A Serpent's Tale-Chapter 381: An Empowering Feast

I’d killed most of the behemoth monsters here, the only ones that survived where the ones that either couldn’t fight for whatever reason, be it simply not being able to or they just couldn’t get here in time, or, they saw my massacre and were smart enough to realise that messing with me would result in their deaths.

Regardless, I now had several piles of dead giant monsters and no real plans on what to do next. I mean, I could leave and go back into the real world, but that feels somewhat wrong somehow. Like I would be missing out on something here.

And looking over the many piles of monsters just lying there, it suddenly came to me.

With the sheer size and power of these things, I would never be able to properly devour them. At least not in my normal form, but like this, I could easily swallow up multiple at a time and then use [Endless Devouring] to gain [EXP] and stat points from them!

The moment this came to my mind, I started by immediately grabbing the head, or what I think is the head, of the tentacled monster I just killed, and stuffed it into my mouth, quickly swallowing the entire thing up. I didn’t even waste a second as I pushed it deeper into my lower stomach and started digesting it mid swallow.

*GULP* *GULP* *GULP*

[Ding!]

[You have devoured a [LvL. 103 Astral Cth’Olypus], earning +455,000 EXP and +355 Stat Points]

I was already at the pile of monsters when that notification scroll appeared. And immediately after, this one popped up

[Ding]

[You have levelled up from 40 -> 41]

[EXP: 539,368/250,000 -> 289,368/300,000]

[You have gained +40 Stat Points]

I didn’t care about any of that as I just started to gulp down the bodies of all these monsters like there was no tomorrow. Each and every one of them going down like I had an endless hunger.

[Ding!]

[You have devoured a [LvL. 104 Astral Drakon], earning +461,000 EXP and +360 Stat Points]

[Ding]

[You have levelled up from 40 -> 42]

[EXP: 755,368/250,000 -> 205,368/350,000]

[You have gained +80 Stat Points]

[Ding!]

[You have devoured a [LvL. 92 Spatial Quake Mole], earning +335,000EXP and +235 Stat Points]

[Ding]

[You have levelled up from 42 -> 43]

[EXP: 435,368/350,000 -> 190,368/400,000]

[You have gained +40 Stat Points]

I decided to just hide the rest of these messages until I was finished.

...

...

...

After probably many hours but what felt like two, I had finally finished devouring every last monster corpse there was and finally, let myself shrink back down into my normal form.

[Ding!]

[You have levelled up from 61 -> 62]

[EXP: 6, 830,368/6,000,000 -> 830,368/7,000,000]

[You have gained +60 Stat Points]

The last scroll came in and I just waved it away, not particularly caring all that much for it or what it had to say. The only thing of note here was that in just a couple hours, I had gone from level forty, to sixty-two.

No [Soul EXP] unfortunately since I had already killed these monsters and didn’t think to eat them beforehand. Nor did I care enough to go and hunt for more. Probably made a few of them extinct to be honest.

Still, I now had an incredible abundance of tens of thousands of [Stat Points] to use. I also felt like my new [Astromancy] skill was close to levelling up. And sure enough, when I checked, it displayed the number [96.66%]. Shouldn’t take more than a day for me to get that up now.

Also, I should probably get to spending all of these [Stat Points], else what’s the point of them? So, I opened my Soul Scroll and went to convert all of these waiting points, which now that I had so many, I could actually feel the power emanating from within. But when I went to spend them in the conversion menu, something was off.

_

[1 = +5,000 HP]

[2 = +2,500 MP]

[1 = +1,250 SP]

[2 = +2,500 Strength]

[1 = +3,500 Defence]

[1 = +4,500 Magic]

[1 = +1,200 Magic Defence]

[1 = +2,500 Agility]

[3 = +100 Speed]

[2 = +5,500 Stamina]

[1 = +1,750 Charm]

_

The values had changed. But I had no idea as to why. Each time it did this before, there was at least some rational as to why but this time I couldn’t think of anything.

’No wait... My new Bloodline? That doesn’t feel right...’ Despite that being the most obvious answer, something told me that that wasn’t the correct deduction.

And if it wasn’t that, then I had no idea what else could’ve done this. I mean I wasn’t going to complain, more power is more power. I was just confused was all.

Either way, now it was time to start using all these points. Nearly thirty thousand of them...

Honestly, I wasn’t that sure of how to go about distributing it all. I guess I can start by giving each of them three thousand points worth each? I can afford to do that and still have points left over. So, with that, I started from the top down.

[Ding!]

[+15,000,000 HP]

[HP: 100% (+90,000)]

’Huhwah?’ THAT was the first one? Fifteen MILLION [HP]?

As I was processing the sheer absurdity of this, I suddenly felt my insides exploding, with new flesh and organs taking their places over and over again.

Which resulted in me throwing up bit and pieces of flesh and blood for several minutes straight. Yet my [HP] never seemed to go down at all during that time.

When it was finally over, there was an entire lakes worth of blood pooled around me like a shallow marsh filled with the wet and squishy squelchy flesh that was my organs.

’That... was FUCKING PAINFUL! Is that going to happen EVERY time?!?’ That prospect almost made me want to stop here, but then what would’ve been the point of me eating all those behemoth monsters?

So, gritting my teeth, I spent another three thousand on my MP.

[Ding!]

[+3,750,000 MP]

[MP: 100% (+6,174,320)]

This time I felt my heart explode. That was one of the few organs that didn’t explode when I increased my [HP]. Thankfully for me however, it only exploded once.

When I threw it up however, I could feel something from the remnant parts of my ruptured heart that now floated atop the surface of the blood pool after throwing it up. I was going to burn it, but then I thought to myself, if this is going to continue happening, the I might as well do it later.

’Ugh... This is going to be such a miserable experience...’ I steeled myself for what was to come and did the next one.

[Ding!]

[+3,750,000 SP]

[SP: 100% (+26,000)]

This time, it wasn’t a painful experience, since it was my soul that was being affected here. But it certainly was a disorientating one as it felt like my soul was growing larger, yet at the same time remaining the same size. It was weird, but at least it wasn’t painful.

After recovering from that much more pleasant conversion, I moved onto the next one. And looking at it, it would probably also cause some level of unbearable pain in some inane way.

[Ding!]

[+3,750,000 Strength]

[Strength: 3,853,000 (+2,351,800)]

This one made me feel extremely heavy for a time as I felt all the muscles in my body were turned into mountains. Literally. I felt like I was being crushed by my own weight to the point I thought I was going to die.

This extremely heavy weight was so immense that I collapsed and was forced to submerge half my body into the bloody marsh that I had created.

Thankfully I didn’t die and it soon subsided, allowing me to continue on with this arduous process. After getting back up and wiping myself off with a bit of magic that it.

[Ding!]

[+10,500,000 Defence]

[Defence: 10,548,700 (+6,363,220)]

My skin exploded this time, along with my scales and basically anything that covered up my insides. This happened multiple times but not quite as many as when my insides blew up. I was also fortunate enough to have a new layer of skin and scales already beneath the previous layer.

Ultimately, all this did was just make this tangy red marsh bigger, even if only slightly compared to how big it was already.

Either way I had to keep going. I mean, I didn’t have to, but again, I would’ve eaten all those monsters for nothing otherwise.

[Ding!]

[+13,500,000 Magic]

[Magic: 13,693,000 (+8,275,800)]

Increasing my [Magic] made me feel like my heart was going to explode, but in the end it didn’t and just throbbed extremely hard and painfully. But, compared to what came before it, this wasn’t as bad. It still hurt, but it wasn’t unbearable.

[Ding!]

[+3,600,000 Magic Defence]

[Magic Defence: 3,632,200 (+2,239,320)]

This one thankfully didn’t really affect me anywhere near as much as before. Probably thanks to the fact that the worst of it is already done ravaging my body. But I then realised that I didn’t quite have anywhere near enough to actually put three thousand points into all the stats.

Still, what I had left was adequate enough for me to just dump it all into the rest of my stats.