Reader

Arthur crawled forward the instant he arrived, quickly hiding beneath the leaf of a wild grass plant.

He poked his head out and looked around.

Suddenly, he heard a "quack-quack" nearby. He pulled his head back and waited quietly.

Before long, through a gap between the blades of grass, he saw Big Gray Duck flap its wings and dive into the sea from midair.

It flew up from the sea again, a large yellow croaker in its beak.

At the edge of the beach, Big Gray Duck pinned the fish beneath one foot and began tearing at its scales and sashimi-like flesh.

While Big Gray Duck ate, Arthur headed deeper into the island.

He named this stretch of beach Big Gray Duck's Beach, or "Gray Duck Beach" for short.

For a caterpillar, Gray Duck Beach was fraught with danger. He couldn't stay here.

Making his way through the grass, Arthur exhausted all his strength. He crawled from night until dawn, only managing to move a hundred meters.

Fortunately, he was already far from Gray Duck Beach and had reached the wooded area of the island.

"Hiss~ hiss~"

A rustling sound came from nearby. A sense of foreboding welled up inside Arthur, and he looked up to see a round, plump sea snake staring at him.

Its red-and-white striped scales marked it as venomous, more than a caterpillar could handle.

The sea snake ignored the caterpillar on the ground and continued slithering through the grass. Its target seemed to be Big Gray Duck.

Arthur had just let out a breath of relief, thinking he'd escaped danger, when a tremendous force suddenly struck him.

The sea snake lashed its tail across the caterpillar, sending Arthur flying in a spectacular belly-flop onto the beach beyond the grass.

His head hit the sand, and he rolled three times. Dizziness swirled through his mind.

The commotion caught Big Gray Duck's attention. It cocked its head and looked at Arthur, seeming a little curious.

It had eaten a caterpillar not long ago, and now another one just like it had appeared.

Could there be a caterpillar nest nearby?

"Quack!"

Perhaps tired of eating sea fish and eager to change up its breakfast, Big Gray Duck waddled gracefully over to Arthur, swaying from side to side.

The instant Big Gray Duck lowered its head, the sea snake concealed in the grass suddenly sprang out.

Like the fastest of guns, it struck Big Gray Duck precisely in the neck. Its venom gushed out in that instant, shooting straight into the duck's blood vessels.

The poison surged up from its neck to its head. Big Gray Duck staggered around as if drunk, dancing a merry hornpipe on the ground.

Arthur watched Big Gray Duck fall. The gust of air it kicked up knocked him over, and he rolled once across the ground.

"Big Gray Duck has been successfully hunted by a sea snake. The beach has officially been renamed Sea Snake Beach."

After waiting a while, he turned and squirmed toward the island's interior, in case the sea snake got tired of its meal and decided to try something new.

He was just so delicious!

While the sea snake savored Big Gray Duck, Arthur set off once more and successfully reached the woods.

Arthur looked around, made sure there was no danger, then walked up to a blade of grass and began nibbling on it.

He was hungry.

As he chewed on the grass, he suddenly sensed a murderous aura.

Before he could turn around, a scythe-like shadow flashed past. Arthur's head went blank, and he floated above his corpse.

He saw a Green Mantis waving its double blades as it ate the caterpillar's corpse.

Arthur watched the whole thing as Green Mantis cruelly devoured the caterpillar. Once the caterpillar had completely disappeared,

a thought surfaced in his mind: control this Green Mantis.

He fixed his attention on Green Mantis. Soon, he sensed another consciousness—chaotic, natural, and weak.

Gradually erasing that weak consciousness, Arthur took over the body.

When he opened his eyes again, his hands had turned into mantis limbs, and the insect wings on his back were buzzing softly.

"You have acquired the 'Mantis' form."

He supplied his own sound effects for the transformation. His current state really did feel like a role-playing game.

Why hadn't he gained Big Gray Duck's form when it ate him?

Arthur pondered the question. Was his consciousness not strong enough to kill Big Gray Duck, or was it because Big Gray Duck wasn't an insect?

He currently thought the latter was more likely. Consciousness could only take over insects, which fit the characteristics of [Moth].

"Coo-coo! Coo-coo!"

Birdsong echoed through the woods. Arthur controlled the mantis and hid in the grass, curling up.

Its natural camouflage let him stay hidden there for the time being.

His mental state was a little hazy, so he had no choice but to stop controlling the mantis. His consciousness returned to his body, and he lay in bed, quietly recovering.

It was a very strange state. He could clearly sense the world around him, but his "consciousness" told him it was best to lie still.

Like a fetus back in the womb, quiet and comfortable.

It seemed like a long time had passed, and yet it also seemed like no time had passed at all. Arthur hovered on the threshold between wakefulness and drowsiness.

Suddenly, the countdown for [Research] rang like an alarm clock, jolting him out of that state.

Arthur sat bolt upright in bed and heard a whisper, as if someone were murmuring in his ear.

[Research on "Reader Potion" is complete.]

[Research results: Reader Potion + formula.]

The corners of his mouth curled up. His golden goose had arrived—the potion formula for Sequence 9 of the Scholar Path.

The formula for the "Reader Potion":

Main ingredients: 1 bloodstained feather from a Transcendental Bird, 3 large eyeballs from Four-Eyed Fish

Auxiliary ingredients: 1 Golden Oak Fruit, 3 Star Grass, 100 milliliters of calf hind-leg blood, and 2 drops of goat's tears.

Arthur studied the "Reader formula." The ingredients listed were unexpectedly peculiar.

"Bloodstained feathers, plucked from a Transcendental Bird; three eyes from Four-Eyed Fish, a species of flatfish native to the Mist Sea;

Golden Oak Fruit from an oak tree inside a Church of Light; Star Grass that grows only when the nights are longer than the days; cow's blood and goat's tears?"

If he hadn't deciphered the Reader Potion, Arthur would never have imagined that the ingredients for a precious Transcendental Potion weren't as expensive as he'd expected.

The main ingredients involved the supernatural, and Four-Eyed Fish lived in the Mist Sea. The rest of the ingredients were quite ordinary.

Ordinary believers could donate a silver coin at a church and casually take some acorns and Star Grass. No one would stop them.

The calf's hind-leg blood and two drops of goat's tears were worth less than one gold coin.

"After mixing it all together, it could fetch 20,000 gold coins at auction. So... profitable!"

Arthur put away the formula and opened the "Reader" Potion. Inside was a black, gelatinous substance.

He gulped it down. The potion melted as soon as it entered his mouth and spread through his body.

Thump! Thump!

It felt as if his soul were leaving his body, as if his body and soul were separating. His consciousness grew more attuned to nature.

In that wondrous state, he could see many things that had been invisible to him before.

A stream of gray energy clung to the gun in his hand. The instant he saw it, the word "Dread" surfaced in Arthur's mind.

Parrot Gro on the table was like a whirlpool, its supernatural power impossible to make out.

Parrot Gro wasn't an ordinary contraband item. Based on Arthur's estimation, it should be a second-tier "Legendary" contraband item.

Something that could be passed down in the words of bards.

There was also a ship trailing the Great White Shark in the distance. Its black, flowing supernatural power was doing its best to conceal itself.

In the blink of an eye, it vanished from Arthur's sight.

When he took the [Reader] Potion, Arthur understood the abilities and taboos of this sequence.