“Harry?”

One would never even think to consider the situation of lighting when inside the body of a colossal monster, mostly because it would just be quite frankly idiotic to entertain. Well, to go on record, it was dark. Like pitch black. The radiant flame flickering upon Brock’s palm was the only thing illuminating the fleshy innards of the beast as he crept through its interior.

Another point of no consideration; the warmth. It was almost suffocating as the various organs of the worm pulsated powerfully and permeated the area with the heat of its effort. Contrary to what he had expected from the monster’s biology, it actually possessed a slew of what appeared to be functioning organs. They were majorly spaced out within its body, however, letting him walk freely.

Occasionally, he avoided the common fleshy protrusions or thick, root-like veins.

Aside from the plush flesh that coated every direction, the was not much else to see, just the frequent strings of gooey flesh and bulging vein system. To Brock, the haphazard placement of organs and the unnatural appearance of the innards’ structure made him feel like it was somewhat artificial, like it had all been dumped here and left to grow and fester.

As for the main word to describe it, ‘utterly disgusting’ did not even begin to encapsulate the true essence of the area. Brock had gagged several times already, either from the sickly stench or the throbbing sight of it all.

From within the body of the Brood-Mother, its thick hide and fleshy walls rendered the shakes and sensations of its digging mute, with Brock being unable to feel even the slightest jiggle from the monster’s underground movements. The auras of the brood-babies were completely masked as well, whether by the overwhelming presence of the beast’s own, or the encapsulation of its body.

Even after several hours of searching, Brock had been yet to find Harry, let alone a trace of him. He was leery of just using his Augment to blast his way through the worm’s interior to find him, mostly because he feared the rare scenario where he killed the monster and trapped them potentially thousands of meters beneath the surface.

That would certainly not be a fun experience. Especially when Brock would have to eat Harry to survive.

“Come here little boyyyyy~!” the cannibal in the making called out to the dimly lit darkness. Like it always had been, no response came back.

Logically, Brock realised he should first head to the beast’s stomach to search, as that was the most likely place Harry would be. The biggest issue with that, he found, was simply the fact he had no idea what a worm stomach looked like, nor if he hadn’t already passed it by. Stomach acid was also a problem that sprung to mind, but Brock chose to worry about that when it came.

Experimentally, he prodded out with his aura and was left shocked when he detected the slightest trace of Harry’s own aura in the beast’s bloodstream. Putting aside the potential that the boy had become food for the monster, the man continued on with renewed vigour and no small amount of hope, following along the empty expanse of the Brood-Mother’s insides.

Soon, however, he met a glaring roadblock. A humungous organ barred his path, slouching over the fleshy flooring and twitching slightly as he looked on at it in barely hidden revulsion. Hissing a breath out his teeth, Brock searched around but swiftly found that the way forward was well and truly blocked by the sack of meat.

Sighing, he wasted no time and just opted to blast a hole in the flesh. Immediately, he felt the entirety of the body around him shudder in pain. Even the aura of the beast that pervaded the area adopted a slight turmoil of rage and anguish.

On cue, while his attention was directed elsewhere, Brock’s feet were met by a surging tide of sickly yellow fluid as it gushed out of the smouldering hole he had created. Grimly, he noticed his feet releasing wisps of foul-smelling smoke as the liquid sizzled at his skin. Gagging at the overpowering stench of rot from within the organ, he stepped inside it and did his best to avoid the remaining puddles of what he assumed to be the previously mentioned stomach acid.

It didn’t take long for Brock to traverse the toxic ‘marshland’ and spot a fleshy tunnel sitting a distance away from his position. Most probably, it led further onto into the beast. Considering the pools of acid all around him, and the various chunks of sloughing stone and melting animal carcasses, Brock thought it accurate to assume the beast had another stomach, or maybe even a few.

Like a cow.

“I’m…” Brock gagged again, this time feeling his lunch threatening to burst out, “…coming for you, Harry!”

Feeling immensely nauseous, Brock hiked through the rest of the acidic wetlands within, avoiding dozens of puddles of stomach acid, the remnants from before already sizzling at his flesh uncomfortably.

Soon though, he arrived at the tube leading to what he hoped was the next stomach and climbed up and into it, blocking his nose as a slightly less rancid smell blew through and tore at his nostrils.

It was a long trek through the tight fit of a tunnel, and several times his feet were washed over by waves of recently processed ‘food’ as it travelled down to be held by the stomach he had entered from. It was quite frankly fucking disgusting, but Brock persisted and finally arrived at the entrance to the next stomach.

Looking over the veritable ocean of yellowed bile and floating chunks of dirt and stone among other organic creatures, Brock said ‘fuck it’ and channelled his flame into a searing beam, deciding to just blow a hole into the side of the stomach. He was not wading through stomach bile like an Olympic swimmer. Not yet at least.

“Harry?”

Even after calling out, however, Harry didn’t seem to be in here either, though Brock could detect the faintest traces of his companion through the tube waiting across another prolonged hike, hopefully leading to another stomach, and not the beast’s confusing death trap of a mouth.

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He promptly sped across the place and entered the tunnel, continuing on his way. Harry’s aura only began to get stronger and so did Brock’s pace.

The man had to admit he was feeling slightly enlightened to the biology of monsters as he trekked through this fleshy prison. He had never really thought about it, despite the sheer amount of beast organs he had seen and smeared so far, but the monsters actually appeared to have a biology no different in nature - not practice - to the normal creatures of pre-System Earth.

He pondered on the true nature of monsters for a while, though he supposed that whether they were actually creations of the System, like Ur’Kahn, or mutated wildlife from Earth was irrelevant. As long as they attacked him and wanted to kill humans, he expected them to receive the same brutal treatment, both by him and humanity.

Soon, the faint sound of humming reached Brock’s ears and he further picked up the pace, the noise of turning pages reaching him next. Within minutes of what turned from a brisk walk into a sprint, Brock finally stumbled out into the next stomach, spotting Harry almost immediately.

The boy’s armour had seen some better days, now severely melted and disfigured, but otherwise, he looked relatively healthy aside from some red, blistered skin, probably from acid burns. He was sitting cross-legged on a relatively flat chunk of stone as it bubbled and floated in the ocean of bile, an oddly familiar book in hand. Unaware of Brock’s presence, the page turned without him touching it and he kept reading, looking both intrigued and incredibly bored at the same time.

“Harry!” Brock called out to the boy with no small amount of relief, leaping over to a sizeable chunk of bobbing stone and then another, quickly making his way over.

The teen in question glanced up from the book with a start, but soon donned an expression of abject relief as he met the eyes of his older companion, “Brock! Geez, dude. I was getting worried.”

Brock landed on his rock and chuckled nervously, moving to help the kid to his feet, “Yeah. So was I.”

The book in Harry’s hands rapidly began to dissipate into mist and enter into the pores of his skin as he noticed the way Brock was looking at the mysterious book. Instantly, he reversed the action, and the mist came back out, resolidifying into the item.

“It’s a Compendium. You don’t have one?”

Brock’s eyes widened marginally as the name jumpstarted his memory and he thought back to the rewards he had gotten immediately after slaying South, The Ape of Pride. Along with his trusty chain-knife, a Compendium had been one of them, although the System had unfairly confiscated it until he had a ‘functional Ascendancy’.

“Nah, I do. You just reminded me.” Rather excited, the warrior closed his eyes and gazed inward, eying the little nugget of something that was nestled into the back of the beating heart of his Ascendancy, almost unnoticeable if he wasn’t looking for it. It was vastly different to the glowing, crystalline node that was his Technique, Ethereal Shackles, instead appearing more like a piece of yellowed fat than anything else.

It was just a feeling, but he was sure it wasn’t meant to be yellow. Or like fat, for that matter.

Expectantly, Brock reached out and tapped into the dormant nugget, calling upon the power of the Compendium. He reopened his eyes and gave a small smile as a goldish mist began to seep out from his skin and collate into the vague form of a book. Then it halted and the mist became scattered to the air by a non-existent breeze.

[Error. Function Fragment suffering from unpowered decay.]

[Due to the lack of sustaining energies, the module containing your Compendium has suffered critical failure.]

[Removing issue…]

[Issue successfully removed…]

“Uh… what happened?” Harry asked, confused by what had just transpired. He’d seen many people use their Compendiums, but he had never seen that occur before.

Gritting his teeth, Brock spared a final glance inward and found that the nugget of fat was miraculously not there anymore, having been disappeared by the cruel machinations of the System. Brock was a man of many things, and right now, happiness was not one of them.

“I’m… getting bullied. Cosmically.”

Harry furrowed his brows at his words, and Brock didn’t elaborate.

In the end, the two of them brushed the issue under the rug, more so Harry than Brock, as he noticed the seething frustration remaining within his powerful friend. After chatting for a bit longer, and cooling off a little, they decided upon returning the way Brock had come, before blowing another hole out the body of the worm. Once it left the bounds of the earth, they would jump out and escape, hopefully unnoticed.

The worm shook slightly around them, though Brock paid it no notice. From what he had seen, gravity was a flexible rule within the belly of this beast, so it was probably nothing. Otherwise, he doubted he’d always be standing upright. Oddly enough, however, he felt a small, but noticeable, stream of energy enter his pathways. Like a contribution bonus.

Huh? What was that for?

Deciding to ignore it for the moment, Brock took to the metaphorical road, and idly, he utilised his aura senses and detected that the faint trace of Harry’s own aura was strongest here, prevalent in the bloodstream. He asked the teenager about it as he leapt over a particularly bulky vein and the boy responded absentmindedly.

“I tried to poison it for you,” he said shrugging, “It didn’t work. Like at all.”

Brock patted him on the shoulder comfortingly, “At least it let me know you were either alive or worm food. Tomato, tomato.”

“It’s tomato.”

“It’s tomato,” Brock immediately shot back, “You’ve got a problem if you think it’s anything but that.”

“It’s not.”

“I’m not doing this shit with you boy.”

They did do ‘that shit’, for over an hour in fact, until it devolved into a screaming match about the difference between a tomato and a tomato. Eventually, after calming down, they left the original stomach and stepped out into the stale, humid air of the beast’s main cavity.

Brock placed his ear close to the ‘floor’, not close enough to touch the slimy surface of flesh but enough that he hoped he could hear any sort of rumbling of the earth passing by. He couldn’t hear anything and realised that at the end of the day, he still didn’t know anything more by doing that.

“Move back.”

Flaring his small flame into a raging orb of fiery fury, Brock grimaced as he placed his hand down on the area beneath him and felt his hand sink in several inches. The flesh crackled and bubbled under the immense heat, and with a hissing breath, Brock’s Augment roared in power, becoming a concentrated torrent of radiant energy.

The Brood-Mother’s body served to be tougher than he anticipated, however, and it took several seconds before his flame finally tore through the thick hide outside, rewarding them with a sudden rush of fresh, earthen air. Although, they both noticed it was far thinner than what was usual. A quick look out the sizeable hole explained why.

Beneath them, the vast red deserts of the outback were flashing past at horrifying speeds, the features of the landscape entirely unrecognisable from the sheer altitude they were at. In the far far distance, Brock could make out a dark blotch he pinned as either being the town of Alice Springs or another population centre in the expanse.

An icy wind was invading in through the hole and licking at their faces, and Brock heard Harry gulp loudly behind him, “…worms… can’t fly… right?”

Brock grimaced as an overwhelming aura dashed in to follow the path of the winds, bathing them in a scarily familiar presence. The deafening beating of wings resounded above them, each one powerful enough to rattle the atmosphere around them, “No, Harry. No, they cannot…”

Birds can fly though.

And they knew of only one in the area.