//Writing Soundtrack: NieR: AutomatA OST Remix
When I came to I was sprawled on the walkway and everything was pure darkness again. My head was hammering like I had been drinking for three days straight and my entire body buzzed with energy. And on top of all that I felt sick, my stomach feeling like I had eaten an entire bear three times over.
Eventually I realised there was a little notification icon in the corner of my vision and concentrated on it.
WARNING: Suffering mana excess!
WARNING: Suffering mana excess!
Alert: [ERROR] initiating mana burn!
Alert: No Skills formed for mana burn!
Alert: [ERROR] initiating forced Evolution!
Alert: Searching Database for Evolution Path with high mana burn capabilities.
Alert: Evolution Path [She who wanders the Stars] found.
Alert: Subject [Hexclaw Hatchling] NULL is not eligible for Evolution Path [She who wanders the Stars].
Alert: [ERROR] overriding permission!
Alert: Override…
Error: Override Error!
Alert: [ERROR] overriding permission!
Alert: Override…
Error: Override Error!
Alert: Override Error! Searching Database for eligible Evolution Path with given criteria…
Alert: Searching…
Alert: Searching…
Alert: Searching…
Alert: Expanding Search…
Alert: Searching…
Alert: Searching…
Alert: Searching…
Alert: One entry found.
Alert: Evolution Path [Antimatter Hexclaw] found.
Alert: Initiating Evolution to [Antimatter Hexclaw].
Alert: Initiating Evolution…
Alert: Physical Adaptation increased. New Skills acquired.
Alert: Mental Adaptation increased. New Skills acquired.
Alert: Cybernetic Adaptation increased. New Skill acquired.
…
…
Alert: Evolution complete! Congratulations. You have evolved to [Antimatter Hexclaw]!
Alert: Subject [Antimatter Hexclaw] NULL mana density still unstable! Remove excess mana to balance out mana density!
What? WHAT?! Before I did anything I quickly checked my status, noting in passing that you didn’t actually need to say Status out loud.
NULL
Tier: 3
Species: Hexclaw Swarm Intelligence
Evolution Path: [Antimatter Hexclaw]
Cybernetic Enhancements: [ERROR], Unknown
Antimatter Hexclaw
Born from energy made physical, the Antimatter Hexclaw is a rare and dangerous species, capable of reshaping reality to their will and creating things out of nothing. Physically resilient, although not especially strong, their strength lay in their Creation and Antimatter Magick, as well as their high intelligence.
NULL diagnosis:
Level: 1
Physical Adaptation: 27.2%
Mental Adaptation: 25.0%
Cybernetic Adaptation: 64.8%
Skills:
[Universal Language Adaptation]: Enables you to understand any spoken and written language, although speaking them may take time to adapt to, depending on your vocal organs.
[Manasight]: Enables you to see Mana.
[Resilience to the Matter]: You were reborn from the energy that makes all with a greater understanding of how it works. You have increased resilience towards anything made from matter or antimatter.
[The Heart of the Matter]: At the Heart of all lives energy. You were there when it remade you, now you can use those processes to remake yourself given time. You have increased regeneration as long as you are in a physical reality.
[Understanding of the Matter]: Live and Death, energy and matter, all things must exist in balance. You have seen what can happen when that balance shifts. Enables the use of magick in the Matter and Antimatter Categories.
[Taking Control of the Matter]: You were reborn from the fundamentals of existence and have the knowledge and wisdom to use it. Creation is but a thought away and given time reality will bend to your will. Enables creation of matter and antimatter at will.
[Wisdom of Life and Death]: Awoken in an unfamiliar body, in the middle of a place you do not recognise, you find yourself unsure of reality. Yet, this is but the beginning. You have faced your demise and pulled through. In time all will make sense, and you know how to survive long enough to have the time necessary.
Alert: Finish the adaptation process to finalise Skill formation.
Alert: Insufficient information on [ERROR]. Use at your own risk!
I was stunned into silence for a good few minutes, reading my new status over and over, just laying there on the walkway. This was… a lot. Did the other Evolution Path’s get stuff like this too? Honestly, it all sounded a bit much, especially since this was my first evolution. If all Hexclaws evolve like this I would not be surprised if we get hunted into extinction.
Then again, I had to do something outrageously stupid to get this. Touching Antimatter of all things was definitely up there in terms of stupidity. I was not an expert on it, well I kind of was now I guess, but that stuff was highly volatile when getting into contact with normal matter.
I also didn’t miss that I jumped three Tiers, from 0 to 3. I didn’t know if that was normal but I was guessing not. Well, I couldn’t say for sure until I learned more about it.
I also didn’t know what to make of the excess mana density, it sounded bad and given that I felt awful, overstuffed, and weighed down I should probably do something about it.
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
After a few minutes I sat up and looked myself over. My broken leg was as good as new, so I probably had been out for a long time. I did notice that my colour scheme had shifted. Instead of the previously soft and pale white chitin it had now taken on a dark grey colour and was significantly harder. Surprisingly it didn’t hinder my ranges of motion whatsoever, shifting slightly whenever I needed it to.
My chest had shrunken slightly, which I didn’t know how to feel about, and my small pair of manipulator arms had been joined by another pair. Which had to be the most useless thing that I could have gotten out of this, since I had yet to find a use for those.
Well, it could have been worse I guess.
I also noticed the feel of a new appendage behind me and turned around, seeing a second tail. This one, while just as long as the first, didn’t have a poison stinger or eyes, instead ending in a deadly looking tailblade about my height in length.
All three of the new appendages were sore, probably from growing them, which made me wonder where I got the energy to do that from.
Well, apparently whatever the hell had happened did give me magical powers, so maybe magic is a reasonable explanation from now on. Stuff just got more and more complicated…
Talking about magic, I still had excess mana and it didn’t take a genius to figure out that that was the stuff you needed for magic. Or maybe in my case Magick, although I had no idea where the difference lay.
I had an instinctive understanding of what my Skills could do, and both [Understanding of the Matter] and [Taking Control of the Matter] told me how to use my magic. Or in the case of [Understanding of the Matter] Magick.
For the Creation Magic I needed only to think of what I wanted. If I just thought of a bar of iron I would get just that. But if I wanted to make, say, a computer out of nothing I would need to have a detailed understanding on how every little part was built. Which, of course, I didn’t have.
My Magick was a whole lot more complicated in comparison. The smallest Spells I could cast were the Antimatter Bullet and the Matter Spear respectively, although even those required loads of mana and were incredibly destructive. If it weren’t for the fact that I might blow the entire starship to pieces if I used those, it would have been a great way to get rid of my excess mana. But for the moment, I had to rely on Creation Magic.
I stood up, preparing myself for my first spell, but was interrupted by a sudden urge to vomit. Apparently moving too much had been a bad idea.
I doubled over, unable to stop myself from throwing up all over the walkway. What I did cough up was… much less yet also much more disgusting than I would have thought it could be.
The substance was viscous and glowing a bright white. It didn’t seem to be any form of actual stomach fluid, instead it seemed to be… liquid mana. Then I remembered that I had one last new skill [Manasight], but so far I had not seen anything weird. Once I was finished hacking up part of the excess mana running through me I tried to concentrate on [Manasight] only to realise that using it would be as simple as opening my third set of eyes. And so I did. And immediately closed them since the liquid mana on the walkway was orders of magnitude brighter to my new senses. It had been like looking straight into the sun.
Okay, I needed to deal with this excess mana thing. I had difficulty concentrating, since my… mana-eyes? Still hurt like crazy, so I tried to focus on something simple that could still help me. I had no detailed understanding of firearms or god forbid the bullets needed for them, so I couldn’t do the one thing I would have loved to do. Getting some ranged attack options.
Well, for the moment I had to do something a lot more simple.
Technically I didn’t need clothing, for two reasons. The first was the simple fact that there was nobody around, and the second was that I didn’t have anything to cover up. But I was used to running around dressed and honestly being naked, even if I wasn’t cold, wasn’t exactly comfortable to me. So that would be the first thing to deal with, now that I could just magic up items.
With a thought I pulled on [Taking Control of the Matter] and I felt the Skill answer. I understood enough of fibres that I could create something passable, even if it would never be especially comfortable or protective. But just being covered and using up mana was enough for me.
A sudden flash of inspiration made me experiment a little with this. Since it wasn’t going to be very protective otherwise, why didn’t I try adding some graphene to the whole thing? While not an expert, I knew enough about the theory behind individual graphite layers and what could make them strong that it should work. Hopefully.
So I imagined a hoodie about my size, and with additional slits on the back for my claw-arms, made out of normal cotton fibre inlaid with graphene, and pushed as much mana into it as I could.
Pushing the mana into it was a weird sensation, and I could already tell that I would need to work on improving on that front.
After a moment a hoodie popped into existence in my hands, just as I had imagined it. Well, not exactly. The Quality was definitely not as good as it could be. On the front there was a line of text that I had stolen from one of my favourite books of all time. It read ‘I went to another universe and all I got is vast magical power’. I chuckled at my own joke that nobody probably would ever understand. Jason, never fucking change man.
When I inspected it more thoroughly the Interface popped up once more.
Alert: Item creation successful.
Alert: Created Item [Graphene Reinforced Cotton Hoodie].
[Graphene Reinforced Cotton Hoodie]
A simple hoodie made by NULL with reinforcing graphene inlays.
Effect [Mana Battery]: Due to the excess mana used in its creation, this item can be used as a mana battery.
Effect [Reinforced]: Due to the graphene reinforcement this item is more physically resistant.
“Well, this went much better than I would have thought.”, I said to myself as I put the hoodie on. It was a tad big, but that didn’t bother me much. What reassured me was that the feeling of being overstuffed subsided a little. It wasn’t gone yet, but it did decrease.
“Maybe it’s time for some pants”, I mused, and thought about what I wanted. I had never been a big fan of jeans, but that was mostly because… crotch related reasons. Which no longer was an issue. Well, hell. Time to make myself some jeans.
As it turned out jeans felt awful on the chitin of my legs. So I scrapped my first pair of pants, which was actually quite easy to do. I could undo everything I did create, although reabsorbing the mana used in its creation was painful. As quickly as I could I made the next thing that came to mind, a pair of hotpants, with the same graphene reinforcement. I dumped every last bit of mana into it that I could muster.
Alert: Item creation successful.
Alert: Created Item [Mana-Graphene Reinforced Hotpants].
[Mana-Graphene Reinforced Hotpants]
A simple pair of hotpants created by NULL with excess mana and reinforcing graphene inlays.
Effect [Mana Reinforcement]: Due to excess mana used in its creation, this item is resilient against magical attacks.
Effect [Reinforced]: Due to the graphene reinforcement this item is more physically resistant.
My entire being was sore now that I had used up all the mana I still had in my system and I felt weak and exhausted.
“Maybe it’s time to get some rest. Today had been… a lot”, I said to myself, looking around. Surprisingly enough I wasn’t tired per se, but I did feel the exhaustion nagging in my mind. Since I didn’t like the idea of sleeping here, as not only was it very likely that my absorbing the antimatter thing, probably a reactor of some kind, triggered to some senses, but it also wasn’t very comfortable.
Making my way back the way I came I found the elevator once more. It took me some effort to unblock it, before I took it upstairs again. Once there I took some time to look around, looking for a cabin or some such that was far away from the rest of the ship and could be locked or otherwise blocked. It took some looking but I did eventually find what I was looking for. It was a small cabin, barely large enough for a person to live in with a bed and a desk, but it was all I needed, especially since the door could be locked by using my [ERROR] override.
I layed down on the bed, staring at the ceiling. Today truly had been a lot, and now that I had time to settle I found myself wondering if all this was real. Then again, I did experience enough pain to be almost certain it wasn’t a dream. But where the hell was I? Contemplating these and more questions my mind drifted off into the land of dreams.
Interlude - The Multitude
//Soundtrack - www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5VsgMRttvQ
We are the multitude. We are the Hive. Yet the Prime did nothing to start the Hive. While we knew why we still did not like it. Of course, we could not go against the deal, that would not benefit the Hive. But we still yearned for it. We were tasked with providing our Prime with the necessary tools, skills, and Skills to survive. To prepare her for what was to come. But we all agreed that she was irritating. Not only did she not understand the need to require knowledge of the materials we needed for the Hive and for her survival, she managed to not only hurt us, but also to nearly kill us by tinkering with mana sources far greater than anything even a Tier 9 could handle!
If it hadn’t been for the one tool we were given to interact with her, we would be dead, the Hive lost, and our mission failed.
Truth be told, we had been surprised by what the tool was capable of. If we hadn’t intervened she would have gotten a Tier 25 Evolution Path. On paper that was great, but with her low adaptation she would have torn us out and shredded us.
Either way, it was time to get to work. It had told us that eventually we would be able to communicate with her, but that required a second body. And we did need that capability. If she continued like this chances were good that we would die.
Despite the irritating feeling of the fibres she dressed himself in, we didn’t destroy it. We had to be very careful with upsetting her. So we endured.
Unlocking the strange metallic gate was easy with the tool given to us, although it still felt weird to use it. It had told us the general capabilities of the tool, but not the details. And it was far too advanced to get a hold of its capabilities by instinct. So we needed to try what we could.
We knew what we needed, luckily. That had been ingrained in us as part of the deal. Otherwise the task would have been impossible. For that, we were grateful at least.
We started with collecting the basics, materials for upgrades and enhancements, since biomass was hard to come by without food. Not that we needed food to survive, but it was necessary to create the Hive.
The issue was that we did not have the amounts of time we would have preferred, needing to acquiesce to the times she was not awake. So we had to be very studious in our planning. Luckily for us, we were not bereft of consciousness if she had control. While we could not act on our own, we could observe and plan.
Using the plans we made during the time the Prime was fooling around, we managed to grab a lot of the basic materials needed later on. And even though we could not find any biomass, we did find a lot of other things. Basics for cybernetics, materials for strengthening our physical body once the time for evolution came. Knowledge we needed for the finalisation of Skills. All in all, it was a good haul. We just had to hope that she wouldn’t do something stupid with them. But we had planned for it, planned for all the eventualities we could think of to set our long term plans into motion.
We are the multitude. We are the Hive. And we will be the ones to rule the world. And if we had to train the Prime to do so, we would.