area51novel Chapter 21 I am satisfied to be born as a human being.
Chapter 21 I am satisfied to be born as a human being.
[Chaos Essence +506]
[Current Chaotic Essence: 666]
After a hearty meal, Luo Lan's reserves of Chaos Origin Essence increased significantly.
Apart from a few carefully selected, somewhat useful monster parts, the mountain of minced meat, the scattered severed limbs, and the bone spurs soaking in purplish-black blood... were all devoured piece by piece by Luo Lan's bone hands.
With this enormous reserve of Chaos Origin Essence, which could be described as an overnight fortune, Luo Lan controlled his massive but dilapidated body and crawled back to the remains of the bone-spiked corpse.
Luo Lan looked down at the relatively intact skeleton stitched with bone spurs, then turned her head to look at her own [Dark Gold Shell].
The high-density gold-forged shell is now riddled with holes, with cracks pierced by bone spikes everywhere. The once majestic giant armored spider now looks like a broken pot with a hole in the bottom.
[Perhaps it's time for a new body.]
The body, derived from the giant armored spider, accompanied Luo Lan for quite some time.
After several rounds of [forging] and [strengthening], the manipulation of the eight segmented limbs has gone from being awkward and stiff at the beginning to being smooth and skillful now.
The mobility and strength of this arthropod are indeed useful in combat, but its large size also has many inconveniences. No matter how agile its eight spider legs are, it still cannot dodge attacks that it cannot avoid.
The fact that I was stabbed by dense bone spikes in a confined space and ended up like this is a good example of what happens.
Moreover, Luo Lan still harbored an unresolved obsession—he wanted to be a "human" again.
Luo Lan is a hardcore model kit enthusiast, and it's true he loves building Gundams, but most Gundams are humanoid mecha. Luo Lan doesn't want to be a multi-legged arthropod for the rest of his life.
If given the choice to be Spider-Man or Spider-Monster, Luo Lan believes that most Earthlings would choose Spider-Man.
The body before us, stitched together with bone spurs, is undoubtedly an excellent choice.
This body has a humanoid framework, with two arms and two legs, and a robust and sturdy skeleton.
The ranged attack method of shooting bone spikes from the body made Luo Lan even more envious.
That attack was arguably the most lethal skill Luo Lan had encountered in this underground palace, aside from the giant centipede's sonic attack, and it was also a ranged attack.
Of course, Luo Lan wouldn't easily give up the already enhanced body parts, such as the [Steel Spider Spear] and the [Dark Gold Shell]. They could be reused through [Refining]. Now, he just needed to replace the "body base".
After weighing the pros and cons, Luo Lan no longer hesitated.
Luo Lan lowered his head, and the giant armored spider's mouthparts slowly opened. A bone hand emerged from its mouth, and five pale fingers spread out, touching the bone spurs sewing the corpse's chest on the ground.
[Casting - Assembly]!
[Consumed Chaos Essence: 209]
[Current Chaotic Essence: 455]
As the ability was activated, Luo Lan's bone hand slid out from the massive body of the giant armored spider.
The main body was detached. The eight thick, long, segmented appendages instantly went still, and the empty shell of the giant armored spider crashed heavily to the ground.
Under the influence of extraordinary power, the pale bone claw, suspended in mid-air, changed its angle, its arm pointing downwards, and aimed at the large hole in the chest of the stitched corpse that had been pierced by the spider spear, and suddenly plunged it in.
The joints squeezed through the lifeless flesh of the stitched corpse, the bony hand merged into the spine of the stitched corpse, the five fingers gripped the position of the central nervous system, and quickly took over every nerve synapse of this ownerless shell.
The stitched-up corpse, which had long since lost its vitality, suddenly began to react.
First, his five fingers trembled a few times, and then his whole body, with a series of twitching limbs, rose again from the pool of blood.
Manipulating his new body, Luo Lan staggered toward the collapsed giant armored spider shell. Each step was like that of a child who had just learned to walk, his feet treading on slippery, dark red blood, making him unsteady on his feet.
Extending his newly acquired arms, his hands, covered in bone spurs, reached for the spider's head. With his right hand, he cleaved his five fingers into a claw, tearing through the corner of the eye socket from the spider's carapace, and with a flick of his fingers, removed the enormous, scarlet eye.
With a sinking sensation in his palm, the enormous eyeball, nearly thirty centimeters in diameter, gradually shrank under the influence of the chaotic source matter. The crimson light on the surface of the eyeball flickered a few times, and its shape shrank from a large sphere to a size suitable for the palm of his hand.
Luo Lan raised his hand and inserted the resized crimson eye into the bone skull that had previously been pierced with a hole. The eye was embedded in its socket, and the crimson light shone again.
His gaze refocused. The single eye circled the new head a few times, quickly adjusting to the new perspective offered by this humanoid body.
[Assembled: The body of the corpse stitched together with spurs]
[Rank: Bronze]
[Skill: Bone Spike Burst Lv.2]
[Bone Spur Burst Lv.2: Consumes biomass energy to rapidly condense cone-shaped bone spurs at the fingertips or palm, which are then burst forth. It possesses bronze-level penetrating power, and its range and accuracy are affected by the caster's attributes.]
Luo Lan looked at her hands, which were currently devoid of skin, covered only with throbbing red flesh and pale bone spurs.
Join your fingers into a palm and aim at the stone wall.
A pale, inverted cone-shaped bone spur appeared out of thin air in the palm of my hand, spinning around. Its surface was rough and covered with many tiny protrusions.
"Bang!"
With a thought, the bone spike shot out, spinning as it cut through the air with a sharp whistling sound, crashing into the wall and creating a small crater, with rubble and dust falling down in a flurry.
Seeing this power, Luo Lan was completely satisfied.
Then, a dozen more bone spikes were launched in succession. One pale bone spike after another shot into the stone wall, blasting the wall into a cloud of dust.
The shattered debris splashed onto the ground, adding a new layer of ash.
Luo Lan stopped the test only when she felt a hollow "hunger" in her body.
This "hunger" rises from deep within the chest, making the formation of bone spurs begin to dry out.
[It seems that "consuming biomass energy" in the skill description refers to something like internal energy storage.]
Luo Lan experienced the difference in the cost of this skill compared to [Fear].
【Terror】 consumes mental energy. After using it, your head will feel swollen and you will need to rest for a while to recover.
However, the [Bone Spur Burst] consumes biomass energy, and the feeling it brings is more like being extremely hungry, feeling empty.
When you're hungry, you have to eat; that's a universal truth.
Luo Lan thought about it and realized that since arriving in this world, he had never engaged in any behavior that could be described as "eating".
The only thing that could be associated with "eating" is the bone hand's handling of the monster's remains, but calling it "devouring" would be more reasonable.
Therefore, Luo Lan had no choice but to give up for the time being and decided to wait and see if the biomass energy would automatically recover over time like spiritual energy.
There is still a lot of source material in reserve; changing bodies is just the beginning of a major overhaul.
Luo Lan stepped across the acid crater created by the burrowing, stitched corpse with a slightly stiff gait, her steps lighter than when she was using the giant spider's body.
He walked over to a relatively intact, faceless, stitched-up remains of a corpse, bent down, and picked it up.
Several sutures in the fragment had come loose, and thick, purplish-red blood seeped from the broken ends. A pungent odor assaulted my senses when I picked it up.
"Ugh, why does it smell so bad?"
The pungent smell made Luo Lan feel nauseous. The stench from the fermentation of purplish-red blood and rotting flesh was so strong that it made her want to turn her stomach inside out.
Luo Lan was stunned for a second before she reacted.
"Wait, how come I can smell something?!"
The olfactory feedback was a bit strange. To be precise, it was much more sensitive than that of Earthlings; the stench seemed magnified and focused, piercing straight into his brain. That's why Luo Lan found it pungent and irritating.
"How can I still talk?!"
Luo Lan froze on the spot.
The tone of the Blue Star language truly came from his now featureless, hard-boned head.
Without vocal cords, the sound is produced by high-frequency vibrations of the skull bones. It sounds extremely deep, with a muddy, metallic, abrasive quality.
Even though the head of this skeleton stitched together with thorns was a hard, bony shell without facial features, its surface so rugged it didn't even have nostrils, Luo Lan relied on it to gain hearing, smell, and the ability to speak...
All I can say is that in a world where extraordinary powers exist, the bodies of monsters that defy all biological principles are simply too amazing.
If Luo Lan's scarlet eye had tear glands and could shed tears at this moment, he would definitely be in tears.
On Earth, sight, smell, hearing, speech... these human senses were so commonplace.
From having only the sense of touch left to now having regained all five senses, Luo Lan has come to realize how precious they are.
The orange-red filter brought a strange visual experience; the auditory sense captured the echo of one's own voice in the narrow corridor; although tormented by the stench, the olfactory sense still broke down every scent in the air and presented it to one's eyes.
This feeling is so rare.
To be born a human being. Standing amidst the blood and rubble, Luo Lan had never felt so content.