He found them at the outskirts of the Marewoods, observing the open plains that led to Grensfield and ready to move at the first sign of trouble. But he brought trouble of his own, and with the aid of magic he was faster than any of them could notice, barring Amice.

Crashing down through the trees above, he landed amidst them in a pile of pain and agony. In the commotion most drew their weapons and aimed them his way, surprise etched on their faces, followed by fear and disgust as they looked over his form.

“Sir Alden?” one of them eventually said. There was no knowing who. Descending into a madness of murmurs and questions, Alden could not parse one man’s words from another.

“Where are we, sister?” he heard one of the Oracle’s heads ask.

“I do not know, brother,” came the other’s reply. “Woods. People surround us.”

“Not as we saw,” the brother said.

“Not as we saw,” the sister agreed.

A wave of pain wracked his body once more and the Oracle fell silent, then his vision went. It worsened, the single wave becoming a tsunami that reverberated across his body back and forth from head to toe. Pain was all he knew now; sharp pain, dull pain, burning pain, stinging pain, and a hundred more kinds beside. Half-formed thoughts raced in his mind, there and gone again in an instant, supplanted by some new torturous feeling.

He was dying. Dark certainty gripped him, forced the resistance out of him. He did not have the mana to heal himself, could not focus long enough to do so even if he did. And even if he could, Alden was sure he knew how.

Leaves crunched beside his head and he felt a warm hand clasp his shoulder. Or, at least, what he thought was his shoulder. He could no longer tell.

“Alden,” a soft, reassuring voice said, and for a moment the pain was forgotten. Vision clearing, he saw Amice stood over him.

In the moment of clarity an idea sprung in his mind as clear as day, and he clung to it. He lifted himself from the ground, with Amice offering a helping hand. He looked at the people around him, searching their faces until he found Aerin.

“Mana potions. All of them,” he ordered. Aerin fumbled for them, producing from her pack three vials. Alden downed them, then waited for his mana to recover. Blood trickled from open wounds on every side, and his…their insides became a blot of pain and nausea. He could hear the pulsing of three hearts in his ears, like drums out of sync, and his body was cold.

When his mana had recovered enough he cast Diagnosis magic on himself and shivered. Their organs, all three sets of them, were crowded together, bound beneath several distorted rib cages. Many of the organs themselves had fused together while others still floated freely, completely disconnected from the rest. And, he saw, they were failing. Hours? Days? Alden couldn’t say.

He could fix them. Time was the issue. The organs were one matter, but through the millions of speckled dots that shone in his mind’s eye another problem presented itself. Blood.

Alden and the Oracle were incompatible, the fusion doomed to rejection. Already he could see them, thousands of microscopic antibodies formed to react with the foreign blood of the Oracle.

It was all too quick. Antibodies took time to form. Something was wrong. There was no time to guess as to what.

The Book of Complete Knowledge

ABO Blood Incompatibility

The Book of Complete Knowledge

Liver

The Book of Complete Knowledge

Intestines

The Book of Complete Knowledge

Kidneys

Opening the blue screens, Alden poured over them, thinking quick. There was not enough time.

“Aerin, cast Diagnosis magic on me,” he ordered. “Remove the excess organs. Theirs, not mine. Keep their heads attached.” Aerin nodded hesitantly, then cast her magic with shaking hands. Spikes of pain shot through him, and the Oracle’s heads began to wail as flesh sloughed off their combined form.

Splitting his attention in two, Alden scrolled through the blue screen, learning all he could. He conjured Diagnosis magic once more, this time more focused, and searched his blood and theirs. The two were opposites; on one end was the Oracle, the universal receiver, and the other him, the universal donor. Good, he thought. He needed only to remove their blood from his own.

The other half of his attention was fixated on Aerin’s work. Sloppy and unrefined, her magic was a hatchet that cleaved away at his flesh and organs. Then she would cut a gaping red maw in his side and scoop out the excess, only to close it once more. Twice his vision blackened, whether from the pain or blood loss he couldn’t say. He had half a mind to stop or scold her, but the work was necessary and, despite how it seemed, she was doing her best. By her fifth go she was breathing so heavily Alden thought she would collapse, her magic now so weak it took nearly twice as long to accomplish what she had at the start.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

He turned to Amice and asked “Can cultivation heal?”

She gave a concerned look, then nodded slightly. “Somewhat,” she said.

“Do what you can to stop the bleeding, then. Aerin, focus on removal, let Amice handle the rest.”

The mage nodded and got to work.

Setting about his reading, time passed until a flare of pain distracted him and Alden saw that night was soon approaching. The lump of flesh and bone and viscera that once was his chest had shrunk significantly, though its form was still grotesque to look upon, stained red from dried blood. Beneath him was a pool of what had once been the Oracle’s body, so immense that it stood halfway to his knees.

Beside him Amice knelt with hands outreached. Energy spewed forth from her fingertips, hard and dense as stone, intermixing with his own just beneath the skin. Scars littered his body and marked where the intermixing energy was concentrated most. Some still bled.

On the other side was Aerin, collapsed into an exhausted heap, her chest rising and falling quickly and visibly.

Alden raised a hand to Amice, said “Enough.” She stopped and Alden healed himself.

“Will you live?” she asked. “Your insides… I cannot imagine how one can be alive like this.”

“Live,” the two heads of the Oracle said, one after the other, voices weak, soft. Lifeless.

“Do you think we will live, brother?” the sister asked.

“I do not know,” the brother replied. “Visions…unclear.”

“And I cannot hear the fates,” the sister said.

“Our doom is nigh.”

“Quiet,” Alden ordered, and the twins fell silent. “There is still work to be done, choices to be made. The marrow of their bones is poisonous to me. They will need to be expelled.”

“And their skulls?” Amice asked.

That was the question, wasn’t it? Arms, legs, ribs, even parts of the spine, all were easy by comparison, needing only to be separated, removed. The skull was another matter. One wrong move would kill them. And then there was the issue of what to do with their eyes and brains after. New skulls, perhaps? Using his own marrow? A tiring endeavor, but possible.

BECOME ONE.

The words intruded in his thoughts, foreign, loud.

BECOME ONE, the words came again, but different, as if from another speaker.

He cast Diagnosis magic on himself once more, searching the nerves that spread across his body, and saw that a line of neurons spread from brain to brain to brain.

You two, I assume, he thought.

YES, came the reply, and with it an image of sorts, a feeling of pure, raw intent.

“A dangerous suggestion,” he said aloud. He had not expected them to be able to accomplish such a feat, especially with as little mana as they had. With his mana, however…

Alden opened his Status screen.

Health: 176/2670

Mana: 232/?080

Stats

Strength: 2?9

Intelligence: ?39

Wisdom: 7?0

Dexterity: ?35

Agility: ??1

Endurance: 24?

Luck: 10?

Charisma: 8?

New Skills

P??p?e?y Rank:?

Mul??-M??d Rank: F

A mess of words and numbers hovered before him. He could barely make sense of them, reading and rereading them what must have been twenty times before he caught on. The System could no better understand his situation than he could. All it knew was that he had changed, and, as the letters and numbers before him shifted, it knew he was changing still.

When had it happened? At the start, when the fusion began? Must have been. He wouldn’t have noticed it then, the merging of their mana cores. Assuming there was anything to notice to begin with. This was new territory, after all.

Amice tilted her head at him in confusion.

“I can hear them in my mind,” he explained, yet confusion still plagued her look. Explaining further would do no good. How could she understand? He barely understood it himself. Nothing like this had ever happened.

“Choice…” the brother said, the words barely audible.

“...made…” the sister said, so quiet Alden thought for a moment he had imagined them.

“There has been a consensus between us three. It will take time. Have the scouts spotted anything?”

“Movement in Grensfield, lots of shouting. Nothing in our direction. Gosfrid suspects they’re retreating.”

“Good,” he said, giving the matter no thought, unexpected as it was. All that mattered was that there would be no interference. “Are there any more mana potions?”

Amice shook her head, and so Alden waited and studied.

Through study Intelligence has increased.

+5 to Intelligence

The process did not take long, but was brutal work. Peeling their malformed skulls open from the bottom, Alden severed the sister’s eyes from her brain, causing her to let loose a bloody shriek. He severed the nerves from their brains to their vocal cords next, silencing the sister, but her shriek continued in his mind, long and loud and deafening. Had he the mana, he would have eased her pain. After that, he pulled their brains into his chest and expelled what remained of their skulls.

Combining their brains with his own came next. Slow work, he dared not guide the nerves and neurons personally, despite the increased efficiency it would provide. Mistakes with them would be too costly. Instead he used his will and mana alone, and hours passed.

Then, just as morning came, the deed was complete.

Fusion Complete

Stats have been altered to accommodate.

In recognition of this monumental achievement the Intelligence will be increased and the necessary Experience Points for level up will be provided.

Reward: 50 bonus points to Intelligence, 22,470xp.

Level Up

Reward: 6 Stat Points