Born in apocalypse

The more Dhruv looked at the corpse in front of him, the more his intrusive thoughts were about to get a hang of him. Controlling his urges to destroy the corpse, Dhruv walked toward it.

Taking a deep breath, he looked at the corpse and put his hand in the corpse’s direction.

"Fuse..." A word left his mouth as he guided his mana towards his hand. Soon a familiar scene began to play.

The scene that was happening was something that Dhruv was too familiar with so he didn’t bother to pay that much attention to it.

Dhruv was sure that even if he wasn’t familiar with this, he wouldn’t like to see a corpse turn into something... something that can’t be explained with human words.

The entire body of the shaman began to fuse in itself, and after just a few seconds of fusing, it had turned into a cube of meat about the size of a shoebox.

Dhruv lifted the metal under the meat and brought it near his head. Looking at the box of meat in front of him, he first cut it into eight pieces. The pieces were cut in a way that he could eat one of them in one go.

Kepping a weird smile on his face Dhruv picked one of the pieces and brought it toward his mouth.

Ugg!!

After making the sound that clearly portrayed his feelings, he closed his eyes, putting a piece of the meat in his mouth.

Dhruv had initially planned to gulp down the entire thing without chewing to avoid unnecessary disgust, but when he attempted to swallow the meat, he quickly realized something wasn’t right.

Once he figured out he couldn’t swallow the meat, it didn’t take him long to grasp what the future had in store for him.

he soon came to the fact that if he wanted to gain any essence points, he had to chew the meat.

As soon as he bit into the soft, cold meat, a strange sensation spread through his mouth. After chewing the meat a second time, all its flavors burst into his mouth.

"Blghrrr! What the fuck!!..." Despite trying to restrain himself, he couldn’t help but spit that piece of meat out of his mouth.

’fuck... fuck, I can’t do this...’ he said as he began to clean his mouth with water he had conjured with magic.

After thinking for a moment, an idea came to his mind, ’Should I buy some skill that lets me turn off my taste sense?’ he thought as he looked at the meat in front of him.

’No... even if such skills exist, I can’t do that. If I were to do that, how am I supposed to eat those tasty meals again?’ Dhruv thought as he couldn’t help but realize that he had reached a dead end.

Despite not wanting to do that, he picked one of the meat’s pieces from the metal plate once again and brought it to his mouth.

Putting it in his mouth, he felt the horrific taste of the meat. Despite the urge to puke the thing out once again, he continued chewing until it was enough for him to swallow it.

After swallowing the piece of the meat, he didn’t eat another piece and instead began to wait for the notification to come.

Even after waiting for a few seconds when the notification arrived, a horrifying realization began to creep over.

’Is it that one mouthful of the meat is not enough to gain even a single essence point?’ A thought appeared in Dhruv’s mind.

After some careful thinking, he quickly dismissed this idea, knowing full well that it couldn’t be true. After all when he had consumed Crystallce, he had gained about 5 essence points with each mouthful he had eaten.

Even if the goblin wasn’t that nutritious, it should, at the bare minimum, have provided him with one essence point. Before Dhruv could conclude anything, a notification rang in his mind.

[You have gained 2 essence points.]

Phew!!

Dhruv heaved a sigh of relief as he looked at the notification in front of him.

’Only two points?’ Dhruv felt that all of this wasn’t worth it for the two points he was getting. Before, he was thinking of getting even a single point, but now that he had gotten two points, he was greedy for some more.

He looked at the meat in front of him and was about to pick one of the pieces once again to eat it when suddenly a thought appeared in his mind. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

’Wait a minute... why am I eating these things when I could just simply fuse it with my body?’ he thought as he began to remember information about fusion.

When Dhruv had acquired the skill [True fusion], there was so much information that had been transferred to him. He wasn’t able to understand all of that at that moment, but there was one thing that he remembered very clearly.

’The skill is only limited by your own creativity.’

Dhruv could remember this line as if this wasn’t just information that he had acquired, but a piece of advice someone had given him. A point he shouldn’t forget at any cost.

’If I could use fusion to get essence points from the corpse... how would that work? Can I directly just fuse with the meat here, or do I need to do something else?’ Dhruv began to think of many plans over the few minutes timeframe.

After minutes of thinking, he had come up with a command that he thought would work for the fusion to work as he intended. The command is,

"Fuse the ’meat or something like that’ with the ’target of the fusion’..." Dhruv whispered.

He still wasn’t very clear about this command and thus needed some test subjects. But the problem was where he could find precious test subjects at this hour.

’Why am I worrying over test subjects when I have a never-ending machine?’

Dhruv thought as he remembered that the slime farm had already been built, and goblins had been tossed in them as well. This implies that the tier 3 slimes had enough resources to make numerous tier 1 slimes.

Dhruv was confident that the farm must be flowing with hundreds of tier 1 slimes, ready to be killed at any given moment.

[Alaric, come here] Dhruv sends this message to Alaric through the Mark of Asteri.

After sending the message Dhruv began to wait patiently. He didn’t know when but, the frown on his face had already changed into a creepy smile.

While he was busy thinking about plenty of ways to conduct the experiment, Alaric appeared in front of him the shadow of his throne.

Without wasting any time, Alaric asked while bowing his head, "How can I help you, master?"

"Go and fetch me some tier 1 slimes from the slime farm," Dhruv ordered. He was so excited that he didn’t even explain why he needed slime from the farm at this hour of the day.

"Of course, Master." Alaric was puzzled about this sudden request, but he didn’t think about it for more than a second and readily agreed to follow the order.

Alaric plunged into the same shadow, and three minutes later, he reappeared in the room. Swiftly, he pulled out the five tier 1 slimes he had selected from the slime farm within his shadow and placed them in front of Dhruv.

"Here are the slimes, Master," he said with a smile on his face.

"Thank you, Alaric." Dhruv expressed his gratitude and focused on the slime and the Shaman meat.

"Master, should I go, or can I watch it happen?" Alaric asked for permission to watch whatever experiment Dhruv was about to perform.

"Ohhh! Of course, you can watch it." Dhruv said as he picked one of the slimes with a metal hook and placed it in a metal box.

"If you don’t mind me asking, master, what is the purpose of this experiment?" Alaric inquired once more.

"It is a surprise..." Dhruv said while keeping his creepy face on.

Alaric nodded after hearing this and then dove into Dhruv’s shadows. He could clearly see everything from the shadow, so he often preferred to observe things while being in the shadow.

Dhruv picked one slice of meat from the plate and placed it inside the box with the slime. The moment the slime noticed that there was a piece of meat in front of it, it quickly began to eat it.

Before Dhruv could do anything about it, the slime had already consumed half the meat, so Dhruv let it eat the whole thing as a thought appeared in his mind.

’Fatten the slime before the experiment... eat as much as you can, after all, this is going to be your last meal.’ With the same creepy smile, he observed while the slime finished the whole meat.

After the slime had finished devouring the meat, Dhruv selected another slice from the plate and placed it inside the box with the slime. This time, before adding the meat, he fused it with a layer of metal to prevent the slime from chewing through it quickly.

Without hesitation, he extended his hand and uttered the magic word, focusing on the command.

Before he could witness anything, a sound resonated in his ear...

Booooom!!