Lukas silently stared at the two dark red cores in his hands. One of them were slightly lighter than the other.
The lighter one belonged to the Ash Viper while the darker one was from the Crimson Viper.
Both the snakes were F ranked but Lukas was now having problems with trying to pick one. Follow current novels on novèlfire.net
The Ash Viper would give him a huge boost in Strength, Durability and Mana while also helping with the other stats but just not as much as the other three. It would also grant him a new skill. It could either be a Lighting Kick or Thunderous Bite.
Next was the Crimson Viper that could give him a huge boost in Strength, Durability and Perception. This boost in stats was 50% higher than the Ash Viper but there was no unique skills.
Both the cores would grant him a skill unique to snakes that had scales and it was simply called; Scales.
'Pure stats or an extra skill… hmm. Crimson Viper will give me an E rank skill while Ash will give me a F ranked scales, ugh.'
He thought about it for a while and then decided to go with the Ash Viper since he needed offensive skills. As for the extra stats, he could get that by eating meat. Having made up his mind, he couldn't help but suddenly had a question.
The only reason people took huge gaps between getting a first mutation and a second one was to expel all the bad stuff from their bodies. Since he did not have this problem he wondered if he could absorb both.
But just to be safe, he decided to ask his system.
[It is safe to absorb as much as 100 cores but there will be diminishing returns. After 100, there will be a huge chance to mutate even if you clean the cores. This is due to the minute amount of remnant sprit/will inside the cores.]
'A hundred….' he thought as he nodded, 'Can I mix different kinds of cores?'
[Currently, no. Safest way is to use the cores of the same species.]
'Currently? Does that mean I can do it in the future?' he asked inwardly and got no response but this didn't put down his mood. He sat down on the floor and looked at Nina who was sitting by the entrance.
"Nina, I'm going to undergo a mutation. Can you close the door and stay guard for me?"
She gave him a slight nod and closed the door from the outside, leaving the room in darkness. Lukas didn't care about the light as he brought out exactly 100 cores of Ash Viper.
They dropped to the floor right in front of him and rolled away.
'Damn…' he cursed as he hurriedly took out four wooden beams and used them to make a boundary to keep the cores from rolling away, or atleast the ones that still hadn't rolled too far.
With this, Lukas went ahead and gathered all the cores and put them all together. Using a fire torch to count the cores and setting everything up, he sat down and put out the fire.
Sitting in front of the cores, he closed his eyes and began mana breathing. Slowly, he began to inhale the mana within the cores. At first, he could only sense a slight tingling inside his nose but soon, it felt like he was getting electrocuted.
In the room, there was visible yellowish smoke that seemed to be coming from the cores and every bit of it was inhaled by Lukas. At first, it looked like regular smoke but as time passed and all the cores began to emit smoke, things changed.
All the smoke swirled together before forming an Ash Viper. It was still smoke but it looked like the real thing as he slithered in the air and went into his nostrils. The moment it made contact, sparks were produced from it's body.
Without stopping, it slithered into his nose and disappeared before another snake was formed and repeated the cycle. One by one, Ash Vipers slithered into his nose while the cores began to shrink steadily.
As this happened, a bright yellow line appeared on the back of his palm before spiraling towards his elbow. The line emitted a bright neon light as if it was pulsing, as if it had a heart.
Nina looked up at the sky before she turned her attention to the people who were coming back from their daily hunts. It was time for the sun to set and for the people to gather together.
She felt calm and peaceful as she idly observed the kids who were showing off their daily catches. Alas, it didn't last long as the entire tribe felt the ground vibrate beneath them.
Nina couldn't help but look at the door beside her. Not knowing if it was something dangerous or if it was just a regular occurrence, she hesitated as she fought against the idea of disturbing her brother.
Just as she was about to knock on the door, the tremors stopped.
"Sigh…" she turned to looked at the people around her who looked just as surprised as her and some of them seemed pretty terrified. In just a few minutes, she saw the stronger people return back to the tribe, looking extremely alarmed.
One of them was Rena who rushed back home with a huge crocodile on her shoulder. She had felt the tremors and immediately rushed back home while ignoring the second crocodile that could have also become the tribe's dinner tonight.
Seeing that there wasn't anything dangerous, she let out a sigh of relief as she looked around.
'The door is locked and the quiet lady is sitting outside… is the honorable shaman doing a ritual?' she thought as she tossed the still alive crocodile on the ground and stomped on it's head.
Just as she had done that, the door opened. An unfamiliar looking man walked out, one that did not look human. Dark grey scales grew all over his body, including his face. His eyes had pitch black slits while the iris was bright yellow in colour.
There was only one thing familiar about this person and that was the clothes he was wearing.
'…. honorable shaman?'