"Okay, let's back up a step or twenty," Sam said, rubbing at his brow with the help of one of his vines. The blonde was pacing back and forth in front of me, considering the implications of what I'd just said and asked of him. "You are telling me that over the last few days, when you should have been resting and recuperating, you've instead been spending the time bleeding all over the place!?"

"And using said blood productively," I defended, pointing at the trio of targets I'd created for the Embassy. "Why do you think those things are so sturdy?"

"Oh, I don't know, Ron. Because you are Q6 and can condense shit!" the healer shouted, surprising me.

"Samuel, I am okay. If I needed help I would have gotten you. You've been in Implant range this whole time."

The blonde slumped, his vines catching him in a surprisingly comfortable looking recliner. "That's not the problem, Ron. It's that you are still pushing and you didn't even breathe a word of this to anyone. The mana overdraw is one thing, and I am glad you discovered that if there isn't enough in the atmosphere the spell chain fizzles, but this... it's a negative feedback loop! You've been actively keeping yourself on the edge of the crippled Health range. Not like I have extensive numerical research, but I've looked at the Nash records to see where their healing practices overlap with ours. Extended injuries get imprinted on your body, making them harder and harder to heal with time."

"It's not been a week, Sammy," I said gently. "And now more than ever we need to be as strong as possible."

"Just because you are right, Ron, doesn't mean I have to like it," Sam huffed. He remained quiet for a few minutes, fists clenched while his vine cloak writhed. I could have continued pleading my case, but it would have been for no reason. Samuel had already said yes, it was just a matter of waiting for him to figure out which way he could change the plan so I didn't kill myself in the process. Just when I saw the tension ease out of his hands, vibrosense warned me of yet another visitor.

This visitor, however, didn't bother to knock and instead strutted right into the Embassy; apparently April had a set of keys for the building. Should set up some stone deadbolts for night time.

The demoness tilted her head in confusion when she found the two of us sitting, alone, in the middle of the empty lobby. "Samuel, I thought we were to explore your defiance of death at your laboratory?"

"Ah, sorry April. Ron asked for my help with something monumentally stupid," Sam said, evenly. There wasn't a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

"Will it draw the edge of the Fates' scissors closer to his thread?" April said, suddenly much more interested in whatever we'd been discussing. "I heard the Nash Shaman and him sought the Reaper just to spit in his face. His end might draw near."

"Not how I would describe it, exactly, but I can't argue with how it felt a few times," I said, shaking my head to hide the shiver April's deadpan demeanor instilled in my spine. Samuel seemed to like her well enough, but her... everything unnerved me. She was a badass detective and fighter, though, and she'd covered Sam's ass during their bar raid so she was more than okay in my book.

"He's going to hurt himself just to advance his Trait," Samuel summarized.

"Oh! Never have been audience to torture," the demoness said, sliding into a seat with preternatural smoothness. She was utterly silent, the only thing that would tell you a person had moved instead of a corpse was the jingle of the cuffs on her kit.

"This is going nowhere," I said, taking my turn rubbing at my brow.

"Actually, it will be your blood that does that. And I think April can help us out," Sam said, wagging a finger as an idea struck.

"Come again?"

"Really?" The demoness replied, way too excitedly.

"You want to rush this and I want your body to make it through," Sam said. "It will take a little experimenting, but I think April's debuffs and my can help us manage your exsanguination. To be perfectly clear, I am going to attempt to set up a dialysis construct to handle this. If that doesn't work, we'll figure out how to best advance your Trait after that."

"How are we going to make a dialysis machine? I don't think the one in the Bunker would even work with my Ichor," I said, more than a little confused.

In response, Sam curled his hand into a claw before reaching out towards me. At the last second, he turned the claw into a point. I was more than a bit confused for a second, but I saw the concentration on his face. My patience was rewarded as his vine cloak lit up with green-gold light a moment later. One of the shoots hardened, taking on a glossy edge that made it look like a pinkie sized thorn. Ah, he's using his Skill. Just to show how much better his magical control was than mine, the thorn grew hollow even as a slow wave of mana crawled down the smooth length of the vine. A foot down from the thorn needle, the vine ballooned before thinning, forming another smaller balloon and returning to another thorn needle when Samuel pinched it off between two fingers.

"Holy Asclepius, Samuel," I said, blinking at the man's on-the-fly creation. Then I eyed the thorn needle suspiciously. "You are going to stick that in my arm?"

"You are the one that's been slicing bits off your forearm, and a needle scares you?" Sam asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

"Can I stab him?" April asked, eyes glittering.

"No!" Sam and I said simultaneously. The woman huffed, but merely leaned back and crossed her arms. Her eyes hadn't left the thorn needle.

"Well, I suppose no time like the present," I chuckled nervously. "What are the chances this goes terribly?"

"High," Samuel said. "I am going to keep a steady stream of flowing to make sure you don't get a damn embolism because you wanted to do this stupid thing. should keep the sludge you call blood thinned enough that your natural Trait has to work harder to heal you. Hopefully, that gives it the catalyst it needs to assimilate. If not, get ready to get sepsis you idiot."

"I'm hearing a lot of insults in there," I said, raising a finger in protest.

"Deserved. Now lay down. I don't even want you comfortable for this, just so you remember the type of shit you make me do," Samuel grumbled.

Despite what he'd just said, vines formed a small pillow to catch my head as I rested it on the ground. With Hec looming on one side while Sam and April hovered on the other, I almost felt like I was actually about to enter a medical procedure. Flashes of what the future of Trait progression would look like thanks to the quantification the Implants provided took up my mind as Sam continued to prepare his work area.

His Skill formed a tight ring around me, pressing Amelia's bracelet to my side and snugly cushioning Fievil under my right arm. Further, vines lashed around my limbs in surprisingly tight restraints. Once that was accomplished, finger thin branches stretched from the restraints and started to cover my body in a mesh of greenery that looked strikingly like what Sam had been covered in when he'd first gained his Attunement. His nerve filaments poked and prodded every surface twice, thrice, before he met my eyes. He'd been talking to April the whole while about when to apply her Gift and what the procedure for her application of should it be needed would look like. Each statement he checked twice to make sure it was clear. Despite the goosebumps crawling up my back, I couldn't deny that the severity with which Sam was taking the whole thing was reassuring.

"I am going to be stabbing into your median cubital vein and subsequently your radial artery. I've never done this, and my knowledge is theoretical at best," Sam said clearly.

"You'll keep me together, Doc," I said, grinning up at him.

"I won't be doing anything. Your body would do the work for me," he said, turning from me to the device he'd created. My grin faltered a bit. Getting smacked around by a Primal Elemental suddenly looked much more appealing. At least in a fight, you were in control. If I understood it, he'd created a one-way pump that would take the blood from my arteries and push it back into circulation. Whether that would count for the assimilation was left up to testing, but it fit how I'd been operating so far. Plus, if that damn needle works like I think it will, I'll be bleeding more than I had with my little cuts.

"Here goes the first needle," Sam said, breaking me out of my thoughts. "April, slow him if you would."

The demoness' magic hit like a truck, considering I was actively trying to embrace the debuff. My whole body shivered and I could feel my eyelids grow heavy with artificial exhaustion. Man, that would be something. I wish I could just sleep through this thing. Unfortunately, Samuel had anticipated exactly what happened when he tried to jab me. Slurry Ichor, Limestone Skin and its upgrade Striated Dermis were not happy with getting attacked in such a blatant fashion. Sam's thorn actually snapped at the base, leaving only the tiniest of nicks on my flesh.

"You are going to have to pretend this is you doing the stabbing, Ron. Your Traits are fighting me subconsciously and I haven't even started," the blonde said, pausing to reform the needle with a flex of his magic. The edge looked even sharper than before.

I took a shaky breath before I smacked my will against my own body. I'd learned to lock my blood in place with Slurry Ichor and I'd learned to trigger Striated Dermis at will. All it took was my active opposition; I wanted the damage because it would benefit me. It was a little backwards, but thankfully I only had to fight the Corporeal Threshold Trait upon entry. The thorn pierced my skin with unerring accuracy aided by Samuel's nerve filaments. My skin immediately locked it in place, very much aware of the foreign object piercing it. It was hugely uncomfortable and Sam didn't hesitate to jab the other end of his device a few inches to the side of my forearm.

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"Ugh," I said, grimacing. "I don't like that feeling at all."

The moment the two ends were within my skin, Sam opened up the side of the smaller bulb he'd formed and air hissed out while the hollow vine was filled with my Ichor. It wasn't a rush by any means, but it was much steadier than any cuts I'd felt comfortable making operating on my own. By the time the valve was filled, I'd gotten the first notice of success.

Slurry Ichor (72 [28]%) > (73 [27]%)

"It's working at least," I said, letting out the breath I didn't even realize I'd been holding.

"Time to set it to run then," Sam said, leaning back and using a flex of his magic to seal the small opening in the vine. With a clench of his fist, the valve opened and Ichor started to flow. My Trait did not like that in the least.

"It's fighting this," I said, gritting my teeth as Slurry Ichor worked to try to coagulate where the thorns pierced my skin.

"," Sam said evenly, his eyes seemingly staring through me and into my very circulatory system. The complaints of my Ichor eased, but not entirely. It became a struggle to keep myself from sealing up, but the dialysis pump was working. The squelch of the blood-filled balloon and the soft breathing of three people were the only sounds for a solid minute before I got my next assimilation progression. When I let Sam know, he took a mental note of the time. I wasn't sure why, but I kept my focus on preventing my blood from sealing the pump while at the same time fighting the jitteryness of laying perfectly still while buffed by .

"Just hit 80%," I said, several minutes having passed while I lost myself in the fight against my own body. I almost couldn't feel the discomfort of the large thorn needles or the sucking sensation as my blood filled the valve.

"Shit, it's slowing down fast," Sam whispered.

"What?" I asked, focusing on Samuel. "It's only been a few minutes."

"It's almost doubling," April explained. "Between each tick of progress."

"Here, bite this," Sam said, producing a short length of bamboo from his satchel. I didn't even really question it. "Grunt twice when you tick up."

Almost five minutes later I did as Sam had instructed. Now that I was paying attention, that was a concerning decaying curve. Similar things had happened with my other Traits, even though for most of them I'd been steadily assimilating them instead of rushing forward as quickly as possible. It was entirely possible that 'assimilating' was exactly what the body needed to do and those things took time. If I wanted to expedite that process, I needed to pay the piper. Which is where Sam came in with a subsidy.

"," the blonde huffed, a double tied spell chain materializing around his hands before my entire body clenched. My heart started beating out of my chest, and my whole body started to shake with the urge to move. The reason for the restraints was obvious in retrospect, as Sam kept his focus on the Ichor dialysis. The rate of progression returned to a percent every minute or so until I got to 89% and progress ground to a halt. Despite the fact that I was twitching as much as when I'd been electrocuted, a whole twenty minutes passed without a single bit of progress.

"It's time," April said, cracking her fingers as black-purple mana curled around them.

"No, not yet. Just give it a chance!" Sam argued, brow furrowed in concentration. Each minute was torturous, and Samuel even had to recast the Amplified buff when it ran out. It wasn't until almost an hour had passed that I let out a grunt to indicate I'd reached 90%. The only thing that kept my mind focused was counting leaves in the canopy of the oak Sam had grown around Hec. It was mind-numbing, but that was exactly the type of thing I needed to endure. As the second application of faded and my body turned into a wet noodle, Sam moved to remove the thorn needle.

With more force than I thought my body could manage, likely thanks to the healer's buffs, I spat out the bamboo gag hard enough that it struck him in the forehead. My breaths were heavy and panted as my body tried to settle out of the rollercoaster of magical effects and Trait constraints I'd put it through. "What are you doing!?"

"It's not safe. You'll just have to keep plugging at this slowly, Ronan. Your capillaries are shriveling just to keep this abomination I constructed from taking your heart's place in pumping this sludge you call blood! If I hit you with my magic again you are going to be strung out for a whole day or worse!"

"Samuel," I managed, groaning as a shiver raced up and down my body. My face and eyes were the only things not restrained but I could feel sweat covering every part of me as if I'd been running a marathon. Considering we'd been at the assimilation process for hours, it wasn't entirely off the mark. "If we stop now I am never going to advance in time. I am going to have endured this suck for no reason because I stopped at the finish line."

"Ron, but you could die--"

"We all die one day, Sam," I said, cutting him off. "If this kills me, then there isn't a chance in hell we are going to make it against the things living on the surface. We are still the little fish in the ocean, no matter how much bigger we've gotten. Do it!"

Waves of indecision rippled off Samuel so strongly I could read them with vibrosense. The healer was going not only against his desire to heal, but also to keep me safe. So, instead, I locked eyes with the other person in the room. April had a complicated expression on her face that not even my upgraded sensory Trait could parse for me. Nevertheless, I could read the understanding in her eyes. They flicked to Samuel before returning to mine. All I did was close them firmly. A second later, it struck.

Nothing immediately happened other than a general feeling of malaise and unease. Then the Affliction stacked.

Once that initiated, the cascading effects on my body began. Minor turned into Moderate and it felt like someone was trying to cook me alive from within while at the same time having dunked me in an ice bath as my body started to fight itself for healing. A sharp pain started up on my lower back, and I knew it was likely something to do with my kidneys. At that point, however, coherent thought was becoming difficult by the second.

"April!" I heard Samuel shout, the healer likely having noticed something change with how closely he'd been monitoring my physiology.

"He made his choice, Samuel. Do not scoff at his mettle," the demoness said evenly, having already released her spell chain. The fever eased, and the Affliction reduced itself to Minor Sepsis in moments without the magical bolstering of the bacteria in my body. I shivered entirely separate from the disaster zone my body was turning into. Life and Death Attuned are horrifying. I don't want to fight them again if I can ever help it.

Samuel released a burst of into the larger balloon holding my blood before it flowed back into my veins. Almost immediately, as the still-infected blood filled the valve once more, a notification rang out from my Implant.

Slurry Ichor (90 [10]%) > (91 [9]%)

"It's working," I said, my teeth clacking against each other.

"Oh, brother. You are a bastard for making me compromise my principles," Sam groaned, grabbing the bamboo gag before stuffing it into my mouth again. "Tell me when you hit the damn threshold. I am going to be keeping you alive so you best not die on me, Ronan!"

With that the blonde glanced at April, who had a serious expression on her face, before the demoness' spell chain enveloped her fingers. The purple-black magic leapt onto my body like a poisonous snake lunging for the kill, immediately pushing the Affliction back to Moderate. I couldn't help the whimper that escaped me as my body restarted the whiplash of healthy and sickened from one minute to the other. The first few ticks of assimilation came quickly, but before long even those minutes started to lose meaning. The only thing my eyes caught were the alternating flashes of green-gold and purple black that signified relief and torturous decay. My stomach roiled and I was pretty sure I lost whatever I hadn't already digested of breakfast. However, Samuel stayed the course and I was pot committed. It's only a sunk cost if you don't win in the end!

An eternity and a half later, the sweetest words flashed before my eyes.

Slurry Ichor (99%) > (100 [ERR]%)

My eyes flew open, panic gripping it as adrenaline started to flow together with the magical debuffs and heals all throughout my body. I recognized what that interrupted notification meant. But I don't have anything in the tank!

"Yes!" I roared, starting to dump mana into Fievil and Amelia as fast as my body could manage.

"Ron!" Samuel said, taking his hands away in surprise. Thankfully, so did April and the dose of that had been headed my way was strangled at conception. "What's happening?"

"T-T-Tribu-ulatio-on," I managed against the pull of every one of my muscles. My Dreg Accumulation ticked up slightly, but the climb stopped at 4%. That last one took 10%! It's not going to be enough! Because I couldn't manage to form words, I shouted at both through my comm-plant. "Take me somewhere else! I need to overdraw my mana!"

Sam and April shared a wide-eyed look but I was already squirming free with everything I had. The Implant wasn't advertising how long it would hold the opportunity for a Tribulation but since it was there I intended to use the golden opportunity. Amelia manifested, blades of wind swirling around her wings before she flashed back and forth fast enough to sever my bindings. I tried to sit up, but all I managed was to lift a hand up. The thorn needles tore themselves out of my arm, but I didn't even feel it. Thankfully, my overseers had gotten the message.

With help from his vine cloak, Sam threw me over his shoulder and took off for the doorway. April blasted the doorknob with some sort of attack that allowed my friend to simply push his way out. As soon as we were beyond the Embassy's threshold my accumulation started to tick up painfully slow. I wasn't aware of where or how far Sam was going. I only had eyes for the count. I flinched when it reached 10% but nothing happened. My body was fully in rigor mortis mode, and flashbacks to the first time I'd overbanked Limestone Skin sent shivers up my back. It was a sensation of helplessness I didn't even remotely want to draw near.

My self induced fear proved beneficial because I kept myself distracted as my Accumulations leapt and climbed steadily until they hit 20% and whatever hidden metric was needed for the Tribulation triggered. It was heralded by a beat of my heart strong enough to cause Sam to stumble, the blonde using every one of his vines to arrest our fall by turning it into a roll. The world fell away as I read through what my Implant typed word by word.

Slurry Ichor (Geocardium)

>Your circulatory system has taken on some of the viscous properties of suspended particles.

>Trait Overbanked. When exposed to air, blood hardens enhancing clotting.

>Corporeal Threshold. Your blood dances through the states of matter to the beat of your heart.

>Corporeal Tribulation. Ichor retains adaptive healing properties and can be used as a curative substance with benevolent application. Malignant application yields the reverse effect.

Metier Quotient: 7 (00%)

Corporeal Level Advancement Achieved. Connection Realigning.