Becoming a Monster

"We need to decide now, if we are going to sit and wait here…or if we find a way to go there ourselves."

The group had to take this time to discuss their options, but the groups were easily divided and the arguments were more intense then what they should've been. The people arguing to stay were majorly of the students who didn't desire to fight.

However those people thought only with their feelings and for their own safety. They didn't think about the fact that if they were to stay, the people who want to leave would have to protect them or the fact that help could come later than predicted or not at all.

Meanwhile Noah took this time to advance to the gate of the campus. The cafeteria was centered in the middle of the campus, with the dorms situated around the same distance as the gates. With a little over a mile to walk to reach the gates, Noah slowly made his way there, but he still had to go past the library and the campus center to reach the main parking lot.

He had to tread carefully, between the buildings, there were more trees than usual to bring about a soothing aesthetic for the students to enjoy reading outdoors. With the growth of the wildlife, Noah would always assume that something was lurking just to be safe.

The area was surprisingly quiet as he made his way on the side of the library. He wasn't used to the natural silence, he thought he would still be able to hear screaming or atleast the sounds of fighting. But it seemed that if there were still any students left then they were in hiding like everyone else.

"Hm?" Noah stopped when he noticed Arachne freeze and turned towards one of the windows. He turned in the same direction to see what caught her attention.

When he did so, he noticed a few heads sticking out from within the building observing him. They must have not liked what they saw, when Noah turned and they made eye contact, Noah could see the instant fear in their eyes before they ducked from view.

Shaking his head, the scene caused Noah to chuckle to himself out loud. 'I guess that's better than trying to attack me, but why are they getting scared all of a sudden now.' He thought to himself before his eyes wandered to his creatures.

"I think you're scaring everyone." Noah said, Arachne hissed proudly while Fenrir prepped itself on and growled.

At first, Noah believed that this was just Fenrir's weird way of reacting to what he said, but he noticed that soon after Fenrir began to growl, Arachne became alert too.

Noah raised his guard along with them and when he looked to see what had their attention, he noticed it. On one of the trees, there was something crawling along down the truck. When it reached the ground, the grass was high enough to still cover its body, but the moving grass gave away its location still. The thing was longer than normal, the body was on the ground, yet he could still make out part of it on the tree. It was easily over 10 feet, longer than Fenrir.

At first Noah thought it could be a snake that had mutated. However with his vision, he could make out that the creature was definitely not a snake, but some kind of insect.

Its body was broken up into multiple segments and was moving quickly to them. Arachne was the first to pounce on what she would assume to be the creature's head and attempted to dig her fangs into it.

"!"

Suddenly, when her fangs were injected into the creature, the rest of the creature's body moved unbelievably fast and began to try to wrap itself around Arachne.

This caught Noah by surprise, when he saw the body of the creature wrap around Arachne, he noticed the numerous legs on the body of the creature. There was no way to count them but he knew the creature's name ended with something-pede.

He wasn't sure what the insect was trying to do, but he didn't like the way it was trying to wrap around his spider. From his bond, he could tell that Arachne was starting to feel pain somehow, he would've like for Fenrir to help out, but he doubts the mindless wolf could help without attacking her as well.

The only thought in his mind was to treat it like everything else lately. 'Destroy the head and it should stop moving.'

He took off with his sword in hand, he felt that he would need more strength to properly swing it if he wanted to cleanly cut the insect's head so he used one of his new abilities.

'Equivalent Exchange'

Using his new skill on the only suitable target at the time which was Fenrir, he used the ability to gain 10 percent of Fenrir's strength which increased his by a little over 5. It wasn't a lot, but for now it was just enough to allow him to properly hold the sword.

Swoosh!

With just one swing of the sword, he was able to easily remove its head. Beginning to feel relieved, he became surprised once again, when he saw the body of the insect continue to move. He wasn't sure if it was just a thing it did after the head was removed and it would stop moving soon or if somehow through its mutation the insect found a way to survive without a head.

Noah's eyes quickly snapped to the insect's severed head and began to repeatedly stab it until the body stopped moving.

It was an anti-climatic battle, but it reminded Noah who recently dealt with zombies majorly of the time that he can't let his guard down when it comes to the wild life.

He walked over to Arachne to help her remove the insect's corpse from the rest of her body. That's when he noticed small puncture wounds covering parts of her body. The insects legs were sharper than he imagined.

"Don't depend on your venom so much next time, that's why the thing was able to get the jump on you like this. You're strong even when you don't use it. Don't move and let me heal you"

It hasn't been long since he bought the skill and he was already using it. Instead of a light green like the healers before him. Noah's healing spell was much darker in color. Slowly the wounds stopped bleeding, he could tell it would take him much longer if he wanted to fully heal the wounds with just a level 0 spell. However the skill was still rather impressive since it stopped the bleeding within a few seconds. Not only his magic state, but his spirit made a huge difference when using spells.

Knock knock*

Around the same time he was finishing up Noah heard a sound knocking on the glass of the building next to him, he could already figure out who it was.

He ignored looking in the people's direction that were watching him from the library and went for the chest that just dropped. He was surprised that the chest happened to be silver.

'Was that bug really that much of a threat?' He thought, since the way he determined the value of chest was by the quantity and quality of what he defeated. The bug didn't seem as dangerous as what the chest indicated, he began to doubt if the chest dropped according to what he originally thought.

'No…I'm sure it must've been poisonous as well. And with the way it quickly wrapped around Arachne in its last attempt, it would be impossible to beat it without sufficient stats.'

After pondering over the issue, he quickly opened the chest. He figured he would only do his normal ritual for chest on gold or higher. He wasn't surprised at all by the little amount of gold he found. On top of that, he found a sturdy bracer, but he noticed that the bracer seemed to be made out of some kind of insect shell.

'First the sword with that zombie and now this…Is it a coincidence that I get drops related to what I kill now?

He shook his head from his random thoughts before quickly equipping the bracer to his dominant right arm before grabbing the last thing. The last item was a whip that had numerous tiny spikes sticking out from. From a distance, it resembled the body of the insect he just killed. The whip stretched at least 15 feet. It was just a shame he wasn't interested in such a weapon.

'Well at least I still got something out of it.' Noah clucked the bracer on his arm and nodded in satisfaction before making his way to leave.

"Wa-wait!"

He soon heard a window open and voices shouting to him, but he ignored them still. Thankfully after walking a good distance away he noticed that they didn't jump out the window to follow him.

He was almost approaching the end of the building. After that there would be a small clearing and he would just need to pass the administration center before coming upon the main entrance parking lot to leave.

Boom!

"Hey!  Come back! Those things are over there!"

Someone yelled after bursting through the side door, it was a clearly different voice than before.

This time Noah glanced over to the voice, he could see that the person was actually worried and afraid for him, yet this caused Noah to shake his head. Noah felt the intention was good, but the way he went about it may have cost him his life if he was someone else.

"Grreewwr!"

And right on cue, the sounds of what Noah knew were zombies sounded on the other side. From the sound of feet quickly approaching, he could tell that many of them this time were runners.

Thud thud thud!*

The sound of something heavy in the distance was also mixed in with the sound of footsteps. Even in those steps, Noah could pick up the sound of steps moving much faster than the others.

"Everyone grab your weapons, we have to help him!" The voice from before sounded behind him.

But just as quickly as Noah heard the footsteps, he immediately saw two zombies coming past the corner first. They no longer were running like the zombies before, but were running like track stars. Their arms were swinging in opposite rotations of their legs unlike the ones with their arms stretched out and they were fast! From what Noah could tell, their agility had to be close to 40.

It seemed gender didn't matter at all when it came to the zombies physique, the two were both male and female, but they were almost identical in speed.

Arachne wanted to redeem herself for after what happened with the insect from before. However when she was preparing to attack, she saw Noah step in front of her.

He stood before her with a resolute gaze, he felt that this would be the perfect time to try out his other new skill. If the skill worked as he believed it was intended to then he would have no fear facing zombies in numbers.

There was no clear way to activate the skill, so he decided to do what he felt was right. His gaze narrowed as he focused all his attention on the two zombies nearing him fast. They had just approached a few meters away from him.

"Stop!"

His tone was cold, but held a sense of danger to the people coming from the library. Instinctively they stopped as well. Not because the skill was affecting them, it was because of the actions of the zombies before them.

.......

A/N: There's a chance Ill post another chapter today to make up for yesterday or I might just post the chapter this weekend.