Chapter 136: Sustenance

Lucius could certainly tell that the Bore Shrew was in a much better condition than before now and was even starting to show better signs of movement. Its limbs now twitched in response and its screeches were also more animated.

"Let's see if the diet of the 'Lost' is available to the bore shrew or not…" Lucius said before opening the slab of pork that was wrapped in cloth.

He then cut a small one inch piece from it and dropped it in the cage.

~thud~

~SKREEE~

The presence of meat made the Bore Shrew react with an excited reaction. It started to twitch and shuffle. Lucius watched as the beast figured out how to move without its limbs. It just made its body twitch and move forward till it was near the piece of the meat.

Lucius had intentionally put the meat a bit far from the beast as he wanted to see if the beast would actually be able to do anything. And it was apparent that its greed for meat was far greater than that of the Potato.

~SKREEE~

The Bore Shrew chomped on the meat and started eating it with gusto. It took large bites and in four bites, it had finished the entire piece. Its teeth were like sharp knives cutting through the meat easily.

Once it finished the meat, its body's veins started to throb as it gained more strength. 

~thwack~

Then… for the first time, the bore shrew moved its limbs. It managed to slap its thick but stumpy leg onto the bottom of the cage. This caused the metallic cage to tremble. The power in that slap was quite a lot for a creature of Bore Shrew's size.

"So it really did lack nutrients… proteins to be more accurate. Hmm… the physiology of the 'Lost' is also apparent since it can metabolize what it consumes so fast." Lucius analyzed.

The 'Lost' were beings corrupted by the Hell energy. They could be humans, animals, beasts, other races or even plants. No matter what kind of being they were, after they became lost, they would gain several similar traits.

One such trait was the ability to consume anything. Though most of the Lost preferred to eat meat and as such would chase down anything alive in its sensory radius. They were similar to zombies in this case, but the two beings could not be compared.

While zombies were undead, the Lost were alive and actually had a certain level of intelligence. Stronger version of Lost were more intelligent and could speak as well. But this consumption of nutrients was also a curse for them.

Once a being turned into Lost, they needed a lot of energy to live. This energy could be obtained in the form of either Mana, Hell energy or biomatter. Hell energy could provide them sustenance for a long time and they would be able to live longer.

Mana was similar to this and they could also consume mana, but it needed to be in the form of a material object. They could either consume mana crystals or other things that were rich in mana.

Then came biomatter which was nothing but plants or animals. The Lost needed to constantly consume them to sustain themselves. While they could eat nearly anything living, they preferred meat the most.

There was plenty of research done on this by the Barron clan and they discovered that the Lost that lived on a diet of Meat could sustain themselves for four times as long when compared to those that were given a plant based diet. 

This was one of the more… 'Civilized' experiments that the Barrom clan had done among the thousands immoral, terrifying and inhumane ones. 

The reason why it was done was also rather unique as the clan wanted to know if it was viable to keep an army of active Lost. While they could always make more of them, making a substantial amount of them took long. So they wanted to make it so that they always had a standing army of lost ready.

This was only because the Lost were in an environment that was not native to them. If they were in a hell dimension or an area that was tainted by hell energy, they did not need to eat anything and could live by absorbing the hell energy.

The bore Shrew was not a carnivore and ate tubers and roots. It being able to meat now proved that the Hell energy had brought about the transformation of it into a being that was similar to that of a Lost.

While it did not fully look like one, Lucius reckoned that it would either take more hell energy to do so or just more time for it to reach a full transformation. 

"Or it may just be how the rune beasts would present the signs…" Lucius muttered as he rubbed his chin.

He sliced off more meat and dropped it in the cage.

~THUD~

The Bore Shrew slapped its one leg that was moving onto the base of the cage and moved forward. It then started to eat the chunk of meat that Lucius had put there and ate it quickly. In less than ten seconds, it had finished if go again.

~thwack~

Lucius saw that it moved its right leg now, which was not moving fully.

"It's improving, so that's a good sign. Looks like I won't need another subject… at least for now." Lucius said, feeling pleased.

He sliced off more chunks of the meat from the slab and put them all in the cage. The Bore Shrew looked as if it was in heaven and ate all of it with gusto. Soon the entire slab of pork meat had disappeared down the gullet of the beast.

The beast actually managed to increase by one more size and looked a bit more even than before. Now its limbs were also growing to meet the same standard as the rest of its torso.

"Lack of nutrition, accelerated growth upon administration of nutrition and change in physiology…" Lucius repeated as he noted it all down in a notebook.