I had waited right outside the forest for Aston and Chris. While leaning against the trunks of a young oak tree, I had my eyes kept closed and arms folded. I was observing the surroundings of Aston and Chris as they made their way towards me. I didn't had to keep my eyes closed, I could still 'see' without doing it; I just felt like it.

As they approaches, they could barely see my outline. Chris was being cautious on seeing a man covered with a robe waiting outside the forest. He drew his sword in preparation for an attack.  Meanwhile, Aston felt curious on the identity of the man, wondering if he could be me. I reacted towards their advances by turning to face them and took off my hood. Looks of cautiousness changed to that of relieved for Chris while Aston's curiosity grew.

"Hey. The two of you have finally reached."

"Yes we did. How did you get here so fast? You had some job to do right? We even had Chris to lead the way."

"Skills."

The one word answer left Aston baffled. Chris seemed less surprised.

"He meant the skills he had. They were the one that allowed him to know where we were heading towards as well."

"I could understand that part but-"

"No buts. Let's not waste anymore time and proceed to the city. I want to see how a city is like."

I cut Aston off and he sulk in reaction to that. Looking for a way to return the favor, he answered back teasingly.

"Aww, someone hadn't been to a city. What a country bumpkin. Hah!"

I gave him a look that could kill as he 'Hah'. He immediately regretted his decision to fight back and cold sweat flowed down his face as he paled. He remained silent on the remainder of the journey to the city as Chris gave me a quick run through on what the city is like.

The city is called Flussufera. It is part of the Bauenza empire and is one of it's manufacturing hubs. It produces many different type of raw materials and process them before exporting it to other cities. Flussufera was built in the middle of the plains to allow more time for detection of invasions from both human and monster alike. Its location also took into account of the many different rivers flowing down the mountain, making full use of them as fresh water sources that could easily be defended. To its north is Taura Forest, the one that we were in. To the west is a well-pathed stone road connecting to the other cities, with the Vuca mountain range providing the previously mentioned water sources blocking off the eastern and southern side of the city.

The journey took quite some time as we strolled leisurely towards what we could see as civilization. As we approaches, I could see the fields and fields of golden wheat shining under the sun that had reached its peak. The farms were situated by the sides of many different rivers, aiding in the irrigation of the fields. There were also other variations of crops, but wheat remained the majority.

Flussufera didn't really seemed like a city at first glance. There were no city walls to speak of. That surprised me greatly as Flussufera was supposed to be a manufacturing hub according to what Chris spoke about. That should had given enough importances for it to priorities defense. Chris gave me an explanation on the reasons behind that.

"Flussufera used to be a pretty small town when we arrived here a few years back. It wasn’t significant enough as a town for it to build walls and it had been peaceful and was far away from danger too. That changed when they discovered the abundant amount of raw material in the surroundings of Flussufera, mainly the metals within the Vuca mountain range. The discovery changed how the empire view Flussufera and thus Flussufera was given the priority to expand and become a city. A city that could provide the manpower and facilities to gather raw material before processing them and then exporting it to other cities. It was one of the main reasons for building the city near the mountains."

He continued on with the explanation of how the city was expanded and had still been expanding rapidly. They would put their focus on expanding the city before rushing out the city walls. That gave enough reasons for the lumberjacks to be in such a rush. They are one of the factors that determines when the city would become safer with the building of walls.

Going past the last field of crops, the number of houses gradually increased. The bustling of city life grew louder as we got closer to the city centre. We headed towards the adventurer's guild as we moved through the streets that were packed with traffic and there were also many peddlers by the side, leaving even less walking space.

The guild building was decently large. It was not longer than the longhouses back in the lumberjack camp but was definitely wider. Compared to the inn beside it, it was more than four times bigger. Unlike the surrounding building that were a story high, with the occasional two, the guild was three stories high too. Due to the differences in height and size of the guild as compared to the other buildings, it wasn't hard to tell from afar where it was.

We entered through the large wooden double doors that was at least two metres tall and wide. It swung inwards and we could see the large number of adventurers gathered within. There were some that were having their lunch, some drinking alcohol, handing in requests or even just looking at the notice board. 

Most if not all of them turned towards us when we entered. The sudden stop in clattering gave me the impression that time had been stopped momentarily. Time continued flowing when the bustling returns and nothing seemed to had happened. They went back to what they were doing, except a small number that continued to monitor us. Which in truth was just me. I noticed that I was still wearing a robe, drawing suspicious glance from those individuals. Taking a mental note to buy less suspicious clothings, I walked towards the corner of the room that was darken by shadow instead of following the two to receive the reward for the request.

I activated [Blend In] and put on my hood. As I confirmed that it prevented a clear view for those spying on me, I started spreading spores into the room. Within seconds, messages started to pop out like crazy, with all of them being the same one.

Due to your intelligence being too low, your spores had been resisted.

I could only curse silently under my breath on how little adventurers that I could turn into spores creatures. I hadn't even tried to contaminate them yet and it had already failed so badly. I could only reduce my wisdom bonus until there were no intelligence penalty and tried again. This time, I managed to get passed the resistance of half the people in the room. It did took quite a while as I didn't have as much mana regeneration to keep up with my emissions. 

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Being only able to convert half of the adventurers after getting back to full intelligence also told me something; Aston and Chris are pretty weak willpower wise as compared to most of the people in the room. I didn’t even had to remove my intelligence penalty to infect them easily, it was even a low five then too. I suppose my plans to spread my influence far and wide wouldn't be as easy as I thought.

I joined back to Aston and Chris after they collected the reward from the extermination request. They saw me walked over and handed me a leather pouch which contains a third of the reward. I just gave them a nod and asked a question.

"Are we going to look for a place to rest at now?"

"Yeah. The inn next door may not be the cheapest, but they do provide good food and lodging at a decent price. I can't wait to eat their rabbit stew again, thinking about it had already made me drool."

Aston spoke as his facial expression changed to that of perversion instead of hunger. We pretended that we didn't know him and proceeded to the inn which was mentioned and rented a room each. 

We had a quick lunch of bread with stew before we went up to each of our room to rest. It was decided during lunch that they would be going to stock up on necessity in the city after a short afternoon nab while I would go solo and get myself some new clothes instead.

I sat on the soft single bed in the middle of the small room. It was small but yet sufficient with the bed, a wardrobe, a lockable chest, two chairs and a table. I took this opportunity to review my status as I rest on my bed, remembering that I had just enough stat points to spent on getting a new spores type.

Blood SporesBy infusing blood into your spores, they are able to feed on the life force within to last a long duration. It also allow easier contamination of other creatures through the power within your blood.Cost: 1*health and 1*mana

MicrosporesYou use more mana to produce microscopic spores. These spores are able to pass through places that are usually not penetrable.Cost: 3*mana

SporelingBy spending your health and mana, you are able to create a separate existence. It can only use [Spores Emission] but other spores type may be used if you have the access to it. It's stats are determined by the amount of health and mana spent on it.Cost: Varies

Although all three types are extremely useful, I chose the first option without hesitation. It helps with what I was lacking the most at the moment; the ability to contaminate. I might not need to worry about the intelligence requirements with it and contaminate others straight away. Even if I the requirement wasn’t removed, it still greatly reduces the time needed to contaminate others.

Feeling extremely satisfied, I went out of the inn to search for a store to buy new clothings. I really wanted to test the new spores right away but I didn't want to remain so conspicuous. I turned right after walking out the front door of the inn, past the guild and down the street. I spotted a clothing store soon after and went in.

The shopkeeper was a slightly muscular man in his thirties. He was slightly tone and had short black wavy hair. He grew a moustache that joined with his short beard, barely covering his chin. A tunic that was dark green with dull yellow outline covered half the length of his arms.

He didn't seemed pleased when I entered the store, probably thinking that I was a thief or someone looking for trouble. I couldn't blame him for believing that with how I looked, so I approached him to tell him of what I needed. His annoyed expression instantly changed to that of a businessman and he gave a big smile. He quickly took down my measurements and got me what I asked for. It cost me pretty much all my money but I believed that it was worth the cost.

There was a set of clothings that was dedicated to stealth which consist of one each of leather hood, long sleeve leather tunic, linen breeches with some leather layering, leather boots, leather gloves and a leather buckle belt. Needless to say, they were all black or at least dark brown to aid in staying unseen. There were a different set for typical adventuring. They were the same design as the stealth ones, with the only exception being the differences in color. They were dark brown hood, dark green upperwear, pale yellow linen with dark brown cladding for the leather lower wear, brown boots, gloves, belt and an additional leather sack for item storage. Other than these, there were also two pair of casual wear. Linen tunic and breeches of two different shades of green and grey respectively in addition to six pairs of white cotton braies.

The quality of the clothings weren't bad, they seemed like they were suitable for fights and adventuring with it's durability. They also felt comfortable on the skin, not as smooth as silk, but not rough enough to cause rashes or discomfort either. For the amount I brought, the price I paid was a bargain for sure even though I didn't know of their market prices.

I changed into one of the casual clothings before exiting the store. I put on the adventuring hood which didn’t fit too well with what I wore and walked into a narrow alley. Although the sun was still high in the sky, shadow covers the alleyways. I decided to use this chance to test my new spores. 

I concentrated and used [Spores Emission] to emitting blood spores instead of normal ones by directing my blood into them. The feeling of health being drained was vastly different from that of the usage of mana. I realised too late that I had used too much health when I saw that my vision had turned red. I felt dizzy and dropped on to the ground, still hidden from the view of the streets. As my consciousness leave me, I could see tints of red spreading into the streets and screams echoed into my brain.

-----

Author’s Notes: Nothing much to say here, other than maybe my attempt at describing? It might not have been good enough, but I tried. :3