It took only a few more hours before all of the energy in Mike’s channels had been processed, and he was in awe of how much cleaner his channels were. Gone was every packet that had hitherto infested him, and all that remained was the perfectly-clear, golden energy. Flexing an ability, he found that his energy was more responsive than ever before. After some testing, he came to the conclusion that his speed of thought and his reaction times would now be his limiting factor, not his ability to activate an ability. It was a good place to be, and signaled to him that he had fully integrated his skills into his fighting arsenal.
After talking more with Pupach about the small packets of energy, he learned that cosmic energy could have inherent traits, and that likely many of the packets were Solar and Lunar traits from all of the cosmic water he had used. He also surmised that some of the existing packets within him were System influence, and likely the mechanism of harvesting assimilants at the end of an integration and that he likely gained them simply from being inundated by System infected energy. Pupach was physically unable to tell him everything, but he could confirm Mike’s assumptions. Mike tried to gain information on how Pupach was being blocked from speaking, but apparently he was blocked on that too, and he was left believing that the HIve was nothing more than a large-scale cult that spanned multiple universes and limited its members’ freedom of speech.
Filthy galactic communists! He raged as he went back to the surface. It was time to find the beast that had injected him and ask for a rematch.
⧫⧫⧫⧫⧫⧫⧫⧫⧫⧫⧫⧫⧫
Mike’s eyes seemed to peer into the eyes of the vulture-griffen-cerberus’s middle head, although both were mostly unaware of the outside world as they internally struggled. “Struggled” was a bit of a misnomer at this point. After a week of daily battles with his opponent, it felt more like stretching than a true workout for Mike. Though the beast kept up a steady stream of injections, Mike was able to process the energy as fast as it came in, the upkeep cost of maintaining his filtration ability being negated by the energy coming in with the infections energy packets.
Feeling the energy supply decrease, Mike knew his opponent was running low on steam and rather than forcing the creature to retreat, he bowed and walked away. It wasn’t worth causing the creature to run away, then he would have to spend hours searching for it.
“How’d it go?” Pupach asked when he entered the nearby crater.
“Eh, even less growth than yesterday I think. I need more opponents.”
“If you can handle that, you are going to be fine handling the ambient effects of the System. Anything short of a direct injection should be manageable.”
“That’s good to hear, but something tells me that I will be on the receiving end of a direct injection with my luck.” Mike said grimly before adding in a somewhat more optimistic tone, “Plus, look at all of those beasts down there who are willing to train with me. I don’t have to hunt them. I don’t have to worry about being ambushed, I can train to my heart’s content. It feels wasteful to simply leave that if I haven’t extracted all of the potential from it.”
Pupach made an odd sound like a squirrel being stuck on a record player, which Mike had come to learn was laughter.
“What’s so funny?”
“Ahaha! Oh, nothing really. You are just finally speaking like a true cultivator. Extracting every ounce of gain from every resource is how it works.”
“You call it true cultivation, I call it growing up under a mother who lived through the Great Depression.” Mike shot right back, thinking himself clever until he saw Pupach’s blank look and remembered he had no idea what the Great Depression was.
After an awkward silence, Mike fled the scene, excusing himself to go train some more.
Two more days passed with little variation. Mike killed a few of his opponents and extracted their energy, gaining himself a single increase to the size of his core. It had been weeks since the last time he had been able to increase its size, and the experience left him wishing he had managed to steal the rest of the cosmic water more than anything else.
Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
Other than his daily trip to train with the strong soul-bender, he spent his time slowly creeping forward up the line. With only around three more steps to being peak Tier 2, he was only a few dozen places from actually entering the rift, and he spent a small amount of time watching the fights unfold. He needed to be prepared to pass through soon, and he still wasn’t sure how he was going to do it.
On the morning of the third day, he was busy fighting with the soul-bender, who had slowly lost places in line due to his daily taxes of the beast's energy, when suddenly he was tackled from behind, breaking his concentration. Sputtering, he looked around, noticing Pupach lying beside him, evidently his assailant, before a burst from Damage Premonition caused him to roll away, narrowly avoiding a pink spear of gooey flesh. Quickly finding his feet, he set himself in a battle stance as he took in his opponent–the goo monster from weeks prior that he had left in a small hole.
It must have escaped and it looks…. No that can’t be right… He thought, dodging another attack. Ok, yeah, it is angry. Seems dumb to hold a grudge against someone in a fair fight.
The surrounding beasts took a step back from the battle, giving the combatants more room to maneuver, but it didn’t prove sufficient. Mike dodged the creature’s attacks, waiting for the openings that had existed previously, but found that they had become almost nonexistent. The creature changed tactics and charged at the fallen Pupach, forcing Mike to intercept. He slashed through a projectile, wove under the followup and forcefully booted Pupach a few dozen yards away. Though he managed to come out of the exchange unscathed, he couldn’t say the same for his blade. He had lost another bit of Quicksilver, which rankled him greatly.
For a handful of minutes, the fight appeared to be a stalemate, which shocked MIke since he could see that his core was much larger than his enemy’s. But then the tide began to turn. Mike couldn’t believe his eyes the first time it happened: as he dodged a predicted attack, the creature slurped sideways and engulfed a spectator, instantly consuming it. A fete it did two more times in the next minute, regaining any lost mass in addition to growing slightly larger.
Though worrisome, Mike wasn’t overly concerned about the creature regenerating, until he checked its core and found that it had also grown. It is growing its core while in the middle of a battle?
“Mike! You need to get out of there. Splurgeslimes are notoriously hard to defeat. This isn’t a battle you can win.” Pupach hollered from the side.
Not one to exaggerate, Mike took his friend’s council seriously, disengaging and sprinting away from the fight towards Pupach’s location.
“Thank goodness for the weird line mechani…”
Mike’s sentence was interrupted by Damage Premonition, forcing him to jump forward. Landing and pivoting, he cut off the follow-up spear and saw with chagrin that the splurgeslime had followed him.
“Mike, why is it following you?” Pupach yelled.
With little time or attention available to answer, Mike focused on the battle at hand. No longer surrounded by onlookers, the beast slowly loss mass under Mike’s assault. Though the beast had gotten stronger, so had Mike, and his previous tactic of hacking off flesh-spears was still effective. He vaguely heard Pupach cheering him on from a distance, but tried to ignore it.
Right as he began to think that he could beat the splurgeslime, the creature used an ability it hadn’t had before: a loud sucking noise emanated from the beast, like a mouth slurping up excess spittle. After a few moments of the disgusting sound, the amputated pieces of flesh began wriggling on the ground before they shot towards the beast, reattaching themselves to it.
Well that is new. Mike thought with trepidation.
“Uh Mike, this one really thinks we should be getting out of here now.”
In total agreement, Mike ran to Pupach, picked him up over under his arms, and began sprinting towards the rift. Beasts blurred past him as he ran towards the front of the line, and it wasn’t until he was five places from the entrance that a large bird with a stinger stopped him from proceeding. In his haste, he had forgotten that everyone had to wait their turns. Setting Pupach down, he aggressively charged the bird. For weeks he had been holding back in fights, focusing on training techniques rather than fighting for survival–this was different. The skills he had been honing were now his tools of death has quickly decimated his foe, despite the creature having a larger core.
His right hand blocked a strike from the beast’s stinger, deflecting it into the ground as he stepped inside the beast’s guards. His left hand lashed out with an ax of Quicksilver, cutting the stinger off at the joint, leaving a broken stump spewing ichor. His next movement brought his right arm back up, blocking the creature’s closing wing and giving him space to bring his ax up and chop the beast’s head off at the neck. The other beasts who had been inching forwards to get a piece of Mike inched backwards at the brutal display, giving him space to look around.
He had hoped that the splurgeslime would be somewhat slowed by the need to challenge others in line, but he saw that wasn’t the case. Slipping forward in a straight line, it devoured one creature after another, the only ones being spared were those who managed to flee in time. Using Energy Sense, he watched as its core reached peak pumpkin for a brief moment while digesting its latest victim before bursting outwards.
“Oh shoot.” he whispered.
“Great Webmilkers…” Pupach breathed, “Tier 3.”