Gourmet Hunter - Chapter 285 (Patreon)

Chapter 285: Surprise Box and Zombie Mushrooms

Geru and Leibo, two male Hunters in their thirties, were not the strongest in ability but were neither weak, mainly because they had been Hunters for ten years and had gained considerable experience.

Among the ten Hunters dispatched by the Hunter Association, Geru and Leibo were fortunate to have survived that attack. However, they were also unfortunate because they had become materials for a sophisticated man.

Is it better to be food for artificial beings or to be materials for making artificial beings?

For those involved, both prospects were quite unfriendly.

In a white laboratory, Geru and Leibo lay on a platform, their eyes dull and lifeless.

The sophisticated man stood beside the platform, his white lab coat always stained with grease and marks from pizza.

He pocketed his hands and tilted his head slightly, observing the expressions of Geru and Leibo with a look that seemed to appreciate a flawed product.

In fact, the frontal lobes of Geru and Leibo's brains had been removed, which in a sense, indeed made them flawed products.

“You... continue to heat up in another way,” the sophisticated man muttered to himself, then turned and walked towards a table against the wall, where a magic box was placed, not very large, about twice the size of an adult human head.

The magic box was square and colorful, each side decorated with different patterns, featuring nearly abstract moons, stars, suns, vague blue skies, white clouds, seas, and even some comical question marks. However, the most striking was a clown pattern with a sinister smile.

This colorful square box was named the Surprise Box.

The sophisticated man, known as Dove, like the other members of the Death Flowers, used this as both his code name and his real name.

Dove picked up the Surprise Box and walked back to the platform where Geru and Leibo lay, meanwhile speaking to the air, “Release the materials.”

His voice, transmitted through a sound receiver, reached the next room.

Upon hearing the command, the operator opened the room that temporarily trapped two magical beasts.

“Creak…”

Suddenly, a slit appeared in the front wall, which then split into two, swinging open to both sides.

Inside were two magical beasts, restrained by locks, one a three-meter-long gray giant wolf with wings on its back, and the other a fat purple-blue giant pig covered in spikes.

Dove referred to these two beasts as materials, and Geru and Leibo lying on the platform were also materials.

Currently, the prison housed a hundred artificial beings, and now, two more were about to be added.

Though the two magical beasts were unconscious, their restraining locks indicated their danger.

Dove casually threw the Surprise Box onto the floor, and the clown pattern on the box suddenly moved, opening and closing like the red lips of a sausage, emitting a creepy laugh.

Then, the box hopped towards the two magical beasts in the room, targeting the gray giant wolf first.

Upon reaching the side of the gray giant wolf, the top of the box suddenly opened, enlarging to encompass the wolf along with its locks inside the box.

Moments later, the Surprise Box shifted, ejecting all the locks, and then moved towards Geru and Leibo lying on the platform, using the same method to encompass Geru into the box, and spitting out his clothes.

After incorporating two types of materials, the Surprise Box began assembling!

The box trembled slightly left and right, and after about thirty seconds, the lid opened, releasing a three-meter-tall artificial being.

This newly born artificial being, like those in the prison, had a human head and a beast-like body, with disproportionate sizes between the head and body.

The human-headed wolf-bodied artificial being stood still, its expression still dull, but its eyes began to show a bit of color and were continuously expanding.

After assembling one artificial being, the Surprise Box then handled the purple-blue giant pig and Leibo, soon assembling another artificial being.

Despite the awkward combination of human heads and magical beast bodies, a closer inspection revealed no artificial marks where the head joined the body.

After assembling two finished products on the spot, the laughter from the Surprise Box gradually ceased and then calmed down.

Dove placed the Surprise Box back on the table and approached the two artificial beings, his body surging with Nen.

“Zombie Mushrooms.”

Dove murmured softly, slowly extending his hands. As his Nen surged, two red-and-white mushrooms quickly condensed above his palms, their caps predominantly red with white bulges, resembling pineapple buns.

After materializing the two mushrooms with his Nen, Dove flashed behind the two artificial beings, planting the mushrooms at a specific spot beneath the backs of their heads.

Rather than planting, it was more like an implantation.

Once the mushrooms touched the bodies of the artificial beings, their spore bodies rapidly penetrated the bodies, leaving only a

 red-and-white cap visible.

Dove stepped back, reducing the aura surrounding his body, and then walked towards the door.

As he took four or five steps, the two artificial beings also moved, following behind him, their eyes increasingly radiant.

Zombie Mushrooms, this was Dove’s manipulation type Nen ability, developed by referencing the real-world zombie mushrooms. These bizarre fungi move on their own, seeking out corpses to parasitize and control aimlessly wandering until the corpse completely decomposes.

Zombie Mushrooms had clear limitations and weaknesses. As the name suggests, it could only control corpses, but the ability itself was designed to serve the user. Dove made modifications to overcome this limitation slightly.

Dove changed the restriction to... an idiot.

Any human without the capabilities of memory, judgment, analysis, thinking, or operation was a target he could control, including Geru and Leibo, whose frontal lobes had been removed.

As for the disadvantages, each time Dove materialized a Zombie Mushroom, a portion of his Nen would decrease, only recovering once the Mushroom separated from its host.

The advantage of Zombie Mushrooms lay in transforming a simple command into complex actions.

Many manipulation-type abilities could only issue simple commands. If complex operational commands were required, it would increase the difficulty of control, but Dove had no such concerns.

He could even allow his controlled subjects to use their Nen abilities with the command [Use Nen Ability], without needing to know the specifics of their abilities or how to apply them.

Not everyone is Luo, and since Zombie Mushrooms were Dove’s Nen ability, what about the Surprise Box? And is the ability of the Surprise Box merely assembly?

Given its bizarre ability to assemble humans and magical beasts, the Surprise Box was likely a conjured item. If this was Dove’s ability, he could completely remove the Surprise Box without having to pick it up and put it back on the table.

It is worth noting that materializing items as a Nen user is not simple, and once successfully conjured, they inherently possess the trait of being easily retrievable.

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