CHAPTER 39: CHAPTER 39: FORGOTTEN ABILITY

His head felt like it splitting apart, he was losing consciousness but he still forced his body to move, he crawled out of the large hole, swimming against the water rushing in.

The flower was thrashing around, it many vines swinging like whips causing the water to explode. He knew if he allowed himself to faint while it was still alive he will be doomed.

But his body didn’t have much strength left, it wouldn’t be long before he faint and he knew it so he swung his tail with everything he had left and cut off the bud from the stem.

Green fluid spurted out of the wound like a fountain of blood. The last thing he saw before his mind went blank was the vines going limp.

His body floated down, he woke up with a mind splitting headache, it was so painful he couldn’t even think clearly without feeling like a sword was stabbed into his forehead.

He forced himself to crawl through the damp muddy floor of the swamp to the flower. It wasn’t just his mind, his body felt weak as well.

He started eating the base of the flower, it was sweet and delicious like candy and most of all, it was nutritious to him. He felt a bit of strength return to his body and he ate faster.

It didn’t take long for him to eat the entire stem, unfortunately he didn’t have enough strength to dig out the roots. When he got to the bud he felt something different.

It had a spicy, sweet yet sour taste. The different flavours made the flower bud much more delicious, he finished it before he even realised.

By the time he was done he had regenerated enough strength and stamina to atleast swim, even though he was not at full power he can protect himself or so he thought.

He noticed another change in his poison gland. His poison had gained a new attribute but he didn’t have the time to think about it or try it out.

His head was killing him, what he needed right now was a place to rest, fortunately there was a giant boulder not far from where the flower was.

And the lingering aura of a rank 3 will atleast buy him sometime and keep others away, atleast for a while but he doubted it would take too long to heal.

He was wrong, 3 months passed and he was yet to fully heal, his thoughts were still muddled and the head splitting headache was still there.

It was not as bad as before but everytime he tried to use any ability he had, including any of his traits it would grow worse, way worse.

He checked the notification for the hundredth time. ( Host has manifested a true image. Host’s soul is too weak to carry the image. Host has suffered soul demage and is advised against using his will until his soul heals.)

He sighed, until he recovers from this soul demage he was defenceless. The lingering aura of the flower only lasted a week, for the past three months he had been forced to hide from creatures he could’ve easily killed otherwise.

These past three months had made him realise how weak he was without his traits. He once believed he had strength, atleast amongst rank 2.

He was wrong, with the exception of his iron scale trait which was mostly passive the others did not work at all and his base stats were ridiculously weak.

He estimated his base strength without the herculean strength was around a ton which was way less than his full strength. He didn’t realise before but he was constantly using the herculean strength trait.

While not using it at full power at all times he was still using it at atleast 30 percent. It had become so natural that he didn’t even feel himself doing it, he ended up believing that the trait was passive like the iron scale.

He also thought the traits were like biological abilities since he didn’t need essence to use them and to an extent he was right but he also thought he wouldn’t need will to use them, afterall he can still do other normal things like moving without using will.

He thought it would be the same for his traits like how spiders can create their webs without will or snakes can create and inject venom without will, he knows this because even normal unawakened versions can do it but apparently since they were technically a part of an awakened ability he still needed will to use them.

Even the passive iron scale trait was weakened without will even though it was still working. That meant he couldn’t hunt at all, while his base stats were higher than those of rank 1 creatures he was still too weakened to even hunt them, just basic movement drained too much stamina.

Luckily there are weeds and poison grass nearby and he was able to survive on that. He sighed again and watched as a giant fish with razor sharp teeth swam passed the giant rock.

In normal days he could’ve killed that thing with a single slap but alas. The worst part was that he did not even remember the so called true image that made him like this.

His memory of what happened near the end of that fight was blurry but he trusted the system and in the future he will try his best to not use abilities above his ability to handle.

He was also starting to regret following that scent and the fact that he didn’t run when he saw no living creature around the flower pissed him off.

That danger 101 but maybe it was because of the mind control so he didn’t beat himself up over it. He sighed again, he had been sighing a lot lately but who could blame him.

This place was too dangerous for a weakened dragon like himself. The only positive thing about this injury was that it hid his aura.

Or rather it weakened it so much it was almost impossible to sense him unless you were standing right next to him so he was able to use this opportunity to learn how to hide his aura.

At first it started as a desperate measure to not be discovered by predators and eventually he learnt how to easily pull it off.

He tried to calm his mind but he couldn’t, he kept replaying the fight over and over again trying to think of things he could’ve done differently.

Then something dawned on him. ’ Wait, couldn’t I have used haki?, F***.’