Darius Nessar [ 84 ]

  Titles: [ Genocide Prodigy ] [ Holder of a True Blessing ]

  Wait, this guy has a true Blessing?

  Aaron blinked, hoping his eyes had deceived him, but it was true. Somehow, the murderous necromancer had received a True Blessing already.

  He knew Mo’han was being picky. He already had multiple blessings to pick from, but still, it didn’t bode well that the necromancer had achieved this before the asura. It changed things. And not just because of the power the blessing imparted onto the necromancer. It meant that another god would be intimately connected to Superearth’s progress. And potentially meddling with it.

  This is not good.

  “I don’t like this one, A-ran,” Mo’han whispered. “He seems to get more creepy every time I see him.”

  He’s even got Mo’han whispering. Well, at least I’m not the only one.

  “So, this is my special reward, is it?” Darius said, taking a seat and selecting the special soul-strengthening rewards that were provided for winning the upgrade.

  The regular food was available to all, but the unique food rewards could only be seen and taken by those who had won them, including soul-strengthening food.

  “I think I’m done here. What about you, Mo’han?” Aaron said, eyeing Darius.

  “Yes, agreed. I’m stuffed.”

  The two passed each other short nods and rose from the table.

  “Good luck with your trials,” Darius waved.

  “Why does everything he says make me feel so… slimy?” Mo’han said as they stepped out into the hallway.

  “Hey, I know her!” Aaron said, stopping in his tracks and pointing to a blonde-haired beauty clad in plate metal armor just a few strides from the entry portal.

  “Another of your kind, A-ran?”

  “Yeah. She’s, she’s,” he waved his finger, trying to place the name. “Ah, I forget. But she’s a top ranker, I’m sure of it. I definitely recognize her face!”

  “Shall we then?”

  “Yeah, let’s go introduce ourselves.”

  I need a palette cleanser after talking to that necromancer.

  “Hey!” Aaron waved as they neared.

  The woman turned to them, an inquisitive look on her face as she studied them. Aaron was just a guy clad in padded martial arts robes, but the towering figure of the six-armed asura beside him no doubt left a lot of unanswered questions on the woman’s mind.

  “Hello,” she said, crossing her arms with a guarded expression.

  “Hey, I’m Aaron, and this is Mo’han. Oh-oh, and I’m from Earth, like you,” Aaron flashed a toothy grin.

  “A Mo-what? Sorry, I just,” she rubbed between her eyes as if trying to make sense of what she was looking at.

  “As A-ran said, I am Mo’han, an asura!” Mo’han boomed, thumbing his chest with all six arms.

  “He’s a mate.”

  “Right, an alien… You’re not one of the races coming to Earth, are you?”

  “No, he’s not,” Aaron said, and she visibly relaxed and deflated a little. “But there are others here that will be. It’s a long story. It’s probably easier to just complete a few trials and go take a look in the viewing room for yourself.”

  She nodded, but it was clear half of what he said went over her head.

  Well, at least she actually seems pretty normal for a change.

  It had been a while since Aaron had anything close to a long conversation with anybody besides Mo’han. And since this was the first normal human from Earth he had met, he really wanted it to go over smoothly.

  Ultimately, whether he did or didn’t create any bonds with other humans, it made little difference to his future outlook. Aaron would get stronger and forge his own path. But he also wanted Earth to have some kind of stability, and he didn’t want to enslave everyone, nor did he want to see anybody else do it. As he thought that, he realized that the old guy might have had a bit of a point about neutrality being impossible, but he still didn’t want to cede Earth over to him.

  The best option for the future was some kind of diplomacy, and it would likely be easier if he got on well with the strongest agreeable people from Earth.

  Besides, he really didn’t see himself as some kind of ruler. If he could help others, he trusted to do those kinds of jobs, then that would be a bonus. He could go on adventures and see the multiverse. Chase thrills. That was his way. Not getting locked down on some throne.

  It took a while for Talia to wrestle control of her focus and stop stealing glances at the asura. Not that Mo’han seemed to mind. He enjoyed the flattery, even if it was more curiosity. During that time, Aaron gave her a simple rundown of the Shadow Trials with a few of his own insights.

  “So, that’s kind of the basics for how this place works,” Aaron said as he finished.

  “Listen to A-ran, he’s a pro! Been here forever,” Mo’han smacked his back.

  “Mo’han.”

  “Oh, sorry. I wasn’t meant to say that?”

  Talia raised a curious brow.

  She seemed like a decent enough person, but here wasn’t the place to be talking about any potentially sensitive information.

  “Remember what I said about the rooms? Once we can get some privacy, I’ll tell you more,” Aaron said, glancing around for eavesdroppers. Then again, he didn’t know what Skills everyone had, and couldn’t rely on the fact that just because he couldn’t see anyone, they couldn’t hear him.

  They didn’t speak for long after that. It was decided that Talia would go grind out some trials so that they could continue talking in one of the rooms.

  “Okay, well, should we start with the viewing room then?”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Talia nodded.

  It was a simple plan: Talia would go and grind out the viewing room, upgrading it until they could share the same room. Unless she had difficulty with that specific trial, then they would change it to the crafting station.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  These rooms were picked by Talia. Both were vitally important to her as she wanted to get a better idea of what would face her after the trials were over, and she wanted to practice more with her Profession, which she had left mostly idle since unlocking it.

  Not only that, but with the viewing room, they could get some strategizing done. Maybe figure out who to pull into an alliance of similar people.

  Since Talia would need to unlock multiple trial stages, Aaron also felt like he might as well go grind some trials out himself. There was no point waiting around. He grabbed a dish from his pouch and started chowing down to power up before pausing when he noticed that Talia was staring at him.

  “Ah-um, what are you doing?” she asked, her face scrunched up with poorly hidden disgust.

  Aaron looked up with wide eyes. “Huh? What do you mean?”

  Aaron looked down at his meal and realized the problem. His food was… not fit for human consumption. And “human consumption” was no longer an apt description for what he did. He was almost more like a living garbage disposal than a person now, when it came to food.

  “Th-that,” Talia pointed, her finger slightly trembling.

  He had kind of forgotten how he probably came across to others. Mo’han had learned to just kind of ignore it, probably because he had very little experience with humans. But Talia?

  “Oh, this? I’m… eating.”

  A bead of sweat appeared on Talia's forehead, and she took a slight step back.

  Damn, I probably look like an animal now, he thought.

  Perhaps he had gotten a little too into the ogre-eating thing, Aaron realized. He was no doubt eating too fast and messily. He was bad with that before the integration, and could only imagine what he looked like now. He felt a bit mortified, and wanted to put the food away and sink into the ground… but he couldn’t let a bit of shame keep him from the trials. He still needed to load up.

  “Sorry, forgot my manners,” he said

  He put the slimy eyeball cake he had been eating back into the pouch and pulled out something more normal-looking: the leg of some kind of red meat animal. He carefully put the shrunken animal leg into his mouth, intending to eat more normally, but once it touched his tongue, he seemed to lose all control. His mouth turned into a commercial food processor, and the meat was gone.

  But that was only half of what concerned his new friend. Because as he ate his shrunken food, his belly, arms, and legs all widened. He wasn’t just growing fat at an unusually fast speed, but the little meals seemed far more substantial than they should be. Heck, he even seemed to grow taller, his features a little more stubby and wide. Almost like his appearance slightly changed to resemble a monster.

  Well, fuck it. I’ve already gone this far. It’s not like it’s something I can hide, either.

  “Is there a problem?” Aaron asked confidently, eyeing Talia as she turned pale.

  “You’re… you’re…” Talia stammered, unsure what to say.

  This was something else. The integration had introduced her to marvelous powers and monsters. But this? She had never seen someone gain an endless appetite to such a degree that they could change their appearance like this. To not just get fatter, and by a large margin, and to actually get a bit taller by doing so? And he was acting like it was normal? What was going on?

  “Why are you getting so much bigger? Is that a Skill?” Talia finally pushed out.

  “Ohhhh! Right. Yeah, it’s a long story. You know what I said about blessings?”

  Talia nodded.

  “Yeah, well,” Aaron winked. “I’ll tell you when we’ve got a room. But let’s just say I know an ogre.”

  Talia continued to nod, wondering what exactly Aaron meant by that. But the mention of an ogre did remind her of something similar she had seen during the Tutorial. There had been an outcast in her Tutorial. They called her the cat lady.

  This cat lady never joined the main group and was probably out somewhere hunting in the Tutorial, if she was still alive.

  But the reason Talia thought about her was that she had actually managed to enter the Tutorial with one of her feline companions. Apparently, there were special conditions that allowed these kinds of things to happen.

  It was called Unbreakable Bond, and it also happened to parents and their children. It allowed them to enter the Tutorial together. The sad part was that not everyone had the natural ability to protect their loved ones, but those who did could gain additional allies at the start.

  This cat lady was one such person. But her relationship went beyond normal love between owner and pet.

  Apparently, at her E-grade evolution, she had been offered a special race. Some kind of cat-human hybrid. Talia didn’t really know the details, but she had run into her in the Tutorial after her evolution, and well, she looked like a humanoid cat.

  Was this eating thing similar?

  “Wait, did you evolve into an ogre?”

  Aaron choked and spat. “Bah-agh! What? Why would you think that?” He looked around at his puffed-up body and groaned.

  “Sorry… it’s, you know.”

  “Dammit. Do I really look like an ogre?”

  “No, I didn’t mean anything by it, I swear! You don’t actually look that much like an ogre at all. I just didn’t know humans could do… that.”

  Looking at his reaction, Talia knew her words were not half as comforting as she might have meant them to be. Sure, Aaron wasn’t actually an ogre, but even the thought that some might mistake him for one when puffed up with power was still not something he wanted. She had offended him.

  “I don’t always look like this. Just when I’m cultivating energy.”

  “Sorry!” she said. “I didn’t mean to– I mean, I was just curious.”

  “Wait, so you can’t do this thing A-ran does?” Mo’han interjected.

  “No. I have never seen anybody do that.”

  “I see. HOW FASCINATING! I thought all humans were capable of such a feat. This changes all of my calculations,” Mo’han said, scratching his chin.

  “What calculations?”

  “Oh, that’s just a figure of speech common on my world. My beliefs about humans have been rocked, that is all. Wait, do you eat the same kinds of food as A-ran here?”

  “You mean that stuff he is pulling out of the pouch?”

  Mo’han nodded whilst Aaron continued to eat. Talia watched as he took out a bowl of soup that looked like it had a couple of full kidneys floating around in it and started scarfing it down. Within seconds, it was gone, and he pulled out what looked like a whole roasted frog, but with eight legs and horns, and then bit its head off, making a squelching noise that made her shudder in discomfort.

  “No way,” Talia squeezed her nose. “I have no idea what any of that is, and I would rather keep it that way.”

  “Oh! How marvelous! So you must be the other food he forces himself to eat in the dining room, then?!”

  “Wait, I look like I’m forcing myself to eat pizza and burgers?”

  Mo’han nodded. “It is a very stark and, honestly, disturbing comparison. You seem to love that foul stuff. But whenever you eat in the dining room, it looks so forced. Like you’re in pain.”

  The ogre-like man looked up at the asura, his mouth open. Then, he looked down, his gaze far-off as though he was re-evaluating his entire life.

  “Yeah, I suppose I do like this stuff,” Aaron trailed off to a whisper.

  “It’s fine,” said Talia. “I’m not judging. I swear!”

  I am totally judging, she thought. What the hell is even that?

  “Whatever, it’s too late now. Anyway, my energy reserves are just about full. It’s time we hit the trials.”

  Talia agreed. As interesting as watching Aaron eat was, it wasn’t actually interesting, and she wanted to go anywhere else. Were all the humans in the Shadow Trials going to be like this? Or was he just some kind of crazy bogan who lived in a swamp?

  Despite her desire to get away, though, she was also curious. She didn’t see many others in the Shadow Trials, meaning she had been one of the first. However, Aaron got there before her, and at a much lower level, and despite Mo’han’s obvious strength, it was clear that the alien looked up to the human somewhat. How strong exactly was Aaron? And what kind of secrets was he hiding for him to be unwilling to talk about them without being in the privacy of this “Viewing Room” thing?

  She was disgusted by his food, but he seemed like a decent-enough guy. She could bear with it for a bit, at least until she learned more about him. And on the bright side, the Trials were done solo, so she wouldn’t have to see it while she was there.

  Her mind made up, she joined Aaron and Mo’han as they made their way to the dial to select their trials.

  As they walked to the dial, Aaron felt a bit sad. He had finally met a reasonable human again… and he had made an absolutely terrible first impression. If it wasn’t obvious enough from the faces she was making as he ate, it was when she chose to walk on the opposite side of Mo’han from him.

  He hadn’t really thought about it before, but Oozagh’s side of his path wasn’t very good for diplomacy with anyone who wasn’t an ogre. In fact, it looked like it was actively worsening his image. He didn’t really want to change his path, since he liked how it all synergized… but he could at least take a page out of Yendal’s book and make the food a bit more presentable, right? He would definitely need to look into that. Otherwise, an ogre wife might be his only option…

  He shuddered as a mental image of female Oozagh appeared in his mind once again.

  Definitely need to fix that, he decided. After I do this Trial, of course.

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