Is this the end of this new journey?

No, no, it is far too early to judge, it is best that we calculate what we can do first.

The dog is approaching slowly, its eyes seems so enthralled by the blood fruit that I managed to create. I should have probably counted for the possibility of the fruit attracting other beings, this is a mistake on my part.

So, what do I have that can somehow do something to do this hulking dog?

[Mind Eater] only managed to give me what the dog is currently feeling, and that is hunger. It is like a ferocious fire, but at the same time calm like an undisturbed lake.

I noted that the contrast is weird, and highly contradictory, though it might be because I lacked the necessary skill to understand it.

[Blood Aura] only managed to calm hunger partially with its emotion manipulation capabilities, which was done when [Mind Eater] is activated at the same time with [Blood Aura].

I try using my mana to move my roots, tying them together to form at least an inch thick rope. The rope will probably not last long considering the absurd size of this dog, so I decided to set it aside for something.

The dog’s maw, it opened to reveal an impressive set of teeth, with the occasional bit of meat within the crevices. Its breath is blowing on my leaves, mouth slowly getting nearer to devour almost my entire stalk and the fruit.

FEAR

A gut-wrenching fear, if I had a gut. I also felt fear when the eagle swarm started banging on the doors, but this is different.

I considered the possibility that I might truly die, after all, this stalk getting chewed off might truly kill me. I questioned whether or not this is truly where I die, to be eaten by a mere dog while howls continue to reverberate in the background.

Should I give up? I consider stopping the measures I am preparing to kill the dog.

NO!

I refuse to accept this! I wish not to accept such a pathetic death, just waiting for my demise like a cowering fool. Abandon my goals in front of such a small setback, is the most absurd thing I have ever heard.

The evil mana within my entire root system and the lower part of the stalk starts to rapidly move towards the stalk that is about to be eaten, while another smaller stream is redirected towards the enhanced root.

The movements of the mana slightly alarmed the dog, and caused it to change its focus towards the rest of the room. A distraction, I took the chance to wrap the enhanced root around the dog’s neck.

The dog might have avoided this constriction by the enhanced root if it wasn’t so overwhelmed by the aura of the fruit and Mikael’s [Blood Aura]. I raise it up and flung it out of the building.

It flew for 2 meters, and out the building floor. Its fall producing a small thud, but it immediately managed to stand back up, with an aggressive growl at the one that stood in its way.

A long root now slowly sways in front of the 14-inch stalk, the dog’s mind giving off anger that is quickly devoured by the hunger it is feeling, its anger-fueled aggression now turning a hunger-fueled one again.

It rushed at the snake-like root, while the root whipped at the dog 3 times in a quick succession. The whips did not do much against the thick covering of the dog, its movements seemingly futile to stop it, though it did manage to slightly irritate the dog.

The dog suddenly barked, and the bark was not a typical one. The bark is accompanied with a slightly-white aura, causing Mikael to feel a bit dizzy but not enough to distract him for even an instant as he countered it with his capabilities.

Most of the mana that he allocated to overload the endangered part of the stalk is almost finished, but it is not fully complete yet, so he decided to finally use up all the energy within the enhanced root for a final attack.

He readied it, and aimed the sharpened tip of the root at the dog. And then like a snake, it pounced at the dog.

The dog managed to move to the side causing the root strike hit its thick shoulders. But despite the amount of mana in it, it only barely managed to pierce through the fur, skin, and into its flesh, just a minor injury to it.

It then lunged at the root and almost managed to rip it into 2 with just a bite, and truly ripped it apart after it pulled at it.

The dog then ran at the plant, with its eyes seemingly filling with glee at the thought of eating ,e, not paying attention as to why the plant’s a upper part now emanates a stronger aura.

The crimson veins is giving off a stronger red glow, while the red leaves start to ominously shine with a red light.

About time, now eat me dog!

Snap! Snap!

2 bites, it only took 2 bites and a pull for the dog to destroy the meager plant’s stalk, at least most of it. It ravenously devoured what it bit off, quickly swallowing it like a thirsty man drinking from an oasis.

I surprisingly didn’t die when the dog bit most of my stalk off, but I didn’t come unscathed. I didn’t feel the typical physical pain, but something that comes from deep within, something closer and more intimate.

After a quick moment of that, a titanic feeling of weakness hit me before I could even register this kind of pain. My [Mana Vision] rapidly blurs until it fully extinguished, but not until seeing a glimpse of the dog’s panic as it starts to cough up wisps of red energy.

Die, mutt

And I lost consciousness.

{Day 11}

Uggghhhhh

Mmm?

He stayed in a state of being confused for a few moments, after which he started realizing that he is still alive. I start checking the state of my body.

To my surprise, I regained my stalk and my mana pool is completely full, and it is 40-50% higher than when I was still fighting the dog. My corpse preservation is also doing well but it seems to have an unusually larger amount of decay than normal, though it is largely subtle.

I used [Mana Vision].

That is an interesting sight.

In front of the now completely recovered stalk is the dog in my battle, though with an interesting difference.

The dog’s fur is no longer black, instead it is replaced with a red color, slightly glistening under the sun’s rays. It’s also now emanating a magical aura, an aura that is remarkably similar to mine.

Most importantly, I seem to have a connection with it, a connection that is similar to when I mind controlled the fly.

Okay, this needs a bit of explanation. And these notifications that I ignored when beating this dog will hopefully explain it.

You leveled up! You gained 3 levels

Skill gained: Magical Enhancement

Skill gained: Mana Resistance

Skill gained: Blood Servant

Skill Improved: Blood Fruit

Skill Improved: Mind Eater

Skill Improved: Blood Aura

That sounds promising. System, give me the information for the 3 new skills.

Magical Enhancement: ability to increase durability of a specific part of your body, with the rise in quality relative to the energy added.

Mana Resistance: allows for greater endurance against mana poisoning, and allows for an increase in resistance against magic.

Blood Servant: the ability to gain minions that is subservient to you, which also comes with the added benefit of being blessed with your evil mana. Subservience is dependent on the level at which evil mana managed to corrupt the mind and body.

That- That is amazing, [Blood Servant] is a massive improvement to my current situation.

As much as I didn’t expect the evil mana to assimilate the dog, and instead rip it apart from the inside, I am by no means complaining about gaining such a skill.

So I now have a dog that should have been strong enough wipe the floor with me, and got even stronger due to its gain in the magical department. A pity, it didn’t improve much in the physical department.

Getting it to bite another enhanced root managed to confirm that, which is a bit wasteful though necessary to fully measure the strength of my new asset.

This asset also confirmed another thing to me, and that is I can infuse evil mana into something or someone to gain dominance over it or them. It supports my decision to preserving the corpses here, though I am not fully certain that I can make an undead servant.

I order doggo, yes that is his name now, to survey the surrounding areas. No one and nothing seems to be inhabiting the surrounding area, except the concrete structures and the plants that grow in the exposed ground of the university grounds..

With this little surveillance, I also managed to see my limit in seeing through doggy’s eyes. The farthest I can observe from, with maximum quality and minimal mana consumption is 167 meters from my main body (the sapling), 648 if I really stretch it.

But I can still order it even when beyond that point, and still observe if I want to but it costs more mana that I can recover.

So, I should be in the 11th day of the apocalypse, I guess I am pretty powerful if I may say so, and need to be even more powerful.

From what I can see from doggy’s eyes, the place’s appearance is massively changed. In fact, the furthest point from that will lead into a jungle or thick forest is 124 meters, 51 being the nearest.

I originally thought that the university’s grounds just experienced a massive plant growth, but it seems to me those are now just an extension of the forest. It probably is related to that system notification about planet size and local wildlife.

Despite going straight for 500 meters in one direction, my sight through doggo still remains the same, and that is a lot of trees. The factors for the maintenance of the concrete building and division from the forest seems to indicate that the forest grew, leaving the concrete parts untouched.

Crap, this basically means that I have become isolated, with forest in all directions.

Sigh

I guess we have to do with this, my plans is horribly changed due to this but this could also have been a blessing, who knows what humans would have done to me in this state of mine, though humans would have also helped in achieving my goal.

Let’s start working again. So according to what I have accumulated from running tests with doggo, it has a mana-infused bark with an added soul corrosion and fear effect due to mana type.

It also has the ability to enhance its physical quality through evil mana which is implied to be gained when it became my servant, and finally the thing that caused me trouble, its mana eyes.

Its magical capabilities have greatly improved from pre-servant stage, which is beautifully excellent for me.

And from what I can observe from the reconnaissance, it seems that there are no beings that can match my servant in strength, at least there is none in the immediate area, to be fair the reconnaissance was not exactly long in duration.

I can also feel that there is a limit to the amount of things that I can turn into a Blood Servant, which was approximately 2 more beings equal to the level of doggo and I would have no more room.

Well that is until the skill got improved 2 times when I was experimenting, and it turned into 30-35. Though there is the question of where I can get beings that is equal to doggo.

For now, I will just start growing fruits for future usage, with it still being the same type, the Type 1 as I call it

It is time to continue growing now.

I entered my dormant state.

{Day 14}

I am growing a lot, lot faster than the last several days. Doggo is constantly hunting food for me, greatly increasing the amount of mana I can use to grow to improve.

I have managed to gain 4 more servants, 3 being animals that doggo caught while one is an undead that is raised by me through blood fruits.

The 3 animals are all birds, which is specifically being used to survey the area, which has almost doubled in the past 3 days. But the birds don’t remain idle while surveying, they also hunt down preys when they can to support my growth.

Though the range of the prey they can hunt is pretty small as they are not that remarkable within the forest, even with being partially blessed by evil mana. The smallest of the 3 is as big as the eagle-like bird that was part of the eagle swarm, while the biggest is at least 50% bigger, so their wingspans range from 5.5 feet to 8.1 feet.

As for the undead, it is an ogre. And true to its reputation, it has a bulky appearance, despite being slightly rotten, though the rotten status was only temporary because it was quickly eliminated by the evil mana.

The male ogre stands easily over 6 feet, nearly 7 feet. It has a relatively thick body, which is not packed or thin, meaning it is fine. Its originally green skin turned red, while the rest of the body’s functions regained their quality when alive, maybe even better.

It just looks like a bulky tall human, albeit with slightly larger and sharper fangs.

The undead or should I call him blood ogre was the third attempt at making use of the corpses, the first attempt contained too much evil mana while the second contained not enough but almost there.

Energy level is a crucial part of the process. Too much mana and the rotting gets too overwhelmed, also leaking a lot of mana in the process, wasted mana since they are far too unstable to be properly reintegrated.

The 2nd attempt was due to insufficient mana, caused by the meticulous mana manipulation to synchronize the bodily functions, it also was unsuccessful in making the brain run again. Careful mana manipulation takes time and effort, time and effort that allows for the mana to seep out of the body.

At the 3rd attempt, it finally reached adequate levels, which just had enough mana to restore and synchronize the body, allowing for a successful attempt. Each attempt took a single blood fruit, which was a measure to make sure that my personal mana reserves are untouched.

I also observed that evil mana acts quite different from what is typically considered death mana or necromantic mana, which is usually depicted as defying biology and allows for function without a foundation.

This indicates that death magic and necromantic magic might not act as depicted in popular culture, but it is far from a guarantee considering the line between evil mana and death mana, though it is confirmed that evil mana needs to have an able-bodied host to create its version of the undead.

The blood ogre unfortunately has basic intelligence, not something that it demonstrated when it was talking with the others. But it is a quick learner, mostly because I am using evil mana to direct its movements and actions.

After seeing the seemingly living body of the ogre, I became silent for a few minutes and only started testing its capabilities after a minute or 2 looking at the face of the dead ogre.

I noted that the brain seems to have reset, losing its memories in its former life.

In the 12th day, he made doggo rip apart the concrete walls of the building he is in. My stalk is growing rapidly and I don’t want to interrupt it too much.

And so, doggo bit the concrete and even the steel within the pillars of the walls. Its strong jaw is good enough to chip at the building integrity, though it did not collapse due to my guidance.

Just kidding, his side of the roof collapsed, putting his stalk and a part of his root system under the rubble.

This small problem was quickly resolved by doggo in just an hour, with the entire collapsed roof being dismantled and set aside. Doggo then continued dismantling the rest of the building, unfortunately it did collapse again but it did not affect the stalk, and doggo finished the entire building.

I did not see much damage done to the corpses due to the collapse, with the most damaged ones being the ones that are far from the main pile. Due to their bloated state, let’s just say it was not a burst that I managed to take in instantly.

He learned the opposite skill of [Carnivorous Roots], which is [Healing Roots], built upon his preservation capability and refined my mana manipulation. I gained when it when I tried to put the flesh pieces together.

This entire demolition process took 5-8 hours, making a substantial decrease to my mana gain in that period.

It was also when under the rubble that I noticed that I have already managed to return to my human level of time perception, which happened right after I started making my first blood fruit.

On the same day, late at night, I turned the birds that doggo caught into my 3 avian blood servants. I did not use a blood fruit for it, as they took much less mana to convert and I was trying to see if it is possible to convert without the fruit.

Within that day, I managed to notice 3 marvelous data.

That my blood servants need no sleep, or rather their sleep is massively shortened. They just need to rest while I inject my evil mana into them, and doggo only needs to sleep for an hour per day, which cost little evil mana.

They also can’t become tired as long as I give them more evil mana, which is can also be fueled by their own mana pool, but it usually gets consumed faster than it recovers.

And oh, his stalk is somehow stronger than steel and the merged roots he used is almost as strong as steel. It took doggo 2 bites and a yank to pull out my stalk, while 1 bite and a yank for the enhanced root.

In a single bite, it managed to severely damage the steel sticks or something in the building’s pillars. The second bite severed it, but not before trying to yank it off first though with not much success.

Everything went fine in the 13th day, just growing and growing. And hunting and hunting. It also confirmed my information about my blood servants’ stamina, which worked too in the 3 birds.

The 14th day and the 2nd week of the apocalypse, I had my first successful attempt at creating a servant from a corpse. It made him question his morals and motivation about doing this thing.

The blood ogre has a single skill, and that it can enhance a single limb from its body in a momentary burst, increasing the force of that limb’s for a single hit. It is like doggo’s bark, but more concentrated and physical-oriented.

It also has a cooldown like doggo’s bark and boost, which probably means that these can count as skills that the system might acknowledge. Or maybe already does, I just don’t have access to their respective system panel.

I also managed to increase the range of his direct connection with his servants by almost 25%, and he can feel a plateau, a sign that it might take the system’s acknowledgement for it to increase.

I am now level 16. My main body is also already 5’1 tall, with a beautiful crown of red leaves. The brown bark remains smooth, with the red veins remaining as thin but more numerous due to the increase in width, though only slightly.

My roots is holding onto a body count of more than 100, with tens of roots extending into the dead animals outside the building, busy sucking out the energy within them.

While the ones that already became dead husks, is thrown away by Guava the blood ogre into the designated pile. The pile looks horrifying with its numerous animal corpses within it that even the flies does not dare to land on, and it stays there till I finally decide to build a hole to dump them in.

=====

Greater Tokyo, near the Third Gate, Gate Outpost: Izuki

“So how exactly do you plan to go back to the Philippine islands? I am sure you realize the difficulty of making that your goal right?” A fair-skinned woman with black hair nonchalantly says, her eyes being distracted by the night sky and its 3 different-colored moon, one blue, one red, and one golden.

“We will figure something out” A guy with a light-brown skin tone replied, his eyes and demeanor seemingly filled with worry, his brown hair waving under the wind’s strength, just like the long hair of his friend.

“Please don’t dismiss the matter so lightly, Vier. It is highly unlikely for our families, friends, and especially him to be alive. Their circumstance is far, far worse than this miracle of a place and federation” The woman said with a worried tone, while changing her gaze’s focus towards her friend.

“I understand your concerns, but you of all people should know that I won’t just back down”

The black-haired woman can only sigh as her dear friend continues to hold on to his hope, hope that their beloved ones is doing well within this twisted reality.

After a while of walking, she says something.

“Well, time to trust again I guess”