Becoming a Monster

"I knew it was gonna happen after I found out I was incompatible with that person's stone….but why is it confused about my race now?"

To Noah, he didn't care if he was a human or not at this point since he has been growing to accept it. What concerned him was what did he do that finally made the system question it?

'Hmm…but I don't feel different at all…' He thought while blood was still dripping from his mouth after the hearts he casually snacked on.

'Screw it, that's not too important so it can wait. I was really looking forward to breaking my mana stats with those cores. It actually went down by like a tenth of what it usually did! Even my level one skills didn't progress as much.'

Noah had to go back to check over the stats one more time just to be sure. But even though the exploit he was anxious about didn't work, he was happy to see how well his stats panel has progressed.

'My two newest skills have reached 100% and I still have a ton of mana now, not to mention that this isn't the end. The zombies will only get stronger which means their cores should be of better quality right? Hehe! I'm getting excited all over again.'

He saw his two companions were done with what they were doing so he thought it was best that he finally got a move on.

'But before that, I need to reset the ratio of our experience again. If ten means what I think it means then I need to hurry and reach it.'

Willing for his experience between the two to go from 20:80 like before, he switched it to 80:20. He planned to make his creatures help him power level his way to 10. Seeing the experience needed, he has a long way to go, but if he could fight more advanced creatures and zombies then he was sure that he could reach 10 before the day was over.

"Wait Ishii!"

The girl that could control flying objects held Ishii back when she saw that Ishii was about to yell out to Noah again. She wanted to get far away from that man

"Bu-but Alicia, did you not see what he was doing? And that bag he pulled a freaking bow out of? The guy definitely knows things that could help us. He doesn't seem bad, it wouldn't hurt a-"

"Doesn't seem bad?? He was LITERALLY eating hearts for crying out loud! AND he was smiling while doin- Mpmh!" After nearly screaming, Alicia quickly covered her mouth and looked around to make sure she didn't alert anything. She then sighed in relief, she couldn't believe she broke character like that, but seeing Noah's actions really put her on edge.

Ishii stood there blankly recalling the past events and then he finally came to a realization that she was right. But maybe he had a good reason, at least that's what he wanted to believe. Alicia saw the inner struggle he was going through and sighed once again. She knew Ishii's character, he was just too kind.

"Let's not think about it, remember he mentioned the people at the cafeteria. If he knows them then that means they might also know what he does. Let's hurry before we miss them.

Under her insistence, the group gathered what little things they could and began to trek their way back from where Noah came from.

In the meantime, Noah was slowly making his way to the center building where students would go to enroll, inquiry about financial aid and the like. He was prepared to have to fight, yet when he made it to the backside of the building he noticed that there were already corpses on the ground and he could see blood and corpses leading into the building since the doors were wide open.

However it wasn't just corpses that he saw, but he saw the things that were attracted to them as well. There were flocks of birds preying on the dead body including two gigantic above human sized vultures. The flocks of birds were clearly different from their original counterparts. He could definitely tell that the birds that resembled crows were at least a foot taller and with his pupils, he could make out small teeth-like objects in their beaks.

He planned to avoid them since he had no way to chase the birds in the arrow, but his eyes twitched when he looked upon the vultures. He needed to at least kill one of them. He remembered what he promised me.

'Maybe I can see if I can still tame another creature…Hopefully I can't for its sake.' Noah turned towards Arachne, who he saw was also eyeing the vultures just like him.

"Arachne, try to capture one, I don't care what happens to the other. Fenrir, just kill as many of these things as you can, we'll go when you start." After giving the command, he watched Arachne situate herself and tethered herself to her original location like always before he saw her legs visibly bulge.

Whoosh!

Arachne exploded faster than a cannonball, Noah was sure that would take a considerable amount of stamina from her, but that's what Fenrir was for.

Screech!*

Before he could move, he already could hear the overlapping of wings flapping. Even though the flock of birds grew in size, they still had the mentality of birds and took off to the skies when a predator emerged. Even through the sound of the wings, Noah could clearly make out the distress call coming from the vulture Arachne was sinking her fangs into.

It's been awhile, but Arachne has finally found a prey that wasn't immune or resistant to her venom. She made sure to sink her fangs into the body of the vulture and not the wings.

Hiss!*

Arachne hissed angrily when the vulture struck her in its last ditch effort to fight back and with its sharp beak it was able to still puncture her backside which was almost equivalent to body armor. It was probably the deepest injury she's received so far, but that just shows the danger of the Vultures beak.

After the attack, the effects of the venom was seen, the vulture's body first went stiff and then slowly the head and neck of the creature began to lower. `

The sound of the vulture's partner screamed from the side. It first jumped away after being startled like the rest, but when it saw the distress its partner was going through, it cried in vengeance and came back to attack Arachne.

Arachne felt that she's already accomplished her task in taking out the first creature. The prey wouldn't die immediately, but it was out for the count. Now she had to try to find a way to put down the next one for Noah without killing it.

"Awwhhhoooo!"

Soon however, she could easily feel the tremors in the ground and hear the sound of the food thief approaching. When the vulture tried to rip into her body, she quickly pulled herself away by jumping at the same time and retreating with her leg.

Boom!

After the vulture missed its target, Fenrir came upon it and pinned it to the ground with his overly large paw. The bird was huge, but its wings couldn't be used like arms to help it push its body up. And Fenrir was a big boy, not to mention strong. When he noticed the bird struggling under him, he pressed his other paw on the bird's back causing the vulture to gawk in pain.

Noah wasn't expecting for the other birds to leave, especially when he saw their sizes and their new features of teeth. He assumed that they would be more aggressive, but this helped him feel relieved for the future. The insects were bad enough, he didn't want to have to constantly deal with birds too.

He quickly made his way over to Fenrir and the vulture while Arachne was keeping a lookout for anything approaching. Noah noticed that even though the vulture was being held down, its neck was moving freely so he shot a couple of webs along its neck to hold it in place before kneeling above its head to activate his taming skill.

To his surprise, he appeared in that space again. 'Does this mean I can tame another creature? Wait! what happened to…me? He was momentarily distracted before he caught attention to the ball that symbolizes his soul or consciousness, he still wasn't sure what it was.

His sphere was giving off an eerie aura compared to before. He remembered that his sphere was clearly white with specks of black and red that were slowly gaining in volume. However his orb now held an almost unnoticeable translucent purple halo around it. The most obvious changes were when he could see that the black and red were slowly mixing and they resembled gaseous clouds similar to something like Jupiter.

Knowing that he would never be able to make sense of what was happening in this space, he focused on the orb in front of him and quickly advanced.

'Something's not right…' He thought to himself as he progressed through the vulture's barriers. In this world, of course the orbs didn't have mouths, but he could tell the bird was 'screaming' in agony as he advanced closer. The pain was becoming more clear after he approached a considerable distance, even the vulture's resistance began to die down.

The vulture's orb was becoming completely unstable, The lights of its orb were going dim and then glowing intensely while it constantly shot off flares.

Noah stopped in consideration that maybe he should give up his attempt of taming the creature, but a dangerous thought entered his mind. 'What would happen if I continued?' That thought alone was enough for him to stop caring about what was going to happen. The bird was in pain, not him so it should be safe for him to continue right?

Intense vibration!*

Noah approached the vulture's consciousness and attempted to still connect to it. At this time, the area began to shake and the orb began to pulsate as if it was a beating heart. Its glow flickered repeatedly before suddenly it glowed completely white.

During this time, Noah could make out the feelings of the vulture, the pain seemed more unbearable than being skinned alive with how much pain the bird was in. And before Noah could have a thought, the orb just dispersed into a glitter of particles and was kicked out of the space.

Noah stood there hovering over the vulture's head still with a confused expression as he thought about what happened. When he came to, he looked down towards the vulture's face and noticed it was covered in blood. For its mouth to its eyes, blood seemed to be squeezed out of it. Its pupils weren't even able to be seen from the extreme pain it went through and part of its tongue was laying beside it as it accidentally bit it off during the struggle.

'So….Maybe it's a good thing I tried it now before I actually tried to tame something I liked. But don't blame me, blame your brethren before you that tried to eat me.'

After his failed experiment, he went to check his loot from the silver chest that dropped. While he grabbed his things, he gave Arachne and Fenrir a mission, which was to grab the hearts from the corpses of the zombies.