Becoming a Monster

Chapter 257: Chapter 257: Weak, But Not Useless

Boom!*

Strong collisions resounded, impacts that didn’t entirely make sense if one were to hear it. The sounds were an abnormality when understanding that the noise was only being created from the transformed zombie’s barrage of fists being executed on the slime who remained utterly defenseless against the zombies speed.

The golem was clearly inferior, each attack it threw was countered, while it received multiple punches in response to its one, and yet, it was the zombie that found itself becoming annoyed.

The zombie was right to call the golem weak in comparison to itself. Its current punches, if used against Fenrir, would leave crippling results with each strike, even against Fenrir’s sturdy hide. But this creature, it was far too slow, its strength far too inferior, and yet everytime it landed a punch, ripples of the golems body would distort, absorbing the impact that wouldn’t be possible if a natural creature or human were to have the same ability.

Because the zombie was aware of its own strength, it knew that regardless of being able to absorb the impact of its blows, its punches would still destroy or even severely damage their insides.

The zombie only began to despise the golem even more just because of what it was. Electric crackled, far louder and menacing than before. The arcs of blue whitish lightening began to manifest sparks of gold within it, becoming a much more powerful threat than before. An even more powerful version of electricity that had once completely deteriorated one of Ailetta’s legs, its power should completely vaporize the golem within seconds.

From afar, Ailetta’s eyes narrowed with deep scrutiny, painfully aware that she, how she was, wouldn’t be able to participate in such a fight. Her mana wasn’t viewed in the same way as Noah’s and the others. If her slime was evaporated, the mana that was contained within that slime wouldn’t be regenerated over time. Her slime and her mana core held a relationship that was both more fragile and yet stronger than all the others.

Her mana was entirely tied to her essence. On one hand, she had the potential to continually increase her mana reserves, and on that same hand, she could potentially lose those reserves permanently.

”You’re thinking what I’m thinking?” She looked towards her other self, a mock smile playing on her lips before she chuckled.

”Of course you are,” she answered herself without a shred of embarrassment. Her other half laughed with the same eerie giggle as she made her way closer.

”As long as it works, then Noah should have nothing to be upset about. Experiments can’t always be done in a controlled setting, it’s a shame he doesn’t feel the same way.”

Their eyes locked onto each, while each had a watching gaze on Noah, keeping an eye out to make sure he wasn’t paying attention to what they were doing.

Their bodies continuously grew closer, eventually their forms touched. In that same moment, the point of contact began to merge. A hand, an arm, a leg; their bodies continued to meld until their heads were the last bit that fully became one.

______________

Despite the zombies’ electricity tearing and burning through golems’ form, the golem still stubbornly was able to reach out. With ease, the zombie grabbed both of the golem’s arms mid-swing. The electric field around it began to converge. Every tendril, every spark that was being emitted from the zombies body violently danced across its form, generating static that affected everyone in the vicinity. All of it converged onto the golem.

The golems body jolted, its head snapped into the air, toxic fumes from its burning tar quickly rose into the air.

Still, the zombie found itself frowning. It could smell it, it could see the damage that it was doing to the golem, the golem was completely at its mercy. Seconds passed, its trait to generate the oiled substance wasn’t able to keep up the portion that was being burned away.

And yet....something was wrong.

”!”

The golem, that has always resorted to using its fist, finally revealed what was hidden behind the substance hiding away its face. Its mouth was no different than a snakes, maybe it was more gruesome. Its mouth opened, its jaw extending almost to its collarbone. Blood red teeth took up the void that was in its mouth, teeth that were nearly two inches long that continued to extend as its jaws extended further.

Realising that its electricity wouldn’t stop the golem from attempting to take a bite out of it, the zombie thought it could simply pull away, and that was where it realized what was wrong.

It felt a force preventing it from retrieving its hands. Its instinctive tug wasn’t able to allow it to release itself so easily, it was as if its hand was sinking into golems body. No, the zombie realized that the ”tar” was almost as similar as its most special ability. It wasn’t that its hands were simply sinking into the golems body, but it was trying to envelope him.

Maybe it was because the golem noticed that the zombie was trying to gain distance, but as soon as the zombie began to try to extract itself, the golem’s entire demeanor changed.

Its mouth unleashed a shriek so abnormal, one would believe a banshee was being endlessly tormented. Its shrek came with a sudden shift of its body. Every ounce of tar that had deteriorated, sprung out from its body, fanning out to create an expansive that shot out in every direction that all began to converge towards the same place.

Boom!

A red aura that had been stimulating throughout the zombie’s body since its foreboding instincts finally released. A powerful invisible barrier enveloped him, pushing away the golem and the ground underneath it. The daunting wave of tar was blown in every direction along with it.

The golems’ entire body lost its hardened form. The repulsive blow played a bigger impact than its more notable electricity.

During the golems’ flight, a gleam entered through the zombies’ vision. Its instinctive drive to consume mana cores from both zombie and humans alike allowed it to instantly take notice of the core that briefly showed its appearance within the golems body.

The moment the gleam caught the zombie’s attention, its focus shifted entirely. The zombie’s eyes locked onto it, an unrelenting hunger for power awakening deep within its corrupted sense of identity.

Not only could obtaining the core diminish the golems strength, it could potentially cripple it entirely, while also imbuing itself with more strength than it had obtained from absorbing tens of the humans within the market.

Its muscles tensed as it prepared to follow behind the golem.

Not even a step was taken before its body jerked, its arms raising as it instinctively swung to its side with pure reflexes. As it turned to attack the sudden assailant, the zombie was only able to get a glance of who was attacking it. For a moment it believed that it was the giant wolf from before, not realizing that if it was, there was a significant size difference.

Its preconception was quickly shattered the moment it felt its body become unresponsive for half a second, a less than noticeable shift in time, but made all the difference when the next blow struck.

The zombie’s vision blurred as the force of the impact collided directly into its face. Its neck snapped back from the explosive force. The strength of the blow was surreal and yet the zombie was still dazed from what happened.

Despite the lapse of thought, its body moved on its own. Its hands reaching out for the attacker in question, its body already beginning to spark as it readied itself to release a torrent of electric energy.

But then something abnormal blocked its hand, while the other was stabbed by something sharp that resisted its grasp. And before its head came down to see what it was, A giant spike descended down towards its face.

The electricity it began to generate, that was on the cusp of being fully released, was disrupted. Once again it found its body not reacting to its commands.

Thud*

Its body was snapped forcibly down into the ground from the momentum of the spike that continued to slam down with it.

The loud collison drowned out the sound of the bones splinting in its face, tt’s skull fractured under the pressure.

Its undamaged eye shot open to look at the perpetrator, seeing a smaller form of Fenrir that appeared more ferocious than the massive beast that could spew fire.

Noah’s gaze was intense, blinded with an excited savagery, an expression that perfectly matched his new appearance.

Noah’s change was just as drastic as before, if his slime form could be considered ominous, then his dreadbeast form was nothing short of terrifying. His height remained stagnant, yet the exoskeleton that always enveloped him became denser, bulkier, making his average stature appear physically stronger than before.

The newfound outer armor that was now cohesively inhabiting Noah’s figure that was now brimming with his bristled silver fur, gave him an appearance with a feral regalness.

His slime that normally filled in the role of his armless arm was no longer capable of continuing its role, leaving that side bare. However, the arm that was still functional became a weapon even more domineering than before, if anything, it only emphasized the terrifying nature of the arm that did remain.

And then there were the giant spikes...