Reborn evolution a litrp.., p.13
Reborn: Evolution: A LitRPG Series (Warlock Chronicles Book 2), page 13
However, I was interested in something else entirely.
Modification: Parasite
Requirement: Mutation Path, level 18; or Peddler Skill, level 13
I could turn it into a Parasite like myself and sic it on other players... Oh, and I know just the person...
Due to my contribution during the attack on the Gray base, I got enough experience to reach level forty and four skill points along with it. However, I wasn’t sure if I should put them into Mutation or Peddler. The first option would improve the effectiveness of any physical changes I’d do on the pets and give me a couple more buffs, while the other would bring me more interesting mods in the future that I’d otherwise be unable to get.
After a little thought, I opted for Mutation. Plague, as interesting as it was, would probably be useless. It wouldn’t affect minions like Rat who would rather tear up an opponent than leave it as a Trojan horse and allow it to return to the base, thus spreading the infection.
***
The Parasite modification was easy to identify: a cross over a picture of a brain. I had to admit that it was a fitting image. After choosing the mod, Listener shuddered as electrical impulses ran through its body, and a tentacle burst out of its abdomen. It twisted and hung in the air.
It was through this tentacle that Listener would receive nutrition, which meant that it’d no longer have to leave the body of its host. Unfortunately, its host didn’t have the same fur Leshy did, so I had to give the pet some armor to protect and camouflage it. I reduced the size of its body as much as I could, turning the poor insect into a very small ball. It looked like the round bit on a pin, with a couple of thin threads, the legs, peeking out of it.
After some thought, I decided to remove its stinger altogether and give it the same poisonous glands that I had with the anesthetic so that it could connect to the host without being noticed. I didn’t want to risk losing the pet as I had no idea where I’d find a replacement for it. I’d need time, and that was a luxury I didn’t have.
The legs were equipped with small blades and strengthened. This would help the pet to cling to the victim’s hair better. Just to be on the safe side, I gave it some armor and protected its eyes.
***
Congratulations! You are the first player to turn a living being into a parasite.
Achievement unlocked: [Degradation]
+1 to all skills
You have reached level 41!
Oho! Not only am I the first player to become a parasite, I’m also the first to condemn a creature to a parasitic lifestyle. Well, at least I got an achievement for it... System, open up my profile.
Warlock
Parasitic Organism
Level 41
Faction: Gray
Specialization: Death Magic
Spells: 1/3
Heir, level 8
Rank: 2 [211/400]
HP: 55/55
Evolution Points: 950
Physical characteristics
Size:1 [4]
Perception: 6
Stamina: 5
Damage Resistance: 1
Mental Strength: 16
Speed: 6
Damage: 1
D. Intelligence: 10
D. Armor: 4
D. Magic: 4
Available paths and skills
Unallocated points: 4
Genus: (faction skill), level 2
[ESP] (unique, personal path), level 20
● Control (basic skill), level 20
● Mental Transmission (passive skill), level 12
● Evacuation (unique, class skill)
● Mental Defense (unique, class skill), level 13
● Mental Attack (unique, class skill), level 15
● Dark Manipulator (legendary skill), level 20
[Mutation] (legendary path), level 19
● Basic Virus (legendary skill), level 2
● Peddler (basic skill), level 10
● Mutation Transmitter (subsection of Mutation)
❖ Linguistics, level 8
❖ Third Eye (legendary skill), level 14
[Parasite] (personal path), level 9
● [Laboratory] (basic skill available to all parasites)
● Connection, level 11
● Augmentation, level 18
Listener suddenly perked up, stretched its stiff legs, and, pushing off the clay shard, took off.
To be honest, until the last moment, I was afraid that its flimsy wings would be too weak to lift the pet into the air, so I breathed a sigh of relief when my fears turned out to be for naught. Listener flew, albeit poorly, constantly leaning to one side, but it didn’t matter. All it needed to do was reach its goal however it could. It wouldn’t need its wings after that.
Susan, member of the Burgundies, I instructed it.
***
That night, I gave Leshy another dose of AO-1. A double one this time.
I could barely look at him as he twisted in agony, vomiting blood, and foaming like a shaken beer can. His hands turned into clawed paws, nails became sharper, and long needles burst out at his elbows, scratching the wooden floor. As before, he fell out of his bed and hit his head hard.
His fur turned scarlet in some places. The blade on his “secret” limb morphed into a cleaver, which almost beheaded Leshy a couple of times. Too bad it didn’t, though, it would’ve saved me some trouble.
I almost flew through the window when his eyes flew wide open. His gaze was full of madness and rage. I flew back to him and injected him with another dose of anesthetic. And although his eyes began to close as if he was about to fall asleep, he managed to get up from the floor and, growling hollowly, stumble toward the door. He kept swaying like a drunkard but he managed to remain standing.
Shit, I thought, the anesthetic doesn’t work anymore...
***
Luckily, he collapsed right at the threshold, falling face-first into the mud left by the evening rain, where he lay until he was found the next morning.
Connection: 50%
Chapter 13
Night of the Black Souls, part 1
“Leshy!” David practically shouted as he bent over the unconscious player sprawled in the mud. “Dude, are you alive?”
Half-asleep, Leshy suddenly realized that he was lying face-down in the mud, mouth full of dirt, and fur matted with muck. Letting out a long sigh, he turned his head in David’s direction. His brain felt like it was being drilled into. He kept hearing a low, numbing hum. Like when a next-door neighbor was drilling something at the crack of dawn during the weekdays.
Leshy’s bloodshot eyes filled with tears. He felt like his internal organs had been boiled and then minced.
“He’s aliiiveeee!!” David said happily. Seeing that Leshy wanted to tell him something, he leaned in. “Yeah?”
“Stop... yelling...” Leshy hissed angrily.
Why do I hear that drilling again...? he thought.
David immediately shut up and tried to lift Leshy who was grimacing due to the headache that was torturing him worse than the rest of his body pains. It wasn’t easy to get him to his feet as Leshy weighed quite a lot and because he was as lively as a sack of potatoes in his current state.
Some twenty minutes later, when several other players came to his aid and Leshy had recovered a little, he was transferred to the Mead Hall.
“What happened to you?” David asked as he put a rolled-up pelt under Leshy’s head.
“I’d like to know that myself,” he replied. His voice was a little stronger, but it was still hoarse and quiet.
The double dose of the drug didn’t manage to kill him, but it did weaken him greatly so all of my efforts weren’t in vain. Leshy was falling apart as was evident by his state and the fact that the Connection progression had jumped to fifty percent. His body had managed to resist the initial those, but it was all downhill from here for him now.
Having told everyone to leave him be, Leshy lay on the bed, staring blankly at the ceiling. He kept clutching at his hands to stop them from shaking, but he couldn’t stop it. He kept rolling to the side, feeling like he was about to vomit, but nothing happened. His thought process slowed down, and his inner voice shouted only one thing: “MORE!” Every cell, every atom of his body wanted, no, demanded more.
But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t figure out just what it was that he needed so badly. He was frustrated by the fact that he had no idea what was chasing him into an early grave. I remembered finding it strange how terminally ill people always seemed to calm down after hearing about their diagnosis, but now I figured that it was much easier to make peace with your situation when you knew what was troubling you.
Leshy, someone who had never done drugs in his life, practically never drank, and who had thrown cigarettes away twenty years ago, couldn’t wrap his head around what was happening to him, which only made his state worse. Third Eye showed me that he was on the brink of madness. The slightest of pushes, and he’d plummet into the abyss, never to claw his way out.
For the next five hours, he kept rolling, gasping, wheezing, trembling, cursing, and praying, but he didn’t succumb to the sickness. This old soldier, who had been in several wars, seen death, sown death, and betrayed his homeland, loved his miserable life too much to let it go just like that. He clung to it with all his strength, forcing himself to endure.
And so he did.
Doesn’t matter, I thought. If the third dose doesn’t kill you, it’ll definitely leave you a deranged drug addict. However, on a subconscious level, I knew that bringing him down wouldn’t be that easy.
A moment later, what I had feared would happen finally happened.
“David!” Leshy shouted, coughing blood.
The doors creaked open almost immediately. David had been standing the entire time, ready to barge in the moment he sensed something was wrong.
“What do you need?”
“Go get some sleep. Tonight, you’ll sit next to me and make sure that I don’t have another seizure.”
“Aye, aye!” David saluted.
Fuck! What should I do now? I won’t be able to buzz, let alone do anything if he camps next to Leshy the entire night! There’s no way I can fly to Alchemist’s place and bring back the drug here during the day... The progress bar won’t move without the drug... AO-1 removed only one of many layers of his mental defense... Fuck! I can’t do shit without the drug...
Unless...
***
Leshy left the Mead Hall in the evening, squinting at the setting rays of the autumn sun. Taking a deep breath, he admired the landscape, enjoying the sounds of the forest that flooded over him. Somewhere in the distance, a woodpecker was hitting the bark of a sick tree in search of dinner. Up in the rich crowns of the oaks, the birds were chirping. And somewhere far, far in the distance, the mutated, frostbitten creatures howled as they tore apart their squealing victim.
A shadow of a small humanoid, slipping from behind the wall of the Mead Hall, suddenly froze. Seeing that his boss was enjoying the sounds of nature, Chief was about to leave, but it was already too late. Leshy had already noticed him.
“Report,” he grumbled.
“The furnaces have been repaired, we’ve started smelting bronze.”
After these words, things kicked into high gear: black smoke began to rise from the chimneys; the ringing of metal pierced the air, joined by curses, and Leshy’s orders; the first tests bore no fruit; increased shift hours; players biting their lips in frustration as sweat poured down their flushed faces; the Mead Hall again...
Leshy returned to his room late at night. David was already waiting for him in the corridor, looking well-rested and enthusiastic.
“Good,” Leshy said, acknowledging David’s efforts. “Leave your weapon, though, there’ll be no one to protect me from.”
David frowned in protest but left his stone ax outside.
***
For several hours I felt like I was playing hide-and-seek with David.
Leshy fell asleep almost immediately, but David, sitting on a pile of pelts a few steps away from the bed, kept his eyes glued on Leshy, only occasionally looking around the room and going to the window to make sure that nothing was lurking outside.
In the end, he outperformed me. Unlike him, I couldn’t sleep during the day. After another three hours of staring at him, I finally realized that he wouldn’t sleep that night. Wishing David all the worst, I closed my eyes.
***
The next day was also spent running around.
Connection: 48%
Leshy seemed simply unkillable. After a double dose of the strongest drugs, not only was he not out of action, but he also began to recover, slowly but surely. These two percent were just the beginning. Without a new dose, it was a matter of time before it reached zero. Goddamn it, the ability to read the host’s mind was only fifteen percent away. Without AO-1, my plan was doomed to fail.
I might have to switch to plan B...
Revenge could wait because, right now, the Grays were facing a very tangible threat — the Burgundy faction armed with bronze weapons. Chief had managed to put almost half of the entire faction to work. Thanks to this, in just two days they smelted enough weapons to arm a small, but efficient army.
Alchemist, who had probably not slept for three days, kept running between the furnaces with wild eyes and checking if everything was going according to plan.
“Six percent tin bronze... Aha! You can cast it. Prepare the mold!” Then, skipping between the workers, he ran to the second furnace. “No, no, no! The handle is too big! You’re not going pole vaulting! What? Yes, cover your shields with leather. The one that was stripped off the moose yesterday...”
The Burgundy army was technologically on a completely different level than the Beige or Gray one. Wielding spears and shields, it looked like a force to be reckoned with. Almost half of the players also had bronze daggers for close combat. The rest, however, used stone hatchets as the supply of tin was limited.
“Alchemist, report!” Leshy ordered.
The breathless scientist, turning sharply at the sound, ran over.
“The strike group is ready!” he reported with a grin.
“Great.” A smile slid across Leshy’s face.
Lokk’s army of thirty men, who had returned from the Beige base yesterday morning had rested and were ready to go into battle. They were joined by a group consisting of forty-five more players armed with bronze weapons. From the flanks, the group was covered by Leshy’s squad, into which almost all the representatives of the “civilians” were hastily recruited and intensively trained for several days.
In the end, the Burgundy army counted eighty men and fifty Werewolves, all of which were trained and well-armed. We were outnumbered. I had no doubts that they could wipe us off the face of the earth in less than a day.
I began to understand what made Leshy change sides. The power of the Burgundy faction was several times greater than our own. Then again, he was to blame for that, as it had been him who had destroyed almost a hundred of our players.
Fortunately, the first target wasn’t us.
“Brothers and sisters! We’ve been waiting for this moment for a very long time. Our faction suffered losses and hardships. Our former leader, Alastor, may he rest in peace, fell victim to a venomous insect. So in order that his, and the deaths of many of our fallen friends, weren’t in vain, we’ll annihilate our enemies! The Beiges won’t know what hit them!” By the end of his speech, Leshy was practically shouting, waving his curved sword in the air.
His cry was immediately taken up by dozens of players.
“We hit them!!!”
The Werewolves chimed in, howling in anticipation of a glorious battle, sweet meat, and burning blood.
***
It was getting dark. I pitied the Beige faction; they had no idea that they wouldn’t get to see the dawn. The poor bastards maybe had thirty players armed with antediluvian spears with stone tips that couldn’t possibly break through the Burgundy shields.
What terrified me was the fact that after destroying the Beiges, the Burgundies would attack my faction. Chasing us out of the numerous underground tunnels of the Mountain was going to be one hell of a task, but they had both the manpower and time.
It was time for me to make my move and get involved.
As I watched the army disappear into the night, I ordered the pets to stop hunting and go to the Burgundy base, then pushed off from the thick log of the palisade, and soared up.
It was time to visit the Uncharted Lands.
***
The body of the Werewolf that I had been using as my host was lost after the not-so-successful attempt to kill Susan. I wasn’t really upset as the corpse would’ve been unusable after a couple more days. Because of this, I had to connect to one of the two remaining pets, killing the Werewolf’s consciousness in the process.
Fortunately, the Dark Connection made it possible to significantly transform the victim’s body. After a few moments, I felt a tremendous burst of energy. My leg muscles swelled and my claws sprang out of my paws, my neck stretched out, and... And then, the transformation took a strange turn. My lower jaw dropped open with a nasty crunch, ripping tissue and skin, and continued to grow in size. The upper one also expanded, making more space for fangs that became elongated and now looked like those of a saber-toothed tiger. I ended up with a mouth that was so huge that I looked like a hippopotamus. My jaws had opened to a hundred and fifty degrees, forming almost a straight line.
I was now a mix of a wolf, a crocodile, and a human. I liked the new look, strange as it was. If we were back home, on Earth, and someone saw me like this, they’d probably think that I was a runaway set piece from some horror movie.
