I Became an Ancient All-Host Lifeform - Chapter 21

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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021 The Man Is a Wolf

Deep in the forest, far from the outskirts of Debri Village.

“Phew….”

Jimmy, a small blond-haired boy, wiped the beads of sweat gathering on his brow with a dirt-caked hand.
The worn basket strapped to Jimmy’s back was heaped with freshly dug medicinal herbs.

‘Good. This should be enough to cover Mother’s medicine costs for a while.’

A bright smile spread across Jimmy’s face as he surveyed his bountiful haul.
Lately, all manner of magical beasts had been prowling near the village, and even the adults avoided venturing deep into the forest.
But Jimmy had come into the woods today anyway, determined to earn money for his mother’s medicine.
Usually it took him the entire day to fill his basket, but today, for some reason, it was already nearly full.
He glanced up at the sky and noticed the sun was already beginning to dip toward the horizon.

‘Hmm, I must be lucky today. I’ve already gathered this much. I’ll dig up just a bit more and head home.’

Just as he was about to venture deeper into the forest to search for more herbs.

Crack.

A sound came from beyond the undergrowth.

“Five, seven, ten, thirteen….”

Someone was counting something.

‘What’s that sound?’

A thick, gravelly man’s voice drifted from nearby.

“Fourteen, fifteen, seventeen…. Twenty. I’ll give you twenty crones, flat.”
“Twenty crones? Are you joking with me right now?!”

Another man’s voice rose sharply.
In that instant, Jimmy went rigid.
He had realized who they were.

‘Oh no! B-bandits!’

To actually come face to face with bandits he’d only heard rumors about.
They robbed passersby of their belongings, and sometimes even killed them.
Of all days to meet them, it had to be when he was carrying so much.
So much for his lucky streak.
Jimmy held his breath and crouched down in the thick brush nearby, concealing himself.
The bandit who’d been counting let out a sigh.

“Look, who’s going to take this junk off your hands? You should be grateful we’re even willing to handle it. Fine, out of respect for our long business dealings—I’ll give you twenty-two crones. How’s that?”
“Fair enough. You should’ve opened with that.”

Beyond the brush, rough-looking men exchanged a bulky sack and coins.
This was a black market transaction—a bandit’s den.

‘I-if they find me, I’m done for! I have to slip away quietly and pretend I saw nothing….’

Just as Jimmy carefully turned to retreat.

Thwack!
“Ugh!”

A bandit’s cold blade plunged ruthlessly through Jimmy’s small belly without hesitation.
The bandit standing guard had spotted Jimmy first.

“Agh… ugh….”

Jimmy collapsed where he stood, groaning in agony.
The bandits who had been trading with one another quickly hid their contraband beneath their clothes.
At the same moment, what appeared to be their leader spoke up.

“Hey, what’s going on over there?”

The leader approached the scene with a menacing expression.
The bandit who had run Jimmy through then spoke.

“Boss, this little rat just saw our operation! Before he can run his mouth, we should slit his throat right now….”
“Hold on.”

The leader, examining the bloodied child sprawled on the ground, furrowed his brow.

“Never mind. Whenever I kill a kid for no reason, things get strange after that—bad luck dogs me.”
“Hmm. Is that so?”

The bandit leader nudged the groaning Jimmy with his boot, then spoke.

“Well, he looks like he’ll die on his own anyway. Come on, you lot. Let’s go.”
“Yes, boss.”

The bandits clutched their spoils and hurried away, leaving Jimmy to choke on his own blood, their illicit trade concluded.

“Agh… cough….”

Abandoned alone in the forest, Jimmy could only writhe in agony, pressing his hands against his bleeding belly.
Though he held it with both hands, the hemorrhage showed no sign of slowing.
Having lost so much blood, Jimmy’s consciousness grew dimmer by the moment.

“Hah… Is this… is this how I die….”

Just as darkness crept into the corners of his vision.
A verdant glow materialized before Jimmy’s eyes from somewhere beyond.

“What… what is that…?”

Soon after, Jimmy sank into a deep dream.
The forest within that dream was peaceful beyond measure.
There, Jimmy encountered a being who existed only in the village’s legends.
She was the mysterious figure cloaked in emerald light—the Goddess of the Forest.
Radiating an otherworldly presence, she drew gently near to him.
Then she cradled the fallen Jimmy in her arms and began to sing him a lullaby.

♪♪♪♪~

The melody of the lullaby his mother had sung to him in childhood wrapped softly around everything.
In her warm embrace, Jimmy’s eyes slowly closed.

‘No, I can’t. I finally met the Goddess, I can’t fall asleep like this.’

Fighting against the drowsiness pouring over him, Jimmy struggled to open his mouth.

“Water, Goddess of the Forest…. Am I… going to die?”

The Goddess merely smiled at Jimmy’s question, her expression tender and wordless.
Then she made an elegant gesture, sweeping her hand across the space around them.
At once, peculiar mushrooms with white spots scattered across a pale green base began to bloom everywhere, springing up like bamboo shoots after rain.

“Oh…. They’re beautiful….”

The sweet, fragrant scent of mushrooms drifted across the tip of his nose.
The moment the dreaming Jimmy closed his eyes and fell into a deep sleep, the real Jimmy opened his.

“Goddess! Goddess of the Forest!”

Waking from the dream, Jimmy searched for her without thinking.
But there was no one around the boy.
In that moment, Jimmy understood.
His stomach no longer hurt at all.

“What? I was definitely just stabbed by a blade….”

Jimmy immediately felt his abdomen with his hands.
A slight scar had formed, but the wound had already healed.
It was so completely mended that he might have doubted the stabbing ever happened outside the dream.
Yet the gaping hole in his shirt and the bloodstains proved beyond question that it had been real.
While Jimmy dreamed, his wound had sealed itself as though by miracle.

“Oh, now that I think about it, the Goddess in my dream….”

Jimmy turned his head and looked around.

“Goddess of the Forest…?”

Though he could no longer see her, Jimmy was certain of one thing: this was a miracle.
Green mushrooms surrounded him in abundance!
They were the very same wondrous mushrooms he had seen in his dream.

“Thank you for saving me, Goddess of the Forest! Thank you….”

After a brief prayer of gratitude, Jimmy jumped to his feet.
He snatched up the Medicinal Herbs Basket that lay on the ground and began frantically sweeping the green mushrooms into it. His voice, brimming with joy, rang out through the forest.

“This is a miracle! The Goddess of the Forest really exists! And these mushrooms…!”

Jimmy declared with a voice full of wonder.

“These are the Resurrection Mushrooms the Goddess gave me! Mushrooms that bring people back from death!”

With the basket crammed so full of Resurrection Mushrooms it looked ready to burst, Jimmy raced toward the village, his heart singing.

* * *

My back as I turned away from saving the little boy, without a second glance.
Heh…. Even I had to admit it looked pretty cool.
That’s right—a person should live with kindness. Doing good deeds without expecting anything in return feels so incredibly good. Maybe my miserable life is finally going to catch some luck, hm?
I resumed exploring the forest at a slow pace with Slime at my side.
Then, from some distance away, I heard the sound of something moving quickly through the underbrush.

What was that?
I immediately activated Vibration Detection.
The ground beneath me thrummed with violent vibrations that traveled through my entire body.

Tap-tap-tap, boom!

This was no tremor made by one or two creatures. A pack of heavy presences was barreling toward me at incredible speed, moving with unmistakable purpose.

‘Insane—what on earth is this? At least a dozen of them. I need to hide, now!’

I dragged my sticky, gelatinous body as quickly as I could and slipped into the nearest thicket.
Holding my breath in the shadows between the leaves, a massive deer suddenly came into view.

Boom!

The deer’s eyes were wide with terror as it bounded frantically, fleeing with everything it had.
Wow, I’d never seen a deer run like that before in my existence—it was genuinely magnificent.
Like an Olympic triple-jump athlete. No, actually far faster and more powerful than that.
The deer’s grace was breathtaking, but the moment I saw what was chasing it, I felt my mind go blank.

Boom-boom-boom.

A pack of wolves was pursuing the deer with relentless ferocity.
Their hunting method was chillingly precise.
They spread out in a pincer formation as they chased.
In other words, they weren’t just mindlessly pursuing from behind—they were spreading out on both flanks, methodically herding the deer in a single direction.
And these were no ordinary wild wolves.
A faint, sickly blue Magical Power shimmered across their sleek bodies.
They were Magical Beasts.

Whoooooo!

The moment the alpha’s howl rang out, the encircling net from both sides began to tighten steadily.
And then the decisive moment came.

Boom.

Wolves erupted from both sides with lightning speed, cutting off the deer’s path forward.
So fast that even tracking their movement with my eyes was a struggle.
With its route blocked, the deer tried to change direction desperately, but it was already too late—the wolves had sealed off every escape.

Shriek!

Hemmed in on all sides by the wolf Magical Beasts, the deer let out a final, anguished cry and became nothing but their meal.
Now came the wolves’ dinner hour.

Crunch, crunch-crunch!

The brutal sounds of the wolves feeding carried clearly beyond the thicket.
In that moment, I understood something fundamental.

‘Ah… so men really are wolves.’

My next host absolutely had to be one of them.
It was the first time in ages that my heart swelled with such fierce certainty—not since that moment in the livestock pen when I encountered Black Ox.

Though I suppose I do feel a bit bad about what happened to Black Ox.
But thinking about it now, his death wasn’t really my fault, was it?
Morogul had already marked him as the next hunt anyway. Whether I parasitized him or not, Black Ox was going to die that day regardless.
My only real mistake, if anything, was letting him experience that unnecessary electrical shock before the end.
I’ll just think of it as a preventive treatment for pain before the mycelial swarms got to him.
Black Ox probably would’ve appreciated having a little mental preparation from the electric shock rather than suddenly being drained alive by those creatures. Yes, that’s right.

‘Hmm, regardless—my next host will be one of those creatures, no question about it!’

I’d settled on a target, but the problem was how.
How was I supposed to manage parasitism on something so fast and so strong?

…Ugh.

…And I’d have to do it dragging this sluggish Slime along with me.
How was I supposed to close the distance to those wolves with this infuriating mass of gel?

‘Think. Just think…’

Pressed flat against the undergrowth, I set my mind to work in overdrive, searching for any way to turn those beasts into hosts.

* * *

Bern had not abandoned his pursuit of Ghost Rat, and now he was lost in deep concentration.
With the mage dead, the Tracking Magic that had been inscribed on his map had vanished along with her.
Finding a palm-sized rat in this vast wilderness was no different from searching for a needle in a desert.
But for a veteran hunter, there was no such thing as giving up.
If magic wouldn’t work, he’d fall back on time-tested hunting methods.
Without hesitation, Bern made his way to the Border Guard Outpost and borrowed a well-trained military hound.

Woof!

Gripping the hound’s leash firmly, he retraced his steps to the Mushroom Cave where he’d made his last stand against the creature.
The interior of the cave lay in ruins, devastated by the aftermath of the explosion.
As Bern sifted through the acrid ash with his boot, searching for clues, his gaze suddenly fixed on a corner of the wreckage.
A fragment of mushroom, blackened and charred by the flames.
The moment he picked it up and held it in his hand, his eyes gleamed with sharp intensity.

‘That cunning rat faced us alongside countless fungal creatures in this cave. It was caught up in the mage’s inferno and the explosion along with them.’

If that was the case, the creature’s body would inevitably be saturated with the smell of burned mushroom.
Without hesitation, Bern picked up the charred fragment and brought it to the hound’s nose.

“Track that scent.”

Sniff-sniff!
The moment the command left his lips, the hound’s nostrils flared as it carefully examined the smell.

Woof!

A moment later, the hound lifted its head with a bark of confident certainty.
Its tail stiffened and rose, and it pulled taut on its leash, eager to lead the way.

In that instant, a nightmare from three years past surged into Bern’s mind.
The terrible memory of losing comrades as close as blood to a Chimera grown even more formidable in the Black Forest.
Bern spoke in a low, measured tone.

“I will end that creature’s life. If only to wash away the failures of yesterday.”

His eyes, as he readjusted his grip on the leash, gleamed with a cold killing intent.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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