NOVPUB
Chapter 90: Surprises
"I get it. I just saw things from their perspective and understood the cause. It’s because your soul is ignited by your will because of the resistance you pulled off against the seal. For monsters, your soul looks exceptionally glorious and powerful. Any monster would want to become your Pet Monster if you extend your hand to them."
John was surprised and laughed. "That’s nice. But I guess this is temporary. It’s because that seal pissed me off, heh."
Scoffing, John said. "Anyway, I am going out now. Get ready to receive the goods."
"Alright."
John went out.
Now fully healed, he took a step forward and was assaulted by the torture from the seal again.
The sonic vibrations didn’t ring, so John just endured the nightmarish fuel that was invading his mind and continued walking without stopping.
Two meters were crossed just like that as he extended his right hand and touched the wooden board.
In the next moment, the wooden board seal and the arm nailed to it vanished.
Inside Monster Paradise, Chuthulos was ready and instantly applied enchantments onto the seal, making it stronger.
The arm, finding itself in a brand new location after thousands of years, was startled at first and then a cry resounded from it, filled with anger.
"THE FUCK DID YOU DO?! Y-YOU BASTARD!"
The arm’s anger couldn’t be measured. It was malding and hysterical after finding out that the seal that was weakened over the course of thousands of years...suddenly strengthened to a whole new height.
This fact sent utter despair to the arm, invoking the demonic anger it couldn’t even release and convey properly.
The arm trembled and gave it all in anger, but the strengthened seal didn’t even budge.
"DAMN YOU! DAMN YOU! I SWEAR I WILL GIVE YOU WORSE DEATH."
"That’s kinda impossible," Chuthulos appeared before the arm and said while waving one of his tentacles. "Hi."
John also appeared before the wooden board as he entered Monster Paradise from the outside.
Looking at the arm, he grinned. "Trash, you thought you could deceive me?"
Chuthulos muted the arm’s screaming and turned to John.
"John, this is the first surprise. The seal contributes to the generation of Molding Essence. Your current production is 98k Molding Essence per day now," Chuthulos said with a grin.
"What?!" John was dumbfounded and quickly checked. "Holy fuck..."
"But this seal is not a renewable life resource like the plants and Monsters, so this generation of Molding Essence will whittle it away gradually. It’s essentially the power of my ancestor that’s generating Molding Essence through a set of interactions and chemistry with resources existing within Monster Paradise. To produce something, something else must be devoured, but this generation keeps a balance against life resources like Plants and Monsters that can sustain and grow via other energies, unlike this Seal."
"I see..." John understood and nodded. "Well, whatever the case, I’m still getting millions, right?"
"Yeah, you’ll get tons of them to develop this Monster Paradise further. Though if you can gather 1 million Molding Essence, you can upgrade the Monster Paradise and create an island of your design, let’s say, an island with fertile land, purely to grow resources," Chuthulos said with a grin. "Moreover, you will get a great function on that island."
"What kinda function?" John asked, curious.
"Attribute Seeds. You will get a new currency called Attribute Essence. You can get it by sacrificing random resources and then you can create specific attribute seeds that would grow exotic Trees of those attributes and grow fruits that would directly boost the said attribute."
"Of course, this also includes Attack, Speed, and Defense trees," Chuthulos grinned. "You can practice Monster Geno Arts for the Geno Abilities, but after getting these trees, you can increase your stats by eating fruits."
John’s eyes glowered. "Damn, that’s awesome. I’d get plenty of free time for other things if I could increase stats by eating fruits instead of circulation training."
"Yep. So, just gather the Molding Essence until you hit one million. With the current generation rate, we only need eleven days."
"Yeah. This is good news. You said this was the first surprise. What’s next?" John curiously asked.
"Yep, and there’s one more," Chuthulos said as he turned to the arm. "Let’s feed this arm to Xhaalthun first."
"Alright."
’What? Feed?!’ the demonic arm shouted. ’What do you mean? What kind of monster are you?!’
The arm was confused and in terror, as he couldn’t understand anything.
In the next second, the arm vanished.
[ +323,240 Xhal Drops acquired. Every week, you will get 100,000 Xhal Drops until the arm is fully digested. ]
"Awesome. I’ll also upgrade you right now, buddy."
John smiled and spent 100,000 Xhal Drops, upgrading Xhalthuun’s Shop to level 3.
[Congratulations. The shop now has an extra item slot. The next upgrade costs 500,000 Xhal Drops, and it will open a new section in the shop—Gacha Section.]
As if Chuthulos knew about the upgrade, he said, "Brother John, Gacha Section is actually good. You can draw five random things at a minimum cost of 500,000, and a maximum cost of unknown, depending on the weekly Gacha Section you get. This is designed to always give you things worth more Xhal Drops than you actually spend. You might get nothing in some draws, but that just means one of the things is enough to cover the value."
"Interesting. So at the cost of items being random, their worth is guaranteed, ey? Yeah, I can live with that." John found this to be pretty reasonable and good. If he got things that were useless to him, he could always sell them.
"And now the main surprise is this," Chuthulos said before his eye glimmered and he spoke, seemingly conversing with Xhalthuun. "Xhal, I’ve temporarily given you the power to analyze the arm. Make sure you extract and form any useful things into free items for John."
After saying that, Chuthulos returned to normal and made a thumbs-up gesture at John.
John blinked, a bit confused and curious. "I don’t get it. You are going to make items from the arm by analyzing it? How does it work? Like what kind of items would I even get?"
Chuthulos chuckled and said, "This is a different type of analyzing. It’s not about just analyzing the arm, but also the soul within it that merged with this arm. The soul of a Calamity-rank powerhouse. Even though it is not complete, he must have some knowledge and memories, so whatever they contain, we will get their replications."
John’s eyes widened in shock as he heard that. "That’s crazy..."
"Yeah, though it will take time as well, but I’m sure whatever a Calamity-rank powerhouse contains is going to be useful in one way or another."
"So how strong is a Calamity-rank?" John blinked. "It does sound pretty powerful."
"Very powerful. It’s just one rank below Demi-God rank," Chuthulos grinned. "However, there are nine stages within Calamity-rank, and this demon was a bit below middle-tier at Calamity-rank."
"Anyway, you’ve got a very long way before you can reach there, so no need to think about it."
John nodded and stretched his arms and legs. "Yeah, I need to bathe and sleep now. After, I can continue training my Pets and increase my attribute masteries as well."
John grinned. If he wanted to create stronger and better bullets, he’d need level 2 mastery in both Blood and Metal.
His Pet Monsters were sleeping after being stressed by the seal, and he also wanted to have a good sleep.
And so, the third day passed by until sunset before John finally woke up.
Alfred, Rexion, and Pymon had woken up earlier, so they were raring to go. Initially, he also wanted to explore the complex cavern system under the ground, but after seeing a bunch of Prime-stage Gold-rank Monsters after entering the first cavern, John made a quick escape.
And so, he flew out of the gorge on Pymon’s back and went to some other area with young Gold-rank Monsters and Prime Silver-rank Monsters.
He wanted to have his young Gold-rank Monsters fight and get strong by eating Gold-rank Monsters’ soul orbs that he could extract.
On the other hand, he would train Alfred, Rexion, and Pymon.
Pymon did a Gene Potential Burst in silver-rank once, and Alfred had also experienced a Gene Potential Burst in Silver-rank. 𝒏𝒐𝙫𝙥𝙪𝙗.𝒄𝙤𝙢
Next, it was Rexion’s turn.
Rexion was just 6 points short of reaching 100, so John was training him first.
John was in a solid area with a multi-attributal spiritual atmosphere, mainly Fire, Wind, Earth, and Water, hence also resulting in other advanced attributes possible from various combinations of those three attributes.
It was an area with small water bodies, floating clouds among the trees containing water, exotic trees, rocks, crystals, and nature growing in a beautiful yet lush way, filled with Monsters.
’Rex, use Blaster Factory.’
Rexion dodged the exploding Dark Purple Crystal spikes shot from Lunar Amythyst Lion’s tail before heeding John’s command.
Blaster Factory was Rexion’s fifth skill and perhaps the most unique skill out of all of his Pet Monsters.
As its name suggested, it was a factory that could create blasters, and its input depended on both Rexion and John.
John could give Rexion an imagination, and voila, from Rexion’s back, a missile launcher shaped with his Bloodscript attribute before the Light attribute came into play.
In the next moment, four mini-missiles launched, bright vermilion with golden patterns, pulsing with power.
The lion quickly dodged, but the missiles were homing.
The beast jumped and swung its tail, destroying one missile, and landed. In the next moment, a missile landed near its hind legs and exploded, splattering corrosive, glowing vermilion liquid on its body.
The other missile exploded right behind it as it tried to escape, throwing it several meters away.
"Finish it off, Rex. I’ll see how others are doing."
John shared his senses with Pymon, who was flying to check up on other Gold-rank Monsters’ battles and Alfred, who was scouting.
’Good. Let’s continue.’
