Ch.297 Chimeras

Ch.297 Chimeras

It was a mistake on his part of course. Although he wasn’t expecting the experimental hybrids to actually obtain a complete gene fusion (making them something more like half bloods of 2 species rather than a complete new species), it was somewhat beyond his expectations that this very weakness would lead to a series of mutations that would turn them into chimera.

As descendants of Breeders, they were naturally Breeders as well. This allowed them to mate with other races and make ‘hybrids’ of their own. This was not something that Eridel had overlooked.

Back then, his Will Flame was only Tier 1, which meant that he was subject to any sort of whim that was synonymous with evolution thanks to his planetary instincts, and it was so bad that he would even overlook things in a completely natural manner that he himself came up with reasons for. It was a little scary to think about actually. It made him wonder about what else he was ‘naturally’ making reasons for, as he unknowingly did the bidding of a force that wasn’t truly his own Will.

However, even with things as bad as they were back then, that did not mean that he was a buffoon. He had been driven to seek evolution in any way that he could and succeed at it, not fail. That would be counterproductive. So he had been aware of hybrids retaining their Breeder status and knew that it was a variable that was not fully accounted for. But that was why he called them an experiment rather than an actual attempt, it was obvious that there were things that he would not know and he was supposed to learn from any errors. And learn from it he did.

But the magnitude of the price of ‘failure’ was very clearly what his planetary instincts had made him ignore. Back then he had thought to himself that any failure will likely result in either the birth of an Abomination, the birth of a crippled or even dead baby, or no birth at all.

All three of those possibilities were things that he had accepted, and were still things that he could accept.

He didn’t like the concept of problematic births or Abominations, but it was a cost that he was willing to make for a greatest future, far more acceptable than condemning 4 entire Worlds to death in order to create 4 ‘super soldiers’, and that was not a decision that he had hesitated much to enact either, thanks to aforementioned reasons.

In any case, with his inhibitions being next to nothing, he hadn’t spent much time thinking about the errors. In his mind (back then) even the greatest error could be erased with time. Moreover, there was even the Eridius System. One of the features of the Eridius System was to prevent problems in their Hosts from occurring. And although he had known that it currently wasn’t at the level where it could completely stop the emergence of Abominations and the like, he had been of the mind that situations like that were what would give the System experience and ultimately make it grow.

And that had not been wrong. The System had learnt from the errors and had grown in capability, but damage had still been done.

To keep things simple, whenever they bred with a different species, the resulting children would essentially just ‘pick up another bloodline’ and still not fuse it. They were in a miraculous yet detrimental state that allowed them to exist in a form where their various bloodlines didn’t need to fuse, and this allowed them to obtain more bloodlines by breeding with other species.

Alas, below the fabled Limitless Realm, all things had limits.

When the hybrids (well, they were much more than hybrid or even tribrid at that point) began to hold too many bloodlines, the metaphorical thread that held everything together began to suffer. It caused them to mutate and produce deformities, making them become chimeras.

The reason why a majority of these traitors were people that had previously shown honour, loyalty and selflessness, was precisely because of those 3 traits. Thinking to take a sharp risk for the greater good of their factions, they had secretly established connections with Envy in order to pretend to be a spy and learn his secrets.

They did this secretly because thanks to previous attempts, they knew that Envy didn’t respond to anyone who was clearly baiting him. Anyone who had made a deal with their ruler or coalition to try and make a connection with Envy had never obtained a response. Evidently, Envy had been aware.

People like Keon looked at the chaos by Envy and could no longer sit back and watch Envy continue his dark deeds any longer without doing anything. So, in their restlessness and selflessness, they made the connection with Envy. The plan was to resist the compulsion and only pretend to be swayed, not actually become a Creature in Green.

They had thought that since there were people who had resisted Envy in the past (especially when he first became the Sin of Envy) that they too could also resist, especially since most of them weren’t actually envious beings. They didn’t have an affinity with Envy Essence, unlike those of before. This gave them confidence.

Unfortunately, they didn’t know that they were like flies who had willingly flown into a spider web.

Envy was much, much more capable than he used to be. At the point he had reached, affinity with Envy Essence no longer mattered. If he could form a connection with someone, he could use it to slowly corrupt that person over time. The only issue he faced was forming the connection in the first place.

You can imagine how laughable it had been for prime specimens to reach out to him themselves. They tried to scam Envy but in the end they were the ones that got scammed.

Not that any of them would think that.

Eridel had no doubt that by now that they all thought that the moment they reached out to Envy was the greatest moment of their lives.

“Quite remarkable, if I do say so myself.” Eridel chuckled. “I kind of feel like a proud father. This ‘son’ of mine may be of the detestable kind but he’s quite good at what he does. He has amazing talent.”

He conjured a bunch of grapes and tossed one into his mouth.

“Mmh.. Speaking of... I’ll think I’ll go with that for the Divinity. It’s not bad.”