Chapter 18: Parasitic Relationship

It had been a few days since the Nings had latched onto the wolf and went along with them. When they had learned that the next unlock would be the Shop, they had been very excited. But, soon their excitement went down the drain as they realized that they had a massive problem on their hand.

The world was still filled with snow, the only thing of color in the surroundings was the brown barks of the trees or the occasional green leaves. And those were all the Nings could see as well.

Nothing else. They could not see anything else.

'What are we gonna do now?' Ning A was troubled. The problem had started small and they hadn't seen the urgency at first. But as things escalated, the problem escalated as well.

'A tree? Or maybe we wait for something to pass by?' said Ning B. He was trying his best to come up with a solution as well.

Once more they looked out into the surrounding. While they all looked the same, the Nings knew that they had come dozens if not hundreds of kilometers away from where that village with the giant wall lied.

They weren't looking at the surroundings to see what there was. They were looking at the surroundings to see what wasn't there anymore.

The wolf pack.

When they had first hopped onto the wolf leader's body, they were overjoyed seeing the constant 450 energy they were getting from it. So, they had turned off the notification and lived freely, waiting for the shop to unlock within half a day. But when the shop didn't unlock, they were confused.

They had the system reopen the notifications and found out that they were getting barely 5 energy. At first, they were really surprised and shocked as to what could have caused this. But when the system explained what was happening, they finally settled down, simply shaking their head at what was happening.

According to the system, because they used the parasite ability, they were now in a parasitic relationship with the wolf. This meant, they were the only ones gaining anything from the relationship, and the wolf, which was the host, was slowly getting weaker and weaker and even possibly dying.

And it did die. According to their calculations, the wolf had given them around 3 hundred thousand energy before dying. Since they no longer had a host, the Nings had to use the parasite ability once more to get another host. And as such, they were in the body of another wolf.

However, they soon realized that these wolves only gave 300 energy. Maybe it was because they hadn't eaten in half a day and were lacking in energy, or maybe it was because the rest of the wolves weren't as good as the pack leader who gave them 400 energy. So, when, inevitably, the wolves started dying, they only got 2 Hundred Thousand before they had to use the parasite ability that cost them a hundred thousand energy.

In the end, each wolf only net them a hundred thousand energy in increment. While that was a lot of energy, looking at the zero wolves around them, they knew they had exhausted all of their sources of energy, and even the one they were on right now would die in few minutes.

'We need to think of something fast,' said Ning B with a voice full of frustration.

'Hmm... wait for a second,' Ning A said as he thought of something. 'Hey system, do we lose energy if this wolf dies?' they asked. Until now, they had kept on changing their hosts every time one was close to dying and hadn't needed to ask the question. Now that they did, the system finally answered.

<You will not disappear or lose any energy>

<You will stay in the corpse of the animal until you switch bodies or snatch onto another body like a parasite>

<However, staying long term on a corpse is not recommended as the corpse can rot and you can lose energy that way>

'Oh, that's good. That means we won't have to immediately look for another body.' Ning A said with a sigh of relief.

'Yeah. And since it's the winter season, I don't think we will have to worry about the wolf rotting for quite a while,' said Ning B as he added more relief to the levity.

The wolf finally died and the Nings stopped there as well. They didn't want to waste a hundred thousand energy on a tree that couldn't move, so they instead just decided to wait for another animal to walk by. They went unconscious, asking the system to wake them up when an animal or monster came by.

They woke up immediately to the cries of dozens of birds around them. There were at least 20 birds of the same species. They had a moderately small body but seemed bloodthirsty as they flew down to the dead wolf corpse and started to bite on it.

'Oh no! We are going to lose energy.' Ning B screamed.

'System, Parasite the closest bird,' Ning A shouted.

They immediately switch consciousness from the wolf to the bird. Within minutes, they devoured the wolf, leaving only bones intact. After they were done, they started flying away.

The birds flew in a batch, and Ning knew, the same fate that took place on the wolves would take place on these birds too. As they flew along with the birds, the Nings realized that the birds were dying once a day, instead of twice a day like the wolves.

'I think it's cause they keep eating food,' said Ning A.

'Yeah, the wolves never ate anything after the first day, did they?' Ning B chimed in as well.

However, that didn't matter to them. They were just here for the energy, and these carnivorous birds could go and die for all they cared.

Suddenly, the birds flew above a span of trees, and they were shown the scenic sights of the ocean once more. Both of them sighed once more and they said at the same time.

' ' Not again. ' '