Chapter 40
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While hanging in the serene heavens like an aloof and untouchable God of destruction, Astaroth watched as the acid rain penetrated the tough scales of the Water Snakes. It then turned the snakes into Swiss cheese before reaching the other side of their bodies and doing the exact same thing for the snakes below them.
In little more than half a second, the massive, piling up of Water Snakes was mowed down and eviscerated…
As they fell from the stairs to heaven like foolish mortals, the Water Snake population rapidly decreased. From the first death to the one millionth death, the deaths were quick, efficient, and unstoppable. And the number was only increasing exponentially…
Over a period of half a minute, Astaroth received a couple unique system notifications.
[Ding! You have killed 1,000,000+ organisms with poison. As a result, your 'Psychopath' Title has ranked up from 'Journeyman' to 'Adept'. All title effects have improved by five times what they were.]
[Ding! You have slaughtered 1,000,000+ organisms of the snake species. As a result, you have received the un-upgradable and passive Title 'Snaeke Hunter'] - [200% increased attack and attack speed against all organisms branching off the snake lineage.]
As soon as these two titles came into effect, the six hundred odd poison spheres turned into upward of two thousand, and all of them had their effectiveness increased by a dozen times what they once were!
SHING! SHING! SHING!
Going through the body of one Water Snake and out the body of a different Water Snake, the acid rain hit like a relentless hail storm. The more it hit, the faster the Water Snake population dwindled…
From one million to two million… two million to five million… ten million… twenty million…
After one hundred million, Astaroth simply stopped counting the number of Water Snakes that he killed.
It was unknown how there were so many Water Snakes in a single pond, but in a world of magic and mystery, there was no possible way to account for and explain every unexplainable occurrence.
For Astaroth, more Water Snakes just meant more loot, and he would never question how loot came to be.
That was like questioning how multiple hundred dollar bills were found laying underneath your doormat. Nobody was crazy enough to deny free money!
[Ding! You have absorbed 0.5 (G16) Energy from a Lvl 9 Water Snake!]
[Ding! You have absorbed 0.8 (G16) Energy from a Lvl 9 Water Snake!]
[Ding! You have absorbed 0.2 (G16) Energy from a Lvl 9 Water Snake!]
[Ding! You have…]
[Ding! Your |Toxic Surge Fall| Ability has leveled up from Lvl 8 to Lvl 9!]
[Ding! You have reached a point of Energy Overflow! Would you like to go through with the evolution process?]
"Yes," Astaroth answered as he increased the destructive power of |Toxic Surge Fall| once more.
With tens of thousands of poisonous spheres raining down acid from above, the rate at which he killed and absorbed the Water Snakes kept on increasing.
It had already reached a point that went beyond reason…
From a misfortunate situation to a lucrative one, Astaroth took full advantage of everything presented to him!
BLING!
Not even bothering to conceal his breakthrough this time around, Astaroth's fuzzy body erupted in divine brilliance!
It may have caused the most powerful creatures in the Pond to notice and swarm toward his location, but it didn't seem to bother him a single bit. Rather, he did that for the sole purpose of attracting all the bait to the rod.
[Goliath Fish (Lvl 9) - Threat Level: Green]
[Largemouth Bass (Lvl 9) - Threat Level: Green]
[Northern Pike (Lvl 9) - Threat Level: Green]
Speeding toward Astaroth from all directions were massive apex predators that ruled the Pond like untouchable monsters!
Many of them were nearly a dozen times his size, but with the latest evolution, size had almost nothing to do with the power of a creature.
Astaroth had evolved from an {Infant Birdeater} to an {Adolescent Birdeater}, and though this evolution came with a substantial increase in size, the biggest improvement had to be…
|Lightning Razor Edge|
Through a few fusions and the improvement from his Energy Overflow, Razor Edge transformed into this superior Ability. Now, with a light flicker of his front legs, Astaroth was able to crackle through the water and phase in front of something far off into the distance within an instant.
Like lightning, he appeared in front of a larger Goliath Fish, sliced through its underbelly, absorbed its energy, and then reappeared back in the skies in the blink of an eye.
It didn't even look like he had moved from his spot…
However, when time resumed and the Goliath Fish had all but been cleaved into two, reality finally sunk in for the rest of the Apex Predators.
The thought of fleeing passed by their acorn-sized brains, but as soon as they saw the tasty slab of spider meat looming above them, they flapped their tails and shot toward him.
They were the big bosses of the Pond! The absolute strongest and most powerful! No way in hell were they going to run away from something that looked so very tasty!
For a while now, Astaroth found the intense bloodlust of everything he's met so far quite odd. They never attacked each other and only seemed to come after him. Plus, they went after his throat as if they were suicide bombers with nothing left to live for.
Of course Astaroth found this more than a tad bit odd, but it wasn't until now that he brought up this matter to the system. "What is going on here, system? Am I prone to suicidal lunatics or something? Do I smell too good to resist," he asked.
[Ding! The host is an extremely unique Existence!]
[All of everything will feel a natural craving for your meat!]
[If the host gets within a certain relative distance to another living organism, that organism will begin to feel the urge to tear the host limb from limb and devour him whole.]
[Some organisms with greater intelligence will be able to resist this urge; however, those with less intelligence will have nothing for which they can use to resist temptations…]
"Well, that explains it," Astaroth said with a sigh. "I had already assumed it was something like this to begin with, but hearing that everything will want to chomp into me like a candlelit dinner steak is a different sort of realization."
After taking a moment to digest his new fate as a walking slab of irresistibly tantalizing meat, Astaroth went back to slaughtering the Water Snakes and other Apex predators.
By his calculations, as soon as he reached the next evolutionary development phase, adult maturity, he would be strong enough to devour the Pond with a single usage of True Absorption.
The only thing Astaroth was worried about was how the outside world would look with an entire pond missing from the ground…
Little did he know that his 'pond' wasn't actually so much a pond, as it was instead a...
End of Volume 2 (Pond)
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