"Would you at least think about it first?" I insisted.

«No. That's complete nonsense.» Sensei replied as he shut down my theory for the second time.

Ugh...this idiot!

"Do you have that much faith in a goddess you only met once? I thought you were a man of science - not a witless fanatic."

«And I thought you were smart enough not to base everything on some unfounded theory.»

"Oh really?" I was fuming.

How could he call it unfounded when we were living proof of the goddess's dubious intentions - and we both saw the moment the man's secondary core exploded!

How did he know that wouldn't happen to us?

«A symbiotic relationship between two cores isn't always destructive.» Sensei calmly replied. «Sometimes the secondary core is there to reinforce the first. In your case it's there to grant you access to the system…»

"But you can use my magic." I made sure to add, in case he had forgotten. "Who knows what other secret function your core possesses, that you don't know. Or are not letting me know."

I ignored Sensei's exasperated sigh. After seeing the man's complex core situation, that was so similar to mine, my thoughts were already filled with so many dangerous scenarios, and Sensei's denial without any explanation to back them, only added more weight to them.

Why else would he deny it, if the goddess wasn't involved?

If the relationship between our cores was a symbiotic one - like how the dark core was to the red core, wasn't it just a matter of 'when' his core exploded and enveloped mine?

Perhaps his core was only biding its time until the conditions were right.

Somehow I felt annoyed. The man that became a monster looked only about twenty years old.

Considering the fast rate I was growing – I might already be an adult in snake years! Didn't that mean that dark future was only a matter of time?

«Can you stop jumping to conclusions.» Sensei sighed, but I was too far gone to stop.

I might just have a year or two, maybe three if I was lucky…

«Will you listen to me?!» Sensei's voice boomed through my head. «You are the furthest thing from that mutated creature. Don't ever think for a moment you will end up like that.»

I stopped in my tracks.

"How are we any different?" I asked in an equally loud voice.

I knew he was just trying to assure me down, but I couldn't completely shake off my doubts.

Sensei listlessly sighed, before proudly declaring. «Because their secondary core was the result of a failed experiment, while I am not.»

Huh? I blinked several times in confusion.

What experiment?

Noticing I had gone silent, Sensei went on to explain.

«Mutants are a secondary race of mortals, but their conception was the by-product of forbidden magic, nothing more. A heretic magus once coveted the power of the abyss for himself, thinking he could harness its power, he desired to increase the power of mortals to the level of other races, and he thought the Abyss was the way to do it, so he defied convention by going rogue.»

I heard Sensei scoff in disdain. «His intentions may have been noble, but the result was obviously a failure.»

Woah? The heck. I wasn't expecting this.

But why did Sensei go quiet?

"Can you not stop explaining midway?" I huffed in annoyance.

Sensei continued with some reluctance. «To draw out a fraction of the power of the Abyss, he used his own people as sacrifices to open a bridge, connecting our world to the void. The result was a disaster of catastrophic proportions.»

«His entire country was wiped off the map, swallowed whole into the abyss with every living person in it, taken as payment. Those that escaped only did so lightly. From that day, they were doomed to be cursed, living on borrowed time until they transformed into…that creature.»

I glanced briefly at the monstrous form of the man and shivered.

I was a monster, but at least I was born as one. This made me feel even more pity for him.

«But the sorcerer had no idea how greedy the Abyss truly was.» Sensei laughed bitterly. «Because of his failure, everyone remotely connected to his blood became doomed. The Abyss infiltrated the scattered remnants of his country, and every descendant born thereafter, in the form of an unstable dark core.»

«Every mortal with a dark core is automatically a mutant doomed to live a shunned life until the day their core explodes. It wasn't enough to swallow the sorcerer's country, it decided to taint his entire bloodline. Mutants like the one you encountered were already doomed to the Abyss the moment they were born.»

"How cruel!" I shouted.

I was astonished and vengeful for people I didn't even know existed until now.

"What happened to the sorcerer?" I demanded.

«He went missing more than two centuries ago. He is already dead.»

Such a tale struck horror in my soul. It was awful that they didn't even have a choice in all this.

«So essentially, the sorcerer doomed his entire bloodline to a life of mindless insanity, trying to grasp the power which he could neither comprehend nor control.» Sensei concluded apathetically.

I thought about it for a moment, before shaking my head. "You don't need to put it that way."

Sensei's tone turned cold. «You don't condemn him? His name has been tarnished and all but scrubbed from the history books because of his unforgivable crime.»

"Well, as you said, he went down that path for the betterment of his race." I pondered. "He had good intentions and I don't think he would have done it if he knew the consequences. I would blame the person who gave him incomplete information about the Abyss."

For some reason, this made Sensei burst into laughter, and he continued to laugh as I stared in confusion.

"What's so funny?" I scowled.

«Nothing, It's just...your perception of right and wrong may need some readjusting.»

What the heck was he talking about?

I was annoyed, so I ignored him and slithered away from the mutant to check the cells for any other captives.

Somehow, hearing how they were created, made them even less appealing to eat, but I collected the corpse nonetheless, because leaving it to be eaten by others, seemed disrespectful.

Although Sensei denied the goddesses involvement and staked his innocence, I wasn't fully convinced. There were still other hints of duplicity that he didn't address.

Like why the evolution tree of creatures, 'amended' whenever I devoured a new stage of a creature's growth? It was too coincidental to be an accident, it was almost like [Devour] was collecting something.

Was it possible that it was improving to create a complete evolution tree?

Yet, as I thought of this, everything was beginning to feel very much like another experiment, and I didn't like it. If Sensei knew something, why didn't he tell me?

And, if [Devour] really was compiling a complete set of attributes – why did I only have access to a few?

Was this due to a restriction placed by the goddess? Or something else.

I could already feel a headache coming on.

I wasn't completely sure, because the only creature I ever devoured enough for their evolution tree to 'amend' were those Hesperia wasps.

Well…almost.

I recalled eating them from their egg and larvae stage, all the way up to their Queen wasp. But I was still missing the [Verum Hesperia] stage, which was where the scary wasp fell into.

This would have been okay if I ate him at the time, but because I found him interesting, I didn't.

Perhaps I should have, and as a result, the Hesperia's evolution tree was still not complete.

Yet, even without that, the attributes I obtained since then, remained the strongest I had.

Was this because I was close to completing them?

If I did, perhaps I would gain access to every single attribute the Hesperia specimen had, rather than just a few.

The thought filled me with excitement, as I scanned through my stats.

Since Sensei was not entirely trustworthy, I was better off making my own way somehow.

While I had achieved a solid core, I was still far from being strong enough to resist my core getting destroyed. Instead, if I could get rid of Sensei's core while retaining the system, I stood a good chance of surviving.

But if this wasn't possible, I had to get even stronger - strong enough so that even if Sensei's core self-destructed, mine would be unaffected.

«What are you thinking so hard about?» Sensei's amused voice asked.

"Nothing." I cheerily replied.

Just how to eat you, you goddess fanboy!

Hmph! There were still other ways I could get powerful quickly.

For one, instead of hunting creatures randomly, I could target specific types of monsters with stronger attributes I could collect with [Devour]. I could then gorge myself on an excess of biomass in the form of monster cores. Those with high amounts of magic would increase my base stats and reinforce my core without much effort.

The only problem was that such monsters were often the Queen's or Commanders of pits of their own!

It was good on one hand, because I could eat my fill of every stage of their growth to gain a complete collection of attributes. But what would happen to those creatures I didn't devour?

Wouldn't they simply join my pit like the Abyssal monsters, I didn't want?

My headache intensified at the thought, and I hissed in frustration.

My tiny pit was already uncontrollably big. Even with the Nymph and her spirits removed, it was still over a thousand creatures and I wanted to cry from the stress.

I didn't want it!

My peaceful life would be over before it even began, if I had to deal with so many creatures.

Which led me to another scary option – using [Mind Chain].

If what Sensei said was to be believed, I was more Hesperia than Cerastes due to eating so much of their kind, which meant skills like [Mind Chain], would be just as effective on me as it was on them.

It was dangerous, but this was also a skill that allowed the Hesperia to exponentially increase their power in one go.

I was contemplating this route, when my thoughts were interrupted by a loud rumble.

It sounded like an avalanche of rock had just given way and I blinked outside to see what happened. Only to find the chasm awash with melted rocks and purple flames that burnt so hot, my scales felt like I was inside a volcano.

Seeing all this, I immediately sped towards the sound of a familiar roar.