Chapter 22

The sun was still setting as Rob took the first step of his new expedition into the jungle. The orange twilight sky poked through the leaves and foliage of the trees above. Soon, it would be dark, and Rob would be relying a lot more on his other senses.

He dropped his shoulder, removing a strap from his backpack, so he could swing it around in front of him and quickly grab something. He pulled out a bamboo holder with a mud seal. The sounds of sloshing liquid could be heard as he picked up the bamboo holder. He undid the lid and looked inside to see a good supply of dark crimson blood.

Part of Rob’s hunt that evening was to investigate the hostile entities he had picked up with his heightened Perception stat earlier that day; but another part was to test out the new ability he had acquired with his Genetic Legacy.

He needed to test out Blood of the Slain.

All he knew about the ability was that it granted an ability of a defeated monster after one drank some of its blood.

Rob was surprised by how much he wasn’t that bothered by the prospect of drinking his enemy’s blood. He knew that the old Rob prior to the Integration would never have wanted to drink a dead animal’s blood. It seemed like a recipe for getting a bacterial infection and poisoning oneself.

But the slayer in Rob? The slayer didn’t mind at all.

It felt like a way of honoring the monsters he’d killed. It felt natural to his process of hunting monsters. He fought them for the thrill of battle, the challenge, the experience points, the system credits, and for all the crafting materials. It was a cycle of hunt, fight, craft, improve in power, repeat. In a process like that, it seemed only natural to drink their blood and unlock their abilities as well.

That was why without any hesitation Rob placed the bamboo holder to his lips and tilted his wrist, letting the blood of the dead Jungle Lizard Queen pass through into his mouth and down his throat.

As soon as he swallowed, a flash of red shot before his eyes, followed by messages in his Profile.

Rob smiled at the messages.

Nice, he thought. Another active offensive ability to go alongside my Energy-based ones.

Rob gripped his new spear and thrust it forward, attempting to trigger the new ability.

His new spear thrust into the open air like a normal attack. Nothing special.

Rob paused in disappointment.

Intuitively, the new skill had been downloaded into his brain. He knew how to trigger it and yet it didn’t happen.

Rob took a moment to parse through the new knowledge in his brain.

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When he had unlocked Energy Thrust, he had to draw upon the reserves of Stamina floating inside of him.

Rob quickly pieced together where he was going wrong.

Venomburst Strike required him to use Aether along with Stamina.

Rob had yet to truly tap into his Aether yet. He knew he had some based on his Aether points in his Profile, but outside of when his body was recovering after a battle, he had yet to use Aether more directly.