Smoothing calm feeling of warm hands, which gently hugged Robert, brought sincere surprise. But it was soon faded away by everlasting calmness that was emitted from everywhere. Rob was like bathing in it, completely covered in this odd but pleasant tenderness. Every change that he went through after getting powers from God was always painful. He was breaking apart just to be assembled again with new parts inside. The absence of free space or their unsuitability didn’t matter as the outer force just used more effort to achieve its goal, disregarding the pure torturous essence of the procedure.
This time was completely different. The bright light blinded Robert, while somehow staying on a comfortable level. Then Rob felt the pull. It wasn’t aimed at his body, but the soul that was kept far away in the space between dimensions. It was like an innocent prisoner after a wrong accusation finally managed to be released. The happiness and, precisely speaking, the correctness of such a happening felt the most natural thing it could be. Merging with his body, it started to get rid of anything foreign, while healing the gaps.
Despite literally falling apart, Robert felt as if he was finally losing artificial parts, that were limiting himself. It was as if the most advanced prosthetic was replaced by his own limb. Yes, weak, with fewer functions, but his own. His whole self-being was indeed like reborn anew, leaving behind any impurity. Moreover, when this process was finished, a wave of energy came, strengthening and perfecting every single part of him, starting from the single cell. Rob was cleansed and modified to be the better version of himself.
Robert 2.0.
The ability to think reappeared, while the warmth began to vanish from where it came. He was refreshed, restored to the peak, and even felt overenergized by the sheer amount of power that went through his entity. Therefore, when Status messages started to appear, Rob was all in anticipation of what he would see and how strong he would become.
Initializing the change in Status after consuming an unknown essence…
Done…
Error… Access to the information is forbidden…
Checking the Authority level of Wepwakor…
Comparing with the Authority level, granted to “Unknown Essence”…
The restriction is partly overruled…
The user had consumed the “Heart of Mutant, descendant of Primal Dragon”…
Hidden conditions are met…
The power of the soul – qualified…
The energy connection to inter-dimensional space – qualified…
The power of body – qualified…
The unlocked potential of growth – qualified…
Checking elemental affinity – Steel – qualified…
The power from Transcendent being – qualified…
The reconstruction of the entity has started…
Disposing of outer modifications of soul…
Wait, wait, what? Oh, no!
Having a bad premonition, Robert started to curse right after reading this line, but it was too late. Everything was already done, and he was just checking the log list of step-by-step changes with no ability to cancel anything. The beginning looked promising as if he was going to uncover a huge secret in a moment, but this part pushed the situation in a completely different way. The more Rob read, the more his mood worsened.
Disposing of outer modification of body…
Planting remnants of purified essences into the entity…
Merging everything together…
Error…
Overall power is not enough to break the current connection to a Transcendent being…
The Authority level is set back to previous restrictions…
Error…
The Authority was partly overruled…
The access to viewing detailed information about current abilities, including a restricted part about an entity called a “Primal Dragon” is granted…
Finalizing the change…
Starting…
However, before diving into the wall of text again, Robert opened his eyes to check his surroundings. He wanted to say that an hour had passed, and it was already a night, but it wasn’t. The untiring sun was scorching and bright as always. The corpses of the beasts were in the same places, untouched by anything because of the absence of any insects or scavengers. Only the dried skin of the dead could indicate that enough time had passed since his consumption of the heart.
The leader of the amphibians was lying motionlessly with a frozen expression. Rob might say it the look of unwillingness, but again – the face of a three-eyed humanoid without a nose was quite difficult to read. Robert didn’t regret his decision to abandon this human-fish. However, the eating of the heart was a completely different thing. From only a brief description of losing soul and body modification, he understood the possible severity of his situation. Rob knew that he was basically alive because of the inhuman body that was granted to him and not because he was creative, intelligent, or powerful. Nope, he basically overlived the threats, rising from the dead again and again.
The growing fear had stopped him from any mental efforts to check his abilities. He was scared not to get any response from habitual mental command. Despite that, Robert had already noticed the change. Not only did his pale skin lose those scary scars, but it also started to grow the body hair back. Still, that wasn’t the biggest hit to his confidence as his mind was struggling to see the surroundings as before. The focus of attention jumped from one point of interest to another, unable to enfold everything simultaneously.
The “power up”? Fucking shit! Rob, you stupid greedy idiot! You are not whore to shove any odd thing into your mouth immediately after getting an opportunity to! Dumbass!
Raging with anger aimed at himself, Robert punched the ground a few times in an attempt to calm down. It wasn’t working, so he decided to just dive into the text to finally understand in what deep hole he had pushed himself by hast and thoughtless action. This time he managed to notice the difference in summoning the Status screen. There was no tattoo on his forearm when the text had appeared on the white background, cutting off the surroundings.
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Human - Dragon Hybrid
Strength - 22 Agility - 16 Constitution - 24
Perception - 16 Mind - 30 Mana flow - 28
Elemental Affinity: Metal (Steel)
Active ability: Conjuring an element
Passive traits: God’s Envoy, Rejuvenation, Endless growth
Again, it is simple and short. The default settings? And what if… Nope, not working. So, first – I’ve lost the ability to change the status screen. The mentioning of God had disappeared together with Tier. Maybe the latter was just an easy way for Wepwakor to estimate the power level of its pawns without looking into details. What else? The Constitution must be a mixture of Endurance and Toughness. However, the biggest elephant in the room is my insane drop in Mind and Mana Flow with no mention of other abilities in Traits. 18 points in Minds – that is more than five times less than before. Fuck! Okay, calm down and read everything carefully.
Human - Dragon Hybrid – additional restricted information is unfolding…
The Primal Dragon wasn’t the first one to be born but was the first of his kind to break the limits of his own world, ascending further into the unknown and becoming a true free roamer. Not wanting to get another pair of chains, only bigger, they joined the group of similar beings. Wanderers, loners, or freaks, who dropped out from the ruling system that was set by Gods only because they didn’t want to be part of it. This difference in views often led to the situation, where they were pictured in a dark light by most of these power-driven beings. Demons, Devils, Abyssals – just a small part of the names they were given in multiple worlds. However, without any similar traits, habits, and unity, they used the word “Ascendants” instead.
During an unknown period, one of The Primal Dragon’s goals was to plant as many seeds as possible during his journey between dimensions. Each of them was basically a small part of his purified essence that would grant its power to a proper wielder but otherwise keep its dormant state forever. Spreading through the descendant with the strongest potential, it would seek its single chance in any form. However, aiming for natural growth and valuing freedom, the power from The Primal Dragon was never meant to turn the taker into a different species. On the contrary, improving the body, cleaning it from any external interventions, and strengthening the connection to interdimensional space and to affiliated elements, The Primal Dragon wished just to make the road ahead for future Ascendant easier, but not to choose its direction for them. The single addition was the ability of any pure dragon to grow, both in power and body, endlessly, using all free energy available and, in some cases, external sources. Taking into account the interconnected soul, the cycle of rise in strength would have no limits. The latter were always hated by true dragons and the Primal Dragon was the biggest example of that.
Surprisingly a lot of info here. So not only Gods are there, but these Ascendants. Even if they are on par in terms of power, which is questionable, I doubt that an unorganized and basically anarchic group can be on the same level with a strict ruling system… Really don’t like the part about free roamers with the possibility to become one of them. How am I going to get out of here?!
Stat: Constitution – the energy-fueled highly-regenerative body made it difficult to exhaust the strength of the body, so the united stat was created to indicate the overall physique of the body, including its toughness.
Active ability 1: Conjuring an element – an ability to summon any shape of the affiliated element from any part of own body using only an owner's mana. No external sources can be used to fuel it with energy. Instead, such a requirement to adapt mana through the element’s affiliated source grants much better control in manipulation. The properties of elements can’t be changed by adding more mana. Constantly consumes mana to sustain the conjuration. The element can’t be separated from the body because it will cut the energy link, thus dispersing it immediately.
Trait 1: God’s Envoy - envoys are engaged in different tasks from being missionaries or conquerors to observing natural laws or leading nations, but they are all united by one thing, which distinguishes the owner from the masses. Mark from a real God. Merging the body and the soul of the future envoy, God branded his servant with their symbol of power, leaving a mark that could be destroyed only with the destruction of both body and soul. From it, they can get part of God’s power, while also giving the energy or power back, access to a standardized self-status screen using God’s authority, the ability to communicate with some sapient species in different dimensions, and have increased potential by small margin, which is fully controlled by the God. ATTENTION: The mark is severely damaged!
Trait 2: Rejuvenation – the constant and endless flow of energy not only supplies the biological needs of the body but also boosts its ability to regenerate the damage by a noticeable degree while improving longevity even more. The more energy, the bigger the effect.
Trait 3: Endless growth – fueled by energy, the body of the owner will endlessly grow stronger, tougher, and bigger even without any additional training.
Rereading the descriptions carefully, Robert confirmed his first assumption. His “power up” turned out to be a real downgrade. He didn’t know the level of it quite yet, but he would know soon. Maybe someone would be happy to be named a dragon-kin or to lose basically a slave collar from God, but not Robert. His realistic life view pointed to way too many problems that appeared before him just because of this “upgrade”.
His return to his original body meant the disappearance of the "No Vulnerabilities" trait. One unlucky hit at the critical point would kill him immediately, when earlier he needed to lose over a half of the body for the same undesired result. His modified brain was replaced with a normal one, maybe not ceasing, but decreasing by several margins his ability to focus on several things simultaneously. The level of regeneration and decrease of biological needs turned out to be unknown and might be easily lower than before. At a bare minimum, there was no mention of the possibility of restoring any part. However, the loss of active ability to heal the wounds would also dramatically increase the danger of any fight.
Even if his regeneration is boosted by a hundredfold, which might sound huge, it would be many times less than before. Just by relying on natural healing a broken limb could take a half day even with such an insane increase, not to speak about more tangible wounds. The dangerous environment might not give him enough time to be ready for another hungry predator. The quick and simple test showed that the amount of steel Rob could conjure also dropped.
So, I am easier to kill, with no fast emergency healing, with remnants of multi-tasking, with less steel to summon… but I can grow as big as a fucking elephant. Wow! What a relief… Shit!
That didn’t end here as the inability to connect with his God might take a single opportunity to leave this world at all. Robert didn’t have any proper instructions on how to “free roam” between dimensions by himself. His system not only refused to change visualization like before but also completly ignored any of his mental commands. The limitless growth in power, including the ability to conjure his element, was only a potential for the future, and, frankly speaking, wasn’t new – he had a similar trait already.
Therefore, the single change that might be useful was to build up muscles without training. The problem was that the island didn’t have any place of entertainment. His workouts were a part of using free time somehow not go insane from boredom. Robert just couldn’t see even the slightest positive of this “power up”, except fully solving his issue with overflowing energy. Currently, an unknown amount of it went directly into his body, strengthening him. But by this point, he already had managed to find a balance. He also assumed that the drop in Mana Flow was caused by redirecting the energy into his body and what he was seeing in Status screen was a free mana, which wasn’t that helpful. And the main question stayed the same.
How am I going to fulfill the conditions of God in such circumstances, a stupid system?!
Sending the request…
Attention… The link is damaged…
Setting time limit before the destruction of the connection…
Error… Information cannot be disclosed…
The conditions:
Kill the Beast 0/1
Bring enough souls **% / 100%
Oh, here you go… Yes, finally! Thanks, System. And of course that asshole didn’t say about the additional need of souls. Okay, I am weaker and on time limit, but what is done is done. It is a karma, Rob. You were lecturing that fish about the consequences of his mistake, and you are in the same shitty position because the next moment after your pretentious speech you made your own. So, wipe your tears, and don’t be a crybaby. You are fucking Dragon Hybrid… Nope, it sounds so retard and overused. Just another secret that will die with me – right next to the bathing in the pile of shit.