[You have leveled up to level 4]
[Choose an upgrade:
Camouflage
Adrenaline Injection Lv. 2
Decomposer]
Memories about what happened to Millie flooded Hiro. Now he understood why he had leveled up. Hiro was flooded with envy at what had happened with Millie in the royal capital. Even though the Hiro that invaded Millie was literally himself, he was jealous. He wanted to milk his girls as well. All of Hiro's girls were virgins and thus couldn't lactate.
Or could they? Hiro checked his skill, but all he could do was flesh mending. That skill couldn't modify body chemistry. He could probably enlarge Rebecca's modest chest, but that was it. Hiro couldn't possibly make them suddenly lactate. He needed a special stimulant for that.
No! What am I thinking? Focus. We are on the brink of civil war with the batkins!
Hiro scolded himself and looked over his skills. It's a serious situation here.
[Camouflage:
Your skin can change its color at will. The process can be automatic, and the color can be changed to exactly match the background. However, texture and depth will not be copied. Your camouflage may be broken if two people look at you from different angles. For every square meter of skin camouflaged, it will take about 10 nutrients per minute.]
He already knew about Adrenaline Injection. It can improve the host's STR stat by 400%, but she would collapse for three hours afterward. Combined with his Amphetamine Lv. 2, Hiro could quadruple his host's stats. This was a huge gain, but so was the demerit. His host would faint after use.
And lastly, there was the Decomposer.
Hiro was split between the Decomposer and the Camouflage. With Decomposer, he wouldn't have to worry about nutrients ever again. Even without food, Hiro could just plant his root in the ground when they slept, and he would gain nutrients from the soil.
However, this skill had no more use after that. Moreover, he couldn't use it while his girls were moving, so this skill had its limits.
Meanwhile, camouflage seemed like it would be used a lot, not just in this conflict. There are many situations where stealth is important. Just yesterday, Hiro had to improvise. It wasn't good enough, as Elizabeth clearly let him find out about the batkins' secret.
However, camouflage wasn't as good as the invisibility Jonathan possessed. Well, he was a top-tier assassin for a reason. There was no way Hiro would suddenly have a similar ability with a real symbiote. He was just an imitation, not a real symbiote. If every parasitic tentacle could do it, this world would be finished.
Ultimately, Hiro chose the Camouflage skill.
[Level up achieved!
STR: 75 -> 77
Dex: 75 -> 78
Mag: 4 -> 6]
[You have leveled up to level 5]
[Choose an upgrade:
Mana Burn
Aurora
Water Mastery Lv. 1 (needs mana manipulation)]
Water Mastery was an easy skip. Hiro didn't have mana manipulation yet, so he couldn't use it. As for Aurora, this was a skill that also appeared when he evolved into Parasitic Flora. It was a skill that cast either a debuff or buff on the surroundings.
It was also an easy skip, as the skill couldn't differentiate between friend and foe. He could probably use it if he used his cores as a decoy and charged into the enemy's ranks, but that usage seemed niche.
That only left Mana Burn. When he saw the skill description, he was surprised. The skill increased the magic stat by 200 percent at the cost of nutrients. It was literally the adrenaline and amphetamine version, but for mages.
Hiro immediately picked that.
[Level up achieved!
STR: 77 -> 80
Dex: 78 -> 80
Mag: 6 -> 8]
After he had finished assigning his level-ups, Rebecca and the others went toward Elizabeth's house, bringing the livestock with them. When they arrived, Elizabeth greeted them. She smirked upon seeing them.
"I see that you brought gifts. Or was it a bribe?"
"It's a gift. Now that we know who is in the wrong, we should talk about reparations," Rebecca nodded. "Ah, just to be safe, have you seen your own status? We want to see your status with an appraisal ball, just to make absolutely sure that you really are a batkin."
"I see. Well, just so you know, only I would cooperate," Elizabeth said.
"It's fine. I'm just curious whether your race has truly changed. Thanks for letting us go yesterday," Rebecca nodded.
[Name: Elizabeth
Race: batkin
Age: 17
Class: Tribal Chief
Level: 54/100
STR: 116
Dex: 117
Mag: 129
Skill:
Dark Mastery Lv. 1
Mana Manipulation Lv. 4
Mana Sense Lv. 4
Sword Mastery Lv. 3
Dagger Mastery Lv. 1
Trait:
Vampire Heritage
Blood Dependency (Hungry)]
Hiro frowned. Her stats were… bad. Well, they were actually decent for normal people. Moreover, she was an all-rounder with proficiency in dark magic affinity.
Hiro also noticed that the appraisal ball lacked the nutrients and bond quality with him. There are no measurements either. Elizabeth was modest in the breast department, but Hiro would still like to know! Meanwhile, Elizabeth frowned when she saw the trait. She wore a sad expression.
"I see. Even after 500 years, you really can't erase your past, huh?" Elizabeth sighed.
"Well, it doesn't matter. The important thing is that you really are a batkin. Look!" Rebecca said as she pointed toward the race section. It was written as batkin there. Hiro knew race could change. As a monster, he had gone through evolution from a lewd worm into a parasitic tentacle and now a parasitic flora. But he didn't know how to change race in another way beside evolution.
"Well. At the very least, that proved that our effort wasn't a waste. We just need to go for it a bit longer," Elizabeth smiled.
"Alright. Next is the gift. As we said earlier, this is a gift. Not a bribe or reparation," Rebecca said as she pointed to the three sheep and two cows they brought.
"If it is a gift, we shall accept it gratefully," Elizabeth said. Hiro was glad that the case was heading toward a peaceful resolution.
"Now, let's talk about reparations. You didn't want money, right? We understand that giving you money after we killed your villagers was insensitive. But what if we give you food? As you may already know, this land is barren. No crops grow here."
"We batkins hunt. Dovekin didn't need to eat much to begin with."
"Well… your status said you didn't eat enough," Rebecca said. Elizabeth turned away, her cheeks blossoming. She was cute.
"The hunt has been scarce lately."
"But you know, if you only drink blood, why didn't you try to raise livestock? It's not like you need to kill the livestock to drink their blood, right?" Cecile said.
"As you already know, nothing grows here. How do you propose we feed the livestock?" Elizabeth said. Hiro sighed. They never said it, but weren't the dovekin behaving almost as if they were the batkins' livestock? They really tried.
"Well. We could do something about that. If you visit the village tomorrow, there are cattle there. If you didn't know, Litmus has almost 200% food sufficiency."
"…So? Are you trying to brag?" Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. She knew other regions might not suffer from food shortages. But she had no intention of moving. Or more like, their circumstances prevented them from moving.
"Have you considered moving? There are barely 200 people for both batkins and dovekin combined. We could easily give you farmable land. Then food would no longer be an issue. You can raise cattle for your food."
"You know our history. We are very secluded for a reason. Others might not be so open-minded about our little ritual," Elizabeth said. She looked forlorn, helplessness oozing out from her body.
Yeah. That gestation ritual was creepy as hell.
Hiro agreed that her race's unique biology would leave them undesired by many societies. If not for the dovekin, they would go extinct without any hope of survival. Hunted because of fear.
"…This was the point where Rebecca couldn't offer any advice. Elizabeth's status clearly said that her race was batkin, not vampire. But apart from that, they behaved just like vampires would. Even Litmus, with its open-minded and tolerant society, didn't look too kindly upon Elysia, an undead under Hiro's care.
Rebecca was trying to make Elizabeth move to greener pastures. There, their tribes could rely more on farming and ranching instead of foraging and hunting. But even in the medieval ages, such villages couldn't stay isolated for long. City officials would come for tax audits. Even if they knew and tolerated the batkins' tendencies, foreign traders would come and there is no controlling that.
Peddlers in Litmus could come and go wherever they pleased. If Elizabeth and Sara founded a village with Litmus' support, they would need to adhere to its rules.
"Well. In the meantime, please accept our gift. As for reparations, how about two cows every month for the next twenty years?" Rebecca clenched her teeth. This was a temporary stopgap measure. It wouldn't solve the problem.
Litmus couldn't offer cows for eternity. Not only would it hurt the budget, but it would also make it look like it was a vassal, not a sovereign nation. As for the batkins, what would they do once the time passed? Would they return to their previous lives? But by that time, the neighboring village would grow exponentially.
The mining village had over 500 people now. They had already quadrupled in size compared to the batkins and dovekins.
If the mining village grew more, creatures and game would run deeper into the mountains, and the batkins and dovekins would suffer from it.
"I will not give any reply about that offer. But we will put your offer into consideration," Elizabeth said.
Rebecca then returned to her room. Her face looked as if she had eaten a bitter bug the whole way.
"Was Litmus such a great country?" Sara asked once they were inside their room in the dovekin village.
"There are less than 200 people here. Even Quantora Town, the place where we came from, would have no problem accepting all of you," Rebecca said.
The dovekin would have no problem living in Litmus. People would accept them just as they accept any other beastkin. The problem was the batkin, who numbered even fewer. Two dozen. Even Rebecca had seen adventurer parties and raids larger than that. A single large clan house could keep them all.
The batkins could act as an adventurer clan, and they would survive without a problem—except for that pesky little trait they had.
Batkins lived on blood. Moreover, they needed humanoid blood from other species if they wanted to give birth. This trait was the bane of all the problems here. Even Litmus's knights had mistaken them for vampires and killed them on the spot when they discovered they had vampire heritage.
"I see," Sara frowned.
"We will think about this again tomorrow. I will give our report to Marissa and Duke Daneswald. At the very least, reconciliation is possible," Rebecca said as she lay down on her hammock.
Little did she know that the problem was about to solve itself in the worst way possible.