"What happened, did I pull an all-nighter again?."
As I groggily opened my eyes it took some time to remember my situation and when I did I wanted to go back to sleep. I looked around my residence, it looked the same besides the fact that there was a big mantis missing.
" I guess Mizumi decided to go out for a bit." Because of the soul bond I felt like I could roughly make out her direction from me.
Anyway it was time to check out my evolution and see my stat improvements.
"Status"
…
[ Name: Unnamed ]
[ Species: Dark Obelisk Hornet ]
[ Titles: None ]
[ Class: Tainted ]
[ Hp: 20/20 ]
[ Exp: 0/50 ]
[ Mana: 50/50 ]
[ Attack Force: 60 ]
Abilities and Traits:
[ Dark Iron Carapace (common): Your body is resistant against physical damage and magic damage. ]
[ Fusion (Unholy): You can steal the traits and abilities of creatures you kill to enhance your own.]
[ Pulverizing crush (uncommon)]
[ Slow decaying poison (uncommon): A mild poison that causes mild irritation ]
[ Eye of the sand eater (Rare): this will help users sense a wide area in the earth around them without the use of sight. 1mp per 30 seconds]
[ Mental link (Rare): the user can establish a mental link with others and can speak telepathically with targeted individuals.]
Magic: [ Iron ] [Mastery:1%]
[ Metal Encasing: Wrap your body in a amor made out of metal]
[ Metal Pikes: Cause Metal pikes to erupt out of the ground to impale enemies]
[ Metal Spears: Summon a volley of metal spears]
…
"Wow, I got some pretty decent abilities, if I can find a way to improve my iron magic I might become the strongest iron-bender."
I looked at my body to see if there were any physical changes and there was. My body had grown three more inches making me almost as tall as Mizumi, I was completely black and I looked way more menacing with black spikes coming out of my back and sharper arms, even my wings got longer and sharper.
Just as I was finished admiring myself a tall mantis walked into the burrow. Mizumi had a small rabbit-like rodent in her mandibles. She walked to me and put the rodent down in front of me.
"I sensed that you had woken up from your evolution, congratulations sister."
I heard a mature and pleasant feminine voice in my head. I looked up towards Mizumi's head and even though I couldn't see it I could tell that she was happy for me. Back in my past life I couldn't even build up the confidence to start a conversation with a girl so this was a new experience for me.
" Thanks Mizumi, but I was wondering why do you call me sister?"
Mizumi tilted her head and looked at me "My kind believes that anyone who helps them in their lowest times is considered family. Also I smell female pheromones coming from you so I called you sister."
My mind crashed, I didn't want to believe it. My little dragon that had accompanied me on my journeys had gone to the pearly gates before me.
" System tell me that what she says isn't true."
[ She is correct you are indeed a female hornet]
At this point I was tired of this emotional rollercoaster, I got to be isakai'd but at what cost.
Barely holding on to my sense of reason I ate the rodent Mizumi brought with a sense of defeat.
Afterwards I decided to head southwards towards the tall mountain chain that bordered the forest. Traveling there with Muzumi I had time to practice flying and I could see the improvement. With stronger muscles I was able to fly higher and longer, I could easily fly to the high branches of trees.
" By the way, why did you capture those ants? I'm pretty sure you could have defeated them?"
I asked as I had been pondering it for a while.
Mizumi stopped and sighed as if the question had brought up some bad memories, " Me and my two other sisters were hunting around the lake when we came across a gold crown centipede. We thought that if we worked together we would be able to defeat it, we were overconfident and underestimated it, I was the only one who managed to escape."
" Sorry I brought it up, it must have been something you were trying to forget" I apologized. It must have been hard to go through that and even lose your sisters.
" It's alright, and I'm very grateful for you saving me from those ants. I have to get stronger to protect my new sister.;"
I was kinda guilty as I was going to use her to get better fusions but I feel good for not doing it now. Anyway on our way to the foot of the mountain we came across some weird creatures. There was a group of red hairless rats. We killed two of them when we strayed from the pack. We also found a weird crater and there was a big alligator creature resting in it. It Had large white crystals growing out of its skin. It even noticed our presence and released its bloodlust at us.
After that we decided to call it a day and head back to the burrow. I decided to start practicing my iron magic as I would need it to complete my two imminent goals: defeating the centipede that killed my sister's family and dethroning the king of the south, the crystal alligator.
First I found an area around the burrow to practice, I activated [metal encasing] and my entire body, even my wings, were wrapped in a dark metal. I guess that the spell didn't need any chant time and it gave a big boost to defense and power but its downside is decreased agility. Next we have [metal pikes] I activated it on a butterfly that was a few feet away from me, The next instant five metal spikes shot up from the ground and skewered the bug.
I like this spell as killing enemies from their blind spots would come in handy. The mana points to use it were not that costly either, and lastly we had [metal spears] I activated it and six spears came out of a magic hex above me. To a human these were probably the size of sticks but when I fired them at a tree they created a large hole in its trunk.
With these abilities I was off to a great start, took a break to eat something with Mizumi and got back to grinding my iron magic mastery.