As the panel slides away, one of the rewards particularly attracts Adam's attention. EX-rank pet egg? He has never seen a pet yet, not to mention an EX-rank one.
Taking it out of his inventory, a fist-size white egg appears on his palm. "Hmm, no matter how I look at it, it still looks like a normal egg." As soon as those words are spoken, the egg shooks lightly as if taking offence to his words. Suddenly, a strong suction force appears around the egg absorbing all the energies around them. Worse is that the egg is now stuck to his hand and absorbing his mana. He is not worried at first since he is confident in his mana regeneration ability but that fact quickly changes when suddenly the egg starts to suck his mana faster than before this.
Adam finally starts to panic and opens his status panel. He scrolls to the skills section and immediately levels up his [Divine Body] to level 10. His body starts to shake and spasm but not for long since the egg is absorbing all the excess energy. He can still feel his body becoming stronger, but it is much slower and tolerable.
His mana regeneration finally starts to catch up with the egg when the egg decides to suck a lot more fiercer than before. Adam then levels up the skill again and the egg also increases its suction force. They do the push and pull a few more times until [Divine Body] reaches level 100.
By that time, the egg finally slows down its suction force, and a few seconds later, it finally becomes dormant. Adam stares at the egg but still hasn't closed his status panel yet. Just in case the egg decides to play a prank and increase the intensity more than ever.
The egg suddenly starts to wiggle and shake when suddenly a crack starts to appear on the surface of the egg. More cracks appear as more violent the egg moves. While Adam is attentively observing the egg, a black fluffy arm pierces through the egg shells. A few wiggles later, 1 more arm also appears. The arms wave around a little bit, and they start to scratch and tear apart the remaining shells away, and a cute little round head pops out.
Adam tries to help it pull apart the remaining shell but the little arms swatt his arms, refusing his help. Adam chuckles at its cute behaviour and after a while, it finally manages to free its legs and tear away the remaining shells. Its body as the size of the egg suggests, is very small. It stands on two legs looking around while standing on Adam's palm.
*Grrrrrrr*
Its little hand rub its belly looking hungry. Adam scratches his head as he doesn't know what to feed the little thing. Adam nudges its head with his finger a little bit to gather his attention.
"Hey, little guy. Girl? I don't know. Anyway, what do you want to eat? I don't have any baby food with me right now. I have a lot of monster meat though."
The little thing's eyes shine as Adam mentions monster meat. Adam takes that as a sign that it wants the meat and takes them out of inventory. Adam hasn't managed to do anything about the meat when the little thing jumps down from his palm to the ground and rushes to the monster corpses.
Adam has a minor heart attack when he sees the little thing jump down his palm. Fortunately, the thing landed nicely and unharmed. Unfortunately, that is not the last surprise he will get. When it reaches the corpses, its little mouth suddenly opens wide and swallows the whole batch of corpses.
The thing then burps and rubs his belly which is a little more rounder. It then runs back to Adam and climbs his leg up his head. It then sits on Adam's head and lays there. Adam picks it up and brings it close to his face to closely inspect the little guy. He doesn't know how strong this little thing is but assuming by the amount of mana it eats up, it either is super strong or has massive potential.
The little thing suddenly extends its hand and touches his forehead. When their skin touches each other, Adam sees a string form between his temple and the little guy's temple. Yes, guy. Adam suddenly can feel that it is a he.
[A connection has been formed between you and a member of the Abyss race. Would you like to proceed?]
[Yes/No]
Adam hesitates for a moment since the name 'Abyss race' is pretty intimidating. But remembering that the little guy comes from the pet egg, it probably is a pet. Adam then clicks yes, and the string that he sees forms on him, and the little guy disappears, but he can feel the connection between the two of them becoming stronger. It feels like they are now connected by their souls.
Adam snaps from the trance out state when the little guy retracts his hand. Abgrund is the little guy's name. He not only knows it, he can also feel it. The abyss. That's what it means.
[STATUS]
Name: Abgrund
Aged: 1
Race: Abyss
LVL 10(0/100)
VIT: 100 (150115)
STR: 100(150115)
AGL: 100(150115)
INT: 100(160116)
Talent: Devour(EX)
Skills: Soulbond (EX), Light Affinity(EX),Darkness Affinity(EX)
[Devour](EX)
•Able to devour any corpse and recover the mana and health of both bonded souls.
•There is a 0.01% chance of obtaining the skills and 0.001% of obtaining the talent (if there is any) of the devoured corpse.
[Soulbond]
Skill type: Passive
Rank: EX
Level 1(0/100000)
Desc: Able to bond the user's soul with another's giving both of them the ability to understand each other without words. They will also share their attributes, talents and sometimes skills.
When Adam finishes skimming through Abgrund's status, he gasps at how awesome his skill and talent are. With his talent alone, Adam can imagine how powerful the future Abgrund is. It is literally the talent that most Isekai protagonist has.
Unfortunately, the chances of obtaining skills and talents are very low. Another thing that Adam is surprised about is he can increase the level of Abgrund's skills. Adam ponders for a while and levels up the [Soulbond] skill. With every increase in level, he can feel the connection between the two of them increases. If he is to make an example, the connection between him and Abgrund before this is like friends but now, it feels like they are brothers that grow up together.
He can also feel Abgrund's emotion and mood, along with his presence, even if he can't see him. A flush of discontent and hunger goes through his body, and he can see that Abgrund is sitting on his shoulder, rubbing his stomach. Adam felt a little guilty ignoring him like this and summons more monsters from his inventory.
Abgrund's eyes light up a little, and he jumps down his shoulder and runs to the monster pile. If he ignores all the gut and blood spilling everywhere, the little guy is a little cute. When Abgrund finishes eating all the corpses, he runs back to Adam and holds his hands up.
Adam chuckles at the little guy's antics and summons a ball of water to clean the guy. He then picks him up and puts him on his shoulder. He can feel that although he is no longer hungry, he is not fully either.
Adam thinks about it for a moment and summons his skeleton. He goes to the skeleton and rips its arm and gives it to Abgrund. He takes the bone arm and starts to nibble on it happily. Adam turns to the skeleton and sees that it has already regenerated its arm. Adam orders it to follow him while occasionally ripping its arm to let Abgrund eat it.
They walk out of the forest and see the town in the distance. As Adam approaches the gate, he can see that the town guards start to stand stiffly and more frigid. Adam wonders what's going on but decides to ignore it and just goes to the gate anyway.
Just as Adam is about to greet the guards, all of them salute to Adam led by one of them. "GOOD EVENING, SIR!" They all shouted together. Adam is dumbfounded. "Uhhh, what is going on?"
One of the guards steps forward and salutes Adam before continuing to speak. "We are here to give our respect to you sir. You may not know but The Lich has been harassing our town for as long as I remember and has been the cause of an uncountable amount of death to our people. We would like to give our sincerest thanks and gratitude to you for slaying that monster."
After he finishes speaking, Adam finally has some context on how big the commotion he just did. Looking at the guards, he is at least in his mid-40s and that means the Lich had been harassing the town for at least a few decades. Although Adam understands it, he feels a little undeserved of their gratitude. After all, the only reason he went to fight the Lich is because he just stumbled upon him.
"No need to make such a big commotion about it. After all, I also gained something from that battle."
"You don't understand, sir. Many of our loved ones had been killed by the Lich before. You receiving the rewards for killing it is naturally normal. We can't let our saviour just help us and gain nothing."
"Woah woah woah. Saviour? I am no saviour. I just do my job. To earn a living. No need to treat me like I'm some hero or something. Just treat me like a normal person."
"Bu-"
"No but. I am just like any other guy and you should treat me like one. Okay, maybe a little preferential treatment is fine. Anyway, I'm going in to sell my loot."
"Ah yes sir. Have a good evening."
Adam waves at them as he enters the city and he truly realizes how much the people suffer because of the Lich. The townspeople have literal stars in their eyes as they watch him walk. He hurries his steps as he is afraid that the townspeople might start to mob him.
Entering the butcher, Adam greets the receptionist and asks them to bring him to a large open place. The receptionist smiles and brings him to the back and Adam dumps as much monster as the place could possibly hold.
After clearing all the monsters in his inventory, the final total prize is 5000 coins. It's actually 4000 something but the manager of the butcher decides to round it up to 5000. He is not going to refuse though. Money is money.
As Adam exits the butcher, he finds a quiet place and logs out.