Chapter 29

‘Ow.’ The next night did not awaken the creature with a gentle hand, instead, it woke up to an aching body and stiff back. It’s unnecessary stubbornness, the previous night, had been a folly that it was going to pay for tonight. ‘Ow. Ow.’

The Malfae stretched, or rather tried to and failed. ‘Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow.’

Crack, pop, crack, pop.

When the creature was finally able to stretch enough, its joints popped and a sigh of relief escaped its pale blue lips. Only when all its joints had popped and its body ache subsided did the creature even think about going out.

The creature’s venture into the outside world was witnessed by the azure moon as it danced across the sky. Its pale light illuminated the world in a soft ethereal glow. The Malfae stood at the edge of the crevice as it observed the otherworldly scene before it flew off.

The creature had planned to hunt tonight. But before that, it had something even more important to do. It didn’t want to postpone it in the case suffered another bout of laziness fuelled stubbornness. Thus, it had decided to collect soft grasses for a bed before anything else.

0.0

The creature reached the spider hunting ground and slowed down. Its wings still made a lot of noise as it flew, thus it flew low and slow to decrease the noise. It reached the area where it had previously hunted the little black spiders regularly but it soon paused as it looked in the direction of the monstrous spider which had once chased it away. ‘Should I…?’

Smack!

‘What the f*** is wrong with me?’ The creature caressed its increasingly purple cheek. ‘Why would I even think that?’

Smack!

‘Don’t come up with something so stupid next time.’ The creature softly patted its other increasingly purple cheek. ‘Remember that brain. There is more where that came from.’

Sometimes, negative reinforcement was just the right thing. The creature shook its head and, with two purple cheeks, flew towards the nest of the little venomous spiders. It wanted to test itself now that it had evolved. Though, considering that the only thing to change had been the gain of active defence, the creature did not expect much. After all, the creature still lacked a means to actively hurt someone rather than just passively deal damage through its venom.

The Malfae chose the prey and silently landed on the nearest branch before it started going through its Skill list once again. It sighed and dismissed the screen before observing its chosen prey. It was another spider, just like all the rest in the area.

The creature grimaced but brought forth the [Malfae Shield], from where it had been protecting its back. The shield then opened and spread out under the will of the Malfae and then it continued spreading until gaps appeared in between the individual wings.

The Malfae nodded to itself and guided the spread-out its shield towards the thread from which the spider had been handing. The said spider noticed the approaching pair of wings of course. After all, when spread out, the wings did appear quite big.

The spider immediately abandoned the thread as it let go. And while it fell, another thread shot out of the spider, arresting its fall. The spider thus fell onto the ground somewhat gently. It turned back to look at the massive pair of wings that were the shield and fled.

‘Tch.’ The Malfae watched it all happen and the decisiveness and the speed of the spider left the [Reincarnated] with little time to react. The Malfae had never been able to hunt those spiders that had been this decisive. ‘That was a bust.’

Still, it decided to complete its experiment and guided the gap in the shield, around the thread and then willed the shield to close. The individual wings began to move and overlapped with each other as they closed. This action caused the thread to be stuck in between the wings and, as the wings overlapped, the process similar to the function of a pair of scissors occurred. The spider thread, thus, was cut in two.

The creature smiled as this was what it had been hoping for. But then it frowned as the thread, instead of falling, got stuck to the shields instead. The creature scowled. ‘Tch. What a waste.’

With its first experiment a failure, the Malfae found another spider to conduct its second experiment. And instead of stalking up to its prey, the creature changed its strategy. For as it neared the spider, the Malfae landed on a branch a bit far away.

From its location, the Malfae moved the shield to the ground beneath the spider. The evolved moth then puffed up itself and charged at the spider. The spider noticed the approaching thread and immediately let go of the thread, entering a free fall.

When the spider finally landed on the ground, after having arrested its speed, the shield that had been waiting nearby came crashing down on the small 6 legged creature.

The spider died on the spot.

Though the moth could only grimace when it saw the remains of its prey. The blood, the flesh, the guts and the chitin had come together to form a gross mess that even the immortal sensibility of the creature could not digest. The [Survivor] sighed as it dismissed the [Malfae Shield] and the spider thread that had been stuck to it, fell off. The creature then summoned another shield and flew off in the search of its third prey.

When the Malfae found the third prey, it followed through its third strategy but this time, instead of slamming the shield on the spider, it decided to use the shield to chop the spider.

After the two failed tries, the third one succeeded as the spider landed near the shield. The spread-out wings of the shield surrounded the spider in between their gaps and then slammed shut. The six-legged creature barely had time to react before it had been bisected in two.

‘At least it takes less time than earlier.’ The Malfae consoled itself as it dug into the flesh. This was its first real meal after the evolution and it had taken the creature 3 tries to hunt a spider. After the meal was done, the creature waited for the poison to arrive.

And it waited.

And it waited.

The poison did not affect.

‘Eh?’ The creature frowned and checked its Skill list but it’s [Poison Resistance] hadn’t increased. ‘Then why…?’

Cautiously, the creature ate a few mouthfuls of the venomous meat and after a bit of time, it ate a few more mouthfuls. The poison came into effect then and the pain erupted within the creature’s body.

In truth, it wasn’t that the creature had become more resistant to the venom but that the size of the creature had changed by a triple. As such, the same amount of venom that had once affected the moth did not have much effect on the Malfae. Once the poison wore off, the creature grimaced and decided to hunt the frogs to increase its Level. Those creatures had not only given it an incredible amount of Levels, but the Malfae also had a tried and tested method to hunt them.

‘To not make use of them would be true idiocy.’ Though to the utter disappointment of the evolved moth, it could not find even a single frog anywhere. It was as if they had vanished in thin air. ‘Is it like snails all over again…?’

In truth, it was. The frogs most came out around the monsoon and stayed dormant for the rest of the year. Additionally, winter had just passed and spring had barely arrived; the Malfae was not going to find any frogs for a long time.

The Malfae searched for the rest of the night and finally returned when the sun started to illuminate the sky. Its fruitless search across the forest had left the creature a bit tired and a bit frustrated. Even though it had successfully hunted, the creature felt like it hadn’t accomplished much.

Thus, more than a little irritated, the creature closed the entrance with the employment of the [Malfae Shield] and some leaves, before falling on its newly gathered bed of grass. Sleep did not grace the creature for a long time.

0.0

The next night proved itself to be a bit difficult for the creature. It hadn’t slept properly, as a result, it woke up cranky and irritated. Its HP had also not replenished yet. This did not help the creature’s mood any.

Thus, when it went directly to the spider hunting ground, it was more than a little irritated and frustrated. Therefore, when it fought the arachnids, the creature simply crushed the spiders to death with its winged shield. It did not eat them. In fact, once they died the Malfae did not even give them a second look.

It had just wanted to crush them utterly and brutally for no other reason than to just let out its own frustration. And thus, for the first time, the Malfae embodied the second true nature of its Vessel. Malfae, a creature of malice.

The creature huffed and panted as it stood by the support of the tree’s bark. It had flown relentlessly and left a trail of dead spiders in its passing. And now, it felt much better. Though the creature felt a little guilty for being wasteful, the emotion was not particularly strong. ‘As long as it is worth it, it’s not a waste.’

0.0

As the creature finished dealing with the last pangs of pain from the spider’s venom, a thought popped up in its head and the creature took to the skies as it flew in the direction that had always soothed it and landed just outside the clearing, that was its destination, and frowned.

Its antennas that had always picked up the alluring scent, without even the use of [Scent], were not picking up anything. It activated the Skill and immediately noticed not only the lack of the alluring scent but also the lack of the predator’s scent. The creature instantly became alert and folded its wings until they overlapped and seemed smaller than they were. It retreated and hid behind the cover of leaves before cautiously, activating [Sense Essence].

The clearing was empty. There was nothing out of ordinary, where there should have been. In the middle of the clearing, where there had been a plant once, nothing stood there anymore. Within the clearing, where there had been a creature guarding the plant, there too, was nothing anymore. Both the flower and the wooden mantis had gone missing.

The Malfae remained hidden as it observed. The creature kept its guard up as it waited.

Though, after a few minutes of observation, the creature killed the Skill [Sense Essence]. Since the Skill had Levelled up, it had begun to consume 10 mana per minute, instead of its previous 5. This had essentially reduced the active time of the Skill, by half. Thus, the creature did not activate the Skill regularly as before but used it sparingly.

Thus, the creature continued to wait however, even after waiting for the rest of the night, the wooden mantis did not show up even once. This gave the [Survivor] a pause as its mind supplied 2 options for this occurrence. The first option being that something had made the mantis its dinner and the flower had been destroyed in the ensuing fight. If this were true then the creature would remain as far as from this clearing as it could.

Anything that could hunt the mantis was not something that the Malfae wanted to deal with. And then there was the second option that it was the mantis that had made use of the flower instead and had left the area once its goal had been achieved. ‘An immortal guarding a flower is strange in itself…’

The creature did not know which one, of these two happenstances, was the true reason. Or if the reason was something completely different. But until it knew more about what had happened, the creature decided not to enter the clearing. By the time the creature returned to the crevice, the light of dawn had started to rip apart the darkness of the night and the mantis had not yet returned. The Malfae chose not to enter the clearing all the same and decided to watch more.

As it reached outside the crevice, the creature sensed for any faint scents through its antenna and when it found none, it activated the Skill, [Sense].

Ting.

[Skill [Sense Lv.3] has reached [Sense Lv.4]. The active time of the Skill has been increased to 4 minutes.]

The creature was a bit startled at the sudden Skill Level up and that too, one so soon after the last night. But it was of no consequence and the creature dismissed the notification. Its eyes then fell on the eggs laying in the corner and the creature thought for a moment. Its eyes narrowed as it nodded.

The creature activated the Skill, [Drone Egg] and soon, one after another batch of eggs popped out of its groin. ‘F*** you cockroach. You ate one batch but so what? I can create many more!’

Though as soon as the final egg fell out with a splash, the creature activated the Skill, [Sense Essence]. It was only after the creature had ascertained the Essences of the all eggs, that it let out a sigh of relief and went to bed.

0.0

The creature spent the following week mostly waiting outside the clearing. It was waiting for something to change, anything. Though contrary to its expectations, nothing changed during the week and the clearing remained as lifeless as always. Thus, after a week of observation, the creature finally decided to go in and investigate.

The creature regularly activated and deactivated [Sense Essence] as it silently stepped inside the clearing. It had already decided against flying inside as that would create a buzzing sound, no matter how slow the creature flew. Step by step, the creature moved forward, with all its senses at high alert. As a result of its paranoia, it paused at every passing wind and every rustle of the grass. Hence, it took the creature quite some time to reach the location.

The creature frowned. It had not found any remains or stumps of the plant. And neither had it found any remains of the flower that had the colour akin to the white moon. It thought for a moment before it began digging up the spot and even then, the creature found nothing. It was as if the plant had never existed, to begin with.

The creature searched the entire clearing for the rest of the night. What it was searching for, even the creature itself did not know. When the night finally came to end, the creature had to face the truth that the plant and the flower no longer existed. And the creature would not find it no matter how much it searched.

The creature returned home and activated the Skill [Sense Essence] to check the crevice for a foreign presence before entering. Though, as the Skill’s 1 minute of activation time had yet to end, and the creature turned the Skill onto the eggs and noticed something strange.

The shapeless haze that had seemed to represent the had begun to change. It seemed to the creature that the haze had begun to condense but, into what form, the creature could not tell yet.

-X-

Within a desolate desert, inside a dilapidated shop, on a simple chair, a youth seemingly slept.

-X-