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The honey badger-like magical beast stared intently at the colorful serpent, its small eyes gleaming with ferocity.
It occasionally reached out with its claws to paw at the snake, while the coiled, colorful serpent opened its mouth wide, its upper body trembling as if it might pounce at any moment.
The snake's stamina seemed to be lacking, and after a tense struggle, it showed signs of fatigue. The honey badger seized the opportunity and suddenly lunged forward.
A layer of yellow light shimmered on its fur, indicating a defensive skill.
The colorful serpent spewed a cloud of venom, blocking the way, and its fangs, gleaming with a cold light, bit down hard on the honey badger's body.
The venomous fangs pierced its fur, continuously injecting venom. The honey badger had made a mistake, misjudging the state of this serpentine magical beast and failing to bite its neck to prevent a counterattack.
But it didn't matter. Besides its defense, it also had a strong immunity to snake venom. However, there was a certain risk involved, as even immunity has its limits.
The two engaged in a melee, with the honey badger gaining the upper hand. Before the venom could take full effect, it successfully tore its opponent in two. It crushed the venomous snake's head, not stopping its attack until it was certain the snake was completely dead.
Devouring a magical beast of the same rank would greatly benefit its growth, not only accelerating its level increase but also potentially helping it break through its original talent limit and reach a higher level. This was why it was willing to risk its life to hunt such dangerous prey.
Of course, breaking through the limit was only a possibility, a very slim one. How easy would it be to break the shackles of talent?
If it could do this often, at every stage of its growth, then the originally slim chance would increase significantly.
The honey badger extracted a verdant crystal from the venomous snake's crushed head—its magic core.
Magic cores, also known as magic crystals or the prototypes of spiritual pills on the Douqi Continent, are, as the name suggests, a type of energy crystal within a magical beast's body, filled with extremely violent heaven and earth energy.
For humans, magic cores usually need to undergo a series of processes and be refined into pills before they can be digested and absorbed. However, magical beasts have a special body structure, different from humans, and can swallow them directly, although their efficiency in absorbing and utilizing the energy is not as high as that of pills.
Not all magical beasts have this kind of energy crystal, the magic core, within their bodies; it exists with a certain probability. This honey badger seemed to be in luck.
After eating the magic core, it hugged the snake's body and began to gnaw on it, as if chewing on a spicy stick.
As it chewed, its body gradually stiffened, convulsed, and fell to the ground, then stopped moving.
The immune system in the honey badger's body was engaged in a fierce battle with the toxins. Besides the possibility of death from excessive toxins, the body would become stiff and unable to react to the outside world while the immunity was resisting the snake venom, which was also a major danger.
This was why it was still so cautious and careful, even though it had immunity.
A Worm of Spirit quickly crawled over... This was the opportunity it had been waiting for.
Taking advantage of the honey badger-like magical beast's immobility, it burrowed into its ear and into its brain.
It emitted a hazy gray light, its body slightly illusory, as if sinking into water, slowly merging with the brain. Thread-like tendrils grew from its body, densely spreading throughout the host's brain, completing the initial parasitism.
Subsequently, the Worm of Spirit embedded in the brain began to become illusory, eventually transforming into a spirit body.
Although the honey badger could not control its own soul, it still launched a counterattack when invaded.
Under Amon's control, the Worms of Spirit that had split off had specialized souls, so their soul strength was higher, more than 20% of the main body's.
The Worm of Spirit began to fight against the honey badger's soul... One was not a match, making deep parasitism difficult. More Worms of Spirit were on their way, entering the honey badger's body in the same way, eroding its soul.
The honey badger's soul resisted desperately, but it still couldn't withstand the increasing number of Worms of Spirit. Its body twitched slightly before returning to stillness. A white circle appeared on the black fur around its right eye.
With the efforts of five Worms of Spirit, the honey badger's soul was controlled, and deep parasitism was successful. Amon successfully obtained his first puppet with a certain combat power!
With the support of this combat power, the range in which the Amons could hunt expanded!
In this area where second-order magical beasts were rare and mostly first-order magical beasts resided, having a first-order puppet gave him a lot of room to maneuver, so he no longer had to specifically look for the old, weak, sick, and young.
This honey badger was now Amon's strongest combat force, and naturally became his main body's mount and bodyguard.
In addition to this honey badger-like magical beast, the other Worms of Spirit also had gains. Several successfully ambushed several ordinary crows with no Douqi fluctuations, parasitized them, and turned them into puppets.
Thus, Amon gained aerial vision!
Although aerial reconnaissance was not as detailed as a search network composed of Worms of Spirit, the range it could search was wide enough, making it easy to determine the approximate activity range of certain magical beasts.
With the honey badger as a snake venom nemesis, Amon naturally focused his next search on those snakes...
Targeting snake-like magical beasts not only allowed him to take advantage of the honey badger's venom resistance, but also, after successful parasitism, allowed him to challenge stronger targets with their venom... Not all magical beasts have strong venom resistance.
Anyway, they were just puppets; death was just a loss of a Worm of Spirit, which could be replenished by splitting off a clone... Amon didn't care about the loss of soul; with the "Soul Devouring" talent, he could easily make up for it.
However, the loss of cultivation became a minor problem... He didn't have a method to directly devour other living beings to quickly increase his strength; the increase in cultivation had to rely on honest cultivation.
Even if the avatars didn't have to worry about the foundation and only cared about the present, trying to improve as quickly as possible, it would still take some time to change the Douqi from the first stage to the second stage and then split off.
Half a day later, the snake venom in the honey badger's body had been mostly resolved. Its body seemed to have suffered significant damage and needed to recover, which made Amon give up the idea of immediately using it to hunt the snake-like magical beasts that the Worms of Spirit had discovered and were monitoring.
Good tools had to be used to their fullest potential. He was currently in the initial stage of development and couldn't afford any waste.
...
In the forest in the early morning, a thin mist drifted through the trees like a light veil, covering the entire forest with a mysterious veil. Occasionally, a few rays of sunlight penetrated the dense leaves, scattering golden light.
After the honey badger, Amon obtained four more puppets: two snakes with crimson bodies and ice attributes, with a chilling poison in the ice that could freeze blood; a short, red-skinned, ugly-faced ape-like magical beast; and a long-bodied bird-like magical beast with two pairs of wings.
Among them, the ape-like magical beast was the strongest, already at the level of a high-level first-order. Amon used a full ten Worm of Spirit avatars to control it. It also replaced the honey badger as the main body's favorite toy.
Five first-order magical beasts with a unified will, acting together, fearless of death, and able to cooperate with each other, could be considered a dominant force in this area where the strength of magical beasts was generally weak. In addition, this strange group had venomous snakes, so some second-order magical beasts would not easily provoke them, and Amon's safety problem was initially solved.
He originally wanted to continue expanding his group of magical beasts, snatching first-order medicinal herbs from other magical beasts to help with cultivation and accelerate his growth.
However, an accident on this day disrupted his plans. A Worm of Spirit discovered traces of humans!
After learning that the world he had transmigrated to was "Battle Through the Heavens" and solving the safety problem of the main body, the question he had always been concerned about was what time period it was now.
The sooner he could determine this, the sooner he could make arrangements and develop himself better and faster.
So, the four-winged bird-like magical beast set off with a group of crows to find those humans.
As for whether or not to contact them, it would depend on the specific situation.
... ...
In the silent forest, a team of people walked quietly, pairs of vigilant eyes constantly scanning the dark places among the surrounding trees, hands gripping the weapons at their waists, ready to deal with the sudden attacks of magical beasts.
High above, the four-winged bird had sharp eyes and good eyesight, piercing through the distant distance, tightly locking onto the mercenary team. It did not get too close to the mercenary group, as a magical beast, even if it was only a first-order, would arouse the vigilance of these mercenaries, whose strength was generally not strong.
Closer, the white-eyed crows surrounded the team in all directions, three or two at a time, in front, behind, left, and right.
A crow stroked the socket of its right eye with its wing, its eyes carrying an interested meaning: "Mercenaries... Interesting."
In the center of the mercenary team was a rather handsome young man, obviously the leader of the team. He was not holding a weapon in his hand, and compared to the tension of others, his expression was slightly relaxed.
"Vice Captain Mu She, since just now, I have had an ominous feeling, as if I have been stared at by something."
Mu She stopped, looked around, held his breath, and concentrated. Everyone else stopped moving and stared at different directions:
"Maybe it's an illusion. Let's keep going. The captain gave us a death order to bring back a wood-attribute magic core... You don't want to make the captain angry, do you?"
"That... Of course not."
The captain had a bad temper, and a first-order wood-attribute magic core was not a difficult task. If they didn't complete it, they definitely wouldn't have a good time going back.
In the forest about a hundred meters away from them, a hunched ape-like figure pinched the socket of its right eye and whispered to itself:
"Mu She? This name seems a little familiar..."
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