Chapter 80: Identity stealing
Chapter 80: Identity stealing
Mark flew like a meteor through the mega dungeon.
His eyes roamed around in search.
He found it.
A Tier 1 Pinnacle Demon.
It was just an Impure Demon that looked like a huge snake and it had no demonic tricks at all in its hand. Mark swiftly moved towards it and its warning Soul Sense coldly glared at him.
Mark blitzed through the air and appeared around it like a hawk. His claws held the snake in a vice grip and it began to thrash about in an attempt to move away. He held tight. Both of their Defensive Magic Skins immediately broke.
Hisss!
But Mark was fine with that. Suddenly, vines started to grow out of his hand and pierced into the Snake's body. The snake tried to counter it, but Mark held it absolutely still.
Tier 1 Pinnacle Demonic Trick—Parasite.
The snake's Mindpower was absorbed into him and Mark felt himself fill up. But it couldn't go past his limit as a Lower Demon—he could only have '100' points of Mindpower. Soon enough, in a minute or so, the snake's entire source of Mindpower had been drained and it hissed in anger.
This former Hunter Ability, and current Demonic Trick had a unique aspect to it. As long as it was facing someone with zero Mindpower, it could become its Parasite.
[Parasite]
[The ability to absorb other people's Mindpower by touching them.]
[The user of this demonic trick can also enter the bodies of people with '0' Mindpower and use them as a 'second life.' An armor of sort. If the host of the Parasite dies, the Parasite does not die alongside.]
[When inside a Native as a Parasite, the World Wills will not notice the user.]
[The ability to absorb other people's Mindpower doesn't work if the Parasite has attached itself to a Host]
The snake thrashed about but it was no use. Mark's demonic body fussed into it and amidst agonized hisses, the snake grew still. After a while, there was no Mark around but instead a giant snake. Even his wings and horns had shrunken enough to completely become one with the snake.
[The snake has become the Host for the Parasite.]
The message for killing it didn't come, that must mean the snake was not dead but in a sort of half-dead, half-alive state.
Mark moved to the side and took the hamster and backpack into his huge mouth. He looked around nervously and slid with all the speed he could muster into a building. Then, he hid deep inside it and waited.
He had at first planned to Parasitize a normal human outside the mega-dungeon... or maybe a Hunter. The Parasite ability was a very good power for hiding himself. It was similar to a sort of identity stealing method in a way.
If he made a Hunter into his Host, Hanmo and the others just might confuse him for a normal Hunter. But then, Mark had chosen otherwise.
He planned to kill Hanmo here and now. Deep in the building, he hid the hamster and the backpack. Then hissed at it warningly once before moving back to another side of the building.
Hanmo, come.
Soon enough, about ten minutes later, an icy sphere moved into the Dungeon with a calm pace from the sky.
Mark looked at it with his Soul Sense as the sphere broke away and revealed three teenagers and a mature man. Hanmo and the Trio Hunters.
Many Soul Senses were mixed here, so they wouldn't notice him.
And now, he finally saw Hanmo's stats.
Maybe because Hanmo didn't have a Defensive Magic Skin like the Demons, he could see his stats even though he was a tier weaker than him.
[Hanmo]
[Tier 2]
[Physique: 666/666 (Medium)]
[Mind: 454/690 (Medium)]
[Hunter Ability: Space Ice Manipulation (A-Rank)]
[Resistance: Space Ice Resistance (High) (T2)]
Mark looked at what kind of ability it was.
[Space Ice Manipulation]
[The ability to generate and manipulate Space Ice.]
Incredible. So that is why the ice is floating. It's not ice in the first place, but something else entirely.
If only Hanmo's Mindpower reached below (100), Mark could have used Heart Input to completely empty it. For Heart Input to work, he had to have as much Mindpower as his target.
Since he didn't have Mental Resistance like Demons, it would indeed work.
Until now, Hanmo and the rest were the Hunters. Mark hissed.
Now let me play the Hunter.
________
[Marcus Haeligarth Aramanteuil Véxillarius Nócturnâ Aërglothur]
[Tier 1—Lower Demon]
[Physique: 100/100 (Pinnacle)]
[Mind: 100/100 (Pinnacle)]
[Soul Spheres: 63.9]
[Bloodline: Ephemeral Dungeon Heart Demon]
[Demonic Tricks (T1)—Soul Devourer, Heart Input, Dream Gambler's Mortal Puppet. Parasite (Pinnacle), Dream Shock (Pinnacle).]
[Cultivated Powers: Soul Sense (100 Meters), Magical Defensive Skin (Tier 1)]
-[Resistances]-
[Heart Resistance (Low) (Tier 2)]
[Plant Poison Resistance (Low) (Tier 2)]
[Physical Resistance (Pinnacle) (Tier 1)]
[Mental Resistance (Pinnacle) (Tier 1)]
-[Soul Traits]-
[Demonic Heart]
[Soul Bond Treasures: Seal of Destiny (1), Portal Key to an Unconquered World (1).]
________
Mark just watched as they flew past this building toward the center of the Dungeon.
Am I not their only target?
Don't tell me…
Mark hissed again.
Were they going to hunt other Tier 1 Demons here and make Seo Jin Hu revive them as Kill Slaves?
As he watched, Maki's shadow blurred, and a wolf walked out of it. It was a Wind Demon with many wind-type demonic tricks. Indeed.
When he looked at Seo Jin Hu's stats earlier, it had shown that Seo Jin Hu could have at most 10 Kill Slaves, and he already had 5.
[Kill Slave]
[The ability to revive anyone as a mindless Kill Slave upon killing them with your own (or other Kill Slave's) hands.]
[Limit—5/10]
So, the wolf must have been kept in the shadow till now because it would die outside the Mega-Dungeon. The World Will would kill it.
Mark frowned. If they got more Kill Slaves, it would be more troublesome.
But he could also see their eyes roaming about.
They were wary of air strikes. Nothing in the land could truly threaten them, and as Mark watched with sullen eyes, the Wind Demon Wolf jumped down from the flying ice and landed on a building. It began fighting a demon.
They plan to kill demons with demons.
But now, he was very happy that he had chosen to become the snake's Parasite. If they had noticed the Red School Demon out here, they surely would have attacked him first.
Mark suddenly felt his heart tremble.
He had suddenly understood a horrifying fact.
Damn.
Since Seo Jin Hu could turn Demons into Kill Slaves, too, wasn't his potential even bigger than a normal Demon?
The Wind Demon Wolf had Soul Sense, it had Defensive Magic Skin, and it even had its own demonic trick. So, didn't that mean, through that Kill Slave, Seo Jin Hu was gaining all that?
So, a Hunter who could really save the world, huh?
Mark hissed.
As long as Seo Jin Hu kept killing stronger foes, he would keep growing stronger.
If he could somehow kill a Tier 10 Demon today, Seo Jin Hu could theoretically have a Tier 10 Kill Slave. As impossible as that sounded.
Seo Jin Hu... in his case, the fact that Hunters couldn't grow stronger didn't apply.
Hiss.
And I just have to kill him to use the Seal of Destiny on him. I can steal his Ability!
Mark slid around. If his guess was correct, Seo Jin Hu was most probably here to turn the Boss of the mega-dungeon into a Kill Slave. All these demons he was turning into Kill Slaves must be to build an army for that undertaking.
How infuriating.
That meant, Seo Jin Hu totally saw Mark as a side job. His main goal was the Boss.
Well, that serves me better.