It was almost midnight by the time they managed to strap the last vine around the stack of bamboos that constituted their raft. The jungle was not asleep and silent at night. Insects were there to accompany them, be it mosquitoes, spiders, centipedes, millipedes, fireflies, grasshoppers, and countless other nocturnal bugs that had been disturbed by their loud, destructive movements at the edge of the stream.

Mir had been fearful that some larger creatures might be attracted to their location due to the ruckus, but apparently, the threat of the enraged bees seemed like a deterrent dangerous enough to keep the other predators nearby in check, not that there were many predators in the peripheral region of the sacred ground, to begin with.

Task accomplished, they tested the raft a couple more times in the shallow waters, discovering that the twelve feet by twelve feet construct could barely support their combined weight. Perhaps adding another layer of bamboo might make it safer, but they couldn't find more bamboo clusters nearby to do that. They'd have to wait till daylight to search for more inside the jungle.

"Now, let's use the remaining time of the night productively. Mir, you'll stand guard for the next 2 hours. Reno, you can sleep for the next 4 hours. I'll be drinking the rest of the honey to increase my stats."

Murray walked ashore and sat down on the bank, dumping a mouthful of honey down his gullet. While he closed his eyes and put on a cloth gag around his mouth, Reno and Mir watched him with their full attention.

Murray's hallucination episode lasted nearly thirty-five minutes, by the end of which he looked absolutely spent. Leaving a shaken Reno behind on the raft, Mir went up to the bank to check on him.

"The hallucinations are this powerful in the later stages? Good Lord!" Reno said, half-amazed, half-frightened.

"Oh yeah. Heck, even the initial hallucinations can be pretty fucked up if you keep your eyes open during the attack. I almost lost in mine," Mir replied.

"This is just making me even more unwilling to consume contaminated food..."

"You gotta do it if you want to live. And you gotta do it as many times as you can if you want to live well in the future. What's the use in being scared?"

Shrugging nonchalantly, Mir began to walk around the area, occasionally chasing off an odd bee that had separated from its swarm.

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Most of these bees were mutants themselves. But forming a contract with them would be a waste of his own potential. Each time a human formed a contract with a creature, the data and the neural imprint it would leave in his brain would become a part of his neural networks. If the contracted creature died, those parts would be destroyed with it, leaving a backlash that was hard to overcome even at the Transcendent stage. For those below that stage, like Mir and Murray, such an accident meant huge damage to their developing neural networks. The backlash would cause massive disturbance in the brainwaves, sometimes which could destroy a functional brain, leaving an empty husk behind that would be incapable of doing the basic tasks of a human mind.

The best outcome a human pursuing the evolution standard score could hope for in this case was to only have a limited portion of his brainwaves disturbed. This would mean that they would never be able to pursue the peak of the evolution standard scale, lest the future Brainwave Disturbance caused by the hallucination attacks cross the upper limit of safety range and turn him into a mutated, insane abomination.

If one still wanted to become a Transcender at that point, they'd have to risk everything and begin the Virus Neutralization Process with their major stats stuck around the 50% – 70% score range. This would severely limit their Soulslot Reserve, their future spiritual growth, and their capacity to attain a high-level mutation once...no, IF they reached the Transcendent tier.

This was the reason why few people would try to form contracts with mutant creatures before reaching the peak of the Evolution Standard Scale with all of their stats maxed. Once one reached this stage, there wasn’t much to fear. One could even use these contracted creatures at that time to break through to the Transcendent tier, although this method was now considered too primitive and risky, used only during the early days of the advent of the Sun's curse.

There were far safer methods available now. The most popular of which was the Virus Neutralizer formula. Not only it allowed one to break through without any mental disturbance, it also helped in controlling the mutation one would experience in the process, which often saved lives and preserved the sanity of weaker Transcenders.

Hence, Mir was unwilling to form any contracts with ordinary mutant creatures just to ward off their trackers. If any of his contracted creatures died, his future would be in dire straits. The Purplevein Queen Bee, on the other hand, was a decent choice. She would be durable enough to not die immediately when used in combat. Although the newly groomed queen would be a grade- 1 mutant, she would be much more useful than ordinary grade- 1 mutant bees. And her high mutation potential would mean she could mutate further in the future alongside him.

"Mir, have you fully recovered from the hallucinations yet?" Murray suddenly shouted from where he was sitting, apparently having recovered from his own hallucination episode.

"Yeah, I don’t see the phantom bees anymore," he truthfully answered.

"Well, get ready for the backlash."

"The what? Why would I experience a back-"

Mir stopped in his tracks, the realization hitting him rather bluntly.

He had used the diary to strengthen his mental resolve, empower his mind to not lose itself in the flow of the hallucination, anchoring his thoughts to one sentence: 'I will not give in to any temptations caused by the hallucinations.'

Granted, he had had to rely on his wisdom and guesswork to figure out whether he was actually inside an illusion or not during the mental attack. But his incorruptible clarity and the artificially created persistence had been the real factor that had allowed him to make the correct decisions. Even when every part of his body and mind had screamed at him to mutate according to the need of the moment, he had stubbornly clung to that one principle– no giving in to the urges.

And this would naturally exact a toll. The diary wasn’t just a useful tool. It had its side effects, pretty severe ones at that too.

Mir recalled that after drinking the honey, his [ Extent of Viral Infection ] Stat had increased to 9% from its previous abysmal 7% score.

The diary's suppression of the virus would take effect soon, now that so much time had passed after making that wish.

And that was just the lesser side effect. The major one was the period of unconsciousness that would follow after the expiration of the wish.

"...Fuck."