Just as I was poking at the insides of the cloning pod, I hear rushing footsteps coming down the corridor again.
It's that little guy again!
He stops right in front of my pod, and gives off an annoyed snort.
Suddenly, my entire pod begins to turn upside down, and the amniotic fluid slowly begins to drain away, leaving me suspended only by the tubes surrounding me. As soon as the fluid reaches below the level of my mouth and nose, I begin to severely choke, gasp and cough, as air begins to rush inside of my lungs and replace the now-draining fluid. I guess I had not been breathing air when I had been stuck inside of the pod, but rather the amniotic fluid itself.
I squeeze my chest hard, and push out all of the fluid away from my lungs. I guess it’s the main reason why the pod got turned upside-down, so that any new-born clone might expectorate the amniotic fluid outside of their bodies upon being released.
It takes a couple of minutes for me to stop feeling like I was choking to death. Seeing that I am now Ok, the little fellow slams a button on the side of my pod. All of the tubes and cables inside retract, except for an organic looking one that was connected to my navel. I guess that it’s some sort of umbilical cord? Anyway, without the support of those extra tubes, I tumble out of the pod like a brick. I find myself on all fours on the floor, still gasping for air and looking into the eyes of the midget. If I had not known that this was a demonic sect beforehand, I would have screamed my head off in fear by now. The dude is absolutely hideous. One eye is larger than the other due to a totally deformed cranium, and the smaller eye has been replaced with some sort of artificial looking scouter/camera. The right side of his upper body has also been replaced by mechanical looking appendages, including the arm which looks like a mix between a terminator hand, a swis army knife, and all of the contents of a surgeon’s bag.
He begins to approach me, as his hand switches to a shears-looking tool. I’m really scared of him, so I flip backwards and try to push myself away in the other direction, but my limbs feel like putty under me. He gets to me instantly, grabs me like a sack of potatoes, then slams me down on the floor face up. He then proceeds to approach me with those open sheers, and my blood freezes in my veins.
Snap!
The midget suddenly cuts off my umbilical cord.
Ah, so that’s what he was after. I would have wet myself if my bladder had been full. For a second there, I thought he was going to cut off my head!
I look down on my body, and I can see the remains of the umbilical cord still dangling down from my navel.
"Dammit, if you’re going to cut it, at least cut it off properly. This is going to look terrible when it dries off!" I mumble to myself.
The midget suddenly freezes when he hears my statement, then a laser-like light beam suddenly shoots out of his artificial eye and scans me from top to bottom.
Aw shit! Did I just screw myself by talking?
He approaches me again, then snips the remaining umbilical-cord excess, leaving my belly area nice and smooth. He then grabs me by my very, very long-ass hair and begins to spin me around like a pinata, scanning all angles.
"How the hell can it talk?" The midget mumbles to himself. "Did the nail not properly take control? No...wait, that’s not it...the roots...the roots are missing? Impossible? What the f...aw...no, there they are...but...how can this be?...lower dantian roots?...did it mutate on it’s own?...wrong strand?...maybe DNA contamination in the cloning process?...weird, weird...INTRIGUING! BRILLIANT!"
"Hey, I’m right here you know! Let go of my hair! It hurts!"
"HAH! It even has spunk!...This needs further analysis!!!"
He drops me back on the ground, then begins to gaze at me even more profoundly with those creepy-ass and uneven eyes. I feel naked and exposed, but this is not the look of some pervert, peeking at a young girl's body, this is the look of a cook gazing at a rare ingredient on the chopping block, or that of a mad scientist looking at it’s next experimental guinea pig. I do not like it one bit!
He waves his hand, and suddenly, there's a pair of clothes immediately dropping on top of my head out of nowhere. What the hell was that? Inventory manipulation? Spatial ring? Bag of holding?
"GET DRESSED!" He yells at me.
"HaaaYY!!! Yes, sir!"
I immediately put on the garments. It’s a full-body jumpsuit, colored in black with red vertical stripes that just screams “Evil Minion”, and a pair of those weird socks that you wear together with cheap asian sandals. It is also quite tight around the chest area. I only noticed now, but whoever had cloned this body, had also been very generous with the boob proportions for a 13 year old girl. Precocious growth much? Now I’ll have to live with these frontal weights all of my life! I just hope they don’t get bigger, fighting around while swinging two massive jug-a-tons would really mess up my balance and also give me constant back pains. I only like boobs on OTHER girls, not myself!
"Yo! Senior! You also got a mirror in there or something?"
The midget gives me a half amused and half surprised look, but still produces a freakin LARGE ASS full body mirror by waving his hand, just as with the clothes. Yep, definitely spatial storage of some kind. I gotta get myself one of those!
I stare back at myself, and I'm blown away. This isn’t pretty. This isn’t even beautiful. This is ball-out-of-the-park fucking gorgeous! Whoever this DNA formerly used to belong to, had been so good looking that she would have shamed all front cover magazine models even after the photoshop retouches. No wonder Timmy said Charisma is my highest attribute!
Even with the messy black hair and stupid looking jumpsuit, I still look stunning in a distressed-I-want-to-help-her-so-bad kind of way. A mix of asian beauty with a touch of the west, something like the second iteration of a certain game protagonist involving blue and yellow space gates, back from my Earth gaming time.
"You done yet?"
"Ergh!...umm...y..yeah!"
"Ok."
The mirror vanishes instantly, only to leave me staring back at the ugly face of the midget again.
Ok, I should do something about that, can't keep calling the guy “midget”. I hear it is quite insulting to vertically challenged people. Come to think of it, what about my own name? Should I use the name from my previous life? No, that would be lame! New life, new name!
"Yo...sooo, Senior...What’s your name...what should I call you? For that matter, what is MY name?"
"N...name? Erm...oh...wow...Ugh...it’s been a long time someone asked me that" He says with an even more surprised look. "I’m Yi Gore, 25th’s Lab Master of Clones, and you...let’s see...erm...you’re Batch 4, Subject 13…
Humhumhumm...Let’s go with Trina. Means 13 in ancient cultivator language and it also sounds nice."
"Tri..na?"
"Yeah you know, like the numerals after 10...hu-na do-na tri-na qu-na qvi-na si-na sev-na octi-na nevi-na etc."
"A..haaa..."
Meh, Trina it is then. Doesn’t sound bad either.
"Aaanyway...get up! Come help me with the others. They’re almost “ripe” as well."
"Yessir!" I follow him.
I’m still wobbly on my feet. It’s amazing that I can even stand upright. The cloning process must have included muscle strengthening too. I follow the guy to the other pods. I don’t want to be pissing off any mad-scientist-decmonic-sect-midget full of mechanical claws yet. The same way he did to mine, he turns upside-down the pods belonging to the other clones one by one, then flushes them out. This time, he cuts off the umbilical cords much cleaner, remembering my previous protest about it.
In the end, we’re left with 12 more of “me”, which stare with a blank robotic gaze at myself and Yi. They’re also sporting the same silly jumpsuits and weird socks, and stand aligned in formation like well trained soldiers.
"Sh...should I also go stand in line?"
"No...you’re obviously different. I’m just going to write you down as a “defective” clone and remove you from the batch. Only one clone lost is quite alright, number-wise. We usually lose about a third of each batch. This series has been surprisingly efficient. It must have been the upgraded amniotic fluid-type recipe."
"Erm...different how? You’re not going to just put me down, and then dissect me to see what went wrong with me, are you? I mean, seeing that I’ve just been born, I would very much like to live!" I fidget.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
"Dissect you? No? Whatever gave you that idea? You’re much too precious of a sample to discard just like that! Mutated and transplanted roots are something like one in a billion chance, of course I would want to keep you alive and see how the hell those work!"
Phew! Well, at least that’s one weight off of my heart.
"Sooo...then, what am I supposed to do from now?"
"Just follow me around. I could always use an assistant. Lab 25 is sooo understaffed nowadays. Ever since the Hero of the Sun has been getting on our case, the kidnappings have slowed down next to a halt. We have not been getting any new blood into the sect for a while now!"
"Erm...kidnappings?"
"Well yeah, the basic recruitment method. We’re an Evil Demonic Sect, who the hell do you think would voluntarily join us? It’s all commonplace arround here, kidnappings, murder, treason, ritual sacrifices, unholy summons of otherwordly beings, faustian pacts, the works. For new blood, the sect usually goes out and slaughters a few villages or minor sects, then brings back the remaining orphans. After that, they are handed over to the elder generation, and become pawns ripe for indoctrination. Once they are old enough and have managed to survive, it becomes their turn to “tutor” the new generations. You’d be surprised how much a lot of stick and very little carrot can accomplish."
"So, your whole sect is based off of a Pyramidal Oppression Scheme from top to bottom?"
"Hmm...wow.. yeah, that’s quite a nice way to put it. Never thought about it in that way, but it makes a lot of sense. I should write that down…"
"Then yourself…"
"You’re wondering if I’m also some innocent orphan that got taken? Hah! Why would you even care? To answer you, well, yes I am. EVERYBODY here is! I used to be a member of a small agricultural sect when it got wiped out off the map by the Demonic Cultivators when I was a kid. I only managed to get this job in the first place because I knew a thing or two about grafting. Except the “grafting” process I knew about was plant to plant, instead of their idea of adding an extra limb to a monster, but I made do with what I had available. You'd be surprised how adept one can become at attaching extra limbs, when the threat of sheer extermination looms over one’s head. After having a few successes with the multilimb monsters, I got promoted to this job here, as a Clone Supervisor. After my boss, the former Clone Master, “accidentally” got snapped in half by rebellious clones, I got his job instead."
"”Accidentally”..."
He winks back at me with his big eye. That’s sooo creepy!
"Common occurrence in the sect. Many “accidents” happen every day. Common occurrences...hihihihihihiii…"
"Riiight…Ok. Then who was the other dude that was with you? You called him Senior, so what’s his rank?"
"That’s Elder Xin, he’s in charge of all of the Experimental Labs. He answers directly to the Guild Master. Wait a sec, you were awake even back then? That was almost two days ago! For how long have you been conscious?"
"Erm, I don’t know? I woke up just a few hours before you two showed up…"
"Then, what the hell have you been doing all of that time?"
"Erm...cultivating I guess?"
"Cult...how the hell can you even cultivate with a transplanted root? It does not make sense!"
"Well I was doing this and that and before I knew it, I was level 2 and if you hadn’t shown up I could have kept going."
"YOU’RE WHAT?"
"Level 2? I mean, Qi refinement stage 3...why, what’s so amazYYYY...ok put me down, hands off, that tickles! Ok, don’t poke me with that! I don’t think it would fit! Ahh, no, senior, you’re being too rough…"
After manhandling me a few more times and poking me with even more strange instruments, Yi lets me go.
"Hah! This is INCREDIBLE! AMAZING! STUPENDOUS! Stage 3 right out of the pod? Oh, I am sooo getting promoted if I can figure out how you did that! IMAGINE THE POSSIBILITIES!"
Indeed, I could almost picture a full army of mindless minions all wearing black and red jumpsuits all charging at the enemies with their enhanced cultivator bodies and screaming their lungs off like rabid monkeys. It wasn’t a nice picture.
Yi Gore began to do even a little dance in place out of happiness. He looked ridiculous, with his short and stubby legs swaying all over the place, but I bit back my tongue.
"Senior, what’s so amazing? I don’t get it...there is no information about that inside of my memory packs."
"AH, right! You would not get it, would you? Ok well, to put it briefly so that you might understand, it takes a cultivator an average of half a year to reach second stage after opening his roots, and a then a year more to reach stage 3. And you did that in less than two days! TWO DAYS! AMAZING! By the way...HOW THE HELL DID YOU DO THAT ANYWAY!!!???" says Yi before flourishing all of his extra tool appendages towards me in a threatening manner.
Seeing Yi open up like a swiss knife is fucking terrifying!
"Well, after I woke up, I heard you two pass in front of my pod and then…"
I spill the beans, describing my entire thinking process and the ordeal of transplanting the root. Yi listens to me with an absolutely stupefied expression on his face. Of course, I omit anything related to my transmigration and Earth.
"...and that’s why my roots are like that, inside my dantian." I declare proudly!
It takes a few seconds for him to process the whole story, before he begins to laugh hysterically while rolling on the floor. After laughing like an idiot for a couple of minutes, while destroying my ear drums with his screeching and grating voice that could have raised cats from the dead, he stops, catches his breath and returns his gaze upon me.
"AAH, truly a blessing from the heavens! Only an uninformed fool could have ever thought of EVER doing something idiotic like that, and even attempt it till success! You, child, are a treasure! A total idiot, but still, a true rarity any collector would love to have in his collection."
Urgh...I think he means that literally. I don’t think keeping a fetus and clone collection in-a-jar is that far fetched, when it comes to crazed demonic-cultivator mad scientists. I do not plan on becoming one of the exhibits though.
"Too bad that you’ll be dead within two years tops, I would have loved to have more time to inspect you."
"WAIT, WHAT? Two years? Why? Is it because I’m a clone and I have limited lifespan?"
"Limited lifespan? Why would anyone ever produce clones with limited...hmm...actually, that’s a good idea, let me write that down. But no, it’s because in about two years, you are going to get blown up by your own transplanted roots. Tell me, why do you think the roots are originally inside the head?"
"Umm, I dunno? Cuz Mama Nature made it so?"
"While that may be also true, it’s because cultivators go against the heavens. They extend the branches of their spirit tree upwards, out of their crown dantian, in defiance towards the rules of the world. So now tell me, what do you think happens when the tree is growing from the lower dantian, and the entire body is in the way of the branches?"
"Ugh, auch...I’m beginning to see your point."
"Exactly!"
"But then, can’t I just stop cultivating and let the root remain the same as it is?"
"Nope!"
"Huh? Why?"
"Because of the location. Since the roots are now in your lower dantian, where all of the Qi gathers, it basically means that your roots are being bathed in nourishing Qi 24/7. There is no way they will stop growing. Everytime you will lose and regenerate Qi, by gathering it back from the world, your roots will get nourished and get extended little by little, untill…"
"Yeah I get it...I go kablooey!"
"Still, if there was some way to avoid the...impalement...the benefit of having the roots grow by themselves without the cultivator having to channel Qi and nourish them directly would be ENORMOUS. It would be like...passive automatic cultivation! FUCK!"
Timmy: The midget is right! You have unlocked the skill [Passive Cultivation Increase].
The skill progress bar has been added to your status screen.
Description:
Everytime you are below max Qi and your passive Qi regeneration is active, gain cultivation experience equal to 0.01% of all regenerated Qi. This passive does nothing if your Qi sits at maximum, so go out there and waste some Qi!
I tell Yi about my recent system prompt, and he instantly almost faints.
Another round of poking and prodding begins, and it’s similarly uncomfortable, but I’m almost used to it now.
"Hah, absofuckinglutely out of this world! This needs further study...I don’t have the tools on me to properly analyze…"
"YIIII GOOOOORE! WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU, YOU LITTLE WORM! WHERE ARE MY CLONES!!!???" A scream rages across the hallway from above.
"AAA shit! It’s Elder Xin, he’s here to inspect the clones. Quickly, get in line with the others! And for fuck’s sake, don’t do or say anything! If he finds out that your control nail has failed to take hold, he will destroy you instantly, and neither you or I want that to happen now, do we?"
"Right!" I nod, and rush to the end of the clone line, assuming position and staring blankly at nothing like a puppet.
"YIIII GOOOOORE! STOP MAKING ME WAIT!"
"I’M DOWN BY THE PODS, SENIOR! I WAS JUST FINISHING THE EXTRACTION PROCESS"
Elder Xin comes stomping down the stairwell, and harumphfs at the sight of Yi. He’s a tall guy in green chinese robes, thin but well built, with a split pointy gray moustache and sharp goatee adorning his face. His face and skin is of a darker hue, almost tanned, and he has some major dark bags under his eyes, like he had not slept the whole week. Which might actually be the case.
He has a paper fan in his hand, and I can see Yi flinch at the sight of it.
He begins to patrol in front of us, stepping from clone to clone and inspecting us like cattle, me included. I just keep my mouth shut and reactions to a minimum, least I give myself away.
"Wonderful! This batch is quite impressive, I have to say! 13 out of 13 successful…"
"12, Yi Gore interrupts him. 12, senior."
"12? Why? What happened?"
"Last clone is...slightly defective. The roots are damaged, but it has also gained a positive mutation, so I would request permission from Senior to allow me to study it."
"Ah, well, that’s a shame...still no perfect batch as of yet. I was hoping my new version of the improved growth serum would fare better this time. Very well, do as you please, then dispose of it once you’re done with your research. We don’t have enough sect resources to feed another pointless mouth."
"Yes, Senior!"
"Alright, you are then authorised for the next step. You will proceed with training the clones in the Hero Beguilement Techniques starting next morning at sunrise. I have granted you rights to unlock their Tier 1 and Tier 2 memories. Until then, get these clones parked inside of their lodgings."
"Immediately, Senior."
After that, the elder left, and I was stuck following after Yi with the other clones. He took us through many winding passageways, across quite a few stairwells and floors, until we finally reached the topside. The Lab had been built into the side of a mountain, rights into the bedrock. It was nighttime outside, and as soon as I stepped out of the Lab’s exit, I was welcomed by the vast expanse of the Universe, painted in a billion stars across the sky. You could have almost picked my jaw off the floor, when I saw the TWO moons in the sky, which had cemented the last traces of my doubts that this was indeed, a different world. When Yi saw me stop and gaze like an idiot at the starry sky, he only gave me a bittersweet smile, then nudged me along with the rest of my “siblings” towards a nearby hovel, where the clones “slept”.
Of course, I failed to get any shuteye, with my mind being in a total mess, wondering what tomorrow would bring.