Ducking under a swing of a double-bladed spear, Robert tried to strike a huge amphibian into the abdomen but didn’t manage to reach it. Despite his own heights, the opponent was easily over three meters tall (around 10ft.) and by this point was quite wary of the nimble human. The corpses of all his subordinates were already lying on the beach motionlessly. Moreover, their mutual achievement was only the deep cut on the chest of this mutant.

Therefore, the leader of the now-dead group started to rely on his longer arms to keep a safe distance in a search for opportunity. It wasn’t that helpful as somehow this strange humanoid was able to change the size of its weapon. One moment amphibian had to block the crude metal club from breaking his knee only to see how it was disappearing just to be summoned into the other hand in the form of the fang. The latter almost immediately cut through his skin, creating another wound on his body.

“Die, abomination!”

Sending unfocused telepathic messages into his surroundings just to get rid of his own frustration, the amphibian attempted to overpower his small enemy. The wide swing for distraction was turned into an overhead strike with all available force. He was glad to see, how this mutant opened his mouth in familiar to every sane morloken expression of a surprise. An odd appearance with a lack of proper sight just couldn’t hide. Of course, the enemy tried to defend himself by putting up the round plate. However, the deep blue iron wasn’t called that because of no reason.

Cutting through the dark grey material like it was nothing, it almost managed to sever the arm of the mutant, when everything went downhill. Failing to notice in time how the enemy was making a rotational motion, the amphibian was surprised to feel a lack of any resistance. The strength that he had put into strike was too big to stop halfway. Moreover, the earlier cut plate turned into a formless huge thing, which only added weight, increasing inertia even more.

Hitting the rocky ground with all the force, he pushed his spear deep inside, almost making it stuck there. The short disorientation from striking the air instead of an elusive enemy was forcefully ended when he felt a blade piercing his cheeck. The instinctive attempt to push away the pain only worsened the situation, cutting his face in the process and almost taking his side eye. A wild swing of his arm managed to hit the mutant, which gave him the ability to stand up. The fear already pushed away all remnants of a clear mind, completely overruling the consciousness by a primal instinct of survival.

He was one of the leaders of the rebellion. One of the first to gather a force against the rule of Royals, who forbid any change in a social ladder. The death of the King in an attempt to become a Reborn Dra’lo’Kiaj on the very same island had set in motion every ambitious person. The opportunity to rewrite the long-existed order was rare and was stupid to waste. But he was not like others – pawns of the Church, filthy servants of the Throne, or instruments in fins of Generals. He had the support of the majority of ordinary folks. He was meant for greatness. He even had prepared a group of elites to fight this infamous mutant, who was at the center of current hot-topic rumors. Named as a guardian of the Queen and cursed with a horrible appearance, he was responsible for the demise of many Marked Warriors. That’s why the heart of such a creature could boost his image to new heights, pushing him to the top of Rebels. Unfortunately, he failed. However, he would return after…

“For the humanoid fish you are running quite fast, I have to admit,” piercing the back of the amphibian, Robert had pushed him to the ground, before repeating the strike once again, now aiming for the head. The corpse convulsed a few times and stopped, finally ending this confrontation.

Was it the fourth group? Nope, fifth. Yeah, fifth. At least they were not strong and crumbled in fear quite quickly… But if they are so scared, why the fuck do they continue to come here? For that lizard?

As always, there was no answer, just Rob’s assumptions. Still, he wasn’t complaining as his attempts to communicate with each of such groups failed miserably. They always attacked, not even trying to speak with their awful method of telepathic sound attacks. Robert sometimes felt as if they were sending something in his surroundings, but it felt like mockery, curses, or battle shouts. Nothing specific or aimed at him. All he heard was the weak pressing noise inside his mind and that’s it. Maybe they were just weaker than that old leader or the change gave him protection against forceful telepathy – he didn’t know. Therefore, a peaceful solution was out of the question.

On the other hand, his time limit and the need for souls gave him targets to kill. It could sound evil, but it was either them or him. For Robert, the obvious choice was his own future. Moreover, his “power up” decreased his chances by a noticeable degree. Luckily, it wasn’t as bad as he thought at the beginning. He had enough time not only to accept the change but also to get used to them.

Some of them appeared to be a clear improvement like it was with conjuring steel. The first test that gave him an idea of weakening his ability was misleading. As an infant slowly learning how to operate with its own body, starting from limbs until the tiniest and most precise motions of the fingers, in the same way, Robert had to work over the usage of his steel element. He was far from naming himself skillful in it, but even without his modified brain the control had become much better, while the speed of conjuring had also grown to almost instantaneous, despite any complexity of form.

Speaking of his former Hive-Mind trait – the loss also appeared to be not so crucial. Yes, it was harder to notice some motions of enemies during the fight, but Rob surprisingly had found out that he overestimated his ability to use it properly. He was sure he was utilizing the knowledge to predict the enemy’s movements and was just late to react, but it was just wishful thinking. Without hundreds of equipment to command directly, he barely scratched the surface of the barrel in terms of possibilities. Therefore the loss didn’t affect him that much, especially with the accumulation of a battle experience. Together with almost the same power of conjuring the steel, Robert just made a single step back in this regard with easily visible potential to go much further in the future.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

However, the healing was a huge problem. Even this cut on his chest would take him several hours to heal. The first fight after his “upgrade” ended him lying in a half-dead state inside his self-made underground cover for an unknown amount of time. Not only that, but he had to staple his wounds with summoned steel to stop bleeding just not die from the blood loss. On the other hand, his regeneration could even deal with a severed finger, growing it from nothing, and leaving no scars after.

Basically, he was like a superhuman with increased strength, endurance, toughness, and regeneration, but not on the level of ignoring even a simple knife, the possibility of throwing a car-like projectile, or jumping over a three-story building. Only his steel element looked supernatural and caused no trouble. Unfortunately, the regeneration did, although just bothersome.

After replacing the abdominal mixture of what was his previous body with his “perfected” old and natural, Robert at first didn’t see anything special. His appearance didn’t change – clearly improving his body had no effect on beauty in the eyes of Primal Dragon. Everything was the same – rough facial features, green eyes, aquiline nose, messy black hair. Exactly the latter started to become a problem. He never was a hairy type, having his chest bare of anything like a bald monk. But as any male descendant of monkeys, he had enough on other parts of his body, including his face.

No one mentioned it in comics or in books, but his regeneration worked on a whole body, including hair and nails. Therefore, it turned into a non-stoppable cycle of shaving and haircutting. Fortunately, the speed of growth decreased with the length, helping him to find the right balance not to turn into a walking hairball. On the other hand, Rob had to forget about not wearing a beard. At least such routine care was a refreshment in his killing spree.

Slowly and carefully starting from the smallest ones, Robert steadily tested his current power without additional risk. Of course, groups of underwater invaders made their edits to his plan, but overall he was returning to his battle powers and, what was more importantly, confidence in himself. It almost turned into overconfidence, when he tried to tame a tiny lizard that he somehow managed to find near the group of amphibians, which he sent to an afterlife a few minutes ago.

“Hello, buddy!”

Smiling in an attempt to look friendly, Robert started to shorten the distance to the cute predator. Light green, with a confused expression on its face, it was staying near the corpse of its parent as if trying to wake it up. However, it was a futile effort after the spears of the amphibians had left their marks. Its hiss sounded more like a begging squeal, making Rob grin as an idiot.

How will I call him? Rex? Greeny? No, wait, it can be a girl. We can make a good team in this shitty world… Every proper protagonist has his own pet that will become powerful in no time. Finally, this is my opportunity to shine. It is a pity that no one will be able to see it, but so what? We will have ourselves to support each other. We will rise together! And I can try to take you with me. Yeah, there must be a way!

“Don’t be afraid, little one. I will not hurt you. I am here to…”

Rob couldn’t finish as the lizard just jumped straight into his face, completely ignoring a stretched hand. Grabbing into his nose with its tiny teeth, it almost had bitten it off, while Rober was dumbstruck from an unexpected painful experience. His attempt to push the small predator away failed miserably as clawed paws started to cut his face into pieces. Summoning the steel mask directly on his face, he managed to separate himself from the aggressive beast. However, that led to nothing as assaults continued. In the end, Robert had to run away, not willing to harm the small lizard, crashing his wish of owning a cute but deadly pet.

That left him with loneliness. Training and fighting were periodically brought to pause by raging thunderstorms, which seemed to set a whole world on pause when nature decided to act. After so much time spent on the island, Robert started to notice nascent signs of lighting outbursts beforehand to have enough time to hide into his self-mined cover. These moments were mostly spent either in entertaining himself with conjuring complex objects, or in thinking over different things.

Don’t know about the movies, but to hear music would be great. Any music. I am even ready for some odd styles right now… Hamburger! Yeah, to eat with a cup of coffee, while listening to something… rock&roll, maybe? Like in old movies about cafés near the road… There could be a smiling woman with a kettle of another portion whenever you are finished. Oh, dreams, dreams…

Robert’s eyes wandered around surroundings that were constantly being attacked by thunder. On his opened palm a small crude figure was slowly marching, taking each step with extra caution after a noticeable pause. Made from dark grey steel from a single piece, it showed as mechanical movements of the primitive toy. Nevertheless, it moved further, while the thoughts of its creator were far away.

Rob wondered if this life was even worth it. The idea of traveling around seemed wonderful, but his own experience from three worlds, including his own Earth, had shown that it might be just a dream. He could describe his life in the bunker as plain and grey, but it didn’t mean he needed more adrenaline in his life to color it. On the contrary, he wanted to experience just simple things to be happy, and not the thrill of survival on the verge. Unfortunately, it wasn’t his choice to do… until his “power up”.

Maybe this is an opportunity for it? But I still need to kill the beast and to meet the stupid quota for souls. I’ve spent so much time here. It could be even years… How is the Earth doing? Did it manage to repel the invasion? Or is it still just defending? And William – did he achieve his goal? I hope he did – he was always a righteous person with high morale… And… No one else left. Huh. Funny. The third world for me, but most of my friends or acquaintances had died already. Note for future, Rob. You need to make connections with people. At least then you will be able to recall someone during such a time of melancholy and sadness, when you are stuck in the deepest hole out of all dimensions.

The thunderstorm continued its attempt to destroy everything around. Robert knew it would end soon, bringing back his ongoing hunt. Despite all the ups and downs, Rob wasn’t willing to stop. The more he struggled, the more he wanted to feel the normal life by himself. He knew that there were many obstacles ahead, but he would still try to overcome them. If he was too weak, then he just needed to use his head to find a way around. As it was with this dangerous natural disaster – it could be life-threatening to be caught in the center of it, but what if he could redirect the risk on another target, much bigger than himself? It might work out.