This must be the living ancestor. I can’t see him normally, but I do see him beneath the rear courtyard, looking at me. This should be enough to communicate.
“Long spoke of me. My form is but a vessel, I made some changes, your guards are fools.”
I see his mouth moving but his words are carried like silk in a stream towards the guards. That’s right, you better bow after all that bullshit.
In unison, “Our sincerest apologies-!”
“Silence. Just give me a sword to test.”
A tickling feeling appears in Aden's ear. “I must beg pardon for my subordinates, they are a rather eager bunch. Please, do come in.”
Receiving a sword from a confused looking young guard, ignoring the young man, “I’m just grabbing the nearest sword to test something after altering my vessel. I will return to you when I can heal you. It is good to know you are not as excitable and foolish as these morons.”
Having said his piece, Aden doesn't wait for a reply and runs the blade through his toe, implanted in the ground as he struggles to keep himself straight. The moment the tip finds purchase between the scales, the ground explodes. Aden is unmoved, having been using far more strength to stand than necessary. A tickle approaches his ear, but then ceases before coming through.
As the dust settles, a tiny blast zone around his foot shows his unharmed toe, pieces of his flesh crammed into the side of the dirt crater, and the surrounding dirt surface turned into a clear, soft, crystalline dust.
Well holy shit. I didn’t get to analyze what I wanted, but damn! This would probably have killed Long back then. I should take the parts back in.
While Aden reabsorbed his flesh with his foot, the tickle returned. “I do not know what even to make of this. Your experiments go outside my dealings. Eye opening, perhaps I should study more.”
“You wouldn’t survive. I’ll be going, you go back to healing for now.”
“Regrettable, until next time, Aden.”
Doing his best to “walk” back to Long’s courtyard. There was a slight pressure, along with his ability to exert control over chi at a distance using thin strands of his own. He could probably kill me from range, and if I didn't have this absurd vision and these senses, I would never know what hit me. Which doesn’t matter if he isn’t going to attack me in the first place!
-
-
While I couldn’t say I am physically exhausted, as my vigor never ceases, I feel mentally exhausted…and energized at the same time. I feel like I should be bouncing off the walls with this energy.
Looking back at the path he took through Long’s residence to the courtyard, he sees foot marks like he walked in sand, and little pock marks from his wingtips. While I can see my walking is getting better, I fucked up his floor. That will be hard to fix. I’ll just have to make this worth it.
Plopping down on the ground, Aden lets the sky take view again.
Like a caged bird…my fault…wait, I can fly poorly with an excuse now. Wait again, I can hardly walk, what the fuck am I thinking. Back to caged bird I guess, just in a different way.
Alright. Within.
Within, within, in.
I see, pressure at the edges of my body is heightened due to the difference in space, along with already high pressures, while piercing further in is negligibly lessened due to the spatial expansion. The moment my insides become outside, they are forced to compress into normal space, gaining higher density than they should have at the point of conversion, then exploding out. Many factors, one big result.
I could make some huge bombs…HUGE tiny bombs…Chi flow first. It’s time to start
modding my body.
First, form a clean chi-resistant layer of hide…A thick, gray, slate of hard leather forms from his outer arms
Now, provide pathways of least resistance…As if being sculpted by light itself, grooves just below the surface glow their way into existence, slowly tracing themselves out.
A simple one, this should increase hardness, but the one skybeak said was bad because it makes things brittle.
Aden picks the slates off, tearing easily from his arms like dead skin after a sunburn. Then tosses them at the ground. The slates fracture just from the tossing movement alone, then shatter once they hit the ground.
More successful than I thought it would be. I wonder if I could imbue this effect into targets with projectiles. Oh! Maybe I could make tiny shards that sear themselves into a target, destroying part of the runes while becoming a part of it, and letting the target's chi flow through into the new pattern of runes, thus imbuing them with the brittleness. Then I add those to a small explosive projectile. If they cut it, it blows up in their face showering them with the shards. If it hits them, pincushion.
Wait, no. Spatial distortion. I can just make a massive chi bomb, then add loads of shards. Tiny bomb, big boom. Yes.
…I think I’m getting ahead of my skill level here.
Next up, small boom.
A polyp begin to form on the tip of Aden’s finger, slowly splitting itself into a ball and sagging until it touches the ground. For a few minutes, nothing happens, then the stone cracks. Once more, then three, then twelve, steadily caving the center into the ground and heaving the outer edge of the stone fragments up.
Big inside, dense outside. Seeing this would probably freak people the fuck out. It goes against so much of their understanding, and yet they have these spatial rings…Whelp, test run numero uno!
Aden lets the stalk separate and retracts it into himself, the ball now its own entity. He hefts it up in one hand, then gives it a two-handed pitchers throw into the sky while remaining seated. Then he grabs a shard of the no longer imbued leather and flicks it into the ball.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
The building shakes before anything visible to the human eye occurs, but Aden see’s it in slow motion. Like a boulder hatching from a rubber egg, the skin splits open from the point of impact and lets loose the sheer mass it contained. Expanding until it occupied almost the entire courtyard.
I may have made it too big.
Aden kicks his legs out, propelling himself towards the courtyard entrance as the sphere of flesh crushes the ground.
…
Is it weird how appetizing that looks?
Sinking himself into the ball with a hug, absorbing it. What am I?
A screen appears.
[Connection Established]
Oh, nice timing!
[World Acceptable]
What?
[Integrating…]
I said “what?”
[Integration Halted Due to Incompatibility 57%]
I’m doubling down on “what”?
[Recalculating…
What are you, my gps?
[Update Successful]
[Welcome Back, Player Aden]
image [https://i.imgur.com/BplMxru.png]
Well I’ll be, you fucking work for once. Species tooltip?
[Due to excessive data corruption and change, species is no longer determinable. Please establish population and name]
Ha, no. Maybe? Clone army?
Mana, Chi, and Ki? Mana is low. Chi and Ki are going down.
[Warning. Chi reserves consumed by death chi interaction]
[Warning. Ki reserves consumed by death chi interaction]
Well, that much I could tell. I’ll have to establish a usage rate to know more.
I think I see the difference between mana and chi, while my best guess for ki is that it is more of a vital force like it was in my game. Ah, it's basically pure life chi, liquid vitality. its not quite flowing with the rest of the life chi, so much as forming under zones of compression that lack defining forces to tell the chi what to do, letting it purify into ki. Outside of advanced magic, this might be the best healing energy. I wonder how it's important enough to be named like mana vs chi?
Hybrid, I agree. Assimilator? Yeah, I get it. I even thought that before. Low rating, high authority. How to leverage authority? No tooltip.
Core formation, watcha doing buddy!?
[Warning. Core sealed via soul sealing curse.]
Kinda knew that, but I guess it confirms my soul is sealed too.
Looks like it’s tracking everything it thinks was done, since there isn’t really a linear way to track things. Like with people forming their core without a nascent soul, like idiots. Although…I guess that's me now? Not like I made the choice. Can I even form a nascent soul like this?
Since my rating is G and I can wipe the floor with most of the people outside, I think i’ll take the body reformation C and chi condensation B. Certainly lets me know my place around here-
Oh…”Microverse”. Where the fuck am i? Well, had to be some sort of “verse” I suppose.
Looks like that box is the failure to integrate, dunno how important this is.
Affinities, tooltip…death, fire, life, lightning, yeah I know this, but now a weak earth affinity. Nice.
image [https://i.imgur.com/2AAqMFD.png]
Explosive, no shit. Let’s see- oh. A few of these bugs I assimilated have self-exploding mechanisms. That and I got everything else right I think.
image [https://i.imgur.com/MZj8djd.png]
Yeah, I know I can heal. Nothing really new.
Now toxic, I need to know what changed… wow, I just have enough going around that everything is reduced to such a pure state. I didn’t see a bunch of debris aside from my own flesh, so I take it what remained aside from the transparent glass dust became gas or diluted in the air.
Looks like I may be healing him soon.
And getting hunted more often
No shit I’m a hybrid, what do you mean though- oh. Holy shit. Divine smokes. Way to highlight my entire body, but I get what it's pointing at somehow. My spirit roots are just as much material as they are immaterial, and that's not even the new part. I just didn’t quite get that like this before. They are almost all of me now, like removing the gaps between tangled cords. Abiotic Hybridization, I get it now. Undead looks alive compared to these parts, but they still function. Like the nutrients you absorb and how they get used, they aren't alive, but these are higher functioning. At what point does something count as alive?
Some parts don’t function without some sort of animating force, a new weakness my mortal body didn’t have. Really hitting in undead and golem, but at least undead runs perfectly off the endless supply of death chi trying to kill and enslave me.
Man, it really looks bad like this. I need to step up my mental time table. I’m running out of time, I need to eat so much more.
Demon, Mystic Beast, and Divine Beast are apparently really messing with my core. I think in a good way though. My intense energy levels are inducing condensation of a core but the phylactery is eating that energy, so they counteract each other. If I overcome the death curse, or better yet, maybe work with it, I might be able to condense a core like no one has before. Golem wants a core too, but it lacks the driving force, its more of a parasite on the creation process. I guess it's more a powercore for golem while with the others they condense it on their own.
Slime body, me knows. Aden relaxes his body, floating within the ball of flesh, absorbing it.
Fixed body plan…mmmm, yeah, four-armed, four-winged, bipedal, generally what the goddess gave me. So that's why I can’t manipulate myself freely, but also why I didn’t completely lose my form earlier.
Sealed Dantian. Already read ya.
Superior senses.
My whole body. It’s all got a sensory mechanism of some sort. Ooooh, I shouldn’t hold back my horns. “Calcified Tusk-Horn Antennae”.
Aden let’s everything out. Relaxing his body into its fullest self. A crown of white opalescent furry horns wreath his head. A thin, dense, translucent layer of hairs coat his skin, slightly obscuring the intricate subdermal scales with a shimmer. His vision bifurcates momentarily and then adjusts itself back.
Now I really feel everything with this body. These are like reinforced narwhal horns, and this fur is…”Trichoid sensilla”? It looks like magic polar bear fur. Its like every hair is my inner ear. I feel and hear everything so…thoroughly.
Running out of flesh blob to reabsorb
Let's see if I can make a healing ball for the wise man.
Long turns through his courtyard gate, seeking Aden, to be greeted by a destroyed garden. In the center of it all, a shrinking mass of flesh culminating into Adens new to him form. The light adorning him with a blurry film, unable to reflect his visage cleanly. Shimmering like a cloud of glitter in water. His crown a tribute to the pattern of life, branching and weaving into itself with the same illusory shimmer. Aden’s eyes open slowly, his lids retracting normally, then a second membrane repealing in a spiral like a mechanical iris to reveal split pupils, circling each other as koi in a pond. The eyes visibly flex and adjust themselves as Aden looks. He breaths in, taking the surrounding energy with him.
“Hello, Long.”
His mouth agape, eyes with fear. “What have I done…”
“Hm? Nothing like that, I just made changes to my vessel. The flesh blob was something I was reabsorbing after experimenting further and making a bomb of sorts.
Aden holds out a small matte white ball in his palm, “Will this do for your ancestor? I’m a bit restricted, so I just flooded it with Ki and the paired life and death chi flowing about my body. I believe this should heal him and balance well with your styles of cultivation?”