Book 5 Chapter 13.3 – Path
It was like an enormous ghost, hovering about within the innermost areas of Su’s body, and it was currently gradually awakening. In addition, from the various signs, it seemed to be omnipotent. The only thing that made Su feel slightly more at ease was that his will still possessed the highest level of command. It would always carry out the things that he wanted to do. Even if later events proved that his path of evolution was incorrect, walking a crooked path, it would still carry it out to its end, but it would use its own method to carry out a remedy from the side. For example, making up for a portion of the mistake during the next strengthening.
When selecting abilities and strengthening himself, Su possessed an instinctive superiority. He was a natural hunter, so he understood clearly the advantages and disadvantages between himself and his prey, and in the exploitation of his environment, he was practically unmatched. On the path of evolution, Su pretty much didn’t make any mistakes, and his increase in ability while in the wilderness was slow, and thus, the activity of his instincts were limited, which was why Su didn’t notice this.
Meanwhile, Dragon City was where everything changed.
When he first joined the Black Dragonriders, for the sake of not becoming a burden on Persephone, Su began to increase his strength through the orthodox path: battle, obtain evolutionary points, strengthen abilities, and then more battles. During this process, Su established his own armies several times, but they would be wiped out time after time again. However, as a whole, Su always followed the path of ability strengthening.
When he brought the post-transformation Madeline out from Dragon City, this path gradually became unusable, because the upgrade of abilities went too slowly. In reality, Su’s speed of improvement was already extremely rarely seen, and he even more so never felt a bottleneck for future abilities. This meant that at the very least, in the Perception Domain, Su could develop a tenth level ability.
Su was extremely powerful, and his development was fast, but his enemies were even more terrifying. That was why Su set the firm resolution to overcome his past fear, finally releasing the shackles he placed on his body’s instincts, walking on this new path of directly absorbing and transforming external genes to strengthen himself. This was a path of no return. This plundering method could bring a rapid growth of abilities, and the strengthening saw no limit. However, the world was a balanced one. The past few decades already had many instances proving that plundering genes wasn’t a feasible method. In most cases, the abilities that could be plundered were all low level ones, these second or third level abilities things anyone with a bit of talent able to slowly develop. The few instances where plundering of high level abilities succeeded all ultimately resulted in death by genetic collapse, not a single individual living past a year after seizing the ability, most showing signs of genetic collapse within three months.
The understanding humans had of their own bodies, in reality, was as superficial as their knowledge of the cosmos.
Genes were the key to the evolution of all living things. If one recklessly absorbed and digested them, there was no way nothing bad would happen. Even dark species who could absorb abilities had extremely great restrictions. They had to filter out all genetic fragments they were incompatible with, and the level of abilities they could absorb had strict upper limits.
Calculating the time, it had already been a few months since they left Dragon City, and Su also absorbed a large amount of unique genes, among them no lack of high level ability genes, to the extent where it included the eighth level Extreme Assault. Meanwhile, in the Black Dragonriders’ materials, the highest level that was successfully plundered was only five levels. Even now, Su didn’t feel as if there was the slightest bit off about his body, let alone any signs of genetic collapse appearing. Under his instincts’ organization, all of the acquired genes were thoroughly decomposed and perfectly fused together with Su’s original body.
This path, at the very least right now, was still incomparably perfect. Only, where was its limit?
The expression of Su who was buried under ice moved slightly, as if he was smiling. Then, all apprehension and doubt were stored away, put aside to be resolved when the time was right. The analysis of Pandora’s bones continued all this time, currently less than 10% unlocked, which was just the peeling of the thin, outermost layer. Su was extremely interested in her bones’ composition. If he could form an exoskeleton through this type of composition, then it would be equivalent to wearing alloy heavy armor, and it could also isolate all probing. It could even defect, transmit, and weaken all types of force fields and waves, so if it was slightly modified, it should possess powerful defensive effects against energy attacks.
Once the preliminary unraveling of the bone’s mysteries was completed, he could already apply it to his bone blades and bone granules hidden under his skin. Once the modifications were successful, Su’s bone blades’ physical performance would reach that of the Black Dragonriders’ composite material short blades. His body’s defensive strength would also increase substantially, so with his body’s current five levels of defense strengthening, together with the bone armor defense at crucial areas, would be enough to display the effects of seventh level defense. In addition, the bone armor would be temporarily pieced together by the granules within his body during battle, so it wouldn’t affect his mobility.
Compared to her bones, Pandora’s blood and genes carried even more mysteries. A great amount of derivation and analysis showed that her genes contained a completely new composition, one that was different from any known creature’s. From the initial analysis’ results, this type of spacious composition was a bit similar to the mysterious region Su detected in the fishman’s brain center, energy or information existing in fields or waves. This structure could be activated through special methods, and only then would it release energy or reconstruct information. Regardless of whether it was information or energy, using this type of spatial structural method for storage would allow for over a thousand times that of ordinary life forms.
Just that tiny bit of space in a single fishman brain’s instantaneous production of information and energy was large enough to almost make Su die. Even though the main reason was because it tore through the limitations of space in that instant, allowing Su’s spiritual world to link up to Pridekla’s, accomplishing this was still definitely not an easy task. At the very least, it wasn’t something a dozen or so fishman could accomplish if they worked together.
While sleeping, a thought suddenly emerged. If this type of composition completely reconstructed his brain’s computing centers, then every single core would at least possess the intelligence of an ordinary person. When that time came, it would be equivalent to there being several thousand people living in Su’s body, all of them existing to provide him with forward plans and advice.
This was definitely not just an ordinary type of chaos.
