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Chapter 10: The Parasitized Pet Dog
🕑 Added 2024-07-09 05:43:00 +0000 UTCThe next morning, Cyrus was walking on his way to school.
"Only 2% progress in one night. At this rate, even if I stay until my walking time ends, I won't fully integrate this shapeshifting talent."
Gaining Fantasy Points wasn't easy. He hadn't earned any while working as a security guard at Vought International for a month. So, having finally entered a fantasy world, Cyrus was determined to obtain at least two talents, if not more.
"Judging by the parasitic creatures' performance in the original story, there should be more than just two talents. Could it be because the creature I analyzed yesterday was in its larval stage?" Cyrus pondered as he walked, thinking about how to encounter more parasitic creatures.
Simply fishing for them was far too inefficient.
As he was racking his brain, a boy in a light brown coat appeared in his line of sight. The boy was looking at his right hand and mumbling something.
"Shinichi."
Cyrus's sudden appearance startled the boy.
"Careful! There's a companion, one of my kind, approaching us."
"You mean Cyrus is also parasitized?" Shinichi asked nervously.
Seeing Cyrus walking toward him, Shinichi immediately pulled out his phone, pretending to receive a call while actually talking to his right hand.
"It's not him, it's someone else. It's getting closer to us."
"How can you sense them?" Shinichi asked, glancing at the eye-like creature in his hand.
The creature responded, "I can sense brainwave-like signals."
"Good morning, Shinichi." Cyrus greeted him as he saw Shinichi walking in the opposite direction. "By the way, aren't you going to school today?"
"Shinichi, don't engage with him. We need to leave and find the other one before it finds us," the creature urged, retreating into Shinichi's body.
Shinichi scratched his head, feeling that leaving without an explanation would be rude, but he couldn't think of an excuse, so he decided to tell the truth. "I was planning to go to the police, but now it seems unnecessary. I was just going back home to get a workbook I forgot."
"Do you want me to come with you?" Cyrus laughed, seeing Shinichi's face turn red from lying.
Some people are naturally bad at lying, and clearly, Shinichi was one of them.
"No need, I can go by myself," Shinichi quickly refused.
"Alright." Cyrus stood there, watching Shinichi's hurried figure with a meaningful smile.
On the other side, the creature reappeared in Shinichi's palm.
"Strange, why didn't you just refuse outright?"
"You don't understand, it would have been very rude," Shinichi explained patiently.
The creature blinked its round eyes in confusion. "Rude? What's that? It seems I have a lot to learn."
Following the creature's guidance, Shinichi turned left and right through the alleys.
Soon, at the end of an alley, he saw a shocking scene: a pet dog was eating the corpse of a golden retriever.
"A dawg eating a dawg," Shinichi exclaimed in shock.
The pet dog noticed Shinichi, turning its split head toward him.
The scene was like something out of a horror movie.
Even more unsettling was that the pet dog began to speak.
“Have you failed too?”
“Are you dissatisfied with the host I’ve chosen and the animal I’ve taken over?”
Sensing the intense killing intent from the other creature, Migi immediately urged Shinichi to run.
After Shinichi escaped, the parasite-controlled dog’s head sprouted fleshy wings, allowing it to take to the sky.
“Incredible, its transformation is flawless.” Once both parties had left, Cyrus stepped out from around the corner, looking up at the flying dog with admiration. “It’s like a work of art, truly perfect.”
At that moment, Shinichi, thinking he had successfully evaded the threat, looked up only to see the flying dog heading straight for him.
“You’ve got to be kidding me, this can’t be happening…” Shinichi started to say.
Before he could finish, Migi transformed into a tentacle and attacked the dog.
The dog was agile, but being in the air limited its ability to counterattack. After a few rounds, Migi's tentacle pierced through the dog's body and extracted its heart.
Migi placed the heart in front of Shinichi and said, “As I thought, it used the dog's internal organs and digestive system to survive.”
“That was a companion you barely encountered.”
“It was a dog, probably due to the environment it grew up in. But still, how foolish.”
Migi's words made Shinichi realize that it had no emotions; killing its own kind was as inconsequential as swatting a fly.
“Forget it, let’s go. I need to find a place to wash this blood off my hands.”
Barely two minutes after Shinichi left, Cyrus reappeared.
He approached the dog’s carcass and shook his head in regret. “What a waste of a perfect research subject. Even in death, its body has value.”
Cyrus picked up the dog’s body, stuffed it into his bag, and headed home.
Skipping a few classes wasn’t a big deal; right now, advancing his fusion was more important.
He took a paring knife from the kitchen and, fighting back his revulsion, began to dissect the body. He didn’t need the precision of a medical student; he just needed to understand the dog’s transformation structure.
After half an hour, Cyrus finally comprehended the structure of the flesh wings. He straightened up and summoned his interface.
Just as he suspected, the fusion progress on the interface had increased to 14%, a full 10% jump. His theory was correct: more contact with parasites accelerated the fusion.
“This is getting interesting.”
Cyrus looked at his right hand, where all five fingers had transformed into blades, and nodded in satisfaction.
He experimented further and found that in this state, his stamina drained at a rate similar to full-speed running. Though it didn’t match the enhanced body of a parasite, he was quite pleased with the result.
“It seems I’ll need to fuse with a superhero’s stamina after this mission. Otherwise, even with the shapeshifting ability, I won’t be able to use it for long.”
As Cyrus pondered which superhero to target, his phone vibrated in his pocket.
Answering the call, he heard his teacher’s voice and quickly explained, “I’m really sorry. I had an upset stomach last night. I’ll head to school immediately. My apologies.”
After hanging up, he instinctively wiped the sweat from his forehead.
“It’s strange. I’ve been out of school for years, yet talking to a teacher still makes me nervous.”
