Seed of Titan-Chapter 123: A Close Call

Drai’s swings became wider as he struck the ape even harder.

’Thirty-five seconds left... Come on, just die already.’

A loud crackle suddenly split the air as the alpha’s body shined, and violent arcs of lightning instantly burst out.

Drai’s arm quickly heated up and numbed as the electrical discharge coursed through the black staff. His grip failed, and the staff dropped to the ground with a heavy thud.

Despite being battered black and blue, the alpha’s instincts remained sharp. It sensed the opening and immediately lunged at Drai while baring its fangs.

"Argh!"

The impact sent Drai tumbling backward, his hands clamping hard onto the alpha’s maw that was closing on his neck. Drai’s whole body was slightly convulsing and sizzling from the electrocution.

The alpha’s hands grabbed onto Drai’s shoulders. Its dirty nails were digging into his flesh, dragging him closer.

Drai gritted his teeth and his muscles tightened as the alpha’s yellowed teeth brushed against his neck. His body was now spasming greatly, almost getting out of his control.

At this moment, a notification popped up.

[Warning—30 seconds left until Colossal Augmentation is terminated]

’Shit! I can’t die here!’

In desperation, Drai did the unthinkable. Leaning his head forward, he savagely drove his teeth into the alpha’s furry neck.

The alpha’s jaw instantly loosened due to the unexpected attack. But this turned out badly for the ape. The counterpressure was gone, so Drai’s hands easily snapped the maw wide open with a sharp clack.

The alpha let out a painful howl as its grip on Drai’s shoulders weakened. But the lightning surged even more violently instead.

Disregarding the pain searing through his nerves, Drai painstakingly shifted his body to the alpha’s back and wrapped around his arms around its thick neck, squeezing with everything he had.

The alpha thrashed around, clawing at the arms strangling it, but Drai held firm and tightened his grip like a human vice.

The moment Drai felt the alpha’s neck slacken, his strength exploded and he wrenched the alpha’s head sideways.

A sickening snap echoed through the clearing.

The alpha collapsed onto its knees and dropped to the ground with a heavy thud. The lightning coursing through its body subsided, and muffled death throes escaped from its throat as it twitched.

Soon, the twitching stopped; the light had finally vanished from the alpha’s beady eyes.

Drai stood there, panting heavily as he stared at the alpha’s massive corpse. Disregarding Nero’s one-sided beating, this was the toughest opponent he had ever faced.

Suddenly, Drai’s gaze shifted, and his expression quickly turned grave.

Hanging on a huge tree at the distance was another massive white ape that looked even bigger than the "alpha" he had just slain.

And to make it worse, a notification popped up.

[Warning—10 seconds left until Colossal Augmentation is terminated] 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

Not even Titan’s Fortitude could ward off the sense of dread that was currently swelling within Drai.

It had taken him more than twenty seconds to defeat the last ape, and that’s when he was in a much better shape. So at this moment, Drai knew that his demise was almost certain.

However, fate seemed to have something else in store.

After their eyes met, the new white ape leaped off its branch and disappeared into the trees, leaving Drai stunned.

[Warning—Colossal Augmentation terminated. Remaining cooldown: 89 minutes]

Drai remained frozen as his body shrank. It wasn’t until the alpha’s massive corpse blocked his view that he finally snapped out of his stupor.

Drai’s legs gave out and he dropped to the ground. He was left staring at the blue sky with his heart thumping, still in disbelief.

"I thought I was dead for sure... Why did it run away? Was it scared of me?"

Drai shook his head and slowly stood up, wincing as pain flared through his battered body. He knew he needed to leave quickly in case that other white ape decided to return. But as he glanced at the massive corpse of the "alpha", a thought struck him.

Drai dragged himself toward the ape’s neck that was now larger than him. After spotting the wound from his own bite, he immediately jammed his hand through it, piercing the ape’s flesh.

A short moment later, Drai felt a familiar sensation flowing into him. But unlike the grainy flow from the tree before, this time it felt like a stream of water was coursing through his arm.

"System, how’s the essence quality?"

[It is multitudes higher compared to the previous source.]

"But didn’t you say sucking from corpses isn’t good?"

[No. I previously mentioned that using Bio Drain on non-living organisms will diminish the yield; this does not mean it is inherently bad. In addition, essence from fresh corpses likely have not degraded much.]

"Oh, okay," Drai said. He then looked at the numerous dead apes scattered across the area.

"At least I’ll get something from this battle. Is this my life now—hunting beasts for their essence?"

While waiting for the process to finish, Drai examined his fresh wounds.

"How many days will it take for these to heal?" Drai sighingly remarked.

"Hm? There are fewer injuries on my silver markings. Are they tougher than my normal skin?"

While Drai was busy with his thoughts, essence kept streaming into him. And around a minute later, the flow began to subside before stopping completely.

Luckily for Drai, the white ape’s body was way smaller compared to the large tree he had tried draining before, so he didn’t have to wait too long.

At this moment, the System popped up.

[User, the essence collected via Bio Drain seems to have additional applications. Would you like to know more?]

"Really? Tell me about them," Drai replied as he removed his hand from the neck and began walking to another ape’s corpse to drain more essence.

[First, it can be used for recovery, such as healing your wounds. Second, it can be used to reduce Colossal Augmentation’s cooldown.]

"What?!" Drai exclaimed in shock while halting his steps. He blinked his eyes repeatedly as he read the message, making sure he saw it correctly.

"So how do I use it?"

[Simply issue a command as per usual. The process will then commence until the desired effect is achieved or the essence is depleted. And please note that the used essence will be lost.]

Without hesitation, Drai immediately ordered, "Use the essence for my cooldown."

[Initiating cooldown recovery.]

A second later, a notification appeared.

[Cooldown recovery complete.]

This baffled Drai. Not only was he expecting a longer process, he also didn’t sense anything different from him.

Drai quickly navigated to Colossal Augmentation in his status screen. His eyes instantly widened upon seeing that the cooldown was no longer there.

"It’s ready to use again?! Just like that?!"

Drai trembled in excitement. One of his biggest problems had just been solved. He immediately clasped his hands and prayed for the Deepwilds Siproot, wishing that his benefactor would be forever healthy, rich, and produce a lot of strong saplings.

"I’ll make sure to have a garden full of them," Drai remarked as he planned a future trip to the underground jungle.

Following this, Drai ordered once more, "Heal me with the essence."

[Initiating health recovery.]

This time Drai could feel the pain from the process. He watched his skin and muscles rapidly regenerate, way faster than his recovery from Lesser Titanic Physique. His patchy burnt hair was also returning into its previous lush.

Half a minute later, Drai had fully recovered, looking renewed aside from his tattered clothes.

"This is crazy!"

Bursting out laughing, Drai proceeded to skip merrily around the giant corpses like a madman. It wasn’t until a minute later that he finally calmed down and resumed draining the fallen apes.

"Great, now I can take my time collecting all these essence. Even if that white ape returns, it’ll just end up as my ’healing potion’, hehe..."

Calculating the number of corpses and the duration of the draining, Drai estimated that it would take him around forty minutes to an hour to drain all these dead apes.

"But now that I can use the essence for my cooldown and healing, should I save them all or use some of them for my development?" Drai pondered. "Hmm... Maybe I should reserve three times’ worth of full recovery for both health and cooldown, and use the rest for my development until there’s a need to resupply."

Having made up his mind, Drai instructed the System to follow his idea, to which the System complied.

After he was done draining his current target, Drai would quickly move to another ape before thrusting his hand into whatever gaping wound he could find to save time. After all, he didn’t have enough strength to pierce their thick, furry hides unless he transformed.

After repeating this for fifteen whole minutes, Drai was almost halfway done. If there’s one thing that Drai was proficient in, it was repeating the same movement for a lengthy time. This whole process was similar to training, so Drai actually quite enjoyed it, especially when the gains weren’t as obscured.