His nerves were thrumming with anticipation as Logan prepared to deploy [Life Fabricator]. He was about to attempt something he’d never tried before, but he figured it came back to visualization. From his first breakthrough with [Life Cycle Master] by envisioning drilling through a brick wall, to envisioning a deep, endless reservoir to open his Karma pool. Even back to the perception trial when he’d figured out how to grow a star.
If he willed it, he’d have it. It was just a matter of power. Of Karma. This time, he needed every drop at his disposal.
Logan looked down at his armour-clad arms. Karma. Just like that, he dismantled his suit, keeping only his pouch for Ernie and the armour around his neck. Although his Karma pool had gotten large enough that he no longer had to worry about his armour depleting it, he needed every drop right now.
Logan scrubbed a hand through his hair, widened his legs, loosened his shoulders, and then closed his eyes. In the background, he could hear Ernie shifting in his pouch, the ground vibrating, and the far-off sounds of violence as Ernie’s minions continued to fight and hold the line. But he could tell that they weren’t stationary. They were moving.
His heart pounding with urgency, he clenched his teeth, before forcing himself to calm through sheer willpower, taking another deep breath before deploying [Life Fabricator].
It started underneath his feet. Logan pictured himself standing on an immense network of roots, roots forced to bend away from the asphalt. Without a barrier, they would have spread, nature reclaiming the city and going back to its natural state. But the barrier was like a wall of steel keeping everything out.
What weakened a road? Weather, rain, followed by freezing and thawing, wear and tear, repeated ad nauseam.
There was water underneath the road. They were standing in an area closer to the lake that had a high-water table. It was such a problem that residents had filed lawsuits. Condo owners were stuck in sinking, concrete money pits. By now, most developers knew that to build a sturdy building, they had to tunnel deep into the earth, bypassing the high-water table.
This was water from the lake.
Water so immense it would be like wading through a river. And water wanted to move. Water wasn’t stationary unless forced. Forced by the asphalt.
Logan envisioned that water tickling like a stream towards the surface. Then when the soil was saturated, moisture streamed like a water tap, surging against the asphalt barrier up above. Still, it continued, until the stream turned into a river, erupting like a waterspout. Back and forth, frothing like shaking a bowl of lake water.
Up and up, the water continued to flow. But a barrier was just that. With enough pressure, eventually, it would give. A street could only hold on so long before it burst.
Logan helped it along, envisioning the asphalt weakening, like tar in 200-degree heat. The concrete would warp, twist on itself, while pressure surged from down below.
Underneath his feet, Logan felt the ground move.
He held back a smile. Until now, everything had been visualization. He’d hoped that by picturing something in his mind, [Life Fabricator] would make it into a reality. It had been speculation, but now, the evidence was undeniable.
It was underneath his feet.
Warmth radiating throughout his body, Logan felt hope. The first stirrings of conviction made him straighten with resolve. He was on the right track.
Looking down at the ground, Logan deployed the next part of his plan. He’d prepped the soil; the asphalt was weak. There were roots all around him, an explosion of underground networks from the maple trees, thousands of thick chunks of bark followed by delicate filaments. With [Life Fabricator], he no longer needed a seed to grow a specific plant. All he needed was life.
The roots could be repurposed, a solid base for what he really wanted.
Biting his lip, Logan envisioned green sprouts growing from that root network, hundreds of them, spreading and burrowing to the surface. Water saturated the ground; the soil was loose. The perfect breeding ground for what he wanted.
Logan closed his fist, his fingers white knuckled as he willed the roots up, up, at the same time as forcing them to thicken, making them fat, as big as his Cursed Rope, as wide as a fire hydrant.
They grew so rapidly he could feel his Karma draining like someone was sucking on a straw.
Water surged; roots climbed…
“Shit!”
Just like that, the asphalt exploded like an underground excavator had burst through the ground. A chunk of concrete hit Logan on the cheek, another clipping his shoulder, more shattering the apartment building windows on either side.
He could feel Ernie shifting in his pouch, but he knew to keep quiet while Logan concentrated.
Logan ground his teeth. Unconsciously, he’d raised his hands as if he were in prayer, but instead, it was as if he were a magician commanding a green army.
The roots continued doubling, spreading like worms, forcing Logan to back up. Still, he continued, raising the roots like vines, vines so numerous that they could only continue going up. A stab of sharp pain radiated from behind his eyes. Logan hissed as a gush of blood trailed from his nose.
It wasn’t Karma depletion. Not yet. But he was utilizing so much Karma that his body couldn’t keep up.
400/2,028.
300/2,028.
200/2,028.
It was rapidly draining.
His Karma regeneration rate couldn’t keep up, yet Logan knew throwing his free attributes into wisdom to increase it wasn’t an option—he needed to increase his Karma pool so he could unlock [Liche Devourer]!
A vein in his forehead throbbing, Logan disregarded the poker sawing through his head, ignored the pain and persevered.
And as if once he’d started, it fed a self-fulfilling prophecy, the vines continued growing, rising out of the ground like a humongous beanstalk.
They were mutant vines.
Logan nudged them along, making the barrier as solid as possible by interlacing the vines like a patchwork quilt. So thick it would take a battering ram to burst through it. The plant covered the whole street from end-to-end, a massive wall, the apartment buildings on either side.
But there was a problem.
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Gasping, Logan opened his eyes. Around him, the maple trees had withered as if a meteorite had blasted them until they’d fried. Bushes shrivelled, the flowers turned into dust. The vibrant green grass was no more, nothing but brown weeds. Dead.
He’d sucked the life from everything around him, and although the vines were still growing, they were growing slowly. Instead of a surge, it was a trickle.
By now, the vine wall was the height of a single storey building. The barrier would slow the army, but it wouldn’t stop it. Eventually, the rats would climb over it, and Logan would be in the exact same situation all over again.
He needed more life.
And what better life source than the rats?
With his high perception, Logan could hear them. They must have gotten past Ernie’s minions, since off in the distance they crept closer and closer. They continued to surge like hairy, noxious nightmares. An army of elephant rats. Ugh.
“My minions are no more,” said Ernie, sniffing, his voice glum. “All dead. I’m in a web of despair!”
Logan cracked his neck. “You can get more. They’re hundreds of the buggers to choose from.” Just thinking about them made him bare his teeth in anger.
Although the Cursed Rope crackled up above on its electrical currents, Logan believed the emotion wasn’t fed from the rope. Who wouldn’t feel rage surge when forced to fight a mountain of rats? The System had given him the spider rat back at the resort, and that had been bad enough. These frigging things gave him the creeps.
With a blink, Logan took out a handful of diamond dust and sand and then deployed [Mimicry Armour] to reform his gloves and talons. Using his Pink Sock, he soared into the air and aimed for the nearest building. His talons made a nail on chalkboard sound as he scratched the stucco like trying to grasp a sheer cliff face, digging in, taking out a chunk of plaster before finally obtaining a solid grip.
Rather than using his Pink Sock, Logan dug in with his talons. They were so sharp that punching into the stucco was like punching through a pile of jelly. Logan climbed, scaling the building like a mountain climber while Ernie peaked out of his pouch, waving his tentacles and squeeing.
Peering down below, Logan judged he was ten storeys up. That should be high enough.
Logan kicked with his feet, swinging over to the nearest apartment patio and slamming to the ledge. The apartment owners had a barbeque and five patio chairs that faced the street, but more importantly, the patio had a perfect view of his new hedge. Logan could look directly down on it, while still seeing the approaching army.
Peering down, Logan could only gape. He’d created mammoth, carbon-sucking trees, but what he’d grown below reminded him of something from a fairytale.
It wasn’t full of green shoots or leaves. It didn’t resemble a natural plant. Instead, he’d created a solid mass of gnarled roots. Roots that were dark grey, and so brittle they looked like they’d shatter. And yet Logan knew they were solid like a stone. He hadn’t purposely set out to make it look forbidding, but that’s the way it came across. And somehow, he’d managed to sculpt the first hint of thorns.
Well, the System must call his class [Fabled Creation] for a reason.
And yet, Logan wasn’t done.
That’s where the rats came into the picture.
It was just a matter of waiting for them to arrive and for his Karma pool to fill.
1,800/2,028.
1,900/2,028.
2,000/2,028.
That was the best he could get. Making a snap decision, Logan willed out a bucket of sand from his spatial collar and reformed the rest of his armour, from his legs up to his chest plate, to his full helmet and facemask. With a sound of the air sealing, his senses sharpened. The rats were getting closer.
This would be the tricky part.
Although he suspected that he could siphon life from a living animal with [Life Fabricator], he had no idea how this worked. After all, the skill hadn’t siphoned life from Ernie, and he was the closest animal around. That meant that unlike the maple trees, Logan would have to purposely instruct the skill to source its power from the rats.
And there was yet another question… could he suck life from a living animal and repurpose it into something organic like his mutant vines?
It was a hell of a time to test it, but Logan had begun to believe that he shone the best while under pressure. Life or death situations. Without the pressure of the perception trials and the fight with the Silverdagger Clan, he never would have learned that birthing a star was possible, or that he could make flies drop to the floor, dead, with a snap of his fingers.
Being conservative and not trying his best was no way to live, especially when his life was on the line.
Once again closing his eyes, Logan extended his senses, searching for the bright spots of life that represented the rats. They were half a block away but getting closer.
That would give him time to figure this out.
The rats pegged like blobs of life, each one dull. But there were so many of them together that the dullness transformed into a supernova. It was hard to concentrate on only one rather than the swarm.
But once he latched onto a rat at the front, he concentrated on that pinprick of life to the exclusion of everything else. Forming a fist to help hold his concentration, he fixed the rat in his mind and then imagined a tether connecting the rat all the way back to the pile of roots down below.
Keeping that tether fixed, just like before, Logan imagined the roots growing, fattening and spreading like a parasite. But this time, something resisted him.
The roots didn’t want to grow like before. No matter how many times he pictured it, they refused. It was as if they had a mind of their own.
As if they wanted to be… something else.
With a grimace of distaste, Logan envisioned the roots not just as smooth, gray gnarly shoots; he pictured the surface as a living thing. The thorns he’d been excited about, now became claws, a branch root now became a gnarly tail.
As if he’d hit a breakthrough, the plant surged into an explosion of growth with a burst, ballooning in size.
Off in the distance, Logan was still tethered to the dull spot of life that represented the rat, but it was dimming as if a light had been snuffed out.
Ding!
[You have defeated a Level 44 Two-Headed Rat!]
Hell yes! [Life Fabricator] might as well be [Liche Siphon]! It wasn’t draining Karma from the rats, but it was draining their lifeforce.
Holding back a whoop, Logan opened his senses with renewed excitement. The rat swarm had continued to charge, and now they were only fifty feet away.
All the better for him to latch onto them.
This time, Logan didn’t just concentrate on one dull ping, he concentrated on five at once. The sharp jab of pain behind his eyes worsened, blood drizzling down his nose and into his mouth, but Logan didn’t care. Latching onto the five rats, he tethered them to the vines.
Squeezing his other hand into a fist, he wrenched, envisioning the vines multiplying like trickling frost. But to continue the same rapid rate of growth, the plant was forcing him to do what it wanted—take the life he was siphoning and funnel it into a rat vine. Stubs formed on the root like ingrown hairs. On the next root, ingrown hairs burst, transforming into black fur.
Up and up, he grew the plant, until it was as tall as two storeys, then three, thickening the thing so it was the width of a trailer truck. Solid, like a wall.
He wanted it to grow. He wanted to—
Ding!
[You have defeated a Level 46 Two-Headed Rat!]
[…]
[You have defeated a Level 44 Two-Headed Rat!]
[You have defeated a Level 43 Two-Headed Rat!]
[You have leveled up!]
Up above, the Cursed Rope snapped through the air as the swarm passed underneath it. It jumped so fast it was a blur, going too fast for Logan to track as it dive bombed for the nearest rat. Wrapping around its body, it let acid eat into its hide, damaging it, before it jumped to the next. Unlike with smaller animals like the flying snakes, the Cursed Rope could only do so much. But since Logan had threatened it, it was rabid in its need to prove its usefulness.
The rats were twenty feet away.
Logan targeted another group, this time latching onto ten. Even though he could see them with his eyes, unless he concentrated with his senses and recognized the dull pings of life, he couldn’t seem to connect the tether. In a way, [Life Fabricator] was like [Life Cycle Master]. A direct line of sight wouldn’t cut it.
The rats had reached the vine wall and had stuttered to a stop, the ones at the front pawing the ground in confusion.
Once again, Logan disregarded what was happening below and fed life to his plant. Fattening the vines until they had gaping holes that looked like mouths, forcing the vines to continue to spread, to widen the wall, but also to climb.
But still, it resisted him. Logan had a vision of a plant in mind, and it didn’t want to be a plant. With another burst of blood gushing from his nose, frustration surging, Logan decided to take a mental step back.
He had a hunch. Could he…
Just like the mold and the bacteria, couldn’t he ask it what it wanted?
Don’t you want to grow, don’t you want to climb? asked Logan.
The vine shot to attention, shocked. We can talk?
Logan held back a gasp. Unlike the other communion he’d had with the mold, this came back clear, as if he were talking to an intelligent being.
A being that he’d hatched.
Logan took a different tact. What do you want?
To bite, to rend, to swallow, to suck blood down into our roots and nourish our babies.
Logan gulped, a trickling of unease seeping into his belly, making his stomach slosh. What the hell had he managed to grow?