Chapter 69 – Make It 20!
Misha's brain, for once in a while, processed in lightning speed.
Joining the local human faction was impossible for Misha as she did not like them. Working with the MWG was also bad for her as her grandmother seemed to be at odds with them.
Furthermore, there was no option to complete the quest by being herself without siding with anyone! If she did that, the game would treat it as she picked the third option by default!
Therefore, Misha could only try to solve this misunderstanding about her and the other otherworlders. She had to prove that she was not like the predecessors, who seemed to be the alpha testers of this game.
Still, the actions of these NPCs were too odd to be called NPC anymore. Their reaction was too realistic!
'I must treat this as if I'm dealing with real people!'
Calming her mind, Misha opened her mouth.
"I am not an otherworlder."
"Then, how do you explain that transformation and the fireball that you used to destroy the APC?"
Misha already had an answer to this question. But before she could say that, she had to make another preparation.
She took a deep breath and activated her [Polymorph], planning to transform to Mia.
Once she could switch to Mia, she would be not afraid of a sudden fight if she were to screw this up.
A hologram image appeared in Misha's mind. The girly boy in front of her had a bundle of red hair, dragon horns, small lizard tail, red scales, and two wings like her.
Mia character's appearance right now was not the human Mia. Instead, it was the Inferno Dragonewt Mia!
The racial change affected her other body as well!
A game description appeared below the character,
[Your polymorph level is not high enough to transform into a character of another race. Auto-correction has been applied to your character.]
Reading the description and looking at the new altered character, Misha heaved a sigh of relief.
'I don't know if I'm lucky or not. It saves me a lot if I transform into this instead of a human form!'
Without further ado, Misha transformed into the evolved Mia.
The crowd was shocked by the transformation process as they had never seen anything like this up close.
Finished with the transformation, he checked his skill list in his status menu, praying that the imported skills would not be affected by the evolution.
.
****************
<<Skills>>
Inferno Mastery – 1/200
Polymorph – 4/100
Manual Body Regeneration – 93/200
Telekinesis: Lesser Object Control – 100/100
Telekinesis: Medium Object Control – 25/100
Telekinesis: Flight – 79/100
Electrokinesis: High Voltage Resistance – 100/100
Electrokinesis: Barrier – 100/100
Electrokinesis: Force Field – 69/100
Electrokinesis: Zap – 52/100
Pyrokinesis: Burning Resistance - 60+1/200
Pyrokinesis: Fireball – 100+1/200
Pyrokinesis: Flame Field - 25+1/200
Pyrokinesis: Blast - 1+1/200
****************
.
Everything was still there. To Mia's surprise, many skills had been influenced by the Inferno Mastery and racial perks, increasing their level caps by 100.
But he had no time to rejoice by the boosted skills, Mia looked at Tama's eye, praying that she would not be in pain.
Betraying Mia's worry, Tama screamed in a delighted tone.
*MEW!* (I LIKE THIS BODY NOW!)
*MEW!* (I LOVE IT HOT!)
Everyone in the room could hear and understand Tama's mewing. They stared at this new Misha with a complicated expression.
Mia did not have the time to get shocked by the change. He had to solve this enmity ASAP.
"If I tell you that I had been kidnapped into the underground facility, then I accidentally ate a hydra core inside the base while I was escaping, will you believe me? This is the form that I acquired from that hydra core."
"What!?"
Mia put the fragmented information from the game description and the words of Crystal into use. If his theory was correct, the consumer of a hydra core could obtain unique skills and the qualification to evolve from it.
"I obtained this ability from the core I have eaten in that underground base. This body and the fireball you saw from that night are the byproducts of the hydra core."
<<Ding>>
<<Thorn believes in you!>>
<<Your friendship with Thorn has become [Friendly].>>
At this point, Thorn lowered his gun, "It's true. Before she came here, Mafdet had transferred her to the human's secret underground base. I was the one who drove her to the entrance of that facility. I've already filed the intelligence report to you many days ago, so you can go and check it. Though I don't know how she got the core, I can vouch that she was really kidnapped to the underground base."
Sebastian grimaced. He turned around to replay the footage again.
He kept watching how Misha transformed into Mia and launched the fireball. Sebastian kept rewinding and replaying the scenes over and over again.
Sebastian took a deep breath and shut down the monitor. His glowing yellow eyes and his white eyes darkened, changing the color into pitch black.
He turned around and stared at Mia without blinking.
"Then, why didn't you have the evolved form back then!? Once you ate the core, you should have evolved right away!"
"My constitution was still too weak back then. It took me a while to adjust to the virus and my partner. Well, I ate a red gel, and when my body completely digested it, I become like this."
<<Captain Wayne believes in you.>>
<<Captain Jirath believes in you.>>
<<Captain Chujai believes in you.>>
<<Captain Paradon believes in you.>>
Killing intent from the captains was gone. As for the reason, Mia could guess that by reading the notification messages.
"Crystal, what was her VIT when she first arrived!?"
Crystal put away her gun and ran back to her table. She pulled the bundle of papers from one of the drawers to read.
"Around 200. We haven't confirmed it with Mr. PISS yet."
"Take her to that moron! I want to see her stats!"
Using this chance, Mia opened his status menu and allocated 140 of his free attributes into his VIT, increasing it from 203 to 343. For the other 140, he put all of them into his STM to balance the value of his vitality and stamina.
If one of them was too high while the other one was too low, they could get suspicious.
.
Thirty minutes later, all captains escorted Mia to the job center where Misha applied for a job and met Mr. PISS here.
The commotion caught the eyes of all civilians who were waiting for a domestic job here. They gazed at the two dragonewts, Mia and Sebastian, with interest.
However, their face revealed fear when they saw that the escorting soldiers were aiming their guns and rifles at Mia.
"Mr. PISS, scan this person right now!"
The Daoist in the camouflage military uniform brought out a cup of coffee and gave it to Mia.
"Drink this."
Mia looked at the coffee in confusion. He drank it anyway.
'If I remember correctly, I drank this when I rested in that VIP lounge.'
Seeing that Mia drank all of his coffee, Mr. PISS brought out a blank paper and placed his palm on it.
Black ink came out from the palm of this Daoist, covering the whole paper. Soon, all ink took forms into alphabets, and all of the alphabets arranged into words and numbers.
Mia's status appeared on the paper!
.
STR – 151
VIT – 343
STM - 300
AGI – 199
DEX – 167
INT – 501
WIS – 376
.
Mia stared at the paper in shock and amazement. Thinking back when he came here as Misha, this weird looking person had already read his status when they first met!
As Mia's eyes met with the glance of Mr. Piss, he winked as if he knew Mia's secrets.
*Nyo-ho-ho*
Even his parasite partner let out a weird laugh!
Sebastian compared Mia's current status attributes with the old one Crystal had on her papers. Obviously, Mia's present attributes improved.
However, Sebastian still did not believe in Mia's excuses.
"What's your partner's name?"
"Tama."
The wings behind Sebastian transformed into two giant tentacles at the size of a human's arm. At the tip of each limb, they opened their eyes.
The color of Sebastian's tentacles was not yellow or green. They were black, the same color as Sebastian's eyes.
*Grrr* (Child, answer my question.)
Hearing the threatening growl of the tentacles, Mia and all captains had goosebumps as its voice contained sinister vibration that shook their heart.
*Mew?* (What? I'm eating. Too busy to talk!)
*Grr* (If you don't cooperate, I'll kill your host!)
*Mya!?* (Ah?)
Two wings behind Mia's back transformed into two orange tentacles with an eye each. They extended forward and faced the tentacle eyes of Sebastian head-on.
*Shaa!* (What did you say, you rotten banana!?)
*Grrr!* (Answer my question, or I'll kill you and your host!)
*Myaa!* (I dare you! Try me, and I'll turn you into a cooked banana!)
Mia sweated bullets as Tama's attitude suddenly became similar to his grandmother.
'Why are you getting wild now, Tama!?'
Mia glared at the black tentacles and the old man Sebastian as he gritted his teeth.
'When push comes to shove, I'll fight my way out!'
His hands gathered electricity and fire energy within his body, getting ready to release everything at any moment.
Meanwhile, Sebastian also gathered dark cloud around his arm, planning to activate his abilities as well.
"Ahem!"
The cough of Crystal disrupted the tension between the two dragonewt and their partner.
"Commander, let me ask these two instead."
Sebastian withdrew his surging power and took a step back. His black eyes restored to his normal states, but the two black tentacles still glared at Tama's eyes.
Mia also got room to breathe. He exhaled out white smoke and flammable gas that had been gathered within his lung.
A small spark of fire escaped from Mia's nostrils, scaring all escorting soldiers.
Crystal was also intimidated by Mia's current form. She took several deep breaths before she turned to Mia.
"Misha, I'm going to ask Tama a few questions, alright? Tama, can you talk to me?"
*Mew!* (Sure, give me food after this!)
Crystal's corner of her mouth curved upward into a smile. This was the exact same attitude of Tama when Misha and Tama had first arrived.
"Tama, is Misha an otherworlder?"
*Mew?* (What's otherworlder?)
"Someone who came from another place other than this world. Is Misha one of them?"
*Mrrr?* (Let me think a bit.)
Mia closed his eyes and prayed, hoping that Tama would be smart enough to help him. Inwardly, he cursed Crystal and Sebastian for using this tactic to interrogate.
'Please, Tama. Work with me!'
*Mrrr* (I think I remember something.)
Mia's heart sank. At this rate, Tama would answer like an innocent child that Mia was an otherworlder since Tama had been in the real world.
Using his inner blood cell control of MBR foundation, Mia condensed his blood cells into letters and forced them into Tama's tentacle vessels.
The message was simple.
[10 Tunas]
*Mew!* (Oh! I get it!)
Crystal was surprised that Tama suddenly screamed because of something.
*Mew Mew* (Misha is a good girl.)
Crystal was puzzled, "What do you mean? Is she an otherworlder or not?"
*Mew?* (She was always with me, and she has never done anything weird. What's wrong?)
"Let me change the question, has she ever worked together with the bad guys?"
*Mrrr?* (Who's the bad guys?)
"The guys that don't have similar types of blood as ours, the humans."
*Nom-Nom?* *Mew* (The yummy human? No, she killed all of them whenever we met them!)
"What about humans with strong psychic powers? Have Misha met or talked with any of them?"
*Nom-Nom!* (All of them is already in my tummy!)
Crystal held back her laughter. She turned around to see Sebastian and others, "All of you should lower your guns. She's one of ours."
<<Vice Commander Crystal believes in you.>>
<<Captain Hewett believes in you.>>
<<Captain Booker believes in you.>>
<<Captain ...>>
Long messages notified Mia that the attitude of all captains had changed. All of them believed in him now.
Even the escorting soldiers put away their weapons. Since they could understand Tama's mewing language, they did not think that a newborn parasite could fool their own kindred.
<<Ding>>
<<Your relationship with the Hydra Faction has become [Casual]>>
Unbeknownst to them, Tama used her tentacle to write letters at the surface of Mia's lung.
[Make it 20!]