This chapter has been proof-read by: AnthonyL

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[One week after leaving Niardo]

Today was a horrible day for travelling. Storm and heavy rain had plagued our journey as our carriage kept getting stuck in the muddy roads. Since the hired soldiers were cold, wet and tired we decided to stop for today and resume our journey once the storm was gone.

Mother, Irene and I didn't feel that bothered by it since we were still dry and warm inside the carriage but we felt that exhausting our escort would only slow us down in the long run. During this week of travelling I had finally finished my new arcane project.

I decided to erase my fireball circle and redo it from the beginning but differently. You see, when you stack two circle on top of each other you obtain a totally different circle. Most of the time this would create a giant explosion but I had thought of something very smart about that.

I had created a new fireball which I called firebolt this time as well as earthbolt, waterbolt, windbolt etc. The most important aspect of these new circles was that they could be stacked up on top of each other allowing me to create different effects.

In the standard magic system there is no such thing as a water + fire spell since they should both cancel each others but with my new circles, I could cast waterbolt and firebolt on top of each other creating a new circle allowing me to launch a totally new type of attack unseen until now.

After some quick testing I discovered that water + fire launched a highly explosive steam based attack, wind + earth seemed to create some type of sand storm attack which could probably rip people skin to shred as if you used sand paper on them.

There were many more combinations but I already had proved that it was indeed possible. Next I needed to test if I could stack more than 2 circles together. Can you imagine a fire + water + wind attack ? Who know what it would end up as.. Maybe a major explosive failure, but I was still curious to try.

I still didn't understand how to create LightningBolt, FrostBolt, MagmaBolt etc but my research was progressing at a good speed in that area. Then I could probably create a DemonicBolt, a ShadowBolt, DeathBolt and basically a “Bolt” attack from all the elements available.

Now when it come to the dragon core... Irya's core. I still hadn't consumed it yet and I had a very good reason for that. If I consumed it now there would be no guarantee that I would be given a dragon body with her famous iridescent scales.

I could even end up wasting her precious EXP-DNA into something else. The only way to guarantee that I would get her high tier scales ability was to consume her only after ranking up as a dragon. It's really simple really, let me explain.

Sister Lucy already told me that at level 200+ and with over 50k EXP-DNA I was already in the dragon bracket. I knew that mother was leading me to a fully grown dragon therefore my new rank up was going to at least offer me 1 dragon to rank up as at a minimum.

Even if it's a shitty dragon, it doesn't matter now that I have the chimera ability since I can simply change what I don't like and add what I want. I could transform a bad dragon into an OP dragon as I wanted. So if I consumed Irya after my rank up I could simply add her iridescent scales to my body without the randomness coming with the usual rank up.

My plan was now very simple and effective. Kill the incoming dragon, rank up, then consume everything with an ability I wish to get. If my calculations are correct, I should be strong enough by the time we reach the dragon lands to survive what is to come.

As night approached the soldiers quickly began to assemble the tents and lit a fire to cook the food. Since I was quite hungry and ate more than all these soldiers combined, I decided to go hunt in the forest for a larger prey to eat.

Flicking my tongue in and out I inspected everything in the forest but couldn't find exactly what I was looking for. Turning into a falcon I then took off into the air to cover more ground more quickly. As I was flying over a certain part of the forest I ended up catching the smell of blood.

A lot of blood, something either big or many of them had died at the same place. Curious I landed near the area in question and began to scout the area. There, in the forest, laid a pile of rotting corpses. Tens of them all in a 1 kilometre radius.

It felt as if a battle had taken place there but all I could find were the bodies of various monsters of all kinds. None of them seemed to be from a pack or a group of some kind but instead seemed to be random animals of the forest who all ended up dying at the same place.

Some bodies were fresh, while other were old and highly decomposed. This evidence seemed to indicate that something living in this area was continuously killing everything infringing into its territory. Could I have finally found a monster worth hunting?

I smelled the air and waited but there was no movement of life sign to be found. Puzzled I simply stayed there and observed the corpses closely. Those which were in a more advanced state of decomposition all had something in common. A plant seemed to be growing from their body.

[Identify]

PlantSpecies:Fremansia (aka Zombie's Trumpet)Rank:ANature:ParasiticRarity:Very Rare

Hoo? Parasitic? Am I in danger right now? Now worried I backed away and inspect my status. No poison, no status effect on any kind. I was unaffected by whatever this plant was supposed to do. Not having any information about this peculiar plant I quickly opened a web browser window and did a quick research.

Not finding anything at first I finally found what I was looking for in the Alterlife forum. A group of players had encountered this said “Zombie's trumpet” and described their experience.

My friends and I were in an exploration quest in the demon lands when we came across a monster cemetery. Hundreds of monsters laid on the ground perfuming the air with the putrid smell of rotting flesh. Unfazed, my group and I opted to have our scout go ahead and report the situation.

We were really surprised when our scout went to inspect one of the dead bodies and simply changed for no reason. He wasn't answering anymore and seemed to simply wander around looking for something. We followed him from a safe distance and after an hour saw him sit on the ground and remain there, unresponsive for hours.

The man eventually disconnected and told us via e-mail they he had lost the control of his avatar and had no other choice than wait for death. When we asked him what had happened he simply said that he had felt a slight pain in his chest before his body began to walk on its own.

Wanting to know more, we ended up sending more men to investigate and every-time the same thing would happen. Luckily, each time we would gather important information and begin to understand what was going on.

What we concluded was that it was all caused by a single plant. The Fremansia (aka Zombie's Trumpet). This highly dangerous plant has trumpet shaped flowers capable of moving around the same way sunflowers can follow the sun but the zombie's trumpets follow body heat instead.

When you get at a certain distance from this plant, it aims at you by tracking your body-heat then launches a bunch of small needles (which are its seeds). These needles embed themselves into your skin and somehow take control over your body via poison or something else.

Once the plant takes over your body, it will lead you in circles until it finds a suitable area with plenty of sunlight, good soil and water. Once satisfied with the new location you will simply be stuck, unable to move until you die of dehydration.

The seed embedded into your skin will then begin to germinate and use your decomposing body as nutrient for its growth. After that the cycle repeats itself. New flowers would bloom and wait for a target to walk close by, then infect it.

If you see many corpses with purple flowers growing out of them, (STAY AWAY).

Guhuhuhuhu* Ho well... Looks like I ended up finding something very good for my arsenal. My gardener touch was rank B and this plant was rank A so I couldn't grow them immediately but in the future this could be a very vicious way of decimating a town or a group of enemies...

I realized how lucky I had been for being cold blooded. Since this plant was targeting via body-heat, me who didn't have any was immune against their attacks. It also reminded me to be more careful in the future since I wouldn't always be this lucky.

A little bit shaken by my near death experience I settled for smaller prey but consumed a large amount of them to compensate. I would love to tell the tale of an epic battle between me and my food but it would have been exaggerated.

What I did looked more like someone going berry picking in the forest. All the creatures I encountered were killed as fast as I could eat them. Satiated I went back to camp to resume the game of mahjong currently going on between Irene, mother and I.

Two days later we were still in the carriage, bored to death... Irene and I were currently playing the memory game together which wasn't really fair to Irene but I had no intention of loosing on purpose. With that being said I immediately noticed that she had greatly improved.

She was very dedicated to her training and it had begun to show great results. Soon I would give her some riddles to figure out and see how she does. As I was playing with Irene, I kept growing plants trying to rank up my gardener touch to rank A. I couldn't wait to play with my new toy after all...

Bandits!* We're under attack!* Everyone in formation!* Protect the VIP's !* Sound of soldiers yelling*

“Sighh... So noisy outside!!!!! Can't they shut up a little?” (Kneeko) *ARRRGGGggggg!

“Can't help it. Humans have a tendency for being loud...” (Anastaria) *HAAAaaaaaaaa! MY ARM!!

“Buhhhh Brother is too good at this game, not fair!” (Irene) *HelP! Help!!! GUARRrgggg

“Stop complaining and keep training sis.” (Kneeko) *There's too many!!!! Stay in formatioN!!! GUAAAaaaaaa!

“BUHhhH!!!!!” (Irene) *Raise your shields!!! *Mommy I'm scared!!!!

“Come on now, it's your turn to play.” (Kneeko) *Gurgle *Gurglee... CAPTAIN NO!!!!

[...]

“Sighhh* ALRIGHT ALRIGHT! I get it! Sighhhh* Useless soldiers. If I want silence looks like I'll need to deal with this problem myself.” (Kneeko)

“Fufufufu* Have fun!” (Anastaria)

“You're kidding right? Trash human DNA ain't worth celebrating over... Sighhh*” (Kneeko)

Angered I exited the carriage and saw most of our soldiers laying dead on the ground with the rest fighting bandits all around the carriage. I walked up the the nearest bandit and grabbed his face with my right hand. [Arcane FireBolt + WaterBolt = SteamBolt, power 5%] BOOOMmmmm!*

The man's head exploded in thousands of tiny pieces. Some of the bandits who saw the scene began to converge toward me with daggers in their eyes.

“Hey you soldier, get some distance away from me otherwise I'm not responsible for your death.” (Kneeko)

The scene which then unfolded before my eyes was that of our soldiers running away from me while the bandits were doing the exact opposite. When the bandits were close enough I unleashed [Lightning Discharge]. A 10 meters area around me suddenly got engulfed by lighting.

The air was filled with a smell of BBQ mixed with the screams of the poor bandits stupid enough to attack me. Lightning Discharge being only mastered at Rank E didn't kill any of them but they were now on the ground trying to get back up after the shock.

Not waiting for them to get up I immediately used [Vines Hell] and immobilized them on the ground. With the battle already won, I took my time to pull out my trusted “Minotaurus Heavy Club” and began bashing the bandits' skulls one at a time. Under the screams and pleas of these poor bastards I killed one, then two and three.

Fame +150

Fame +150

Fame +150

Level Up!

Looks like killing bandits is good for my karma. Poor bandits, how desperate do you need to be to choose such a dangerous job... With all these players around trying to get good karma, the life of a bandit was certainly a short one. After killing 12 bandits my karma was now back to neutral (0) and I decided it was enough.

Turning around to look at the remaining soldiers what I saw was pitiful. 6 grown ass men, soldiers at that, were hiding under the carriage looking at me with terror in their eyes.

“Are you going to let me do all of your work?” (Kneeko)

Suddenly realizing that the area was no longer dangerous, the soldier ran out and began to stab the remaining bandits as I slowly walked back to the carriage.

Stab* Critical -750HP

“Urggg!*” (Kneeko)

Something stabbed me in the back, quickly turning around with my club in hand I barely managed to see a blurry figure disappearing to my right.

Stab* Critical -570HP

Ghuuu!* I know this feeling. A speed build assassin. Each time you turn, they move around you and continuously stab you in the back with their sneaky techniques always trying to go for critical hits. How dare he!!! Does he think that since I have no speed points that I won't be able to deal with him?

He should have ran away while he had the chance. Now that I have selected him as my prey, there is no future for him anymore. I will track him down to the end of the earth if I need to but I will have his head on a platter for injuring me. [Basilisk Cry]

“KIIIIIIiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” (Kneeko)

+++

STATUS:

PROFILENAME:KneekoLEVEL:219GENDER:MaleMONEY:433G 31S 30CRACE:(Chimeric) Bolt Basilisk (Rare Variant)MONSTER RANK:Medium highHEALTH:5800STAMINA:600MANA:8700STRENGTH:1470 (+50)(M)INTELLIGENCE:755 (+100)SPEED:29DEXTERITY:27(H)VITALITY:415 (+150)CHARM:40 (+265)LUCK:23 (+65)AGILITY:26RESISTANCE:665 (+200)(S)ENDURANCE:45SKILL POINTS:15FAME/INFAMY:0 (Neutral)CLASS:-------------------TITLES:Spoiler : ☑ Don Juan

☑ Dungeon conqueror

☑ Elemental Master

☑ King of the pond

☑ Sphinx Slayer

☑ Toxic Powerhouse

☑ TycoonPASSIVE SKILLS:Spoiler : Amphibious (E)

Blunt Weapon Mastery (E)

Obscuro Poison (B)

Poison Resistance (A)

Unharmed Mastery (E)

Viper Neurotoxin (A)ACTIVE SKILLS:Spoiler : Basilisk Cry (D)

Deadly Breath ©

Death Stare (S)

Gardener touch (B)

Lightning Strike (E)

Lightning Discharge (E)

Luminar (E)

Poison Spit (D)

Sad puppy eyes (B)

Tail Whip (B)

TerrorEyes (B)

Vines Hell (D)

Viper Bite ©ARCANE LIBRARY:Spoiler : Arcane EarthBolt

Arcane FireBolt

Arcane WaterBolt

Arcane WindBolt

Immovable MountainCHIMERA FORGE