‘Mimicry: Ares: Chimera x 2, Troll x 1, Vampire x 1, Cyclops x 1, Leviathan x 1, Direwolf x 2’
“Witness.”
Dust of the rocks exploded out in a plume under the sudden and immense change in weight.
‘Cyclops: Arcane Eye’
A singular, slightly larger eye at the center of his brows. One that could see into the truth of mana.
‘Leviathan: Scale Armor’
From head to toe, a sea-green matte armor wrapped his figure. It was actually scale armor, but these scales were not a snippet of the leviathan, but a compressed version of the entirety of the scale Armor of the leviathan. The multiple orders of magnitude that the leviathan was larger than Noah served to make his armor that many thousands of times stronger than regular, already tough, leviathan armor. Unlike the leviathan, Noah was smaller while retaining the same amount of scales, so the individual scales were not easily visible, making the armor appear matte sea-green. Aside from the impenetrability of the scales, they were a result of replacing his human skin and was thus attached to his body in a natural and tight fit, removing the clunkiness that would come from such armor. The only downside was the weight of the armor, heavy enough for the earth below his feet to cave below it into individual potholes. If not for the fact that the scales were already the lightest part of the leviathan, even for the immense strength of Ares, agile movement would become a challenge.
‘Chimera - Enhanced Blood Control’
Chimeras on the Calysta continent, strictly speaking, were not a species in and of itself. No, they were an incredibly special type of monster that formed when the spirits of different species were forcibly merged together into one body, forming a unique situation where multiple souls of multiple monsters existed within one body. This was against the rules of the Calysta continent. Multiple spirits and souls were not permitted to exist in such a manner.
When Noah had killed a Chimera, curiously, his skill seemed to recognise a new species, even though none of the individual souls within the Chimera he had killed were any he had not killed before. Even more curiously, when Noah attempted to mimic the Chimera, he found himself with what seemed like a new skill in and of itself rather than typical mimicry.
A skill to break the rules of the Calysta continent.
However, Noah was hesitant. For the longest time, he was hesitant. After all, as a man who had access to the diverse catalog of monsters on the Calysta continent, he was more aware than anyone that the rules of the Calysta continent were imposed by Her to ensure the safety of her lambs. Defying it could result in destabilization of his own spirit, instantly severing his soul from his spirit or even worse, mutation.
But with the calculative and academic ability of the archmages, they were able to calculate a modification that was well within a level that would not harm Noah while being a modification that would be most beneficial to Ares’ capabilities. This was to enhance blood control. The enhancement was not a minor one and pushed Noah’s blood control to a level far beyond even the mythical Vampire King, who had once wrought havoc on the continent as an entry-level SSS-ranked monster. It was this blood control that enabled Liquid Armor, and required a tremendous amount of mana to maintain.
‘Blood Control - Liquid Armor’
In the same way the numerous scales of the leviathan appeared small in comparison to itself, each scale on Noah’s small body appeared like a dot. In between these dots, crimson was visible. Only those in the know were aware of the crimson’s identity as blood. After all, blood was meant to overflow if simply exposed to the open in such a manner. The blood was kept in place by enhanced blood control, though it was not ordinary blood. Blood was finely and carefully coagulated with supreme blood control, was mixed into thinned blood, such that the mixture of flour-like coagulates and thinned blood formed a non-newtonian fluid. This mixture was responsible for the distribution of force.
Sure, Noah possessed indestructible armor, but the force behind the attacks could simply travel through the scales and rupture his internals. This was where the non-newtonian blood came in. Like all non-newtonian fluids, the blood would harden and distribute force throughout the fluid when pressure was applied onto it, significantly negating the impact of any attack.
Of course, when it came to attacks from Noah himself, the control of non-newtonian blood would be released in a manner that the inertia of the blood would steer coagulates in the blood away from his attacking limb, avoiding a scenario where his own defense defended the enemy. With such liquid armor, though useless against penetrating attacks, force-based attacks would be redistributed around Noah’s body and be greatly mitigated.
When this Liquid Armor was coupled with the Scale Armor that was specialized for defense against penetrating attacks, Noah’s durability was just one step below the peak of SSS-rank.
‘Chimera - Ripped Wings’
This second modification as a Chimera, was much simpler and required significantly less mana. This was because it was a simple twist of biology rather than of any arcane abilities, and because a ‘template’ already existed for this modification. When one cleanly ripped off the wings of a bird, what they would see were two long slits where their wings were. What Noah did was to imitate those slits of ripped wings and then create an additional pulmonary circuit of arteries that looped around his body to his back, traveling right under the slits, and back to the heart. When the slits appeared, blood would pour out the slits, with the tremendous regeneration of a Troll and Overdrive providing the blood necessary to gush out.
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During the fight, his ammunition would increase with every second as blood gushed out of his back, progressively providing him with more and more to fight with.
‘Direwolf - Prime Werewolf’
Werewolves were arranged in a hierarchy based on purity of their blood. The purer the werewolf, the closer they were to the wolf while maintaining not only the rationality but also the stature of a human. Much like wolves, werewolves traveled in packs and were led by the Alpha Werewolf, the strongest and purest. Only the strongest of the werewolves were permitted to breed, and the stronger they were, the more they bred. As time passed, over generations, since strength correlated to purity of bloodline, werewolves became purer and purer and experienced further enhancements from mana to utilize the wolf’s physicality in a manner that made werewolves vastly stronger than that of normal wolves. Now, most Alpha Werewolves could be placed at the level of A-rank, just one rank below the S-rank Alpha Direwolf.
However, much like how wolves in the wild could mutate into Direwolves under the influence of certain natural conditions, those born with the lycanthrope gene complex could also experience an extremely rare mana mutation as a zygote within the mother womb, where these natural mana conditions were met, and the ‘wolf side’ of the person mutates into a ‘direwolf side’. And even more rarely, this zygote could happen to be within that of a future Alpha werewolf.
The evolved ability to perfectly utilize the physique of a wolf of the Alpha Werewolf on a human and the power of the S-rank Alpha Direwolf. The meeting of such extremely unlikely events would cause the birth of this supreme creature, an entry-level SS-ranked monster, the Prime Direwolf.
Finally, the additional enhancement by Noah with surgical partial mimicry to the physique of the Prime Direwolf to utilize a lycan physique to a further extent under the guidance of the scholarly archmages led to an almost peak SS-ranked physique.
This powerful physique hid below his skin of scales like a hidden tiger, the only sign of it being the retractable claws that now jutted out of his fingers.
Such a body was the base that was enhanced by Overdrive. In just raw physicality alone, he was a peak SSS-ranked existence.
‘Blood Control - Overdrive’
Theoretically, vampires could artificially control the blood within their own bodies to circulate with a speed several thousand times that of a regular person. WIth several alterations to the content of their own blood, including but not limited to higher protein density, adrenaline, oxygenation and so on, they would be able to attain unprecedented strength. However, with such rapid circulation of their blood comes significantly heightened stress to the circulatory system. Though organs like the heart can be strengthened through mana to resist damage to a certain extent, fine individual capillaries cannot enjoy the luxury of the same level of reinforcement. Beyond a certain point, they begin to rupture. Vampires, being regenerative beings, are able to overlook a degree of blood vessel damage to forcefully circulate some body-strengthening blood anyway. This is what grants an abnormal strength to the vampires. However, this method only goes so far as their regeneration. The limit to the doped strength of a vampire is the point where blood vessels begin to rupture at a rate matching that which can be healed through regeneration. This is why higher-ranking vampires are stronger. With more regeneration and blood control comes a higher limit to the rate at which blood can circulate before the rate of rupturing exceeds that of regeneration.
Noah, who could only mimic the lowest vampire, was limited in his regeneration as a vampire, as well as his blood control. Usually.
However, he was now in a state where he had used the mimic of a Chimera to distort the biology of the vampire to raise his level of blood control to a level surpassing even the mythical Vampire King, who had once wrought havoc on the continent as an entry-level SSS-ranked monster, the rank where a hero summoning was required to restore continental peace to the rampage of such a fearsome monster.
And with the regeneration of a troll and the immense physicality of a Prime Werewolf within him, his frighteningly strong blood vessels would not only require significantly greater force to rupture, they would also heal at a blistering pace.
Blood doping at an incredible high level would become feasible, and when combined with the strength of a Prime Werewolf, power at a level that would shatter an ordinary leviathan's skull with a single punch was reached.
‘Blood Control + Water Control + Water Charge Control - Blood Lightning’
Having mimicked both the ruler of blood as well as the ruler of thunderstorms in his current state, he was able to manipulate both.
By dispersing blood into a fine mist all around the inside of the dome, the visibility inside the dome was reduced to practically zero, and for the dragon, the small figure completely disappeared. Though being unable to see the enemy due to low visibility was not usually a problem for the dragon, who could use mana detection to find its prey, this time, the blood mist was thinly imbued with mana, making this approach impossible. This stealth granted to Noah was, however, only a sweet side-benefit of the primary reason for dispersing blood mist.
Regions within the fine blood mist would be electrically charged with the ionization of the ruler of thunderstorms, the leviathan. By wrapping a thin layer of this blood mist on himself and constantly using the leviathan’s ability on a low level to control charges to prevent the blood mist from electrocuting him, he is able to add an electrocution to all attacks he delivers, as well as to all attacks he receives.
Additionally, by rapidly charging two regions in the dome oppositely, he would be able to create lightning between the two zones. With this, within the enclosed demiplane, where blood mist could be densely packed with little effort necessary on Noah's end to restrain its diffusion, he could manipulate lightning almost freely!
Add to that the fact that filling the space with dense blood mist would allow him to sneak attack with blood literally from anywhere in the dome.
The demiplane, the ultimate trump card of the dragon, had been turned into Noah’s domain!
‘I had even orchestrated this entire war to begin at night so Ares could fully display its blood abilities without the impairment of the sun, but the dragon helped me with the sun-blocking demiplane while even going the extra mile to allow Ares’s lightning manipulation abilities to fully blossom. What a kind dragon! I should thank this uselessly big oaf with a swift death as a fellow kind guy, shouldn't I?’