Tuck sat on the floor of the temple contemplating his day when a question hit him.
'How did that MonoOwl know to attack me then?' He wondered, Tuck was suddenly certain that even at that moment, although he was within the protection of the Temple, the Titan MonoOwl watched him.
'All seeing eye.'
The knowledge floated to the forefront of his mind as if a long lost memory. This was the knowledge about the world one of the Goddess had promised him. Tuck held his face and rocked back and forth thinking of the implications. He decided this skill may be more overpowered than his Void Wyrm abilities. There was a reason people said knowledge was power.
Thinking of the Void Wyrm made Tuck draw another conclusion, he needed to stop thinking of himself as a human and start thinking that he was a Humanoid Void Wyrm. All the Wyrm’s power and the Human intelligence to maximise it.
‘What can I do?’ he thought, turning his mind inward. His inherited instincts told him he could tunnel, reserve, attack, sense and hide.
‘Ok but what do those abilities actually mean?’ He needed to test them.
Tuck had used the tunnel ability to get back to the Temple and dodge the Titan MonoOwl’s first attack ‘Tunneling’ referred to space rather than earth.
“Awesome, I’ve got a teleport!”
Tuck quickly flickered about the Temple. It felt as natural as breathing to him but he noticed that he could stay in his tunnel.
The memories from the Void Wyrm, disregarded this as no big deal. It never paid attention to its surroundings once it was on its way somewhere, it would sleep until it arrived.
Tuck now found this fascinating while in the tunnel the world around him turned dull, less distinct and everything seemed to come to a stop.
‘Maybe teleporting isn’t the best comparison.’ He thought. Tuck put out his hand to touch the temple wall but it passed right through it. He walked over to the altar to use its light source and checked for his shadow. His shadow would disappear as he entered his tunnel. He was both invisible and intangible, Tuck tested the ability, trying to move slowly across the room, he noticed his bubble squished space in front of him and stretched it out behind him. A personal warp bubble, so although the ability worked like a teleport over close short distances it was more of a hyper space bubble. That meant that over longer distances time would become a factor, of course those distances were Galactic, on the World of Shaards he could teleport freely.
‘Let me rename that bubble my Wyrm hole.’ Tuck thought to himself before chuckling at his own joke. He was quite amused by the thought of Wyrming through space. It sounded so much more fun than tunnelling.
‘So what was a reserve?’ He questioned. His instincts spoke to needing energy to move far and always having food saved in case of emergencies. Tuck analysed his inherited memories and found a near death scenario where the Void Wyrm had come out of its tunnel between stars and didn’t have enough energy to re-enter the tunnel. It had starved for months before finding a rogue asteroid to eat, since then it always kept food in its reserve. Tuck’s best explanation was that a Void Wyrm had a separate ‘stomach’ for storage. Since he knew the Void Wyrm to be a type of space time monster the chances of this ‘stomach’ being some form of pocket dimension was high.
Tuck turned his attention to the supplies in the Temple. With a thought space rippled, passing over the items and they were gone. At least no longer in the Temple, but he could feel them within him and could pull out any item he wished. He also noticed he could rearrange everything in that space as he saw fit. He had full control, his Instincts even told him items in there wouldn’t decay.
‘Neat, this could keep the name Reservoir.’
With that sorted he now needed to work out his attack. A large aperture opened, lept forward and closed like a blinking eye… No not a blinking eye, a snapping Maw. Tuck practised maneuvering his Maw and discovered he could attack from any angle and could open multiple Maws simultaneously.
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Wondering where things he bit off would go, Tuck sent his Maw outside and took a bite out of the ground. The rock wasn’t his reservoir but a different space waiting to be 'digested'. Another surprise, just like with his Reservoir he gained knowledge about what was in this Maw. The Void Wyrm's instincts and the basic knowledge from the Goddesses combined to allow him to appraise things he should have no clue about. For example Tuck now knew this rock was high in iron content.
Tuck decided to keep the iron for trade and ‘digested’ the other minerals in the rock. Void Wyrms could eat anything. They literally broke things down into atoms and soaked up the energy. As the energy from the disinterested slag seeped into him Tuck felt better. All the cuts on him healed and aches and pains he’d started to live with faded, along with the gnawing hunger that was growing as he used his powers. Each gram of matter released an exponential amount of power that Tuck could feel being stored for future use. Punching holes in space was power intensive, Tuck decided he would look into a more passive way to feed himself in the future, but at the moment Tuck honestly had not felt this good since his teenage years. The lump of iron he had left back was moved into his reservoir without him having to bring it back into open space.
Tuck continued to mine for a while, he wanted to be in his best condition and have a decent sized pile of iron to trade.
After he had gathered enough and felt like a rockstar, it was time for him to understand Sense but he realised he was actually always using Sense. It stopped him from teleporting into a wall. But Tuck understood it could do much more, his journey to Shaards had shown him he could interpret data into visuals far beyond what his eyes could see.
As he tried to expand his Sense it felt like how people described an outer body experience, time slowed and Tuck’s outlook expanded and he absorbed the information around him. He could even 'see' the Titan MonoOwl lazily circling, watching him through the Temple walls.
‘That bastard needs to die.’ Tuck thought. Putting actions to his thoughts a Maw opened in the MonoOwl’s path and bit off its head before another Maw snatched the rest of its body out of the air. Everything happened too quickly for the Titan MonoOwl to react although Tuck perceived the event in slow motion.
‘Another unexpected benefit, this Spatial Awareness gives me a Time Slow and my Wyrm hole gives me a Time Stop.’ Tuck revelled in his blessings but noticed his shortcomings. He couldn’t interact with the world to take full advantage of the Time stop and hearing the Goddesses talking about that Kunpeng creature, he probably wasn’t the fastest thing around, but maybe he could change those things with practice and training.
Tuck dismantled the MonoOwl, keeping the parts that his new appraisal skill told him could be sold like the feathers, the eye, blood, meat and most importantly, the SoulGem. He disintegrated the rest, Tuck purposely did not think of that ability as 'digesting' since these contents included offal.
‘I will consider that ability as Disintegrate.’ he thought, as he tried to settle his queasy stomach.
Now Tuck needed to get past the flock of MonoOwls. They may be more docile with their overlord dead but he wasn't in a mood to test that.
"Let's try this hiding ability." Tuck said aloud.
A shadowy portal moved up his body leaving only his face exposed. It was as if he was in a borrow but this burrow was mobile. This ability was like a combination of his Maw and Wyrm hole. Like his Maw he could open several apertures at once, so his hands and feet could be out for attacking. Like his Wyrm hole he could hide in it but unlike his Wyrm hole he couldn’t close it while he was inside but he could turn the aperture into a slit like the visor of a helmet.
‘Alright I’ll name this ability Shroud'.
So in all Tuck had a windfall of abilities. He had a Wyrm hole (Teleportation, Hyperspace, invisibility and intangibility), Spatial awareness (time slow), Maw (Attack, Disintegration and Healing), Reservoir (Storage and Preservation), Shroud (Hide and Stealth) and thanks to the Goddesses, Appraisal.
‘I am overpowered as fuck and yet I almost died as soon as I got here.’ Tuck thought.
"Fuck this place is dangerous." he whispered aloud.
Once again Tuck steeled his nerves and Wyrmed out of the Temple to the treeline below before using Shroud to make his escape.
Tuck revised his power list to include flight since his Shroud was basically letting him do just that. He didn’t need to rely on the ground for his propulsion nor to change direction. He was also moving incredibly fast, instead of weeks it would take him days to reach the Human settlement without using his Wyrm hole.
Tuck weighed his options before concluding a field trip was necessary to help him refine his control of his abilities. Instincts were great but they were a poor substitute for skill. He needed to build up an ability memory just like he had a muscle memory.
He needed to do both a Walkabout and Dojoyaburi.