Chapter 281 - The Sharpest Lizard That Ever Sharped III

Though Boris made it home safe and sound, he spent the night largely sleepless. His body continued acting up, shifting between phases of excitement and lethargy. It was not necessarily the lack of rest that bothered him, but rather the inability to burn his excess energy. Though he could certainly exhaust himself by heading outdoors and chasing his tail, the lizard was unable to shake the jittery sensation that continued to pulse through his body. He simply had to wait around until it finally abated.

Of the six hours he had lain in his bed, five were spent dealing with the annoying palpitations and their aftermaths. Had he not been a weapon, the lack of sleep would surely have ruined the next day, but his constitution ensured that would not be the case. His consciousness only faded as a means to stave off his boredom between the more entertaining bits of his mistress’ journey. Like all the times when food was served.

It was precisely during one of those times, and not during any of his midnight misadventures, that the lizard finally understood the scope of his problem. When presented with a full plate of food, including the forks and knives that he typically enjoyed, Boris found himself completely disinterested. The dish’s quality was certainly a contributing factor, but it was not necessarily at fault. He had a solid track record of gulping down his mistress’ cooking, regardless of how burnt or raw it may have been. And yet, he was paralyzed, stuck staring at the pitch-black shoggoth eggs with none of his usual fervour.

He focused on the burnt shells for a total of ten seconds, enduring his mistress’ expectant stare before turning around and returning to the weapon rack. He was under the vague impression that he heard his mistress drop a plate, but he was unable to process the words in detail. Another attack had started right as he returned to his place.

Each pulse would start in his core and bounce back inside of him when it reached some extremity or other, radiating through his body in waves. It was precisely the bouncing that caused his discomfort. It pushed against his frame, wanting but unable to burst from the seams. When he directed his consciousness towards the echoes, he found that the individual bits of discomfort did not last quite as long as expected. It felt like his body was growing, even though his physical size remained unchanged.

It took a random experiment—the idea for which suddenly popped into his mind in the middle of a yawn—for Boris to realise that he could control it. It didn’t always listen, but he could shift it around in his body whenever he put his mind to it. With just a bit of practice, he found that he had no trouble keeping it suppressed. And the more he played around, the more malleable it became. The energy soon found itself listening to his whims, cycling in, out, and through his body on demand. He had the idea to shape the energy into a blade, but his experiment was interrupted when he spotted a large spider with its face glued to the window.

The mechanical arachnid scrambled out of sight almost immediately. Curious, Boris climbed outside and followed it to the roof, where he found the creature waiting with a net between its feet and jaws. It released the sticky web on top of him, knocking him to the ground and gluing him to the garden. The confused ikarett flailed his limbs, but he was only further entangled. Transforming his body didn’t work; even with his limbs turned to sharpened blades, he was unable to cut through the webs. He grew to his maximum weight when the spider approached, but unlike the red-skinned man, the machine wasn’t discouraged. It wrapped him up in a ball and lifted him with ease. Boris considered teleporting to his mistress’ side, but he dismissed the choice as he recalled that she was still cooking. He didn’t dare imagine how cross she would have been if he happened to deface the already ruined dishes she had in progress.

Thus, he found himself at the arachnid monster’s whims, with no option but to sit around as it put him on its back and transported him out of town. The spider proceeded without concealing itself, but while many of the arviads were already awake, none thought to stop it and help. The few that labelled it an abnormal sight were disparaged by their peers, who decried that life in Vel’khan was already inherently abnormal.

After roughly ten minutes of walking—the other living weapon wasn’t very fast on its feet, and his weight certainly worked against it—it brought him to the forest where it set him down, transformed its front legs into a pair of scythes, and swung them at his face.

Though it certainly looked the part of a telling blow, the attack neither fazed the lizard nor left a mark on his otherwise perfect body. It was a result that the spider seemed to have expected. It lowered its head with a sad chitter, popped him back on its back, and continued towards the city.

They lined up outside the gate as would an ordinary pair of travellers and prepared to enter the city. The guards were competent enough to react with caution when they spotted the unfamiliar spider monster, but their intervention came to an end with the advent of a large spiky lobster. The blue-grey crustacean, who had emerged from an office of sorts, lightly petted Boris on the head and waved them right through.

Once past the gate, they proceeded through the rest of the city unhindered. A few quick twists and turns took them straight to Temple Street. The devout were plentiful despite the hour; there were hundreds of people heading up and down the cliff, some with offers or donations in hand, and others feeling refreshed with the combined weights of their prayers and sins taken off their chests. Of those that laid eyes on the two weapons, most were surprised or concerned, but there were some that stared with fervour and adoration.

Not even all the attention put a halt in the spider’s steps; it carried the lizard roughly halfway up the cliff before entering a cathedral with two massive spears crossed over its entrance. Many of the churchgoers immediately clasped their hands and bowed, with one particularly pudgy nun even crying at the sight of the visitors. Boris was confused. He had never heard of the spider-like weapon and refused to believe that it was so popular; he was supposed to be the most well-recognized mascot in town.

While he stewed over the horrifying revelation, the spider took him deep into the temple, bringing him up to the second floor and into a large, open atrium. The room changed immediately as he entered it, much as the forest had the previous night. The skylit room turned dark as it was replaced with a long marble hall, filled with all sorts of people, statues, and weapons. A lady appeared right in front of him, not a weird, armless centaur like the nice lady he had met the previous day, but a normal lady with a torso and arms growing out of the front of her many-legged body.

She had shockingly pale skin, rosy red lips, and eyes of the same colour. There were a pair of horns growing from her head and a strange metal-looking thing growing from her back. Upon closer inspection, he found that her lower half greatly resembled the creature that had escorted him to the location, albeit with a few differences in the various details.

She didn’t seem very happy for some odd reason. Her lips were twisted into a frown, and she advanced through the building with a series of heavy stomps. The floor came apart with every step. Every tile in her path was either punctured, cracked, or flipped, and the pillars hardly did any better. She ran right through them, collapsing them behind her as would a living storm.

“Return my dagger.” Her chest heaved, dramatically rising and falling with every weighted breath. “Undo whatever you have done to the Thirsting Blade and return it immediately!”

Boris tilted his head. It was the same demand the smaller spiders had made, but he didn’t recall touching any daggers.

“How dare you make a fool of me!” The goddess raised an arm and formed a simple magic circle at the tip of her fingers. A trio of glowing chains was ejected from the spell, each pulsing with a distinct reddish-pink as they captured the lizard in their grasp. Raising him up to eye level, she stuck a hand through his gut and felt around, only for her face to pale. “It’s gone? No, no, that can’t be right. I still sensed it yesterday.” She narrowed her eyes and looked at the lizard again. What started as an intense gaze, however, soon shifted to a nervous sweat. “Mruh!? Wait, I swear… But the energy’s still there, so? Huh!?”

Boris made a squeaking sound before she could get too carried away and pointed a foot at his stomach.

“Oh, uh, oops, sorry.” She retracted her limb and set him down on the ground as she sank into thought, muttering something or other under her breath all the while. “Wait so if he has its energy then… but no that can’t be right. That shouldn’t be possible.”

With the fresh wound already closed by the time he hit the ground, Boris had little to do but sit around and stare while the goddess sorted through her thoughts. And oh so very long a while it was. If not for his body’s strangeness, the ikarett was confident that he would have long fallen asleep. When she finally sorted through her thoughts, after what seemed like an entire hour, the spider goddess first began by snapping her fingers. Hundreds of massive, glowing chains erupted from the ground and put everything back into place. They vanished as soon as the work was done, leaving only a trail of pink particles in their wake.

With that done, the goddess teleported the pair to her throne and seated herself upon it. Her arachnid legs were crossed, while her humanoid half had its back held perfectly straight.

“Welcome, mortal, to the divine realm,” she said, in an unbefitting, magnanimous tone.

Boris began to tilt his head, as if to ask her about all the events previously transpired, but she refused to acknowledge the inquiry. A chain caught his face halfway through the motion and unmouthed his silent question.

“I-I am Vella, the goddess of war,” she said, with a stutter. “And I greet you now with the opportunity to become one of the lucky few that shall receive my blessing. All I will need is for you to pledge your undying loyalty.”

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The lizard paused for a few moments before attempting to shake his head, but again, he was denied by his glowing fetters.

“It is an honour to be able to serve me,” said the goddess, through gritted teeth. “Now be a good boy and let me take control of your life.”

His third refusal was met with the same failure as the previous two. The blatant denial almost seemed to pop a vein in the goddess’ forehead, but she calmed herself with a series of deep breaths and slowly approached him, face to face. “You will become my servant. Now take my hand and accept.”

Creaking against the chains, the lizard finally managed to shake his head. Albeit just barely.

“I don’t think you understand, lizard,” she hissed, her voice laced with venom. “I am not giving you a choice, I am making a dema—”

“I would say that you are the one that is failing to understand.”

Vella’s already snow-white face paled as another female voice echoed through the chamber. Gulping, the spider raised her eyes to see the door to her cathedral flung open. Two humanoid figures made their way inside soon after, one a goddess with a cosmic glare, and the other a god with a refined air about him.

“I told you to stay out of her business.” The goddess’ horns shone with a dazzling purple light as she made her way down the aisle. “Did you think that I would fail to see through this idiotic, harebrained mess you call a scheme?”

“Uhhhmmm errr… W-what are you going on about, Flux?” Vella stepped in front of her ikarett guest and forced a smile. “A-are you okay? D-did you hit your head or something?”

“You lie like a child.”

“I’m not lying!”

She opened up a light blue pane with one of her legs and slid the back of her temple forward as stealthily as she could. The resulting squeeze sent Boris’ spirit into another dimension, where he would not be so easily discovered—or at least that was what would have happened had she succeeded. Her control panel flashed with a bright, red Access Denied, no doubt in part thanks to the dragon plugging away at a pane of his own.

When she looked at him, her mouth agape with horror, he only returned a gentle smile. There was not a shred of guilt upon his handsome features, even as he condemned her to her fate.

“For the record,” he said. “I am sorry.”

“You liar!” shouted the spider. “You’re enjoying this even more than she is!”

“I said I was sorry,” replied the god of accursed destruction, “not that I wasn’t enjoying myself.”

“Damn you, Builledracht!” shouted the spider. “You’re despicable!”

“I will be taking that as a compliment. Now how about you step aside? I’m not quite sure how long Flux’s patience will last.”

Vella gulped as she looked both gods in the eye, her spider set focused on the dragon, and her humanoid set on the qilin. “C-come on! I wasn’t even doing anything against the rules! I-I was just getting my divinity back from this l-lizard thing!”

“If you used either of your brains for half a nanosecond, you would know that we already caught you red-handed,” said Flux, with a sigh. Holding out her hand, she apported Boris into her grasp and set him down between them. “I will not be so unreasonable to say that you cannot exert any degree of influence on him.”

Vella’s face lit up immediately. “Then does that mean I ca—”

Flux raised a finger and cut her off. “But I will also not allow you to act unsupervised. You will abide by the standard procedure and offer one option for ascension laden heavily with your influence. If he fails to select it, then that will be the end of that.”

“What!? That’s just plain ridiculous!” shouted the spider. “The whole point of the dagger was to stop him from ascending! I can’t just backpedal on that now! Especially not after he’s stolen its power!”

Flux breathed a tired sigh. “And I am saying that going so far is completely unreasonable.”

“How else am I suppose—”

“You aren’t,” said the qilin. “Mortals are not toys, Vella. They have wills of their own, and we cannot force ours upon them. Sometimes, oftentimes, they will make choices that do not coincide with our plans, and that is simply something that we must accept. Certainly, we can praise or condone their choices, or perhaps deliver judgement upon those within our own fold, but that is not to say that we should behave as tyrants. You must understand, they have wills of their own, thoughts and feelings to be considered in earnest.”

“I know that.” Vella bit her lips and balled up her fists. “You do realise that I’ve been a god for much longer than you, right?”

“I do,” said the other goddess, “and it is precisely the extent of your experience that serves to express your sheer incompetence.”

“Flux, I think she’s had enough,” said Builledracht, with a wince. He couldn’t help but notice the not-so-crocodile tears welling up in the spider goddess’ eyes. “We should get on with our business.”

The goddess of the eternal flow frowned briefly, but soon lowered her head with a nod. “Yes, let us move on.” She raised one of her hands and slowly swept it from left to right. The spider goddess’ domain expanded as she did, growing to five times its previous width. Just enough room to show the ikarett his choices.

“Hey! I didn’t say you could mess with that!” shouted the goddess of war.

“Stop complaining. Finish your entry quickly, or I will initiate the process without your input.”

“Bwuh!? Huh? I haven’t even started! Wait, hold on! Just give me five minutes!”

“You will have no more than a millisecond. I do not have the spare time to deal with the likes of your idiocy.”

“One millisecond to make a class!? That’s just plain ridiculous! Not even Flitzegarde can pull something like that off!”

“Unlike you, some of us are busy,” said the goddess of the flow. “Now hurry along and configure your option before I decide to configure your mind.”

Gulping, Vella shied away from the piercing, nebulous glare and pulled up her panel without another word. She worked as quickly as she could and created a new class object with several parameters defined. To work within the restrictions of the system was rather difficult; there was only so much that she could change without an outright denial—the very same limitation that prevented Flux and Builledracht from simply reviving their extinct species.

She would not have encountered any particular issues if she had simply focused on her own goals, but it was impossible for the goddess to simply overlook the countless suboptimal flaws that littered his design. His original creator had very clearly intended for him to be fodder, and it showed in the way his circuits were arranged. She had to reorder each by issuing instructions to the system to redefine their paths and flows in real time.

“You have half a millisecond remaining,” said Flux.

“Stop rushing me! I’m working as quickly as I can!” Next, she altered the type, and with it the list of properties available to be applied. With so much of her divinity already ingested and incorporated into his body, it was a surprisingly easy task, but the same could not be said for the section that followed. To optimize within the given limits was a nightmare and a half, but she somehow managed to cram in everything she wanted, right as the other goddess narrowed her eyes into a glare. “I’m done,” she said, with a tired breath.

“You went two full milliseconds over. That’s thrice the time I gave you.”

Though she allowed her mouth to serve in its usual capacity, the goddess of the flow had waited until Vella finished her work before laying the lizard’s ascensions bare. As was often the case with living weapons, there was an almost countless number of options; there was effectively a choice for everything he had ever damaged, with each victim offering up its properties to be taken into his fold. It was not necessarily just individuals that provided his options, but mixed groups as well, some logical, others completely random and lacking in coherence.

Slowly, Boris panned his eyes across the room. There were a number of interesting choices hidden in the crowd, such as the Strike Ikarett, which had the ability to transform into a full-body suit, the Magical Stikarett, which could turn any wielder into a twelve-year-old girl, and even the completely unrelated Reaper’s Scythe, which would grant his blade the property of instant death. But while they were certainly novel, the lizard knew better than to select them. His mistress would surely be annoyed if he was to lose any of his previous functions.

After looking through a few others, he eventually found himself focused on a very slightly shinier version of himself. He backed away when he noticed the spider lady light up, but after scanning through the choices again, he pressed his snout against it and made his choice.

His class classification changed from Weapon to Relic and his body was created anew. He would become the sharpest lizard that ever sharped, or as named by the goddess of war, the one and only Ikarett Type Infinite Arms.

___

Boris

Durability: 706980702/706980702

Mana: 32697/32697

Durability Restoration: 196204/second

Mana Regen: 7/second

Ability Scores - 0 Points Available

- Agility: 2011

- Dexterity: 1657

- Spirit: 7586

- Strength: 1517

- Vitality: 565520

- Wisdom: 379

Racial Class: Ikarett Type Infinite Arms - Level 500.00

- Air Resistance Resistance - Level 1.00

- Greater Pain Amplification - Level 1.00

- Infinite Armoury

- Ironclad Defense - Level 597.58

- Napping - Level 1209.41

- Perfect Replication - Level 1.00

- Shapeshifting - Level 379.01

- Soul Link - Level 120.32

- Weight Manipulation - Level 91.23

Primary Class: Lord of Naps: Level 717.83

- Napping III - Level 2916.77

- Sensory Deprivation - Level 812.92

- Sovereign Might - Level 31.20

- Status Ailment Negation - Level 102.10

Secondary Class: Blunt Force Instrument - Level 588.02

- Impact Damage Amplification - Level 198.12

- Napping II - Level 2027.15

Tertiary Class: Holy Relic - Level 1.00

- Blessed Aura - Level 1.00

- Divine Enforcer - Level 1.00

- Napping V - Level 1.00

Unclassed Skills

- Napping VII - Level 8967.11