Greed God chapter 49

January 14th 2016 Lord Mansion 11:00 AM EDT

It  was time to make some magic. I had to admit, I was excited. Roy was  joining up, as expected, and it was time for me to create his new self. I  palmed an Elixir of Mental Aegis and considered my options. After  looking over everything though I turned to Roy and decided to just ask.  "So...what do you want to be?" My personal preference was animal, it had  gone over well so far, but mineral or hell, even vegetable might work.  Though I kind of wanted to save plant merging for a hot girl, I'd love  to own a Dryad.

We were in the  room I set aside for all the stuff Whisper brought me last time. I'd  sent her out for more when we got back a few hours ago, and her flight  speed made picking up supplies much easier. Now I had a whole shit load  of random stuff laid out here for potential merges and I was ready to  work. Honestly though I was fine letting Roy pick his own changes, the  kid would probably fall in line better if he could, and I wasn't into  dudes so I didn't care overly much how he ended up after he finished his  transformation.

I  was going to merge him with an F rank object or being to get him up to G  where my other minions were, but exactly what kind of F rank artifact  or being was still up in the air. He seemed to be really into guns, but I  felt like making him a human gun would probably turn out weird. I  wasn't nixing the idea, but I really hoped he picked something else,  hell even a sword would be better.

I  expected him to go for the weapons, or maybe even the animals, but he  gravitated further down, coming up to a bar of steel. He picked the  thing up, weighing it in his hand. "So how does this work exactly? You  combine me with this and I'm what? A robot? How is this going to regrow  my arm exactly?" He had a point actually, if he decided to go with a  more unusual transformation. I decided to get the arm out of the way  early.

I  grabbed a couple things from the pile. A bit of scar remover for the  body aspect, and a worm for limb regeneration, along with a battery for  speed and power. I through in some antibiotics just for a general pick  me up, and merged the J ranked items together into a pair of I ranked  items, and the I's together into an H. Once the tube of ointment was  done combined it with an H rank healing pill I had from the drug store  just to make sure it would be up to the task and appraised it.

[Appraisal function  activated. Treasure detected. Regeneration tonic- G rank. Supercharge  the body of the user to instantly heal any and all wounds. Scars will be  erased and lost or missing extremities will be regrown.]

I  tossed it to him. "You have a point, so we do the arm first. A proof of  concept if you will." He stared in shock at the brown spherical pill in  his hand, something I'd cobbled together from a few random odds and  ends and swirled together in a flash of light like magic. Which...it  probably was, not that I'd bothered to wonder about mechanics. But  still, a G rank item cost me a grand which brought down to one hundred  and five thousand after the supplies Whisper brought on this most recent  run.

He stared up at me  searchingly, then swallowed hard and, face firming in determination,  tossed the pill back while he had the nerve. His body, upon being  exposed, locked up, and he fell over, stiff as a board and twitching  stiffly on the ground. The marble in my bedroom wasn't exactly comfy,  but then, I didn't really care. I waited for five minutes as his skin  all fell off and some dead hair fell away to be regrown. The limb was  last, and it was pretty disturbing. A skeletal arm tore it's way out of  his stump and then the torn flesh grew down over the bones.

Still,  unpleasant or not, it did work, and once he finished screaming he  looked...well more wary than grateful, but I saw at least a bit of  gratitude in there. He stood up out of a mess of dead skin and hair,  which Whisper swept forward to...well, sweep. I stared at the kid,  bored. "Now, I believe we were designing your future self. You might be  stuck with whatever we pick for life so I'd put some real thought into  this" He stared at me, part awe and part fear, before nodding and  turning back to the table.

Instead  of picking one thing to focus on he picked out things that spoke to  him. I figure he expected I'd merge them all together and make something  new for him, which to be fair was completely accurate. He looked at  Whisper, who smiled encouragingly, and I smirked internally, poor kid  was desperate for a mommy, and Whisper knew all the buttons to press.  That would make things easier.

To  my surprise, he picked out a snake as his base, a spitting cobra to be  exact. He also grabbed a large sniper rifle. Both were I rank already.  He looked around for a bit and finally grabbed an H rank vial of poison.  I stopped him once he got there. That was all I needed. I combined the  gun and the snake, then the result with the venom, and then merged that  with the G ranked elixir to create my final F ranked product, bringing  me down to ninety four thousand points. I appraised the result with  relish.

[Appraisal function  activated. Treasure detected. Deathtongue Cobra- F rank. A deadly  creature of steel and poison. The Deathtongue cobra is scaled body and  mind in hardened steel and moves with the speed of a bullet to attack  it's target, immune to mental interference and resistant to all but the  strongest physical blows. Upon excreting it's venomous spit, the  substance hardens into a metallic projectile capable of traveling great  distances. Following penetration of it's victims flesh the metal is  absorbed into the bloodstream as fast acting poison.]

I  blinked...it was a metal snake that could spit poison rifle shots? That  was fucking awesome. I looked at Roy with new respect. "Holy shit, kid.  You have good taste. This thing is metal, both literally and  figuratively." I paused. "Wait, you were kidnapped in like two thousand  two or something right? Was that term in common use back then?" I  shrugged. "Fuck it, who cares, point is this is a top class F ranked  beastie. You ready to become one with the snake?" I was curious to see  what he would keep from the combination. Some of all of it for sure, but  I didn't know how much.

He  swallowed hard before nodding. "Yeah. Yeah I am. This is going to give  me the power I need right?" I nodded seriously and he took a deep  breath. "Alright, then I'm ready. Where are we doing this? Right here?" I  obviously didn't want the kid turning into a twitching mess of mutating  flesh on my marble floors...again. So I sent him to the bathroom. Once  he left I picked up the Cobra, completely docile before it's owner, and  carried it inside after him.

I  was actually curious how merging him like this would affect his  interactions with me. I knew that humans weren't mentally effected by  the brand so much as physically. They did as told because they had to,  but it didn't change how they thought, but he was going to be merging  with this snake, and it obeyed me without question and seemed to  genuinely adore me, just like the other serpent. I had noticed Whisper  being more devoted post merge, so it made me curious if she was getting  something from her animal side that made her more docile.

If  that was the case Roy was likely to become much more manageable after I  finished up his transformation. I told him to kneel down on the tile  and draped the cobra around his neck, where it waited patiently, and  then I triggered another merge. I went down to ninety three thousand  this time, spending a grand on making a G ranked minion from the F  ranked serpent. Despite the downgrade I considered it a net positive for  me. Humans were smarter than animals and just as easy to control.

[Appraisal  function activated. Treasure detected. Roy Harper- G rank Deathtongue  Cobra-kin. A powerful long ranged attacker in the service of Nicholas  Lord. Roy feels both fear and gratitude towards his new employer.  Inheriting the Deathtongue cobras mental immunity, physical durability,  and venomous metal projectile spit, Roy is a walking weapon with a  grudge to settle against the people who kidnapped him and stole his arm  to create a sleeper agent clone.]

I  blinked. That last part was...weird. I hadn't been aware of that bit of  info. I filed it away for future use. Roy was...fine. I remembered  belatedly that Whisper's merge hadn't been much trouble either. The  difference between taking mutagens and being directly combined I  supposed. I helped him to his feet. "So? How do you feel kid?" I gave  him a quick run down on his abilities in case he wasn't just naturally  predisposed to them, and I saw his face light up with excitement.

His  eyes, still blue but now with a slit pupil, were wide with eagerness,  and his skin took on a darker greyer tone at vulnerable points as it was  dusted with metallic scales. "I feel...amazing. Like I could do  anything." He bounced on his toes and threw a few punches, fast ones.  Faster than I could manage. My mutagen had been peak G rank, but it had  been used on a mostly normal person, not to mention it was kind of a  jack of all trades upgrade. I personally was only about H rank in terms  of physical power.

I  still had ninety three thousand GP, once I got to a hundred thousand  again, I could afford an E rank upgrade. I was still on the fence about  what the hell to do though. Should I merge with an animal? Make another  mutagen with the Kobra Venom stock I still had? I was just so damn torn.  I could lean more into the serpent thing, or I could try to do  something totally new. I shook that off. That was a hypothetical for  later, for now I had something more important to do.

I  turned to the kid. "So...want to go to the window and see how far that  poison bullet spit can go?" He grinned and we bolted out of the bathroom  to the balcony outside my room. Once we got there we both scanned the  sky for something that would work as a target, and when we found  something he focus and turned to get a running start. I grabbed him.  "You missed a bunch of stuff, but spoiler, running starts trying to spit  off a balcony never end well. Someone learned that the hard way."

He  flushed slightly but nodded. Narrowing his eyes, he focused into the  distance then reared back and spat. There was a loud crack, and my eyes  widened as Roy's throat bulged slightly and a shot rang out from between  his lips. The bird nearly three hundred yards away that he'd been  eyeing literally exploded in a burst of feathers and I blinked. Holy  shit. When the system said long distance it wasn't kidding. I turned to  Roy, who was grinning like a look. "Ok. I admit it. This is awesome." I  clapped the kid on the shoulder. It really was.