I Became A Zompirewolf

A day later, the house of Zhasks was in ruins. Not because of Leon's and Darjud's plans, but because Otiga wanted it to be that way. After last night, Otiga did not have a reason to stay on the planet anymore. Especially after Gabriel sided with Darjud and the loss of her trust in her soldiers.

Since Ashton and Anna had to leave the planet as well, they offered Otiga a ride, to which she readily agreed. She might have lost her influence over Euphoria, but she was still an asset. She wasn't a monarch anymore, but she was still the founder and owner of the largest intelligence networks in the Orion arm of the galaxy.

By having her tagalong, Ashton essentially had a walking and trustworthy source of information with him. It was an opportunity only a fool would pass up on. This was a major reason why Ashton decided to help her.

As for the situation in Euphoria, thanks to Otiga's network, they knew exactly what happened after they left. As she had expected, the attack on her and her 'family' as a whole, was classified as an act of terrorism by the radicals. Apparently, she was targeted because of her influence over the Orion arm.

Darjud who was the main propagator of the attack was now being held as the saviour who put his life on the line to protect a fellow monarch. Unfortunately, he failed and was now receiving intense care under the watchful eye of Gabriel or as Ashton knew him... Michael.

Otiga was pronounced dead on the spot, and so were Ashton and Anna.  Ashton almost puked blood after hearing this but continued to listen to the rest of the made-up story.

As for the Gryphon dungeon, it was rumoured that Michael had gone inside the dungeon while Darjud was fighting against the 'terrorists'. Michael cleared the dungeon in secret and when he came out, he realised something was wrong and rushed over to the Zhask mansion.

Because why not? He is a god in the eyes of the public living on Euphoria. It was only obvious for him to know what was happening. No one was even going to ask him how he knew exactly where he had to go. Maybe they were scared of asking questions or maybe the people didn't give a shit about anything.

Either way, back to the story. Sadly, by the time Michael reached the crime scene, he was too late to save Otiga, but he managed to save Darjud. That was the story that the public got to know of, and through them, Ashton and the others did as well.

The only good thing that came out of the mess was that he got his [Perception] skill back when he evolved. But Ashton had made up his mind to only use it under certain circumstances.

"Gotta give it to the fucker's PR department. They did a great job spouting out bullshit from their sewer of a brain." Ashton scoffed the moment Otiga delivered the news to him and Anna.

"If I say anything, it'll be hypocritical of me. After all, I have used the service of his PR department myself." Otiga smiled wanly, "All of them are a piece of shit, but they get their job done. They once tried to portray a woman who pooped on her husband's bed as the good guy but failed. I think that was the only failure they got ever handed to them as the woman's image never recovered after that."

"Please tell me you made that up..."

Anna squinted her eyes. Just thinking about a grown-ass adult pooping on a bed made her feel... uncomfortable and disgusted. As for Ashton, who had seen the struggle of people living in an enclosure, Otiga's words didn't matter. Either way, he had seen far worse things than some poop on a bed.

"We will reach the mothership in a day," Ashton switched the topic, "till then, let's try and get some rest."

The ladies nodded and Ashton left the room. He wanted to ask a few things from Astaroth, regarding the so-called key to immortality. Although Ashton had no intention of immortalising himself as it felt quite useless and boring, learning more about it wasn't going to do any harm to him.

If anything, he might be able to incorporate it to make some sort of a new healing ability which wouldn't use mana or wouldn't count as an ability. From his last battle, he had come to realise a lot of things. One of which was that he shouldn't depend on [Regeneration] alone for healing purposes.

[Shall I start? I should warn you, the details of the story will probably bore you... a lot.]

"It doesn't matter. Go ahead."

[Alright... here we go.]

It all began when the Xyrans began planning to overthrow the Precursors. Their scientists were given the task to uncover as many mysteries about the Precursors as they could so the Xyrans would have an edge over them. One of the most important ones was... the key to their immortality.

[Back then, the average lifespan of a Xyran was between 100-120 earth years. Which wasn't remotely enough to fight and win a battle against the Precursors who had lived on for more than millions of years by that point.]

The scientists theorised about it for decades but ultimately came to the conclusion that their answer had to be on a much smaller scale than they were expecting. The answer had to be hidden inside the fundamental stage of life... the cells present inside everyone's body.

[Every intelligent being knows the importance of cells for a healthy life. These cells have the ability to divide and thus grow. For the sake of it, let's just say one old cell miraculously divides into two or more healthy cells and life goes on.]

Ashton silently listened to the explanation while nodding his head. He did not interrupt Astaroth, even when a few things were going right over his head as the explanation got a bit more complex.

[The problem starts when these cells stop dividing. That's the stage when one's body condition starts deteriorating and we say the person is ageing or is old. In other words, there's a limit to how much a cell can divide. The Precursors, however, overcame this restriction and were able to basically turn themselves into immortal god-like beings.]

"So the Xyrans decided to even out the odds?"

[Mm-hmm... unfortunately for us, the way we divided our cells wasn't nearly as efficient as the precursors. I don't know the reason but it could be because unlike them, we were forcing our bodies to live longer by forcing down a foreign material inside our body.]

[We believed as long as our cells kept dividing, we'll be healthy. Which was true... to a certain extent. For most of us, this process was smooth and the cell division was regulated by itself in our body. But some were unlucky and their growth didn't stop, leading to the formation of cancerous cells and deformities.]

The moment Astaroth mentioned deformities, Ashton immediately thought of the wings behind a high-ranking Xyran's back and Astaroth disagreed. Although the wings behind their backs appeared while they were getting used to [Cell Division], it wasn't a deformity.

Instead, Astaroth was referring to deformities like growing an extra limb or a head or some other part of one's body. It might not seem much, but truly it was a horrendously painful experience... how could growing additional organs even be remotely considered a fun experience either way?

At first, Ashton thought growing an extra limb or two would be quite useful in battle. But his imaginary happiness was immediately shot down when Astaroth mention the extra organs were essentially useless as they were made of useless cancerous cells.

[I can still remember the cries of countless people as their bodies turned into a deformed mess. I don't know how the pain felt, but I can try to describe it in a way you would understand. You remember how painful it was for you during evolution, right?]

Ashton shivered as he remember how helpless he felt. Although it was a part of the plan, if he could evolve without going through the pain, he would do it without any hesitation.

[Yeah... their pain was at least a hundred times worse. Most of them did not survive the ordeal, and those who did, they either turned insane or killed themselves in fear that they would have to go through such pain all their lives.]

Ashton stood there silently. All of a sudden, he thought [Cell Division] might not be a technique he was interested in. Achieving immortality with such high risk, wasn't really worth it. At least in his opinion. However, that did not mean there wasn't a way for him to do something about it.

After all, he was officially on the bloodline of a Precursor. As long as he kept making the right decision while evolving, he might end up obtaining the Precursor's version of [Cell Division]. But for now... there was not much he could do about the lack of strength he had.