Demon King

The Fifth Evolution (5)

Where have I gone wrong?

[Oh oh oh oh oh!]

First of all, it was clear that I misunderstood the goal of the second floor of Jinma’s Tower. I believed that the way to clear the second floor was to defeat the undead with the utmost efficiency.

But it wasn’t. When I defeated the undead that way, they resurrected as if they were waiting. No, it was like they reassembled themselves.

Will I be able to win just by repeating what I did?

No way. There’s no guarantee that I’ll win just by defeating them twice, and it is impossible to save more stamina and magic. It could be possible, but I couldn’t afford enough energy to beat them again.

What is the way to kill this undying legion? As A said, what is the way to stop them?

Should I use a special weapon? If that was the case, could I sprinkle holy water and hope it will stop them? Either way, there’s no way to get it now, and since I can’t open the inventory, I have no way to use it unless it was already in my hand.

But if holy water does work for the undead, it might work on me as well.

It is impossible to simply kill them and powder their bones. At this point, I had no choice but to discard what I initially thought. No doubt, it was the first possibility that I ignored, but that was the only option now.

Eat. I had to eat them.

But it wasn’t just to eat. Just seeing the process of the legion recovering from being ground to fine dust. They’re the ones who returned to their normal shape even if they were pounded, cut, shocked with lightning, or slashed by Blood Shadow. If I just ate them after beating them down, I will not have a good time. Ghouls might revive in my stomach and eat me from the inside.

I needed to use Predation.

It is impossible to defeat them unless it’s a skill that entirely consumes the target and absorbs it. In the first place, it was reasonable to think that the second floor was prepared to grow Predation.

[Predation Lv4]

[You can eat anything. Recovers stamina, mana, and injuries just by eating. Some degree of toxicity is negligible. Increases efficiency when absorbing the abilities of the consumes. Even low-leveled skills are more likely to be absorbed.]

Predation has grown a lot until now. But when it reached level 4, some things were left unchanged.

“You can eat anything.” In other words, I can’t use Predation on anything that isn’t a creature.

[Your neck bones are so fresh! Can I take them?]

[Give me fresh skin, flesh full of life!]

I grabbed the skeleton with a bone sword using one hand and a tall ghoul approaching from the back with the other. While it’s impossible to absorb undead with a level 4 Predation, I can’t conquer the second floor without eating all of them.

Isn’t this similar to when Lee Chan-yu evolved? He succeeded in taming a hellhound, which was impossible at the time. As a result, he evolved into a Beast Commander. It seemed impossible, but it was what happened.

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Lee Chan-yu believed that he could only dominate wolves with his leadership skills. Still, he was also qualified to make a hellhound obey his will. Not with his leadership skills, but through his power and belief. It just wasn’t presented in the skill description.

Skills are excellent, I won’t lie. I use it to my heart’s content because I could use skills at the special level like Lunatic Trickster, Black Rose, Flame Magic, Ubiquity, and Detection.

But since when did I only have the skills prescribed? I could swing a sword before learning Martial Arts, and I could jump before I learned Leap. Just because you don’t have the skill for it doesn’t mean you can’t do it. Skills are just there to reinforce actions related to the skill.

But skills paved the way to my growth and potential nicely. At some point, I grasped and used my power according to my skills. It taught me things I could do well, and I followed them.

In the end, I wasn’t strengthening myself with skills. I was tailoring myself to fit the skills.

It was late. But once I realized it, I had to act now. I must somehow do the impossible using Predation alone.

Lee Chan-yu has done the impossible. From the standpoint of being called “Boss” by him, I wouldn’t be able to keep my dignity if I couldn’t do something like this.

[Ahhhhhhhhh!!]

Fortunately, I have a sense of what to do now. It wasn’t different from what I did earlier. So far, I have analyzed my attack skills and movement skills then calculated how to be completely efficient. I had to be perfect by managing everything from my movements to my mana management.

What I needed to think about this time was Predation. I had to get a complete picture of how it worked and how to take my prey’s essence and power. How I absorb and why it doesn’t work against the undead.

However, the skill cannot be changed in a way that increases its efficiency. So what was impossible with just Predation, I had to make to by utilizing whatever I can alongside it—stamina, magic, skills other than Predation, and if necessary, everything else. I can do it. No, I have to do it. If I can’t do it, I’ll be trapped here forever.

The things I’ll need are Predation, an undead, and a monster that’s not undead.

If it’s undead, then where else need I look but where I am? Monsters that are not undead are also here. Though there’s only one. Even if I die by mutilation or anything missing, I will resurrect as a complete being.

I put my right arm to my mouth. The thought of doing this disgusted me, but my will triumphed. As long as I was convinced, I will do this, and I won’t back down.

“I will enjoy this food.”

I took a wide chomp on my arm.

Predation is, after all, a tool to support me.

Predation using my body made my power feel cleaner and more expressive. And the more I ate, the stronger I felt.

It was easy to mistake it as something possible because I had this skill. But that way of thinking was wrong. It was born as a skill, and it belongs to me. This is my strength. It is my own power, and I have no intention of explaining it.

After understanding the skill, I was able to grasp how Lee Chan-yu was able to do the impossible. Heighten your senses to the max.

I sensed myself, my arm, my mouth gnawing at my arm, the vicious force beating inside me. I must overcome this pain. Forget it.

“Grrrr…”

[You must have been desperately hungry!]

[I want one too! Your other arm!]

The life essence overflowed through my flesh, bones, blood, and muscles. And a little less, the mana essence. There were lots of energies, large and small, but always divided in two.

Predation greedily absorbed all of it. Initially, it wasn’t so simple to digest. Still, I was able to do it naturally like a human walking on two feet, a bird flying, or a whale swimming.

By eating myself, I sort out my energy, extract it, and give it back to my body.

But because what I eat is myself in the end, my stamina and magic never recovered. Instead, it decreased. Maybe because I can’t make everything I eat completely mine yet.

If I could control this power, I could increase my efficiency, but I’m being blocked by my limits. This alone had no chance to grow as time went on.

After five deaths, I figured out how Predation works. How does it work? I was able to sense the process of absorbing energy.

Now that I tested Predation on living things, I made a guess why it doesn’t work on the undead. But in the end, I figured I won’t know until I actually tried eating them.

[He’s eating him!]

[He’s crazy!]

Since I died fifty times dealing with them, I had already grasped their behaviors. I chased most away as I grabbed a skeleton. He tried to pierce my chest, but my cloak couldn’t be penetrated that easily.

“I will enjoy this food.”

[Ahhhhh! The pain! It’s so dark!]

I bit his head off. As soon as the undead entered my stomach, I understood why I couldn’t devour them with my Predation.

This food… is harmful.

Undead are things that do not have any life essence at all. If so, how did these undying legions come to life?

The life essence starts to disappear the moment the owner dies. Mana is also similar. If you think about it, when life essence is extinguished, mana is even extinguished.

The moment when life essence disappears is when the body ultimately returns to nature, and so does mana.

To become an undead, there must be no life essence. The undead artificially extracts all life essence and injects new energy or creates it by altering life essence itself. That’s how they maintain their bodies.

Magical energy is created to imitate life. The power that holds mana maintains the body and enables movement. It’s called death essence.

This way, objects that move through death are born, not creatures that have life in them.

Level 4 Predation divides and absorbs power into two: the life and mana essences. If the life essence and mana are combined, the product of the two would be extracted. The extracted essence will then be made into a skill.

Of course, it’s not just life essence and mana combined, but there are other variables impossible to grasp.

But death essence is not included in the absorbed by Predation for a simple reason.

The unclean essence invading my body felt terrible. It was challenging to get mana out because death essence was holding onto it. However, it was impossible to drive death essence out. In the meantime, death essence freely roamed around my body and tried to alter my life essence.

Because that is the function of death essence: reversing life essence and assimilating itself. By doing so would make me undead.

The horror it brings was not good. The moment I become undead is the moment I lose all my life essence. I believed that I would be resurrected, but what if it went wrong? What if that doesn’t count as death?

[Key gig. Kigi gig.]

[This is interesting… so fun!]

I desperately raised my mana, but the amount of death essence invaded my insides, draining my life essence little by little. Moreover, the undead did not leave me alone and kept attacking.

Is it really impossible? Is this the limit of Predation? Can it really only accept living things?

I didn’t believe it. It could be possible if it developed more. I needed to rein in death essence, break it down and absorb it. I was sure it would.

But I wasn’t good enough to do that. Predation was still lacking, and I needed time. So much that I couldn’t compare everything else that I’ve been through.

But if so, what should I do for me to survive and to absorb this undying legion?

The death essence inside me has invaded my heart and was transforming it. They wanted to replace my heart full of life into a heart of death.

Then I suddenly thought of a way.

Deterioration.

If it’s possible to transform life essence into death, is the reverse possible? Can I revert death essence into life essence? The moment I thought about it, my pitch-black heartbeat once before being struck by death essence, causing my pulse to stop.

I heightened my senses and focus on the death essence. The power of the things inside me and the way they move.

Time ran out, and I became undead. However, I wasn’t able to relish becoming undead as I was immediately revived as a bugbear. This time, I caught and swallowed a zombie.

I analyzed death essence. I took note of how it manipulates mana and the way it alters life essence. In my analysis, I found a way to resist it using my power.

It was only after the seventeenth death that I found out.

[intermediate Regeneration becomes Lv10 and evolves into Advanced Regeneration! Some dead bodies can be brought back to life!]

The power to change death essence to life essence. Until now, I didn’t have that power. I ate and ate more, analyzing life and death essences.

Only

[Advanced Regeneration has become Lv3!]

I swallowed a ghoul trying to eat me. Inside my stomach was the enormous death essence it had, battling against my regenerative abilities.

It shouldn’t be enough to bring back a missing body part. By using the power of Regeneration, I had to intercept death essence directly. And I had to absorb all those death essences through Predation.

It was impossible with only Regeneration and Predation alone. It was possible with all the skills I had, all the tricks to move my body, control mana, and such.

[That, that ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh]

What happened?

At one point, I realized I felt rejuvenated. Since the start of the challenge, I realized that my stamina and magic had significantly recovered.

I raised my head. Hundreds of undead were staring at me. But they were no longer something I couldn’t eat.