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Chapter 4 - My convulsing body and me

“Perk processing initiated”, Roberion’s body is again submitted for the colorful blinding lines, they contort around his body, and his body relaxes, feeling relief for the first time, Roberion manages a small smile...until it changes to a grim, as the pain comes back with a revenge, the pain was the tasteful pain of evolution, his hurtful body arches, he feels hot, as if his cells were being modified in a cellular level, his bones start to realign little by little, it feels like both the perk acquisition and its functions are working at the same time, like he was being crushed, rearranged and healed at the same time, the convulsing only lowered by the impaired movement of his body.

This doesn’t look good. Roberion pales seeing that although his body is being healed and the pain diminishing, his body is in some mad way eating itself out, and some of his musculature seems to be slowly diminishing. This system seems miraculous, but it can’t give me even first aid, damn, at this pace I will become a dry wizened body, before his panic could rise, after approximately 6 minutes, the process becomes slow until it stops, his body is healed enough to a fighting condition, but a monstrous hunger assaults him.

“That is great”, Roberion says mockingly. Although healed, his body, now healthy enough, convulses more because of his body movements are restored, weirdly enough, after being restored, his body keeps getting damaged. I need a way out of this. There wasn’t anything here that could help him. Aside from the spider, the only thing in this room was the blank roof, walls and the almost white floor, having its white ruined by oil and blood.

Roberion’s convulsing halts a little, with a better mind, he focuses on the spider, and a crazy but supposable achievable idea gets hold of him, There is no denying that this spider is a machine, but it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have some peak mundane materials, for it to be this strong it must have been made of something good, even the exterior metal its made seems high quality, with enough strength he gets up but his body gives signals that the convulsing wasn’t in the past, Let’s work fast.

Trying to find more information on how to absorb materials, he focuses on his status screen:

Level

1

Strength

10 (-4)

Dexterity

14

Intelligence

13

Endurance

12 (-4)

Knowledge

19

Social

8

There was a change to his stats, his knowledge was up by 4, and both his Endurance and Strength were lowered by four, panicking, he tried to focus on the information, but the system answered for him, “Strength and Endurance lowered to reflect current body conditions”, using that as his cue, “System, how can I recover it?”, the system answers him promptly “Recover current body conditions”, not delaying he look over the materials and goes right into the matter of things, “System, can I use the body of this robot spider to improve my stats?”, his body goes rigid, his lobe gets hot, as it gets hot he feels some of his energy vanishing, his weakened body gets worse.

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Ignoring the currency stats of affairs, the system answers, “Peak-stage mundane stainless steel, middle-stage mundane iron, late-stage mundane petroleum-based oil, peak-stage gold components, early-stage circuit board...”, a big list of materials was displayed, not having a clue if he could use something as that oil on his body, he asked, “System can you show what I can use to improve my body?”, the system answer shortly “Mundane materials: Peak-stage stainless steel, peak-stage gold components, peak-stage copper filament, late-stage petroleum-based oil; VIII tier materials: Neutrality early-stage electronic nucleus... VIII tier 100% mortality rate”.

The answer raises more questions than answers, “System, how can I have petroleum oil in my body? What does VIII tier and neutrality mean?”. The questions were also a way to clear some of his confusion with the stranger’s message.

Before he can get an answer his body starts convulsing again, and he falls hard on the floor, ignoring his plea the system answers, “The existence of Petroleum-based, and petroleum-constituted lifeforms are known, for Null biology, mundane material adaptation and transformation needed, higher tiers need alchemy or direct material input by the user or specialist, cost of the process is some of the material do you accept? Yes/No...”.

Before the system could keep on explaining, Roberion yells with his meager forces “YES!!!”, the system answers promptly, “Process initiated, the stats will be increased by: 3 Strength, 6 Endurance, 2 Intelligence.”

“Here we go again”, Roberion tries again to endure the pain, both his convulsion and body change getting hold of him, if someone could see his situation, it would be if he was being assaulted by the colorful lines of the system, while his body was passing through an evolution is undeniable that the damage wasn’t being fixed, it was like if a rotten wood became a rotten iron, even though the iron was tougher, he still rotten and weakened.

His body was improving little by little, and even if he critically analyzed his improvements, he would notice a betterment of his thought process, even if by a marginal number, the only thing he thought that could be the reason would be by using some of the golden component materials, as the why it was doing that, that was a mystery to him, while trying to ask the system more about how the process worked, the system would simply keep quiet, denying him an answer.

Right, it seems better if I kept my line of questions that I had before this whole-, pain assailed his body again, this time being his skin, his skin felt hot as molten steel, and by weird as that would sound, his skins seemed to become tougher, not though as the mechanical spider, but strong enough that if he fought the thing again, it would have a harder time, blessedly his skin and his body didn’t have any visible change if he got a silver color, he would wager that the mission would become a failure before it began, Maybe I could take the spiders job and do some pummeling in the fresh Nulls, as he says that the remembrance of being put down time and time again by the spider resurfaces, ‘No, that guy was good at his job, I need to get out of here and go to that medical yard’.

As the process finishes, his body recovers, consulting just a little, giving him the chance to move again, as he gets up he takes a look around the room, “The system gave it one harder time than me..”, the body of the spider was consumed, it looked like some sort of acid or little ants ate half of its body and its insides, that wasn’t the only change, “Now we are talking, I can get out of—“, a silence falls on the room, I need to remember to act like a Null, talking would send me direct to the recycle or worse, but now I can see that part of the wall changed, it seems like a door I can get through in somewhat.

As the beaten Null walks to the door, he takes a last look at his stats:

Level

3

Strength

13

Dexterity

14

Intelligence

15

Endurance

18

Knowledge

19

Social

8