Chapter 266: Petrifying Gaze
Alex immediately pulled his hand back, but a sharp pain suddenly traveled from his palm into his shoulder, causing him to grit his teeth. He looked down at his hand and froze when he saw that his entire palm had turned into stone.
Alex slowly moved his fingers, and small pieces of stone crumbled from his hand and fell to the ground.
’The monster could turn whatever it looked at into stone?’
The discovery shocked him, but instead of fear being his first reaction, Alex found himself fascinated by the ability. He had never encountered anything quite like it before, and although he felt that the Stone Basilisk was most likely a mage-type monster, he had no idea what kind of element or magic could produce such an effect.
Alex looked toward his shoulder and immediately noticed that it had suffered the same transformation. His torn shirt was unchanged, but the skin and muscles beneath it had turned completely to stone.
Fortunately, the transformation didn’t seem to have affected everything. His bones and nerves were still functioning normally, which meant that the basilisk’s ability had only transformed his muscles and skin rather than turning his entire body into stone.
Alex began using mana to break apart the stone covering his hand and shoulder while carefully examining the fragments. He quickly sensed something unusual inside them, and his expression became serious when he realized that the stone contained Origin Energy.
Alex focused on that energy and began pushing it out with his own mana. The Will contained within the Origin Energy was extremely weak, so removing it wasn’t difficult, and the moment the last traces were forced out, the stone suddenly lost its stability.
The stone crumbled apart, but another wave of pain immediately spread through Alex’s body. He gritted his teeth and looked down at his arm, only now realizing that removing the Origin Energy had caused the transformed tissue itself to disappear, leaving him without an entire palm and a large portion of his shoulder.
The pain was severe enough to make his body tremble, but Alex forced himself to remain focused on the pieces of stone scattered across the ground. He picked up several fragments and examined them carefully, only to find that there was no Origin Energy left inside them.
They were now ordinary pieces of stone.
Alex stared at them for several seconds before finally understanding what had happened.
’So anything organic this monster looks at can be turned into stone.’
’The transformed stone contains the monster’s Origin Energy, and the amount of Will contained within that Origin Energy determines how long the transformation can remain stable.’
’Once the Origin Energy holding the stone together disappears, the transformed material can no longer maintain its structure and simply crumbles.’
’Wait, is the stone crumbling because the Origin Energy is being expelled, or because the Will contained within that Origin Energy is being expelled?’
The distinction was important, and Alex couldn’t help but become curious about it. The Stone Basilisk’s ability was fascinating, especially because he had never encountered an attack that could transform living tissue into another material so easily.
He also couldn’t help wondering how such an attack could be blocked. More importantly, why hadn’t the ability affected his clothes? Alex looked down at the torn shirt he had received from Frank, which was already in terrible condition, but despite being directly against his skin, the shirt hadn’t been turned to stone.
’Maybe it only affects things that contain energy or Will? The shirt doesn’t have any energy, so perhaps the ability simply ignores it.’
Alex couldn’t be certain, but that was the most reasonable explanation he could come up with. After thinking about it for a while longer, he finally stopped his little experiment and focused on his current condition.
Petra was already healing him, and her healing had become considerably stronger. Alex could feel the damaged tissues slowly recovering as Faith flowed through his body, which made him think about how difficult it had been to mutate the Stone Basilisk.
If the reason he couldn’t easily mutate the monster was because it was a higher ranked species with a much stronger biological foundation, then Petra’s healing should logically have become less effective against him. Alex was now a Mid Rank species, and if life mana had more difficulty changing the cells of a higher-ranked species, it should also have more difficulty repairing them.
Yet Petra’s healing wasn’t noticeably weaker. At first, Alex wondered whether his new species was simply better adapted to life mana, but Petra wasn’t using life mana at all, so that explanation didn’t make sense.
’It must be because she’s a Priest.’
The more Alex thought about it, the more reasonable that explanation seemed. Mages like him relied on life mana to directly influence the body, which meant understanding biology and controlling life mana properly was important, while Priests seemed to use something much more ’supernatural’ through Faith.
’If Faith also required knowledge of biology to heal people, Petra wouldn’t have been able to heal everyone as easily as she does.’
Alex finally reached a conclusion and lowered the output of his Advanced Battle Instinct Spell, allowing his surroundings to become clearer further.
"Can you hear me now?" Joseph asked as Alex looked toward him.
"Yes," Alex replied with a nod.
"What was that about? Why did you zone out like that?" Joseph asked, looking somewhat confused.
"I was trying to figure out what happened when the monster attacked me. It seemed like anything it could see could be turned into stone, and it hit my palm and shoulder, so I was checking whether there were any aftereffects," Alex explained.
His voice remained calm, but everyone else immediately became tense. Sarah and Yulia looked particularly serious, their expressions changing as soon as they heard what Alex had said.
"A stone? Are you sure?" Emma asked.
"Yes, it seems the monster had a special ability because it was a High Rank species. Thankfully, it was still a baby that hadn’t even been born yet, otherwise we could have been in serious danger," Alex replied.
"We need to leave, quickly," Joseph suddenly said as he began packing their belongings at full speed.
The others followed his example without asking questions, and Alex quickly realized there was probably another reason Emma and Yulia had reacted so strongly amongst everyone.
"What did you see outside?" Alex asked, piecing the clues together.
"There were some monster statues outside. We thought they were part of the ancient ruins, but now it seems those were probably transformed by the Stone Basilisk’s parents, who came here to search for the egg," Joseph explained.
Alex nodded slowly as he understood their concern. If the parents of the Stone Basilisk had already reached this area, then encountering them would be extremely dangerous, especially since they had no idea how powerful an adult Stone Basilisk could be.
Before leaving, Alex absorbed the Gene Potential from the dead monster. Now that his species had reached Mid Rank, he was finally capable of absorbing the Gene Potential of a High Rank species.
[Your Species level has increased. Level 11 → Level 12.]
[Mind (+3), Mana (+1), Free Stat Points (+2).]
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