He didn't scream for much longer. Large mouthfuls of blood poured out of Billis' mouth like a fountain. Judging by the amount of blood, his internal organs must have been severely wounded.
Inside the bucket, the bright red blood was immediately absorbed by the purple liquid when they came into contact. The blood was then directly sent into Billis' body through his skin. The purple and black liquid started bubbling during this process, and an oddly fragrant smell filled the hidden room.
A seductive and phantom-like singing started alongside the smell.
The singing was like the voice of angels, sweet and refreshing. It was inspiring and moving at times, clear and crystalline at others, and even profound and reflective at certain moments. Several beautiful sirens the size of a palm floated above the purple liquid and sang in unison.
However, as they continued to sing, all their flesh started to rot and fall apart, turning into pools of purple-black fluid and joining the rest of the liquid in the bucket. Only lonely skeletons remained, their jaws moving up and down, letting out strange creaking noises.
At the same time, the touching song suddenly turned into a hateful curse uttered with bloody tears. A mental flux filled with hatred and vengeance rippled through the air before surging into Billis' body.
Billis' grip continued to tighten. Splinters started flying everywhere from the strength he exerted on the sides of the bucket. He gouged deep marks in the hardwood.
Inside his body, the accursed Queen Bug was furiously devouring his heart. Outside, the curse of the sirens was continually surging into him, eroding his soul without stop.
Billis dove into the purple-black liquid when the pain reached its limit. He suppressed his disgust and started gulping down the revolting material.
The liquid in that bucket was fresh blood taken from living sirens.
Judging from the amount in the bucket, they had to have wholly drained ten sirens of their blood. The sirens were a type of magical sea creature that could compare to human adepts. Ten advanced apprentice-level sirens had cost Greem a hundred and fifty thousand magical crystals.
The assimilation process between Billis and the Queen Bug was a manner of mutual devouring. In this process, the Queen Bug's body needed to become Billis' new heart, and the Queen Bug's soul needed to reside in Billis' soul successfully.
The Queen Bug did not possess any ability to improve and grow on her own. However, when it infested Billis' body, it could become stronger along with Billis' personal growth. That was a unique method of growth that belonged to their species!
However, the assimilation process itself was far too cruel and bloody. If the host failed to endure through the entire thing, both man and bug would die.
That was why Greem had no choice but to purchase the siren's blood to increase the success rate of the assimilation.
Just like the Water of Life of the elves, siren's blood also possessed astounding regenerative properties. However, this blood was already soaked in the hatred and curses of the sirens at their deathbeds. That was why one had to endure the power of these curses when using the blood.
The reason Greem chose Siren's Blood over the Water of Life was due to the clash of attributes. Both the Queen Bug and Billis had the unique twin attributes of darkness and earth. These were opposed to the Water of Life. Consequently, Greem had no choice but to choose the siren's blood, even if there were potentially severe side-effects.
Fortunately, getting rid of these curses would be an easy matter as long as Billis successfully merged with the Queen Bug.
The intense torture of both soul and body brought Billis to the edge of life. He curled into a ball and soaked himself in the siren's blood, silently enduring the terrifying pain of having his heart eaten out.
Red blood continued to pour out of his orifices before being transfused into his body with the siren's blood. It was this cycling of his life force that ensured Billis wouldn't die of exhaustion during the assimilation process.
Greem silently stood by the side of the wooden bucket during the entire process, carefully watching over every step of the assimilation. With his subtle soul connection to the bug, along with the Chip's x-ray vision, Billis' body was like a transparent sack. Greem could see everything happening within.
Greem didn't just examine him without doing anything. He occasionally drew a small blood sample from the bucket to keep. After this, he could analyze the secrets of the Queen Bug's assimilation through the composition of Billis' blood.
While Greem anxiously waited, the Queen Bug had managed to squeeze all the way into Billis' chest. She had also managed to devour all of his heart.
Under ordinary circumstances, Billis would have been a dead man at this moment!
After all, as a beginner apprentice, he was still incapable of using magical energies to sustain the cycle of life within his body.
However, the siren's blood had provided Billis with additional life force. It allowed him to hang on to his life until the Queen Bug managed to replace the heart's function, even while he was missing a heart.
Splash! Water went everywhere.
Billis emerged from within the blood. He grabbed onto the sides of the bucket and panted intensely.
A pair of strange dirt-yellow pupils resided within his eyes!
…………
Three days later.
Sabrina walked into the hidden room with a large plate of mutton steak. Traces of blood still clung to the meat.
This place was on the second level of the stone tower.
Apart from the few pseudo-adepts, no apprentices were allowed on this level. Beginner Apprentice Billis not only had a room to himself, he even had the privilege of having five daily meals personally sent to his room by pseudo-adept Sabrina herself!
This kind of treatment undoubtedly invited the fervent jealousy of the other apprentices.
However, only Sabrina knew the truth. It was hard to tell if the person that had locked himself in that hidden room was still that Beginner Apprentice Billis!
Under Greem's strict orders, Billis had moved from the first level to the second level of the tower. He had not left his room since. He only hid within that dark and enclosed space, spending most of his day eating and devouring food with an eager passion.
At first, Billis only ate those well-roasted and juicy steaks. However, even with the two chefs sent over by the city lord cooking non-stop, they were still unable to appease Billis' bottomless appetite.
Three meals a day turned into five meals a day, then continuous feasting. Sabrina was reduced to a busy worker. She was constantly bringing large platters of meat to and from the hidden room and the kitchen.
Afterward, Sabrina realized that Billis didn't seem to be picky about the taste of his food or even if it was fully cooked. She decided to have the chefs do away with the fine cooking and marinating process. All they had to do was cut the meat into appropriate portions before quickly cooking it and sending it to Billis.
In the end, Sabrina even decided to throw the bloody corpses of cows into the room with her mechanical claws.
Finally, Greem was no longer able to stand the sight of all this. He called Sabrina over for a few words.
The next time Mechanical Girl Sabrina visited Billis' room, she brought a live cow with her!
…………
No one knew whether it was intentional or not, but most of the apprentices in the tower had been sent out on errands.
Sabrina extended four or five mechanical appendages from her waist and lifted a three-hundred-kilogram cow, which she easily carried into Billis' room.
The room was dark and without light.
In truth, Sabrina should have been able to see everything within this room. She had a strong mechanical eye capable of infrared sight and low-light vision.
However, this room was different. It seemed as if a magical effect had been imbued in the darkness of the room. It didn't matter how wide Sabrina opened her eyes; she couldn't see anything. She only ha
d a vague feeling that a terrifying secret hid within the darkness.
Sabrina didn't dare to take more than one step forward. She stood in front of the door and sent the struggling cow into the darkness with her mechanical arms.
Every time this happened, she would feel a strong pulling force on her mechanical appendages. If she didn't let go of the cow promptly, she might have been dragged into the darkness with the unfortunate prey.
When she retracted her mechanical limbs, the cow had vanished, and some pale, green, and stinky slime clung to the appendages.
Then the terrifying sound of tens of thousands of biting bugs would echo from the darkness of the room!
Chapter 461 Bug Transformation
Deep in the night.
The bustling city of Gilneas had once again fallen into an unusual silence.
The ravenous Billis was wandering inside the stone tower, looking for his prey.
The black robe draped over his body continuously swelled up and deflated, as if there were many living creatures squirming about under the cloth. A strange cracking or crunching sound seemed to ring out from under the robe as well.
This was the second level of the tower. There was no one else apart from Sabrina and Morse here.
That was why Billis hadn't managed to find a suitable target, even after making several rounds through the corridors.
At this moment, the images of several dozen locations were moving about in Billis' compound eyes. He was dizzy from the information overload. He had just obtained this Bug's Eye ability.
Billis silently stopped somewhere in the corridor. He attempted to sense for any motion behind a thick stone door. Four or five strange bugs with black shells fell out from his robe.
They were only the size of a fingernail, but they crawled on the ground in an agile fashion. These bugs crept into the room through the tiny gap under the door.
Once they had made it past the stone door, Billis was immediately able to see everything behind it. His compound eyes could share their vision.
It was extremely bright inside the room. Pseudo-Adept Sabrina was crouched over a wooden table, carefully and solemnly grinding several extremely sharp spiral cross-blades. As a mechanical girl, these spiral cross-blades were one of her few long-ranged attacks. That was why she had to take them out and conduct proper maintenance on them every so often.
An indescribable sense of danger suddenly surged through her heart as she was concentrating on the task at hand.
Sabrina turned her head abruptly. The red mechanical eye under her silver mask quickly scanned the entire room. She didn't find anything out of the ordinary. It didn't matter whether it was the infrared sensors in her left eye or the low-light vision in her right eye. Neither had picked up on any unusual lifeforms, apart from the few tiny bugs crawling in the shadows of the walls.
Tiny bugs!
Sabrina's mechanical eye suddenly glowed brightly.
This place might not compare to an actual adept's tower, but it still had tight defensive arrays. How would it have let several bugs make their way into her room?!
Having understood that, several narrow slits immediately opened up in Sabrina's body. Three spiral cross-blades shot out and slashed towards the shadows like flashes of lightning.
Those strange bugs clearly couldn't stand up to the spiral cross-blades that had been enchanted with piercing and sharpening effects. The five dots in Sabrina's infrared sight immediately extinguished. At the same time as the bugs died, a muffled grunt rang out from outside the stone door.
Sabrina didn't even hesitate. She opened the stone door and charged outwards with instant-cast wands in each hand and silver mechanical appendages all around her. Yet, she couldn't see a single form in the narrow corridor illuminated by the gentle light of illumination crystals.
The enemy was quick to run!
A savage light gleamed in Sabrina's eyes. She intended to immediately send a magical message to Sir Greem, who was on the third floor. Yet, just as the light of a magical message had gathered about her mouth, Sabrina changed her mind. She picked up the spiral cross-blade that had just exterminated the strange bug.
Some pungent slime seemed to have gotten onto the blade. The ooze glowed with a ghostly green glow under the light.
Could it be him?
Sabrina hesitated for a little longer before finally dispersing the magical light with a wave of her hand. She turned and returned to her room. Nothing else happened after she shut the door.
At the far end of the corridor, there was a ceiling that wasn't illuminated by the crystals on the walls. At the moment, strange black beetles crowded this corner.
A tide of beetles surged out once the corridor returned to its previous silence. The beetles climbed down the walls and onto the ground, once again reforming into a strange human figure wearing a black robe.
Bug's Eye, Bug Swarm Transformation, Shadow Tunneling, Earth Spike.
These were the various abilities that Billis obtained after assimilating the Queen Bug.
However, his Spirit was still too weak. He was still incapable of supporting large-scale swarm activities. He could only split out twelve beetle scouts at the moment.
Billis' current Spirit was only at beginner apprentice level. However, his combat ability had risen by several degrees. He was no longer the same pushover apprentice.
Sir Greem had mentioned that the Queen Bug he assimilated had once belonged to Evil Bugs Acteon. Evil Bugs Acteon was a powerful adept whose strength was acknowledged by all. That meant his path to advancement had already been established. All Billis had to do was train his Spirit, and he would steadily rise to adept-level.
He might still have been a beginner apprentice now, but the speed at which he would advance was destined to be several dozens, or even a hundred times, faster than other apprentices.
He was destined to become a powerful bloodline adept in the future!
This prevailing belief stimulated Billis. He was barely able to suppress his bubbling desire to head to the first level and start a massacre.
Blood and flesh! He needed blood and flesh!
For some reason, Billis' intense desire for blood and flesh had not disappeared since he successfully assimilated the Queen Bug.
If it weren't for Sir Greem sternly warning him not to go hunting in the stone tower, Billis would have turned all those apprentices, maids, and servants into his prey.
Billis stood up and looked at the stone door at the end of the corridor before turning and disappearing into the darkness around the corner.
He wasn't the opponent of these pseudo-adepts as he was right now. In fact, he couldn't even sneak up close to them. Thus, if Billis wanted to hide the secrets he held, he would have to lower his standards and feast on those below advanced apprentice first.
Billis hadn't taken two steps in the dimly lit corridor when he suddenly stopped.
His master seemed only to have emphasized him not being allowed to hunt in the stone tower. He never mentioned anything about outside of the stone tower. If he snuck out of the tower under the curtain of night...No one would notice if a few people went missing from Gilneas City, would they? It had a population of several tens of thousands after all.
If this had been any usual circumstance, the kind and caring part of Billis' humanity would have rejected this sort of unreasonable slaughter. However, the flames of starvation had lit a fever inside him. He no longer cared about what feelings he had about the situation. Instead, he bowed before his instincts to kill and hunt. Billis turned and dashed towards the closest window.
…………
Greem, who had been reading books on the third floor, shook his head and let out a soft sigh when he sensed Billis' aura vanishing from the stone tower.
As the stationed adept, he was able to rely on the defensive array, along with his powerful Spirit, to sense everything within the tower. Nothing in here could escape his spiritual senses. That was why Greem knew everything that Billis had just done. In
fact, he had merely allowed him to do so.
If it weren't for Greem, Billis' weak attacks would never have been enough to allow him to escape this tower.
Greem casually tossed out a magical golem core and summoned a wind critter. He had the wind critter levitate in midair and follow behind Billis. With this eye in the sky, Greem would have a complete grasp of Billis' every action in Gilneas City.
Greem's impression of Billis the beginner apprentice was pretty good!
He was loyal, resilient, hardworking, and even somewhat kind. Billis was an apprentice with a decent moral compass. Unfortunately, his elementium affinity had never been a dominant trait. That caused him to have inferior talent and cursed him to be stuck at beginner apprentice level.
However, his twin attribute of earth and darkness had been activated after this successful assimilation of the Queen Bug. They were finally dominant traits over his other attributes. This would clearly affect the future development of his bloodline path. Moreover, how a person's personality would develop after merging with another lifeform's differing character was also an extremely interesting subject of research!
Greem immediately started collecting the necessary research materials after having the Chip construct a research project.
It was as easy as flipping his wrist for Greem to hide from Billis' senses while he gathered essential data and behavior on him!
The only thing Greem needed to be careful of was ensuring that Billis didn't cause too much trouble. Otherwise, if rumors started to spread, some unwanted problems would still come their way. It wouldn't even matter if Greem managed to get Alvar to put a lid on things.
Unlike Meryl, Billis was like Gargamel back in Fire Throne. They were subordinates that Greem was secretly assembling for his future development. Thus, if it was possible, Greem didn't want him exposed to certain people too early.
Having finished dealing with Billis' matter, Greem took out a knowledge crystal from his pouch. He tossed it about in his hand and fell into deep thought.
This knowledge crystal had come from Adept Flandre's storage space. All sorts of bits and pieces of knowledge were recorded in it. It was easy to tell that it was the incomplete knowledge that Flandre had somehow stumbled upon in his life as an adept. The water adept had recorded it all in this knowledge crystal to prevent himself from forgetting some crucial details.
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