If the Lord wanted him to create an army, then that’s what he would do. Not merely because she had asked, but because it was in his self-interest to do so; a fact that he believed the deity implicitly understood. He also intimated that he had been chosen for a reason. If the deity didn’t like the way he conducted business, then she wouldn’t have selected him for the task. That meant he needed to play to his strengths and find a way to civilization as soon as possible. Subsistence living was for lesser beings.
After glancing at his status and taking a moment to shake off the nervous energy he felt from his last brush with death, Jon decided it was time to leave his hiding place. While he was thinking, he noticed that the mantis had dropped him near a trail clear of the natural plants and detritus that were readily available in the forest. Its mere presence was a sign of intelligent design, and he was curious where it led.
If the trail had merely been a small path, then Jon would have considered it an animal trail that probably led to water or some other resource. However, this path was large enough for two men to walk abreast. The jungle warfare training he had received many years ago hinted that this was a sign of civilization. Jon wasn’t quite sure what he would do if he reached its destination. In his current state, he didn’t have the capacity to communicate. Toothless jaws and an unnatural tongue made it difficult to recite Shakespeare, and the essence of politics was the ability to communicate. At the very least, it would comfort him to at least observe and collect information on other sentients.
Fortunately, the sun had started to rise while Jon had been making his way down the path. His senses allowed him to stay in the high grass running parallel to the trail and remain vigilant for any signs of intelligent life, rather than risking traveling on the road itself. It would have been a premature ending to the Scourge if their great and powerful progenitor was trampled to death by a rider on horseback as they galloped down the route.
The trail itself meandered deeply in the woods. Jon was concerned that penetrating further into the forest meant that he would end up encountering higher level enemies. It was soon apparent that his fears were unfounded. Whatever force had created the trail had also kept it clear of high-level monsters. Jon could sense more powerful creatures on the edge of his sensory range, but they didn’t near the road out of a cultivated sense of self-preservation. It was a situation that the vulnerable monster felt appreciative for.
Every half hour or so, Jon would stumble upon another beast, and he would take the time to practice with his new tail blade. After a few such encounters, he was inordinately pleased with his new weapon. He could use his tail as a weapon while keeping his sensitive face from being attacked. He practiced the opposite movement of a lunging snake by coiling himself around his snout protectively and raising his tail high above his head. He found that unusually dim creatures thought the blade was his face and struck at that, rather than his more vulnerable skill. Inevitably, they died more quickly than the rest.
His favorite way of killing woodland creatures had become hanging from trees like a dirt-colored vine or hiding in the grass to plunge the blade into an enemies vitals. It wasn’t often a one-hit kill, but not one enemy had been able to keep from fleeing as blood poured out of the stab wound. Jon became a little annoyed that he always had to chase down his fleeing prey, but he was mollified by the fact that enemies higher leveled than him were dying without much risk to his own safety.
The day continued in the same fashion and by the time the sun had set, Jon had gained two levels, bringing him to level 7 and he had acquired enough biomass to level all of his mutations to level II. It seemed that acquiring biomass was easier than leveling up. The flat return of experience meant that killing enemies the same level or lower than him did less to advance his level. However, enemy levels didn’t affect the amount of biomass they supplied, and since advancements of his mutations also increased at a flat rate, it was profitable to farm weaker creatures to level his mutations.
Looking at the biomass requirements for the next set of levels made him think that soon, mutations would eventually be harder to collect than experience. To get his mutations from level II to III, he would need 20 biomass each. If he could maintain the pace that he did today, then perhaps by the end of tomorrow, he could level one of his mutations.
Jon was a little disappointed that so far, the levels to his mutations had not had any real substantive changes. They got a little more potent or had a bit more quantity but nothing functionally had changed about them. He was hoping that just like he had gained a minor mutation at level 5, that his mutations would change once they reached level five as well.
He was increasingly becoming used to his new body and that translated into better dexterity when using it to kill his enemies. His ability to coil his body around an opponent and turn them into red paste had become a nasty piece of work. If his acid wasn’t so adept at removing evidence, his little part of the woods would have looked like a Jeffrey Dahmer kitchen. All he needed was the matching furniture.
As the sun faded, Jon took the table to dig out a burrow close enough to the path that he would be able to sense anyone who stopped by. He had learned his lesson about night time predators, and he didn’t want to be on the wrong side of a swooping mantis again. He could defend himself more capably this time, but only idiots accepted a risk without profit.
Right now, he was simply focused on making it to the end of this road, no matter how long it took. If he was honest with himself, he genuinely missed intelligent company. It’s all fun and games to be a murder snake on the hunt, but murder hoboing your way around the forest lacks a certain charm. He’d rather be murder hoboing around a city. There was more variety.
Sunlight drifting through the treetops woke Jon slowly. He had peacefully slept this time without dreams of fire and bloodshed. He stretched his body out languidly, taking in energy from the beams of sunlight. Rousing himself, he mentally committed himself to another day of murdering cute woodland creatures and following the trail to its source.
As he continued on his journey, he noticed that the woods had grown more managed, and the trail wider. It looked far more maintained than it did yesterday. Jon was pleased that he seemed to be going toward the right direction.
Soon he settled into something of a pattern. Small insectoids were dying within one to two attacks, and the larger mammals took little more than that. Occasionally he did run across the lone wolf or the lone bear, but the paralytic on his tail blade made the confrontations almost dull. If necessary, he waited until the animal had returned to its den or home and killed it while it lay unsuspecting. He was getting tired of killing mindless animals.
Their base levels of cunning weren’t exciting enough to Jon. The only positive part of the experience was that the larger animals provided a wealth of biomass that he was able to put to good use. By the end of the third day of this journey, he had gotten to level 9 and leveled his tail blade to level III. He had really started relying on the tail blade more and more, and it had become his favorite means of dispatching his prey.
After another rote day of murdering his way through the forest, he decided to curl up for the night. A single beam of moonlight shone into the small den he had dug out and reflected dully on his tail blade. If Jon had the requisite skeletal system to smile, he would have. The weapon was a beautiful piece of nature. Long enough to create a wound that could not be quickly healed and sharp enough to slit a throat in the dark. The paralytic compound that could coat the blade at will made it a perfect ambush weapon.
No matter how Jon evolved in the future, he figured he would keep the tail even if it weren’t the most diplomatic of accouterments. Every night, he spent time visualizing his battles. It was an essential exercise that not only helped him to remedy any mistakes he had made but also to improve any future conflicts. As he was doing his nightly exercise, an expansive mana disruption entered his field of vision from the path.
Jon uncoiled himself from his den and cautiously s
lithered towards the path. He wasn’t very far, and his target was moving at a walking pace. Jon was caught unaware at the beauty of the mana signature before him. Animals all had mana signatures, but unless they had some sort of magical component, their mana signatures were very faint. Some plants had vibrant mana resonance, but Jon had learned quickly to avoid them. They usually had some sort of mental magic to attract prey, and Jon wasn’t willing to brave their magic just to eat a plant.
However, this figure on the road was lit up like a bonfire in his vision. Strong magical beats pulsed throughout its body and lit up his whole silhouette for Jon to see. Pulses of mana followed the circulatory and nervous system precisely. For a predator like Jon, it was practically advertising itself for the kill.
Jon considered again how useful his senses were. At first, he was disappointed that he hadn’t spawned in this world with eyes. However, over the past few days, he had really come to appreciate the versatility of his senses. In many cases, they were even better than normal vision. This encounter brought his thoughts full circle. As he neared the path to get better “look” so to speak, a thunderous voice rattled throughout his skull. TAKE HIM!
Immediately, a horrific bloodlust rose from the depths of Jon’s being. As the figure stepped ever nearer, Jon launched himself from the underbrush. A scream of fright came from his target, and Jon ignored it, to bring his tail blade to bare. With one smooth movement, Jon brought his blade from low to high. He shredded through his targets leather boots and sliced through the Achilles tendon before making his way higher and slicing up his victim’s thigh.
The man, Jon now realized, fell to the ground, mouth open with piercing screams. Jon wasted no time and brought himself closer to his victim. As he was about to wrap himself about the man’s throat and crush his throat, a strange stupor fell over him. He didn’t feel like he was being controlled. Conversely, Jon felt instincts he had never known he possessed rise to the fore of his consciousness. Instead of killing the man like he would any other opponent, he coiled himself in front of the man. In a haze, he plunged his tail blade into the man and started pumping all of the paralytic compound from both of his glands into his prey.
After a short moment, the man lay frozen on his side. He was curled up and holding his damaged leg. As if he were in a dream, Jon grasped the uninjured leg with a coil of his body and used his prodigious strength to drag the man off of the road. Jon couldn’t discern much about the features of the man as his vision didn’t allow him to take in fine details like those, but he did spy a pair of long elf-like ears.
If Jon could groan, he would have. Does everything come from Tolkien? Just once he would like to run into a fantasy world that didn’t have an elf, orc, or something else from Tolkien’s imagination. The man had to be some kind of interdimensional traveler if his tropes were brought to life even here.
Once the man had been pulled away from the trail, Jon feverishly began to dig a burrow large enough to hold the man. His tail blade slipped through the earth like a knife through butter, making the job reasonably easy.
After close to an hour by Jon’s estimation, the burrow was complete. Still, with unconscious thought, Jon plunged his blade into the man again to inject him with more paralytic. After that, he dragged the man into the burrow. Part of Jon was horrified by his own behavior. He had no issues with killing animals. He didn’t prolong their suffering, nor did he kill them in excessively painful ways, though he had the means.
What he was doing with this man was downright torture. Had the paralytic not only frozen the man but slowed down his biological processes as well, he would have already bled out onto the earth. Instead, Jon was keeping him in this half-dead state for a reason he couldn’t quite elucidate.
A strange power had clouded his mind and his body and his instincts made him act this way. Next, Jon used his tail blade to cut a straight line down the man’s spine. The cut started from the base of the man’s skull where it met his spine and continued all the way to the man’s tailbone. As the flesh parted, blood began to pool in the cramped space.
Idly, Jon lapped up some of the blood with his tongue and dismissed the experience and biomass notifications he was getting. He was too focused on what he knew must happen next. Jon sidled closer to the curled up man and began to shift his body left and right into the man’s new wound. Jon could feel his soft flesh change and warp as it morphed itself to fit the man’s spinal column. Jon plunged his head into the space just below the man’s skull and felt his head began to make the same transition. Unconsciousness took Jon as soon as he had evenly applied himself to the man’s body.
Sunlight woke Jon once again, and he opened his eyes at the blaring light. Wait. He had opened his eyes. Jon startled himself awake and propelled himself from the dirt like a low budget zombie movie. He looked around him and found himself in a forest. Large trees surrounded him, and the air was thick with humidity. He could hear the trills of birds and the screaming of insects in their endless pursuit for food and mates.
“Was it all a dream?” Jon said aloud and then clapped his hands to his mouth. That wasn’t his voice. Looking down, he saw finely shaped hands with digits that looked dextrous enough for watchmaking. They were a nutty brown color like rich tree bark. These weren’t the hands that he remembered from his previous life either. The hands he remembered were rough, calloused, and wrinkled. These almost resembled a woman’s manicured hands.
Studying the rest of him, he realized that he was wide-shouldered and well proportioned but had a slender frame like that of a dancer or acrobat. His hair was long and black. Looking down, he wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothing. Instead, his body was painted in blue woad. The symbols and designs were unfamiliar to him. Parts of the design were washed away by dried green-black blood that Jon assumed was his own. Looking at where he had previously lain on the ground, the dirt had been clumped with the same colored substance. Jon ran his hands through his hair. He stopped when he felt soft, pliant scales on the nape of his neck.
“Oh.” He whispered. “It wasn’t a dream.” Jon used his mana vision to study his own back. What he saw intrigued and disgusted him at the same time. His old form had become a layer of scale-like flesh that started at the nape of his neck and descended all the way to his tailbone. From there it turned into a prehensile tail that fell to the ground. His tail blade glinted evilly in the sunlight as it rested on the ground.
Congratulations! You have taken your first host! As a parasitic organism, you have the ability to fuse with a variety of hosts. You share experience and mutations with your host. Should you abandon this body, the host will die, and you will retain the experience and mutations that you earned while in the host body. You have received 3,000 experience. You have reached level 12! You may now choose another minor mutation.
The horror of the moment fell away as Jon read the prompt. So this is what he had been made for. The fact that he was a Scourgeling now made more sense. Based on earth biology, Jon would probably use this body to create his next primary form of evolution. He still had the feeling that he was far off from that moment, but this was a huge step forward in his development. This new body gave him increased mobility and senses. Even better, if for some reason it was damaged, he could simply move on to a different humanoid body. Scourge indeed. Speaking of injuries…
Jon took a cursory glance on his body and found that all of the damage that he had sustained from last night had been completely healed by the evolutionary process. Additionally, Jon could not distinguish himself from the new body. That probably meant that abandoning the body would be a long and challenging endeavor.
Jon thought about what he should choose for his next mutation. He didn’t really need anything now that he had a new body. With a thought, he coiled his tail around his waist until it resembled a snakeskin belt. If he could hide his parasitic effects, then he could potentially interact with society to find better targets. Additionally, he could use humanoid targets to level himself and acquire more biomass. H
is acid would be a great way to dispose of any inconvenient bodies.
Jon paused. How the fuck was he supposed to use his acid spit now? He opened his mouth and probed it with his fingers. It had all of the same structures as a typical humanoid. Jon consulted the list of minor mutations to see if there would be something that could help him there. Laughing aloud, he spotted precisely what he needed. A prehensile tongue.
Prehensile Tongue: This mutation evolves the tongue and gives the user the ability to lengthen the tongue at will. Further, the end of the tongue can be flexed and used to sharpen itself into a needle-like point. Doing so will expose a hollow cavity in the tip of the tongue which can be used to directly inject biological weapons such as acid, venom, bacteria, and more. Further mutations can increase the numbers of tongues, the length of the tongue, apply mind-altering magic to the surface of the tongue, grow papillae, and more.
Jon confirmed the choice with his mind and spent some biomass to turn the tongue into a multifunctional weapon. It was a needle-proboscis combination similar to a mosquito that could inject his target with paralytic compound, with a valve that connected to his acid-containing glands now located in the back of his humanoid throat.
The end result was a tongue that wouldn’t look out of place on a sci-fi villain. Jon was pleased with his choice. He would be able to use paralytic or acid as it suited him, and it was a weapon that could easily be hidden.
Just to demonstrate the functionality to himself, Jon was able to extend and retract the tongue with ease. If he needed more firepower than he simply had to use his tail. Jon smiled for the first time since he arrived in this world. He had stepped upon a powerful destiny, and the first time he was actually excited.
What. What in Silvy’s testicles is going on?!
Jon stumbled. “Uh. What was that?” he said aloud.
That was me! Why can’t I control my body?!
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