CH 14: Power

"Then if this bloodline is cursed like you say, why did you give it to me in the first place?" Rios gritted his teeth and roared in anger.

His arrogance and beautiful dream of being the heroic protagonist exploring the world had vanished the moment he learned that his path was filled with disasters that would most likely end in death.

But what Rios failed to notice was that his personality had already begun changing rapidly under outside influences.

He was becoming angrier, less composed, more emotionally unstable, and colder toward others. Yet all of it felt completely natural to him, as though nothing about his personality had changed at all.

He was walking straight into a catastrophe without realizing it in the slightest!

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[The system did not grant the host anything. You were born with your bloodline from the very beginning.]

[Your skills and abilities already belonged to you. The only thing the system did was awaken them a little earlier.]

[Aside from a few special benefits granted by the system to prepare the host in time,]

[everything else you possess belongs solely to you, Host.]

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The strange voice disappeared, and the system’s mechanical voice returned once more.

Rios stared at the system panel in disbelief.

"What exactly are you preparing me for? Why are you helping me in the first place? And where will you go if you won’t be staying with me for long?!" Rios clenched his teeth, frustration filling his voice.

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[The host does not possess sufficient strength to know such information....]

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"Strength, huh!"

"So you want me to become stronger, don’t you?"

"Then that’s exactly what I’ll do."

Rios’s gaze calmed as he decided to end the conversation with the system, having realized he wouldn’t be getting any more answers. He withdrew his consciousness and returned to reality.

"My Lord... My Lord, are you alright?"

The moment Rios regained his senses, he was met with the shocked and worried expressions of old Jansh and Luna.

"What is it, old man?" Rios asked in his deep voice.

"My Lord, you’ve remained completely motionless for over half an hour, so we became worried about you." Old Jansh bowed respectfully, his anxiety finally easing.

"Don’t worry, old man. I’m fine," Rios replied in a slightly gentler tone.

"My Lord, should we continue our journey now?" Luna asked while rubbing the spot on her cheek where Jansh had slapped her. The traces of tears were still visible on her face.

Rios looked at the two of them and frowned. Earlier, he’d been too busy checking the system panel and processing all the shocking information to notice, but now...

"Why have the two of you become so short?"

"My Lord, we didn’t become shorter. You’re the one who became taller," Jansh answered with an awkward smile as he scratched his head.

"What do you mean?"

Startled, Rios looked around and finally realized the truth.

He was now as tall as the trees surrounding him.

He had grown to thirty meters tall!

Nearly twice the height of the Giant Ang he had killed.

"Ohhh, man! Just look at me now! I could crush any Giant like that idiot with a single strike of my roots and turn him into meat paste. Or split one apart with a single swing of my branches and make barbecue slices out of him."

Rios admired his own body and the overwhelming power that came with such tremendous size.

Imagine a colossal tree as tall as a nine-story building marching through an army.

There was only one word to describe it.

Chaos.

Pure chaos.

Chaos of terror and fear.

Chaos of corpses and blood.

It would be like a fully armored three-meter-tall human walking through a flock of chickens.

"My Lord, now that you’ve grown this massive, our travel speed will increase tremendously. The journey to the City of Light should take no more than three days instead of a whole week," Luna said excitedly as she jumped in place while looking up at him.

"Hahaha, silly girl. Who said we’re traveling through the forest?" Rios laughed, mocking Luna’s assumption.

"My Lord, please forgive my ignorance, but if we don’t take the forest route, then how will we travel? To the best of my humble knowledge, there is no other path leading to the City of Light," Jansh asked respectfully, worried he might have overlooked something. After all, Rios didn’t seem to know much about this region.

"No need to worry. You’ll find out soon enough. Come on, climb aboard."

Confidently, Rios lowered two branches, lifted old Jansh and Luna, and placed them on his sturdy limbs near the purple sphere hidden beneath his canopy of leaves that served as his face.

"Hold on tight," Rios ordered excitedly as he prepared to activate the new skill he had obtained upon reaching the third level.

"Our apologies, My Lord."

Luna and old Jansh hesitated for a moment but eventually grabbed onto his branches with embarrassed expressions.

Cloud of Abyss—Activate!

The moment the skill was triggered, something resembling gray mist began pouring from Rios’s roots until it condensed into an enormous gray cloud that slowly lifted into the air.

Rios focused on it and found that controlling the cloud was astonishingly easy.

The cloud rose steadily, and under Rios’s control its speed increased little by little.

"W-We... We’re flying! We’re flying!"

Luna grabbed Jansh’s shoulder, but the old man had already frozen in place from sheer shock. She shook him violently in excitement.

"Slap me so I can tell whether this is a dream or not!"

Baaaam!

"Hey! Did you seriously slap me again?!"

Luna shouted while rubbing the fresh slap mark, the previous one not having faded yet.

"Mmm! Mmm!"

Jansh nodded repeatedly, still unable to recover from his shock...

A thin shield of gray mist formed around Rios, and his speed climbed higher and higher until it reached one thousand kilometers per hour.

"At this rate, we’ll reach the City of Light in just a few hours!" Luna exclaimed in shock as she looked toward the horizon through the protective mist barrier shielding them from the raging winds.

"Mmm! Mmm!"