I'm a proper student; I only take nine kinds of potions every day.

Chapter 142 Tears well up! This parasite is practically a delicacy!

After confirming that there were no abnormalities in the surroundings, Pilsson's legs began to change.

Two vines gradually turned into several gray-green ones.

Each one is as thick as a wrist, with the end forking into finer rootlets, like the roots of an old tree.

The vines silently climbed up the exterior wall of the apartment building.

Pilsner's upper body slid down the vines, like a spider descending along a spider silk.

He approached the window that was made of tattered newspapers and wooden planks.

A dozen seconds later, his body, like a slowly growing vine, seeped into the crack in the window frame.

In the darkness, a pair of eyes adapted to night vision scanned the room.

There was a figure on the bed.

He lay there half-hunched over, his body trembling uncontrollably.

His breathing was rapid and irregular, like a seriously ill person struggling to fall asleep.

Pierson's lips curled up slightly; he had spotted his target.

To prevent any accidents, he waved his right hand again.

This time, the spore density was twice as high as before.

Invisible particles, completely invisible to the naked eye, drifted out from his palm, forming an invisible fog of death in the air.

Since the other side neither moved nor resisted, their rapid breathing acted like a vacuum cleaner, sucking in the spores one by one.

"No matter how strong your body is, you have no chance to resist this concentration of spores."

"After all, he's just an apprentice."

Even after confirming that the spores had been inhaled, Pilsner still did not rush to take action.

He activated his second extraordinary property: plant activation.

Two jet-black old vines extended from his shoulder blades.

As those old vines grow, their tips split open, and sharp, fang-like barbs grow out.

The next instant, the two old vines, like venomous snakes pouncing on the rabbit, wrapped one around Evan's neck and the other around his feet.

Then, with a sudden tightening and a jerky swing, he lifted Evan off the bed like he was hoisting a pig.

At the very second he hoisted the target, Pilsner infused his spirituality into the withered wooden sword in his hand.

The dry wooden surface suddenly burst forth with a captivating green glow.

The wood grain began to twist, soften, and expand, and the shape of the entire sword transformed into a strange green tongue within seconds.

The tongue was half a meter long, its surface covered with dense, tiny barbs, and constantly secreted green mucus.

It can lick itself, and looks as soft as a piece of live meat, but its surface has a cold, metallic sheen.

Pilsson raised the tongue, aimed it at Evan's forehead, and without hesitation, slapped it down.

Once hit, it can completely take over the target's nervous system within seconds.

Are we absolutely certain of victory?

Bang!

Two muffled, explosive sounds came at the same time.

It was like two giant hammers simultaneously smashing two wooden stakes.

Pilsson felt a sharp, stabbing pain in both shoulders.

The two old vines that extended from the shoulder blades were snapped in the same second by something.

Before the pain subsided, he discovered that the figure he had been dangling in mid-air had vanished!

"What————!?"

Before he could react, a gust of wind howled from behind him.

"Oh no! It's a trap!"

Pilsson was horrified.

His body instinctively activated the third characteristic that he had not yet fully mastered.

The skin begins to harden, layer by layer, from the outside in, turning into the hard bark of an old tree.

However, the opponent was simply too fast.

His body has changed by less than a third.

Bang!

A powerful punch pierced his chest from behind.

The bronze fist pierced through his back and emerged from his chest, bringing with it large pieces of broken bark and wood fibers.

At the same time, another large hand reached out from behind and precisely grabbed his neck.

That hand was incredibly cold and incredibly hard.

While he was still completely bewildered, those fingernails had already pierced into the skin of his neck, which had not yet turned into tree bark.

The moment the needle pierced through, Pilsner sensed a sudden change.

I felt dizzy and short of breath. My forehead started to feel hot, but my body felt unusually cold.

The strength in my limbs seemed to be drained from my blood vessels, rapidly disappearing.

"I... I've been poisoned?"

"Damn it, what kind of poison is this? The symptoms are just like a cold!"

With a background in scientific research, Pearson's brain, even in this life-or-death moment, was still instinctively comparing the symptoms with the database of diseases he had previously studied.

Fever, chills, muscle aches, difficulty breathing —

These are typical symptoms of the flu!

But the onset speed was wrong, it was too fast!

Concentrated? I've run into a competitor!

In those fractions of a second of analysis time, he realized that he had completely lost the power to resist.

Pilsson, half human and half tree, lay straight down on the floor.

He was extremely weak at this point, and his face, which had turned half into tree bark, alternated between red and white, while also sprouting numerous black spots.

He didn't even know how the other person had discovered him.

"That damned, despicable man! Did he inject poison into my body?"

Just then, a face appeared in the moonlight, looking down from above.

The face that appeared before him wore an incredibly exaggerated smile.

His mouth stretched to his ears, and his two rows of neat teeth gleamed white in the darkness.

Though her eyes smiled into crescent shapes in the shadows of her eye sockets, the wrinkles on her face, caused by excessive effort, made them appear strained.

His entire expression conveyed a bizarre state that was somewhere between extreme happiness and mental instability.

Pilsson instinctively let out a scream.

"ah!!!"

A large hand covered his mouth.

Then a low voice sounded in the darkness.

"What are you making so much noise for so late at night!"

"Don't you have any sense of public decency? The neighbors still need to sleep!"

Pilsson felt like a string in his brain had snapped.

This is a life-or-death battle in an extraordinary fight!

The first thing this guy said wasn't about my background, my purpose, or asking me to hand over any treasure.

The thing they care about is not disturbing the neighbors' sleep!?

Seeing Pilsson's stunned expression, Ivan smiled broadly.

He had thought this seemingly clueless research nerd might have some hidden tricks up his sleeve.

The results were achieved using only conventional physical methods.

Vines, hardened bark, and a ritual implement that requires contact.

The only thing that could be described as bizarre was the spores.

However, after he inhaled those spores, they directly turned into a 0.6% progress bar for foggy encephalitis.

"You've finally arrived, my lovely little lamb," Evan said in a low voice, forcing a smile.

Pilsson coughed twice, his head feeling as heavy as if it were filled with lead.

"You—you actually knew I was coming tonight?"

Ivan grinned: "That doesn't matter anymore, since you're already here."

Pilsson looked at the perfectly healthy, incredibly strong man in front of him, who showed no signs of poisoning, and asked incredulously.

"How did you manage to do that? You've already inhaled so many parasitic seeds, how come you're still alive and kicking?"

'

Ivan had no interest in answering the question and pressed on, "What method do these parasitic seeds represent for you? Are they magical artifacts or a special characteristic?"

Pilsson sneered, still feigning toughness: "You think I'd tell you?"

Ivan chuckled and instantly activated his Demon Hunter form.

The vision of the Spirit Vision 5 swept across Pilsson's entire body and instantly locked onto his right arm.

Both times he attacked, he used his right hand to splatter spores forward.

Furthermore, through his demon-hunting vision, Ivan could faintly sense a special, extraordinary energy emanating from his right arm.

He reached out and tore open the sleeve of Pilsner's night clothes.

Beneath the night clothes, on the inside of Pilsner's right arm, lay something.

It is about half a meter long and looks like a centipede with many slender segments.

The entire monster was perfectly fitted to the contours of the inside of the arm, hidden beneath the skin.

Those slender, segmented legs pierced his blood vessels and were still wriggling, as if drawing nutrients from his blood.

"This is the mutated virus parasite you cultivated," Ivan said with curiosity.

Pilsson was startled; he hadn't expected that the other party already knew the laboratory's secret.

The next second, he instinctively raised his arm to attack, wanting to silence him.

Unfortunately, he then discovered that his limbs were completely out of his control.

Unbeknownst to him, tetanus caused his muscles to completely spasm and stiffen.

Rabies threw his nervous system into chaos, while influenza and plague caused his thermoregulation to completely collapse.

"You—you can actually inject all sorts of diseases into my body?" Pilsson looked at his stiff limbs in astonishment.

"These symptoms—when did you inject rabies into my body?"

Evan was quite surprised that he was able to analyze the poison he had been given in such a short time.

"As expected of researchers, they are much more perceptive than those laymen."

He didn't waste any more words with Pilsson; his bronze fingers sliced ​​open the skin on the inside of the other's arm.

Pierson was horrified at the sight and struggled violently: "Damn it! Are you insane! Do you know what this thing is! How dare you—"

Before he could finish speaking, Ivan's fingers had already grabbed the tail of the parasitic monster.

The thing felt the external force pulling it and instantly became ferocious.

As it detached from Pilsner's skin, its entire body suddenly became translucent.

Then, in a bizarre manner, it pierced directly through Evan's bronze-colored skin defenses.

Ignoring physical barriers!

Like a ghostly centipede, half of its body had burrowed under the skin of Evan's forearm.

Upon seeing this, Ivan was immediately horrified and filled with anxiety: "What the hell! Are you crazy! Do you have a brain?!"

He growled at the parasite that was burrowing inside.

Pilsson sneered, "You're the one who's brainless!"

"The aberration of the Y virus possesses a certain phase capability, allowing it to penetrate the skin directly, bypassing physical barriers."

""

"Even with the strongest resistance to the virus, you can't survive being parasitized by the Y-virus variant!"

"Because these aberrations have already absorbed an unknown amount of..."

He wanted to continue explaining the science, but Ivan had already stumbled out of the bedroom and headed for the kitchen.

Pilsson watched his retreating figure and instinctively wanted to run away.

However, his body had been completely paralyzed by more than a dozen viruses.

The half that had transformed into a tree shape was now twisted into a bizarre ring, like a spring stretched to its limit, completely immobile.

"hateful!"

He cursed.

Then, the next second, a feeling of envy welled up inside me.

"Why does he have this ability? I wish I could have it."

In the kitchen.

Evan pressed his bronzed hand firmly against his forearm, trying to pull out the Y-virus parasite that was burrowing inside.

But this thing is too cunning.

Its semi-transparent state rendered physical grasping completely ineffective. Every time Ivan's fingers touched it, it would slip through his fingers like an eel and continue to burrow deeper.

"Brother! If you want to die, you don't have to die like this!"

Evan cursed at his arm.

As he cursed, tears welling in his eyes—

The part of the Y virus parasite that burrowed under the skin was turning black at a visible rate.

Last time with the ghouls, the blood toxicity was only slightly over 40, which allowed the bone marrow parasites to leave behind a complete corpse.

But now, the toxicity is 96%!

Under Ivan's helpless gaze, within seconds, the parasite completely dissolved into a pool of black liquid in his blood.

[The Fog-like Brain Plague has devoured the remaining slime of the Y-virus parasite, progress +1%.]

The kitchen fell into a deathly silence.

Based on the experience of the previous copper plague attack that phagocytosed bone marrow parasites, the effect on living organisms was 0.6% better than on dead organisms.

This substance is dissolved in the blood, which means it is digested even after death, so its effectiveness is naturally greatly reduced.

"A huge loss!"

He sighed.

But what's done is done, and there's no going back. He turned to look at the remaining half of the corpse in his hand.

It is about thirty centimeters long, with a fairly hard shell, and its grayish-white carapace is covered with fine patterns.

Those arthropod tentacles were rather soft, and were still twitching slightly instinctively.

Looking at the cross-section, there are a large number of unique black structures inside, which are still wriggling as if they are not completely dead.

Evan picked up the thing and squeezed it against his mouth twice, hoping to squeeze out some spores or bodily fluids to increase his progress.

Unfortunately, nothing came out.

He sighed, then rolled the thirty-centimeter-long parasitic corpse inward like a piece of chewing gum, forming a ring about three fingers thick.

With almost no psychological burden, I just stuffed it into my mouth.

Creak! Creak! Creak!

The sound of carapace being crushed by teeth echoed in the quiet kitchen.

Evan chewed and savored the food, his fingers stroking his chin.

"This tastes much better than the mutated potion!"

"Chew—chew—chew—it's very chewy, but it doesn't burst with juice. The texture is a bit like eating shrimp with the shell on."

For a moment, Ivan's mind raced, involuntarily recalling all the things he had eaten in the past—

Rat blood, ghoul claws, Nyogda's retinue, aberrant potions —

The next second, his eyes welled up with tears.

Because he sadly discovered that this thing, among all his recipes, could even be considered a delicacy!

Thinking of this, he quickly took two small sips before swallowing.

You consumed the remains of a Y-virus parasite.

Option 1: Take it as medicine and reverse the process.

[Option 2: Fog-induced encephalopathy indicates a severe need for the remains of Y-virus parasites as nourishment, which can significantly enhance its own integrity.]

The prompt is similar to the text given by the Copper Plague when it devoured the retinue of Nyogda.

He chose the second option.

[The Fog-like Brain Plague has devoured the remnants of the Y-virus parasite, progress +3%.]

Just this one.

Gone!

Ivan stood in the kitchen looking at the control panel; the progress bar had reached 5.4%.

"Alright! It's not too slow, much faster than before the copper plague!"

Be content with what you have!