cave could bring, but we just follow the instructions given by Gracie and cautiously went deeper into the cave. We had difficulty in seeing the further we went into the cave as the amount of moonlight that shined into the cave was limited. Slyvie wanted to light up a torch but was prevented from doing so by Gracie with a ¡°This is part of the training.¡±. By the time we spent five minutes walking into the cave, we were already engulfed in total darkness or so it would seemed. We navigated our way forward by walking with our hands on the wall. More than half an hour later, a message popped up.

For traversing in near total darkness for a long duration, you have gained the skill [Night Vision].

Night Vision

This skill allows you to see slightly better in low light conditions. As your skill improves, the effectiveness of the skill will improve too.

It seemed like I wasn¡¯t the only one that gained the skill as I noticed the others were each surprised with the sudden improvement in their vision. With the aid of the skill, our current vision capability is only helpful to the extend of being able to see silhouettes of those around us within a few metres. It still did help as we could actually walk somewhat without keeping a hand on the wall to guide the way. A few moments more of walking later, we realised that the surrounding was getting brighter. It was barely bright enough for us to see figures a short distance ahead of us with [Night Vision]. The figures were humanoid in nature but were huge if they were actually human, which I discovered was actually hobgoblins! This cave was probably the one that Gracie fought her way through, or if not, somewhere related. The same moment I noticed the hobgoblins, they noticed us too. I was sure that the others saw the hobgoblins too as I could feel that they had tensed up. I told them to act clueless with my telepathy. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. ¡°There is a group of eight hobgoblins ahead. I¡¯m sure that each of you have seen them and I¡¯m also sure that they¡¯ve seen us too. But I believe that they don¡¯t know that we could see them and probably plan to ambush us. What we need to do is to act like nothing''s wrong. We¡¯ll strike them when we¡¯re close enough, before they execute their ambush. The confusion from our sudden attack will prevent them from fighting effectively as a group.¡± After receiving an affirmative from each of the party members, we continued our walk as though nothing was wrong. I did noticed that Gracie had stopped quite a distance from the hobgoblins, far enough for them to not notice her presences. I supposed this was the start of our training, excluding the walk in the dark. When we were mere moments away from the hobgoblins, I shouted ¡°Attack!¡± which shocked the hobgoblins and we went into battle. The shock from my sudden shout and each of us rushing at them costed their initiative even though they already drew their weapons long ago. We made used of that opportunity to injured four of the hobgoblin with considerable wounds before they could react, only Slyvie failed. She was equipped with a short sword and shield and only went through a crash course on how to use them, it wasn¡¯t a surprise that she wasn¡¯t able to land a hit even with the surprise element. Losing the advantage of the surprise attack, the five of us need to fight off eight hobgoblins, which wasn¡¯t an easy task. I gave off instructions through telepathy, ¡°Aston, keep three of them busy, Chris and Raoul, two for each, Sylvie, assist as you see fit. I¡¯ll take down one by myself before coming to help you Aston.¡± With a simple plan of delaying the enemy while we lower their numbers, I took on the role of the assassin. I was one in class in the first place and I couldn¡¯t really take on multiple opponents easily unless they were weak. These hobgoblins weren¡¯t. I had to make full use of my skills which works perfectly on a single target to take them down swiftly. The first hobgoblin wasn¡¯t too hard. In the surprise attack from before, I had stabbed my dagger deep into it¡¯s guts. It had already suffered a near fatal wound before the duel begin, making it easy for me to dodge and parry his attacks. I waited for the moment he flinched as I parried his sword and kicked his guts. That stunned him long enough for me to stabbed my dagger deep into his throat before immediately pulling it out and stabbing it again to the back of his head and jumping away. As I confirmed that it fell down lifeless, I ran to take off some pressure from Aston. Aston was coping well enough considering that he had to juggle three hobgoblins that were higher level than himself at the same time. His parrying was especially good as each parried strike made the hobgoblins lose precious time to take Aston down as I arrived. Knowing that they couldn¡¯t hope to take Aston down easily in a short while, even more so as I had arrived, the hobgoblins decided to change their targets to me. Two hobgoblins rushed at me as one brandished a gigantic sword and the other a huge axe, leaving the one with long sword to block Aston¡¯s way. It wasn¡¯t difficult to notice where and when they are attacking as the hobgoblins held weapons that were heavy and slow. The size of the weapons did made it so that I had to dodge a longer distance to avoid their huge hit range. They tried to surround me by attack from two sides but I was able to sidestep some of the attacks instead of jumping back. I took one of the opportunities to slashed the throat of the axe wielding hobgoblin as he struggled to lift his weapon which had dug itself into the ground. An axe came flying past my face as I turned back to face my other opponent, hitting it in the face, killing it in the process. Looks like Aston had finished off the other hobgoblin and came to help me out. ¡°Thanks!¡± I shouted out to Aston which he replied with a hearty laugh before heading towards Chris while I went to help out Raoul. ----- Chapter 25: Ogre The other four hobgoblins went down pretty easily. It had turned into a two versus two and a three versus two on either side of the battles, making it a lot less exciting and dangerous as compared to the previous fights. Only when all the hobgoblins laid on the floor lifeless did Gracie moved closer to us. ¡°Not bad, I had not expected that you would have used their ambush to your own advantage. That had certainly caught them by surprise and aid you with your numerical disadvantage. I was expecting you all to fail miserably due to the strength and number differences. I supposed that I can pass you all due to your ability to create some form of tactics on the go.¡± We were somewhat happy as she had praised us but didn¡¯t let it get over our heads. If we failed in any of the parts in the fight before, the result would have been horrible. If the one that I was fighting was at its full strength and I couldn¡¯t take it down fast enough, Aston might have fallen. If Aston had fallen, we wouldn¡¯t be able to reinforce the others and take down each of the hobgoblins one by one. That wasn¡¯t the only possibility on how the fight could have gone wrong though. The fight itself was a good experience for us. To take on multiple opponents that were stronger than ourselves, we were able to improve the effectiveness of our body and skills as we had to do that to survive. It was better than just relying on the stats advantage that we would usually take. By training under these circumstances, we can improve ourselves outside of levelling, enabling us to take on stronger foes the next time and continue on this never ending path to getting stronger. With just ten minutes of rest from the end of the battle, Gracie hurried us forward again into the near darkness. While keeping an eye on our front for the smallest of movement, we proceeded. It did not take long for us to meet another group of hobgoblin. It was smaller this time, four of them, and we took them down swiftly as we could team up easily. A few more groups later, where the largest was the first one of eight hobgoblins, there was a change in our opponent. While not looking too different from the hobgoblins that we were fighting, it was larger, way larger. It was an ogre. The average hobgoblins stand at a height of two metres while this orge we were seeing stood at three metres, maybe even reaching four. It was large enough that it could barely stand straight and not hit the roof of the cave. The intimidating aura that it gives off wasn¡¯t just caused by its size, it looked intelligent too. The feeling as the ogre stares as us seemed like he was staring into our souls. We don¡¯t really know how to react to him. He was the one to react first. ¡°Heh, I had a feeling that some bugs had intruded into the cave and you know what? I was right! Although I¡¯m feeling good and would very much want to let you guys go but I¡¯m not allowed to do so. Rules stated that any intruders are to be eliminated so I¡¯ll have to follow that!¡± The way he spoke and the impression that he gave was vastly different. He spoke as if he wanted to let us get away but the feeling he gave was the opposite. He saw us as prey and I could see the hunger in his eyes as he looked as us. However it changed to that of lust when he saw Gracie. Surprisingly not so when he saw Slyvie. Gracie noticed the lust in the ogre¡¯s eye and looked annoyed at that. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. ¡°The five of you should be able to take down that disgusting thing. I¡¯ll just stand over here and wait for the death of that repulsive creature.¡± ¡°Aww, don¡¯t say it that way. It¡¯s not like I¡¯m weak enough for them to take me down. And you must be feeling shy to speak of it that way. Don¡¯t worry, I¡¯m come over to join you once I¡¯m done with these bugs.¡± The ogre winked after he replied to Gracie who seemed more than mildly annoyed at this point in time. It was to the point that you could almost see the anger radiating out from her. With me charging as the trigger, the other three melee fighters dashed along with me into battle. Slyvie stood her ground as she began to cast buffs on to each of us. Knowing that in a battle of stamina, the ogre would win us, I aimed to end this fight in as short a time as possible. When I was within his range, his weapon which was a two metres long bastard sword smashed down towards where I was standing on. I knew that he was going to strike and already had a plan for it, but it was impossibly fast for the size of the sword. With centimetres to spare before his sword cleaved me into half, I used [Shadow Movement] to get behind him. Smirking because he thought that he got me, I gouged into his achilles tendon, activating all the effects of my assassination skills. He screamed out in pain as he lost his balance at the same time. The stab had prevented him from moving around, making it easier for us to take him down. He had not lost the full use of his legs though as he retracted and extended the leg that I stabbed towards me. With the activation of another [Shadow Movement], I moved towards the other leg of his crouching form and stabbed again. Not as effective this time as my [Gouge] skill wasn¡¯t ready and that he noticed me, resulting in him moving his legs and making me missed his achilles tendon. He still screamed out in pain and anger and fell down face first on to the ground. With him on the ground and not being able to use both of his legs effectively, all of us swarmed him on from multiple sides and inflicted as much damage as possible while he swung his arm and sword wildly at us. He wasn¡¯t able to hit us very well due to the position that he was in and the limited view he was having. He knew that he could only get out of this situation if he could change his position, so he rolled away to his right. We were all on his left, except for me. When he rolled away from danger, he rolled into death. His roll directed his own head onto my dagger. What seemed like chaos earlier was actually pre-planned. I had told the others to attack him from his left through telepathy. He would instinctively roll towards his right, away from danger and I would [Shadow Movement] to a place that could effectively use his own movement against himself. That resulted in his self-stabbing. The stab was lethal as he stopped moving soon after he was stabbed. Blood splattered everywhere while a pool of blood gathered where his body laid still. ----- Chapter 26: Taste of Hell ¡°Nicely done.¡± That was the only praise that was given by Gracie. We weren¡¯t really expecting more, but to sum up her praise in just two words was a bit, unsatisfying. ¡°Don¡¯t show that kind of face! I just praised you all, you know?¡± We exchanged looks among ourselves while we gave a tired smile. The damage that we accumulated from the fight wasn¡¯t worth mentioning but the mental strain on us was real. We had fought enemies higher level than ourselves in a fight for survival for hours straight, with barely any rest in between. It was easy to see how haggard we had became. ¡°Okay, I can see that you¡¯re all fairly tired. But if you really want to improve yourself, you¡¯ll need to push your body and mind to the limits!¡± Each of our own faces distorted in their own ways as we imagined the need to continue fighting in more of these life threatening situations without having a rest. Noticing the looks on our faces, Gracie seemed slightly pissed off, but then her face suddenly brighten up. ¡°I know! Since you¡¯re all so tired, I¡¯ll let you all rest for today if you complete one more fight!¡± While being showered by looks of happiness from each of the others, I showed a face of condemnation. ¡°Since I¡¯ve not gotten any action and I¡¯m bored, you get to fight me!¡± Her smiling face was not reflected by us. The others had their mood turned into that of mine. ¡°It¡¯s not that hard, all of you can gang up on me at the same time. All you need to do is to hit me once and then the training for the day will end. Any punch, slash or even stab can count. As long as it hit me.¡± Finding out about the condition for ending the training seemed possible. We readied ourselves and fought the fight with the devil. The result? Total annihilation. Every time our weapon draws near her and we held the hope to hit her, she sped up and dodged it. In return for the failed hit, she countered back with a punch towards whoever attempted the attack. This repeated itself multiple times even when I devised tactics to make use of her blind spot and surprising her to reduce her reaction speed. Some of them worked in that it actually managed to slow her down, but like the many hits before, she barely dodged it. In less than ten minutes, each of us had many bruises and were already panting for breath. For herself, she hadn¡¯t even sweat a drop and was in tip-top condition. We knew in the back of our mind that she was a monster. We knew that the fight was a trap. We knew that she couldn¡¯t have ended the day with such an easy bet. We knew, we knew everything, we just wanted to hold on to that false hope that we could end our day early and rest. It was all part of her plan, we knew that from the start. After desperately struggling for more than an hour, where Slyvie fixed us back whenever we were out of the fight and couldn¡¯t continue fighting, Slyvie herself joined the fight. It didn¡¯t made any differences whether it was a one on one or five on one. The only reason we weren¡¯t dead yet was that she controlled her strength on each hit so that it wouldn¡¯t cause permanent injuries. She was so good at controlling her strength that she could send Aston, who was able to handle hits, flying and changing her target to Slyvie, who wasn¡¯t able to take hits, the next moment while dealing the same amount of injuries to each of them. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. Her instant reaction and control of her body made us in awe of herself, if we were not the one getting beaten up so badly. The hell ended about three hours after it started.

Due to intense usage of your body, you have gained the titles ¡°Punching Bag¡±, ¡°Living Hell¡± and ¡°Zombie¡±.

Punching Bag You got hit so many times that your body had gotten used to being hit. +10 Vitality, +5 Willpower, +10 Defense, +1 Health/Vitality

Living Hell You have went through hell and survived through it. That had caused you to become more resistance to both physical and mind attacks. +5 Vitality, +10 Willpower, +10 Defense

Zombie You are like a zombie. It doesn¡¯t matter how many times you go down, you rise back up. +15 Vitality, +10 Willpower, +5 Defense, +1% of max Health to Health regen

¡°Good job Gracie¡± is not something that I¡¯ll say to her. The gains from the beat up was very high for the duration that we spent in it but the amount of pain that we had to go through for it is not worth it. What I did found out from the aftermath was that each of us five obtained all three titles and benefited from it but other than that, Gracie also gained a title.

Movable Fortress For remaining under attacks for long durations while dodging and returning each and every one of those hits, you have gained stats. +20 Strength, +30 Dexterity, +15 Vitality, +25 Willpower, +10 Defense

Finding out about her title just makes me angry. She had already been so strong, and now she just had to gain a title to make her even stronger. Just how could we ever catch up to her? The differences in strength between ours and hers just seemed to keep on widening. That¡¯s the feeling that I got. At least she wasn¡¯t an enemy and that she was speed training us, that¡¯s the only consolation that we got. Maybe the last part was the bad point. ----- Author¡¯s Notes: So, the protagonist isn¡¯t a op character. Maaaaaaaaybe Gracie is one. Maybe. Chapter 27: Sonic With what transpired the day before, we fell asleep immediately the moment we were allowed to rest. Of course, we did not forget about having someone for guard duty, but Gracie suggested to do that in our place instead. We were thankful for her volunteering but still decided to not let her take the whole workload herself. It ended with Gracie and myself on the first shift, Aston and Chris on the second, and Slyvie and Raoul on the third. At the start of the shift which last for three hours, with only Gracie and myself left awake to guard the others, we had a little chat. ¡°Thanks again for the help back then, also thank you for being able to forgive me for that attack.¡± ¡°Heh, no problem. You already explained earlier on the reasons for doing it and that it was kind of harmless which was the reason I forgave you. If it was otherwise¡¡± ¡°Yeah, I know, you will roast and skin me alive before cutting each piece of my muscle and force me to eat them till I die, though you don¡¯t really meant it.¡± She remained cut off mid-sentence and couldn¡¯t think of what to reply with. Seeing that she was uncomfortable with her threat as the last thing that was spoken before the unnerving silence, I changed the topic to something more up her alley. ¡°So, you mentioned before that you pretty much dived into a hobgoblin cave and fought your way through. How were you able to win against opponents that were so much stronger than yourself while being outnumbered?¡± ¡°Simple. You treat each fight as a fight for your life, which isn¡¯t far from the truth. You need to constantly put yourself into such dangerous situations in order to push your body and mind to the limit. Only by constantly challenging your limits will you improve. By fighting in situations where you are fighting opponents unworthy of your skills, you will just be limiting your own growth potential. When comparing two different people who started out the same way but honed their skills through either staying within their limit or by constantly challenging their limit, the one who challenge will surely win in the end. Even if the amount of time that was put in was far less, the effort put in by the one challenging will still be higher.¡± ¡°I see, keep on pushing yourself and never stop moving forward.¡± After that, we only had meaningless chitchats before we changed shift with Aston and Chris. Waking up from the sleep, my muscles were sore and my bones cracked as I moved my body. It was due to overexerting myself the day before. I was pretty sure that the others were the same. As I looked around for confirmation, I figured that I was right. Even Sylvie and Raoul who woke up three hours earlier for guard duty still looked sore and tired. Thinking about the day ahead which would be worse than the previous day made me sigh out in response. With dried bread and meat as breakfast, we got up and continued our training. Like what I had expected, the fights that we had to go through was getting harder. With every fight we fought, the enemies grew in strength and number. We had to adapt ourselves rapidly in order to survive through the trek deeper into the cave. Before we knew it, the sores in our muscle were long forgotten. If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. Like before, we relied on tactics in our fights. The differences was that we had each grew stronger, and faster, so much that I could probably fight three hobgoblins by myself at ease. If I were to compare myself to Aston, who is a monster in the making and could handle six or even seven hobgoblins by himself now, my capability wasn¡¯t much to speak of. Seemingly satisfied with our progress, Gracie made rules for us to follow to challenge ourselves. Before I knew what was happening, I was left alone to fight ten hobgoblins. What I was told by Gracie was simply this: ¡°You, go ahead and fight the next group of enemies. You don¡¯t have to defeat them, just survive for an hour by yourself and then we¡¯ll come in to help. If you can¡¯t handle them, then run back to us. But, prepare for additional training if you were to fail.¡± With how demanding the training already was, any additional training would make this hell even more unbearable. I had to accept the challenge, or die trying in the process. I would probably die to the training if I failed the challenge anyway. With that being done and said, I¡¯m back at where I was. Ten hobgoblins looked over to where I stupidly walked towards. They roared at me and each charged towards me with their own weapons. A sword came flying at me from the side, aiming to slice off my head in one clean sweep. I ducked and it flew past the top of my head, slicing off a tiny bit of my already short hair. With that sword attack, five more came flying. Jump left, roll right, jump back, duck again, and parry the blow to the right. The attacks kept on coming, and I just kept on dodging, parrying with my weapon whenever it was impossible to dodge. What worked in my favor was that the space wasn¡¯t so big that all ten of them can attack me at the same time, yet it wasn¡¯t small enough that I couldn¡¯t find space to run within the gaps of their bodies. Twenty minutes in, I felt that I could continue this for as long as my stamina could last, which seemed to be much more than the hobgoblins themselves. It was damn tiring, but also so satisfying and fun, when I run and hide between themselves as they struggled to keep me within their sights. They also had to control their attacks in fear of hitting their allies. Meanwhile for me, I had no such limitations. I stabbed into their blind spots when I could find the opportunity to as I slipped past each of them. The hobgoblins were extremely agitated at being unable to hit me and finally stopped caring about hitting their own allies and I parried each of their hits to the others, which led to a blood bath. I got so used to dodging that I was even able to dodge the blood that was theirs as I attacked and made use of their own attacks to hit the others. What the others saw when they arrived at the end of the hour was me, standing in the middle of ten corpses. My smile almost looked menacing, and surrounding me was pool of blood that belongs to the hobgoblins, with no stains on my clothes. ----- Chapter 28: Challenges ¡°That was fun! Now give me more challenges!¡± I shouted towards Gracie as they made their way towards me at the end of the hour. They expressed shocked towards how I reacted and the corpses that surrounded me. It would be weird for anyone to see someone in ecstasy and no longer needing help when you were expecting them to do so. Gracie reacted the same way as the rest at the start, being shocked by the scene. It quickly changed to happiness as she praised me. ¡°Now, I surely didn¡¯t expected that. You even seemed like you¡¯re dying for more! Now, that¡¯s the kind of training that I want to give to the rest of you!¡± Gracie exclaimed as she turned back to the others. All they could wondered was how they were going to complete the near impossible feats that Gracie was going to demand them of. Knowing that there was no escape for the trainings, they could only accept each of their challenges as calmly as before. I acquired the title ¡°Speed Demon¡± after the completion of the challenge, which I expected would be the same for each of the others after their own challenges. The rules for Aston¡¯s challenge was simple, but not easy in any ways. He had to fight on his own until he could one hit his opponent. Perhaps, for easier enemies, this would pose no problem. The problem was that his opponents were hobgoblins and trolls. They possessed high health and defense, while being higher level than Aston himself, making this an impossibly hard challenge. Even more so when the challenge involves him taking a hit from his opponent for every hit that failed to kill. It took a while as we watched him fighting solo, taking hits many times while not being allowed to be healed by Slyvie. Eventually, he showed his prowess as a berserker as he struck down enemies after enemies with a single cleave of his axe. He earned the title ¡°Rager¡± for succeeding the challenge. Chris didn¡¯t have it easy either as he had to deal with a situation pretty similar to myself. What he was limited to was that he was only allowed to parry. He had to parry five hobgoblins for the duration of an hour, never allowed to strike back. That, is in a way harder than my own challenge. Since I was allowed to strike back, I could make use of my dexterity to strike them before dodging away, making my enemies weaker over time. Chris had to continuously parry and not outright dodge his enemies while being surrounded. He needs to focus and concentrate on each of his enemies¡¯ movement constantly as each time he failed to do so, he would receive a hit from his blind spot. He earned ¡°Diverter¡± for his skills. Last but not least, the siblings had their challenge. It could be said that they were to challenged each other, just not directly. Raoul had to fight against a single troll. The catch? Raoul was to not land a fatal blow, and Slyvie would be healing the troll throughout. This meant that Raoul had to constantly maintain damage on to the troll so that it wouldn¡¯t be strong enough to take out himself. Meanwhile, Slyvie had to heal the troll so that it wouldn¡¯t die. Slyvie wasn¡¯t allowed to heal Raoul too. If either of them failed in their task within the time limit of two hours, their punishment would be to extend the duration for another two hour with another troll. The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. Their challenge was actually harder than it looks. In the first place, both of their levels and fighting experience was way below the other members of the party. Meaning that it was a lot harder for them to fight the trolls that outleveled themselves. They also had less control over their skills, making it harder for them to not tire themselves out due to not knowing how to make use of their stamina and mana efficiently. It took them slightly more than three hours for them to complete their task as Raoul out damaged Slyvie in a moment of rage and killed the troll that they were supposed to keep alive. In the end, Raoul obtained ¡°Precision¡± and Slyvie ¡°Priest¡±. All these challenges took us almost the whole of the second day. It was very taxing but helped us improved by leaps and bounds. By going through these challenges, we pushed ourselves over our limit and we got to learn to fight better in unfavourable circumstances, improving our skills, and also obtaining titles which increased more of our stats. With the amount of hunting in the cave that we had done, I was pretty sure that the end wasn¡¯t far away. With that in mind, we rested ourselves for the last day of the training. As we followed the same shift system we had the previous night, I was again awake alongside Gracie. ¡°It felt like it had been so long since the training that you¡¯re conducting have started, but it had only been two days. And tomorrow will be the last day.¡± ¡°It¡¯s only two days of training, how could you even feel that it had been that long? Is something wrong with your sense of time?¡± ¡°Nah, sometimes time just felt longer than it was supposed to be. Thank you.¡± ¡°W-Why are you suddenly thanking me? I didn¡¯t do anything?¡± ¡°I¡¯m thanking you for taking your time to train us. It hadn¡¯t been easy going through the training, but it had definitely been effective.¡± Gracie turned away and I could notice from the corner of my eyes that her ears were red. I supposed that she wasn¡¯t used to other people thanking her directly like that. They probably got too used to her strength and had taken it for granted. She then mumbled something so softly that other people shouldn¡¯t be able to hear. But me being myself, I could hear what she had intended to say directly from her mind. ¡°You¡¯re welcome.¡± ----- Chapter 29: Valkyrie Falling Like the day before, we woke up and had stale bread and jerky for breakfast. The sores that we felt wasn¡¯t as obvious and I guess that means that our bodies were slowly getting used to the demanding trainings. With great anticipation for the last day of the training, we packed our camp in high spirits. Unlike before, Gracie walked alongside us as we hunted. She also joined into the fights and we breezed through the enemies. Barely an hour had past since we started fighting when we reached a dead end. ¡°Eh? Did we moved on to a wrong path? Is there some secret path?¡± Slyvie asked as we all stopped in front of a huge wall. Aston tried to hit the wall with his weapon and his axe dug itself into the dirt and stone. ¡°Seems unlikely, this is a natural wall.¡± Ignoring that fact that Aston¡¯s casual hit caused more than a dent in the wall, it really seemed like the cave had ended. What Gracie said only further helped to prove that point. ¡°Yes, this is the end of the cave.¡± ¡°Eh? So we¡¯re done? With the training?¡± Raoul asked Gracie in disbelieve. ¡°Nope.¡± There was a silences before Gracie continued. ¡°Here is the last part of the training. All of you shall fight me once more.¡± Gulps could be heard as the air was otherwise still. ¡°The catch, you need to defeat me or make me accept defeat before I exit the cave.¡± ¡°Huh?¡± The stupid response came from Aston as he wondered why she would do that. I heard his thoughts, ¡°Why would she make exiting the cave as the condition for her winning? Couldn¡¯t she just defeat all of us?¡± ¡°Let me answer your question Aston,¡± ¡°What- Hey! Stop reading my mind!¡± Ignoring Aston, I continued. ¡°It is a fact that we had been training for the past two days while Gracie just laid back and relaxed. Other than the beatdown that she gave us two days before, she did not improved her skills. In the other case, we were constantly polishing our skills and we had also leveled quite a bit. I believed that right now, if the five of us were to fight her at the same time, we have a chance of defeating her.¡± ¡°That¡¯s right. I may be strong, but I¡¯m not arrogant. I have personally seen the effort each of you put into your training. I¡¯m pretty sure that I can solo each of you one at a time but I doubt that I could fight all five at the same time. Even I have a limit that can¡¯t be broken in such a short while.¡± Understandings rises from each individuals as they finally understood the reasoning for her conditions to winning. As the understanding rises, the dread did at the same time. ¡°But that means that we¡¯ll be running while we¡¯re fighting.¡± ¡°No one says that one must stand their ground while fighting. One must adapt to the ever changing terrain as the fight progresses.¡± Gracie shot down Raoul who couldn¡¯t be sure if Slyvie¡¯s stamina could hold out. Fighting in a fixed location for long duration saps a huge amount of stamina. Only by staying at the back of the fight and rarely appearing on the front line did Slyvie managed to last with the low stamina pool that she had. With the conditions of the fight, it would be hard for Slyvie to follow us throughout the fight, even more so if she had to contribute towards the fight. ¡°Don¡¯t worry brother! I¡¯ll do my best!¡± Slyvie¡¯s shout could only managed to put a weak smile on Raoul. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. ¡°Now, if there aren¡¯t any more questions, we shall begin.¡± With the end of her words, she ran off. We could barely react as she suddenly ran off. With the small head start she had, we chased after her. With the high dexterity that she had, it wasn¡¯t an easy task to chase after her. If we were just comparing running speed, the only one who could keep up with her would only be Raoul and myself. While Aston was tuned more towards strength than speed and Chris a mix of both, Raoul needed to be agile enough as a martial artist. With that in mind, I got Raoul to follow me as we chased Gracie. I knew that we needed to slow her down so that the others could join into the fight, but trying to slow her down myself would be futile, so I waited for Raoul to catch up too. With myself running to the left of Gracie and Raoul to the right, we did a pincer attack on Gracie. While Gracie agily blocked the rain of punches from Raoul with her mace, she blocked my dagger attacks with her large shield. It was hard for her to maintain her attention on both of us, but she still managed to blocked all our attacks. I started to attack with more feints and attacked while changing my position to herself and I could finally see the effects on slowing her down. The first successful strike was when she barely turned back to glance at where Raoul was attacking and I dodged out of her vision by slowing down. Surprised when she glanced back to not see myself, I managed to stab into her legs before she could detect my attack. With the injury, she couldn¡¯t maintain her speed and had to slow down. I went on to injury her while she remained distracted by the pain and Raoul¡¯s attacks. Although most of my other attacks were superficial wounds, it all adds up to slowing her down and soon Chris joined into the fight. With one more opponent to handle along with her injuries, she started to get hit by the others two in addition to myself. When Aston came catching up, ready to unleash his attacks, we believed that she would be defeated soon, but she surprised us. Without thinking, Gracie suddenly stopped and turned back, whacking her mace hard on to the oncoming Aston. He barely reacted in time and held his axe up to blocked the attack, but the combination of his running speed and her swing caused him to be blown back to nearly ten metres away. He would have been injured quite badly if he hadn¡¯t blocked it in time. Still, the damage wasn¡¯t light. With the way he was hanging his right arm limply by his side, it would seemed like he had broken it. Luckily, Slyvie caught up to where Aston managed to get up from and begin healing him. His arm that was hanging by his side twisted a bit before it went back to normal. Aston tested his arm by swinging it side by side. It looked as good as new. Gracie was impressed with how Aston had managed to blocked her attack and how fast Slyive had managed to fixed it up. She then looked towards us who surrounded herself and then at her own wounds. We then noticed that the exit of the cave was only a short distances away as we could see that there was light straight ahead. Happy with what she saw, we expected her to make a mad dash for the exit but was disappointed. ¡°I give up.¡± ----- Author¡¯s Notes: I may not be able to release a chapter next week as I will probably not be having access to the internet for the next 7 days(or maybe slightly more). Sorry that you wouldn¡¯t be seeing another chapter next week. Chapter 30: Camazotzéˆ¥æªš Form With the surrendering of Gracie marking the end of the training camp from hell, we finally could relax. While we laid on the ground, recovering the stamina from all the chasing and attacking that we did, Raoul spoke out. ¡°Well, the three days doesn¡¯t really seemed like a lot of time now that we looked back at it. It was such a different case when we were undergoing the training though, believing that an eternity had passed since the start of it.¡± ¡°Yeah. It¡¯s also shocking how much we had improved over the past three days. This kind of improvement that we went through would have taken other adventurers years to achieve!¡± Aston added in to what Raoul had said. Chris did the same soon after. ¡°Only if we¡¯re talking about normal adventurers though. If there are other people out there that are like Gracie¡¡± ¡°Then what huh?¡± ¡°Nothing!¡± Gracie interrupted Chris with a taunting tone, making Chris broke out in cold sweat. Although it is true that the differences between our individual strength and Gracie had been reduced by a fair bit, our mind still holds close the memories of how scary Gracie could be. With the completion of the training camp, not only did our levels spiked due to the amount of experience we obtained, we also obtained multiple stats boosting titles. Spoiler :

Status
Name:	Cliff Blakesh(Jess Arlie)
Title:	Sandman(World Changer)
Race:	Human(Parasite)
Gender:	Male(Male)
Level:	34(16)
Experience:	63%(24%)
Stats points:	0(0)
Class:	Shadow(Spores Master)
Health:	748/748	Mana:	888/888
Health regen:	14.8/s	Mana regen:	17.7/s
Strength:	41(145)	Intelligence:	50(25)
Dexterity:	58(103)	Wisdom:	13(74)
Vitality:	30(68))	Willpower:	30(68)
Attack:	82-174	Defence:	15(40)

Skills

Class Tree Assassination[Level 37] -Backstab[Passive] -Gouge[Active] -Sneak[Passive] -Lacerate[Active] Shadow Manipulation[Level 25] -Blend In[Passive] -Shadow Movement[Active] -Shadow Mutilation[Passive] Spores Controlling [Level 38] -Spores Emission[Active] -Spores Detection[Toggle/Passive] -Spores Identification[Passive] -Spores Sense[Toggle/Passive] -Spores Mind Reading[Toggle/Passive] -Spores Suggestion[Active]

Other Skills Information Processing[Unique Passive][1500] Night Vision[Level 15][Passive]

Additional Bonus +1 Health/Vitality(Zombie) +1% of max health to health regen(Zombie) +20% max mana +1% of max mana to mana regen +10% to all stats(World Changer) +10 Strength(Speed Demon) +40 Dexterity(Speed Demon) +35 Vitality(Tragic Child/Punching Bag/Living Hell/Zombie) +35 Willpower(Tragic Child/Punching Bag/Living Hell/Zombie) +25 Defence(Punching Bag/Living Hell/Zombie)

Status
Name:	Chris Bleufost
Title:	None
Race:	Elf
Gender:	Male
Level:	32
Experience:	42%
Class:	Swordman
Health:	630/630	Mana:	150/150
Health regen:	6.3/s	Mana regen:	1.5/s
Strength:	70	Intelligence:	25
Dexterity:	57	Wisdom:	15
Vitality:	33(63)	Willpower:	15(40)
Attack:	45-84	Defence:	15(40)

Skills

Class Trees Swordsmanship[Level 24] -Sword Mastery[Passive] -Slash[Active] -Stab[Active] -Parry[Active/Passive] -Counter[Active]

Other Skills Night Vision[Level 15][Passive]

Racial Skills One with Nature[Passive]

Additional Bonus +1 Health/Vitality(Zombie) +1% of max health to health regen(Zombie) +50% Health regen in forest(One With Nature) +50% Mana regen in forest(One With Nature) +30 Vitality(Punching Bag/Living Hell/Zombie) +25 Willpower(Punching Bag/Living Hell/Zombie) +25 Defence(Punching Bag/Living Hell/Zombie) +50% Parry Chance

Status
Name:	Aston Redhill
Title:	None
Race:	Dwarf
Gender:	Male
Level:	32
Experience:	44%
Class:	Berserker
Health:	960/960	Rage:	0/100
Health regen:	17.2/s	Rage decay:	1/s
Strength:	108	Intelligence:	12
Dexterity:	20	Wisdom:	11
Vitality:	30(60)	Willpower:	34(76)
Attack:	16-129	Defence:	20(45)

Skills

Class Trees Berserk[Level 25] -Rage Control[Passive] -Rage Cleave[Active] -Pure Rage[Active] -Pain Suppression[Passive]

Other Skills Night Vision[Level 15][Passive]

Racial Skills Iron Heart[Passive]

Additional Bonus +6 Health/Vitality(Iron Heart/Zombie) +1% of max health to health regen(Zombie) +1% Strength for each % of missing Health +50% Willpower(Iron Heart) +30 Vitality(Punching Bag/Living Hell/Zombie) +25 Willpower(Punching Bag/Living Hell/Zombie) +25 Defence(Punching Bag/Living Hell/Zombie)

Status
Name:	Gracie Strunrm
Title:	Iron Maiden
Race:	Valkyrie
Gender:	Female
Level:	35
Experience:	88%
Stats Point:	0
Class:	Weapon Master
Health:	1050/1050	Mana:	80/80
Health regen:	10.5/s	Mana regen:	0.8/s
Strength:	75(132)	Intelligence:	10(8)
Dexterity:	37(74)	Wisdom:	10(8)
Vitality:	60(108)	Willpower:	38(70)
Attack:	59-158	Defence:	52(62)

Skills

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Other Skills Night Vision[Level 15][Passive]

Racial Skills One Who Battles[Passive]

Additional Bonus +50% Strength(One Who Battles) +20 Strength(Moving Fortress) +20% Dexterity(One Who Battles) +30 Dexterity(Moving Fortress) +50% Vitality(One Who Battles) +15 Vitality(Moving Fortress) -20% Intelligence(One Who Battles) -20% Wisdom(One Who Battles) +20% Willpower(One Who Battles) +25 Willpower(Moving Fortress) +10 Defence(Moving Fortress)

Status
Name:	Raoul Rivera
Title:	None
Race:	Human
Gender:	Male
Level:	31
Experience:	87%
Class:	Martial Artist
Health:	770/770	Mana:	120/120
Health regen:	15.4/s	Mana regen:	1.2/s
Strength:	50	Intelligence:	13
Dexterity:	65	Wisdom:	12
Vitality:	40(70)	Willpower:	30(55)
Attack:	40-60	Defence:	15(40)

Skills

Class Trees Unarmed Combat[Level 23] -Stone Fist[Active] -Iron Body[Passive] -Redirection[Active/Passive]

Other Skills Night Vision[Level 15][Passive]

Status
Name:	Slyvie Rivera
Title:	None
Race:	Human
Gender:	Female
Level:	30
Experience:	93%
Class:	Healer
Health:	550/550	Mana:	700/700
Health regen:	11/s	Mana regen:	7/s
Strength:	15	Intelligence:	55
Dexterity:	20	Wisdom:	70
Vitality:	20(50)	Willpower:	25(50)
Attack:	12-18	Defence:	15(40)

Skills

Class Trees Saint[Level 22] -Healing Touch[Active] -Healing Light[Active] -Cleanse[Active] -Healing Aura[Passive]

Other Skills Night Vision[Level 15][Passive]

With our updated status, it no longer seemed like a far fetched ideal for us to fight against the bats. Although it is true that he is still level fifty nine and we are all only thirty plus, I¡¯m sure that with the six of us working together, we can make it work. With plenty of rest from the time spent on eating our fill of lunch, we proceeded back towards the cave where Camazotz rest. With the sun setting behind our backs, we entered into the cave a second time. This time we were fully prepared. We would strike through Camazotz¡¯s children of the darkness and get to him. With the hellish training that Gracie put us through, the bats that attacked us in swarm didn¡¯t seemed like much compared to when we first fought them. It is a fact that the average levels of the bats are higher than those of the trolls that we trained on, they are also more agile as they could fly, but they are also weaker at the same time. Even before our hellish training, we were able to strike down a bat with each hit while we were at full strength. That was something which we couldn¡¯t succeed in doing with the trolls, with the only exception being Aston, which only happened after all the training we went through. With the strength we had now, an almost casual swing of my weapon struck down multiple bats. The ease we had as we moved deeper into the cave made it seemed like our previous entrance into the cave was just a dream. In no time at all, we approached the spot where we first discovered Camazotz¡¯ existences. ¡°We have came back, which I assumed you already knew since we stepped foot into the cave.¡± I spoke out loud into the darkness towards where I sensed Camazotz was at as we continued countering the endless wave of bats. ¡°You swine! You actually dared to step back into my cave! Die!¡± Knowing from the start that he would most likely not stopped his attack, I spoke out in hope of the tiny chance that he might tell me of the reason on why he attacked us the moment I mentioned that I am a parasite. With no chance but to continue moving forward as Camazotz would continue bringing destruction onto us, I lead the party in the general direction from where Camazotz hid. Until now, I still have not been able to fully identify Camazotz as his skills were still hidden from me. Although I don¡¯t want to risk it if possible, I could see no other choice but to take him down as soon as possible. His stats were no longer astronomical number now that we had completed our trainings. Our only choice was to approach him and take him down as we were only able to fight in melee range. When we finally saw him, we were surprised. With the swarm of bats attacking us being slightly larger than us when they spread their wings, we had expected Camazotz to be even larger, maybe around five or ten meters tall. What we saw betrayed our expectations. He was small, so small that even with his wings spread out wide, it would only be a meter long. We even thought for a moment that the size was due to the distance between us, but my senses tell me otherwise. This is the real deal, the real Camazotz that we had been training to fight against. This small, frail and almost normal looking bat that has huge fangs that was bigger than his own head. He was hanging upside down just meters away from us. With how close we were to their boss, the other bats had stopped their barraged on us. ¡°This, just how. We trained through all of that just to fight this!?¡± Aston¡¯s speech clearly angered Camazotz as the red spark within his eyes glowed fiercely towards us. Without any other warning, Camazotz flew towards Aston at a speed which my eyes were barely able to catch. With myself being the fastest in our team, it was with little doubt that the slow Aston couldn¡¯t react to the attack and was sent flying by the small bat that shot out like a bullet. Aston flew back a couple of meters before crashing into the stone wall. He got back up in two seconds and shouted out with strength. ¡°That! Didn¡¯t! Hurt!¡± ----- Author¡¯s Notes: Luckily, the thing that could¡¯ve caused my week of no access to internet didn¡¯t happen!(Well, more like pending, so I wouldn¡¯t know if it will happen and if so when). Also, unluckily, I also got into more troubles which could cause similar results to happen. So, sorry in advance if I suddenly couldn¡¯t update the series. >.> Chapter 31: Camazotzéˆ¥æªš Fall What Aston had said wasn¡¯t exactly true. It might have hurt less due to his passive [Pain Suppression], but it was also a fact that his health took a significant dip. That one attack had dropped his health by twenty percent. With him as the one with the second highest defence in our group, we can easily tell how much damage it would have been if it had hit our healer instead. The damage done by that one attack could have been fatal if we hadn¡¯t been through the training we did. Even though we struggled so much to complete the training, I believed that it had been worth it. Wasting no more time to allow Camazotz to attack, I gave out commands through telepathy. ¡°Slyvie, stay back and heal whenever someone fall below sixty percent of their health. Raoul, stay close to Slyvie and block Camazotz¡¯s path to attack her. Gracie and Chris, try your best to lock down Camazotz¡¯s movement. Aston, attack it when his movements are slowed down enough for you to hit.¡± ¡°But, but I can¡¯t see the health like you can!¡± Slyvie shouted out. I had totally forgotten that one. Believing that there was no harm in trying, I used [Spores Suggestion] on Slyvie to make her see the health of everyone above their heads. ¡°What-WHAT!? I can see them now!¡± ¡°Then what are you going to do, big shot?¡± Came the question from Gracie. Her tone wasn¡¯t one of annoyance at me calling the shots. She had already saw my leadership capabilities during the training camp and was already following my instructions while she asked that. ¡°Just buy me some time! There¡¯s something that I want to try.¡± As I said that, I spent the fifty stats point that I had to obtain the other two types of spores that I had skipped out on originally.

Microspores

You use more mana to produce microscopic spores. These spores are able to pass through places that are usually not penetrable.

Cost: 3*mana

Sporeling

Cost: Varies

Since I had no intention of directly fighting Camazotz, I moved the bonus stats from [Information Processing] from Strength all towards Wisdom. It brought down my Strength to only fifty five but increased my Wisdom to a staggering amount of a hundred and fifty eight. With nearing two thousand mana, I spent one hundred health and one thousand mana on each of the sporelings that I was creating.

Statues
Name:	Sporeling
Health:	100/100	Mana:	1000/1000
Health regen:	1/s	Mana regen:	10/s
Skill:	[Blood Spore], [Microspores]

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It takes almost half a minute to recover enough mana to make another sporeling. That was a long time considering that the others continued fighting a losing battle with Camazotz as they were unable to hit him. I had to give each of my sporelings so much mana so that they could have enough mana regeneration to be able to last long enough for what I needed them to do. When five minutes had past, I had created ten sporelings that I hid nearby. With my preparation done, I switched back the Wisdom bonus back to Strength. ¡°Now!¡± I shouted out loud although there wasn¡¯t a need to. With my command, each of the ten sporelings spread out thick clouds of [Microspores] into the air, which in just moments, covered the whole area we were fighting in. ¡°This!?¡± Gracie momentarily stopped fighting Camazotz and looked at the scene before her. It was similar to what she had encountered back in the lumberjack camp. The differences lies within the fact that these spores were a lot smaller and there were a lot more of them too. ¡°Continue fighting!¡± I shouted as I leaped into the fight to join Gracie and Chris in attempting to stop Camazotz, which had not been stopped once so far. Camazotz just sneered at me and said, ¡°Like you joining the fight will be of any help!¡± We just continued trying to fight Camazotz but wasn¡¯t able to injury him nor slow him down enough for Aston to land a hit. As the fight proceeded, the spores concentration in the air continued to thicken. What Camazotz didn¡¯t know was that the [Microspores] in the air were going to be the cause of his downfall. Believing that the spores were already thick enough, I set the plan into motion. Gigantic tentacles sprouted from the walls everywhere, grabbing hold of Camazotz¡¯s wings, feets, and even his neck and brought him down on to the ground. ¡°What!?¡± Was the response that came from everyone, Camazotz included. I shouted out to get them out of their confusion, ¡°Now¡¯s the chance to attack!¡± Hearing my command, Aston landed his first hit on Camazotz, followed soon by others. Even Raoul who was supposed to be protecting Slyvie joined in. Although he didn¡¯t kept his full attention on protecting Slyvie, he still looked back towards Slyvie with every hit to make sure that she remained safe. As Camazotz remained tied down by the tentacles and were unable to fight back nor avoid the barrage of attacks by us, he cried out, ¡°What kind of sorcery is this!? How are these tentacles so fast and are able to escape my sensors!?¡± I ignored his questions and continued stabbing him until I was sure that he had died. When I was satisfied, the tentacles disappeared into puffs of smoke. With the boss dead and the other bats seemingly afraid to attack us, Gracie spoke the question. ¡°So where did those tentacles came from? I¡¯ll assume that they are your doings.¡± ¡°They are. And they are just illusions.¡± ----- Chapter 32: Legend(End) With the killing of Camazotz as a start, Jess Arlie, who was better known as the World Changer, went on to accomplish feats that were unheard of. With the usage of spores as the core of his power, he did many unimaginable things with it. The most famous and dangerous one being the [Spores Controller]. The final skill of the skill tree of the same name, it enables the user to gain full control of infected target as long as they were unable to resist his power. Making full use of his power, Jess Arlie rise up to the top and gathered armies, both by awe and respect for his character and ideal and also the using of [Spores Controller] to convert the unwilling. Though many people believed that making use of his skills to control others were the acts of a tyrant, they believed that it was a necessary evil. At the heart of this ideal was Gracie the Valkyrie whom many looked up to as a goddess of war. Gracie lead many armies into battle at the front line while Jess commanded them at the back, coming up with many strategies that turned their opponent¡¯s advantages into their own. Jess supported the field with illusions that were more real than reality while Gracie stormed through the enemies, leaving none strong enough to stand on their own feet. Of course, the generals that were under Jess wasn¡¯t just Gracie. Chris had became a swordsman that was the dream of many young boys as he was able to fight off many opponents while still displaying the gracefulness like that of a dance. He was also able to command and lead the knights that displayed their loyalty to himself and obtained perfect records of no casualty whenever his knights went on to the battlefield. This applied for both themselves and their enemies; They were all rendered harmless without being able to hurt the knights or themselves. This caused others to admired them as strong yet gentle. On the other hand, Aston loves to go in by himself. He didn¡¯t get the admiration of others in the same way as Chris. In fact, what he had gotten was more like notoriety - Death lies whenever he enters a fight. Unlike Chris who was seen as strong yet gentle, Aston was just seen as a monster that was too strong to fight. He left no mercy to whoever that crossed his path. It¡¯s a wonder that Chris and Aston could be seen going around as the best of friends. Next were the Rivera siblings. Raoul had became the master of arms or lack of. He had became so well versed in both using weapons and his own fist that with or without anything in his arms, he could defeat his opponents. In order to further train himself, he often left by himself to train in seclusion. Of course, he never got rid of his sister complex and would cry tears of sorrow whenever he had to leave his sister, Slyvie. He would always appear whenever anything were to happen to his sister, making it such that his sister often became bait to lure him out. That happens when there were challengers looking to pick a fight with him or when Jess decided that they needed Raoul¡¯s help in the upcoming battle. In battle, he would be something like the middle ground of Chris and Aston. There was mercy in him, enough to not kill his opponent, but enough strong to make sure that his opponent would not be able to stand up and harm his sister ever again. There were exceptions to the last line though. Slyvie, who many sees as the goddess of mercy, would make it such that the opponents of Raoul would still be able to live life normally after the beating by his brother. As normal as running away from Raoul in fear whenever they sense him though. With Slyvie¡¯s heal, the mortality rate within the battlefield often drops to as near zero as possible. She heals friends and enemies alike, so much that her fame spread to every corners of the world. Anyone who knows of her will never lay a hand on her as that was just asking for the wrath of every other living being. With the help of his generals, people who believed his ideal, and also his controlled unwilling helpers, Jess took over cities as he and his army swept across the kingdom. Cities fell into his control, and soon it was kingdoms, the continent, and eventually the whole world. Of course, not every one of these battles were fought without bloodshed or were won without much resistance. One of these battles were that of the capital of the Bauenza empire. At the city, the king and many other nobles hid within the wall as they escaped from the battles across the kingdom that Jess had caused. Although the king could understand the ideal that Jess carried, he was unable to just put down everything and surrender them to him. And that was what lead to the situation, armies sat on top of the walls of the capital city, refusing to surrender to the army that was besieging the city. If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Jess didn¡¯t want to harm the people if possible; They were innocent. He wanted to accomplish his ideal as soon as possible and the besiege was taking too much time. They would also have little chance of winning if they were to brute force their way through. Even with Slyvie with him there to heal the wound, the causality would be too high for Slyvie to cope along even with the other healers that they had in hand. Leaving him with no choice, Jess had to find an alternative to making them surrender. Swarming sporelings just out of range of the siege machines that the city could use, Jess walked the perimeter of the range. It took him three days and two night of constant creation in order to spawn a field of sporelings that surrounded the city. Both side watched in wonder as to what he was trying to achieve. They had already knew of what he was capable of with his spores, but they also knew that the range of his power couldn¡¯t reach even the walls of the city. What they hadn¡¯t expected was that he commanded the magicians under him to stand behind each of his sporelings while facing the city. They were then told to cast the gust spell, a basic wind magic that did as it¡¯s name implied. The wind caused by magician caused the spores created by the sporelings to be carried along with the wind, into the city. With the amount of spores that were carried into the city by the wind, it was easy to cause terror that no one could have imagined, but what Jess did was totally different. He just made the soldiers laid down their arms and opened the city gate, walking into the city himself. Some may think that he was crazy as he waltz into the enemy city by himself, but people who knew of his power knew that he had as good as won. Everyone in the city was at his mercy. Although it was true that there were some that were able to resist the effects of his [Spores Controller] due to their high intelligence, he could pretty much control every other person to do as his wish, capturing those that he failed to with his powers. With no other cards to play, the king could only surrender everything to Jess as he walked into the palace, none of the royal knights being able to stop him. With the whole world under him already, one would wonder if his ideal had been achieved. It would be hard to say. Certainly, it would be true that no war had been started since the war he created to conquer the world, but the world was still no perfect place. People still die daily due to various reasons; Illness, monsters attack, bandits, starvation, and plenty of others. Jess¡¯s ideal would be to create a world where people don¡¯t have to suffer, but in the process of doing so, he had to gave up on the small things. The amount of information that he had to process was just too taxing when he pretty much infected every single creature in the world with all the spores within the air. He could only process the thoughts that he deemed more important, thus losing out on the small stuff. The ideal of a naive child. For the greater good, but is it really? ----- Author¡¯s Notes: To be perfectly honest, I had started this story without much thoughts. I only had a slight skeleton on how the story could have proceeded till around chapter 5. From then on, I had to make do with what my limited mind could think up of. Since then, it had been becoming harder and harder to continue writing the story. While I do hope that some of you enjoy the story and would like to see it continue, I don¡¯t think that I would be able to live up to the expectations. Thus, I decided to end the story before it becomes that bad. Thank you for following my story up until now. If I were to start another story some other time in the future, I would appreciate it if you could read it then. Thank you.