I slowly start to open my eyes, I look around in a daze. Suddenly I remember, the ritual, the will of the world, the primal force of nature. I open my eyes and look around my surroundings. I sigh seeing that I was still in the room where the ritual took place. I look at the centre circle, or where it should have been at least. I could not find a trace of the ritual. It was as if it never happened. I look at the module in the middle of the room. I pick it up and look into it. I see a young man with a dark blue complexion, bright purple hair wearing clothes made of bright green leaves sleeping in a garden filled with many different types of plants, as fairy fyre wisps dance around him.

I take the module to the wooden mannequin lying in the corner. I kneel down beside it and push the module into its chest. I see the wood turn midnight blue and take on the texture of skin. Hair starts to grow on his head, eyes turn more real than just carved holes. The mouth and nose form and he gasps for air. He abruptly opens his eyes, I notice they are pink in colour. He was a bit lanky.

He looks at me and then wraps his hands around me tightly, hugging me. I get flustered for a bit, not used to physical affection, then I also wrap my hands around him. “ You know, that was reckless of you to do a ritual unprepared and freestyle like that, on top of that you even called upon the will of the world. Just to give me a better body? And don’t even get me started with the other force you invoked, why would you do that, just the heart and seed would have let me possess the mannequin independently.” He mumbles into my shoulder.

I let go of him and he also let go of me after that. “From when is it me getting nagged by you for doing reckless things? It’s usually the opposite,” I say with a chuckle. “ And for your knowledge, I did not invoke the other force, it just came when I started the ritual. And I don’t know if you will see me again, so I could not have fixed your body later. So I had to use some extra materials. I used the mimic corpse I had in the jar, so you should be able to function as a normal human, use your previous power and manipulate your body a bit. You should at least make more human-like ears than the ones you have now.” I say pointing at the leaf-fealer-looking things in place of his ears.

He feels them with his hands and then looks at his hands in wonder as he feels the sense of touch for the first time. He then looks at his crotch and scrunches his brow. I see a bit of flesh wiggling in his crotch which was bare like any mannequin’s. I shouted in his face. “No! No! Not in front of me. Just wear these clothes. Do those with your girlfriend.” I just throw the extra clothes I had prepared at him.

I get out of the room after turning the anti-observation array off. I go towards the storefront and see that the sun has already set. I see Jenny tapping on the table in impatience and nervousness . I looked at her, “ Surgery was successful.” She jumps a little, hearing my voice. She almost dashed to the room but as I standing in front of the door she almost bowled into me. “ So impatient in seeing your boyfriend naked? Let him get dressed a little.” As I say that her face flushes.

After about five minutes, Phantom comes through the door in a ghostly form. After moving completely clear of the door his form solidifies. I see him wearing a white cotton shirt and blue jeans. His height around 6’3”. “So that’s why you moved so weirdly when in phantom form. It feels itchy touching things in that form.” He says while nodding sagely.

I see Jenny look at Phantom with a starstruck gaze. I chuckle a bit and say, “ So now I have to get going, that weird feeling is telling me to go into the forest. I don’t know if I will see you again. So bye.”

“Do you have to go alone? Can’t I come with you?” Phantom asks. I look at him and say, “I have said it many times, no you can’t come with me on this. I don’t know why. It’s getting late so for the last time, Goodbye!”

I quickly leave the store and start going into the alleys to shift to the original form.

As I go into some alleys I feel my watcher sensor vibrating. I quickly dodge to my right and drop into a roll. I stand up hurriedly to find a spear made of darkness sticking out of the concrete, where I had just been. I quickly activate my stealth module and try to get out of the alley. As the sensor starts to vibrate, I shift my body to the left to narrowly dodge a shadow spear. I flick a seed towards the direction that the spear came from while putting an attacking module into the seed. I see the seed pulse in a dark purple glow. It then course-corrected to its right slightly. I hear it hit something while I dodge a spear that came from the same general direction as the seed. I hear a slight grunt of pain, when I look up at that I figure covered in glowing purple roots.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

I then hear a feminine voice sigh and say, “ Kids these days! Can’t even handle someone like this. Coming in gloating about their B-rank ability. Cheh! Now he will have to die for knowing about us and so do you.”

As I hear the last thing she says, my sensor goes ham. I backflip onto the wall of the building and start running on the top of the building. Behind me hear a burst of laughter. “ You think you can run from me? Me, The Abyssal Viper? Then run!” I hear more maniacal laughter right behind me.

My sensor starts vibrating again, I leap off the building I was on towards to city wall while activating the glide module in my jacket. My jacket splits from the middle of my back, turning into a pair of black leathery wings. I start gliding to the outer wall, the laughter far behind me.

I then suddenly feel something hit one of my wings. I look over to see a small snake with wings made of shadowy feathers, its scales pitch black and without eyes. It starts to coil around one of the wings, which caused me to spin out and hit the ground. I take an ivory dagger out of one of the side pockets of my backpack. I try to remove the snake by wiggling my wings. When it did not leave my wing I stabbed it with the dagger which left a white mark on its pitch-black body. I started to scream in an echo-like hiss as its body started to dissolve around the white mark. It bit my left wing in its death throws as it finally died.

I then start to scale the building next to me. As I start to book it towards the walls. After some minutes I get over the wall under the watch of a sleeping guard. As I start to navigate my way through the forest, I feel stinging on the left side of my abdomen. I look over to see that the whole left side of the jacket is wispy black. I quickly take off my jacket and found that a bit of the wispy black stuff was on the spot that was stinging.

I suddenly hear laughing. I hear, “ See I told you, you would die. That is my special venom. It has no antidote as it learns from whatever it has killed. That means that as it kills more of your cells it will get more efficient at killing you. Nothing will stop your death, so I am leaving you here, bye.” She said in a tone as if she was talking to a corpse.

I try to fight it with my aether but it doesn’t do anything. I then remembered the nanite cores that I had. Those were said to be able to change a body to adapt to almost anything. As I had felt that I could not have had used them to make his module I take those out of my backpack and look at the instructions on them.

I curse as I see them saying that these are meant to be surgically implanted into someone. I look at my side to see that it has already spread much further. I grit my teeth, take the small orb the size of my thumb and put it in the middle of my temple, using aether to mould my flesh and bone to embed the control core near my brain and link it and my brain. I start to get a headache as I feel some new sense trying to integrate itself. I see a flashing screen in front of me.

[Checking systems......

No nanite found matching host biometric and aether signature.

Nanite Forge with host biometric and aetheric link missing.

Please install it to proceed further.]

After reading the message, I take two potions out of my bag and drink it. One of them is a numbing agent that starts to numb my body as soon as hits my stomach and the other is a blood controller which makes my blood not leave my body.

I then make a cut near my heart and put the forge there. Then I use my aether to link it to my body crudely and close my cut. Then a screen flashed before my eyes.

[Nanite Forge linked to the main host body.

Starting production of nanites.

**Errors detected**

** Placement of Forge not on the supply line. Rerouting supply network.**

Delay in nanite production by 32 minutes.]

I grit my teeth looking at the message. Seeing the black stuff spreading faster, I start going towards the spot where the whispers are telling me to go in the hope that it might save me.

I sprint into the forest towards the place the whispers are telling me about. I stumble into a clearing, in the clearing was a ring of flowers, the moonlight shining into the ring. It makes for a beautiful mystic sight. I took a step into the clearing, then another and feel the stinging come back as it overcame the numbing agent. I take another step, then some more, at last, I step into the circle and croak out the words infused with aether, “ Please save me....” Then I black out again.