Flashback to the day before.
It was one day before Han Dong had departed to register at the Knights’ Academy.
The majority of the moving that they had to do from Samuel Commoners’ District to the School District had been done with the aid of the local security officers.
As for furniture, his sister Nina and mother had both gone to the bazaar in the Commoner’s District to pick out their choices. As long as the payment was made, the staff would deliver everything to their new home.
Han Dong did not have to care about anything occurring on this day, and all he needed to do was get some rest. But Han Dong had no such intentions of doing just that.
He chose to shut himself indoors in the empty old apartment and studied.
First, he read the books on ghouls for about five hours, getting a detailed understanding of the strange creature type before training himself on how to use his ‘arm’.
Forget about being proficient with the completely new arm, Han Dong had to at least ensure he was able to get used to wielding it.
First, Han Dong was aware of the problem regarding its ‘weight’.
The arm that he had obtained from the matured Ghoul was completely incompatible with the 170 centimeter tall body of Nicholas, a scrawny body that had gone through an extended period of malnourishment.
Including its long fingers and claws, the arm would normally be left hanging till it could touch the ground from that height, and its muscular structure meant that it was essentially as wide as the body it was attached to… It was completely incongruent.
“The weight of this arm should probably be around 20-30 kilograms. There’s no way my body can support it in my current state… If I were to swing my arm, I would lose my center of gravity and displace myself right there and then, making it impossible for me to fight.”
Han Dong was sweating profusely and panting hard. after he practiced with it for no more than 10 minutes, unable to carry on.
The traits of immense strength, swift movement speed, fungal properties as well as its limited regeneration were all confined within the Ghoul arm, while the rest of Han Dong’s body was still lacking.
“I can’t carry on like this. Nicholas’ body isn’t something that I can simply just train up… I’ll have to think of a solution to resolve this… In the event I am unable to explain the existence of the ‘Accursed Chenli’, I won’t be able to let her appear in front of others. If I were to run into any sort of danger in the process of registration, I’ll have to deal with it by myself, but just this shortsword isn’t enough. I need to be able to control this arm and utterly change it to become one of my strengths.”
“Is there any way for me to compromise on this, such that I would be able to utilize the strength of my Ghoul arm and also avoid having to bear with this weight?”
Han Dong stared at his huge arm.
The only thing that he could do was to use the impersonation ability that his Faceless One’s head provided, which could disguise his arm to look like that of a human aside from morphing his own face. Is there a way to find this compromise?
Han Dong spent four hours and tried to swap between the original look of the ghoul arm and his disguised form.
Slowly, after swapping between them many times over, he became even more practiced with the speed of the change, to the point where Han Dong could very vaguely feel that intriguing sensation when he switched between either form… Through grasping onto that sensation, he managed to find a way to halt the switch halfway.
Unbeknownst to him, the day had turned into night, and since the kerosene lamps in the house had already been moved to their new place, the apartment became so dark that he could hardly even see his own fingers.
But after a while, the room began to bask in a faint green glow, scaring neighbors who passed by to scurry off back home as quickly as they could.
The green glow had come from the fungal infection trait that originated from Han Dong’s right arm.
Veins after veins of green phosphorescent light traveling through his blood vessels covered his arm, each even slightly protruding out. Plus, there were still the sharp claws that were about 10 centimeters long to contend with.
They were short yet thin, but that only made them even sharper.
Such a transformation meant that the arm maintained the size of his human form, and its weight remained unchanged. The green light that came from his arm illuminated Han Dong’s eerie smile.
“Haha… Success! This middle ground that I’ve achieved means the weight of my arm now is about the same as it would be in its human form, yet it would also have both the sharp claws and the fungal properties the arm provides. Even though there is a huge drop in terms of my strength, I would at least be able to control it.”
Han Dong flexed his right arm with ease.
His sharp claws left aggressive fungal spores in its wake as it swung past.
After spending half a day’s time, he had finally found a way to freely use the new arm of his… However, Han Dong’s training plan was not yet over.
He took out several white candles from his backpack and lit up the old, pitch black apartment.
“Miss Chenli…”
The candles flickered and danced when Han Dong called out her name.
A woman appeared in red, her head already lowered, and her hair loose, standing in the darkest corner of the room.
It looked somewhat frightening in the current setting, and Han Dong experienced some shortness of breath when he was faced with such a scary scene.
“Don’t… Don’t scare me like that.”
“… I didn’t do it on purpose.” Chenli immediately, tied up her hair with a band. “I have a habit of looking like this… I’m just a little more comfortable looking like this.”
“Habit? Isn’t scaring people the original intention of a ghost?” This was the first time that Han Dong had heard it expressed in such a manner.
The moment Chenli tied her hair into a ponytail, the horrific sensation that she gave off had disappeared without a trace.
Perhaps it was due to her deepened evil cultivation that Chenli no longer gave off the air of a country bumpkin.
The thick yin energy that she gave off made her seem all the colder, and at the same time, made her skin become more delicate and icy.
“What do you need me for?”
“Spar with me a little… Because I can’t let you show yourself out in public, there might be a series of tests or examinations that I have to clear when I leave for the Knights’ Academy. I’ll need to have a certain level of strength myself, otherwise, I won’t be able to lift my head up in the Academy, and that would affect my future development.”
“Spar? I’m worried I might injure you.” Chenli’s eyes would dart away from time to time whenever her eyes met with Han Dong’s own.
“It’s fine, it’ll be okay as long as you stop yourself at the appropriate times, no? Superficial wounds won’t be a problem.”
“Okay, I’ll give it a try… At my full strength?”
“We’ll start with that. If I can’t keep up, we can slowly adjust it accordingly.”
The moment those words slipped out of Han Dong’s mouth, a gust of evil wind whipped past his entire body, and her kitchen knife was already on his neck before he could even react.
Chenli was no longer that fledgling heretic in the Space of Destiny.
She had evolved after drinking the liquid inside the Holy Grail… Chenli’s quality and the amount of yin energy that she exuded, as well as her overall attributes had all improved rather drastically. It could even be argued that she had completely surpassed human limitations.
“Erm… Slow down a little more for me, I guess.”
In the end, the two settled on Chenli using just 30% of her strength, achieving the required sparring intensity that Han Dong was searching for. They continued to train in such a manner until right before daybreak when Han Dong went back to rest up.
——————————————-
Back to the now, in the Darkmoon Forest.
It was all thanks to the intense training that he had put himself through that Han Dong chose to formulate a battle plan that centered around himself at the core of the strategy, taking on this Scissors Sutured monster all by himself.
When the monster struck with its tongue wielding the scissors, the pressure it gave off was much less than that of what Chenli gave off.
“Its speed, sense of dread it gives off as well as its verve were nothing like Chenli’s. In that case…”
Right as the Suture Monster got near, a blast of plague energy came shooting right out from the tip of his shortsword, accurately penetrating the oral cavity of his opponent, corroding its vital tongue off… Both its long tongue and its scissors fell to the ground just like that.
Han Dong’s right arm had already morphed back into the size that he could control.
His green veins bulged on his skin and his sharp claws were extended.
At the moment when the suture monster’s tongue got sliced off, Han Dong took the initiative to attack.
His claws slashed into the body of the monster as he exerted strength to tear it apart, exposing a single, dark colored core that was sitting right in its stomach wall.