Becoming a Monster

Chapter 641: Chapter 640: Am I Really That Evil?

Noah was impressed with what he learned about Morvyr, but that was all it was.

The elf had given him a much better understanding of what he could expect from one of the Queen’s arbors, especially when their abilities were taken into consideration alongside their natural strength.

It was useful information to have, but Noah had considerably more reason to focus on himself after everything that happened inside the cave.

The changes he experienced from incorporating everyone’s genes had gone beyond what he originally expected.

Strangely enough, that wasn’t because his attributes had experienced some ridiculous increase.

Noah had become stronger. He could feel that much without needing his Nexus Eye to tell him, and the amount of mana his body could hold had increased along with it.

But neither improvement was significant enough on its own to explain how much his overall power had changed.

The biggest difference came from his abilities.

His Draconic Dreadbeast bloodline was probably the best example.

It had originally been created from the genes Noah received from Fenrir and Bolas, and now that both of their bloodlines had evolved, incorporating their genes again caused his combined bloodline to do the same.

Noah had expected the bloodline to become stronger.

He even expected his abilities to change, but instead the change itself was different than usual.

His Draconic Dreadbeast bloodline had evolved into an Infernal Dragonfiend, but that didn’t mean everything attached to the bloodline had suddenly been replaced. Most of his abilities remained relatively the same, only gaining additional effects that reflected the improvements brought by Fenrir and Bolas.

Those additions were where things became more ridiculous.

Miasmic Sovereignty had already allowed Noah to devour mana and temporarily use it to recover his own reserves. Now, absorbing mana could directly increase his magical power as well.

The increase depended entirely on how much mana he was actively absorbing. The more he consumed, the greater his magical power became, and besides the increase being temporary, Noah couldn’t find any actual limit to how high it could stack.

Of course, reaching some absurd level would require an equally absurd amount of mana to continuously feed the ability.

But the possibility was there.

Miasma was no longer the only thing Noah could use to reinforce himself either.

The infernal flames brought by his evolved bloodline could be used in much the same way, allowing Noah to channel them through his body or concentrate them within individual parts. The difference was that the reinforcement they provided was at least twice as effective as what he could achieve through miasma.

That additional power came at the obvious cost of requiring considerably more energy to maintain, making miasma the more efficient choice whenever Noah wasn’t in the crisis.

Overlord’s Manifestation had experienced a much more straightforward improvement.

Manifesting his Infernal Dragonfiend bloodline now increased his Strength, Stamina, Magic, and Constitution by fifty percent instead of the previous thirty. His affinity with the bloodline also made him completely immune to flames weaker than his own while doubling the effectiveness of his normal mana perception.

Noah could already imagine how useful the latter would become.

Mana perception was something he relied on almost constantly during a fight. Being able to perceive it twice as effectively meant spells, concentrations of mana, and even changes in the mana around him would become considerably easier to notice while the manifestation was active.

Ancient Blood Awakening had changed in a way Noah found even more interesting.

The Awakened Vassals created through the skill were no longer separated from the rest of his creatures when it came to his taming abilities.

Before, their unique connection to Noah came with boundaries that prevented him from doing everything he could with his normal companions.

Those boundaries were gone.

Noah could now fuse with an Awakened Vassal just as he could with the others, and more importantly, he could share one of his skills with them through the same connection. The number of Awakened Vassals he could maintain had also doubled, increasing from two to four.

That alone opened up considerably more possibilities for the skill.

Overlord’s Resonance was where Noah began to see the other side of his increased power.

Previously, the ability could increase all of his attributes by one hundred percent. That limit had now risen to one hundred and fifty.

Unfortunately, the consequences hadn’t remained the same while the benefits increased.

Noah could still use the ability up to its previous limit without experiencing anything worse than what he was already accustomed to. Only when he pushed the resonance beyond one hundred percent did the negative effects begin to increase alongside the additional power.

The closer Noah came to the new limit, the more severe those effects would become.

It made the additional fifty percent something Noah couldn’t treat as free strength, but that didn’t make it any less valuable.

Yet even that wasn’t the change Noah found the most dangerous.

Unlike everything else, his final ability hadn’t existed before.

Infernal Hellfire.

From what Noah understood, the flames were supposed to originate from Hell itself, and their most important property was surprisingly simple.

They destroyed.

Organic matter, inorganic material, and even spiritual beings could all be consumed by the flames.

As long as Noah’s flames were powerful enough to overcome whatever they were burning, they possessed the potential to destroy it.

An ability like that immediately became one of the most dangerous things Noah possessed.

It was also dangerous even to himself.

Infernal Hellfire didn’t sustain itself through mana alone. Every moment Noah kept the flames burning consumed some of his vitality alongside his mana, forcing his own body to contribute toward sustaining flames capable of destroying nearly anything they touched.

Prolonged use was even worse.

The longer Noah maintained the flames, the greater the strain placed on his soul became. He couldn’t simply reclaim what he spent by absorbing the fire afterward either. Unlike natural flames or his miasmic energy, Infernal Hellfire couldn’t be reabsorbed once Noah created it.

And despite being its user, Noah wasn’t completely safe from it.

His resistance to fire could protect him from flames weaker than his own, but Infernal Hellfire was his own flame. Losing control of it or carelessly allowing it to spread back toward himself could damage Noah just as readily as whatever he intended to destroy.

For once, Noah had gained an ability where learning how to use it wasn’t simply a matter of figuring out how much mana he could afford to spend.

In the end, the results of the new bloodline were worthy of the two who gave him their blood.

Ailetta’s bloodline was a different matter.

Unlike Fenrir and Bolas, Noah couldn’t also obtain anything new from Arachne to improve the other half of their combined bloodline. Because of that, it hadn’t experienced the same change as his Infernal Dragonfiend.

That didn’t mean Ailetta’s new genes had been useless.

One of the first improvements Noah noticed was the increased potential of his golems.

Ailetta’s recent growth had greatly improved the intelligence of the slimes she created, and after incorporating her genes again, a similar improvement carried over to Noah’s ability to create golems.

The rudimentary intelligence he could instill into them could now be pushed considerably farther. Depending on the golem and what Noah put into its creation, he could potentially grant it a much higher level of intelligence, with some even having the possibility of developing genuine sentience.

There was a time when Noah would’ve been considerably more excited about that improvement.

His main avenue of fighting had changed since then, and golems were no longer something he relied on nearly as much as before.

Still, that didn’t make the improvement useless. Being able to create something capable of understanding complicated orders and making decisions without Noah constantly directing it could become useful for far more than fighting.

It was an improvement Noah happily accepted.

But it wasn’t what he had been hoping to gain from Ailetta.

What Noah truly wanted was her ability to wield holy energy.

Especially when everything currently pointed toward one of their greatest enemies being capable of using that same power.

Ailetta’s recent mutation had finally made the holy energy an inherent part of her bloodline, which meant Noah could finally obtain it along with everything else he received from her.

And he did.

The problem was that he barely had time to appreciate it.

Almost immediately after the holy energy became part of him, his Nexus Eye reacted and began absorbing it for itself. Noah could do little more than watch as every trace of the new energy disappeared into the eye until there was nothing left for the rest of his body to use.

At first, Noah nearly despaired.

He would’ve rather kept the holy energy than received another improvement to his Nexus Eye. The eye had already become considerably more useful after everything that happened, while holy energy would’ve given Noah something entirely new to work with against enemies who were likely to use that same power against him.

Thankfully, the Nexus Eye wasn’t completely ungrateful.

It hadn’t simply taken the holy energy and given Noah nothing in return. Whatever happened after the eye absorbed it resulted in Noah gaining another transformation.

One that was almost the complete opposite of Ailetta’s.

Instead of allowing Noah to temporarily embody something holy, the transformation pushed him even farther toward the other side.

Devil’s Descent.

Just reading the name gave Noah goosebumps.

Just how evil was it trying to say I was?