Eren was bewildered too. He couldn't make heads or tails of what was happening to him or his unintended victim. But in the next second, the hand that had grabbed Renar's almost melted wrist also turned dark green and had crocodile-like scuts over it.
Eren couldn't think of what to do or react next. So he activated his F-Rank Sedated Perception to buy himself some time.
'What is this? Reen, you have any idea?'
Reen pondered for a moment before replying:
This seems to be the innate spell that I use to digest my food. How did you learn it?'
Eren smiled mirthlessly in his head before responding:
'Hehe. Beats me. I didn't feel like I was casting a spell either. It was as natural and effortless as breathing.'
Reen thought of something and asked her master to confirm:
'Erni, do you think demi-humans have inherent spells of the beasts they have absorbed the bloodlines of?'
Some sort of understanding dawned on Eren after Reen made her line of thoughts known to him.
'Quite possible. So inherent spell is what you get when a spell stops being a spell. I will have to experiment with this power later on. This is not the time to make the pawns wary of me. Reen, how can I bring things back to normal?'
Reen shared her experiences of using her inherent spell with her master. Eren used those experiences to control the spell that had just awakened.
For some reason, Eren could taste some blood in his mouth which he knew wasn't his. His head also felt heavy and the arm that had displayed the properties of crocodile skin felt sore after it returned to normal. Evidently, the inherent spell had a few side effects.
Eren's arm returned to normal. But the same could not be said about Renar's hand. Thankfully, only a small section of the epidermis of the hand had been melted and the rest of the skin underneath it was still intact. So it wasn't a serious injury. At most, it would look like the epidermis had been burnt off by a fire spell.
Eren cast an F-Rank fireball spell before quickly discarding it. This was to cover the traces of an inherent spell he had just executed.
The butcher hadn't figured out the whole thing yet. There was no reason for him to inform his pawns of the phenomenon that had just occurred. He then cancelled Sedated Perception to process the time normally.
"You… you… lied to me. Why are you using the spell when you told me not to?"
Renar complained and shouted as he looked up. He looked up just when Eren had discarded the fireball spell after activating it.
Eren was still in midair. He pushed against Renar's defensive X guard and used the recoil to jump back in the air. He did this before straightening himself and landing safely on his feet a few meters away from the anthrope.
He retrieved an F-Rank healing potion from his storage and threw it to Renar before replying:
"Err… my bad, Renar. I accidentally activated my spell without intending to. You can use this potion to heal your wounds."
Eren said and then looked at Belar and Viper who were standing at a distance from the mock battleground. He was sure he had been quick enough in covering up the incident, preventing two novices from noticing the unusual nature of the incident. In contrast, Renar was too overwhelmed by pain to notice that a strange pulse of mana originated above his head.
Renar did feel weird about an E-Ranker using the F-Rank spell in a fight where he had proposed not to use any spell. He also wondered how an F-Rank spell could hurt his E-Rank body. But rankers had many ways to pull something off like this.
Eren felt like he should try the same thing with Viper and Belar too. But he needed them as pawns for his exploration of ranker's purgatory. Therefore, he didn't want them to be scared by him. So he dropped the plan.
Eren no longer fought with Renar. Viper and Belar were only asked to show him their fighting prowess by battling each other. The two obliged.
"Alright, this is enough. You guys will have to sign a binding contract with me before I make some arrangements for you. It'll take some time before we start our exploration. So rest well while honing your battle skills in the meantime. Are there any questions?"
Belar raised his hands and asked without any fear:
"You are from the Beast Bloods? How come we never heard anything about you while we were in the organization? Were you active in another region? And why us?"
Eren in Ronny's avatar just shrugged his shoulders before saying:
"I was indeed active in a different part of Edinburgh and didn't hear about you guys either until only recently. It is bothersome to locate the disbanded Beast Bloods members so I just freed you guys whose location was now public knowledge."
Belar tried asking some more questions. But Eren just released his mana sense and spread it across the region after getting irritated by the young anthrope's persistent attitude. Renar, Viper, and Belar at the time subconsciously felt like they were being suppressed by a higher form of existence than them. They stopped asking questions as a result.
Eren had already arranged an anonymous place for the three anthropes to spend a few days at. He was going to call them to action only at the time of purgatory exploration. He gave some more instructions to the anthrope before allowing them to depart from the place.
"Erni, what are you planning to do with them exactly?"
Reen assumed the form of Selena sometime after she and his master were alone at the ruined castle and asked. The latter looked at the orange-red sky coloured by the setting sun and replied slowly:
"I am not sure. At first, I wanted to use them as disposable pawns in purgatory. But now I feel like I should use them to carry out some experiments. Let's see what happens in purgatory. I'll try to keep them alive if I can help it.
We are running short on time because of the multitude of pies I've dipped my fingers in. *Sigh. We'll have to focus on my shop and get it running before I enter ranker's purgatory."
Eren concluded and started to walk away from his previous position. Reen followed after him. He needed to get his affairs in order before he could experiment with his newly obtained inherent spell.
The inherent spell wasn't the only thing he had gained today. He looked at his normal body stats on the spectral screen after he had returned to normal.
The butcher had a smile on his face when he saw the progress that had happened over just a few minutes: