Chapter 151 First Merging (2)

A surge of pain shot through his head as the two neural links came off, making him gasp in pain. That was the worst feeling Erik had ever felt in his life. His vision swam, and he almost fell from the bed, but he caught himself just before collapsing into the floor.

That pain lasted for at least an hour before starting to subside. However, he still had to merge the powers before the whole procedure would be deemed complete.

[LEYLARHAD'S DNA AND BUSH HEDGOHG'S DNAs SUCCESSFULLY MERGED.]

[1740 DNA POINTS DETECTED. 200 DNA POINTS USED. BRAIN CRYSTAL POWER MERGING PROCEDURE INITIATED. THE USER IS RECOMMENDED TO LAY ON A BED.]

From there, things were relatively easy. Erik didn't feel pain at all and remained seated on his bed, waiting for the merging to end. The process took two more hours with no problems along the way. Once finished, a notification rang inside his head.

[PROCESS COMPLETE. NEW POWER UNLOCKED: POISONOUS ASTRAL WOLF BITE.]

"Ah, fuck..."

The system just said poisonous astral wolf bite. Erik clearly couldn't be certain what the power would do, but he could easily infer that it was just a version of the astral wolf bite with a poisonous element.

This was for sure a powerful brain crystal power, but Erik didn't particularly like it. It would have been cooler if he gained the ability to conjure an astral wolf or something like that.

Still, unfortunately, that was not the result. However, the young man thought that if he kept merging powers, he would get something like that sooner or later.

Maybe if he merged a conjuring type of power and the poisonous astral wolf bite, he would be able to achieve this result.

Now, Erik just had to test this new power of his: However, he couldn't do it inside the Red Palace, so he decided to leave it for later and just check his status. As he willed it, the usual bluish-white window appeared.

___________________________________________________________

[Host Information]

[Attributes]

[Powers]

[Biological Super Computer Powers]

[Host's Powers]

-Rapid Growth [Plants] (ESIGMA2E-Ranked)

(Allows the host to make Plants Grow Faster)

-Sharpening (ESIGMA1D-Ranked)

(Makes Everything sharper according to the quantity of mana imbued into the item or body part)

-Poisonous Mana Darts(ESIGMA1D-Ranked)

(Conjure poisonous mana darts whose lethality depends on the mana injected)

-Bone Manipulation(ESIGMA1E-Ranked)

(Manipulate, enlarge, and increase the density, shape, and sharpness of the user's bones)

-Animal Shapeshifting (ESIGMA1E-Ranked)

(Shapeshift the body into that of an animal. Animals must be absorbed to unlock their shapeshifting.)

-Mana Exoskeleton (ESIGMA1E-Ranked)

(Create a bone-hardened exoskeleton whose strength depends on the mana used to create it)

-Poisonous Astral Wolf Bite (ESIGMA1D-Ranked)

(Conjure an astral but solid projection of a Leylarhad's head whose only aim is to bite at whatever target the host is aiming. Its teeth have a poisonous element whose Toxicity depends on the mana used. Notice: the target must be close to the projection)

-Metallization (ESIGMA1D-Ranked)

(Transform into metal body parts and items through mana. The strength of the material depends on the quantity of mana imbued.)

[Skills]

___________________________________________________________

Erik observed his status and quickly went to his power section, where he found two notable things. The first was that Astral wolf bite and poisonous mana spikes disappeared, and that clearly the number of neural links decreased. The second one was that a new voice was there; it was the poisonous astral wolf bite.

"Well... is better than nothing, really..." Erik said to himself. "I guess I will simply have to find a way to use it efficiently as soon as I'm able to go thaid hunting again..."

With that, Erik tried to get some sleep since he would have another busy day the following day. However, his thoughts trailed to Mr. Fox's dead body.

To be honest, the emotions he felt were already subsiding. Erik had been taken advantage of for two years, but at the same time, he wasn't really that angry with his employer since he was the only one who gave him a job when no one did.

This made it so that the young man's mood quickly returned to normal. It wasn't worth thinking about such people, neither alive nor dead.

***

Private investigator Hais was currently looking at some documents. After receiving his payment in the past weeks, the man started studying the case two women brought to his attention. It was the one related to the disappearance of three young men, Conal Price, Orson Smyth, and Logan Reid.

What the investigator found out was a pretty dark situation, but it was nothing out of the ordinary, to be honest.

He knew how much this country was rotten, how they pushed young people to be elitists and base everything on power.

The situation was slightly better when he went to school around thirty years ago, but these things had already happened there.

He was even subject to discrimination because of his power: parallel will. It was useless for combat, and he even had many problems during his military service.

The only thing this power did was allow him to have like two thinking brains at once, making him able to analyze things much better and have like two minds he could dedicate to different tasks at the same time.

That was also why he decided to do the private investigator.

Investigator Hais found a lot of evidence that the three boys bullied their fellow students. They beat them, robbed them, and probably sent them to the hospital multiple times. He wondered how society might have allowed things like that to happen, but then he recalled how rotten it really was.

Mr. Hais interviewed many of these young boys and girls during the past weeks, and they all had some things in common.

The first one was that they hated the three bullies' guts. They were openly happy about their disappearance and didn't even try to hide it.

The second one, though, was that no one of the students he interviewed was strong enough to kill the three; after all, that was the whole point of them being discriminated against.

However, the man didn't interview everyone; he still missed a couple of students, among which was the rumored awakener.

Hais quickly found out that he was subject to bullying before his awakening, and something weird happened a couple of days before the three young men's disappearance.

This student, the awakener Erik Romano, ended up in the hospital as thugs apparently assaulted him. Heis found this fact extremely suspicious, and he couldn't understand how the police could think it wasn't a matter worth investigating. It was too coincidental.

There was also another incident regarding the four as they had a fight at school in front of the whole student body.

If he found all these things, there had to be something more about this matter since it was unlikely that the police didn't know all of this. Was it possible they knew, but they covered up the case to protect him due to his awakener status? Were the militaries so desperate to obtain his powers as to cover a murder?

He didn't have any tangible evidence yet, but something inside of him told the investigator that Erik Romano was deeply involved in this matter; he may even be the culprit. That was possible since he became strong enough to join the Red Palace, and killing people like Logan, Conal, and Orson wouldn't be that hard.

"But I can't understand how..." The investigator told himself.

"If he really is the culprit, where did he hide the bodies? How come no one found them?"

He thought about it. Judging by the temperature around here, and the fact that they were in the middle of the summer, it was highly likely that the bodies had already become skeletons. However, the bones had to be present somewhere, and if he did find them, he could understand what had happened.

"Well, I can't be too sure he really was the killer... I still have many people to interview. Besides, I really have no proof that it was a student..."

The investigator continued searching through his computer files. But after a while, he received an email. It was an anonymous sender, and this immediately piqued the investigator's attention.

___________________________________________

YOU MAY FIND THIS INTERESTING.

-1GB FILE ATTACHED

___________________________________________

The message didn't say anything else, but it had an attachment. Hais immediately downloaded the file and quickly found out that it was a video.

The man opened the file. It was footage taken at the western train station. In the pictures, he could see three individuals,

"Are that Conal, Orson, and Logan?" the investigator asked himself.

The trio was chasing a masked student with a slightly chubby appearance and not particularly tall.

"Well, that's interesting," the investigator said while watching the footage. He saw they smashed several stands and damaged some shop properties, enraging the owners. After a short chase, the four ended up inside a train. The investigator zoomed in on the train and found out it was number 113.

The man quickly went to the train station website and searched where train number 113 was headed that day.

"Northern district?"

Then everything started to click inside the Investigator's mind. That was an excellent place to hide a body, as most of the places were farms and fields. However, it was also true that there were a lot of farmers there, and by now, someone should have found the bodies already.

"Wait a minute..."

The man went again to his files and opened the one regarding Erik. It was then that a grin appeared on his face.

"He does work on a farm!"

It was now clear. Erik Romano did kill the three students. He didn't have proof yet, but it was just a matter of time acquiring it if he found the place where he killed them.

"Well... now I'm sure it wasn't a gang that killed the three boys..."

Still, if he found all of this in two weeks, it was impossible the police didn't. The young man's homicides had probably been covered. This meant he had to be careful about his next moves, as the government was involved.