Jason’s POV

They were walking past the dead panther that had attacked Jason yesterday when Selene had asked them to stop. Jason had told Caleb to go ahead to the lake and wash himself off really quick and they would catch up with him.

“So why exactly do you want us to stop here?” Jason was looking at the crouching Selene. She seemed to be inspecting the dead panther’s eyes and the thick veins that stood out from it’s fur.

“Well I’m trying to discover how long this one has been infected and if we should expect to find more. Going by the veins and how thick they are around this one has been infected for five or six days. It takes about three days for the blood parasite to fully mature and another three for it to reproduce. After reproduction anything that the panther bleeds on could become infected it just depends on if there’s an infant blood parasite in the blood. Considering how a blood parasite can spawn a dozen infants after maturity that is thankfully a low probability with this blood-mad panther.” Selene as she was talking first gestured to the veins on the panther which she could grip with her hands pretty well then to the panther in general.

“So we should be perfectly fine right? Since it hasn’t infected anything else everything is just fine and dandy.” Jason just shrugged and started stroking his wolf fur and beard. Although stroking his beard was more like stroking a rocky surface with how many knots were in it.

“Well you would be right except that this was a child of a parent blood parasite.” Selene shook her head and started mumbling inane words and scratching her already ratty hair. I guess some habits form solitude and insanity die hard. Glad I don’t have any of those. Jason then proceeded to take out a heart and eat it completely oblivious to what he was doing.

“Well I mean technically every monster is a child of another so that’s not that surprising.” Jason again just shrugged and kept eating. To Jason there wasn’t much of a difference between a blood-mad beast and the normal beast. Either way if it tried to kill him he would kill it.

“That’s not how blood parasites work.” Her frustrated words were cut off by a sharp inhale of breath. “Sorry… blood parasites are not naturally occuring. They’re born from mummies. A Mummy Lord is a mummy who has extreme spellcasting abilities and a want for blood. Not like a vampire who needs it to grow and just live. They desire blood because that’s what they don’t have. They’re dried up and at the beginning of their lives as Mummy Lords they believe that getting blood will allow them to regain their life. Eventually they learn better and stop trying that but the damage they’ve done is already there. Even if they stop trying to get blood they simply become more dangerous because they start focusing on necromancy. They never stop trying to regain their lost life.”

“I still don’t understand, but here’s what I got. Mummy Lord powerful, Mummy Lord bad, Mummy Lord causes blood parasites, Mummy Lord stops causing blood parasites and then causes zombies. Amazing information on Mummy Lords, but I still have no reason for why it’s important to stop blood parasites. Also can’t we just kill the Mummy Lord. Once we breakthrough and I start getting some offensive skills and movement skills I bet I could do it.” Selene took off her mask and hit him with it before putting it back on. The short view of her face that he got let Jason know that his comments were unappreciated. Selene got up from the ground and dusted herself off before putting her hands on her hips and facing Jason fully.

“Mummy Lords are at least level 50 so we can’t even think about attacking them before we breakthrough the second barrier level 49. A newborn one like this is probably 55 or so because they are able to and willing to create blood parasites. As for why we should care about blood parasites. Firstly they strengthen their victims while draining and absorbing all their blood, then they’ll force the animal back to where the Mummy Lord is waiting so that he could take all the blood the blood parasites have absorbed.” Selene started walking to where Caleb was probably waiting for them. “He won’t get anything but a bunch of blood but that’s not the point. The blood parasites will continuously reproduce until about the…” She paused reaching into her robes from the top and pulled out a book. She leafed through the book until she came to a page in which a blood parasite was drawn albeit badly. “... the fourth generation.”

Well that explains how she knows all this stuff. She’s just a nerd. I should’ve figured since I’ve been letting her study my runic body for weeks now. Although she’s been begging me to get the next stage of runic skin as soon as I can so that she’ll have more to study.

“So there will be a total of what one… thirteen… one hundred forty-five… too much math but somewhere above fifteen hundred probably. Ok I take my hesitation back, we need to worry. That many aggressive and crazy beasts running around is not good. If the Mummy Lord is above level 50 then he can probably create blood parasites that are above level 25 as well. Especially since this one just barely came to maturity before I killed it. That many level 24 beasts would be a giant issue for us but above that! Holy god we’re fucked.” Selene put the book away and nodded as she walked.

“Well no god will help us, but we should worry yes. They’ll be attracted to places with a lot of life which is probably how this panther was infected. The forest is teeming with life so probably a desert Blood-Mad beast got here and got into a fight with the panther and left it alive so that it would become infected. So this is either a third or fourth generation most likely. We’ll just have to watch out as we go into the desert. Hopefully we only see a few more.”

“Well fuck.” Jason let out a puff of air. “Whatever… we’ll just kill anything that attacks us.” Selene laughed at the simplicity of the statement.

“Fair enough you barbarian. I really want to know what your next class is. Considering how you’ve been relying on your luck to keep you alive in fights.” Jason grinned at that and pulled up his wolf hood.

“I’ll do my best to keep you surprised.” They came upon the clearing where the lake was and found that Caleb was standing there playing with the cub. Both the cub’s fur and Caleb’s hair were wet. The two were playing tug of war with a piece of meat. Although from Caleb’s face it seems that this was more of an impromptu and unwanted session of play. Jason walked into the clearing laughing.

“Well Caleb is that cub trying to steal your food?” All Caleb could do was grunt as he kept trying to wrest the meat from the cub’s mouth. After another second Caleb’s grip slipped and the cub ran a few meters away to gobble up the food gleefully with Caleb looking on in exhaustion. He looked less upset and more amused.

“He h-has a higher Fortitude s-stat. It ca-can’t be helped,” Caleb made excuses as he looked at his comrades from the ground. Selene helped Caleb up as Jason took his wolfskin hooded vest off.

“Keep making excuses buddy. Maybe if you worked on your just natural arm muscles then you could win a tug of war with a level three beast. Alright you two it’s my turn to wash. Get outta here. Once I’m done Selene you’re up next and then we’ll get going into the desert.” Caleb grabbed the cub who was finishing up his food, then him and Selene took off into the woods.

Fully stripping Jason looked down at his body. In one of the rare times he thought about Earth he compared himself to himself back then. He went from having some fat and relatively smooth skin to what he was now. He was dense and packed with muscles without losing any amount of flexibility. The tradeoff was that instead of his mostly unblemished skin he was now covered in runes and scars.

“Maybe I should’ve gone into the magic route. Then my body wouldn’t have been changed so drastically. At least I wouldn’t have been covered in runes. I wonder what changes happen to mages. Physical skills change the body so maybe magical skills change the soul. Soul and mana are almost interchangeable according to Selene. Maybe… I don’t know. Does it matter? Not really. I’m not that good at thinking during fights. I really just react so using magic or active skills probably won’t work well. I don’t even know how to use mana. I’ve never felt mine.” Jason was very good at talking to himself and going off on tangents. It was a skill he had on Earth and one that he refined before he got his companions. “Whatever. I need to bathe.”

Jason jumped into the water. Letting the cold water crash against him and wash all the blood and dirt off of his body. Opening his eyes he found that the sun shining through the water created a beautiful scene which he appreciated for a moment. The seaweed at the bottom of the lake was green and slowly waving with the currents that the fish within were making. Jason listened.

Being in the water didn’t hinder his hearing. The fish within the water had the music of an instrument he had never heard of before. It sounded to him like bubbles. Slow and floating before crescendoing at a random point. Jason admired the pond life for a bit before scrubbing himself and swimming to the top and getting out of the water. While he still could he ran his hands through his full beard trying to get some of the knots out of it. He dried off by shaking his body and running around a bit before putting on a cleaner more intact wolf skin outfit. Then he titled his head to the sky and cupped his hands like a megaphone.

“I’M DONE!” A few birds flew from the surrounding trees.

“No need to shout, one-eye.” Selene came out of the woods and told him where Caleb was. After telling her to come find them when she was done he left as well and found Caleb just where she said he’d be. After a few minutes of watching Caleb shoot the same spot on a tree over and over again Selene finally came back and said that she was ready to go. An hour later the party ended up at the end of the path that Jason had found the day before. Jason turned to the party and gave his speech of encouragement which he had been planning for an hour.

“Alright. Watch for hidden enemies which there will be a lot of. Watch for poison which there will also be a lot of. Watch for anything with giant red veins popping out of it. Lastly and most importantly if we see anything that even looks like a mummy we turn and run like hell. Sounds good?” Jason watched both of his party members nod with more seriousness than he himself was feeling. “Perfect! Adventure is ahead, you two. We better not keep it waiting.”