Starscream whistled while he worked. His whistling had improved a great deal since incorporating several syrinxes, the vocal organs of birds, into his communication module. He had gone back to Jigoku, and from there, the demon graveyard. It was remarkable how well preserved some of those alien anatomies had been. The border guardian simply hadn’t understood the kind of treasure trove he was sitting on. It was true, the materials that were available would have been considered middling or low quality deeper in the Middle Kingdom, and most artists wouldn’t have known how to make use of them if they had them, but for Starscream, they were game changing.

It was hard to say how big Hollow really was, but from the surveys he’d taken and the information he’d been able to glean from test subjects before they died, he estimated that it was at least one hundred million square miles. That was about half the surface area of Earth, but rolled out mostly flat, and with so much less water coverage that the actual land masses approximated the total territory above sea level on Earth. The majority of the admittedly vast human population were at cultivation levels so low they did not qualify for a star ranking.

At first, Starscream had taken this arrangement as a boon, as it meant there were large swaths of territory within which he could act with relative impunity. The inhabitants of Fringe Town had thought of themselves as weak, and in the context of cultivation advancement, they were, but nearly everyone in Fringe Town had been a low level pure artist, and that simply wasn’t the case for the larger world. Near universal cultivation status, admittedly pegged below the three-star mark, had been an artifact of their somewhat symbiotic relationship with the Soma crop.

Many communities around the edge of the empire had no such resources. They were mere mortals, living and dying as quietly as the serfs of Earth had done in a different age. Their bodies were of little use to him. Too weak, too fragile, and unable to channel meaningful quantities of mana without quickly succumbing to terminal deviations.

Starscream had tried to make himself a human body first, but that project had ultimately been abandoned in favor of a chimera approach. Sacred beasts existed in the wilds that were advanced enough to provide him with the kind of raw materials he needed without being advanced enough to have already been hunted by more powerful artists. The basic framework he was working with now rested on the anatomy of an old hawkbear supported by spare mechanoborg parts and more than a few alien organs from the graveyard. The hardest part had been constructing a proper quintessence organ for use in the long term. The organs that he borrowed from mortal humans and low-level beasts tended to burn out in a matter of days, or less if he had to fight.

He’d settled for redundancy.

Now he had three cores spaced at intervals in his oversized frame, and he would switch between them whenever one was pushed to the point where damage became inevitable. His body was self-reinforcing, self-regenerating, as long as he kept it supplied with mana. That wasn’t too difficult, now that he could channel directly from the environment as a normal cultivator would, though he did have to spend more of his day on mere maintenance than he would have liked.

The events in Fringe Town had not passed under his notice, and though he had not participated, he had benefited greatly from the chaos inherent in war. Ise Ebi had been surviving on the outskirts of the transformed village, and though Starscream had approached him in a friendly manner, the sacred lobster had sensed his intentions and reacted violently. Of his three cores, the one he had stolen from Ise Ebi was by far the strongest. The lobster should have been able to kill him easily, but his spirit had been wounded somehow. It had something to do with Yuyu’s absence, the spiral dragon’s influence; Starscream only cared for the results. Ise Ebi’s antenna were an excellent addition to his sensory suite, and his exoskeleton had been put to good use as well.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Starscream liked to look at himself as an artist examining his work with an eye toward improvement. Genuine mirrors were rare, but he had an extra eye on the end of a tentacle that was good for giving him an outside perspective on himself. A dozen feet of rippling muscle, fur and scales. His shoulders and arms were protected by layers of sacred carapace like plate armor, and the Red Spider had taken its rightful place as his left hand. The entire Frankenstein form was laced with scripts that kept everything together and running properly. If he could ever manage the transformation ritual that Sunwhisper had undergone to attain his third star, the scripts would no longer be necessary, but he had been reluctant to try. The most likely outcome would be ruining the body and the cores he had put so much effort into already.

It was, however, a necessary step. One could not become truly strong without a mana body, and Starscream did not intend to eke out his living in the margins forever. He had been working on the ritual chamber in a cave hundreds of miles further down the Jigokuan range from where he had previously settled with Sunwhisper. It had been his home for weeks, the longest he had spent in any one place, and though he disliked taking that kind of risk, he needed everything to be perfect.

He might not survive failure, and even if he did, the cost would be starting over as a spider once more. Sunwhisper had too many advantages already, and there was still the quintessence to be claimed somewhere in this world. Not that Starscream cared about saving Earth, but the potential for unlimited cosmic powers was enticing in its own right.

Starscream was working at the center of a network of webs that gave him precise information about what was happening not only in the cave, but for nearly a square mile of territory around it. His fibers were sensitive enough to tell him when the wind blew, or birds sang. So when men came within his territory, he had plenty of time to prepare.

There were three of them, and their associated vibrations suggested they weighed between one-hundred thirty and one-hundred eighty pounds respectively. Starscream hid himself behind a trap door in the ceiling of his central chamber and felt their approach through the webs.

They were clad in black cloths that hid their entire bodies. Their tattoos were covered, but silver threads marked the areas on their arms that should have shown their ranks. One of their sleeves held the image of a coiled snake, the other a bird with four wings, and the last an octopus with five arms. The symbols conveyed their ranks well enough, and they had sacred beasts with them. Their animals were small enough to be carried, or ride on their shoulders, and they matched the images on their arms. The sparrow was obvious enough, chirping merrily into the ear of its master, and the snake was moving beneath the robes of the one who seemed to be their leader. Starscream didn’t see an octopus anywhere, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one.

These were cultivators of the fourth star at least. When they saw what he was, they would kill him, and his new body would tear like a paper doll in their hands. Even so, he resolved to fight. He had developed techniques of his own, and it was still possible for him to escape with a single core while they were distracted with his main body. He had done it before. Setbacks were setbacks, but the Sigma grind was forever.

The lead cultivator held up a hand to the others shortly after they entered the main chamber, a few steps short of being directly beneath his trapdoor.

“We wish to speak with you.”

Starscream held perfectly still, even going so far as to lower the activity in his cores to below baseline levels. His heartbeat slowed to a crawl.

The man’s face was covered, but they all behaved as if they could see through their masks. He looked up at the trapdoor, his point patently obvious.

“Do not attempt to hide from us.”

Starscream allowed the trapdoor to swing open and lowered himself to the floor in as non-threatening a manner as a twelve-foot chimera could manage.

“How can I help you?” He asked, and one of them flinched at the sound. His voice was an amalgam of birds and beasts and men. He was a solitary chorus.

“We have been tracking your activity for some time.” The man said. “And we are intrigued.”

“And who are you then?” Intrigued was about the best adjective he could have hoped for in this situation.

“We are the zaibatsu.” The man removed his mask, revealing a fleshless chrome skull beneath, so reflective that Starscream saw himself in it. “There is much for us to discuss.”