Lyden saw the thread similar to when tried to assimilate with the Muscle's Muscle aretisite.

But this thread was thinner since it was a 1-star aretisite.

Following what Ku Sang said, he then began to focus on another fossilized aretisite while not losing focus on the first one.

He now saw two threads. He repeated the steps until he saw all five. It was not easy to focus on it simultaneously, but it was doable.

Sitting next to Lyden, Ku Sang was watching him with a sinister look.

"He took the bait. He would not be able to leave that state until he either failed or succeed. And once he failed, there will be a backlash causing him to blackout. Kuhahaha." Ku Sang was in glee. Although Lyden was suspicious of him, he could not resist the bait.

"This is what you get for trying to extort me, you bitch. If I could only beat the crap out of you right now" But Ku Sang did not. He did not want to wake up Lyden from that state. He had heard what happened between Cho Kyung and Lyden.

Ku Sang was not sure what aretisite he had, but he overcame Cho Kyung with ease. Cho Kyung was one of the top hunters in his organization. If he succeeded in assimilating with more aretisites, then he can quickly become top 3 in his organization.

Cho Kyung could even defeat Ku Sang if they fought with only 1-star aretisites.

Ku Sang got up to get close to Lyden, who was sitting crossed-legs. Lyden was not able to hear what Ku Sang was saying as he was in a deep state. "It took me three hours to succeed in refining and waking up from that state. So even if you succeed, it will be too late. Even more, the Blood Nosehound will start to wake up in 15 minutes, and he will eat you up! If only you just helped me without asking for anything in return..." He spat on Lyden's face before heading out.

He stopped just outside the entrance of the tunnel.

"Since I do not want the Blood Nosehound to leave, I will just destroy this entrance." Ku Sang took out a small 2-star aretisite that he had refined. It turned into a red sword larger than Cho Kyung's sword.

He stabbed the sword aretisite into the ceiling of the tunnel. Then with his Blank Red Blue, he quickly freezes and then heats up the sword over and over again. This action caused the ceiling to expand and compress until the stress was enough for it to collapse on itself, thus ceiling the entrance.

The Blood Nosehound was twitching from the noise caused by Ku Sang. It was already showing sign on waking up.

Inside the mind of Lyden, five thin thread can be seen was like slow-moving streams. They all flowed from one side to the other. It was slow, but Lyden was able to change their direction at will and make it move towards each other.

'What do I do now? Ku Sang did said make the five threads into one, so I guess I try that,' He positioned the thread side by side and tried to squeeze them together, but as soon as he does, the sound of his heartbeat echoed in his mind.

'What!? The Random Monster Transmutation aretisite is acting up?' He quickly separated the threads and only then the Random Monster Transmutation began to calm down.

Lyden was puzzled by the random aretisite's action. He tried to squeeze the threads again, and the same thing happened again.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

'Why is it doing it? Is it some negative feedback?' He thought of a possibility. The Random Monster Transmutation aretisite was more than transforming him to a monster. It fed on what was impossible to do.

Another word for that was failure. The aretisite can sense if Lyden will fail and send feedback through his heart, although he could be wrong about it.

He remembered that he failed before when he tried to assimilate with Muscle's Muscle aretisite, and there was no reaction from the Radom Monster Transmutation aretisite.

But he decided to go with his gut since he did not have any better ideas.

Lyden ignored about what Ku Sang had said about fusing the threads into one and let his Random Monster Transmutation Aretisite become his teacher.

He tried multiple ways to make the threads become one.

Forming a ball…

Stitching it together…

He even tried to create an outline of a cube, but each of them the aretisite reacted to it.

'This is harder than I thought… It is hard coming up with ideas now… Then how about this.'

The next thing he did was to create a loop by fusing the endpoint of the threads.

He was going to make one long thread that formed a circle.

When the first two thread fuse, there was silence in his mind.

He then continued until it became one big circle. It reminded him of the ouroboros, but with five snakes biting each other to make a circle.

He knew he had succeeded because the thread started to squirm together until it became a single dot.

Lyden opened his eyes to see that on the one hand, it was empty, and on the other hand, a single fossilized aretisite.

'Haha, this is a great find. The side effect of this aretisite is better than its main ability.' This was the first time that he was glad to have it. It was like discovering a glitch in a game that gave him a massive advantage over others.

The fossilized aretisite had a bright red sheen to it. It was like jewelry expect one could see an outline of a small lizard. Lyden wanted to assimilate as soon as possible, but he needed to assimilate with a 1-star first.

The fossilized aretisite was now a 2-star.

"The color seemed different. Perhaps it has a different ability or is a stronger version of its predecessor." Lyden speculated.

Lyden got up and looked around for Ku Sang to ask him for a 1-star aretisite, but he did not see him. Not only did he not wait for him, he even destroyed the entrance.

'Tsk, that bastard, he was trying to get rid of me after all.' Lyden was annoyed that he thought he was a good leader and thought they could help each other now and then. However, this made Lyden feel less trust towards others.

Suddenly from behind him, a high pitch howl echoed in the room. The Blood Nosehound had awakened from its sleep.

It opened its red beady eyes, and the drools from its mouth formed a puddle beneath him.

Its mind was disorder and could not think properly.

It felt very hungry from not eating for days and wanted something to stop the painful craving. It sniffed around until it smelled Lyden. It roared at him releasing hot air.

'I guess Ku Sang theory was wrong about that monster not seeing me. This must be Ku Sang's set up. He must have known when it was going to wake up and let it kill me when I was refining.' Lyden was furious. Not only did Ku Sang entrapped him, but he even tried to get him eaten by a monster.

The Random Monster Transmutation aretisite squeezed his heart, telling him that he could fail. It was not as strong as when it happened near the tower at sea, but it was tight enough that made him feel uncomfortable.

"I should be careful. I do not know if it is squeezing just because of the Blood Nosehound or is it something else." He deduced that the Random Monster Transmutation aretisite does not signal what was impossible or upcoming failure directly. But instead, it was one event that led to another event until it becomes too hard for him.

What gave him the idea was the tower in the sea. A tower cannot harm him, but the things inside the tower. Also, when he was refining. The closer he got to failing his refinement, the more intense the aretisite was.

The Blood Nosehound lunged at him a gaping mouth full of jagged teeth. It was trying to eat him right away.

Before it can even get a taste of Lyden, Lyden swatted away to the wall.

BOOM~

A deep imprint had been formed when the Blood Nosehound smashed into the wall and the room tremble.

Rocks fell from above the room and cracked formed on the ceiling to the floor.

The Blood Nosehound got back on his four legs with an angry growl.

"This is not going to be easy," Lyden said. It was not because of his opponents, but the room he was in. It was not sturdy enough to fight in and could break apart at any moment.