The Rise Of A Porter

An hour after midnight,

Inside Arnold's workshop.

The workshop was filled with sounds of hammering and quenching metal sheets. A file of automatons was furiously beating a thick sheet of metal with all their might, trying to shape it up.

But the noise because of their hammering was could not even be compared to the noise coming from the opposite corner of the workshop where Arnold was doing the same task as the automatons were but he was way faster and the quality of work was better as well, but only by a bit.

If it had been Talos, he could've possibly increased the quality of the work to almost the same quality as him, but right now Arnold wanted to be fast and didn't bother much about the quality. He just wanted a prototype of the gun that he could test as soon as possible.

After finishing shaping up the last sheet of metal, Arnold placed the hammer back on the anvil and wiped the sweat off his body. He then turned to check up on the automatons before doing anything else.

"Not bad guys!" Arnold exclaimed after examining their work. It was their first 'almost completed' sentry gun.

The gun was about four feet tall and was supported by a three-legged stand. The triple barrel of the minigun shone brightly under the crimson light of the burning forge. This barrel enabled the sentry gunfire at an insane rate of 10 rounds per second! Well, at least that's what it should do in theory. The sentry wasn't complete yet so there was no way for Arnold to test and confirm it, but the gun itself looked promising.

"Alright guys," Arnold said, his eyes still fixed on the sentry gun, "Try to finish it by tomorrow morning, no. Be sure to finish it by tomorrow. Pull an all-nighter if you have to, but this sentry should be completed by the time I wake up."

"Yes, master!" The automatons exclaimed together like their minds were linked to one another through some hivemind.

"Alright guys, I'm off." Arnold waved and headed towards his bedroom, "I've shaped up few extra metal sheets for your convenience, so feel free to use those if you need to."

Saying that Arnold shut the door behind him and was about to jump on his bed, ready to snore all night when he remembered there was a thing he still needed to do - Feed the dragonkin's blood to the egg.

"Kudos to my great memory..." He let out a long sigh and jumped into his domain instead.

Once inside the domain, he went into the old church building which he had renamed to, 'Avalon'.

He didn't want to get stuck there so he quickly made his way to the vaults where the egg was kept for its safety. He didn't Asterios or Dread to accidentally make scrambled eggs out of it.

The vault was located on the same floor as the mortuary where the bodies monsters hunted by him, were kept. He had planned it so that it wouldn't be a hassle for him to feed the egg every time he wanted to. Fortunately, Arnold was able to reach the vaults without anyone noticing him.

It wasn't like they could force him to do to something against his will while he was inside the domain, but after the sh*tshow his summons pulled off when he got back from the swamps was essentially the reason why Arnold didn't want to encounter any one of them while he was there.

'Just imagine sneaking into your personal space like a thief... tsk tsk tsk what have I reduced myself too...'

He went to the mortuary, filled a flask with the red lizardman's blood and then proceeded to open the vault using his Biometric scans, or in other words, by scanning his fingerprints along with his heartbeat. Talos was the one to install all these 'security measures' on his own. Well, he needed to get it approved by Arnold so he knew all about it. The moment the doors opened Arnold was met with a familiar message.

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Creature's hunger grows.

The creature is learning to control its hunger. Control increased! 

The creature is still hungry. Hunger is less than the maximum value.

If not fed within 06:00 hours, the creatures HP will start decreasing at a rate of 15HP/minute. 

Current HP: 6000/6000

Time remaining to hatch: 98:12:30:03 (Days: Hours: Minutes: Seconds)

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"Eh, I thought it'd have already lost a bit of its HP as it's been almost 'two days' since I fed it last time." Arnold mumbled, "Whatever, it's good that it hasn't but since I'm already here and have the blood with me, it would be better to feed the egg anyways."

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The creature is absorbing the nutrients from the blood... 

Hunger diminishes...

The creature isn't hungry anymore.

The creature has successfully absorbed the nutrients from the blood of Cosmic C ranked mutated monster.

Attributes Increased!

HP: +500

Strength (STR): +24

Defense (DEF): +16

Agility (AGI): -2

Intelligence (INT): +9

The blood of the monster contains one compatible ability. 

The creature can learn a new ability from 'Dragonkin's blood'!

[Allow the creature to learn new ability?]

• Yes or •No

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"The hell!" Arnold couldn't believe it, "How the heck the agility went down instead of going up as usual!"

So far whenever he had fed the egg blood of any monster, it's stats have gone up but now it looked like the creature within the egg had now reached to some kind of 'Limit'.

Arnold then realised that the agility of the red lizardman he faced first wasn't very high and maybe the creature's agility was decreased because of that.

"Looks like I can't feed the egg whatever I want anymore." He mumbled scratching his beard, "I think it's about time to check it's overall stats and then starts feeding it to balance its attributes in the most effective way, but before that..."

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[Allow the creature to learn new ability?]

• Yes or •No

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"Yes."

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The creature is learning the ability... 

Ability learnt successfully!

• [Dragon Bite] : (Active ability) This attack does true damage (up to 15% of Max HP) to the target bitten by the user and has a 20% chance of permanent lowering the target's Defense stat by 10 points. The true damage dealt can be increased if the HP of the target is more than 30% of the user's HP (maximum up to 20% of the target's max HP).

Every time the user kills a target using this ability, the Cooldown of the skill gets permanently reduced by 5 seconds.

[ Rank: S ]

[Mana cost: 600/per use]

[Cooldown: 50 minutes]

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"Losing two points of agility to gain an S rank skill?" Arnold's smile widened, "Worth it!"