The Emerald Steppes were all but barren. The green sediment that gave the region its name and coloring, was ironically responsible for poisoning the soil and making it near impossible for any substantial farming and growth to be done.

As such most of the creatures that could be found in this region were at least partly carnivorous, taking their calories in meat and blood, if that was what it came down to, for their survival.

Fork-Horn Moose were named for both their tongues and their horns, both of which grew in, four pronged and gray, like your average table fork.

Edwin ran into three of the beasts during one of his tri-weekly jaunts around the outer-borders of Rus. The creatures were in the middle of eating a wild boar when he ran into them.

Their muzzles red with blood and gristle.

His first thought was to make a retreat. It was one thing if he’d run into the beasts on purpose, but this time it was quite by accident and he hadn’t been prepared. Wearing only a small general-use dagger at his side. The blade meant more for eating than personal protection.

From the aura that oozed out from beneath the shaggy, gray-brown winter coats that lay upon the creatures dense, gargantuan frames, he could tell they were at least at the of the special stage.

The essence in their bodies having begun the process of making them fiercer and stronger than any normal fork-horn moose could ever be.

Edwin was almost out and away when the bull moose at the head of the group looked up and glared at him. Snorting mist from out its nostrils.

“Ah...Nice Moosey, moosey, moosey...no need for us to….”

The moose charged and Edwin was forced to act, he was just a year shy from being a splendid adult again, by his reckoning. It’d have been a shame to waste all that time and effort on both him and his parent’s part, by dying.

So he did what he generally tried his best to avoid doing.

The moose charged, the bull moose’s action bring all three into a frenzy, they roared, the sound honking and menacing, their antlers tilting downwards to skewer the errant jotun that had interrupted their meal.

Then almost as soon as everything started, it was ended.

Finished with three short flashes of light.

The three moose fell, violently crashing into the ground, and leaving tracks in the soil, like derailed locomotives.

Then there was a sound of metal leaving flesh followed by the sound of metal entering flesh.

Two of the moose were stunned, blasted by rays that came from the boy’s palms.

The third moose, the bull moose had also been stunned and afterwards, a tendril of black metal and spiked into its skull kill the creature instantly.

This tendril snaked back into Edwin’s spine. It was one of ten manipulator tentacles that had been generated automatically over time. Born from additional clusters of hyper myelinated neuronal tissue. Wrapping themselves around Edwin’s bones as he grew.

His mostly mechanical, central nervous system, being heavily influenced by his past as a machine.

“*Gnh…” Edwin groaned. Sucking in a cool breath.

Blood dripped from his side, near the root of the black tendril. As well as from his nose.

Edwin did his best not to use these tentacles of his. Though it wasn’t for any reasons of trying to fit in or ape some modicum of normality.

Embla was a world where everyone was different enough from each other, that being too normal would be the true oddity. And even if that weren’t the case, Edwin was self aware enough to know that too much of his nature was irrevocably, irredeemably divergent for any attempt at trying to perfectly blend in with his fellow Jotnar to be feasible.

Edwin had indeed decided to leave most of his body biological and not revert to a full machine state, but he’d done so for the sake of living as a Jotun in the best fashion a former spaceship could.

Still even then he hated using his powers and his mechanical parts. Mostly because they generally hurt too much to use. They were also expensive. Draining both his stored calories and his stored essence.

Even if he could use the direct control he had over his nervous system to abate some of the pain it caused him to use those assets, there was no easy fix for the damage it caused him and the cost in energy.

A cost in energy that was often accompanied by exhaustion and pounding headaches. Biologically speaking, though he’d been fine just seconds ago, he was now technically starving. As if he hadn’t eaten in days.

Which was why Edwin was now putting a fair portion of his time and all his accumulated knowledge into trying to figure out an ideal physical form for himself. One that could support both halves of Edwin’s nature. Allowing him to be the perfect blend of man and machine.

This was his reason for all his experimentation and his sampling of the local wildlife, his search for the perfect Jotnar form. Or at least so he told himself. Conveniently ignoring all the data he had in his memory banks concerning divine physiques, from his war with gods and devils.

If he was being perfectly honest part of his reasons for doing the things he did. He likely should have also included the alleviation of boredom, and an in-built instinct to constantly self-optimize and collect new facts that was pretty much just hard coded into all of the Nemesis race’s Exploratory Warships.

It was too unreasonable to think one little death could change all that he’d been doing literal eons.

White windows appeared in the empty air. The windows engulfed the two living beasts, putting them in a space that would hold them in stasis till Edwin figured out what he wanted to do with them.

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Edwin cycled essence for a few minutes and let the nanites in his blood stream repair both the damage to his body and the damage to his clothes.

“*Hup*!”

Once he was sure he was whole and presentable again, he leaned forward and then swung the three ton bull moose up onto his shoulders.

With all this having been seen to, Edwin saw no reason not to resume what he’d been doing. Heading to a favorite spot where he’d founded a fairly rich patch of mixed essences for later storage, cycling and cultivation.

This esoteric energy would be supplemented with energy pulled from more mundane sources such as solar radiation, universal background radiation, any free heat found in his surroundings, and energy from the planet’s electromagnetic field. He could even absorb the kinetic energy from local sounds.

Driven by principles of machine-evolution, his systems had advanced to a stage far beyond anything his original makers could have imagined.

Edwin’s nanites could find energy from pretty much anywhere. The only question was storage and use and his body’s tolerance of these energies. Which was what the essence was for. As the particles seemed to have some reality altering effects that made use of the more mundane energies simpler and more manageable.

Like a beast of myth, Edwin’s cultivation was rising at its own pace. Fine Tuning the makeup of his body while he made the broad strokes and finishing touches.

To that end, Edwin consider, most of his current problems with his body, as a sort of growing pain.

They were particularly troublesome when he was just a child. A cause for much pain, the occasional fever that had his parents calling both the local doctors and the local priests. They were annoying now, resulting in current dislike of using his old space-ship capabilities unless he absolutely had to, but eventually, he’d get over it.

And in full honesty, he couldn’t be sure of how much of all this, was something he was going through, and how much was just down to the fact that after eons of doing so, he gradually come to like quietly and constantly tinkering with his internal composition.

Fiddling with his organs, flesh and bones, in much the same way a motorhead might fiddle with “their” vehicle of choice.

*****

After Edwin finished cultivating, he slung the moose back onto his shoulders and then headed back to town.

“Heya, Eddy boy!”

“How’re ya doing Ed?!”

“Hi, Mr.Fitzpatrick.”

“Morning, Mrs.Jones.”

He passed a few people who were either riding in wagon or riding on horseback. He waved to the one’s he knew. Verbally greeting the one’s he knew well.

This continued even after he’d entered the town. Edwin wasn’t popular by any means, Rus was just the kind of folksy place where everyone knew each other it was custom to greet those you knew.

The people who called out to him were those who were friendly with his parents. Those who’d known him growing up and weren’t quite as influenced by rumors of the boy’s uncanniness.

Edwin passed his father on his way to his real destination. The man was where he usually was, sitting outside one of the town’s local taverns. Surrounded by a few of the town's other layabouts and rascals. Sitting with cup of dice to his left and a tankard of ale to his right.

“How goes it son, I take it you went hunting again?” said Jarek.

Edwin looked up towards the huge beast that he had draped across his broad shoulders like a shawl.

“Er...it seems so...this time it wasn’t really on purpose though.” said Edwin.

Jarek whistled, smiling widely, his green face flushed from all the early afternoon drinking  he’d done.

“That’s my son. Hear that lads, my boy goes out to the wilds and somehow accidently comes back with the damned king of the glade on his back.”

The other fellows chuckle. Some of the newer ones seeming impressed. While the older ones just nodded.

It was a known fact that Oddmund family's intake of meat had gone up by a ten-fold since their youngest boy had taken to walking out from the town gates on his own.

A habit he’d started when he was around ten or so.

The vis-Oddmund’s ate like kings. The rest of the Oddmund clan ate like they were McBriar folk and the town of Rus in general also profited.

Though the boy wasn’t popular or particularly well liked, it was at least acknowledged that with him roaming the lands outside the town, the town itself had never eaten quite so well, quite so cheaply and wildlands beyond the town’s walls had never been so safe.

*****

Edwin reached his destination a small shop that sold wild game  brought in by hunters.

As the years went by, Edwin had become their biggest supplier, and eventually his curiosity got the better of him and he asked to see how they did the butchering there.

It turned out it wasn’t much different compared to the butchering on otherworlds, which in turn wasn’t much different compared to the medical vivisections Edwin used to do back when he was starship, picking up biological samples and a medical drone picking up patients.

He found that he was good at it, and the owner found he was good at it, and eventually they built a reporte that turned into a nice genteel working partnership.

“Oi...Eddy, where the hell have you been kid?” said the butcher.

“Out on a Jog…As you can see I came back bearing gifts.” said Eddy.

The butcher chuckled.

“Tch...More like you came back with more work for us to do..Have a bit o’ pity on an old man, will you?” said the Butcher

“And more meat for us to sell...if I do most of the prep work... which is pretty much always the case...if we’re going to be honest.”

The butcher just shook his head. Turning his attention to bloody flesh that was already spread out on the table in front of him.

“Right, right...just get to work…T’aint paying you for the conversation.”

Edwin went to find his own table, setting up a hook and chain that hung from the ceiling and hanging his fresh killed quarry on the hook.

He put on an apron, dingy, brownish pink from frequent use and frequent washing. Then he crouched down for a bit to get his equipment from the shelves under the table. Beneath the table was a bunch of shelves and drawers, within the top most drawer was a set of sharp, clean, gleaming steel knives.

Edwin brought them out smiling faintly as he looked at his own reflection in the blades.

Then he got down to the business of butchering the moose. He gutted the beast, He skinned it, and began systematically removing the muscles from the bone.

Preparing the boneless meat that would be sold for a premium at the shop.

*****

Edwin stood at that table working, for exactly six hours, fifty-two minutes, and twelve seconds before deciding he’d done enough for the day.

“Well...till next time.” he said. Saying goodbye to the butcher. Who’d already stopped and now sat behind the counter of his shop with an old book in hand.

“Later, kid.”

While butchering the moose Edwin had come up with a few ideas for what he’d use the live moose he had stored in stasis for.

He was busy deciding which of the options he’d actually go with, while he meandered back to his home in the Oddmund part of town.

Once he got to his home he found a stranger standing near the back wall. Wearing a mask.

Edwin frequently ran into such strangers in the past, it had been a while since the last one came by. A few years at the least.

Using his [scan] ability to look beneath the mask he saw that the stranger was one of the infrequent out-of-towners that came and went through Rus’s gate. Passing through the county like tumbleweeds on a windy day.

The stranger was standing outside Edwin’s sister’s window. A small toolbox set down beside him. The box was open and Edwin could see a bottle of something that would likely count as an anesthetic were it to be used medically. Some rope and a burlap sack for easy carrying.

It was almost cartoonish. The man seemed to be an ordinary, every day hoodlum, someone who’d been offered an unseemly amount of money to do something out of their league. And had made the attempt because they were likely both despicably greedy and stupidly brave.

Just to be sure, Edwin decided to ask the man what he was intending to do, before he, Edwin, acted.

“Er...sir. I’m afraid I haven’t had the pleasure of making your acquaintance. I don’t suppose you could…”

The man jumped and then after recovering from being startled he began striking out wildly with a dirk he’d had strapped to his back.

Seeing that his assumption that the man was indeed yet another would be kidnapper come to try and break into his sister’s room, had been confirmed, Edwin no longer hesitated.

Lunging forward, his hand piercing through the back of the man’s head.

He stepped back, pulling his hand from out of what remained of the man’s shattered skull.

Edwin stared at the corpse, wondering if he should take it as a research sample, but in the end he decided against it. He’d collected far too many ordinary Jotnar corpses throughout the years. They were no longer of use.

With that option out, Edwin did what always did when he had some unusable, non-edible, biological waste to deal with, using heat rays to incinerate the body and reduce it to ash. Scattering the ashes with a few kicks.

“Welp...Guess I’ve got to go tell mom and dad that this nonsense has started again....” said Edwin. Frowning. Rubbing his gurgling stomach.

Aware of what having a would-be kidnapper at his sister's window likely meant.