Space splits.
Or is it his senses? They feel everywhere. He senses himself. His body. Human. Mortal. Or is it lostbelt Earth? Omphalos? Crypt ██ ████████ █████—?
Memories. Events. Impressions. Self and foreign. A human. A lostbelt. Anomaly. Singularity. Realm. Lostbelt. Underground. Aboveground. Desert—
Cracks appear. Cracks diffuse. Cracks get larger. Brighter. Cracks converge. Diverge. Shatter. Reform.
His mind devolves.
Instinct arises. Instincts of a human. Instincts of anomaly. Instincts from skills. Instincts from monster prototypes. Instincts from—████S██E of the Cr███ █f ███di███ wo███
There is no pain. The cognition of pain no longer matters. He is swallowed by injury. By his senses. By information. By Anomaly. By Power. By Mind. By—
He falls into a swirling maelstrom of pain.
He doesn’t know where he is.
He doesn’t know who he is.
He doesn’t know what it means.
It doesn’t matter.
He sees it now. Like a large integrated circuit. What is a circuit? How does it integrate? What is seeing? Information? Information assimilation? Where would that be? Why would that be? What does—
The complexities increase. They twist. They bend. They form shapes that shouldn’t exist. Shapes he knows have always existed. Three-dimensional. Ten-dimensional. Matrices. Lattices.
His vision narrows. What is vision?
The world expands.
He concentrates on the needless. Why? He knows he will split in half otherwise. How does he know?
Unnecessary.
The world is too big for this small body. The monster prototypes are too large for this soul. The Spiritual Presence is too grand to be hidden within this shell.
Yet the world fits. Yet the prototypes exist in segregation. Yet the Presence stays hidden. Bound. Forged. Fused.
He is being repelled. He can’t be repelled.
He is reaching it. He can’t reach it.
He shouldn’t reach it. Not reaching it will be unforgivable.
He is reaching out.
He is reaching out.
He is REACHING OUT.
His eyes burn. His brain burns. His extends his arms and they extend and extend and exten—
SCCRREEECHHHHH!
GET THERE—
GET THERE—
GET THERE RIGHT NOW—
“Ha—agh—gag!”
His eyes are focused now. They are also dripping blood.
Right and wrong. Black and white. Colorful and grayscale.
He is opening his eyes. He is human. He is monster. Not human. Monster. His perceptions blur. Dim and bright. Pitch-black darkness and bloodred.
His tendrils elongate. He opens his mouth. His extensions move. Raw power enters his body. Power from Ley Lines. Power from Self. Power from—█████
His ears block all reception. He has no eyes. He has no ears. And yet he does. He raises his—███████████ ████—and uses it with great efficiency.
He is awake. He is hungry. He is always hungry after awakening. He is large, slimy, filled with—█████ ███ ████—he’d rise and he’d not starve. Not like—███████████ ██—and he would howl—███ ████████████—and—███████ ██████—as the cycle continues forever.
Power cloaks him. Unbridled. Chaos in flesh and blood. Rage without restraint. Force without balance.
He sees it. He understands it. He has become it. Human is monster. Monster is human. Lukas is the ███████████ and—
An unholy roar emerges from his throat.
—███████████ is Lukas.
There were few things in life as primal as hunger.
No questions about right or wrong. No quibbles. No compunctions. No liabilities. No alternative motivations. No doubts. The very feeling serene in its throb. The lingering pain of starvation burned away everything inconsequential. Made it all seem simple.
Really, why hadn’t he thought about it this way before?
His senses felt different. His perception felt heightened in certain places and dulled to the point of non-existence in others. And with it came a whole new approach to being…him. He looked around at the carnage, at the quivering miasma all around him.
It felt right. He was no weakling. He was a killer, and he had no other purpose. He could protect in a way, he supposed, by killing everything that stood in the way of that which he shielded. But why would he do such a thing?
Killing indiscriminately was easier. Killing was better. Killing was joyful.
He hungered to kill.
He noticed the familiar glint on the floor. His blades, useless pieces of trash. Sharp, but useless. For what use was a tool when he possessed this much power at his fingertips? Vestiges of his powerless self, perhaps? Souvenirs at best. He was above them. He was—
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SYSTEM OVERRIDDEN!
New Auxiliary Power Sources from ███████████ Added!
███████ ████████ Protocol Initiated!
Base Host is under the effect of █████ ██ ████████ █████
FOREIGN OMPHALOS FUNCTION Added!
FUNCTION
LEVEL
ENERGY COST
Capacitance
NA
NA
DESCRIPTION
Absorption of Energy from the World to bolster Omphalos Energy Reserves
VOLUNTARY
Currently Set to ON
MONSTER PROTOTYPE: ████████
SKILLS
LEVEL
SOUL CAP CONSUMED
Raw Lifeforce Manipulation
3
5000
Regeneration
3
5000
████████
3
500
████ █████
2
500
Monster Prototype ████████ Activated
Consciousness Shift Active
LIVING ANOMALY Activated!
Enact Reverse Shift?
Reverse? Why would he—
“…Lukas?”
He looked up. The world was still grayscale.
And in it stood PREDATOR. Alone. Confused. Angry.
Afraid.
She flinched as his gaze fell upon her.
His lips twitched.
PREDATOR took a single step back. He could sense power building within her. Blue. Elemental Wind Mana. White. Elemental Frost. Gold. Lifeforce surge.
Was that a challenge he sensed?
His lips twisted in feral anticipation.
She raised her right hand.
A spinning ball of wind erupted out of it like a living thing and streaked through the space between them, crossing the distance in a fraction of a second.
His chest exploded. Ribs shattered. Lungs punctured. Blood erupted out of his mouth and eyes. His muscles tore. His left arm shattered, leaving a stump attached to the shoulder.
And then, they weren’t.
REGENERATION Activated!
Ribs reformed. Muscles sewed back. Organs reknit. Bones pushed back into place. Power whirled around him like a hurricane, and he was the eye of the storm. This power—it was his. He would use it. He would embrace it. With this he would kill the AGGRAVATION, kill this PREDATOR. He was He-Who-Consumes-Within and now he would become the new ████████ of this Crypt of Fiendish Worms.
“MORE!!” he bellowed. “GIVE ME MOOREE!”
He put a single foot forward.
PREDATOR turned and ran.
He let out a whoop of joy, the ravenous hunter to kill roaring inside him, batting away rationality like a tidal wave. This…this was so much simpler than the alternative. There was no need for thought, for calculation, for speaking, for friends, for goals—for anything.
Right now, he was the hunter.
PREDATOR was now PREY.
She made funny little gasps and whimpers as she fled. She slipped and bruised herself over a sharp rock. Bled a little. Cursing, she continued to run. She was terrified, and not without good reason.
After all, out of all the monsters in this cavern, the most dangerous one was on her tail.
She was lithe. Curved in the right places, with an athletic, lean build. But she was human. Or bremetan. In any case, one thing was certain—she was afraid. And fearful people made mistakes. Errors in judgment. Anxiety prevailed over instinct.
And that was her disadvantage. Which made it his advantage.
Slipping past a small turn up ahead, she faced him for a moment, her countenance shining with fear and hysteria in equal amounts. Her right arm moved up, and power stirred within.
It only made him smile.
He slowed down to a walk, letting her have the chance. The look of confusion on her face was only to be expected. After all, she had expected him to come faster. To cross the gap between them and prevent her from going through with it. It was only natural.
Ironic, really, that even in such moments, the human mind tried to enforce rationality.
Bremetan mind, he corrected himself. Not human. Bremetan.
“Lukas!” He could hear the pleading in her tone. “Remember who you are! Remember! We’re in this together!”
Pleading. Request. Did she think it would work on him? No. No, it wouldn’t. That last attack was strong. Destructive. Possibly one of her strongest. It hadn’t worked. That was why she was pleading.
Classic prey tactics.
He’d teach her better. He was a predator, and she was prey. They were in it together, actors on the oldest stage of the sapient world.
The hunting grounds.
Another burst of wind hit him. A lance, this time.
It disintegrated to shreds before it managed to get a foot within his vicinity.
PREDATOR shrieked. Anger. Frustration. Anxiety. Fear. All rolled into one. Nice. Exquisite. Then, the little idiot raised both arms.
Again.
“FUCK!” she yelled, and thrust out both hands. A howling lance of glacier-blue, coherant, observable, utter cold flooded into the cavern. The very air around him screamed in protest at the sudden, wild shift in temperature, with steam and mist boiling off everything in a cloud. That beam struck at him, forming a wall of crystalline ice, easily ten feet tall and doubly thick, and curving forward like a breaking wave.
It did not reach him.
Howling in reply, Lukas slew the oncoming attack with pure Decay, colliding it with the frost wave with all the power and momentum of a freight train. There was an enormous roar, a series of impacts, and cracks exploded through the clear ice in a spiderweb of crazed lines.
The wall held.
The still-standing wall of ice filled him with rage, boiling black, all-consuming and all-encompassing. Like a rabid dog whose chain had been severed, he lashed out, reaching to the very depths of the titanic reserves his body now had access to. His pain receptors were silenced, rendered vestigial, and a violent red mist warded off anything remotely resembling sanity.
And then, he struck.
There was a low quiver in the floor beneath his feet, a hideous pressure in the air, and then, a column of red-white energy, pure power, erupted out of his right hand—which exploded right away—and hammered into the frost wall. It shattered like a toy.
Lukas looked down at his destroyed arm. Regeneration activated. Bones expanded. Muscles reknit. Blood oozed out, just a little. Again, as good as new.
But PREDATOR was nowhere to be seen. She had taken advantage of the barrier and ran for her life.
How pathetic! She was supposed to be strong! She was the PREDATOR, not this weakling! Just for this disappointment, he’d find her. And when he did, he’d kill her. He’d bleed the life out of her.
And then—
He’d assimilate her.
Make her his.
The Crypt of Fiendish Worms would have her █████████—
No. He was an anomaly. A creation of Lostbelt Earth. Only that should get access to the Truth that was █████████, NOT this PALTRY cavern—NOT—YES—NOT—
He shook his head. He was wasting time. He needed to find her. But trying to find her in this endless labyrinth was an exercise in futility. She was lithe and quick on her feet, and that wind spirit made her faster than he was.
Lukas Aguilar might have needed to run after her. But the ████████ of this Crypt of Fiendish Worms didn’t. Not when he was empowered by the crypt itself. Every nook, every cranny, every single stone wall through which the ley lines ran, empowering the anomaly to expand in all directions, was his to wield. Raw, unadulterated power that could be used to create, to mutate, to expand. Power that made his own reserves look like pocket change. And that wasn’t the only thing he had gotten through this connection.
A small grin formed on his lips.
“You can run!” he whispered, a savage grin twisting his features. “But you can’t hide!”