After a couple of days, Ash finally finished his first ever disease splice.
'Crimson Pulse Thorn… Quite a nice name…But-'
Ash's muscles began twitching. His hands jerked, his neck tensed, his abs squeezed.
His heart raced, a sense of urgency bloomed in Ash's body. An urge to run around and hit everything in his sight bloomed in his mind.
But Ash fought to hold himself back.
He sat on the ground, his hands digging into the earth, squeezing tight as he repressed the violent urges.
Then thorns began growing all over his bark-like skin, the similar ones as the thorns that the carnivorous tree shot.
He still hadn't deactivated his steelbark ability, the dark brown bark still acted as his skin.
'I can NEVER get used to this.'
Ash barely held on. He even sent out his crimson vines to pierce the earth, making sure his body didn't just run around punching and kicking more deadly flora and fauna.
The symptoms of a tier 2 disease were not something Ash could just shrug off.
His high blood pressure dulled his mind, putting him into the fight or flight response.
If not for the mind perseverance ability from the glorious hallucinogenic mushroom, Ash might have had possibly found another tree to kick and punch.
Even if he created the disease himself from splicing them, that didn't mean Ash was automatically immune to it.
Just like any other disease, he had to survive it first before his body could seize it as his own.
But in the end, he won. His body adopted the thorns as a part of it, and it had suppressed the violent urge.
Thorns now became a part of his steel bark skin, but there wasn't any annoying new normal for his body like a constantly bleeding shoulder, for example.
Ash finally deactivated his steelbark skin ability, regaining his ability to move his mouth.
"Thorny Berserker… It has a nice name… And…"
Ash summoned his original crimson vines, suspending them mid-air as Ash activated his new ability.
Dark brown vines slithered out of Ash's arms, pinky-sized thorns decorated the whole vines as it wriggled in the air.
"I got even more vines! Praise the benevolent god!"
The 4 vines danced in mid-air. Each of them showing off their beautiful crimson color and deadly thorns, respectively.
But Ash realized a problem. He read the description of the newly spliced disease, and found out that he might have, fucked up.
'Grants the ability to summon vines that can shoot venomous thorns. Temporarily grants anyone injected by the venom superhuman strength and acceleration...'
The vines and the thorns weren't wrong. They were just what Ash wanted.
The problem was, 'Temporarily grants anyone injected by the venom superhuman strength and acceleration.'
'Anyone injected by the venom…'
The corner of Ash's mouth twitched, an itch to facepalm himself with his hands covered in the new thorny steel bark surfaced in his mind.
'If the berserk ability applies to anyone who had been injected by the venom, or hit by the thorn, then doesn't that mean…
My enemies too…?'
To prevent himself from hitting his own head, Ash ran back to the outskirts of the forest where weaker wolf creatures populated the area.
He soon found another mushroom wolf and shot his new thorns towards it.
The wolf wasn't even aware of Ash's existence until a sharp prick hit it on its backside.
It turned in the direction of the attack, but found nothing other than weeds and trees.
Ash had made use of his new vine to wrap around tree branches and held himself up there, between the thick leaves.
Something he couldn't do before due to his crimson vines' tendency to kill any organic matter that it touched.
Ash kept inspecting the mushroom wolf, and what he found proved his fear.
After his thorn injected its venom into the wolf, the wolf's whole body began twitching before it just bolted straight forward into…Nothing.
The wolf was overwhelmed with the thirst for blood, running off into the deeper parts of the forest as if it were an invincible entity capable of devouring the world.
Its strength also doubled, so Ash couldn't really blame the wolf for feeling it could eat anything in its path,
But now, his guess was correct.
'I just created an ability to buff my enemies' strength...
Good job, me. You've successfully shown how well you thought of choosing your catalyst!'
Ash later checked to see whether he could prick his own skin with the thorn, and it actually worked!
His strength had doubled, while the violent urges were minimized because he was already immune to the original disease.
That fact at least saved Ash's head from being smacked by Ash's hands.
But another problem, though. Now, Ash has a steel-like armor ability.
One that was even strong enough to repel wolf bites and possibly the huge bear's claws that Ash had been avoiding to preserve his life.
There's no way Ash would go into a fight without it now.
And with such strong armor, his thorns couldn't even leave a dent.
'I… I need to create another disease… I have to redo the splice…'
Ash sighed. Turning away from the outskirts and dragging his feet deeper into the forest once more.
Opening the codex and starting the splicing process from zero.
========
Ash kept his mouth shut using the steelbark armor.
Both of his vines were summoned, the two of them working in tandem to keep Ash locked away inside a cocoon of vines.
He was hanged on a tall tree branch, more than 15 meters tall.
The thorny vines clung to the branch while the crimson vines squeezed him tightly, not allowing him to even move his toes.
His body kept trying to move involuntarily, his brain had lost control of it.
The only way Ash could keep them under control was by tying them up so tight, a normal human would have long asphyxiated from his vines.
In fact, even Ash started to have a hard time breathing. But he didn't have any other choice.
Somewhere on the ground under him, a single creature, about 6 meters tall on its shoulder, ran around the area, searching for the creature that had run away from it.
Its target was none other than Ash himself.