The cold sea spat penguins with full stomachs over the gravelly coast. Some emerged gracefully from the surf, while others more like got yeeted by the waves towards the nesting area, unwanted loli dakimakuras in a pillow fight. A fat orca observed from her privileged position, stranded on the rocky beach, swiveling her head to try and catch a delicious penguin. She was going to die, but she wasn’t going to care. There was grandeur in passing away like this, in a feast fit for some god particularly fond of bird meat. To consume was what life was about since that fateful day when a Labrador had licked her, showing her the true reason why almost everything breathed: to eat.
Most penguins ignored the orca: half of them because they considered that she provided a valuable service, killing off their competence. And the other half because, after a quick glance, their bird brains concluded the orca was retarded.
Lino was dumbfounded. These penguins were… normal. This was your average earthly fauna. They may have had little quirks in their behavior, but he wasn’t sure he knew what was the normal for this species of penguins. They raised their monochrome heads to stare at him and honk loudly after realizing they weren’t dealing with a really tall peer.
You know, I never imagined sowing chaos among flightless birds would be so funny. Kick that female over there.
“Why would I do that?”
For the sake of my amusement.
“I am certain the old me would consider you a terrible person. Or thing. What are you, exactly?”
You don’t want the truth.
Carefully and with a long step, Lino reached a penguinless spot among the densely packed group of birds and nests. “I am quite positive I want it.”
The truth is I am… me.
“You finally learned the identity function, we could celebrate. But you lack a mouth for cake, and…” Lino stopped sassing to observe a female penguin that had decided to peck his thigh menacingly. He decided he would ignore her, as the animal was merely tickling him. “Whatever, I think the penguins are not happy with my presence here.”
If Lino could interpret the faces of penguins, he would have noticed they stared at him like kindergarten teachers at drunk drivers.
He strode among the mass of honking fish eaters trying to cause the least distress possible among the population. The man he had been would have wanted it that way, and that seemed to be a reasonable guideline for his new life. He could have been now devoid of empathy and love and hate, but he hadn’t once, and in case he ever recovered those human traits, it seemed better to not do anything he would regret. He almost hoped they never came back, but he couldn’t find the necessary concern about they doing so to truly care.
“I feel so empty inside, like an Egyptian mummy coming back to life. And it doesn’t burn, it doesn’t prick. He extended his hand and watched one of his children move under the skin of his palm. “Sidereal space teems with more life and heat than my soul. Am I alive, System?”
You are certainly not dead. And the penguins seem to be taking exception to that. Also what the hell is going on with that cracker-nigger whale over there?
“That’s… one of the terms for orcas of all time. It is beached, it seems. It will die soon, it’s organs must be collapsing right now.”
The orca stared in direction of Lino and made a pulsed call. Followed with a jaw clap and a whistle. She was very happy to see another mammal. Maybe she could eat him. Now, if she just had some kelp or other algae for seasoning, and a second stomach for desserts, or enough time left to digest the penguins. What a conundrum, to die for food, and to be able to eat less because you were dying.
Lino hopped across and amidst nests to reach near the whale and examine her, arms crossed, from a few meters away. “I think she got some brain damage.”
The killer whale began panting and her eyes showed their staunch independentism.
She probably got bitten by a Golden Retriever. Which is an accomplishment in and of itself, I must admit.
“Are Golden Retrievers here something like the lycanthropes of legends? They bite you and you become a weretriever?” Lino asked, assuming he needed to be slightly amused. It was an unusual thought, at least.
We would need Golden Retrievers attacking people to test that. It’s like discussing how it feels to lay the invisible, intangible, inaudible unicorn the atheists love to blather about.
The whale barked happily. Dying due to internal collapse felt amazing.
Lino felt something stir inside him. At first he thought an emotion had sprung forth, but it was just one of his children.
His children, who had a good understanding of mammalian anatomy. Maybe he could be a good parent and help the odontocete at the same time.
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“System, would it be possible to infuse one of my larvae with my vital energy and inject it into the whale so it repairs its internal anatomy?”
Why do you want to heal the whale? What has the whale done for you?
“It is giving me a chance to test the limits of my powers. To learn. And Lino would have wanted this. He used to care for wildlife.”
I need bigger ellipses for this… O O O.
That’s better. Now, please, Lino, don’t refer to yourself in third fucking person fuck.
“Help Lino cure the killer whale and Lino may stop referring to Lino in third person,” said Lino, thirdpersoning loudly.
“If the system refuses to help, I can.” The voice of the racist plant resonated inside Lino’s mind. “When the sun sets and the day comes to an end, I am your avatar, Lino. I, and not the system, am supposed to guide you in your cultivation. So you can grow powerful, and then… we conquer Uruguay back once and for all!”
Lino pursed his lips and inhaled slowly. No matter how much time passed, the Nothoracopteris argentinica would keep being faithful to her roots. Not literal roots but metaphorical roots. When talking about a plant, one needs to clarify.
One of Lino’s children coiled under the skin of his palm, taking the form of a spring or a perfectly shaped turd, feeling the intent of his father. He was gathering vital energy around the vermis, infusing it with his blissfully corrupted spirit. This one remained calm, but the others panicked: What was their father doing? Why was his spiritual flow changing all of a sudden?
As the godly larva tunneled through his constantly pained, and eve3r-healign tissues, Lino approached the Labradorca with firm step, right hand extended, and the bulge under his skin growing. Lino was following the guide of his avatar to do this, and he didn’t trust her, as much as consider that it was a statistical advantage to use the seed fern’s aid instead of going blind, regarding cultivation.
The orca remained very quiet. The internal bleeding had taken a toll on her will to move. It was so warm and cozy. She could bleed out for eternity for all she cared. She barely blinked, lost in the nearly orgasmic embrace of multiple organ failure.
The poor thing is not long for this world. Devour it.
“Shut up, he is almost done!” the Nothoracopteris defended her master.
A pang of pain came a second before the child ripped through the skin of his father, covered in blood, flesh and sap spurting out of the gash and, with his circinate lophophores emerging from the three mouths around it’s spear shaped, lignified head, the hybrid between worm and root, animal and plant, landed onto the Whale’s skin, and, despite the animal’s surprised struggles and thrashing, stuck to it with its mucous epidermis, and slithered it’s way towards the spiracle of the cetacean while said being feared the worst —an afterlife without food—.
Lino stepped back and curled his fingers as the wound healed. In the cold of the pole, pain had a new fashion to it. A new experience to take note of.
The whale kept squirming and whistling in pain, and Lino wondered, rather clinically and without any emotional investment, if it would work. Soon, from every pore of the whale, green began sprouting. little glossopteridean leaves like soft fur were being born form the animal’s skin, and this would have made Lino smile, had he not been, well, devoid of emotion.
The penguins gathered round to observe the whale change as something bubbled under her skin and inside her very core. The larva had introduced herself deep, and now was spreading its roots, repairing that which had been damaged with vegetable tissue instead of an animal’s, but striving to keep the functionality nearly intact.
Lino circled the whale, and for a moment, admired the animal’s powerful, stilled tail.
You cannot return this monstrosity you created to the sea. It would make documentarists pretty angry. And I care about them because reasons. Reasons like annoying you. You know what? I am going to give myself a quest to annoy you.
[NEW QUEST FOR THE SYSTEM]
Objective: Annoy Lino until he does cultivator things.
Reward: Satisfaction (Just this once, unrelated to the Rolling Stones)
“The whale will live: it worked. Now I shall drag her back to the sea and watch over her for a while. “
He grasped the animal’s tail tightly, and grew roots from his feet so the whale wouldn’t send him flying with her struggles. Putting the weight over his shoulder, and deriving an unexpected, slight but noticeable pleasure from the fact he didn’t find the animal heave, lino trudged into the sea, as the waves broke against his shape and the pebbles rolled underfoot, and under the Labradorca.
The Labradorca was confused and disgruntled: they were taking her away from the condescending penguins! She had to pull! Pull like the dog that had shown her the meaning of life pulled from the leash!
But it was all in vain: Lino’s grasp was inescapable, and his advance towards the depts. undeterred. He would save this stupid whale, just to see where it led to. For a man without a purpose, anything could be considered an advance. Towards what? Self-cognition, perhaps. Or nowhere: life on Earth had no greater purpose, no meaning. It was a mere accident of chemistry, a versatile and complex self-replicating reaction and the naturals ramifications of such a mess. And it had been like that for three thousand and eight hundred million years, and still went strong. Purpose was a human caprice, and while Lino could entertain those, he now didn’t have to.
As he didn’t have to entertain breathing and thus he tasted the salty water and felt the horrible sensation of it intruding his nose and lungs as he submerged himself in the polar waters, orca still on tow. His gnarled, bloody roots reached deep in the gravel and kept him from floating, and his precious cargo’s leaves had now grown to the size of scales and lignified, giving the orca the aspect of a breathing wood carving of some ancient sea reptile.
Soon enough he let her go, so she could take a breath on the surface and, he let the animal go, and she surfaced to take a deep breath despite how clumsy her swim was with this new body.
He, the seed fern and the system expected her to go away, but the Labradorca didn’t, and, instead, charged towards Lino — that calmly observed her through the crystalline waters — with her mouth agape, head-butted him, and then licked him thrice in the face.
Dear gods, if we assume one is what one eats, this thing definitively ate a retriever. Or several.
Through rocks bedecked in bivalves and fields of red sea urchins Lino marched onwards, seeking the depths. And the kind and ever-hungry Labradorca, acting against her best interest, followed, singing and whistling and pulsing with mirth.