Chapter 150: Eating strange things

I slowly wake up and look around.

“…Master?” I see my master sitting in a chair reading a book, I still haven’t gotten used to the fact that he looks like a child.

I look around the room I’m in, it seems to be a common bedroom although it has lots of books of various types, it looks like the room of someone addicted to reading.

“I see you’ve woken up, you’ve been sleeping for a few hours,” he responds without taking his eyes off the book.

“Ow…” I put my hand on my head after feeling a little pain and a somewhat uncomfortable feeling as some memories of what I’ve been doing in the past few days surface.

It seems a bit blurry, I only remember going out and killing monsters, but I had no control while most of the time everything was dark and comfortable.

However, I remember a few flashes of memory about the master beating me, sometimes I would get beaten and other times he would hit me, although most of the time everything was dark so even that is not so clear.

“What happened to me, master?” I’m not sure what really happened to me.

“You just lost control, but that’s normal after all you came here to train precisely to avoid this loss of control,” my master replies as he puts the book on a table and comes up to me.

“Let’s go, we don’t have time to waste,” he starts heading for the door, I get up and follow him.

’I’m naked…what great consideration…’ I lost my clothes in the forest and from what I can understand the master brought me to his island, but he didn’t even bother to put clothes on me.

As we follow the path, I put on pieces of clothing that I pull from the shadows until we reach an area that looks like a dome, my master uses magic to open the door and continues forward.

“…” There is one thing that is very clear in my mind, a bite that caused me unbearable pain. I felt like I was going to die, it was so painful that my consciousness seemed to oscillate.

While that whole ocean of mud I was in seemed to tremble.

’My master is quite strong…’ I wonder how strong he really is, but this question will remain unanswered for now.

“Let’s make one thing clear, rebellious student, if you lose control again, I’ll hurt you more seriously this time,” he speaks in a cold tone as we reach the center of the dome.

“Of course…” The area in the center rises a bit, revealing a strange table full of things I don’t recognize well.

“Ew, this thing stinks,” I feel a strangely unpleasant smell coming from one of the things on the table, the smell is repulsive.

“Come here,” he commands me to approach while I obey, I have no self-control and I’m not sure how it works to assume my monster form, but I know it is extremely powerful.

“What do I need to do, master?” He simply grabs a book and starts reading while gesturing with his hand to me, pointing to the table.

“Eat.”

“…Excuse me? I think I didn’t understand.”

“Eat everything on this table.” He doesn’t say anything else while he continues reading the book, from the cover it seems to be a book about materials that can be extracted from monsters.

“Everything, really everything?” Some of the things on the table have disgusting appearances and smells.

He doesn’t answer me as if he considered the question too stupid to answer.

’Tsk’ I start eating the least disgusting things on the table first until only 3 things are left.

“…It shouldn’t be that bad…m-maybe it just looks bad,” I put something that looks like a paste but with a somewhat disgusting consistency and the smell is unpleasant.

As soon as it touches my tongue, I feel disgust, I think it’s the worst thing I’ve ever put in my mouth, I continue eating and it takes me at least 10 minutes to really eat everything.

“What the hell was that thing?” I ask him, trying to contain the urge to vomit.

“It’s the ground-up entrails of a Kraken that has gone through the fermentation process for 1590 years,” he replies without much interest in what I think about the taste.

It’s basically rotten ground-up meat, no wonder it tastes and smells terrible.

“Why do I need to eat this?” I’m not at all satisfied with this, I think even garbage would be more edible than this thing.

“For two reasons, first because you need to better understand the difference between a low-level monster and a high-level monster.” Now that he mentioned it, I realize that this mixture really had a strangely high nutritional value.

Even the mana that this thing had was a very high amount.

“Okay…and the second reason?”

“I’m punishing you for being a rebellious student.”

’Had to be…’

I look at the second thing that was left of the 3, it looks like a red gum that is inside a red pot, but what’s inside seems to be alive.

“Can I at least know what I’m eating?”

“What’s in the pot is an [Iridius Ruler], supposedly an S-class slime, but the truth is that this monster is a high-level [Parasitic Mimic], as soon as you eat it, it will try to eat you too.”

’Great warning…’ So this thing is really alive, I take a deep breath and open the pot while quickly putting it in my mouth to make sure this thing doesn’t run away.

This thing starts moving inside my mouth as I swallow it, but it clings to my throat and begins to infiltrate my flesh while invading my mana path.

“Cough, cough!” I cough up blood while calmly thinking about what to do, I already imagined this would happen, I just need to understand this training well.

’It’s invading my mana path…’ I notice that this thing’s mana path is similar to mine, with this I can understand a little more, I change my mana path, expelling this thing.

My entire mana path turns into a formless black mud, so the [Parasitic Mimic] can’t fix itself to it.

’I understand…it’s a similar feeling…reminds me of when I transformed…’ The [Mimic] tries to find something other than my flesh to attach to, then it tries to infiltrate my veins.

’I’ve discovered enough.’

“Master, what do I do now?” I don’t know how to remove this thing from my body.

“…Nothing, just survive, it should come out in an hour if it can’t consume you,” this doesn’t seem very reliable, but there’s nothing more I can do.

’So I need to keep my mana path in the form of mud for 1 hour without stopping?’ That seems difficult, I sit on the floor to concentrate, focusing only on not letting this thing go to places it shouldn’t.

I spend the 1 hour that was more agonizing than I thought, when the [Parasitic Mimic] couldn’t infiltrate my mana path, it tried to infiltrate my brain, which forced me to turn my brain into mud as well.

And with that it was super hard to maintain concentration because I felt like I was going to lose control at any moment.

But fortunately this thing really came out after about 1 hour and 5 minutes, although my master had told me to eat this thing again.

“Master…I can’t eat this,” If I put it in my mouth, it will only try to consume me.

“You won’t leave here until you figure out how to eat this,” He hands me the pot again since he captured the [Parasitic Mimic] that had tried to attack him.

’Maybe…’ I focus on trying to partially change my form to that black mud while holding the pot close to my stomach.

’I feel like I can do this…’ I transform only the part of my abdomen into mud.

’I-It’s hard’ It’s even harder than just transforming my brain and mana path into mud.

’N-Need to be quick’ I form a jaw and throw the whole pot while using the passive [Devourer] to try to eat both the [Parasitic Mimic] and the pot it’s trapped in.

In mud form, my digestive system is not based on organs but on the mouth, so in mud form, anything that is chewed is automatically digested.

I fall to the ground, breathing with difficulty as my body returns to normal.

’I-It hurts’ I hold my stomach, which is causing me pain. It seems to have worked, but transforming only that part into mud without good control caused me pain.

“Get up and eat the last one, you’re taking too long for something that should be simple.”

’Simple…’ I’m sure in monster form eating these things would be easy, but in human form it’s difficult.

“…What’s that stinky thing?” This was the thing that had the horrible smell I felt before.

“Are you sure you want to know? Your older sister wasn’t very happy when she found out what it was.”

“I want to know.” What’s in front of me is a strange black lump, strangely reminds me of modeling clay, and although it has a horrible smell, the state of the lump seems perfect.

So it’s hard to believe that this is also rotten meat, and if it’s meat, why does it have this strange color? It has a very deep black tone as if it was absorbing all the ambient light.

“Eat it first, then I’ll tell you.”

“…” I hold this thing and bring it close to my mouth, but as soon as I open my mouth to bite, I start to cry.

“Huh…W-Why?” I don’t understand, it just seems so wrong to eat this, it hurts my heart to even try to bite it.

My master has now picked up a notebook and a pen with ink and started writing while watching me attentively, it seems he’s interested in watching.

’I can’t eat this…’ It seems so wrong.

“Rebellious student, this is an order from your master, eat this now or I won’t train you anymore.”

“!!!” I can’t be without this training, to me it’s obvious that I have no self-control in my monster form.

I bite this black lump while the tears keep falling, I feel so much pain with the act, it’s not physical pain but an emotional pain, as if I were committing something terrible against myself.

I continue eating, trying to ignore the tears I don’t understand, after eating everything I start writhing on the floor as if I want to get what I ate out of my stomach, I feel a strange despair for having eaten this.

It’s even worse than the feeling of death, I feel as if I were close to committing the greatest of all sins, I feel like I want to die if I commit such a sin.

’W-Want to vomit’ I can’t keep this in my stomach, so I start vomiting this thing, after having gotten this lump out of my body, I immediately feel better as I wipe my mouth.

When I take this thing out of my body, the desperate feeling passes, while I feel a great relief, as if I had barely escaped committing an unforgivable sin.

“I’m sorry, master…I can’t eat this.” I don’t know what it was, but it seems impossible to keep it in my stomach, my passive [Devourer] didn’t even activate to try to digest this thing.

“It’s okay, I never expected you to be able to keep that in your body, I just wanted you to experience the greatest despair possible for your race.”

This was cruel, I’ve never felt so much despair before, I don’t know why, but I absolutely cannot eat this thing.

“What was that?” I ask while wiping the tears that stained my face.

’Tsk, I hate crying…what a merciless master I’ve gotten…’ I hate showing such a weak side of myself to someone, at least the master was the only one who saw this shameful side.

“It was a piece of the Goddess of the Abyss.” When he says this, I feel a huge hatred for him while clear murderous intent leaks out, directed at my master.

“Calm down, rebellious student, it wasn’t me who took this from her, the goddess herself handed me this piece.”

“Do you really think I’d be capable of hurting her?”

When he says this, I calm down a bit.

“Never do that again.” I hated that desperate feeling I felt.

“Don’t worry, you won’t have to go through that a second time, after all you are a being who has never committed any sin, so how did it feel to almost sin?”

“Terrible.” Sins are defined by the race, I don’t know what my race considers a sin, but being so close to committing a sin caused me inescapable despair.

“And how do you feel now?”

“…Better…I also better understand what I really am…” I feel a deeper connection to what my true form is.

“That’s what I wanted to hear, so we can move on to the next part.”

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