A month had gone by since the operation and the entire time I had to feed the swine, or it would go nuts.
The VLR, Void Lighting Reaper, took that long for its internal changes to settle, and for the core to fully integrate with the body. When the growth finally stopped, the beast showed, for the first time, the abilities I was looking for. Around it, stuff just began disappearing one day, randomly at first, but then at a more controlled pace.
The VLR gained the ability to siphon stuff into its personal space pocket.
While testing it out, I noticed the creature was not yet fully aware of its abilities and was just testing out a new skill it had gained.
It didn’t show any discomfort or bad side effects, so I was happy to say that the experiment was an absolute success. Of course, that was just one example, but it showed I was on the right track.
However, one success was not enough to get me to modify my body recklessly. Well, my body yes, but my core was different. It was nearly indestructible in the first place, so carving a complex web of inscriptions onto it would be no easy task, not to mention I didn’t know how it would affect me going forward.
For that reason, I decided to wait even longer and gather more information and confirm the effectiveness of my work.
In the meantime, Thener and the company achieved some limited success with the research I gave them. With combined forces, they managed to synthesize a new kind of material. It could be what I needed, or it could just as easily be a waste.
It was too early to say as the sample was quite tiny. What showed promise, however, was that the Dreadstone mixed in with other materials was quite stable and still showed its Qi-draining properties. Mixed with some metals, it also wasn’t as brittle anymore, though the material strength still left much to be desired.
[Good work. It's not even been two months and the research is showing progress already.] I praised the team as I examined the tiny pebble-sized sample. It was better than the raw Dreadstone, but still too weak for my tastes. With just a little pressure from me, it still broke, just not as easily, so it definitely couldn’t be made into a blade.
[Have you tried using the more exotic metals for the base? I think they might be a viable option.]
“We did, boss.” Bram nodded. “It’s just that they are extremely difficult to work with, so we decided to rule out all the low-hanging fruits first. Just in case there are some viable combinations, we could save a lot of time.”
[Hmm. You might be right. Nice job. Keep it up.] I left the group to brainstorm ideas in peace.
The refinement of Dreadstone came to a halt with them being preoccupied with that. Instead of doing it alone, I took a distant guardian role, watching over the village as well as the area around the mine.
Much of the ground was upturned and the deeper parts exposed to the air, so my job was also to keep people away from the Dreadstone ore for their own safety. Especially the kid. Little Felix always wanted to stick his nose into things he shouldn’t, so we had to watch over him so he wouldn’t accidentally kill himself.
There was such a vast difference between someone who just started on the path of Cultivation to someone even just in the Golden Core Realm, much less the Spirit Realm, that any tiny wrong move could turn him to dust in an instant.
He was advancing well toward the next step of the Spirit Accumulation Realm, but even with perfect Cultivation, he was nowhere near strong enough to be able to just walk around unguarded and mingle between us.
Thalza was similarly isolated from the rest, Cultivating on her own. She would occasionally come and see what the others were doing, but her suspicion and mistrust of humans would not let her interact with them anything more than on a surface level.
A shame, since they could learn from each other. And with the power and knowledge she had, the research could go a lot faster. Oh well…
Unlike our little group, the village operated as it usually did, our presence not affecting their work at all. People still worked endlessly to scrape by enough ore every month, gaining a miserable amount of resources in return. Most of it was food and water for the little one since he couldn’t consume anything we could find in the Ashen Wastes. The flesh of Spirit Beasts would kill him instantly if he tried to eat it, so they really didn’t have a choice. His mother too, was too weak to consume it, as were a few others.
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Those in the Spirit Realm were fine in that regard, but even they needed fresh water to survive. There was only so much that could be done by purifying beast blood. Not to mention the need for pills and medicines for when a beast hunt went awry.
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On the topic of hunting… I left the base behind as I sped along the ground, flying at great speed in a random direction as I hunted powerful beasts.
I felt a disturbance far away and quickly followed it in the hope of finding a worthy opponent to fight.
I was hunting bloodlines. Strong, unique bloodlines to add to my repertoire of abilities. The VLR was rushing like a lightning bolt beside me as I was unwilling to let it out of my sight for even a moment. Experiments had to be observed, and the swine carried the most important experiment of them all.
Flight was a laughably cheap way to travel apart from being fast, and soon we noticed a cloud of dust on the horizon.
By the time we arrived, whatever conflict there used to be, was already over. A large creature stood over the mangled remains of some unknown beast, feasting on its flesh.
The swine beside me sniffed the air with its snout and then snorted, digging with its front foot and releasing aggressive vibes.
The beast, a large panther-like creature with four small, beady, glowing eyes, looked up from its meal and growled back. As it did so, I noticed large folds in its neck skin, similar to shark gills, which were also glowing, just red instead of the orange of its eyes.
The top of its head was armored with overlapping bone plates, and black, leathery skin covered the rest of its body, which included thick, muscular front legs with massive claws as large as my entire body, and an agile tail with barbs and spikes flicking side to side.
Its rumbling growl vibrated the gravel around us in a warning as the beast half larger than the VLR took a step forward, blood dripping from its massive maw.
[Alright piggy, show me what you got.] I patted the swine on its side.
Lightning sparkled and gathered around the beast’s face, its eyes blazing with wild energy. It stood like that, twitching as it gathered power for a strike. Then, suddenly, it charged.
The swine was like a lightning bolt, shooting across the ground and straight at the larger monster in front of it.
It was a brave swine for going against a larger opponent, with static flickering on its thick fur, but we didn’t feel the immense power across such vast distances for nothing. The black monster retaliated before the lightning charge even connected, digging its claws into the ground and roared.
The folds of its neck skin flared out, vibrating with power, and a conical blast struck, carving deep groves into the ground, stopping the charging swine dead in its tracks.
The sonic boom became a continuous beam of energy, striking like a massive sledgehammer and pushing the lightning beast back despite its considerable bulk. With a squeal the pig was upturned and blasted away, its fur rippling and breaking off as each new wave threatened to tear it to pieces.
[Huh, now we know why the corpse was so mangled…] I said while grinning, but it was doubtful that anyone heard it over the painful sonic blasts. I simply plugged my ears and waited for the attack to be over as my clothes rippled in the wind. It didn’t move at all from the blast.
The roar ended shortly, the beast unable to sustain such power for long. I looked back and saw the VLR slowly recovering and getting back on its feet way over there in the distance. Its eyes and ears were bleeding, but other than that it didn’t seem too hurt. Not that the damage it sustained was trivial, after all, it got beat up quite badly.
However, as if injected with stimulants, the swine squealed, flipped around, and once again coated itself with lightning, going for another head-on charge.
Brilliant lightning flashed across its body, standing out like a beacon in the gray world, and then it was off. You could say it was quite pig-headed.
All jokes aside, it was definitely a brave beast, but just bravery was not enough to win. The dark panther bared its fangs and then suddenly its body expanded by another third, becoming nearly twice as large as the charging swine.
That time, instead of slowing it down, the beast charged as well, intercepting the lightning swine rocket in a great explosion of lightning. There was a loud boom as the two collided, and a rapidly expanding sphere of energy exploded outward, ruining the landscape even more than it already was.
When it hit me it felt like a gust of warm summer wind on my skin, just with enough energy to level a small city. No big deal.
Well, the piggy certainly had other feelings. I heard its squeal and dispersed the dust with a wave of my hand. What I uncovered made my blood boil.
My greatest treasure was getting mauled by the black panther. The monster was towering above it, violently biting into its side, with blood everywhere. The only saving grace the little guy had, was that its hide was covered in thick fur, offering some meagre resistance.
[Piggy!] I shouted, enraged. We were just having a bit of fun, but that foul beast was taking it way too far. How dare it try and murder my magic science experiment!
I was fuming! In a split second, I appeared behind the big cat and pulled hard on its tail. Now, you might think my actions would be ignored since I was like a mouse compared to it, but as my fangs sank into the unguarded flesh, and the Essence extraction began, nobody would be able to keep themselves steady.
The panther flipped around with a roar and I could see the orange of its eyes as it snapped its maw towards me. I let it bite me, but instead of wounding or even killing me as it thought it would, its teeth struck hard metal. Or what I would call my skin.
In that moment I knew, that it knew, that I knew, that it fucked up. It tried to kill me and my pig, yet it failed.
Sometimes I would laugh off such an incident. I was not feeling merciful that day.