CHAPTER 237: DECAY IS THE WAY TO GO

Every other duel was nothing special, and Theo became a lot more bored than usual.

Ron was there to talk with him, but other than that, everyone was keeping themselves at a distance from him, making Theo feel like his coming days in the academy were going to be a lot more difficult.

The blue-haired girl had already left with her hound, and so had the brown-haired boy. Theo wanted to do the same, but two things were making him stop.

It was Ron’s duel, and the cloaked man’s order for him to stay back.

He had asked Ron many, many times about his beast, but all this time, he had only one thing to say.

"You will know when you see."

That was the last time Theo asked, and now, he just waited in the corner while being bored.

Twenty minutes later, finally, Ron was called to the circle, and Theo got up.

It was finally time.

He got inside the circle, and that was when Theo felt like the weirdness was at its peak now.

Every other student was also confused, but there he was—Ron—smiling at his opponent, who only saw that he was a commoner.

Anybody could tell from the way he was looking at Ron that he was a noble. Seeing no crest on his shoulder made the noble boy feel a lot more superior from the start.

Theo didn’t know why that was; the affinities were random, and no single family got the same affinity anytime in the last thousand years.

"Take your beast out, Ron," the cloaked man spoke impatiently.

"Yes, yes!" Ron spoke, and soon enough, something started coming out of his shirt. It bypassed the clothes and oozed out through the neck in a very disgusting way.

The instructors, too, looked at the creature with skepticism—one even horrified by its presence.

The creature soon started moving down Ron’s body quickly and then to the ground.

Theo quickly checked its status; there had been no creature like that he had ever seen in any of the books or real life.

*

*

Rotling Hatchling

Rare

Level 2

Type: Nature Type

*

*

’What the hell is that? And was it on his body the whole time?’ Theo thought and shivered at the thought of it.

The beast was like a slime, only its shape was a lot more stable, and the slimy texture was thick.

Theo could not tell where its eyes or mouth were, which made it look more like a slime.

But the name of the beast was nowhere close to a slime.

’Rot and decay... those two make sense, but why is its affinity nature? I don’t get it.’

Theo thought and looked at Ron, and when Ron saw him staring at him, he waved toward Theo unseriously.

The opponent had a metal affinity wolf—the most common creature that everyone tried getting their hands on.

Wolves with any affinity were very popular among the masses, and Theo had only read about them in the market and seen the soldiers in the Castle.

But it became clearer when Theo saw more than a quarter of the student body with different affinity ones—but a wolf at the end of the day.

"Start."

The wolf went straight for the slimy creature in front of it and scratched its body with its left foreleg claw.

Theo squinted his eyes only to see that the wolf winced back and lifted its foreleg up.

The fur around the claw that touched the beast was already burned away, and the claw started steaming too.

When that happened, Theo only nodded in understanding. He knew what Decay meant, and seeing this only made his understanding of the beast even clearer.

’It’s definitely decaying whatever it touches... but the floor isn’t decaying, nor did Ron, so I guess it’s definitely in control of what Ron and the beast want to decay and what not.’

The noble kid had a pressured face as if he was facing diarrhea, and the wolf looked back countless times with a whiny look.

"GO!" The boy spoke in defeat when the wolf wasn’t accepting any bond command.

Even though he said it out loud, the wolf stayed in one place, and when it saw the slimy beast move forward, it quickly started moving back.

The noble boy winced in frustration; this was not how he had imagined it in his head.

Ron just kept humming and looking at the noble boy with amused eyes.

"If your beast doesn’t attack in the next 10 seconds, you will be disqualified," the cloaked man spoke with cold eyes.

The noble boy panicked under his gaze, and with gritted teeth, he started giving orders to the wolf again.

This time, the wolf looked at the boy with surprise; its ears were straightened.

Theo could tell he was bad-mouthing the beast.

The wolf cried one last time before it started moving forward with its head down. The glob of thick liquid kept moving forward, yet its speed was worse than a normal turtle on land.

The wolf came straight in front of the blob and moved its paw up.

The paw started glowing the next second, and that was when Theo thought he would see something better in this whole fight.

And he was right—but not in a good way.

The blob of liquid’s part of the body shot out toward the wolf, making it flinch, but it was too late.

When the blob that shot out touched the wolf’s fur, it started expanding and covering the wolf’s body.

"G-Get back!" The noble boy said in a panic, and the wolf tried its best only to feel that it was completely stuck in one place as if it were quicksand—only horizontal and out of the ground.

Theo’s eyes perked up in interest. The speed at which the blob had launched a part of its body forward was unlike any of the speed assumptions he had made about the beast till now.

It was fast, and he could feel a bit of familiarity in that attack.

It had the same feeling as when the mantis was small and slow, but when it used Metallic Strike, it shot forward with ten times the normal speed.

"That’s the end of the bout."

"Ron is the winner."