Aurum - Year 3
'A familiar? What does this change?' That was all I could think of at the time.
Muck became a familiar, but what is he a familiar? Is he like a witch's familiar? Or just a servant created with skills?
"Muck! Come here!" Soon as I said that, the little moss slug started to quickly slide towards me and then started to attach itself to my feet.
Picking him up, I looked like a human being carrying a mini xiaua. It fit in the palm of my hand, but it was still very adorable.
[Status] [Information] Attributes Name: Muck Species: Living Moss Life: 2.3 Def: 2.8 Level: 1 Type: Vineborn Vit: 36.3 Int: 0.3 Mana: 34.5 Stamina: 12.1/22 Dex: 0.3 Wis: 0.2 Talent: Converge Affinity: Life Spr: 1.2 Str: 0.1
[Skills]
{Photosynthesis} - Lv 1
Use sunlight, moisture and nutrients to create MP
{Regrowth} - Lv 1
Regenerates lost parts quickly using Sp.
{Verdant vitality} - Lv 1
If the damage received is less than the points of your [Vitality] it will be ignored.
{Familiar} - Locked
As long your creator remains alive, you can be revived indefinitely by him at the cost of MP.
{Mirrored} - Lv 1
When you suffer any type of damage, you can reflect it back to your enemy at the cost of Mp.
"Damn!! What are these skills? {Familiar} seems to be your version of [Maternal Connection], but this skill {Mirrored} is incredible!!" Muck, in addition to gaining some really cool skills, also gained the ability to level them up, something he couldn't do before as a "golem".
"Are you alive? Technically you have a soul... So I would say yes?"
Muck's "soul" was a [Life Echo] which I can't say if it is a soul or not, the echoes seem to be a type of mana spirit that I can control, but I think they are far from being "souls" .
Do I know what a soul is? No! But I'm sure it's not that simple to give a "real" soul! to someone.
"You are a completely unnatural creature... Your body, your core, your "soul" are all artificial, so you are an artificial life form... Or just a complete life form?"
The moss didn't seem to care about my moral crisis, but I really wondered whether or not Muck was "real." I could still "deactivate" it by taking the life echo out of it, but in doing so would I be literally killing Muck? Or just turning him into a golem?
"Boys? Do we have creatures that are very weak in the coliseum?" I asked my guards standing around the room.
"Of course! We have some ants available at the coliseum!" Said an excited guard.
"Very good!" Without thinking much, I started walking there on one of the rare times I left my room. As I passed through the places I could see the amazed eyes of the hive members, and the tension of the royal guards to protect me, even though I was inside the nest.
After a while I came to a large open corridor that took me to a large room that contained a large gate of bars made of hard wax alloy, and branches treated to be fortified.
There were weapons, benches, cabinets, pots and various things around the room, and some soldiers were arranged all over the place.
"The Queen Mother!" Shouted one of the soldiers, which made everyone look at me in wonder. While I was nervous with so many looks, with a slime made of moss hanging from my hand.
I don't like to admit it, but I only knew the older generations of my hive personally, the vast majority never came to talk to me, or never even saw me throughout their lives.
Only [Royal Guards] and [Royal Knights] came to my room, so most of the soldiers didn't know me personally.
The working classes had more chances to see me in their lifetime, so they weren't impressed when they saw me, but the soldiers were super excited.
"H-Hello boys! I came here today because I need some really weak ants to do a test with Muck."
"Ohhh!!" Some soldiers exclaimed.
"Get back to work! In the presence of the great mother you must show results, not open mouths!" Said my [Royal Knight]
"Leave 'em! You're all invited if you want to see Muck fight. I don't know if he's a good fighter, but I'm here to test that."
"Wow! Can this goo fight?" Said one of the soldiers.
"Well... I guess so? Technically he can't deal damage, but if he takes damage he can reflect it, so it's possible he could kill someone."
"That's cool!! I thought he was going to get into someone's mouth and choke them to death, or something!" Said another soldier.
'That's not a bad idea....'
Soon my entire delegation moved to another hallway, which led to the stands, where there was a large seat that had clearly been made for me. I sat in place and waited until 2 Ants tied with ropes, with broken legs and shaved eyes were brought to the place.
Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.
I could see some soldiers positioning themselves in the stands waiting for the chance to see Muck work, so I gave the order to the boys, who released one of the ants, and secured another by the rope to the wall, before finally leaving the combat zone.´
'Muck' With my mental words, Muck "looked" at me, and awaited my commands.
'Hmmm... Let's see... Let's start with something very abstract and see if he can follow these orders...'
"Kill one of the ants." As soon as I said that, Muck began to slide along the floor, until he reached the bars that separated the stands from the combat zone, then he squeezed through the holes and fell to the floor of the battlefield.
Muck then crept surreptitiously towards one of the blind ants, and began to attach himself to its feet. The ant then bit him with all its jaws, but then released him with a squeaking sound.
Muck seemed to have used his stolen skill {Mirrored} to reflect this damage, and because of the skill [Verdant Vitality] he himself did not suffer any damage from it.
Muck continued to attach himself to the ant's feet, and in a completely unexpected situation, he opened a large "Mouth" full of pointed branches in rows side by side.
"What the hell?!"
Muck then attached himself to the ant's leg, and wrapped himself around her while the ant tried with all his might to free himself from Muck.
Muck's damage didn't seem too great, but he didn't let go of her, and seemed willing to play a game of attrition with the ant, as Muck would get the upper hand in a very long fight.
When about 10 minutes had passed and Muck showed no sign of letting go of the ant's leg, I decided it was time for plan B. or C.
Choke that ant.
'Smother her with your body'. As soon I gave the order Muck detached himself from the ant's leg, and slowly crawled up to its chest, then moved to the ant's face and began to cling between the ant's jaws, but after a while I realized that this was not doing the trick. causing suffocation.
'Shit... The ants in this world seem to be like the insects in my world... Their breathing is cutaneous.'
If you don't need your mouth to breathe, then it doesn't make sense for me to try to suffocate you through your mouth, so what can I do?
"The eyes!"
The eyes were a soft part, and very close to the brain, so they were a direct path to the "main control" of the body of any living being.
'Muck! Dig out the eyes, and destroy the brain!' Following my commands, Muck reached towards the ant's eyes, and created a wooden thorn in its body, then he used this thorn to stab the ant's eye violently, while the ant just struggled helplessly, then he began to enter the ant's eye. hole that had formed, before exploding into a ball of spikes that pierced the entire ant from the inside out.
[Notice]
Your familiar "Muck" killed a [Valley Ant], you gained 0.01 XP!
Muck succeeded, he killed the ant, and still proved to be very intelligent and capable. Knowing how to follow orders to the letter, and possessing racial abilities that I didn't know he had.
Muck can create these wooden thorns all over his body, and use them as a defense, or as a form of attack, being able to create an armor of thorns, thorns to stab someone, and even sharp teeth for a mouth.
Soon Muck began to emerge from inside the ant's head, completely covered in vitriol, but then he shook himself a little to get rid of it and rubbed himself on the arena floor like a hamster to clean himself, before slowly crawling towards me.
As soon as he reached the walls of the coliseum, he showed another of his unlisted abilities, which was the ability to create small roots on the wall and use them to climb them quickly and consistently.
In a short time Muck came excitedly to me, and attached himself to my feet again.
"Ohwn... Who's a good boy! It's You Muck!" I said as I took it in my hand and raised it to eye level.
[Status] [Information] Attributes Name: Muck Species: Living Moss Life: 2.3 Def: 2.8 Level: 1 Type: Vineborn Vit: 36.3 Int: 0.3 Mana: 20.3/34.5 Stamina: 2.1/22 Dex: 0.3 Wis: 0.2 Talent: Convergence Affinity: Life Spr: 1.2 Str: 0.1
"Damn!! You spent a lot of mana!! Why are useful and powerful skills always so expensive!! Damn, you can't just reflect all the damage done to you, that will leave you without mana quickly."
"Hmm?" Looking closely at Muck's Status I see something I haven't seen before, a new haba called [Talent].
"What is talent? Is it something exclusive to familiars? What is it for? Why is your talent [Convergence]? Does it have something to do with your ability to reflect damage?"
Muck didn't give me any answers, and it didn't seem like he would, this was just more information I had to deal with.
'What is a talent for? This seems to have something to do with Muck's "Reflective" abilities, and his ability to negate damage less than his [Stamina] value, but is it just that, or is there something more?
----------------------------------------
Aurum - Year 3
Muck showed me that a life echo can do much more than I thought, so I started thinking about other ways to manipulate things around me with these echoes.
The echoes of life are like little spirits, they are not alive, but they are not objects either, they stay in the "in-between". If I could use them as souls for familiars, then what was their limit?
According to my tests, the echo that created "Muck - The Familiar" was solely the echo containing an echo with the spell [Connect] if I tried to use other spells on a nucleus I would not have the same result.
But it still gave me a lot of ideas, and my main one was a project I had put in a drawer. The creation of a magic wand.
The staffs we have nowadays are very bad, they use a lot of mana, and they have an expiration date. But echoes are ways to cast spells indefinitely as long as they have mana to spend.
So why can't I make an echo using a magic wand, and then replace the use of catalyst crystals.
"Test number #1. I will place a life echo containing a [Wild Growth] spell inside a simple wooden staff.
I and some wizards, along with some archivists and artisans were testing these new theories, and to begin with I summoned an echo of life, linked it to the [Wild Growth] spell and ordered it to inhabit the wooden branch of life.
But what happened was that the echo entered the branch leaving behind a lime green cloud, and then I felt the echo disappear, and then in a matter of seconds the branch started growing in crazy, disorganized directions for a few seconds until it became a tangle of a bunch of roots.
'Failure.'
"Any ideas boys?" As soon as I asked the question I could see the boys shaking their heads in denial.
'This is going to be a long day....'
----------------------------------------
"Test #47. Now we will try to make an echo of life live inside a crystal mechanism and see what can happen, as this is a highly dangerous experiment, I ask that everyone move behind the security walls. "
As soon as I finished speaking, everyone was already in their seats, the room that was previously tidy and prepared for research was now in a mess, papers and failed experiments on the floor, and several clipboards on the tables with failed projects.
As soon as I summoned another life echo, I linked it directly to the [Life Drain] spell and sent it into the device. So I activated my crystal skin and waited anxiously for the result.
Soon the device, which was actually more of a collar made of vegetable leather, life crystals, and a small catalyst crystal began to vibrate, the previously white crystals lost color and turned into a beige yellow crystal, and small thorns grew on the inside of the collar.
"A success?!" Shouted one of the scientists.
Getting close to the thing, I take a look and realize that I've lost connection to the echo, but the collar hasn't exploded, so that was a good sign.
[Description] Name: Drain Collar Rarity: Rare Quality: Bad
Created by the hive queen, in collaboration with the development club. This necklace is capable of draining the wearer's life essence and converting it into pure life energy.
"OH shit!! I enchanted an item!! I really enchanted an item!! And it looks like a pretty special spell!"
A necklace that drains the essence of life? It's very subjective, but very useful too, I could make one of these for farm animals and create clean and renewable energy production.
"Kukuku.. Heheh HAHAHAHA!"
"She's gone crazy again... That's why Ken says she needs to sleep well at night..." Said one scientist to the other.