Becoming a Monster

Chapter 218: Chapter 218: Ascendent Aberration

The slime creature continued to dislodge itself from the spider, uncaring for the continuous attacks inflicted on its body.

Arachne had no idea what Ailetta was planning. With her aid gone, the behemoth would prove to be more difficult than ever to defeat now. However, the more Arachne feared she could lose, the fiercer she became in her attacks. Despite the creature’s heightened recovery factor, Arachne scrutinized the fact that the creature wasn’t able to heal the deadliest aspect of her attacks.

Her body continued to explode, dashing, blocking, attacking. Each wound she created she would ensure that the wound was quickly injected with one of her accursed webs that would dig deeper into the wounds with the help of the behemoth itself. For each poisoned wound that was healed, the webs that embedded themselves would also be covered up by its new skeleton that formed over it, allowing the webs to continue its functions of inflicting its stat draining qualities onto the creatures.

Although the behemoth could heal itself, healing didn’t correlate to cleansing. The poison that continued to accumulate within it was gradually strengthening its potency the longer it built up into the creature’s blood. Combined with Arachne’s webs, time also became her opponent. With time she could beat it, the creature wouldn’t even be able to be considered her opponent anymore. But how much mana has she spent? What about the stamina needed to continuously evade the spider’s thorns, and the strength needed to parry them?

These were all factors that she also considered, making her understand that time wasn’t her ally in this fight. 15-20 minutes? If she could last that long while continuously keeping up her charade, then victory would be hers.

But being aware of her limits, she chose to strike the area that was the spiders most vulnerable, but also most dangerous, its face.

The behemoth’s face was also the one area that was unprotected from the thorns. Instead, Arachne had to risk getting caught within its massive, deadly mandibles that despite its one-dimensional form of danger, was still much more threatening than the multitude of thorns.

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The behemoth’s angry shrieks were a clear indicator of Arachne’s success. While Arachne continued to antagonize the creature, the battered slime aberration was already standing in front of Ailetta with a devoted and yearning gaze.

Ailetta’s hand was outstretched, waiting for the aberration to give her something. Words were unnecessary between them as the aberration lowered itself, placing its own hand that was largely disproportionate to her own next to hers. Eerily, something from its chest bulge, the bulge was in the form of a circle as it slowly moved through the aberration’s chest, shoulder, and gradually making its way down its arm. Finally, a massive mana core emerged from its palm, glowing with an intense violet light amidst the darkness, wrapped around gray nebulas, with the same unknown yellow particles mixed between.

Ailetta’s lips curled into a small, knowing smile as she gently took the core from the aberration’s palm. She held the core with both hands, admiring it as if it was a priceless treasure.

”This is far better than I expected...It’ll do just nicely,” she muttered to herself in a delirious fashion. Her gaze fixated on the mana core in her hand, its pulsating light reflecting the growing fervor in her expression.

Anyone observing might have thought she had completely disengaged from the battle, entranced by the object of her creation. But even amidst her fervent musings, the rest of her eyes were always watching everything going around her, especially the eye that always was fixated on Noah, hoping he was watching her, expecting how much pride he would show if her experiment was successful.

”You can come home now, sweetie,” one of her eyes looked over to her creation that was still waiting patiently. The absence of the core within its body was already taking its toll. Without it, the aberration was forced to consume its own reserves of mana just to sustain itself, undoing the precious accumulation of energy it had gathered throughout the battle. Each second it stood without direction was a waste of its potential, a squandering Ailetta wouldn’t allow it to persist.

The creature’s body quivered at her words, as though overjoyed at her acknowledgment. The change started at its tail, its slime receding up its body, revealing what was left of the creature underneath it. Multiple areas of its body began to fall apart, bones broken, flesh missing, and inner parts of its body ruptured and torn apart now that the slime was no longer holding it together. The slime traveled into the air, circulating and compressing itself to eventually form an abysmal slime three times the size of the original.

One could only imagine the sheer size the slime might have attained had it not expended so much of its mass recovering from the behemoth’s relentless assaults. Despite its diminished state, the moment it merged with Ailetta, her power surged noticeably. Her mana reserves swelled, and her magical aptitude increased by a full 20 points.

Ailetta’s smile widened, her expression a mixture of satisfaction and unrestrained glee. Everything was going better than she had anticipated, and the mana core she now possessed only made her anticipate for what she planned to do to raise her expectations even more.

Meanwhile, Noah couldn’t stop wondering what she was about to do. But no matter what, he planned to fully observe it all, he was aware of his shortcomings and watching Ailetta defy the system’s regulations and limits would help him uncover ways to do the same, at least that was his goal. But his problem didn’t stem just from the lack of creativity, it was due to the fact that he was strong. If something didn’t have the need to be fixed or improved, then how exactly would one go about improving it?

Noah had always found the matter taxing on his mind. It was the same reason why he was only able to fully exert himself and overcome his limits during life threatening battles.

He continued to watch, Ailetta’s skills fresh in his mind, he knew every possible skill Ailetta could activate that could involve the core that she looked at so favorably. Before she could go through with her plan, he tried to think of all of the possible scenarios. Obviously, whatever she planned had something to do with the core, but what?

As he watched her, Ailetta placed the core onto her chest in the area opposite of where her heart should be. In the very next moment, the orb began to slowly seep through her slime exterior, eventually fully submerging itself into her body.

Her figure remained still afterwards, too still for Noah’s liking. But his ’eye’ saw everything. Her mana was in shambles, threatening to erupt from within her. Two opposing energies within her were colliding violently, each vying for dominance. The tension within her reached a breaking point, and Noah watched as the clashing forces spurred a transformation.

Her body contorted unnaturally, stretching and reshaping in ways that defied comprehension. Her lower half split into four grotesque extensions, each moving with a sinister, serpentine grace. These new appendages curved sharply, propping her body above the ground with unnerving stability. As they extended outward, their tips morphed into monstrous snake heads.

Each leg stretched to almost 30 feet. The heads of the serpents at the tips of her limbs were enormous, their size nearly matching that of her entire body. Each head was grotesque and monstrous, with eyes as large as Noah’s entire torso, their crimson depths glowing with a malevolent intelligence. Their jaws were lined with rows of razor-sharp teeth.

The heads hissed in unison, their wide, dripping maws snapping open and closed in anticipation, as though tasting the very air for the scent of prey.

Her transformation didn’t end there. Her back erupted, tearing apart the gelatinous remnants of her humanoid form to reveal four translucent, dragonfly-like wings. The wings shimmered ominously, pulsating with both violet energy and streaks of crimson. Each wing was as large as her body if not accounting for the addition of the four replacements of her legs.

As Ailetta stood, her eyes marveling over her new changes while also watching Noah’s expression, she couldn’t contain herself anymore. Delighted laughter erupted from her, her body jerking with the power of her emotional giddiness. The experiment was a success, surprising Noah, a success. Now she needed to prove her power. Her gaze locked onto the behemoth that was now missing three other eyes.

”She can be quite vindictive...” Ailetta mused aloud. ”But....” Her gaze locked onto Arachne who was forced to retreat away, her breaths were beginning to become labored. ”She shouldn’t mind if I stole her thunder, right?”

Without needing to practice, the wings behind her began to move. The flapping of her wings was slow and steady at first. But the speed continued to pick up until the moment that the wings seemed to stop moving, however the hum of her wings grew louder, betraying the fact that her wings were still beating, but at unimaginable speeds.

With the power of her wings that even created another wind to dig into the ground beneath her, her body lifted from the ground, allowing her to continue to fly until she hovered a few feet from the ground. It was time to prove to everyone why she was second in command.