51 Chapter 51: Preparations I

Herbert took a deep breath; he knew that her mother did not intend to pick a fight with him. Rather, her intentions should probably be to check on him. It was only because she had a tough disposition that she used a sharp tongue when talking with him.

Herbert who understood this merely kept his silence and maintained his current state of mind. After all, he also wasn't in the best condition to be thoroughly lectured right now. With every second that passed, Herbert could feel the changes that are occurring in his body and this kept him in an uncomfortable state.

Her cryptic words needed his brain to be focused so that he could decrypt it but Herbert was already finding it harder by the minute. So, even though he tried his best, he could only give her short replies like yes or no. But since she seems to be displeased, Herbert understood that he can get things over with if he just apologizes, and so he did.

"I apologize for that, mother. Sorry for not telling you in advance."

"You need to remember, with your brother gone, we can't afford to lose you too. Anyway, since you have reached the Transcendent rank then I won't say anything more."

She then turned her back on him and walked towards the door. Seeing this, Herbert rejoiced. He was finally going to be free to focus on himself. However, his mother once again stopped in her tracks to leave a few words before exiting the room.

"Right, about that girl. I've already talked with her. She's not bad. At least, she's better than that Princess. It's good that you've given up on her for this one."

"Yes, mother."

"Good night, Albert."

"Yes, mother, good night."

If Herbert still had the presence of mind to understand what she meant, then he might not have just simply nodded his head and replied mechanically. However, now that it had already passed, Herbert could only let this issue go. At least, she did not realize that he had used the extremely rare Awakening Stone.

Once Herbert was left all alone in the room, he immediately sat back on his bed and closed his eyes to keep focus. He could feel that his body was slowly heating up. This sudden temperature change had made Herbert very sweaty.

As he tried to check his current condition, Herbert noticed that the energy flowing through his body was forming an entirely different path whenever he activates his abilities. However, there are still similarities to it, the main key point is that the energy still flows to his forehead which acts as a vortex.

Once his temperature had cooled down, Herbert was assaulted by a splitting headache which almost made him lose focus, but after enduring it, Herbert felt a cool and chilling sensation that enveloped him from within. It was as if he had enjoyed a nice dip in a pool in the middle of a hot summer day.

The next thing that he knew, the night had passed and the morning rays of the sun had started to peak at him from the window. Despite not having enough sleep, Herbert did not feel the slightest bit of drowsiness. However, he did feel mentally tired from having to keep his focus all night long just to make sure that nothing went wrong.

As Herbert opened his eyes, the first thing that he noticed was how unpleasant his clothes felt. He then materialized white feathers to purify himself and his surroundings. Once he had finished this, he immediately tried to make the energy flow into a different path and discovered an entirely new ability.

When he was digesting the Awakening Stone, he had the image of the totem in his head, however, he did not know how it was related to the White-Horned Snakes. But this did not mean that he had no idea about the possible abilities that he might awaken this round.

In the book, the protagonist got a mysterious egg that became his pet. This pet should originally be another White-Horned Snake but somehow, it changed and grew up to be completely different.

He believed that the egg should've been the offspring of the two Transcendent ranked snakes that he had killed, and the Awakening Stone should have somehow played a part in influencing the type of creature that their egg would have been. But because he killed the two snakes before they could have the egg, the resources that should have gone to benefit the egg were now used up by him.

With this in his mind, Herbert thought that his inference should be similar to what happened in the book. Although he would never be able to confirm it as he couldn't ask the author, he was pretty sure that this was very close to what the author had in mind.

Just as he thought, when Herbert tried using his powers, he instinctively knew that it should be related to dreams. In the book, despite its strong physique, the protagonist also used the power of his pet to make his enemies fall into dreams where he would extract information from them.

Now that Herbert had two bloodlines awakened in his body, he first tried to combine the two by activating them both at the same time. However, he soon realized that the two bloodlines did not seem to be that compatible. He did not gain a mutated ability as Ingrid did.

But that was fine, Herbert knew that he shouldn't be too greedy. He already had another power that he could slowly level up. Since his Ravenmoon bloodline had already reached the Transcendent level the first thing that he should do was to stabilize his rank by striving to reach Transcendent Rank 1. But he knew that it would take a lot more effort to achieve that. So, he decided to instead level up his newly awakened bloodline which still had no name.

"Following the naming conventions of the bloodlines, I should name it after the type of creature followed by its type of power."