Becoming a Monster

Chapter 534 - 533: The Limits of Intelligence

Dobby’s condition wasn’t good, and none of the others knew what to do to help.

Instinctively, one of the felines turned toward Alexandria, ready to call for her. Even if she was in the middle of something important, none of them believed she would ignore Dobby. Not after everything they had gone through together.

The feline opened his mouth, yet no words came out.

Another one wasn’t aware that the first cat hadn’t called out; they turned towards Alexandria next.

Then another.

One by one, the cats looked toward Alexandria and fell silent.

Alexandria wasn’t in a condition to hear them. The blood worked... she was changing.

She was bent forward slightly, her body trembling beneath everyone’s watchful gaze. Yet despite her posture, there was no agony on her face.

Not exactly.

Her expression was unreadable. Her eyes were unfocused, and her breathing had slowed into something almost blissful.

The pain was there, but it wasn’t the tearing, brutal agony she expected.

It felt closer to pressure finally being released, like a stiff spine cracking after plaguing her for days.

Every change that passed through her felt overwhelming, but beneath that intensity was an intoxicating sense of correction.

Her tail was the first to change visibly.

Near its base, the fur rose as the muscles beneath shifted. The single tail lengthened slightly before splitting farther down, forming two separate ends that remained connected to the same base.

They weren’t two fully independent tails, but neither were they a single one anymore.

The divided tails moved slowly behind her, each end twitching with a different rhythm.

Faint black mist seeped from their tips.

Then Alexandria’s body began to grow.

Her frame expanded by nearly a fifth of her original size, every muscle tightening beneath her skin while her bones shifted with quiet pops.

All of her features became more defined with sharper angles, giving her a more predatory elegance than before.

Her claws lengthened slowly, curving into sharper, darker points that looked less like ordinary claws and more like blackened blades shaped from shadow.

Then her fur began to shed.

Dark strands regrew almost immediately in their place, smoother and deeper than before. Her new coat carried a strange sheen, but not one that reflected light.

Sunlight touched her body and seemed to dull against her fur, swallowed by the darkness instead of bouncing away. The effect made her outline appear softer at the edges.

From different angles, it was hard to decide where her body ended, and the shadows began.

Her shadow stretched beneath her despite the sun remaining unchanged.

Noah watched every detail closely. This was exactly what he needed to see.

He was worried yet curious about whether his blood would affect them on the same scale as it did Ethaniel.

To be able to create monsters on the same scale as those mysterious hooded figures would exponentially strengthen the collective power of his group.

And if that really happened, he wouldn’t hesitate to find wild monsters and creatures to turn into stronger mutations to harvest them for his own creatures.

Despite his imaginative dreams, Noah had already entered this with the mindset that Ethaniel’s situation likely couldn’t be compared to monsters.

Back then, his experience with the zombie virus had already taught him that corruption did not function the way the stories from Earth claimed it should.

The infection had never truly been in the blood itself.

It was the mana.

The corruption spread through mana first, tainting the body afterward as a result. Blood was merely one of the many things affected along the way.

That was why ordinary creatures bitten by zombies didn’t always transform the same way humans did. Their mana pathways, bodies, and cores reacted differently to corruption.

The same principle applied to his own blood.

And during that time, he had never encountered an animal that carried zombie-like traits either.

He had assumed it was because monsters already possessed mana-rich bodies and cores capable of resisting or adapting to foreign corruption far better than humans could.

There still wasn’t enough information to truly understand why that difference existed beyond the simple reality that humans were far more fragile in comparison.

But perhaps Alexandria would finally give him part of that answer.

Noah’s eyes narrowed slightly as he continued observing her transformation.

He could see her aura growing stronger. Without observing anything else, he was sure beyond a doubt that his blood increased the strength of monsters on a wider scale than it did before.

There was simply no comparison.

Just his regular blood benefited her far more than his mana-infused blood.

And it didn’t stop at increasing her strength.

It had drawn out changes within her body that were compatible with her nature.

These changes weren’t enough for Noah to describe as an evolution.

But they also didn’t feel like mutations either.

When Noah or his creatures mutated in the past, their bodies often developed entirely new characteristics. New instincts. New biological traits. Sometimes, even abilities that had little connection to what they originally were.

Evolution wasn’t much different.

An evolution represented a creature stepping into a completely new stage of existence. Their mana, body, instincts, and even their presence would fundamentally change into something greater than before.

Alexandria’s transformation lacked that feeling. The blood was amplifying everything that already existed within her. And her physical change was the result of improving her body to accommodate that amplification.

The more information Noah gathered from this, the better he could understand what his blood had become.

Unfortunately, the one creature he was most worried about prevented him from focusing completely.

The cage behind them rattled violently.

Thunderous impacts caused the tremors to reach even where the cats and dogs were. It was then followed by depraved growls and wet, starving snarls that dragged almost everyone’s attention away from Alexandria.

Dummy had lost complete control over any little bit of reasoning he had left.

There hadn’t even been a moment when he tried to resist.

The instant he smelled Noah’s blood, whatever fragile restraint Dummy possessed vanished entirely. He slammed himself against the cage over and over, each impact sending violent tremors through the cage restraining him.

At first, his hunger had been directed toward Noah’s blood. The instinctive desire for evolution that Noah’s blood would incite became secondary to the scent and the foreseeable taste alone.

But then...

Alexandria consumed that drop.

And now Dummy wanted her.

The massive jaws in his torso stretched open impossibly wide as saliva poured between rows of jagged teeth. He hurled himself against the cage with enough force to crack the ground beneath him, his distorted growls growing louder with every failed attempt to reach her.

The cage held firm at first.

Noah had intentionally made it far too durable for a creature like Dummy to break through by brute force alone.

Yet Dummy didn’t stop. His torso-mouth suddenly clamped down around one area.

At first, nothing happened.

Compared to the violent force of his thrashing, his bite seemed almost unimpressive.

The backlash from biting something that durable should have shattered his teeth long before the cage itself gave way, yet Dummy immediately bit down again without hesitation.

Then again.

And again.

The grinding of his jaws, relentlessly tearing at the hardened slime, soon took over the noise generated by his thrashing. Most of the damage came from repeated stress rather than raw bite force itself.

Finally, small fragments broke loose.

Dummy swallowed them instantly. Noah’s gaze sharpened immediately afterward.

The change was subtle, but impossible to miss.

The moment those tiny pieces entered Dummy’s body, his flesh shifted unnaturally. His muscles tightened beneath his skin while the mouth in his torso stretched slightly wider than before. Faint dark veins crawled beneath his flesh before slowly fading back out of sight.

He was adapting from consuming just the small bits of Noah’s slime.

Noah stared at him blankly for a brief moment before releasing a long sigh.

”...It’s amazing how nature works,” he muttered under his breath. ”Dummy’s potential perhaps reaches the same potential as the others, and evolution balances him by making him stupid.”

After releasing that deep breath, Noah extended one tendril back toward the cage.

The mana flowed through it; the entire cage changed instantly. The rigid structure softened into a black elastic material.

Dummy, who had been pressing his full weight forward, immediately crashed face-first into the ground.

Before he could recover, the softened cage collapsed around him.

It wrapped around his limbs first, yanking them inward and pinning them tightly against his body. Then it coiled across his torso, binding him in a thick, gridded restraint that resembled an eldritch straitjacket.

Dummy’s mouth opened to bite the slime before it fully enveloped him.

But Noah’s slime moved faster.

Separate muzzle-like bindings formed over each one.

One sealed around his face. Another clamped over the massive jaw in his torso.

More wrapped around the smaller mouths on his palms, locking them shut before he could tear into the restraints.

Then everything hardened again.

The cage was gone. In its place, Dummy lay bound to the ground in a black restraint harness that restricted any bit of movement. Only his obnoxious growls escaped since the muzzles were only functional around his snout.

His other mouths were left with space between their teeth and his slime.

Noah stared Dummy down for a moment before shaking his head.

”Because of you, I wasn’t able to focus.”

His gaze shifted to Alexandria, who was now stabilizing from her transformation.