Blood Assimilation

A while later.

After gathering the corpse of the gang members in one place, Randy immediately undid his assimilated state right away, mostly because of the stress on his body due to using more than one assimilated state at a time.

[[Assimilated Mode Deactivated]]

The next moment, he searched the gang members' bodies for anything valuable that could be salvageable or useful to him.

Although this could, in a sense, be counted as him desecrating the corpses of the dead, however, he did not care one bit as the other parties were the ones that aimed for his life first, and so, he does not need to show them any consideration.

Besides, why would he not take advantage of them?

A few moments later, Randy found some rings that were still undamaged but had seals placed on them, and with no way to open them at the moment, he put them into his very own storage ring for now.

Since he could not afford to trigger those seals without knowledge about them beforehand, and if he forcefully tried to open them regardless, then who knows whether he would be able to keep his life?

With that thought in mind, he decided that it was right to take a look at them later.

In any case, there was one thing that Randy was able to find in the clothes of all the corpses of these people, which was a bottle containing some fluid.

And the good thing was that these bottles did not appear to have any seals engraved on them.

Or at least that is what Randy thought when he saw the bottles since they somehow looked familiar to him.

When Randy was about to urge the system to appraise the contents of the bottles of liquid, a notification suddenly rang from the system instead, catching Randy's attention since the system usually does not appraise things by itself unless urged to do so.

[[Attention! Detected crystallized ability stones in three of the available corpses]] The system suddenly announced.

[[Does the host wish to extract and store these crystallized ability stones in the system's storage space and absorb them later?]]

[[Or record the crystallized ability stones' properties in the system's record function's storage and comprehend them later?]]

"…Wait, what? What do you mean by these? Absorb abilities and recording abilities? Hold on, I am confused, how is that even possible in the first place?"

Randy was shocked and bewildered at the same time by these lines of text displayed by his system as he found them so unexpected.

He knew very well that his system might have been altered after it was upgraded by that unknown power from before, and so far, he could only assume that it might have something to do with that mysterious ovoid that appeared in his dream the other day.

However, despite him expecting some changes to occur in his system, he did not expect this kind of change.

To be capable of taking abilities from others, is that not too much? How does that even work?

Is it not enough that he could extract hidden special abilities from artifacts? How is it that the system says that he could also steal— no, take abilities from others?

Would that not cause some disturbance in the current world's order if people suddenly lost their abilities or something like dying because they could not use their abilities at a critical time of war?

Thinking about this, Randy could not help but disapprove of the thought of taking advantage of other people in this way.

After all, no matter how many abilities he has, there is only one of him, so it is pointless to have more than one ability in the first place.

Since he cannot be in more than one place at a time to deal with whatever crisis the world may face in the future.

With that thought, he decided to ask the system about what it meant by extracting ability stones and recording abilities from the gang members' corpses.

'System, can you please clarify what you meant by extracting and recording abilities? Are you telling me that I can steal people's abilities, or am I misunderstanding something here?" Randy carefully asked this to the system.

[[Answering to the host: It is not possible.]]

[[Clarifying: The host himself cannot steal ability nor could the system's new function. Only when the entity with the ability had attained a certain level of comprehension toward the true essence of their ability could they form a core-like form of their ability. Which were generally referred to as the 'Crystallized Ability Stone']]

[[As such, it is the physical manifestation of one's innate ability as one develops their ability; these abilities take different forms, but most of the time, it depends on the personality of the individual who owns the abilities. Furthermore, not all beings or entities could form a crystallized ability of their own as it usually takes years of comprehension towards their awakened ability before it would start to form a shape pertaining to their very nature.]]

[[Notice: At the point of one manifesting a crystallized form of their ability, it would be impossible for anyone to steal or affect their ability using external powers, however, when they perish, these crystallized abilities would stay dormant in their souls for a few moments before they eventually dissipate and become one with the laws of the world.]]

[[In addition to that, the time the crystallized ability stone dissipates may vary depending on the type of crystallized ability or the completion of the core formation.]]

"…"

Randy was instantly overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information received from the system and remained speechless for a long while.

However, while reading through the lines of texts displayed in front of his eyes, there was one thing that he clearly understood, that it was simply impossible for him to steal ability from others.

Furthermore, if one had a crystallized ability, then no matter what heaven-defying supernatural ability the other party had, they would also not be able to steal the ability of such a person.

The most important aspect of all these was the fact that he and the system do not possess the ability to directly steal abilities from the living.

That was if he were to ignore the fact that he could assimilate with other creatures' blood and use abilities similar to them through their blood knowledge.

After all, that was not him stealing abilities and closer to him copying their abilities instead by using their blood knowledge.

And with that thought, he sighed in relief, but then he suddenly thought of something very unsettling.

That was if there existed someone out there who could directly steal people's abilities.

Randy thought about it for a bit, and he did not find it strange at all.

After all, look at his own awakened ability for comparison, which was very abnormal even to him.

And that was because he could essentially copy the traits or talents and, or abilities of others through his blood assimilation ability, so why would there not be a being or entity capable of such a feat as stealing abilities?

However, that was what was unsettling about this whole matter.

If that supposed entity was human and they were not a good person, then they could very much do whatever they wanted with such a heaven-defying ability.

And Randy hoped that he does run into such a person any time soon.

At this point, Randy shook his head to get rid of these thoughts as they do not matter right now, and he proceeded to read through the lines of texts once again to familiarize himself with the meaning behind them.

And he then recalled something very crucial that he needed an answer to and decided to ask the system.

'System, do you mind telling me the difference between absorbing these crystallized ability stones and comprehending them?'

Randy asked this because the system seemed to have not bothered to explain this matter since it might have assumed that he was only curious about whether he could steal abilities from others or not when he asked the question earlier.