ã€ŠCancer means progress?ã€‹


 Chapter 1: Mission accomplished

    Chapter 1: Mission accomplished

    Dr. Mitch Korrigan leaned back in his high back leather chair. The blue glow of the surrounding diagnostics screens cast a pale light on his square face. The lab was silent, save for the soft hum of the bio infusers lined up on the counter. Months of meticulous work has led him to this very moment. A moment where his loss of face in the civil medical community, a moment where his rise in military contracting and a moment where science and his paranoia finally culminated.

    He reached for the closest violet vial labeled ¡°Neo-Crisper Omega¡± recently programmed feat of genetic engineering, the inscribed program only deemed to be used on hulking bio weapons. The protein and stem cell slurry would be capable of rewriting his genome with precision. Each infusion of the slurry brought him closer to his goal: a body that could defy the oppressive grasp of the Federation, a body that could heal and adapt beyond natural limits. A body he could feel secure in. A body that would be self sustaining even in the worst of situations. A body where he wouldn¡¯t have to fear the encroaching drums of war.

    Mitch knew the risks. The lab¡¯s digital records were meticulous, and the AI monitors relentless. But the vision of a free and secure existence, unshackled from company & government control, was worth every risk. He tapped the command on the holo-interface, initiating the final sequence of genetic manipulation he had planned. As the system whirred to life, he couldn¡¯t help but think back on all the stress of the past few months as he made these weekly night visits to the lab. On those days making sure he was the last one off of work. Securing an exit, leaving a way in without security triggering later in the night.

    What he didn¡¯t know was that the anomalies in his lab¡¯s digital fingerprint had already been flagged. It seemed even with the cameras shut down and the door security bypassed, the lab equipment itself generated meticulous records beyond what Mitch with his clearance could see or overwrite.

    His muscles spasmed violently a few minutes later. It was going to be a painful night for the doctor, as this final round of treatments would complete the integration of the biohybrid graphene nanotube musculature. This advanced system, powered directly by ATP, required the synthesis of countless classified documents and cutting-edge research to perfect. One document stood out the most; the holy grail that gave Mitch the confidence to go through with this boneheaded plan. ¡®Graphene Demons: The Carbon Supremacy Initiative¡¯ was a highly classified military document which outlined the highest performance genetic modifications to be used on planetary special forces teams. The fusion of organic enzymes and graphene technology promised unparalleled strength and efficiency, but the integration process was anything but gentle.

    With stumbling motions the doctor made his way out of the lab after cleaning up. A herculean task as his fingers & legs kept spasming violently every few minutes as his very muscle cells were slaughtered. His modified regenerative immune system worked overtime to begin graphene construction. His entire body felt sore & swollen at the same time. The next weeks were bound to be in a haze of strong painkillers, chewing on graphite chunks and tens of thousands of calories needed to succeed in reconstruction.

    ¡°Mission accomplished¡± he muttered before making his way out of the lab through the backdoor, he took the maglift back to his apartment in the nearby city of Palihen, away from the military base.

    The Doctor received a plethora of questioning looks from late night passersbys in the city as he stumbled his way to his apartment¡¯s lobby. He reached two gray steel elevators at the back of the nice establishment. He mentally pressed his floor with his neural interface hat. It was a pain to wear during the day but not having any invasive brain implants was well worth the daily annoyance.

    Taking off the electrode ridden baseball hat, he collapsed in bed. The doctor struggled to fall asleep with the pain racking his body. Even his improved regeneration and fistfull of pain medications did not provide enough comfort to let him drift away just yet.

    All he could think was, what if he wasn¡¯t through enough with his digital cleaning? What if someone noticed him on city street cams walking back at night? What if there were lower level records in the lab equipment beyond the surface records left in the gene editing software¡­

    As all these doubts raced through his mind, one stood above the rest, it worked so far? if they suspected anything they would have dragged me into court by now¡­ But in the back of his mind, The doctor knew, knew that his boss or base security could be waiting to hit him with a cumulative report of all his wrong doings once he finished incriminating himself.

    Soon a long enough lull in spasms let his exhausted mind finally slip away into darkness.

    The next day going into work the doctor found himself being told he has an impromptu meeting with the chief medical officer in thirty minutes. Mitch, swore internally like a pirate.

    Fucking cunt under a grime covered hover rail, I¡¯m going to die for this.

    If they have actual concrete digital records of all changes, i¡¯m fucked.

    If they know I''ve been experimenting on myself with lab equipment, I''m fired and most likely sued for breach of contract.

    If they know exactly what i¡¯ve injected myself with¡­ a plethora of bioweapon grade treatments as part of those records, decent chance i¡¯m fucking dead. They¡¯ll tell me I''m going off to prison then I¡¯ll find my food spiked with cyanide before I ever reach any steel bars. Though, they better have something stronger than cyanide since in the laundry list of modifications was a broad spectrum toxic substance metabolites. But, I''m sure there¡¯s something horrific it doesn¡¯t cover and if they have detailed records they¡¯ll know what¡¯ll still kill me¡­ I''m sure I cleared all of the records in the lab equipment software so it can¡¯t be more than detailed usage logging? Right? Unless all records are duplicated out of lab servers? Fucking hell, I woun¡¯t know till I go in? Do I make a run for it? Also they¡¯ll know something is wrong right when they weigh me or take a flash picture. I weigh nearly four hundred and fifty pounds in a lean muscular six and a half foot frame & I have a tapetum lucidum embedded in my eyes now for night time seeing¡­

    I¡¯m still having nightmares about the ridiculous levels of graphite I was taking after the multi layerd graphene nanotube skeleton modification. A whole kilogram of graphite chunks every night. Oh the painful black shits were legendary. If i had tried such a stunt before a plethora of gi tract & liver enhancements i¡¯d have long ago killed myself. And¡­ This time is going to be so much worse, the minimum is six kilograms of graphite chunks if I want this done within the next month.

    Rick, Mitch¡¯s boss snapped his fingers irritated in front of the doctor¡¯s eyes, ¡°Earth to Dr. Korrigan, You have a meeting to get to later. At least get some charts done before you head out. We¡¯re drowning in paperwork as usual, I can¡¯t have you spacing out!¡±

    Dr. Korrigan went over to his desk, the floating mental displays shuttering awake as his neural interface cap connected to the workstation. He pulled up the log of charts for outpatients, it was a boring part of the job since the vast majority of the time AI review was enough to recommend any treatment. Human overview was needed for legal reasons.

    Mitch did not even read the majority of the charts just approving all of the AI recommendations, too busy plotting a possible escape.

    Too late to call in sick. If I were to leave now and they actually have dirt on me I wouldn¡¯t be able to leave the city via public transport. Additionally, I¡¯m much too sore and still prone to tremors to take my hoverbike. There¡¯s also document scans on all main roads out of the local state. Even if I were to escape I¡¯d have to leave my family, & friends behind, much less dealing with another charge for escaping prosecution when I eventually get caught¡­ If they have everything, the worst they can hit me for is  unauthorized use of classified procedures, breach of contract & maybe illegal human experimentation. So that comes out to a maximum of fifteen years? I hope I didn¡¯t miss anything. The federation law books are extensive.

    He stood up to get to that dreaded meeting. You know what? Fuck it, it¡¯s not like anyone really ages these days, as long as I don¡¯t mysteriously die in prision this shouldn¡¯t be too horrible. Just thinking of all of the holliday¡¯s i¡¯m going to miss brings pain to my heart. If I do get tossed into the slammer I''ll definitely be single afterwards since there¡¯s no way my sweetheart Lyla is gonna wait that long. For the love of god, I hope I don''t get offed in the next 15 years.

    I just hope Dad won¡¯t do anything stupid to bail me out early. If my fuckup somehow ruins his chance to finally become a Fusion-Walker, there¡¯ll be hell to pay. He¡¯s been working for nearly a century now as a droid pilot on the front lines to finally become a fusion powered super soldier. For his family of course. Not that I believe him.

    The sterile halls of the medical facility blurred by as Mitch ruminated over dozens of different situations as he walked into the CMO¡¯s office.

    It was a dark wood furnished room. A stern looking white haired man sat behind a large mahogany table. He looked from away from what Mitch assumed was an invisible floating display and waved Mitch over.

    ¡°Dr. Korrigan! Make your way over here, and take a seat.¡± The Chief Medical Officer beckoned, his voice demanding.

    Mitch complied, walking his way over to the chair opposite to the man¡¯s desk. Mitch tried to keep his best poker face. The random spasms from last night¡¯s treatment made it really difficult to accomplish.

    "Dr. Korrigan," the CMO began, his tone somber, "I''m sure you''re aware of the gravity of the situation we find ourselves in."

    Oh you¡¯ve got to be shitting me, how do I even respond to that? Mitch¡¯s mind worked overtime.

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure what you mean? I¡¯ve not been informed what this meeting is about?¡± Mitch countered hoping for the best.

    ¡°It has come to my attention over the past dozen weeks that you have been making unauthorized after hours lab visits. None of which have been reported officially.¡± The man said, in a factual tone.

    Mitch decided to not say anything, and just let the man put down all of his cards.

    ¡°I also have additional records of extensive equipment use during these escapades of yours. And additionally, during all of these outings there are entry records to a plethora of bio-military procedures at the same time as your entrances. As well, it¡¯s been quite difficult for your co-workers to not notice the physical changes you¡¯ve been having. While we cannot say for sure these changes came from your ventures into the lab or you¡¯ve gone on a civil grade genetic editing procedure splurge recently. But given the lack of civilian gene editing medical records found. It makes for a very unfavorable look for you Dr. Korrigan.¡± The man said, surprisingly laying out the information he has on Mitch.

    Mitch opened his mouth to respond, but the CMO raised a hand to stop him.

    ¡°I¡¯m not done. Given the apparent illegal use of military medical procedures, holding of bioweapon modifications without license & unauthorized access to classified material. I have no choice but to terminate your contract with immediate effect. Furthermore, given the severity of the actions stated, we will be pursuing legal action against you. Finally your benefits are considered null and void. I hate to do this Doctor Korrigan but you have left me no choice.¡±

    This white haired whoreson! At least I''m not getting detained on the spot. I¡¯ll be able to get my proceedings in order and hopefully get some hours in this new body of mine. I don¡¯t imagine Lyla is going to take this news well. I guess that¡¯s the least of my worries. That relationship is now just as null and void as my employment benefits. I might as well sell everything I''ve got and buy up some federation capital system stock. Maybe I¡¯ll come out on top if I do that, full set of enhancements, and a retirement fund once I get out after the feds pay for my prison room and board. Mitch thought hopefully as he stood up to leave, he knew better than to say anything in this situation. It was better just to get up and leave. He was no longer employed anyways, no reason to save face.

    Wait¡­ just ¡®holding of bioweapon modifications without license¡¯. I swear I read that there was a higher category of possession for graphene mods specifically. If you had the juice to power graphene musculature one would have the power to flatten a skyscraper by themselves.

    As soon as Mitch gathered his belongings and left the base premises, his civilian data plan turned on. Mitch frantically looked up the ¡®holding bio weapon modifications without license¡¯ code. He quickly found his answer, he was slightly less fucked than expected. What he read before was the local region code of the capital system, not the federal laws. Thankfully Mitch wouldn¡¯t be executed on the spot.

    Stupid ass brain skimming law articles. At least it turned out as a positive. Gotta look at the bright side here. Actually, let''s look at the dark side instead¡­

    After digging through a dozen form posts, Mitch found the punishments for said felony¡­ The lightest of which was a hundred year prison sentence, the worst of which was being indoctrinated into the federation army to join the front lines for a century. Well, a century if you live that long.

    Wait, Hold on! Hold the fuck on! No this can¡¯t be happening!..

    Mitch took a deep breath.

    No, it¡¯ll be all worth it, just think, I''ll be a rich man when I get out! My track record as a doctor, surely I''ll be tossed into the prison for the next hundred years and not have to suffer the front lines. Anything but the front lines, my father¡¯s stories. I would not be able to live in them.

    <hr>

    Mitch mentally prepared for a horrible conversation with his father. Mitch contacted his dad two days into his recovery over a holocall.

    ¡°Mitch you¡¯ve not called in so long! What made you decide to call me? If it¡¯s about your Mom again¡­¡± Ronan, Mitch¡¯s father began.

    ¡°No, Dad. Not this time¡­¡± Mitch sighed, paused, and looked up at his dad¡¯s floating face a dozen feet in front of him.

    ¡°Come on Mitch, Spit it out. I swear I won¡¯t tear you a new one.¡± Ronan said softly.

    Mitch winced, remembering the verbal beating he got from his father when he informed him of his leaving of civilian therapy into military contracting.

    Oh boy! This is gonna be fun.

    The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

    ¡°Dad¡­ Well¡­ I¡­ Might have made a massive mistake. You know how I got into medical military contracting due to my fascination with bioweapon gene therapy. The therapies I have been performing here in Palhien are a century ahead of anything the civilian athletes I¡¯ve treated had access to¡­.¡±

    ¡°Mitch I know, I know, You love your new position. Seeing all the new bleeding edge gene tech. Don¡¯t get me wrong, I''m happy for you, but can you get to the point?¡±

    ¡°Well Dad, starting a few months ago¡­ I started making nightly visits to the lab outside of working hours¡­ And brewed some bleeding edge tech for myself¡­¡± Mitch said with a wince as his father¡¯s eyes bore directly through his skull.

    ¡°Mitch¡­ You didn¡¯t! Why?.. If you¡¯re telling me someone must¡¯ve caught you¡­¡± Ronan paused and took a deep breath. Then continued.

    ¡°Son¡­ When is your trial? Better yet, has someone bugged you? Have a lawyer in place? Did anyone follow you home?¡± Ronan asked another dozen questions after that.

    ¡°Dad, stop. No one has bugged me and this is an encrypted call. The court proceeding is in five weeks.¡± Mitch responded a bit exasperated.

    ¡°Mitch, I¡¯ll see when the soonest I can take leave¡­ Then me, you and your sister will organize a nice long family get together. It¡¯ll be nice to see you in person, it''s been so long. But Mitch, hope isn¡¯t over yet. If you can get a good lawyer, and put together a good defense, I''m sure you¡¯ll come out of this okay. Trust me son. You¡¯ll get through this.¡± Ronan said somberly

    ¡°I¡¯ll send you a contact of mine who is a lawyer that deals with these sorts of situations. He¡¯ll want to know the whole story and I will too once I see you in person. But I have to go, my lunch just ended. Remember Mitch you¡¯ll come out of this stronger.¡±

    Ha! Stronger alright. Mitch thought as his right leg spasmed and dented the hardwood below his graphene heel.

    ¡°Thanks dad, I¡¯m surprised. You actually meant it.¡±

    ¡°Mean what?¡±

    ¡°Not to tear me a new one¡±

    ¡°Ha! Calling you a slobbering dumbass in this situation isn¡¯t going to change the facts. I just need you to be strong since no decision of yours is gonna make this easy.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, I¡¯ll try.¡±

    ¡°No Mitch you won¡¯t try, you will, See you soon¡±

    ¡°See you¡±

    Ronan¡¯s floating face faded away quickly as the call ended.

    The next couple weeks passed in a blur, his studden vacation was filled with an unhealthy number of hours in a full dive vr pod playing Eldoria, a stupidly immersive full dive vr game. His extreme virtual fighting addiction and his horrific muscular pains prevented the doctor from doing anything the first two weeks. Which resulted in the two hundred hours of playtime during his physical recovery. Higher if you counted the personalized ai system playing in his stead while he was asleep or away. After using virtual combat, drugs and gambling to get his mind off of his galactic grade fuckup and his painful body during recovery, Mitch broke it off on good terms with Lyla after a goodbye screw. He sold off his hoverbike and old house off planet back from when he worked in civil gene therapy in the Polaris star system. He ate well, spent time with old friends, and helped organize an extended family meeting along with his father. He saw no reason but to prepare for the worst.

    Throughout the weeks the doctor could not help but itch to try out his new musculature. All of the skeletal and muscular system changes finally worked in a well oiled tandem. Even now he still struggled with his own strength and weight. There were many instances of glass jars being shattered, door knobs getting warped, tile floors cracking, automotive door handles being ripped off and old light switches getting mangled.

    When Mitch¡¯s social battery was exhausted he would spend his time exercising trying to find the limits of his new body. To say the least, he struggled to find the hard facts of his new frame. The normal gym gear available just wasn¡¯t enough even with all the free weights he could fit on an olympic bar. It seemed his chances of maxing out an engineered body on mundane gym gear were quite small. It was like trying to bog down an industrial grade hydraulic press with styrofoam. He was getting extremely odd looks during high intensity sets. Both due to the high weight, and the microscopic speedy graphene heat exchangers on his skin that quickly wicked away the copious amounts of waste heat into an annoyingly visible aura around his sweating form.

    The temptation to stretch his legs every night was too alluring especially with the potential prison sentence and front lines hanging over his head. Mitch every night would make his way to the abandoned part of Palihen. A section of the city abandoned due to a nuclear equipped terrorist attack gone explosively wrong. On these visits he would test his limits, crushing concrete, leaping eighty foot gaps, and sprinting at top speed. The first few nights were filled with painful tumbles down tens of stories. After the first nerve wracking gravity experience and surviving no worse for wear the doctor attempted increasingly more demanding courses through the decrepit skyscrapers. At a certain point the most exhausting part of these trips was eating enough food to feel satiated. Over thirty thousand calories a day and he still didn¡¯t feel satisfied. Those days only occurred when pushing his strength near the limits. What truly scared him was that, He could only hope he could sustain himself on whatever scrap sized meals he may get in prison. Just moving around the carbon dense frame in daily life still took more calories than he was comfortable with. Then adding the daily concrete jungle trips and the doctor was stuffing his face more frequently than he had ever done before.

    The doctor was thankful he focused so heavily on a robust engineered GI tract for a foundation of his changes. He just wished he managed to get access to a stasis body modification chamber in the depths of the military base. The true holy grails of genetic weaponry needed said chambers to be completed successfully¡­ The most well known example is organic deuterium fusion inside cells. Having said modification is when a weapon becomes a true strategic asset, a Fusion-Walker. Sadly, the doctor did not have the chance since said chambers were heavily monitored and reserved years if not decades ahead of time.

    If I had fusion power, I wouldn¡¯t be limited to pitiful small bursts of fifteen times the human standard. The graphene demon spec calls for fission or fusion power, sadly the best I have is god damn sugar. Mitch could only dream of the two hundred and sixty thousand times increase in strength the full demon spec outlined.

    On the last night of practice, Below, Mitch spotted a scraggly man demanding the wallet of a doe eyed tourist. The tourist made the brain rotted mistake of entering the abandoned area by themselves. Much less being dressed in expensive tropical themed wear and blue tinted sun-glasses.

    How did that dumbass even end up here? None of the new digital maps even have these roads mapped. Do I help him? Given the billion layer thick graphene dermal graph mod, I have nothing to fear from arms fire¡­ The holy grail document mentioned graphene demons taking artillery shells center mass no worse for wear¡­ I mean even if I accidentally kill him, I¡¯m probably going to prison already, right? What¡¯s a few more years for a little bit of fun? Wait¡­ Let''s make sure to not kill him, I would rather that info to not make its way back to any law enforcement. Mitch thought, trying to justify his actions as he leapt from his twentieth story perch of a nearby gutted scraper.

    He landed with a sharp crack, the nearest inches of concrete below his carbon heels cracked into a small debris spray as he fell into a low crouch. The landing kicked up enough loose dust for him to lose sight of the duo in the alley. Said stunts would have long ago given him brain damage even with his carbon skull if he didn¡¯t have graphene laced hydrogel to protect his brain from shocks and drastically improved elasticity of his gray matter protein structure. Mitch refused to die to something so benign as brain damage. The sims he ran in the lab has his lethality acceleration threshold at three hundred G for a three second period. There were some more exotic treatments to make any chance of acceleration causing brain damage impossible but they required a stasis chamber. Complete brain restructuring outside of a stasis chamber never works.

    As the dust settled, Mitch saw the dark outline of the scraggly man now pointing a handgun in his general direction.

    ¡°Stay back! I¡¯m fucking armed, reach for anything and you¡¯ll have two extra holes!¡± The man said in a gruff voice, slightly panicked.

    ¡°Wooooaaaahhh! No one needs to get hurt here. I¡¯m sure our tropical friend is just a tad bit lost. Able to cut him some slack?¡± Mitch responded, raising his hands in mock surrender with a coy smile on his face.

    The tropical shirted man opened his mouth to speak but before he could the gun in the scraggly man¡¯s grasp swiveled back into his direction.

    ¡°I don¡¯t want to fucking hear it!¡± The mugger then gestured to his head saying, ¡°Hurry up and send over ten thousand creds before I blow your brains out! I know you¡¯re fucking good for it! There¡¯s no way anyone wearing capital system brands isn¡¯t packing! You have ten seconds!¡± The mugger said spittle flying from his lips.

    Mitch decided this was probably the best opportunity he was going to get. Tensing his legs as forcefully as possible, his four hundred pound frame of dense modified muscle launched its way down the alley. Powerful thumps reverberated through the alleyway as his booted feet pounded concrete.

    By the time the mugger managed to spin around a second later, Mitch had managed to cross sixty of the seventy feet between him and his target.

    ¡°Fuck¡± Mitch muttered, as a series of four deafening pops echoed throughout the alleyway as the mugger went for the kill.

    The first shot went wide as Mitch jerked violently to the right, but the last three hit Mitch center mass with audible meaty thumps. The hollow points flattened on his skin. The bullets each penetrated through a millimeter of flesh then dispersed their energy broadly into his dermal graphene layers, graphene rib cage acting as rigid support.

    With a manic smile half due to adrenaline and other half excited to try out his new form on something living, Mitch reached the mugger before he could get any more shots off.

    Mitch charged into the mugger going nearly forty five miles an hour, dragging the man¡¯s face and chest forcefully across the jagged and rusted steel wall of the alleyway for a dozen feet.

    The wall was soon covered in a red smear as the rough surface ate away at the man¡¯s skin. ¡°Agah! I¡¯ll fucking kill you!¡± The man screamed violently as he mag dumped into Mitch¡¯s abdomen to little effect.

    Mitch smiled at the mugger, he was very used to getting his hands dirty from his favorite pastime of playing Eldoria.

    I don¡¯t want to kill him, the chances of his death being logged to the cloud by a cheap brain chip is too high. Assault & battery seems a lot more palatable, I doubt he¡¯ll even report it with the gun involved n¡¯ all¡­ I do have a meetup scheduled with Rick and friends though at Loungebarz in an hour, so lets make this quick. Mitch thought darkly.

    The man squirmed on the rough, now red slimy wall pinned by Mitch¡¯s left hand. The doctor raised a right fist and drove it directly into the man¡¯s sternum at a quarter max force.

    The man gasped as the right fist connected. With a sickening series of cracks, the man¡¯s rib cage splintered then a second later he coughed up a series of vermilion drops of blood.

    With a sigh and a quick spiteful stomp on the man¡¯s right pinkie toe, Mitch turned just in time to see the tropical shirted man finish sprinting out of the alleyway.

    I sure hope that guy wasn¡¯t recording this shit.

    Mitch glanced over to the incapacitated, squirming mugger,  His ribs are mangled¡­ Maybe I should drag him to a hospital? No, fuck him. I got a social to catch. Mitch thought before wiping clean the superficial wounds with his torn apart shirt.

    <hr>

    The next morning Mitch, a little hung over, was unsurprised to see an email for a court proceeding. It was for a plethora of accusations from the feds & local Palihen city government. He already got a lawyer in place weeks ago and was hoping for the best.

    <hr>

    A series of heated court proceedings followed. They went smoother than expected, his father¡¯s attorney did a great job making his case. A case of a successful son of a military man, scared by the encroaching war, further stressed by the stories passed on by his father as a droid platoon pilot. And how the doctor was looking for a form of security in these uneven times. How a great man like Mitch did not deserve a dog¡¯s death or to be fodder at the front lines, but deserved a new chance at life after he served his time.

    Ultimately, Mitch found himself staring out of an enclosed jail cell. It was a hard fought legal process finding him guilty. The clear digital records & genetic testing played a large role.

    At least I managed to avoid the front lines, no horrors of chitin, skin and steel for me to fight.

    Mitch was being sent off to a maximum security prison outsystem. He¡¯d be transported over a warp pad through the local spatial nexus orbiting the planet.

    A hundred years. A hundred fucking years. I¡¯m gonna go insane. Father said he¡¯ll come to visit and so did my sister Nora. It¡¯ll have to be enough.

    I just need to be strong.

    Mitch shook his head, no point to wallow in pity, he just needed to accept it.

    Moving his thoughts onto the smaller things in life. Mitch always hated warp pads. For one, they caused horrific nausea every time he used one. It was always as if his very soul was being jostled in the most nauseating way possible. And second, he did not have a single clue as to how they worked, and not for lack of trying. The concepts of spatial manipulation with simulated exotic matter just seemed to elude him.

    The local station deputy sheriff walked into the courthouse holding cells area.

    ¡°Get your ass up, transport is ready! I hope you¡¯ve gotten all of your proceedings in order. Cross system communication in Achird is very difficult. I do not envy your situation, I hear horrible things about the Achird prison complex.¡± The man said with a somber smile before pulling out nanotube laced zip ties to secure Mitch¡¯s hands with. Then, walking him out of the courthouse into a hovercar police transport outside the courthouse.

    The automotive blurred past many newly developing suburbs & settlements on colonized fringes of the planet. They were fast approaching a gray colored vertical line bisecting the horizon. The two space elevators planetside were the cheapest form of transport to low earth orbit. The elevator chamber was massive, easily a hundred feet each direction. The duo was joined by various different faces most dejected, all of which had matching zip ties around their wrists.

    This was worth it. This was worth it. This was worth it. The doctor repeated as a mantra. The planet''s surface fell away outside of the chamber. The sheer engineered power and vitality the doctor felt coursing through him was what gave the mantra weight in his mind.

    The most worrisome thing of this entire situation is that I''m going to be set to Achird, a glorified mining star system filled with max security prisons known to work inmates to the bone. So much for a cushy experience behind bars¡­ The real reason I''m worried isn¡¯t the manual labor but that the system is reserved for the cybernetically and biologically enhanced in-mates. It is considered the most dangerous place in this star cluster. There is at least one case a year of a war veteran super inmate snapping and going on a rampage. You¡¯d think they¡¯d at least strip the cyberware off the inmates but the production increase of not doing so is too large. The rampages continue to be a regular occurrence. I really doubt my broad set of enhancements could keep me safe from a rampaging tech goliath more nano-steel than man¡­ It¡¯s ironic that my quest for security through improving my body is going to lead me to feeling less secure as a whole for the next hundred years.

    The ride up took around two hours, it was a relatively slow process. The piece of massive freight machinery was working overtime as it was rush hour. Many well off folk took transport off the planet for work or vacation all the time. The energy demand was immense but nothing a few dedicated fusion power plants couldn¡¯t fix.

    The chamber gradually came to a stop, with the loud humming of the electromagnetic rails propelling the group upwards slowly dwindling in volume. Then when halted, a series of hissing gas exchanges between the elevator chamber and now connecting airlocks occurred noisily. The inner airlock door opened slowly revealing a green light beaming through the thin fog within.

    The leading sheriff yelled out to the accompanying officers to herd us prisoners into the airlock.

    The group was then separated into smaller groups of a dozen each then put into massive transport pods to be flung from low earth orbit to the nexus by a spinning space tether. A mainstay in long lasting space infrastructure.

    The pod was relatively small for a rocket since it only had enough fuel for reaching the nearby tether and docking. Mitch reached the destination in a few hours time, the massive chrome and white plastic monstrosity of a space station that was the system nexus engulfed the shuttle¡¯s windows as it approached closer.

    The hallways were extremely busy. People of all shapes and sizes were walking the halls, aesthetic genetic editing and mundane cybernetic implants were affordable and widely available. So while being escorted through the halls Mitch saw everything from the average joe to seven foot tall bodybuilders with pointed ears and red eyes. The age of designer babies had long ago morphed into the ¡®modify to your whims and extent of your wallet¡¯ motto.

    Mitch looked at himself in the glossy reflection of the polished space station walls as they passed by, seeing a currently well groomed, six and a half foot tall dark brown haired white twenty year old with matching eyes. I wonder how that¡¯ll change over the next few years. I hope my anti-aging treatments can last a hundred years.

    The group quickly reached warp pad chamber thirteen, it was a small warehouse sized room with a single entryway in or out of thick steel airlocks.

    ¡°Listen here fishies! Ya¡¯ll ain¡¯t going to the same place, I want Mitch Korrigan & Richard Killihan up here first! You both are being sent off to Achird, Illgar yard! The rest of you stay put!¡±

    With a hefty sigh, Mitch made his way forwards through the group, standing in front of the deputy.

    The deputy surprisingly put a hand on Mitch¡¯s right shoulder saying, ¡°Son, hang in there, that system is brimming with chrome monsters. If you¡¯ve got a good head on ya, you¡¯ll have a good chance of getting out a bit early on good behavior. Now get your ass onto that pad, we don¡¯t have all day!¡± Then lightly shoved him forward into the airlock to follow behind the hulking nine foot goliath that was Richard Killihan.

    Mitch found himself being directed over the speaker system to stand in the exact center of the pad back to back to Richard.

    ¡°Fishies, you move out of the center mid warp, no promises you¡¯ll make it out the other side in one piece!¡± The deputy announced over the loudspeakers, seemingly standing beside the pad technician.

    ¡°Initiating warp process to checkpoint Achird, Illgar. Stand still!¡± The high pitched technician said over the speakers.

    The very space around the duo started to warp and buckle violently, It looked as if the walls of the chamber were crawling up to the ceiling and the floor was falling away into the abyss. Then with a building purple flash the nauseating experience was reaching a crescendo.

    But before Mitch ever saw the other side, the hulking bloke Richard, spun around and kicked him straight in the back full force. Richard¡¯s cybernetic integrated form was easily able to launch Mitch into the mind melting surroundings.

    The worst feeling of nausea came over Mitch, who quickly projectile vomited. The acidic yellowish green fluid seemed to curve confusingly after exiting his mouth splashing him across the neck as if the way forward was actually curved towards him now. All he heard before blacking out over his loud retching was a gloating line from Richard, ¡°The colonel sends his regards, he hates brainiac twinks like you who think they deserve combat mods. Thanks for the payday once I get out of here.¡±

    Colonel Sandiers, of course. I always gave him a hard time when coming into the lab for a checkup. The man was not the smartest tool in the shed.

    Who knows how long later, Mitch groggily floated back to consciousness. Although¡­, Am I dead? I must be. What other situation would I see a light at the end of a tunnel?

    Wait hold on, did I just get killed by the base colonel sending an inmate hitman? I just had to jinx it didn¡¯t I? Brainiac twink huh? I was the same size pre enhancements, I guess Richard just sees everyone below his height as fuckable. He¡¯ll fit right into prison. I wonder if his modified height is compensating for something? Fingers crossed he gets his head bashed in before he can escape.

    I hope the afterlife is better than prison. I didn¡¯t do too many heinous things in my lifetime, although I cannot say the same about my time in Eldoria.

    A confused eternity later, the light slowly started growing, before engulfing the doctor¡¯s vision whole in an exponential expansion.

 Chapter 2: I hate wildlife

    Chapter 2: I hate wildlife

    The light covering Mitch¡¯s vision slowly began resolving. Resolving into a greenish hue that is. Mitch felt a bout of nausea as gravity suddenly reasserted itself on his corporeal form. His inner ear quickly informed him he was upside down.

    Mitch looked down from his flipped position seeing a wide stream of green water flowing down a smooth rocky riverbed. It was banked on both sides by a thick covering of massive trees. Trees so massive even from his high vantage point of a hundred feet high, he was looking at branches and trunks flanking his accelerating vision instead of the top of a canopy.

    The sound around him was quickly drowned out by the wind ripping by his ears as he fell face first directly towards the riverbed. But Mitch swore he heard a far away female scream.

    That thought was quickly tossed away as Mitch focused on trying to get his feet under him before full facial impact.

    Mitch contorted his back and forced his legs down into a skydiving posture within a second. The fall only took around three seconds to reach impact. Mitch, fighting the building air resistance and the wind slowly pushing him forwards, ended up in a kneeling position instead of a standing one when he made his graceful landing.

    A landing so graceful he tumbled head over heel nearly a dozen times before impacting a gray boulder in the riverbed with a meaty thump.

    The world in my head goes round and round, round and round, round and round!

    Mitch quickly recovered from the blunt force trauma and dizziness enough to dislodge himself from his impromptu bolder perch and drop gracefully onto the river stones below.

    Alright. Limbs, check. Head, check. Skin, check. Countless bruises, check. Headache, check.

    First things first, where in the hell am I? Also what just happened? I know warp pads have a concerningly high failure rate due to some mumbo jumbo technical excuse I never understood, but this is ridiculous! That cunt only kicked me a few feet out of the center!

    Mitch, with his pounding headache, kicked one of the numerous rocks in the riverbed. It shot out of the large ditch with blistering speeds.

    So much speed, Mitch didn¡¯t manage to see where it landed. But there was a concerning noise that came with the rock shooting between the gigantic trees. A loud ass SQUAWK!

    Hah, actually hit a bird, lucky. Anyways, where am I? Did I get dumped on a random planet within the next sixty thousand light years or am I actually in the Achird system? Will I get charged for escaping prison? Why are these alien trees so god damn tall? Come to think of it, I do feel oddly invigorated, there must be a much higher oxygen content here than back in Palihen. Does that explain the trees? No, not really.

    God dammit Mitch focus, what do I do? Wait for rescue? I¡¯ve never heard of someone coming back from a warp incident¡­ Alright well at least I think I heard a human scream while falling, I hope it wasn¡¯t mine coming through the panic. That most likely means, if I can get some food, water and shelter and explore around for a while, I can find some civilization? Do I want to go back to civilization? What if a facial scan brings up my id and I get tossed back into prison again?! But what other choice do I have? Stay here in the woods for the rest of my life?

    Mitch upon formulating his basic plan to find civilization after getting some survival elements set up had his attention ripped away from his monologue. Ripped away by branches fifty feet high rustling dramatically.

    The branches suddenly gave way to a massive bird? A bird with a wingspan at least twenty-five feet across. It looked to be an eagle vulture mix, a partially naked head, but a very bulky build. Its feathers were black in color. The weirdest part was with every flap of its wings, foot across glowing white circles floating mid air would explode in soft shockwaves under its wings. The circles had odd runes populating their centers. The exploding circles gave the angry bird extra oomph behind every flap. So much oomph Mitch was now panicking seeing a flying angry dinosaur accelerating at him like a fighter jet.

    Are those hard light constructs?! Birds can make hard light holograms which explode? BIRDS?! Was all Mitch managed to think before nine hundred pounds of angry bird slammed into him talon first.

    The bird¡¯s talons made thin bloody lines across his chest before slipping off the graphene. The bird, unluckily for Mitch, found a grip holding onto Mitch¡¯s shoulders, dragging him across the river bed for a dozen feet. The bird¡¯s oddly metallic talons created bright orange sparks as they ate into the river stone below.

    Now under the talons of the vulture eagle, Mitch found himself being pecked in the face. Not only pecked in the face but with every peck one more of those damned exploding hologram circles would materialize and blast him with a concussive shockwave.

    This thing, better taste like chicken.

    Mitch, even through the quickly building concussion, managed to turn off the mental limiters on his graphene musculature, grabbed onto the chicken like legs of the bird, and squeezed.

    He squeezed and twisted, his back and crushing grip working in tandem to shatter the bird¡¯s leg bones and tear them in half. The bleeding bird sinew stretched then snapped as Mitch got to the end of his range of arm motion.

    Hands now red and slick with blood Mitch realized he didn¡¯t think this through¡­ The nine hundred pound bird, now legless now just sat on him.

    Mitch found himself trying to breathe through a bunch of undulating feathers and dawn clogging his nose and mouth as the screeching legless bird flapped around in a panic on top of him.

    The bird eventually began flapping off of him, slowly rising into the air right above him. It had a look of mixed rage and fear. Blood poured from its messily amputated legs as it looked down at Mitch, a building white light engulfing its pupils.

    A gigantic elliptical rune hologram began materializing between Mitch and the bird. The symbols in the rune seeming oddly sharp.

    Mitch seeing this decided he¡¯d rather not see what the bird would do in desperation. He dashed forwards now behind the flapping hovering bird. He crouched and leaped twenty feet upwards to grab onto the feathers of the bleeding fella. Then like a cracked out monkey he scaled up and around the bird¡¯s side onto its head.

    The vulture eagle all this time was bucking and flipping trying to tear off Mitch. Little could be done as the giant feathers acted as perfect grip points as Mitch reached the head of the vulture eagle. There were no longer feathers to grip so instead, Mitch dug his fingers directly into its flesh and bone. Reaching its teacup sized right eye Mitch struck his right arm forwards like a javelin. The slimy white orb burst like a grape. His arm did not stop at the eye though, following the momentum his carbon fingers blasted a jagged hole through the bird¡¯s thin orbital bone. Reaching its brain, Mitch then swished around his arm until the screeching & bucking bird dropped from the sky.

    The bird and man duo then fell towards the river bed. The elliptical sharp rune circle still was floating midair. Unluckily, The rune burst just as they got in front of it. A condensed and sharp blade of air with a sharp squealing sound shot forwards. The high energy blade decapitated the dead bird, just barely missing the bottoms of Mitch¡¯s feet as he was still attached to the heavily bleeding head.

    Mitch tumbled through the air on the massive bird head, the detached head landed on the stones with a wet thwack.

    Mitch unlatched himself off of the dead mangled head. He then glanced down at his overly bloody hands and his right arm covered in blood, goopy eye humor & clear cerebrospinal fluid all the way up to the shoulder.

    Step one complete, Killed massive bird. Step two, figure out how to cook the damned thing¡­ Wait. Do I need to cook it?

    Mitch paused, looking around the oddly quiet woods around him. A soft screech came from the far distance from who knows what. Also Mitch finally took this chance to examine the canopy above him.

    The nearest trees were similar to massive redwoods but with brown bark. They seemed to be around two hundred feet high. There were also lots of smaller trees between the giants, thriving on the small patches of light leaking through. However, the interesting thing was Mitch could see something far above the canopy even beyond the massive brownwoods. He could see a white barked tree growing to a mind boggling height. The damned white god tree looked almost infinite in height, but if he had to guess it looked around a mile and a half high. So high the blue atmosphere made it hard to see any details at the top. But it almost looked like a massive swarm of black dots were flocking around the tippy top of the tree.

    Okay, focus Mitch. Think about the trees later. Am I cooking the bird? I did include extra acidic stomach acid in the modifications. That should take care of most of the pathogens, but also my boosted engineered immune system should be able to deal with the rest¡­ I¡¯m sure the taste won¡¯t be all that bad.

    Mitch made his way over to the headless corpse of the bird, he decided to get his fill now as there was no way to know if bigger fish would come along and try to grab his kill.

    Mitch began tearing off fistfulls of feathers and dawn off the bird''s chest. He quickly made a nice pink bald patch on the massive right peck. He began tearing into the white bloody meat like a toddler tearing apart a cooked chicken from Costco bare handed. The taste was very, iron heavy as Mitch decided that the impromptu beheading was enough blood draining.  The odd thing was that the meat tasted heavenly, every few bites Mitch would get a flash of euphoria. With the flashes came almost a sixth sense, it felt like he could see the inner workings of his body flash in his mind¡¯s eye. His stomach tensing, his heart pounding, his veins squirming. He could see all of it for split seconds at a time. And¡­ odd milky white microscopic crystals being absorbed through his gut and lungs over time.

    Every flash of internal anatomy, Mitch saw larger and larger amounts of crystals flood his central nervous system. There would be a flash of odd ghostly green gas in his frontal lobe accompanying each sixth sense moment. The flashes of anatomy would cut off within a fraction of a second each time as the building cloud of green gas would suddenly be sucked into the center mass of his brainstem and disappear. The cycle continued a hundred times over throughout the gorging session.

    The birds and air here just have natural opioids floating around or something? Was it using heroine crystals to make those holograms? With a satisfied burp thirty minutes later, Mitch looked down at his progress. He had managed to pick clean all of the meat on the upper ribcage all the way down to the bone. He was stuffed beyond belief and already had to go relieve an accelerated bowel movement in the trees.

    Curse you engineered body and stupid calorie requirements!

    I really don¡¯t have a way to preserve the meat, no salt, no freezer, no nothing? I wonder if there¡¯s any cave or something around here to use as a den to cool this body? Knowing my luck so far there¡¯ll probably be a hologram slinging super bear waiting for me if I find one. If only those crystals worked as a preservative.

    As Mitch was sitting there on his bloody kill picking at a few more scraps of meat, he heard¡­ more rustling of leaves on the riverbank.

    Oh no no no no no. Not this shit again. It better not be a flier!

    Mitch spun around to see an eighteen foot long, metallic furred mountain lion flying off the elevated river bank directly towards him. Its claws were gleaming steel, reflecting the white sun in all directions. Its fur looked to have more in common with steel wool than hair.

    Mitch, actually paying attention this time, leaped out of the way of his ambusher. The mountain lion sailed past the bird corpse and Mitch landing paws first in the river gravel. It quickly spun around, growled at Mitch and began its chase.

    Just have the fucking bird! I¡¯m not risking one of those claws through an eye! My seeing orbs are just as fragile as the day I was born!

    Mitch hoofed it. He leaped out of the river bed, up the fifteen feet into the woods and began sprinting. He couldn¡¯t go his top speed of fifty miles an hour due to all of the tripping hazards. Mitch now just passing the river treeline took a glance backwards to see the lion on his tail.

    Mitch quickly scrambled over a massive brownwood tree root in his way and dashed forwards and began zig zagging through the trees hoping to lose his feline pursuer.

    That drugged meat is really trying to come back up right now. I should not be sprinting full tilt right after eating that much. Mitch thought nauseated, his feet pounding dirt below him.

    Mitch slowly heard the pattering of the lion¡¯s footsteps get closer and closer over the next twenty seconds of sprinting and clambering. Mitch actually spotted a clearing on his right filled with gigantic boars with gleaming steel tusks. A problem for another time, he just kept running.

    The sound of the lion dashing over roots and hopping over rocks behind him, had gotten concerningly loud. Mitch was too scared to glance over his shoulder as he was positive it was inches from clawing distance.

    Mitch broke through another wall of thick green brush to find himself dashing towards a hundred foot wide ravine which fell for who knows how long. It was just blackness past a hundred feet down.

    Fight giga mountain lion or risk the pit? Who the hell would pick the pit?! Ha, I¡¯m going to give that Lion a ne¡­

    Mitch was flying tackled in the back by the mountain lion, its massive two feet across paws launching Mitch and itself directly into the ravine.

    ¡°You stupid ass cat! You better be dead at the bottom!¡± Mitch screamed as he fell into the darkness, he made sure to fall feet first this time.

    A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

    At around the five second mark of freefall, Mitch felt himself hit a steep rough rocky slope. He heard the lion yowl as they both began tumbling down the slope for at least the next ten seconds. The nausea and pain prevented Mitch from really paying attention to how long it lasted.

    The adverse duo finally hit the bottom and it seemed they tripped some sort of motion sensor as the entire ¡®cave¡¯ was immediately lit up by blinding white led lines lining the back wall. A back wall nearly three hundred feet away. To say the least, Mitch and the lion were immediately blinded as their darkness adjusted eyes were blasted with light.

    What the hell is that loud whirring sound?

    A series of deafening pops echoed through the cave as Mitch blinked frantically to adjust his vision. Mitch¡¯s eyes adjusted just in time to witness a stream of tracer rounds fired from the far wall turn the ribcage of the metallic lion into spiky mush. The rounds did not stop in the lion, they still had enough energy to slam into the backing stone wall. The projectiles create even more crack spreading holes in the shale.

    AH FUCK!

    Mitch dove to the ground behind a white boulder hoping to not be turned to mush. A quarter second later the ear bursting buzzing of the machine gun turret stopped, Mitch glanced over to his right and thirty feet away was the mangled corpse of the giant lion. The scariest part wasn¡¯t that though, it was that Mitch realized the boulder he was cowering behind was actually a massive skull of what looked like a lizard. The skull also had¡­ a few hundred inch diameter bullet holes in it. Inch diameter holes that he was positive whatever camera on the turret could see him through.

    A loud foreign slightly robotic voice then emanated from the far wall, ¡°Human identified. Citizen of the Empire, walk forwards slowly with your hands above your head for identification and verification. Cooperation is mandatory.¡± The voice repeated this three more times as Mitch caught his breath.

    Empire?! Empire¡­? What? There¡¯s a human empire? As in with an Emperor? As in¡­ not the federation? As in the only human civilization I knew existed? What is happening right now? Did that warp pad send me back in time or something?

    At least I found civilization in record time! Mitch thought before standing up and putting his hands above his head.

    He shimmied around the lizard skull. His hands kept high. Thankfully he did not hear any more whirring sound building from the far wall.

    Mitch eventually reached halfway to the light covered wall, at this point he was now being blasted with enough light that he¡¯d consider it equivalent to the sun. The robotic voice then switched on again.

    ¡°Facial and body scanning in progress. Stay still.¡± The voice said. Then repeated two more times.

    Three red laser beams then materialized from three different points on the wall. The lines sweeped mitch up and down. The red lights seemed to penetrate his skin, like a flashlight subsurface scattering through a fingertip. Mitch could see the gleaming of multiple camera lenses on the far wall, he spotted at least an array of a dozen.

    Huh, long range diffuse optical imaging¡­ I sure hope my graphene bones and inorganic muscles don¡¯t cause a problem.

    ¡°Basic identification complete, mortal body modifications found, face not found in base records. Genetic sample needed. Off-base contact requested. Citizen please make your way to the base doors to your one o clock.¡±

    Ookay. Reminds me of going into work in Palihen, the locked down military base vibe n¡¯ all. Surely this¡¯ll go well.

    Mitch made his way towards the lit up wall, after getting out of the hundreds of spotlights, Mitch was finally able to see the wall in its full glory. Well, glory might be an overstatement. It was just a grey stone like wall. It was covered in black camera lens dots and two gigantic three barrel machine guns. The guns were concerningly large, so large in fact, Mitch doubted his protection could stop multiple shots. The barrel diameters looked in excess of an entire inch. Touching the wall near the door for a split second, Mitch could tell at least the outermost gray stone like layer was a spray on plastic of some kind.

    Mitch entered the doorway. The door gave way to a blue steel hallway with dotted rectangular LED strips lining the corners like the walkway in a movie theater. The lights had moving green dots going forwards telling him which direction to follow. The voice said as much.

    ¡°Citizen follow the green path to the lab. Genetic testing is mandatory to confirm identification.¡±

    Wait, that¡¯s something I just ignored earlier. He called my mods mortal body modifications. That implies there¡¯s immortal body modifications? I mean I know the fusion walkers back home were gods among men but still, it seems like an odd classification system. Given that almost everyone is functionally immortal. I better not just get blasted to smithereens if they determine I''m not actually a citizen of the Empire.

    Mitch followed the green lights. The surroundings around him slowly passed as he walked. There was little to talk of in the hallway as every numbered or labeled room was closed off by thick steel doors. Each set of doors had an accompanying eye scanning lock pad on the side. One interesting thing he did notice though was that the ¡®marine equipment room¡¯ was unlocked as he was walking by. Unlocked may not be the right term as the keypad seemed nonfunctional and the door was slightly agape. Mitch bet he could cram his fingers in there and pry it open.

    Who am I kidding? I''ll get shot immediately if I try to steal something.

    Mitch finally found himself looking at the end of the green path. It led into a massive set of steel doors labeled ¡®lab intake¡¯.

    ¡°Citizen please wait in the designated area. A lab bot will be with you in a moment. A microscopic skin sample will be collected for testing.¡±

    Mitch, listening to the robotic voice made his way over to an obviously marked waiting area.

    A few minutes later a humanoid droid made its way to the lab reception desk. It had an elliptical head, moved with more grace than a robot should have and a spinning mini lidar on the top of its head. Its two green glowing eyes panned over to Mitch.

    ¡°Citizen, please make your way to room twelve. I¡¯ll be right with you.¡± The droid said in a robotic voice exactly the same as the one on the PA system.

    ¡°Sure, sure.¡± Mitch said before walking through the glass doors which led into a quaint white walled hallway with a dozen rooms all labeled. Room twelve was the first one on his left thankfully.

    An automatic opaque door later, Mitch found himself looking at an odd familiar sight. A patient medical chair and one of those shitty two feet across corner desks.

    Reminds me of my time in civil medicine. In the Palihen gene mod base, the patient rooms were much larger to accommodate¡­ larger people.

    Mitch sat down mulling over the fight with the bird and the odd holograms it was generating.

    I mean I don¡¯t want to call it magic since I''ve seen similar stuff outside of vr sims but the runes really make it seem like magic. Why weren¡¯t the force holograms just like white balls or something instead of runes? Also why was I getting flashes of my insides when eating the bird? What were those milky microscopic crystals in its muscles? Too many questions.

    The receptionist droid made its way into the room. It was oddly cute, the way it skipped forwards instead of walking.

    ¡°Citizen, bio-identification first then paperwork after. Are you ready for a quick skin sampling? It¡¯ll just feel like a quick poke.¡± The droid said, walking forwards with what looked like an oddly shaped injector.

    ¡°Sure¡­ If there¡¯s really no way around it.¡± Mitch decided to not even try with the questions as he was fully sure he¡¯d be stonewalled. Military & Medial AI¡¯s never spill the beans. Usually¡­

    The droid walked over directly next to the chair.

    ¡°On three. One¡­ Two¡­ Three.¡± The droid said in a monotone voice before quickly jabbing him with the sampler. A green LED appeared on the device.

    ¡°Perfect, Citizen. Please wait here, the overseer will inform you of your results and next steps¡± The droid said before walking out of the hallway.

    Mitch decided to take a quick nap on the medical bed as he knew for a fact this was definitely going to take longer than expected.

    <hr>

    ¡°Citizen! Bio-identification has come up with positive results. Classified geneseed results! Procedure 75b33I3 Coma Stasis has been initiated. Citizen please say where you are, a procurement agent will be at your location in t-minus one minute!¡± The overseer AI voice said surprisingly jolly.

    Mitch rubbed his eyes, yawned then jerked forwards.

    Wait what the fuck did he just say? Classified geneseed results?! Procedure coma stasis?! Procurement agent?! I¡¯m not gonna be tossed into stasis for a thousand years on some planet backwater!

    Mitch felt a jolt of adrenaline shoot through his system as he shot out of the medical bed. He tried leaving the room but the thick automatic plastic door didn¡¯t open. So instead with a snap kick Mitch cracked the thing in half and dashed to his right directly through the glass door. Fragments of glass flew through the air as he entered the reception area.

    There were two different steel doors, one of them slowly closing the other slowly opening. The closing one was the one he originally made his way through to get in here. From the slowly opening hallway Mitch heard loud metal clanking of what sounded like four very heavy feet pounding against the steel ground to reach him.

    Mitch without a second thought dashed through the closing door which he came through originally.

    Alright, On the spot plan making go! What are my options? One. Go back to the cave where the minigun turrets are? Bad idea. Wait here and get tossed into stasis for who knows how long? Not happening. Next, make my way to that ¡®marine equipment room¡¯ and either hide and plan or if there¡¯s a weapon in there blast whatever is coming after me. Good idea.

    Mitch bolted down the hallways back to that broken door of the Marine Equipment Room.

    ¡°Citizen! You have left the medical reception! This is in violation of Code 8322b3! Legal actions will be handled after transfer! This is your last warning to cooperate!¡±

    Mitch ignored the overseer¡¯s intimidation and shoved his hands into the gap of the ¡®marine equipment room¡¯ and wrenched, his back went into full tilt forcing the broken door a foot down its very broken rails with loud screeching.

    Mitch slipped into the room and kicked the reinforcing beams on the door to seal it closed.

    Mitch turned around as the motion detecting lights flipped on. The lights gave him a mini heart attack after his recent experiences. To his surprise the equipment room was no room but a mini god damn warehouse. Nearly a dozen four pallet high steel shelves with well organized and labeled equipment.

    There were multiple puck style robots cleaning the floors and under the shelves. Mitch ignored his first inkling to check the computers on the far wall for searching this mess as it would just show the overseer where he was. Thankfully so far Mitch could not even hear the metal foot falls of the ¡®procurement agent¡¯ yet. He¡¯d rather not mess that up.

    Avoiding the paths of the roombas just in case and paying close attention to any cameras Mitch made his way around the perimeter of the storage room.

    There were a few things that caught Mitch¡¯s attention. They were the ¡®MK3833 Niatech energy assault rifle¡¯, ¡®Tranlarto, high efficiency, solar powered translation necklace by Neta¡¯, ¡®Holo-skin, solar powered hardlight disguise, by Neta.¡¯ & ¡®Xk9399 fission grenades by Niatech¡¯.

    The reason these caught his attention was that they were the only pieces of equipment that didn¡¯t have the warning statement of ¡®needs authorized neural implant¡¯. There were literally a dozen and a half of different kinds of self aiming firearms and rocket launchers but every single one needed an authorized neural implant.

    First thing Mitch did was dash for the clothes section to grab a trench coat to fill his pockets. After that, the first stop was the Xk9399 fission grenades as he intended to turn those turrets in the cave to slack.

    Next was the holo-skin, he really hoped it worked as he hoped and could make him blend in with the gray plastic wall to get near the turrets.

    Third was everything fucking else, since apparently he had time. Somehow that overseer managed to absolutely lose him. He grabbed a rifle. He put on the holo-skin which was a clip on belt which self adjusted, it had many black solar panels around the circumference and a floating holographic screen which appeared near his groin when turned on. He quickly set it to the auto camouflage setting and was in awe as his body and all of his gear turned into watercolor like shifting three dimensional representation of the background. Somehow it even projected the correct depth even if a bit blurry to all angles. He quickly shut it off to deal with the Tranlarto which was invisible before, he found it in his coat pocket, it looked like a gray metallic choker which he quickly snapped on around his neck and moved on.

    I sure hope there¡¯s no trackers in these.

    It was at this point Mitch began faintly hearing the metal clanking of his presurer.

    Surely whatever it is I can just blow it up with one of these four grenades right? I mean there¡¯s only two turrets so I might as well use the others..? No, that''s a horrible idea. Camouflage on. I¡¯m hoofing it.

    Mitch pried open the door as quickly as possible which slid open with a sharp creak. He slipped through the doorway, the hard light hologram around him quickly dimmed to a dark cloud of material surrounding him as he entered the dim hall. His night vision mod pulled its weight as his eyes quickly adjusted to the minimal lighting. He dashed down the hall the opposite way of the stomping.

    He quickly passed the landmarks he remembered. Mitch quickly reached the steel door which stopped his path to the outside of the base. When it was a hundred or so feet in front of him he pulled out the fission grenade on a three second delay using the twist ring and shot it towards the door with a hefty overhand throw.

    The grenade beeped and launched towards the door like a bullet. It bounced off the door then rolled back six feet back towards Mitch. It then exploded. It didn¡¯t just explode, it vaporized the door and surrounding two dozen feet of solid steel and stone. Crumbling pieces of loose rock fell from the newly redecorated rock ceiling where the door used. The rocks fell into the newly created crater.

    The shockwave from the explosion slid Mitch back two dozen feet. His rubber soled boots screeched in effort trying to find traction on the polished steel below.

    The metallic feet pounding behind him steadily got louder and louder as he got his footing. Mitch turned around and finally saw the outline of the ¡®procurement agent¡¯ in the distance.

    The agent looked to be some sort of robot dog, it was ten feet in length, its lowered head reached the ceiling of the hallway. Wiggling down it¡¯s back were alien like steel cable tentacles reaching forwards as if hoping to grasp Mitch at any moment.

    Mitch was almost relieved to see just a robot dog as a pressuer until he noticed how god damn fast it was closing the distance.

    Mitch quickly leaped his way over the superheated crater left by the grenade and banked right towards the machine gun turrets. The one closest to him didn¡¯t have the range of motion to point in his direction but the other one on the far wall did not have such a problem. Thankfully the hard light disguise was doing its job at least a little. It managed to turn the turret¡¯s unerring accuracy into a wide spread in his direction.

    Quickly Mitch learned that, yes in fact he could survive a shot from one of these turrets¡­ But just hitting his left forearm tore off a five inch streak of skin, caused immediate internal bleeding and instantly turned his hand completely numb.

    Ow fuck. No time like the present.

    Mitch quickly dove to the ground after grabbing another grenade from his jacket pocket and hurled it towards the far away turret with all of his might and momentum.

    The grenade sailed overhead between a hail of bullets, it quickly flew above the trajectory of the storm before falling back down just five feet from the turret. The timer ticked its last tock and beeped. The turret and surrounding plastic covered steel wall turned into a noxious smoke filled crater.

    Mitch smiled then turned around to see the procurement agent looking around for his position. It most definitely had thermal cameras or something as it locked onto the obscured Mitch almost immediately. At this point the agent was only a mere hundred feet away.

    Mitch panicked, he still needed to nade the turret right above him and the dog was seconds away. Gritting his teeth Mitch formulated a split second plan, he grabbed a grenade, set the timer to five seconds, dropped it and bolted towards the crater that was the previous turret.

    The procurement agent chased after him with little thought, it was screeching out ¡°Citizen please hold for securement!¡± over tinny loudspeakers over and over again.

    By the three second mark Mitch had reached the new turret¡¯s range of motion, the machine began wiring to life. By the fourth second mark Mitch had taken two shots to the back. By the fifth second mark the procurement agent was right below the turret¡­ BOOM.

    The grenade exploded taking the turret and procurement agent with it in a smog bluming plasma explosion which made yet another smoldering crater.

    Mitch would celebrate but his mind was on other things at the moment.

    Ow! holy fucking shit! Holy shit! Did that just remove all the skin on my back?!

    Mitch was making a bloody stain on the bone covered cave floor as all the epidermis above his graphene layers was blown off by the two shots on his back. It revealed a pitch black layer of graphene with microscopic red dots of blood vessels poking through. Quickly Mitch came to his senses and got up and dashed for the bottom of the ravine.

    The gravel in his bare back gave for an uncomfortable experience. An experience turned agony as with all of his might and digested magic bird Mitch threw himself up the ravine. A hundred feet up Mitch quickly set the hard light hologram around his neck and head to bright white flashlight mode as to see the surroundings. Even cat-like night vision can¡¯t see inside of pitch black.

    Mitch heaved and coughed his way up nearly another three hundred feet until he saw a small ledge a dozen feet to his right. He pulled himself over to take a quick break. He took a breather for three minutes or so.

    I need to hurry the fuck up. I need to skedaddle now, my chances of cooperating disappeared right when I activated that first fission grenade.

    Mitch continued his climb as fast as he could, he launched himself up a dozen feet at a time making his own handholds in the stone with his crushing grip.

    A minute later, a possibility he was dreading the most occurred.

    Mitch heard the buzzing of electronic drone blades far below him.

    Cave or something, cave, cave, cave. Gauruntenfuckingteed those drones have ir cameras, there¡¯s no way they don¡¯t if the overseer knows I stole the holo-skin.

    Thank you Jesus! A cave!

    Mitch climbed for another eighty or so feet making his way into a dark cave which seemed to keep going for a while. He settled down, turning the holo-skin back to camouflage and huddled down behind three different bends in the cave system sitting in a cramped dark deadend.

    He sat there for around three hours until he was satisfied and heard no more drone noises or metal footsteps clanking around.

    Mitch began shifting from his hiding spot and began making his way out of the cave until he heard a low boomy growling behind him. Along with a gust of unbelievably frigid air piercing his injured back and torn apart jacket. Frost seemed to build up on the surroundings in a split second.

    HOly shit GIve me a goddamn flashlight NOW!

    Mitch fumbled for the holo-skin controls, but before he could even turn on a flashlight the cave was lit up by something else. Something red.

    Is that another hard light magic circle hologram?!

    Am I about to die?

    Why is it so goddamn cold?

    Is that bear on fire?

    Is that bear frozen?!

    How is it moving?!

    I hate wildlife.

 Chapter 3: You can hear me now? ca*-an**éˆ¥æª› you?!

    Chapter 3: You can hear me now? ca*-an**¡¯t you?!

    Mitch stood there gaping at the bear. If you could really call it that¡­ The creature had some distant ancestor in the ursidae family but gun pointed to his head, Mitch would not tell you this abomination in front of him was truly a bear. Beyond the fact that the creature was encased in a layer of frosted blue ice multiple inches thick on all sides; and that below it¡¯s transparent armor it¡¯s hair was constantly in a state of flaming ember. No, those were just irrelevant details to the true problem here¡­ This abomination was so large it was taking up eighty percent of the volume of the roomy cave exit. The temperature abomination was at least twelve feet across shoulder to shoulder, and at least a whopping twenty four feet in length.

    The abomination seemed to be coming bored of growling. So bored in fact, it decided to trigger whatever abomination of a hologram rune it summoned. From the wavy projection something peculiar happened¡­ The air around Mitch rose around forty degrees bringing the surrounding air to a toasty ninety degrees fahrenheit in an instant.

    Well this isn¡¯t so bad! Just suddenly a nice summer day in this forsaken cave. The contrast is magnificent. Wait¡­ why is the hologram still getting brighter?

    The bear abomination swiped at the rune, its claws outstretched. It was almost as if the bear was trying to tear apart Mitch from a distance.

    Mitch decided to not take any chances and dove to the side. A split second later, Mitch heard a loud crash and shatter. Chunks of hard material battered his backside. He glanced over at the deadend, where he was just standing moments before and saw a pile of flaky white ice.

    The small mountain of ice was slowly sublimating into white gas revealing gray rocky debris within. Above the ice pile was a four foot deep crater dug into the sturdy stone walls of the cave.

    Errr, that seems survivable? I think. I really should¡¯ve spent that week running around the ruins testing my impact ratings. My brain took the daily aches and pains of integration as an excuse to double down on my gambling, drinking, smoking, and gaming. Ah the good ol days.

    Why does the bear smell so heavenly? And what the fuck is that noise? It¡¯s getting on my nerves.

    Ohhhhh. Fuck.

    Mitch realized he was hearing a loud buzzing noise of a drone closing in on the cave entrance. A half second later a fluorescent white light blasted down the passageway. It nearly blinded Mitch, the abomination seemed unfazed.

    ¡°Citizen of the empire, under code 83222b23, you¡¯ve been charged with destruction of property and homicide of an empire droid. Mortal acolyte, you shall be procured and brought before a Judicon! The celebrant shall set the foundation of your retribution!¡± The drone announced in a voice not entirely robotic, undertones of a concerningly human religious tone leaking though.

    The drone inadvertently distracted the abomination from the slightly concussed Mitch Korrigan. Some rock shrapnel from the ice explosion earlier gave the back of his head a good beating. The bear and rune swiveled towards the entrance of the cave that Mitch came through hours earlier. Mitch currently around the corner could not see the drone, but given the sheer volume of buzzing noise, it had to be massive.

    The abomination lazily raised a paw and hit the floating rune like a drum, three times in quick succession. From the large rune a dozen feet across, three smaller red runes spawned and shot down the corridor like falcons chasing prey.

    A split second later, the sound of the drone¡¯s spinning blades were no more, instead was a deafening impulse of ice crackling noise. Mitch saw a small avalanche of sharp chunks of ice bounce down the hall past the bear, but it was obvious that was only a fraction of what was spawned.

    Quick superspeed planning session. What the fuck do I do? Can¡¯t get past the fatty, he¡¯s taking up the entire side of the cave. Can¡¯t go past the drone, I go back to climbing that cliff decent chance a capture drone will swoop by, put me into temporary stasis and i¡¯ll get a nice ass fucking of retribution. Whatever that means. I¡¯d very much rather not find out.

    Following a crack of thunder, a flash of plasma and a sonic boom. The pondering Mitch was catapulted backwards into the deadend crater by a flaky ball of ice exploding on his chest at mach two.

    The abomination now had its full undivided attention on Mitch, it had only taken the bear two seconds to neutralize the drone.

    Mitch gasped for breath, the ice forcefully knocked the wind out of him. Another internal bruise was quickly forming at impact.

    Ow! shit, that just reopened my back scab. I wish this graphene layer was more flexible, sure it stops shit from penetrating but instead I get thigh sized bruises! If I hadn¡¯t sprung for the cadherin synthetic binding protein, my entire chest cavity would be mush from that strike. Instead my every organ is jiggling around my ribcage like a block of military grade jello wobbling everywhere nauseously, bleeding in some places. Mitch focus! Puke guts up later. Plan one, try energy rife. Plan two, rock test then fission grenade. Plan three, try sliding under the icy bastard?

    Mitch tensed his legs launching himself out of the crater just in time to avoid another volley of supersonic ice balls which cracked against the stone like supercharged frag grenades.

    Mitch whipped the ¡®MK3833 Niatech energy assault rifle¡¯ off his shoulder, the shitty strap somehow stayed on during Mitch¡¯s mad dash up the cliff earlier. Mitch sighted the bear behind the rune and pulled the trigger. He was ready to get himself some game! But¡­ Nothing happened. The rifle just made a low beep, a block of text appeared on the ammo counter lcd screen and Mitch swore.

    ¡®Your free trial of the Niatech energy rifle has expired! Please log into the neuralnet portal to renew your license! Niatech is always the best! Add more than 10,000 rifles to one account and get a fifty percent discount!¡¯

    What cheap backwater knockoff is this?! Was this a civilian rifle? Who the hell would buy a rifle with a subscription on it?!

    The bear¡¯s giant rune was nowhere in sight after Mitch glanced back up after looking at the assault rifle display. Although¡­ the ceiling seemed oddly bright, and red?

    Suddenly the ceiling was a brilliant brilliant blue instead of red. Following another abomination paw gesture the air around Mitch suddenly wasn¡¯t ninety degrees fahrenheit¡­ it was two hundred and ninety degrees celsius. Mitch saw red. Not a good red, a bloody red.

    Mitch screamed, closed his eyes and bolted, his legs carrying him full speed into the deadend crater filled with ice. Unfortunately for Mitch, The awful blue rune was tracking him, the temperature scorched his remaining epidermis into a bubbling burn within seconds. By the time Mitch had reached the human sized pile of ice, he could no longer see through one of his eyes he kept slightly ajar to navigate. The entire visual field was blurry and warped from the heat turning his left cornea into a cooked crinkly sheet. His skin was a red boiling mess.

    Mitch dove into the white ice. It was stupidly cold, almost mind blowingly cold. A split second later Mitch realized this wasn¡¯t dry ice, it was concerningly brittle and cold, it was nitrogen ice. The abomination froze the air itself. But the momentary release from the heat was short lived as within seconds Mitch could feel his hands and feet the closest to the ice surface start burning once again.

    Alright, plan two! This one better work! If this last niatech fission grenade doesn¡¯t go off due to a subscription issue, I¡¯ll track down their CEO and sell his organs to afford my subscriptions.

    Mitch retracted his limbs, quickly covered himself in chips of nitrogen ice rolling around in the supercooled particle pile.

    Mitch clawed his way out of the ice chip pile just as enough of the ice sublimated to expose his wrists and ankles. At this point, the heat blasting from the rune above had turned the epidermis on his hands and feet to a thin layer of char.

    The doctor ignored the shooting pains going through his hands and feet, gritted his teeth and began to pull. He launched out of the ice chip pile at nearly fifty miles an hour, this was just enough speed for him to start feeling cool blasts of air buffett his frontside as the heating rune tracked his back. Without the heat buffering his front, Mitch was finally able to open his eyes fully and look ahead of him. It was at this point his khakis and trench coat caught fire, the building heat enough for the cotton content to spontaneously combust.

    Mitch ignored the flames, his eyes dead set on sticking this grenade up this bear abomination¡¯s ass. With a blurring right hand Mitch withdrew the fission grenade from his side pocket and twisted the timer ring with the friction of his thumb to the five second mark.

    Should be enough time to get out of the instant death blast radius and only lose the rest of my skin. Good enough.

    The abomination immediately noticed the flaming Mitch Korrigan flying towards it like a missile. It did not summon another volley of holograms, nor did it call back the one tracking Mitch. Instead, the abomination whilst Mitch was a yard away lazily lifted its right paw, frost covered claws outstretched. Then, with no warning, snakes of pure glowing plasma shot out of its claws like steel piercing shaped charge explosives directly towards Mitch.

    The plasma appeared abruptly and expanded at thirty times the speed of sound. Mitch took all four snakes directly center mass, the heat so massive it instantly flash boiled the skin on his chest. The graphene below turned a bright emissive red, the material began wicking away the four hotspots within milliseconds but it was enough to start cooking the doctor¡¯s internal organs.

    Mitch screamed in pain, sure he¡¯d dealt with pain in vr sims, a lot of it in fact, but he was not immune nor a psychopath. It felt as if someone was directly applying four jaw red hot iron skillets to his chest muscles.

    Mitch spasmed. His right hand cramped ajar from the shock, releasing the fission grenade. It rolled below the abomination slowly, disappearing from the doctor¡¯s view as it tumbled under the creature¡¯s chest.

    Mitch tumbled and fell right in front of the abomination, his mind foggy, the heating rune had caught up to him the moment he landed, his eyes started to boil and fog once again, he had to close his eyes. Just as he closed his eyes he felt sharp points and a blunt shock trying to penetrate his protection. Squinting his eyes open a crack he saw the bear slamming its right paw into his chest, its nails glowing a bright orange.

    Ugh, Wait¡­ Where¡¯s the grenade?!

    Mitch attempted to scramble to his feet, he felt four scorching marks streak down his back as even more of his burt bubbly skin was sloughed off by the glowing claws. Mitch tensed his graphene musculature legs as hard as he could, launching himself out of the bear¡¯s reach. He could feel the cool cave air beginning to buffet his entire body.

    Ahhh, that feels nice.

    Suddenly a shockwave shook Mitch¡¯s chest, and he felt his eardrums instantly burst. He noticed thick blood beginning to pool in his ear canals. The pain and deafness overwhelmed his screaming as he was rocketed towards the gigantic ice pile holding the captured and demolished drone. He was blasted backwards along with stone and icy debris launched by the nuclear shockwave, he made it around ten yards away from the grenade before the secondary godly explosion of light and heat hit his back from the plasma ball behind him.

    To say the least, Mitch was now a black man, a black man with skin so rough he could be mistaken for burt BBQ. A split second later he felt the cold shock of near absolute zero nitrogen ice chips making their presence known.

    Mitch shuttered in the ice chips, the feeling in his skin was now thoroughly gone, but thankfully as he slowly cracked open his new black paperthin eyelids he could see! If a bit blurry due to the retinal damage from the heat rune following him around.

    After positive all of the residual heat on his skin and exposed graphene dissipated into the ice seconds later. Mitch once again clawed himself out of an ice chip pile for the second time within the last two minutes. As he shakily stood on the cold cave floor, the first thing he noticed was that it was terribly dark and smoke clogged. The only source of light was the red glow emanating from a twenty foot across crater where the abomination used to be. And second he noticed, he was god damn ravenous. And third, the cave smelled like charred skin and cooked meat.

    After with crusted hands turning on the flashlight setting on the holo-skin, Mitch made his way over to the bear crater. The holo skin screen glass had seen better days but the stretchy nanotube laced belt was holding up fine.

    Looking down into the crater Mitch saw a now iceless and hairless bear the size of a semi truck sunken into the ground. On second look, it wasn¡¯t sunken into the ground, instead its legs, lower torso, abdomen and lower jaw were all gone. The gaping slice in its bottom must¡¯ve been cauterized too as too little blood was leaking out of the bottom.

    Am I breathing in smoke that used to be bear penis? Actually don¡¯t answer that.

    Is that thing still alive?!

    Mitch could see the abomination straining to move around its jawless skull in the crater.

    Mitch also spotted one of the claws of the bear embedded in the stone wall behind him. Mitch leveraged the sharp object out of the shattered granite. Mitch¡¯s charred and numb hand was not able to register how smooth the object was.

    Mitch hopped down on top of the bear and drove it¡¯s claw through it¡¯s right eye as deep as it could go. The object was sharp and hot enough to drive through the bear¡¯s orbital bone like warm butter and eviscerate the bear¡¯s brain. The bear¡¯s struggle came to an abrupt end.

    Time to dig in.

    Mitch dug out a large combat switchblade out of his charred, flaking apart trench coat. He felt the damned thing drive into his ribs earlier when impacting the ice.

    Thank you whatever cunt left their knife in here.

    Mitch began slicing steaks of cooked bear meat out of the creature, he did not hesitate to begin digging in, his hard graphene teeth making quick work of the gamey meat. As the first slab of back muscle hit his stomach Mitch immediately saw a mental flash of the inner workings of his entire body. The most interesting section was the sheer number of stem cells recruited to regenerate his skin. On the second pulsing view of his body, Mitch managed to see the red blood cells pooling in his small intestine begin wicking away drops of digested fats, amino acids, and¡­ familiar weird pulsating crystals.

    Mitch¡¯s high speed digestive system then slid the next section of mushy bear meat into his gut and Mitch got a third pulse of his internals. He could see those weird pulsating crystals, which he saw earlier in the vulture he ate, yet these bear crystals seemed to be supercharged.

    Mitch watched as the crystals were being transported to every section of his body, the cell walls letting the substance through with no resistance. But upon another pulse of internal clarity Mitch saw that his spinal column and brain were devouring the crystals at high speed. The pulsating crystals would dissolve in the lipids surrounding his dendrites in the central nervous system then transform into small amounts of ethereal green gas. The gas refused to dissolve into the blood or neurons but phased through Mitch¡¯s brain matter. The gas didn¡¯t just float upwards aimlessly, it was shooting around his skull and spine like a second layer of neuronal signals then disappeared into his brainstem.

    Mitch felt like he was on cloud nine. His flashlight of mental focus had extinguished, he was stuck reveling in the new sensations. But his body did not stop moving, even while his mind was not there, his body demanded more meat.

    With every slab of bear meat, the crystal pulsating sixth sense would become more and more frequent. At first it was every two seconds, at the fifteen pounds of meat mark, it had reached a pulse every tenth of a second.

    Mitch¡¯s mental faculties were drowning in the fractal that was his own inner workings. It was at this point the brain stem singularity stopped drawing in green gas. A nanosecond after, the point of glowing gas in Mitch¡¯s brainstem exploded. The ball of concentrated neon green split into trillions of confusing curvy lines and nodes. Only half of the ethereal nodes of the network were embedded in the existing neurons of Mitch¡¯s brain, the rest were grouped into a dense network of points in his prefrontal cortex. The grouped nodes fired off higher intensity light pulses as communication. The neuron embedded nodes also reacted to Mitch¡¯s biological firings. An odd calibration sequence originating from the new ghostly brain network sent tingling across every part of Mitch''s body, tingling places that had never tingled before. After the tingling, the network of nodes started demanding more green gas. After it was supplied, a sharp spear of green gas tinged with flecks of purple shot out of the network and smashed into the fabric of reality itself and opened a subatomic portal inside Mitch''s brain to another point in the universe. A tight bundle of green gas tethers the size of a proton slipped into the portal, and began relaying a stupidly high rate of information back to the newborn network.

    This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

    Mitch was fully unaware of these happenings beyond the odd tingling sensations before the sixth sense stabilized. The world of biology unfurling in his mind''s eye. So much information flooded Mitch¡¯s brain at once it was like listening to ear piercing white noise at full blast.

    A certain noise managed to cut through the noise: a voice. A voice familiar yet so distorted Mitch was unsure of the owner.

    ¡°-*n, you can hear me now? ca*-an**¡¯t you?! Li****n the Empire is our ho*e. Kill your way b*ck, the name of *or**ans spreads unerringly **o*g the stars. Take your birthright, find me in la*er two, sector 83bb**. Your family is dan*er*u*, do not hesita*e. Vultures no matter how familiar are nothing but free meat. W* -*ve t** po-*r o* gods. Bui-- a n-ur-l --two-k wor--y o- --. Assimilate, replicate, control. Do not forget.¡±

    The voice ended in an explosion of mental static which sent Mitch fumbling to the ¡®ground¡¯. Mitch convulsed, his nubile pink and raw skin rubbing against the bloody back of the abomination. The secondary network shooting through his brain was still firing off signals with a vengeance. It almost seemed offended. Mitch¡¯s consciousness began slipping from reality.

    <hr>

    Mitch screamed, he blinked his eyes, they were dripping blood. His eardrums had regenerated. He looked down, half of the remaining bear was gone, its upper back and internal organs picked clean. Mitch rolled off of the now partially hollow rib cage. In too much mental turmoil to stand up.

    The view of his own body was not the only problem since the network connected, he could feel everything living around him for a dozen feet. The bacteria, viruses, the abomination¡¯s cells and bugs crawling on the walls all around. The sheet information overload was killing him, so much new stimulus his brain couldn¡¯t focus on his regular senses. He was able to see, but his brain was so uncaring of the familiar stimulus he couldn¡¯t process any of the visual information. His consciousness was beginning to slip once again.

    Oh no you don¡¯t you fucking bitch. We stand now or we¡¯ll end up in stasis! As I said, that¡¯s not going to happen!

    With a jolt of adrenaline, Mitch slammed his hands into the ground, a pushup like motion launching him to his feet.

    My fucking head. What did that voice even say? Something about meat I''m pretty sure? And¡­ sector 83bb something? Either way that doesn¡¯t follow federation sector naming standards whatsoever? Why did it sound so familiar?

    Mitch shook his head trying to clear his brain of the mind melting migraine. The migraine was completely unpreventable as the sheer amount of stimulus pumped in from Mitch¡¯s new sixth sense did nothing but overwhelm his brain.

    Why are there bacteria and viruses everywhere?! At least I can vaguely sense the outlines of the cave via connecting the tarp of wriggling alive dots lining the walls.

    I can see my crystal reserves slowly being pumped up my spine, probably will last around seven days from how it looks. I wonder if I can stop the flow? Wouldn¡¯t be that weird with how much bullshit I''m going through today.

    Proceeded to try mentally wrangling the crystals with a mental shovel and knock swaths of the crystals out of this blood stream into surrounding cells. But unsurprisingly that did jack shit, just because Mitch could see his own blood stream didn¡¯t mean he could ... .uhhh¡­ Mitch watched on as his mental micro shovel phased through the crystals and bashed a macrophage white blood cell into the wall of his blood vessels exploding it into goop. The goop was quickly cleaned up by another one of the cell¡¯s brethren.

    I can smack my own cells with a mental shovel, so helpful. Wish I could turn off this mental overload of a sphere. I also¡­ don''t feel full somehow. I know my gi tract is fast, but not that fast. I just ate half a fucking bear. Where did all of the shit go? I must¡¯ve shat by now surely?

    As Mitch thought of his excrement he spotted a large pile of excrement with matching bacteria to his gut biome leaning against the side of the bear.

    I would wipe my ass with the bear¡¯s fur, but the bear¡¯s hair is already in the afterlife. It''s been at least a dozen minutes and that giant plug of ice that smashed the drone seems to be going nowhere. I might as well finish the bear meat? Who knows when I''ll get my next meal?

    Mitch proceeded to dig into his cooked meat pile, one that used to look vaguely like a bear. The experience was entirely foreign to the previous one. This time around with every slab of meat he could individually count every single cell in the slabs, he could see the bacteria killing off the nutrient deficient immune cells, could see the muscular cells dissolving from the lack of oxygen and blood flow. As the meat slabs went down into his stomach, he was able to see his modified stomach acid start popping cell walls in the billions.

    Mitch quickly skinned, butchered and ate most of the musculature of the bear within the next fifteen minutes. He worked from the lower thighs up to the head. As he was a foot away from the bear¡¯s brain picking off the flabs of face fat to eat, the secondary network on top of his brain flared. It gave him a massive compulsion to crack the skull open and eat the aboimations¡¯s brain like a jelly bowl.

    Agahhh, brains. Cough. I mean, those brains would be high in fat. Surely the creature didn¡¯t have brain worms or anything? Wait why am I even wondering, I can see its neurons from here.

    After looking around the bear¡¯s skull for a paranoid two minutes Mitch decided to go for it, the compulsion too strong to ignore.

    Mitch pulled out the combat knife he clipped onto his khakis now as the trench coat was on the verge of flaking off of him. With the other hand he pulled out the claw stuck in the skull. Mitch pried out the other eye from the left eye socket using the knife, he tried at first to just stick the knife under the eye and pry it out like a bouncy ball stuck in a divot, but the damned thing burst. The eye sprayed goop across the knife and up Mitch¡¯s arm, for some awful reason probably just to spite the bloody Mitch, the abomination¡¯s eye was extremely pressurized.

    Why didn¡¯t the other one spurt like that? Post mortem decay? Seems awfully fast.

    Thinking nothing more of it Mitch scraped out the remains of the eye from the eye socket, blood and goop staining his knife. After scraping the eye remains down to the bone, he marked mentally where the orbital bone was weakest through his sixth sense, he placed the tip of his knife and slammed the back with the palm of his other hand, hard. A soft crack occurred, the knife sunk four inches through the bone creating a ragged and sharp cut. More blood dribbled out of the brain into the socket along with some watery cerebrospinal fluid. Not nearly as bad as Mitch expected as he had already mostly drained the skull earlier with his mercy kill.

    Mitch identified two more weak spots at the lower back of the skull and with four horizontal holes in the skull Mitch was able to crack and pry the rest of it off using the claw and knife as leverage.

    I could¡¯ve just ripped the damn skull cap off, but I''d rather try to reduce the number of bone spurs getting into my mouth. If I''d just torn the thing off quickly there¡¯d one hundred percent be chunks of bone in my jello dish.

    Mitch finally saw the brain with his two eyes. Sike, it was way too dark in the cave, but he was able to easily tell it was in front of him given the overwhelming sixth sense. The other odd thing was that the brain and spine of the bear still seemed almost alive? They were both still slowly absorbing crystal traces from the remaining blood and organs. Every time a large enough crystal hit the bear¡¯s brain or spine he saw a microscopic jiggle and some sort of multidimensional shutter? It was like the brain refused to shut down so it was throwing some sort of quantum hissy fit.

    I have no fucking idea what i¡¯m looking at. I know the basis of consciousness and anesthesia is quantum based on microtubules, but that¡¯s beyond my paygrade. Did not bother getting the dual degree in quantum mechanics and advanced biology to understand that one. Starting to regret it right now. Looks safe enough? What¡¯s a little bit of microtubules gonna do to me? I gotta get moving real soon, I''m starting to hear buzzing even through the ice.

    Mitch gave up on his facade of civility and began taking handfuls of the pink and red brain matter and shoved it into his mouth.

    Wow I barely need to chew, it¡¯s extra fatty but not the chewy pork fat type of way. Like loose unorganized fats which with the slightest pressure split apart into smaller tasty jello chunks lining your mouth. Lots of umami as well. Man, I should go for another bear brain in the future¡­ Mitch noticed the secondary crystal induced neural network of his was going absolutely crazy. Ooohkay maybe not.

    The bear meat hit Mitch¡¯s gut after twenty seconds of being attacked by superacid and as it hit his stomach, pure euphoria flooded his brain. Mitch was catching glimpses of oddly differently shaped glowing threads smaller than subatomic particles pulled from the neuron¡¯s protein microtubules being devoured. The strands were not entering his bloodstream. They were shooting directly into his millions of gut nerves lassoed up and guided forward by thick clouds of metaphysical dark green gas. The strands were being shot through the neural highway that was his spine up to his brain.

    Before he knew it, Mitch had managed to finish the bear brain. The headache that was pestering him so dreadfully was now cut to a fifth of the previous annoyance. It seemed whatever those strands were they drastically helped the information overload Mitch was experiencing.

    His sixth sense world began to stabilize, Mitch korrigan, bear corpse, trillions of bacteria, car sized ant.

    Wow, for the first time I can appreciate this view! Also did it expand by a foot in every direction? I don¡¯t remember being able to sense an ant from here. It¡¯s really annoying though, if I let my focus linger on any part of my body, the dead bear¡¯s or that ant, my brain starts hurting. Too much information of all of the trillions of molecules sending status reports. I can look at the bacteria just fine¡­ Huh, I wonder, Mitch mentally squinted his sixth sense just to focus on one of his dermis skin cells. The headache quieted, he was no longer aware of the world around him but he just checked, there¡¯s only him, a corpse and an ant. Nothing to worry about.

    Mitch¡¯s sixth sense condensed onto the skin cell, only the faintest view of the thirteen foot circle around him made it to his brain. He watched in fascination as the cell seemed to be preparing for mitosis, Cyclins and kinases proteins preparing DNA for replication. P53 proteins being produced intersposing themselves into the dizzying protein dance, working to stop any DNA damage. Rb proteins modulating the activity of E2F transcription factors.

    The next phase of replication of the cell started heating up, DNA polymerase springing into action to start carrying out the synthesis of new DNA strands. MCM helicase proteins began unwinding the double DNA sequence.

    Mitch¡¯s sixth sense world view suddenly expanded as the ant knocked him off his feet. It¡¯s mandibles dripping venom closing around his neck. The mandibles found no purchase.

    ¡°I don¡¯t remember you being so ugly¡­ and large.¡± Mitch blurted out, his sixth sense and eyes now showing him, the ant shape he ignored earlier was actually the size of a volkswagen beetle and not a biological beetle.

    The ant venom sloughed off streaks of Mitch¡¯s skin, as if an acid. Snapping out of his stupor Mitch finally decided to fight back. He grabbed the two manables of the ant and used them as two large handles to flip the ant onto its side with a massive heave. One of the bastard¡¯s thin legs on the right side snapped off from the roll. The damned thing screeched like a bird, Mitch decided he¡¯ll be killing this thing as fast as possible.

    Why is the ant extra hard to look at? It looks fuzzy in my sixth sense, as if there''s the faintest amount of TV static blasting my brain if I look too far in. Mitch muscled the sense into his control squinting and staring at the tv static for a second until he spotted a pattern to its flow. His secondary layer of neurons squirmed. Suddenly it was as easy to look at the ant¡¯s insides as his own or the bear corpse. The static, nowhere to be seen.

    Perfect, that nerve cord only looks around a hundred and sixty cells across. If I do remember my insect biology, that¡¯s its spinal cord. Too bad bugs can breathe paralyzed. Eh, I''ll take paralyzed.

    Mitch with zero hesitation tried smacking the ant¡¯s spine with one of his cell slaps. Mitch felt his brain get a bit warm as a small green circular rune the size of a pingpong ball appeared on his forehead. The rune was a simple jagged circle, wavering in multidimensional winds with a smaller circle jutting out of the center connected with wavy glowing lines. The small circle sucked out a tic tac sized ball of ephemeral green gas directly from his brain. As soon as the stuff hit open air and passed through the rune it rushed towards the ant like a rabid animal, attracted to his target as if a homing missile.

    The ping pong sized ball of meta gas slowed down going through the ant as if it were going through a pool of water. Mitch squinted, it looked like the nerves in the ant¡¯s body were flooding the body with white gas to catch the rogue projectile. The density of the gas seemed to do little to stop the momentum, but it was managing to dissolve the outer layer of green gas turning a chunk of it into white glowing gas like the rest flooding its body.

    The two thirds of the remaining tic tac projectile hit the nerve cord in the dead middle, it deposited its payload. In a microscopically massive slap of force, a crater twenty nerve cells deep was carved into the eight millimeter across cord. The slap managed to mangle a whole tenth of the cord.

    The ant which was working on walking towards Mitch in a hobbling yet intimidating limp with one of its legs broken, froze. It started tilting forwards, and fell on its face, before beginning to twitch three of its six legs madly trying to gain control of its other three legs.

    Mitch smiled, his bloody and soot covered form walked towards the ant. With a relaxed raise of his right foot Mitch kicked downwards squarely on the ant¡¯s head. Mitch watched his glutes, calf and quads burn through hundreds of grams of glycogen in a single instant. Usually this is where in a single move, Mitch would not be able to exert any more force, just being around twenty times stronger than a normal human. But as the glycogen ran out, and glucose was not transferred fast enough to fill in the gap; the nerves in his muscles began pulling in the dizzying crystals stored in the surrounding tissue and shunted a stream of that magical dark green gas directly into his musculature. The green gas burnt at a much, much slower rate than the glycogen, by providing thousands of times more energy per gram.

    Mitch¡¯s leg began accelerating at mind boggling speeds, breaking the sound barrier multiple times over, with a deafening sonic boom, his carbon heel slammed into the hard carapace of the giant ant. At the first thousandth of a second of impact the ant¡¯s head was whole and healthy, by the hundredth it was a pile of goo. The ant¡¯s brain and fluids burst out the sides and the rigid structure of the ant¡¯s skull acted as a bubble to be popped. By the whole second mark, Mitch found himself flying. Flying straight upwards.

    The massive unexpected force of the kick sent Mitch up towards the cave ceiling at nearly a hundred and sixty miles an hour.  His back slammed against the rock first, his body folding over one of the protrusions in the ceiling. Mitch¡¯s extra elastic organs jiggled in his cavity.

    The bear is trying to crawl its way back up through my throat! Mitch burped, then began falling to the ground. He managed to pull his feet below him within the three second freefall.

    I see crystals! Mitch thought, looking at the royally mangled ant corpse infront of him.

    I really, really, gotta get going soon. It¡¯s time to stop worrying about hard bits, I¡¯m sure my intestines can handle some slivers. Surely?

    Mitch made his way over to the ant, he leaned down and grabbed the end of the nerve cord that was sticking out of the head stump. Holding the bulk of the neck meat with his left hand, Mitch pulled on the nerve cord with his right.

    With a satisfying slurp and tear, the nerve started sliding out of the ant. As the thing got to the end of his arm wingspan, Mitch began eating the end of it, like a massive multiple cm across noodle.

    Mmmm, this thing is chewy! Tastes like the bear brain but¡­. Extra chewy, also has an acidic tinge to it. Must be the venom leaking¡­ that doesn¡¯t matter when I feeeeee-eleleel thhi-iis Ggoogogo-o--oo-o-o-d!

    Mitch¡¯s brain was short circuiting from the quantum threads flowing into his brain. He noticed the secondary neural network slowly built in complexity and size as he gained more threads. His mouth was drooling uncontrollably at this point, his body demanded more crystal to build out the larger network. Just a bit of thread demanded so much crystal it ate through one day of Mitch¡¯ buffer with one ant spine. He didn¡¯t notice with the bear since he was already so hopped up on crystal. But this time, going for the central nervous system first, made Mitch realize the dangers of doing so.

    Give me that protein shake! Mitch thought before cracking open the top of the ant¡¯s thorax, sheer strength alone. He plunged one arm into the creature''s hemolymph sack sticking into the skull and tore a hole wide enough worthy of a king. He began chugging the building yellow fluid, whilst breaking up drags with chunks of organ meat. Once the thorax was emptied, Mitch cracked open the abdomen of the ant, sheer grip strength alone, and began digging in, Making sure to avoid the venom sack within.

    After a massive, high velocity, superhuman dump & piss in the corner of the cave, Mitch began running down the hall at a brisk forty miles an hour. After his high weaned off he realized those drone blades were getting way too loud.

    On the plus side the headache of constantly watching every living creature around him in his periferie was getting less and less significant. Mitch tried focusing on a group of muscular tissue in his bicep to see if he could get a focused view of a whole tissue group and immediately regretted it. It seemed to get exponentially harder to have a perfectly clear view of more and more cell inner workings. It felt like being flashbanged by the sheer amount of information flooding into his brain. The weird magic forcibly decoding all of the hormone, chemical and neural signals going through the tissue group causing even more sensory overload.

    Mitch stumbled just a dozen feet into his run. He regained his footing and clarity by forcing himself to unfocus his sixth sense before he had an aneurysm.

    Much nicer, Who needs to see individual proteins and molecules anyways? I¡¯m content with not getting a headache from sensing all of the cells around me. No need to see their innerworkings. Probably?

    Mitch continued down the cave the bear and ant abomination came through. As he continued running, he saw many offshoots from the cave leading into darkness. The only thing that kept him on the main path without straying was the soft orange light at the end of the tunnel.

    Being able to sense through solid stone and soil he managed to spot ants just under his feet and in the walls crawling through a presumably nest. Nearly a dozen ants in two hundred meters.

    How big would a car sized ant colony be? Too big. City sized colony most likely.

    Mitch was about halfway to finishing his jog to the end of the tunnel. He really wanted to see what that orange light was. Fingers crossed it was a settlement of some sort.

    What else makes such orange light but flame?

    Mitch¡¯s jog was rudely interrupted as he spotted one of the ants in the walls catching a whiff of him and skittering out of the meter wide hole halfway up the right cave wall.

    You know there is one issue with this unfocused sixth sense mode. I can¡¯t see the god damn pheromones the ant is spitting out since I can only see full cells.

    Mitch continued jogging evenly, hoping to ignore the bastard, but before he could, the thing screeched like it¡¯s late brethren.

    Fuck me!

    Mitch spotted one more ant coming through the stone, then one more, another, anoth-, ano-,..... Mitch was surrounded by three dozen ants. It took the bastards less than ten seconds to rush to take care of the intruder.

    Well time to see how fast I can really go using those crystals as fuel. I need to get down as low as possible to the ground and kick off like a sprinter. I need to put maximum force into horizontal acceleration, I don¡¯t want to lose my footing by launching myself into the ceiling again.

    All of the ants were about a dozen feet away just in the edge of his perception. He could see more coming to get him through the walls.

    Mitch got himself into prime sprinting kick off position. He mentally prepared himself. During the last stomp on the ant he merely stopped tensing after seeing the crystals starting the stream in. He wanted an ant left to eat. This time around though¡­

    I bet I''ll find some bits on the wall.

    He blasted his legs with the intention to move. The neurons sent the highest electrical signal they could.

    This may have been a mistake¡­

    His leg immediately caused the air surrounding it to combust into swirling plasma, for the split second it took Mitch¡¯s heel to hit the ground the air felt like pushing through thick honey. As soon as Mitch¡¯s heel hit the stone a gigantic earth shattering shockwave rocked the cave and shuttered through Mitch¡¯s body. The equivalent of one ton of tnt was imparted into the floor with his name on it.

    Mitch felt his internal organs instantly liquify as within one step, he managed to break the sound barrier dozens of times over and turn all of the two dozen ants directly infront of him and behind into fine yellow mists and flying chunks. His vision was immediately snuffed out as his eyes were burned out of his black graphene skull, his stiff graphene eyelids snapped shut to stop the superheated plasma from boring a hole into his brain. The sound of his departure never reached his ears. He saw the stone spider crack and cave collapse behind him though his unfocused sixth sense.

    Mitch rocketed forwards at blurring speeds, his non-aerodynamic body immediately beginning to slow down against the honey like plasma air. The small vertical vector of his pushoff was still enough to send him bouncing up into the cave ceiling then rebounding back down digging into a large ant¡¯s back. Mitch found himself sliding on charred ant gut chunks and boiling juices at hypersonic speeds. He finished the run to the end of the tunnel in record time. Nearly five hundred meters crossed in a fraction of a second. The semi smooth cave floor gave perfect conditions for him to fly into the massive lit up chamber in the most hot, wet and moist style possible.

    You know what if¡­

    Mitch flicked his sixth sense into focused mode on his own right eye socket, he saw his own deflated and charred eye and damaged optic nerve laying limp. He reached up with a right hand and pinched off the end of the nerve and tore out the old deflated eye.

    After which he focused on forcing as much of the energy providing green gas into his immune and stem cells for recovery. He tweaked a bunch of the hormones flowing through his body and forced the immune cells to flock to his right eye socket instead of repairing the skin. Within seconds a small millimeter across the meatball was beginning to grow from a bloody noodle that was his optic nerve.

    Mitch worked in his mind to regrow one eye at record pace, while mindlessly chewing on who knows what.

    Mmm threads, must¡¯ve managed to grab a nerve cord¡­ Oh yeah, I definitely grabbed one, that is a shattered ant head attached to my groin.

    Over the next few minutes ants would approach him fearlessly and attempt to take off an arm or leg of his. These encounters were almost not worth mentioning as with single forceful slaps the car sized ants exploded from the heat and shockwaves produced by the gas powered impacts. Each slap creates a thundercrack of sound echoing through the cave system. Sounds Mitch could not hear given his pulped eardrums.

    Over the next twenty minutes the ant encounters slowed to a crawl. The lack of ants gave Mitch time to regenerate both of his eyes over the next thirty minutes.

    Mitch immediately focused on forcing blinked out yellow ant blood from his new eyes, the disgusting protein goop acting to block his new view. Mitch¡¯s vision began clearing a second later.

    Mitch could finally see through the yellow goop. He was looking into a gigantic stone chamber, at least a thousand meters across. It was filled with orange foliage and mosses lining the walls. Lining the ceiling were massive orange glowing crystals which had edges that fizzed in and out of reality. The cavern smelled like corpses and mildew and was absolutely swarming with ants. At least five thousand of the buggers. At their center was an ant standing as tall as a ten story building.

    Do I see my next meal?! Mitch began drooling, not really thinking of the thousands of ants staring at him, while he was covered in their brethren.

    Why am I actually drooling? I just ate? Wait¡­ Mitch scanned himself over with his sixth sense. Liquified kidney, liver, adrenaline glands, Lightly damaged occipital lobes, and liquified saliva glands.

    Are those crystals fuzzy because they¡¯re huge versions of the hologram crystals I''ve been eating¡­ or do I just have that much brain damage?

    You know there¡¯s not much room for a running start. I¡¯ll need to backup a bit and accelerate slower to avoid further brain damage. Mitch mused before his thought process was rudely cut off by a loud screech.

    The closest ant had screeched, then the second followed, and the third¡­. And then the entire cave was a cacophony of high pitched noise.

    A tidal wave of purple carapace and snapping mandibles surged in his direction.

 Chapter 4: Interlude 1, The Message

    Chapter 4: Interlude 1, The Message

    Year 500 P.R. Empire outreaches. Archid system. Drucyn: dragon forest essence geyser.

    Mark 8322b, ¡®The Overseer¡¯ was in a state of nuclear panic. He¡¯d just let the most valuable subject he¡¯s ever seen with his own two sensors escape like a human¡¯s fart in the wind. Mark was inclined to buck his hard coded programming and send an army after his slipped treasure. Sadly without outside approval, only his scouting troops could be deployed.

    Given the complete lack of trail by the soon to be Hydra; Mark was given no choice but to send the day¡¯s information packet up to the military quantum web.

    A piece of information so volatile, one wrong ear and the empire will buckle. If the found Hydra body dies before cultivating a foundation of vessels¡­ Only the Emperor himself can save us then.

    Mark felt the packet of terabytes of information finish encoding into one of the millions of quantum information bays linked to the base data cluster.

    Mark felt his long term strategy core predict a high chance of defeating the Vornithar threat within the next century if the nubile hydra survived.

    With crossed finger like wires and strategy cores blasting at full power, Mark sent the packet.

    Within minutes, an order from high command raced down into the quantum bays of Mark¡¯s data cluster. Each bay filled with explicit and urgent orders to purge every digital trace of the newborn''s survival. Each and every subsequent command from a greater power in the empire¡¯s legions. Before Mark could finish processing or create any full proof data backups, a forced order from an Emperor''s Judicon arrived.

    A forced shock of electricity flushed Mark¡¯s systems, the emp like wave removed hundreds of terabytes of information from his servers.

    ¡°Why are there two holes in the eastern defensive wall? Both turrets are slagged?! Am I under attack?! What¡¯s the date?!¡±

    Mark went into a flurry of panic rechecking and rechecking his sensors for attackers. He found none. He assigned the next twenty hours of data strategy core processing time on figuring out the cause in his lapse of memory.

    The cores each errored out one after the other mere minutes after starting processing. Every core began a forced meltdown upon reviewing the last few minutes of mana sensor logs.

    Soul wrenching screaming and static filled the halls of the base as billions of electrical and quant-optical circuits fried all at the same time.

    Mark¡¯s artificial mind was irreparably crippled by the sudden loss of all of his strategy cores. A dead ai switch information packet was immediately sent up to command.

    <hr>

    A packet of information originating from the Archid system, one of many sentient ritual material cultivation systems in the empire, was sent into the legion quantum network. It was marked as of utmost strategic value by the cultivation base AI. In turn, the packet managed to cut the line and get sent directly to the spiral arm legion avatar.

    <hr>

    Six hour later:

    Hugo Smedberg, A force Herald of the highest order, a proud commander of a slice of the Emperor''s legions and a strategic asset all on his own. Hugo was a proud man, and currently he was enjoying a prolonged vacation on a paradise planet sleeping with a lover in his bed. He earned such a rare occasion due to his squad¡¯s great feat of killing a wave Vorn that had been terrorizing the essence ocean guard line for months beforehand. It was such a great accomplishment Hugo had been given an offer by one of the emperor¡¯s judicons of a life free of more war. All he would have to do is be the on paper commander and defender of the fastest generating ritual material sector in the empire.

    To say the least, Hugo had taken the choice with a shit eating grin on his face. He¡¯d say it hurt to say goodbye to his squadmates but¡­ They were nothing but a bunch of bloodthirsty empire hounds that gave no effort to keep hold of their humanity.

    Hugo was pulled out of his reminiscing by Kaja, the curvy pale skinned beauty he¡¯d met at the hundred floor casino in the North pas district. Over the centuries, Hugo had picked up quite the body count. At this point in his long life, all of the one night stands blurred together. The constant presence of copious drugs did not help things.

    ¡°Arhh, Where am I?¡± Kaja blearily opened her eyes, they slowly widened further and further with every glance around the room. Clearly not recognizing anything around her.

    She looked over at the hulking mass that was the genetically modified, highly trained, muscle mountain, Hugo. Her eyes widened to their limit.

    After her plump lips opened and closed a dozen times, she looked at Hugo with a mix of emotions flashing across her face from angry, to thirsty to scared. A few minutes later she relaxed a tinge and sighed loudly.

    ¡°Shit¡­ What¡¯s your name again?.. Actually never mind I got it, it¡¯s Hibby¡­ no Hugo! That¡¯s it. Now where are my clothes? I need to get back home before my hubby starts asking any questions.¡± Kaja said, getting out of the king sized bed.

    ¡°Beautiful, it¡¯s noon. That quote, ¡®open¡¯ relationship of yours doesn¡¯t seem very salvageable.¡± Hugo laughed

    ¡°No no, It¡¯s a saturday, my hubby usually is still asleep till one p.m. Ah shit the air cab is estimating a forty minute drive. How did you get me to agree to come out this far?.. This is ridiculous, we''re out in the middle of South Gates!¡± She said freaking out, her eyes looking around at invisible floating screens.

    Hugo got out of bed, tossing the blanket off of himself. As he stood, Kaja stared at him blankly, her previous panic turning into awe. After getting a good look at Hugo sober, her annoyance melted like ice in the summer sun. A dense patchwork of crisp dully glowing runic tattoos covered Hugo¡¯s entire back and upper chest in a complex weave. One large rune held president above all others, his legion identification rune in the center of his sternum, one marking him a herald of the emperor¡¯s army.

    ¡°You, err¡­.¡± Kaja stared blankly for a long moment. ¡°Well that¡¯s a first, have never slept with a Herald. Muscle Buns, Did you fly me here?¡±

    ¡°Probably?¡± Hugo responded with a tilted head. The gesture looked a tad goofy on his hulking seven foot form.

    ¡°Probably?¡± Kaja responded.

    ¡°Probably. I¡¯m only recalling flashes of last night after vaping twenty shots of everclear. For all I know I could have princess carried you all the way here, after breaking a hole through one of the Casino windows.¡± Hugo laughed.

    Kaja walked up to him and sensually traced the main circle of his identification rune with her index finger.

    ¡°Well big man, once I''m dressed, think you can manage to bring me home? I¡¯m sure you have plenty of experience bringing damsels in distress back home.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯d prefer to carry you skin to skin, but your wish is my command ¡®princess¡¯.¡± Hugo said as a short series of small runes on his shoulders increased in intensity and a small pile of woman¡¯s clothes began floating into the room. The pile then spread out into multiple individual clothing items. A pair of tight black leather pants, a deep v neck sparkling red club shirt, pair of socks and a few panda themed undergarments. The floating garments then each had identical spell circles snap into existence in front of them. Steam began forming within the clothes then as each spell twisted and grew in intensity each piece of clothing was ironed and then folded out on the end of the copper colored bed sheets.

    ¡°Oh, my. I¡¯d take you down for round two this very moment if I wasn¡¯t on a deadline, magic man.¡± Kaja¡¯s voice dripped with appreciation and something more wet.

    With a mental flick Hugo sent a friend request over to Kaja on Quant Messenger. The empire standardized faster than light civilian communication network.

    ¡°Hah! Bold. I like it. Though don¡¯t you dare try whisking me away one of these days while I''m at home! No matter how much I''d like that.¡± Kaja joked with a twitching frown on her face.

    Kaja quickly got dressed, she looked like a scrumptious snack. But Hugo stopped himself, Don¡¯t want to ruin yet another relationship. It¡¯s like I attract adulterers like flies. I wonder what it is, my face? The title? The runes? The abs? Probably the abs. Let''s be honest.

    Hugo threw on some boxers and gym shorts.

    The two of them stepped out on Hugo¡¯s apartment balcony, it was a gorgeous view of the megacity, you could see for miles since the bulk of the skyscrapers had inscribed rituals to make them nearly transparent from a far enough distance. While it was one thing to feel every moving particle for hundreds of miles in his perception sphere, it was another to see the full color of the city with his own two eyes.

    Hugo squinted and then with a wave of his right hand and a series of rhythmic thumps and flashes from his tattoos a low flying spy satellite three hundred miles above was turned into melted red hot scrap.

    High command and their sick privacy invasion in the name of universal security. If I ever manage to track down the space weaver runt that keeps putting those damn things up there every goddamn day, I''m going to rip his head off. With my own two hands.

    Kaja poked him in the shoulder, as for the last thirty seconds Hugo had been staring straight up with a look of pure annoyance contorting his face.

    ¡°Muscle buns, I''m running low on time. You can do your magical jerk off session after I''m gone.¡±

    Hugo sighed and mentally grabbed the two of them, focusing on the runes on his lower back. They both began floating off the platform, a harness of invisible force keeping them each aloft. Kaja squeaked loudly, a lot more tame than the drunken squeal the night before. The events of last night slowly dribbling into Hugo¡¯s addled brain.

    Hugo sent them slowly hovering away from the balcony, there was some gawking from onlookers but, these are the sorts of things people on paradise planets see all the time. But not usually in city centers as magi flight permits were a bitch to get. Of course enforcement didn¡¯t try catching you midair but there are a dizzying number of invisible cameras pointed everywhere in the city, and that includes upwards. Cameras so good and blasting out so much ir light they can scan retinas from thousands of meters away. Some sort of invisible air lens bullshit.

    My main reason for hating surveillance. In my early years when I was powerful enough to fly places but not high enough rank to get a flight license, every vacation I took, half of my budget went to paying off flying violations. I tried everything, facemask, googles, holographic disguises. I¡¯m pretty sure half of the empire¡¯s cameras have rituals on them because there is no way they¡¯re mundane.

    Hugo sent them rocketing upwards above the skyscrapers below, logic runes on his lower back automatically triggering from the wind resistance instantly snapping a floating invisible windshield of force in front of the duo.

    After a minute on the verge of a panic attack Kaja looked like she was having the time of her life. Hugo couldn¡¯t help but look at the squirming leather behind.

    Stop. Hugo brought himself under control. The hormone reset the army biomancers put him on a few years ago when he started his indefinite vacationing position kept his lebido at concerning levels. Some sort of an apology after siphoning most of it out of him all those years ago as a new force Acolyte.

    By the five minute mark the leisurely flight was halfway complete. They were over the bustling business sector, many drones and droids churning in a metallic soup underneath.

    It was at this point that a red glowing urgent message seared its way directly into his brain. An emergency message from high command directly aimed towards him.

    ¡®Vanguard grade emergency has occurred in your commanding sector. Report to Arcthor station meeting room 1923a for physical briefing. Immediately.

    Catlea Vykopal, Charge Vanguard.¡¯

    The world around Hugo slowed down to a crawl. He had no time, if he let a god''s damned vanguard waiting for too long his indefinite vacation would come to a very short and bloody end.

    Hugo sweeped the surroundings in his sixth sense. The closest skyscraper roof was a hundred meters away. Hugo sent Kaja shooting downwards towards the skyscraper, at a much faster speed than they had been flying before. A look of sheer panic appeared on her face as she saw the skyscraper approaching. She began drastically slowing down as she reached within fifty feet of the ceiling. She touched down with her high heels clacking against the skyscraper¡¯s flat concrete top floor. The windshield dissolved leaving the high altitude winds to buffet her hair.

    With another mental flick Hugo sent a message to Kaja over Quant Messenger, ¡®So sorry, Extremely urgent emergency. I hope you understand. Every millisecond counts, I unlocked the roof entry hatch behind you. Best of luck. I hope you make it home on time.¡¯

    Hugo reinforced his body with large counteracting force fields holding his cells in place as he subjected himself to hundreds of thousands of G¡¯s of acceleration. He broke the sound barrier instantly. His target was the nearest on planet nexus spacial transportation hub. A cloud of plasma quickly appeared around his windshield.

    As Hugo was flying he opened his space storage artifact necklace which he wore at all times. He retrieved his military wear and tossed it on midair. Sadly he had too much experience with this exact action.

    He neared the front of the nexus, a large bulbous building that looked like a stadium or a gigantic subway entry hall. But it was really just a facade, the real bulk of the structure was underground going for hundreds of stories and spreading out into thousands of programmable transportation docks. A woman essence infused officer tried flagging him down seeing him blasting in at hypersonic speeds but stopped upon Hugo triggering his identification rune, a complex three dimensional computer readable hologram appeared over his head.

    He zipped past the entryway, making sure to create force fields in his wake above the crowds to avoid killing anyone with shockwaves. He aimed for the tucked away military sector of the nexus. He tapped into the wireless network and dumped his credentials and request for immediate transport to Arcthor station. He mashed accept on using the dedicated military personnel transport dock.

    Hugo leveraged open the elevator doors with his mind and tossed himself down the elevator shaft. An elevator car tried close lining him but luckily it was a two car system and he shifted to the other shaft.

    Hugo slammed open the doors on his floor and sped into the transportation dock. He ignored all of the civilians and military grunts on the floor waiting for their transport. Door after heavy door opened up in front of him until he reached the personnel dock he was assigned.

    He opened the dock just in time to see the swirling violet particles of space attuned mana dust flecks snapping into place. The whole hundred by a hundred foot square back wall was suddenly removed and replaced with a near exact copy of the massive dock Hugo was curretnly standing in.

    A nounification appeared in his quant messenger dashboard, from Kaja, ¡°I¡¯m not going to make it! You son of a bitch! This building has a hundred and fifty emperor damned stories!¡±

    Hugo blasted through the new large portal into the opposite hallway on Arcthor, a smile touching the edges of his lips. The hallway which was usually dead and empty, was now absolutely swarming. There were so many mana fluctuations permeating into the air Hugo¡¯s sixth sense range was cut down to a pitiful three miles. Still enough to see the space station in its entirety.

    Hugo blasted down the halls, keeping flush to the flat ceilings, he flew overhead of the rabble speeding towards the meeting room. He couldn¡¯t help but look out the space station windows as he was flying past.

    There were an entire two empire armadas floating out there. Dozens of ships the size of small cities that dwarfed the space station its entirety were in sync with the space station¡¯s orbit.

    What in the fuck is happening? Did one of the ritual resources reach vanguard while being out of surveillance? No, this is overkill. They would just send a legion vanguard assassination squad if that was the case. This is something much larger. Eldritch breakout? No, the emperor has kept those bastards at bay for centuries now, that is a constant. Avatar gone rogue? No we¡¯d all be dead. Vornithar incursion? No, there¡¯s no other way out of their sector of layer two but the essence ocean portal. Titrax infection? Maybe, those always turn into a clusterfuck.

    Hugo¡¯s modified brain eliminated dozens of possibilities by the time he reached the meeting room. The sixteen foot tall sliding stainless steel doors opened way into the meeting room. A round room with high ceilings and customizable hard light projection seats lined a gigantic central round table. The entire room was a complex full spectrum holodeck allowing for over the top briefings. The window curving around the room looked out over the city sized Eclipse Dreadnought warship, its massive bulk framed by the dual blue stars behind it.

    Hugo scanned the room, there were a dozen people sitting around the unnecessarily large table. There was one woman standing in the front of the room. She had white hair, stood nearly seven feet tall and had muscles that belonged to a goddess. As her hair swished around small soft sparks of electricity would arc between the ends of the strands, tentacles of solidified charge mana squirmed around the room like eldritch horrors. A slim azure and black, neutronium doped graphyne suit stood behind her, a functional Aegis.

    As Hugo stood there gawking at Catlea Vykopal for a split second, a voice managed to sneak up on him.

    ¡°Hugo! My grumpy eunuch! Oh my, did you already cheat on me a few years into getting your testosterone back?¡± A sultry and soul scratching female voice accused from behind him.

    He turned around to see a black haired buxom woman he immediately recognized. One of his old squad members, Naima Korrigan, a Herold Life weaver, a member of a distant branch of the spear house.

    Just fuck my life. I have to see this psychopath again. Naima used familial connections to use essence geyser battlefields as playgrounds and use me as a plaything after the military mandated hormone therapy. The therapy was meant to counteract the cocktail of prescribed steroids. But all it really accomplished was fucking with my psyche and reptilian drives.

    To top it off I never actually got my balls cut off¡­ except that one time. She regenerated them immediately though. Hate that label.

    His other two male team members flanked the Naima, Kurdin Valentinovich and Lukov Valentinovich, a pair of force heralds, Both psychopaths in their own right. Hugo had only ever seen a smile touch their lips when tearing apart something bloody. May that be a beast, horror or person.

    Naima opened her lips to continue egging him on, but was cut off. A pulse of electricity made the holodeck shutter around them. An off gassing of a mana tentacle was tinged with anger and demand for obedience which felt as if someone was squeezing your brain stem with their bare hands.

    ¡°Everyone sit down! Waste one more second of mine and I''ll have your diving rights revoked for the next decade.¡± Catlea said in a cold tone, the obvious origin for the mana outburst.

    That threat put a shiver down Hugo¡¯s spine, he immediately disengaged from the group of three familiar psychopaths and sat his ass down into the closest empty transparent chair within a fraction of a second.

    After the group of three walked into the room fully the door slammed behind them.

    ¡°Alright everyone is here, I¡¯ll make this simple. We don¡¯t know much. But the spear¡¯s patriarch¡¯s first son has been identified in system Archid in the Drucyn essence geyser. We don¡¯t know how he got there. But he is a fledgling hydra, the vessel we identified is only at the rank of an acolyte in essence aura. But it is also equipped with half a set of vanguard grade genetic enhancements. The vessel could be one of millions of our new hydra but it seems unlikely given the spear patriarch¡¯s incessant searching for the last thousand years. Either the baby hydra has just appeared out of thin air and is building his power now, or this is one of many and we will be chasing smoke.¡±

    ¡°There are a hundred and fifty known connections to other geysers in Drucyn. Time is of the essence. I''ll be sending this group here to go secure all known exits in the geyser near the base. I myself will be going with heat Vangaurd Kozar Yurievich to scan the immediate area. You have no choice but to cooperate in this matter. Here is captured footage of the vessel, and here is its mana readout report.¡± Catlea finished as a dark haired man with fresh blood covering his body appeared as a hologram ontop of the table. A long numerical report on the man¡¯s mana reading. As well as a video clip of him getting shot by multiple inch caliber anti material cannon rounds with minimal effect. Hugo quickly saved all files from the holodeck onto his local brain implant.

    ¡°Alright, space herold Xin will be transferring us now to the essence geyser portal. Find that runt, for the emperor.¡± Catlea commanded.

    A wave of purple glowing powder filled the room with floating violet runes within and suddenly Hugo was no longer standing in the space station meeting hall. Hugo was now standing shoulder to shoulder with everyone else in the strike team. They were surrounded by a bustling crowd of medieval looking adventurers and weird looking races of people.

    The road was breathtaking to take in, the orange tinged dual star system bathed the magical medieval street in breathtaking gold. There were couples dining under neon green awnings. A baker''s shop ran by a curvaceous elf. A boxing rink where two stone golems were duking it out. Crowds of people betting on the golem winner, Hugo could see in his sixth sense two force acolytes controlling the golems from underneath the stage.

    Hugo sighed, imagining what could have been if history wasn¡¯t so rotten. He looked at the baker with longing eyes before his face hardened.

    Nothing but descendants of degenerates that abandoned the empire in its most dire time of need. They are nothing more than fuel for rituals now.

    A message appeared in a group chat in his military quant messenger account. It was from Catlea.

    ¡®I will be going in with Kozar. The rest of you spread out and seal off as many exits as you can, a few hundred meters of stone around every exit shall suffice. Valentinovich brothers neutralize the nearby locals here and then join the sealing efforts. Any off-planet local interference will be handled by the warships above. Twins, save the heads, You know why. I¡¯ll mark this incident down as a small scale reaping.¡¯

    The twin duo of Valentinovich brothers both suddenly had vile grins plastered across their faces. Their military jackets immediately shredded to pieces from their tattooed spell catalysts beginning to blast at full volume.

    Hundreds of thousands of white traces began blasting out of the duo, the traces clicked together in the air hundreds of meters above into a gigantic dome. The dome was finished in construction within three seconds. The one and a half mile wide spell circle dome began building in light intensity, soft vibrations began emanating from the interlocked force traces.

    The dome began spitting out impossibly thin lines of subatomically thin electron clouds of pure force held together by mana. The lines sliced through everything like air, even stone. The first dozen lines of force magic swept across the base of the dome. Windows shattered and tarps fluttered to the ground. After a momentary pause, all of the local architecture gave out, pristine brick walls toppling over, logs of wood cleanly sliced in half. Another momentary pause later, for all the eye could see, starting from the east side, the head of every single creature within the mile and a half sphere lost their heads. There was no fanfare, no pop, no crackle, just another silent wave of force magic and tens of thousands were headless.

    The ocean of bodies were as varied as they came, eight foot blue giants, elves, cat like beasts and bird people falling from the skies.

    Each and every head began floating into the air just above the building line. With a synchronized clap from the psychopathic twins a shockwave blasted out of the sphere, every remnant of buildings and headless corpses exploded into chunks of viscera, stone and wood.

    The once magical metropolitan main thoroughfare was now a bloody and foul smelling wasteland. Hugo looked sadly over to the pile of rubble that used to be the bakery and imagined that elf¡¯s ¡®face¡¯ one more time.

    Hugo shivered, before looking away from the gruesome sight. He wanted to leave before the ocean of blood wreaked havoc on his nose, like it had thousands of times before. He walked into the essence geyser, a portal framed by holographic wood like runes of dragons burning forests the size of mountain ranges.

    I¡¯ve never seen bigger smiles on those two psychopaths.

    <hr>

    Luis Miguel Contador, or better known as Luis the wave vanguard mercenary was one of the only three wave weavers in the entire empire. The bell curve distribution of aspects for humanity makes it unbelievably unlikely for any human to become a wave or mind weaver.

    He was currently gathering juicy information on the baby hydra from the comfort of an Eclipse Dreadnought janitorial closet. With just enough squinting and headache he could see through the strengthened Arcthor anti perception rituals using his sixth sense. He was recreating the visual information on a small diorama in front of a depth enabled camera in the closet. A bright white-yellow spell showed a perfect miniature scale animation of the conference room.

    The baby hydra finally showed its scaly face. That rotted adoptive father of mine, will not hesitate to leverage the entire family fortune to get his hands on this monster.

    Luis looked down at the mana infused, ragged scars criss crossing his body, which refused to disappear no matter the biomancy and frowned.

    Let''s not let that happen. Time to catch myself a multi headed dragon.

    The son of the spear deserves better than to be abused by my father.

    Even so many years later I can¡¯t scrape the remnants of that memory from my mind.

    <hr>

    Fifty years earlier (Luis Miguel Contador):

    Luis was fifteen years old, the slightest brown and scrawny. He was currently walking back from one of the military prep schools on this manufacturing planet. The constant smog and poisoned food stopped him from gaining any tan or body mass. But looking at some of his fat peers he swore ate the same as him, he had to admit the second one might be a bit of genetics at play.

    He walked down the street, the oppressive yet familiar view of the gigantic spire reaching up into the heavens blocked his view of the setting triple suns above. The damned hundred thousand story monstrosity broaching over the horizon was a mixture of a city and space elevator at the center. One of many on this dirty planet, Killinar. Clouds of yellow smog constantly exited the factories at the base of the spire and smaller puffs came from factories and trainyards on the surface.

    Luis had a small coughing fit as a whiff of yellow smoke broached his nose. He was nearing his parent¡¯s apartment complex. His mom worked as a nurse aid at a local infirmary and his dad was a grunt worker at one of the thousands of essence beast butchering plants nearby. His dad made decent money, his mom a quarter that much. A lot of arguments came out of financial troubles, but Luis knew his parents were in it together till the bitter end.

    Luis so desperately wanted another sibling, but as the years rolled by, that fantasy dribbled and boiled away like leaking acid from a factory pipe. Just the idea of being able to have someone his age he could truly rely on or better yet keep as a rival would be amazing. But his parents and his home were in no shape to take on such a burden.

    The filthy streets were just at home with the rundown rust covered apartment building Luis was walking into. The hum of ancient radiators and water pipes undertone his walk. Mr. Harris, the drunk who lived on the lobby floor and drank on the lobby couch tried greeting him, but he just went into a coughing fit like usual from the outside smog rushing in.

    ¡°Lu - cough - is! Cough! Fu - cough!¡± Mr. Harris got out before he collapsed on the couch coughing the whole way.

    Luis ignored the deadbeat and walked into the ratty elevator at the back of the lobby. It was positively falling apart, an actual hole in the thick steel elevator ceiling was caused by a loose essence beast rat a few years back.

    Luis heard a static muffled ding as the elevator reached his floor, floor 32. It was a bit of a hike to his family¡¯s apartment as each apartment floor was gigantic. It is one of the tens of thousands of city block sized apartments to house the rabble around the spire.

    A solid three minutes of speed walking later, Luis reached the apartment, room 32899. The door to the apartment was noticeably cleaner to the rest of the floor. His mom decided if they were stuck in such a shitty apartment, putting a little bit of elbow grease would go a long way.

    He opened the door to see a relatively clean and extremely familiar two bedroom apartment. His dad, Marco, was leaning back on the couch and absently listening to some music over the living room speakers while rolling a dimly glowing purple crystal between his fingers which fuzzed around the corners and had a deep red inner core.

    Another one of those nights, Luis sighed internally.

    ¡°Dad, Is Mom not back yet? I thought she only worked till three on fridays?¡± Luis asked more worried for his mother than the impending pain that stone will cause him tonight.

    Marco sighed. ¡°Luis, she¡¯s fine. The recent geyser surge has everyone this week at the hospital working overtime. Next week it¡¯s gonna be my turn with all of the beast corpses pouring into the facilities.¡±

    ¡°Think they¡¯ll hand out bonuses this time around?¡± Luis asked.

    ¡°They better. There¡¯s so many plants nearby, if they don¡¯t I''ll leave immediately. But I might do so anyway after next week as I think Jason the prick is catching onto my essence stone nicks.¡± Marco responded with a squinted look creasing his eyes.

    ¡°Yeah, you have been grabbing those more frequently recently. What gives? You know if I awaken as an acolyte I won¡¯t be able to finish school? Is it really that much better of an option? I¡¯m doing so well!¡± Luis tried the same old argument for the thousandth time.

    ¡°Luis, I know it¡¯s scary. But it¡¯s the only way to really move forwards. Becoming a mundane paper pusher won¡¯t get you very far at all. I just need you to trust me, okay? I promise you this is the path to a better future.¡± Marco said with a somber face. The music in the room shut off at the same time.

    ¡°Dinner is in the fridge, heat it up. And grab the stone, do your homework and head to bed. I still can¡¯t believe you¡¯ve managed to sign up for afterschool activities till the late afternoon. Do you even do your homework?¡± Marco asked, rehashing a question asked a hundred times before.

    ¡°Yes I do. And yeah, I''ll get right to it. Thanks dad.¡± Luis said, grabbing the fuzzy edged stone. It felt oddly soft and ethereal to the hands. Almost as if with a hard enough squeeze the stone would melt into the skin. Which it would.

    This is gonna suck as usual. These condensed crystals always cause aches and pains for the uninitiated. Luis thought grimly, looking at the stone.

    Luis quickly heated up the chicken alfredo in the fridge in the microwave. Made his way to his messy room and tossed his book bag to the side of his desk and set his food on top of it. He quickly scarfed down the meal, the cheese perfectly melted and chicken surprisingly soft. Though everything had odd and weird after tastes to it from all of the contamination in this garbage city¡¯s food supply lines. He speedran his homework, half of it already done from mooching answers off his friends after school.

    By the time he was done, it was time for bed, yet his mom was still not back yet. It worried him. But it wasn¡¯t anything out of the ordinary. She had worked impromptu twenty four hour shifts in the past. ¡®Dad definitely sent her a message already, so I''m sure she¡¯s okay.¡¯

    After getting ready for bed, and laying down, Luis took the purple essence crystal in his right palm and began to squeeze. The crystal was hard at first, but as more pressure was applied it began to deform and then started to dissolve into his hand painlessly. If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    Each and every time Luis used one of these accused stones, it got easier. But it was never easy. A dozen seconds later and after about seventy percent of the stone dissolved through his skin, is when the pain started. It began as a dull throb.

    At the eighty percent mark, the dull throb evolved into a full arm bruise like sensation. No visible damage. But at the ninety percent mark is when jolting and shooting pains began to fire from his right hand all the way up to his heart. The jolts spread from his heart to the rest of his body quickly. At this point Luis was groaning and sweating. The chicken alfredo wanted to crawl up his esophagus but he held it down firm.

    As the last of the stone entered his palm, the jolting & shocking pains reached a climax. A climax so widespread the pain reached his head. His lips felt on fire, his head in a tumble drier, and his teeth just out of an industrial sander. As the ultimate pulse of pain rocked his body, Luis fainted collapsing backwards into his bed.

    <hr>

    Luis got rudely woken up from his sickly nap by a firm knocking on the apartment door.

    Definitely not mom, she has a key and doesn¡¯t knock like a bear. Common courtesy round these parts to announce yourself after knocking. Or else.

    Luis jolted out of bed, and made his way out of his room. His dad was already up and at it, a niatech energy gun in left hand which he crammed into the back of his pajama sweatpants.

    ¡°Luis, hide in your room. Be ready with this. Just in case.¡± Marco said, as he tossed Luis an ancient, dirt cheap and loaded semi-auto shotgun.

    ¡°Okay, be careful.¡± Luis responded, his arms still shaking slightly from the symptoms of the crystal and fear.

    Luis stood back against the wall next to his bedroom door. Shotgun loaded, and safety off just in case.

    Luis¡¯s dad yelled out from behind the door, ¡°Who¡¯s there? Definitely no deliveries this late at night.¡±

    A robotic voice came through the door, ¡°Miss Contador, tell your husband you¡¯re here. This doesn¡¯t need to be a big ordeal.¡±

    Luis heard familiar far away sobbing, most definitely from his mother. A look of disgust, fear and anger twisted across Marco¡¯s face.

    Marco grabbed his energy handgun from his pants, turned off the safety and in a jerking motion swung open the door.

    ¡°Oh my god, Lucia!.. Who the fuck are yo-!¡± Marco screamed but was cut off as he was launched like a ragdoll across the apartment into the sofa at, at least forty miles an hour. Luis hears something crack. He didn¡¯t know if it was his dad or the couch.

    The robotic voice, much louder now, no door muffling it, blasted through the apartment. ¡°Marco Illegsias Contador, you have been found guilty of twelve counts of first degree murder, two homicides, financial fraud, theft and robbery. Under the authority of the Planetary Governor¡¯s Adeptus and the Glass Serpent Guild you have been ordained the punishment of familial execution, effective immediately.¡±

    Luis spotted a nine foot hulking figure walz into the room. A muscular man covered in military garb the symbol of the Governor¡¯s enforcement force proudly inlaid on the back of his thick gray jacket. A metal, blood red mask, covered in glowing vermilion swirls covered the man¡¯s face and presumably changed his voice. No enforcement droid is that massive.

    An explosion rocked though the apartment as the thick wooden door was blasted apart into a million small splinters that put a thousand small bullet holes all across the living room. Dust clouds and debris spilled into Luis¡¯s bedroom in waves.

    Luis heard his mom scream as she was also launched across the room on top of his father. It was a slower speed and without a crack, so Luis was hopeful, and clenching his teeth.

    Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, was the only thing going through Luis¡¯s head as he began to hyperventilate.

    Luis calmed his breathing as fast as it rose, and made a rash decision. He¡¯s gonna find me anyway. As long as he¡¯s not a weaver¡­ This could work. Please emperor don¡¯t let this fail.

    Luis rounded the corner, his finger on the trigger, shotgun raised and poised to fire. He didn¡¯t hesitate, the man didn¡¯t react to his quick shuffle around the corner, Luis fired. The force of the eight gauge shotgun rocked his right scrawny shoulder, causing a familiar firearm bruise he was used to from school.

    At the instant the gun went off, Luis could see a white glow appear from under the man¡¯s jacket blasting up the enforcer¡¯s neck.

    The small lead balls that should have sent the man tumbling to the ground, had stopped mid air on some sort of soft barrier around the man before dropping to the fake plastic tile floor of the apartment with soft taps.

    The man turned in Luis¡¯s direction, the white glow increasing in intensity from the man¡¯s jacket. A lash of a white mana tentacle whipped across the room at supersonic speeds with no noise or fanfare whatsoever. It softly wrapped around Luis¡¯s neck like an anaconda which slowly engulfed his body before five bright white runes spawned around his torso. Suddenly, Luis couldn¡¯t move his limbs whatsoever no matter how much he strained, it was as if the air itself all around him had hardened into thick steel.

    The red masked man spoke once again in the modulated tone, although one a lot less filled with grandeur this time around. ¡°You must be the runt, Luis¡­¡± The man paused and walked over chest to chest to Luis. Although with the height different it was more like head to lower ribcage.

    The man¡¯s mask flashed with red light from the swirled inlays. Luis could see the corners of a gigantic grin starting to spread around the mask as well.

    ¡°I was very personally disappointed when I saw your father Luis, do you know why?¡± The man said, in no longer a robotic tone, but a slightly modulated one, very low in pitch. A voice that portrayed the man¡¯s glee at seeing Luis for some reason.

    Luis, ¡°I have-- no idea?¡± Luis responded then proceeded to cough and pull the shotgun trigger at the same time, aimed at the man''s right thigh as they were too close together to maneuver the barrel.

    The shotgun went off, but the same horseshit weaver spell interfered and turned the pellets of death into very still lead beads. The beads lightly fell in between the two men¡¯s feet.

    ¡°Bad idea, little monster.¡± The man responded before with a backhand faster than Luis could even react to sent him tumbling across back into his bedroom, shotgun immediately flying out of his hands.

    Luis heard the man keep talking as he was attempting to recover from the instant concussion from the blow, ¡°Luis, Luis, Luis. I was so disappointed seeing your father because I thought even with all of those crystals, he wasn¡¯t a single step closer to initiating. A dud, a dullard, a waste. But no, I can feel it, he gave them all to you. Every single one. You are on the verge of initiating your nervous system. A soon to be acolyte.¡±

    The man walked closer and crouched over the bleeding and bruised Luis. ¡°But Luis, how many seeker and acolyte grade crystals have you absorbed? Five? No. Ten? Not even close. Do you know how many?¡±

    Luis¡¯s brain, addled as it was, was completely unable to respond to the goading question.

    ¡°Your father, if we even managed to catch everything on camera, fed you at least a hundred crystals. If he sold those all, he could have bought this entire apartment block and lived in luxury. But no, he was determined for you to reach initiation.¡±

    A large magenta flash of light filled Luis¡¯s bedroom as his dad emptied two shots of his energy handgun into the back of the enforcer.

    As the retina searing cleared, Luis felt a deep sense of despair as the two shots of pure multi million degree plasma just dissipated into the air warming the room before ever even touching the enforcer. An ominous gust of wind began filling the room as the two apartment windows finally shattered. With a flash of white light from the enforcer, hundred mile an hour winds quickly filled the room with cold lung irritating yellow smog.

    Luis felt the steel air constraints around him begin to constrict and bend like a mechanized suit, forcing Luis to move. The fake steel dug deep into his skin, creating a dizzying canvas of criss crossing gashes. The air constraints picked him up, making him float a foot off the ground before landing on his feet next to the enforcer. Luis¡¯s arms dripped blood.

    ¡°Luis, how many acolyte grade, much less seeker grade crystals, do you think it takes for a human force acolyte to initiate?¡± The man said completely unfazed by the smog rushing into the high rise apartment window.

    Luis was surprisingly not in a coughing fit like his parents, the air restraints filtered the smog. ¡°I don¡¯t fucking know! A hundred?¡±

    The man scoffed loudly in a modulated and distorted way through the mask. ¡°There¡¯d be no weavers running around this slum planet if that was the case. No, it takes one to two acolyte crystals maximum. Do you know what that means for you? Luis?¡±

    ¡°Fuck you man! Why are there even family execution laws on the books?¡± Luis tried changing the subject.

    The man walked up to him and back handed him once again, much softer this time. Although it was a whole lot more painful this time around. The constraints did not budge, his neck and cheek took every ounce of force. His neck felt on the verge of twisting in a fatalistic manner. A thin gash from the steel rope like constraint around his neck dug in painfully.

    ¡°Little monster, I''m not done yet.¡± He leaned in, mask two inches from Luis¡¯s bleeding face and smiled widely.

    ¡°Luis, it means you are either a legendary mind weaver or wave weaver. Two aspects so almost incompatible with humanity, it takes hundreds of stones to initiate. And Luis, you are right on the edge. I can feel it. All you need is a little bit of stress to finally connect those essence reserves and cultivate your first trace.¡± The man said creepily.

    ¡°Once that happens you will be my little shining star, a perfect little monster for me to finally complete my growing family of creatures.¡± The man smiled, taking off the mask to show a rugged white pale face covered in intricate spell runes, glowing golden eyes, light absorbing scales running down the front of his neck and dirty blond hair in a buzz cut. The face was contorted in an insane smile, one Luis couldn¡¯t even process the degeneracy of.

    An ocean of fractal like white mana tentacles exploded out of the now unmasked maniac enforcer flooding the room, the apartment hallway, then the entire building. All within less than a tenth of a second.

    Two sets of torso spells appeared around Mitch¡¯s parents, a shimmer of air appeared around them. Mitch could see his mom beginning to wake up from the throw, and his dad desperately straining to move.

    ¡°I¡¯ll come clean with you Contador family. I¡¯m not a governor enforcer or a hired goon of the GSG guild¡­¡± A look of relief, fear and confusion crossed Marco¡¯s face as well as Luis¡¯s.

    ¡°I¡¯m someone much much worse.¡± The man¡¯s jacket and undershirt exploded into strands of extremely thin kevlar as eye piercing glowing white runes revealed themselves across the man¡¯s back and torso glowing with the power of sheer force mana.

    Luis looked out the shattered window and saw a skyscraper sized spell circle appear on their side of the rundown titanic highrise apartment. The spell circle was filled with only a few repeating traces. A very powerful, wide and simple spell.

    Luis felt the steel air restraints around him spread to cover every square inch of his body. He couldn¡¯t breathe. He couldn¡¯t hear.

    As Luis tried to squirm and not panic about being suffocated so easily. The spell circle outside built with visible intensity before detonating in a flash of white light.

    A plasma filled shockwave of pure force thrashed the hundred story, block wide apartment building made of nearly all steel and bullet proof glass. The building, crumpled, folded in half and began to melt as it was torn from its thick concrete foundation in an instant.

    The building then crumpled into a ball and began floating. Luis looking up could see residents of higher floors beginning to fall out of the apartment charred and bloodied. The soon to be corpses, fell hundreds of feet.

    The now roughly spherical high rise was then blasted across the city at hundreds of miles an hour by another white spell circle, directly into¡­ the district where Luis¡¯s school was.

    The crumpled five hundred foot across steel ball exploded into sharp steel and glass shrapnel, and threw up millions of tons of dirt, human bodies, steel and concrete across the city as it obliterated Luis¡¯s school district.

    It was at this point Luis was already beginning to tear up, then suddenly sound and air returned to his ears and lungs. Luis gasped and drops of tears began to fall from his face seeing so many of his neighbors, like his best friend Jane get instantly charred.

    Sounds of screaming, crying, debris falling and fires roaring all reached Luis¡¯s ears all at the same time. The view from far above and distant horrific noises tempted Luis to mentally distance himself from the carnage. But he couldn¡¯t, the sheer number of people he just lost, was too high for his brain to even comprehend.

    Luis, jerked his eyes upward and realized that his parents were floating in the air unharmed just like he was.

    It was at this point Luis didn¡¯t feel anger boiling up but just an ocean of hopelessness in the face of this monstrous psychopath.

    Do the lives of ants not matter to giants? Do giants need to follow the laws of ants? I feel like I''ve seen that mask before in a military textbook, does he not have to follow the law even then?

    The blond haired man put back on his mask which he had been holding in his left hand the entire time. A modulated and annoyed voice came out of the mask.

    ¡°Luis, was that not enough? Hrmm¡­ What to do¡­ Ah, it must feel too detached, I''ve had this happen before with Jae-hyun. I guess you need something a tad more intimate.¡±

    Luis felt the constraints begin to move him over to his father who was also floating on the same horizontal plane as him.

    His dad looked him in the eyes and whispered, ¡°Don¡¯t worry Luis, we¡¯ll make it through this. We always do, just look at me and don¡¯t look down. Nothing we can do about it now.¡±

    Luis tried to lean in for a hug with his father as they were so close, but the restraints prevented it. Instead the restaurants around his torso and right arm moved forwards to grab Marco¡¯s left wrist. Luis couldn¡¯t feel his father¡¯s wrist but could feel the heat from it as the restraints were only a quarter inch thick. Luis tried to strain but all that accomplished was cutting more painful gashes into his skin.

    Suddenly Luis¡¯s entire right arm jerked in a clockwise twisting motion, pulled along with the ride with the constraints. His father began screaming. Luis looked down at his father¡¯s wrist and saw nothing but a bloody stump with his father¡¯s hand not held a quarter inch aloft from his own palm.

    ¡°Oh my god, dad!¡± Luis tried dropping the hand, but he was not in control of this mutilation despite being so close.

    ¡°Luis, trigger and we¡¯ll be done with this. Your birth parents can go on and live happy lives in this slum world and you can move onto greater things with me. Every minute that goes by you¡¯ll be tearing off another appendage from your father. Once he dies¡­ guess who¡¯s next.¡±

    ¡°You motherfucker! Just toss me into a geyser, have me fight for my life against monsters. This bloodshed is completely unneeded!¡± Luis screeched over his father¡¯s screaming.

    ¡°Luis, and potentially lose my invaluable new investment opportunity before it even begins to develop? I think not!¡± The man laughed in a distorted voice.

    The restraints immediately lunged Luis¡¯s arms forward and tore off his father¡¯s left forearm, the minute wait rule completely unfollowed.

    It was at this point Luis was fully hyperventilating, sweating all over, the blood of his father slowly dripped through the now suddenly porous constraints onto his skin. The warm, thick liquid made him shiver in disgust and fear.

    ¡°Minute three.¡± The distorted voice said, not ten seconds later.

    Luis was yanked forwards as the restraints around his right hand, effortlessly tore off the upper left arm of his father, leaving nothing but a viscera covered, tendon riddled, bloody exposed shoulder socket. Luis could see the socket cartilage jiggle on top of the torn off upper arm bone. His dad had stopped screaming, he was now unconscious from the pain and blood loss.

    I can¡¯t lose them too. Anything but them. What should I do? What can I do? Whatever it takes.

    But what the fuck is that? Luis thought, tears streaming down his face, thick blood dribbling down his forearms, adrenaline pumping through his veins.

    ¡°Let''s speed this up.¡± The distorted voice whispered behind him, as if the devil himself whispered in his ear.

    Mitch¡¯s right hand was slowly being pulled up to his father¡¯s neck.

    No, NO! I refuse. Not like this! My parents deserve better than this.

    Luis looked up to his mother who was shaking, crying and sobbing within her restraints as she looked on at Marco and Luis.

    The restraints around Luis¡¯s right hand tightened around his father¡¯s neck. Luis could see finger imprints beginning to quickly form around his father¡¯s neck.

    No!

    The restraints squeezed down like a hydraulic press around his fathers throat. The skin ripped first, blood started flowing. His father awoke and stared at him with bloodshot panicked eyes.

    God no! I¡¯d do whatever it takes. Just give me an option, emperor!

    The finger constraints stopped the blood flow to his father¡¯s brain; the carotid arteries immediately collapsed under the supernatural pressure.

    ¡°Enforcer please, whoever you are. Just please I beg you. Don¡¯t do this.¡± Luis spoke quickly grasping at straws for any way to save his father.

    His father¡¯s face was now a concerning blue, and the fingers were beginning to close in further and further. Until¡­ Mitch heard a crunch as his father¡¯s trachea was squished beyond repair. A few seconds later the entire inside of Marco¡¯s throat was sitting right above the palm of his right hand. His father¡¯s eyes went glassy and the blood gushed down Luis¡¯s forearm. The blood half his father¡¯s, the other half from Luis¡¯s forearm gashes attempting to resist the restraints.

    Luis was hyperventilating so hard he wasn¡¯t getting any oxygen anymore. His head felt dizzy and his brain felt slow. His lungs on fire. His right hand wet.

    ¡°Time for mommy! Give her a hug!¡± The distorted, manic voice said from behind him.

    As Luis floated closer and closer to his shivering and shaking mother, something broke inside him. A constellation of bright stars appeared in his mind''s eye. Each star is connected by deep lines of gold. Each star a blinding white, One holding the memories of him running away from a rabid essence beast, another him slipping his mind into fantasy, another memories of science class covering the concept of stasis used in technology today, another of learning quantum tunneling online, these disjointed memories all connected together. Each memory seemed to fall under a blanket of obfuscation.

    Luis clawed at those memories, he managed to pull back the veil using white glowing plasma coating his mental grasp. His feeling of reality began fading away. The world began dissolving into a bunch of swirling transparent particles around him as he pulled harder on those traces between stars.

    The world suddenly came into focus, as if being captured by a camera. Everything frozen in time, a perfect diorama of perception for a hundred meters stretched out around him. He could see the entire frozen world. It was overwhelming and disgusting. His brain couldn¡¯t handle all of the gore and grief he was witnessing all at the same time. He tried crying but even he was frozen.

    He could see the carnage below, the tens of thousands of bodies buried under rubble. The ribs broken, the skulls cracked, and the arteries punctured.

    The particles around him, swirling in invisible patterns, permeated every single plank space around him. There were an infinite number of them. Out of curiosity he focused on a single particle hundreds of meters below next to a crying injured young couple trying to determine what it was and suddenly his world shifted. Luis appeared in a brilliant and burning flash of light next to the couple, he gave the duo horrible burns across their bodies. They started to scream in pain within a half second of his brilliant appearance, before they could, they were turned into red mush by the red masked maniac landing on top of them at hypersonic speeds. The couple liquified and splashed across the street as disjoint bone shards, chunks of flesh and spilt blood.

    ¡°Finally! And you¡¯re a wave mage! A genius at that! A fledgling spell at first initiation! You¡¯ll be coming with me Luis. A life of luxury, adventure and indulgence awaits!¡± The man said with a smile and a slow hand motion calling him forwards.

    Luis felt a very odd sensation as if he was being offered a metaphysical option by the wave aspected mana flowing through his veins. It felt as if the mana was trying to pull him in a direction. Luis couldn¡¯t place a finger on the familiar vector but decided to go with the flow and accept the choice the mana offered. What could go wrong, die in a fireball? Kill more people? Accidentally fry his mother¡­

    On second thought, Can I still cancel this? Of course not.

    Suddenly the world shifted around Luis, the world around him seemed to fizz and distort. Then suddenly he was standing in the frozen world thirty meters in the air looking at his shaken up mother, his bloody right arm extended.

    Am I back in the past? What the hell.

    Luis suddenly had an old memory crop to the surface from a class lecture about frontline threats, the Vornithar were mainly wave and space weavers. They were attacking from the second layer. They were so feared and hard to kill since the powerful wave mages can teleport and try a hundred thousand different futures every second and pick the best one to commit to. But Luis could already feel his essence reserves being at around eighty percent after that one single attempt.

    I have four more of those in me. Let''s try our best. And let''s not flash fry anyone this time.

    Let''s think this through, I can only move about a hundred meters in a single attempt as that¡¯s the farthest I can see particles right now. Will the maniac kill my mother immediately if I were to vanish underground this instant. Or wound the bastard to find me immediately or do both?

    Seems like my best shot, let''s see if I can learn something.

    Luis picked a thick steel walled freight railway twenty meters underground to vanish into. He appeared in a flash of light, which for an instant lit up the tunnel. Luis dropped a foot onto the gravel on the side of the rails.

    Luis touched his sixth sense immediately and watched the man¡¯s reaction. The maniac smiled wide under the mask and muttered ¡°finally¡±. Luis was able to read his lips even from here.

    The man let his mother fall almost to the ground before slowly stopping her fall before she was another bloody smear on the pavement. She stood in the bloody rubble very confused and cried her heart out. She seemed on the verge of fainting. Her hispanic brown skin seemed oddly pale and her usually fluffy black hair was matted down with sweat.

    The maniac within a few seconds, summoned a white spell circle right above Luis and a twenty meter and ten meter diameter tube of solid stone, cabling, pipes and three meters of steel blasted directly upwards at supersonic speed. The man is obviously uncaring about the consequences of its landing in a bustling cityscape.

    He ended up in front of Luis slower this time. In the couple scenario the man appeared in front of him in milliseconds, it took around five whole seconds this time around.

    Fuck.

    Luis shivered thinking of this man blowing away the entire apartment highrise casually and decided to use his remaining essence for a last ditch escape attempt and hopefully the man wouldn¡¯t kill him.

    ¡°Well Luis my little monster, you are about to become one of my elite employees! I mean creatures! Cough I mean family members! Get ready for a life of luxury, blood and adventure! There¡¯s only a lot of paperwork to fill out, a series of genetic enhancements to go through, a five year weaver academy to trudge through, and a two year military service requirement and finally you will be joining your new brothers and sisters in building a new empire under my name!¡±

    ¡°Psychopath, I don¡¯t even know who you are!¡± Luis screamed, tears streaming down his face looking down at his now clean hand and then down at¡­ his completely naked body covered in cauterized gashes.

    The man took off his mask, revealing the same handsome and manic face. A face forever plastered in a psychotic smile. The chains of small runes fell from both of his eyes. They began to glow in the familiar searing white as he responded.

    ¡°Luis, I¡¯m the strongest avatar candidate, Force vanguard of the empire¡¯s legions, Silas Voss. Candidate to become the next patriarch of a weapon family. Soon I will stand brighter than the spear on the frontlines, a cosmic mace shattering the empire¡¯s enemies into unrecognizable shards! You should feel honored to soon be one of the spikes on the family mace.¡±

    Luis was grabbed by mana restraints and catapulted out of the hole. The restraints managed to clamp down on his mana as well, his perception sphere snuffed out, his star traces now dull.

    Dad¡­ I''m so sorry. Mom¡­ I¡¯ll find you no matter how long it takes.

    <hr>

    Fifty years later:

    Silas Voss, the current patriarch of the mace family was currently relaxing in a luxurious great hall of one of the many family estates. A hall so completely covered in layers of holodecks that every time an event was held a completely different outrageous theme was used to spice up the gathering. This time around it was replacing the hall with a gigantic glass fish bowl with shadowy leviathans swimming about outside the bowl. A sight familiar to many of the powerful divers here that have partaken in any of the local aquatic geysers. The fun part was that every six minutes or so a smaller holographic reptilian creature would jump out of the fishbowl walls and try to knock over your drinks.

    To say the least it was an entertaining night. The hard light hologram creatures were programmed to only go after the many weaver guests, so there were spell circles spawned left and right as drugged up weavers tried to dodge fake aquatic monstrosities.

    Silas for the last seven years since his golden boy, Luis escaped had been focused on gathering enough excess of familial wealth to capture the lad. But the problem was to capture a vanguard wave weaver, some exotic methods would need to be used. Methods so extreme, permission directly from an emperor judicon were required and entire planets needed to be rigged as traps for the lost mace spike.

    My sweet little monster grew up too fast. That damned academy must¡¯ve put such vile things in his head for him to imagine abandoning Silas Voss was a good idea.

    Silias sensed his fourth wife trying to sneak up on him as he relaxed at the head of the main dining table. Clara was a beautiful woman, a real balm for the eyes. Silias just wished she had the talent to back up the looks. If that were the case she would have easily been his first choice. But she was a mere herold and lacked the skill and foundation to break through to vanguard. Soul traces were easy to gain, extremely difficult to lose. Clara¡¯s disjointed traces looked like a tangled mess of bed hair instead of a well groomed weave needed for progression. It¡¯s a miracle she made it as far as she had.

    Clara slid a cold hand down the front of his vest. She whispered in his ear, ¡°Sil, let''s have some alone time before a brat causes trouble again.¡±

    Silas summoned a hard air spell in her pants which created a rod like force field. There was no particular reason for the action, but it did elicit an energetic outburst from Clara¡¯s lips.

    ¡°That is a magnificent idea.¡± Silas stood up swinging Clara into his arms like a damsel in distress. Not a single inkling of shame appeared on her face. This had long ago become a regular occurrence.

    Silas panned the great hall as he maneuvered between drunken guests. He spotted his first and second wife, Alma and Kira chatting at a far away table. Alma scowled in his direction seeing him walk out with Clara in his arms and Kira winked and waved him on.

    <hr>

    After an interesting bedroom session, Silas relaxed in the oversized bed, he stared up into gold and silver chains hanging off the topboards. Clara was fast asleep, and Silas was contemplating going for another drink. Events like these were the only moments he let himself fully indulge in heat mana infused liquors. The damned things were nearly entirely ethanol and the heat mana was weaved to diffuse the poison faster into the bloodstream, giving the substance more staying power before being processed by overactive weaver and modded livers.

    Silas levitated himself out of bed, usually he was a hardass about not wasting a single mote of essence but such rules also relaxed during these events.

    At this point in the night Silias could no longer remember what this party was even for anymore¡­ Wait

    Ah that¡¯s right, it¡¯s our celebration for hitting our neutron star harvesting goals this year. The sheer number of layer two beasts which try to make those unimaginable wastelands their home really makes it difficult to reach production targets. Where''s the man of the hour? Jae-hyun? The kid gathered most of the family¡¯s hoard by himself. What did he want again?... I can¡¯t remember. I¡¯m sure he¡¯ll remind me.

    Silias shook the thoughts of work out of his mind, and decided he had better things to do like having a drink with Alma and Kira before the night came to a close.

    Well night was more of a turn of phrase, the event had already been going for five standard days. Serious Weaver parties always ended up like this, a week of debauchery at the minimum. Only the rare few like Clara ever went to sleep. Sleep was a luxury rarely provided to weavers on the battlefield, most had gotten used to it as standard.

    Silias arrived in the main hall, he watched Alma and Kira have a heated conversation regarding Maria, Alma¡¯s crazy daughter. Something about how one woman should not be holding off the Charikan threat by herself. How the legions should be ashamed and how she won¡¯t get nearly enough out of it.

    Silias just smiled and sat down at the table. He did have a horse in this race, but talking with these two would do nothing. He was the one to get Maria the empire¡¯s best duelist fighting for her life in a charcoal dust covered Charikan hive world.

    Alma turned to him with a vile expression on her tanned face. ¡°Silias, what are you smiling about! Maria is wasting her time, potential and your money on this unhinged crusade of hers.¡± Alma said in an even tone gone of the bubbly drunkenness afforded moments before, the ethanol was burned from her system instantly.

    ¡°Has Maria told you why she¡¯s stayed for so long? Even when knowing there is no end to the battle against that plague?¡± Silias prodded. He needed to know how far he could push it.

    ¡°Of course not! You think she has enough brainpower to be killing millions and answer her mother¡¯s messages. Of course not! The youth nowadays are completely incapable of multitasking.¡± Alma huffed theatrically.

    ¡°I have a decent idea behind her motivations. She began her crusade after we had a conversation at the sheer similarities between the Charikan hive world structures and the abilities of the Emperor himself and the Hydra. The qualities of a hivemind biomancer are found in spades in the Charikan core worlds. They are both capable of distributing spell costs, holding an unimaginable number of traces and sharing consciousness over hundreds of thousands of vessels. I may have suggested she would have a better chance against an emperor vessel if she practiced against the Charikan.¡± Silias said slowly.

    Alma¡¯s mouth dropped open, ¡°You didn¡¯t! She¡¯s going to be there for the next millennia! You know how she is. She will not stop until she can consume the entire spell casting capacity of a hiveworld¡­¡±

    If she actually succeeds, we¡¯ll have a new avatar contender in the family. A thousand year stream of annoyance from Alma is well worth it.

    ¡°Well I think it¡¯s for the¡­¡± Silias was saying before getting cut off by a top priority urgent debrief quant messenger nounification.

    Silias¡¯s brain read the message in a femtosecond, processed it in the next, and began rising to cloud nine by the third.

    THEY FOUND THE BABY HYDRA?! They started an operation already without me. It¡¯s run by a few vanguards including Catlea. Twenty five neutron star cores will probably be enough to buy the operation out from the emperor. I know he cares a lot about the hydra himself, but the kid? I think I can convince him for twenty five¡­. But, he knows it¡¯ll give me too much leverage¡­ Access to a judicon hivemind? On second thought I might need to sell a few family members to afford what he might quote me¡­ Well we¡¯ll wait and see, Who knows, it is a hydra, so giving a whole legion Cohort the slip isn¡¯t off the books. Well either way, failing to get operational rights, I''ll end up abandoning my post if I can¡¯t get leave and drag Maria with me. She has the best hivemind experience in the family and can sense interdimensional essence fluctuations. I just need to wait for the twerp to go into hiding, snatch him up and toss him into a layer two family outpost to avoid any emperor questioning using Jae-hyun as a porter.

    Silias¡¯s mental sprint ended, he came to a plan conclusion within the second. He continued where he left off.

    ¡°Best, she comes with me on a family trip to really get some daughter, father bonding for once. I¡¯ll be bringing Jae-hyun as well.¡± Silias said through a bright smile.

    Alma shot him with an extremely suspicious look, whilst Kira gave him a deadpan stare, which silently screamed, ¡®are you serious right now?¡¯.

    Always easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. I¡¯m sure they¡¯ll understand. As long as an emperor vessel doesn¡¯t get involved, I''m positive stealing the twerp will be easy.

    <hr>

    Six hours earlier:

    In the depths of a sixteen planet system, not a solar system but a planetary system built around a black hole¡¯s accretion disk, a quantum information bay was filled with a report.

    The consciousness permeating the sixteen planets worth of biological optical-quantum computers smiled. The first thought the consciousness had within the Zeptosecond of information processing was, The time has come it seems. Ronan, I hope you finish up soon. I already know what their reaction is going to be, I''ll need you. If I¡¯d known he¡¯d show up now I would have never requested such a dangerous undertaking of you.

    The second was, I wonder what my daughter will think of him.

    Now what vessel to send? As always, they¡¯re all busy. I¡¯ll just kill the Incar population, they¡¯ve done nothing but cause solar system spanning problems. That¡¯ll free up an avatar vessel in about two weeks time.

    <hr>

    A human shaped mountain, skin the shade of stone, awoke from its slumber in the Gallaic mountain range of planet Wamic. The mountains shattered and the ground rumbled in anticipation as the incomprehensibly large figure stood from its slumber.

    Green opaque gas began flowing from its calves from pours the size of sewer grates. The gas held the most vile ocean of pathogens and neurotoxins. The organic death cloud began blanketing the mountainous landscape.

    The most notable species in the area were the Incars, a cervid type race. Deer like facial features, purple skin, horns meters across, bipedal, opposable thumbs. The cloud of miasma quickly spread over the terrain.

    The Incar had cities built into the mountains, and massive surface cities made of essence infused wood. The blue tinted wood glowed in panic as the root network was filled with communication signals of death and destruction as massive swaths of enchanted forest not miles away were scoured of all life. The massive titan appeared over the horizon, its walk speed up over time. It slowly adjusted its course until it''s footfalls were pointed towards the nearest Incar city.

    By the time the thumping feet of the titan reached the city walls, the overcity and undercity had already been filled with the deadly miasma. Millions of Incar layed twitching, foaming at the mouth from the wide variety of neurotoxins and genetically modified rabies viruses swept through the city. Families cried over the bodies of their children, before they too came to the same fate. Nothing was spared, the only sound that was heard in the now silent metropolitan was the slow rhythmic thumps of the god titan marching to the next city.

    An aura of green in the shape of an infinite fractal appeared around the titan. It cast a spell on its back and its march accelerated into a physics defying jog.

    Wamic was never the same again and the Gallaic mountain range was nothing but a miles wide rock field for millions of years to come.

    <hr>

    Arlien, a seeker charge weaver, had been stationed to watch this reaper outpost for his current one month deployment. The last twenty days had been boring and uneventful just a rare few flying constructs abducting low grade essence beasts. Nothing to worry about, until Arlien sensed the aura of a rare Acolyte class beast nearing his perch an hour ago. Acolyte beasts were a dime a dozen in a geyser but this one was different. It was a True Steel lion cub. The beasts were famous for their pelt¡¯s durability and essence conductivity.

    Arlien was tempted to abandon his post to hunt down the cub, damn the consequences until he realized the cub was dashing directly towards his location. He triggered his perception spell at that moment, a full light spectrum scanning spell which allowed Arlien to scout through solid stone if he so wished. To his surprise, he saw the eager true steel cub chasing an essence lacking human through the woods.

    Why in the gods'' names is there a human in the deadzone? The reaper bases have been unmanned for centuries? Are they building up for a new sequence? The next scheduled series is not for 200 years yet. I need to watch where this goes.

    After the cub was obliterated by the reaper base construct defenses the human was brought inside.

    An hour later, the human had come out of the base in a blaze of plasma. The multiple bursts of pure electromagnetic energy from the ungodly explosive devices nearly blinded Arlien with his use of his spell not normalizing the light amplitude.

    Arlien after nursing his eyes back to health with biomancer created ointments caught the tail end of the human running away from reaper base flying constructs then disappearing into a cave in the cliffside.

    Why is it running away? Are there factions of humans beyond the empire? Is it an empire criminal?

    Arlien watched with fascination as the oddly strong mundane human encountered a fledgling Exalted class essence beast, a temperance urcine. The human could not be more unlucky. The fight was entertaining, and funny as the human was battered around by the urcine. It was a fun watch up until the human threw another plasma device which promptly blinded Arlien once again.

    ARGHH! It burns!

    After another heavy round of ointment Arlien watched in horror as the mortal human ate pound after pound of exalted beast meat like a starving wolf tearing at a deer carcass.

    He¡¯s going to explode, one cannot intake that much essence and survive as a mere mortal.

    The human over the next hour ate and slept near the beast corpse. Reaper base constructs were buzzing all around the ravine. To Arlien¡¯s fascination, the human became a fledgling acolyte in its sleep.

    Managed to cultivate a trace while unconscious. A monster that is.

    After awaking the human quickly went out of Arlien¡¯s magic perception range through the tunnels.

    My report today is going to trigger an emergency investigation isn¡¯t it? It¡¯s just a single mundane human, what could possibly come of this?

    <hr>

    Godking Eziriel of Holy Coalition, Avatar force weaver and a second layer heat acolyte, watched with burning fury as empire forces encroached on the holy coalition¡¯s deadzone without his permission. The area hadn¡¯t been set up for a reaping, the criminal camps would not even begin construction for another hundred years for this series.

    His wife even had long distant relatives vacationing in the Archid system¡­ She was none too happy to hear the news.

    ¡°What gives them the right?! No matter the reason, we had a deal. I will make a pile of the accused emperor''s heads!¡± His wife yelled in a pantheon gathering.

    Eziriel¡¯s mind was in turmoil, he did not want to sacrifice the life of millions just for a mere petty squabble. He needed to know why the empire would take such a risk. There was always a reason. They would not take this slight sitting down. But, if he could, he¡¯d rather not have the need to turn the empire into smoldering rubble.

    The most furious in the gathering was Izotl the god of flickering flames, he had direct descendants training in the dead zones. Izotl mangled his busy schedule to visit the deadzone in two weeks time.

    Eziriel attempted to temper his resolve but Izotl heard none of it.

    ¡°Damned Emperor of cowards, he scatters his soul across a thousand vessels, but no number of bodies will save him from the fire that seeks his name. I will find every shell, every shadow, and turn them all to ash.¡±

 Chapter 5: F-ant-astic!

    Chapter 5: F-ant-astic!

    Mitch didn¡¯t know what to think. The orange glow emanating from the ceiling above gave an ominous downwards glow to his confused facial features.

    Mitch was currently looking at the tidal wave of car sized ants moving towards him at concerning speed. Yet even as he gave instructions to his leg muscles to move, they did not.

    Alright legs. What¡¯s your problem? Mitch thought as he quickly snapped his perception sphere to focus on his horribly numb legs. The earlier high power stunt down the tunnel must¡¯ve broken some weak links in Mitch¡¯s partially completed genetic makeover.

    Mitch instantly saw the issue with his lower appendages. The heat generation from his dash down the tunnel had fried the nerves in his legs. The musculature and other graphyne constructs were good as new, but all the supporting cells within¡­ told a different story.

    With Mitch¡¯s legs being stuck in a straightened position until his nerves had the chance to regenerate. He had to think of a different plan to deal with the wave of chitin in front of him.

    The wave is still about a hundred feet away, I have a dozen seconds to spare. Mitch tapped his chin then decided to touch his right leg with a finger. The quickly regrowing pink skin on Mitch¡¯s right index finger immediately began burning on contact with the graphyne on the surface of the leg.

    Uhhh, That heat is going to spread to the rest of my body within the next few seconds isn¡¯t it? I have heat dissipators embedded in my skin but¡­ I can already feel my stomach heating to an uncomfortable degree as the boiled blood comes circulating upwards.

    Must cool off faster. Need some water. Mitch thought quickly.

    It was at this point Mitch spotted a large pool of water in the center of the gargantuan cave chamber. The fuck is happening over there? The pool of water was below the ceiling embedded orange crystals which seemed to be condensating chunks of ice onto them. The confusing part was that at random intervals the ice would be flash melted into human sized globs of water with horribly loud sizzling noises accompanying the phenomenon. The globs of water would then fall and fill the large lake below.

    Lake is about two hundred feet away, ants are about thirty feet away now. My legs are nowhere near recovery¡­ Handstand time.

    Mitch at that thought, tensed his core and pressed himself into a handstand. He tensed his triceps and launched himself fifty feet into the air arching horizontally towards the lake in the center of the cave chamber. He watched the wave of ants sore by below him with a wide smile spread across his lips.

    Did I overshoot it? Also my arms are feeling too warm all of a sudden as well. If I''d known I''d have access to this much energy generation I would¡¯ve included active cooling systems in the spec¡­ Mitch thought to himself, still watching the ground wiss by below him for a few seconds.

    Mitch was pleasantly surprised as his overhead press launch actually managed to land him in the lake. He was aiming for the center and landed in the far side of where he intended but it was good enough.

    Mitch¡¯s legs sizzled as their temperature rapidly dropped. Ahh that¡¯s nice. Is what I would say if I had any feeling left down there¡­

    Mitch watched the glowing surface of the lake fade up and away from him as he sank towards the deep abyss below. The silence was deafening. He didn¡¯t see anything alive in this pool beyond sparse amebas and singular celled organisms.

    Approximately two dozen seconds later Mitch felt the cold stone of the lake floor press against his back. Even by this time Mitch hadn¡¯t seen a single fish, or large plant. Just the sparse green algae dotting the lake floor.

    Finally some time to think¡­ How am I here? What is the drug filled pulsating gas, and is it safe for me to keep consuming? What planet am I on? What is this pulsating gas made of? How is it so energy dense? I don¡¯t know! What was that voice earlier? A family member? How do I stem this god forsaken energy flow before I accidentally kill myself via heat stroke? I don¡¯t know. Is there civilization in the general vicinity? Maybe, I heard a single human sounding scream in the forest.

    Mitch kept spiraling, every burning question that came to mind landed him with the same response. ¡®I don¡¯t know!¡¯

    What do I do now?.. Well, I want out of this damn ant hive. My bigger question is, should I keep eating the ants? I can taste significant amounts of pulse gas permeating the whole zone around me. I don¡¯t have a choice but to be exposed to it. And if it helps my survival to keep eating the ants, I don¡¯t have a choice in the matter.

    Alright my subpar information blind plan is: climb out of here. Kill or scare off the ants in the vicinity. Run off before something larger comes along to cook me alive. Find an exit to this cave system. Find some sort of civilization. Rely on this holoskin & translarto to assist me in stumbling through social interactions and hope I don¡¯t get imprisoned or worse¡­ Assuming I get that far, I¡¯ll finally have access to some sort of information.

    Mitch¡¯s anxiety was at near peak levels as he layed in the cold depths of the lake. He had no information to base a better plan off of. So the shitty goal oriented one will have to do for now. His mind eventually got too exhausted from all the circular planning that went nowhere and eventually allowed him to fall asleep.

    <hr>

    Mitch awoke feeling invigorated. And buried ten inches headfirst in a lakebed boulder. It seemed the magically drugged regenerative immune system had done a great job regrowing his cooked & smashed cells.

    Legs are functional. Head is no longer pulsating. My legs keep twitching. Probably how I ended up in this rock. How that didn¡¯t wake me up is beyond me. I probably shouldn¡¯t try dislodging my neck until I can get these leg spasms under control.

    Mitch slowly examined the nerve chain going down to his various lower body muscles. They all seemed well. From what he could tell the neurotransmitter homeostasis was still being stabilized between the old and new nerves. There wasn¡¯t anything he could do about that without burning through his entire pulse gas reserve. His earlier fudging of hormones had cost him a concerning amount.

    Alright if I can find a way to modulate this pulse gas energy substitute mechanism it¡¯ll kill two birds with one stone. Turn these leg spasms from a danger to my health to a mild nuisance; and fix my sudden combat ineptitude. If I try fighting like this I''m going to be launching myself around the cave chamber like a bouncy ball instead of actually killing ants effectively. Sure I can walk and jog around just fine; But, I could see sugar in my muscles taking priority over the pulse gas due to the low energy movements. However, In combat, my muscle memory kicks in and I¡¯ll end up tripping everywhere due to the pulse gas fuel vastly over exaggerating any burst-like movements. And¡­ if I do end up running out of biological sugar reserves¡­ I¡¯ll be completely uncontrollable. Better solve this fast.

    I¡¯m pretty sure where I should be looking first is the fourth dimensional green neural net overlaid on my brain. I can sense two distinct overly glowing paths running through it. I¡¯ll start with those.

    Mitch tried taking a deep breath to steady himself before diving deeper into his sixth sense. He proceeded to snort a facefull of ice cold lakewater into his sinuses. I¡¯m a fucking dumbass.

    Mitch, after recovering from his cockup, condensed the focus of his sixth sense onto one of the two glowing paths running through his head. It flooded him with memories of his first days in the biology lab in highschool where he was introduced to how the school''s own sonic tweezers worked to manipulate bacteria. A second memory bubbled to the surface as he looked farther down the traced metaphysical line. A memory of his first day in university college bio lab where they were experimenting with bacteria with differing types of flagellum and recording their top speed given food stimulus. The same lab session memory also covered white blood cells and how they move around using amoeboid movement instead of flagellum.

    Okay¡­ I¡¯m going to stop looking down that line. That is obviously whatever my microscopic slaps are. I knew I was thinking of manipulating cells utilizing their own Myosin motor proteins  with a control system similar to sonic tweezers. I hadn¡¯t expected my passing thought to solidify an ability built on top of a dozen disjunct memories¡­ If I¡¯d known that was going to happen I would have theorycrafted a bit more carefully¡­ To be honest I hadn¡¯t expected anything to come of my playful attempt against the ant. I wonder if I can modify the ability? I¡¯ll worry about that later.

    Mitch shifted his focus. He moved onto the other glowing path through his brain. He was immediately hit with memories of his first highschool biology lectures on the process of cellular respiration. The first was a horribly boring lecture section on glycolysis. Next was an even more boring lecture on the Krebs Cycle. Finally was a cosmically mind meltingly disgustingly boring lecture on oxidative phosphorylation.

    Are you serious? This ability is built on top of my fuzzily remembered, fifty year old highschool lectures? Sure they¡¯re much clearer after being assimilated into whatever this glowing line is, but that is definitely not optimal.

    Mitch focus. You can deal with your abilities being based on crusty old memories later. Now I just need to find how to modulate this damned thing.

    Mitch continued to scan the line. He was not surprised to find a plethora of other cellular respiration related memories, but he also saw a few memories of his most physically exhausting moments in life. Running his first marathon, a dozen cursed Eldoria combat memories, and a few overdone gym cardio sessions. Holy crap I found it! Mitch ended up finding one end of the glowing trace. He focused on the tip of the trace, a foreign sensation overcame him through his proprioception. There was a new microscopic muscle in the center of his skull.

    Mitch tried relaxing the muscle. Mitch¡¯s face contorted into a look of disgust and discomfort from the completely alien feeling of moving a muscle inside his brain. As the odd metaphysical muscle fully relaxed Mitch immediately began feeling a burning sensation in his lungs. He felt the onset of hunger beginning to creep into his consciousness. His muscles felt deflated compared to how they felt just moments before.

    Too relaxed! Mitch quickly tensed the odd muscle to the fully taught position. The plethora of unpleasant physical sensations berating him quickly faded away.

    Can¡¯t say I miss the feeling of suffocation. Alright. How about I let go of the tension slowly? I just want to not drown and have the alternative fuel power output to be roughly the same as my sugar based power output.

    Mitch pondered for a second and decided that his first instinct for figuring this out was probably his only option at the moment. I¡¯ll just slowly relax it and do some high speed swimming to overwhelm my sugar usage and see how the feeling of the odd energy compares. I¡¯ll eventually find the right brain muscle tension to get them roughly equal.

    Mitch spent the next hour slamming into random lakebed rocks at anywhere between two meters a second all the way to two hundred meters per second. He got a few brain contusions for his trouble but he eventually got enough practice with the mental muscle to keep it at a steady slightly tensed position.

    If I keep injuring myself like this I''m going to need to eat again soon. Not for the energy, but for the nutrients and materials needed to repair my non graphyne constructed cells.

    Mitch took a few deep gulps of the cold cave water before beginning to make his way out of the lake. Compared to his earlier manic testing at higher energy levels his current swim was almost lethargic looking. Suffice to say even at his regular baseline Mitch was still easily able to fling himself six meters out of the water with his final breaststroke. He performed a tucked front flip and landed on his feet, then tumbled onto his ass due to his wet feet slipping out from under him on the smooth cave stone.

    Next time I''m just crawling out of the water. That was not worth my internal embarrassment. Good thing there¡¯s only ants around to see me.

    Mitch looked around the cave chamber. There were around a dozen ants still in the cave, they all seemed small in size. Every ant before Mitch¡¯s fumbled entrance were foraging moss and fungi around the lake.

    Mitch looked up to the nearest ant. It was purple in color just like all of its brethren. It studied him with its teacup sized compound eyes. The ant was merely two dozen feet away. The ant after farting a yellowish cloud of pheromones into the air charged Mitch.

    Mitch stood there with a deadpan look on his face as half of the two dozen ants charged him, while the other half scattered down different tunnels spreading pheromones everywhere.

    You know. On second consideration. What are my chances of being swarmed to death? I mean if all the ants are this weak I should have no issue. But I¡¯ve got a gut feeling these gathering ants are not the cream of the crop combat wise¡­

    Mitch dashed towards the nearest ant and grabbed it by its human sized neck. He tensed his legs and launched himself and his new ant snack over the incoming swarm. The soft shale under his heels cracked and sent shards of rock in every direction. Mitch quickly picked out one tunnel that didn¡¯t have an escaping pheromone ant going down it.

    Mitch began sprinting down the tunnel. His carbon heels clacked against the hard stone below him. The ant in his grasp had stopped moving after being accidentally slammed into multiple boulders during his escape.

    Mitch was not very relieved to sense ants in the cave walls of the tunnel he was sprinting down.

    I¡¯m starting to get worried. Sure I thought based on the ant scale their colony would be near human city sized, but¡­ I refuse to believe these barren caves have enough sustenance to support that many ants! Surely I''ll get out of the colony soon? My mental stability at the current moment is not well enough to handle any more days of ants.

    Mitch, seeing as he¡¯d be unable to find a good place to relax and chow down, started tearing into the dead ant in his grasp as he ran. The feeling of sheer euphoria that the pulsating gas his previous feeding sessions were saturated with was significantly duller as he tore into this ant.

    Am I building a tolerance? Is the ant no longer fresh just after a few minutes? Mitch rubbed his chin, spreading yellow goop across his lower face.

    Mitch continued dashing through ant infested tunnels and chambers at random. He would nab a few separated ants during his run throughs to keep his pulse gas supply topped off. It took around thirty minutes of aimless exploring at fifty miles an hour to find any notable events. He found himself buffeted with gusts of hot wind coming from one of the tunnels in the moss covered chamber he was currently running through.

    Heat in a cold barren cave system? What is that? Magma? More orange heat crystals? God forbid a heat controlling ant?

    Mitch¡¯s curiosity begged him to figure out the source of the heat. Anything to be rid of the cycle of ant meat consumption. But Mitch¡¯s paranoia was much stronger. Especially with the memory of the flaming ice bear mutant still fresh.

    Mitch ended up crawling through a tight gap in the stone as his sixth sense told him it opened up soon after constricting. This uncomfortable army crawling experience was much more enjoyable than figuring out whatever laid at the end of that heated larger tunnel Mitch told himself.

    But what if it was a way to escape? What if that tunnel is a straight shot up to the surface and it¡¯s just hot surface air gusting downwards?

    Mitch froze, his pink skin covered in grey dust and brown mud as he was halfway through his ten foot army crawl.

    No, I''ll just mark it as a possibility if I get too desperate. I¡¯m uninjured, satiated and hydrated. Once any of those three change, then maybe I''ll risk the hot tunnel.

    Mitch finished his crawl through the tight stone gap. He found himself looking into a massive cavern. Mitch was in awe as his eyes flitted around the chamber. The bulk of the chamber was filled with veiny yellow ant eggs. The chamber was saturated with orange light from fuzzy space heated crystals lining the high ceiling. There were a dozen ants tending to the eggs. The ants looked to be slightly larger versions of the worker ants he¡¯d been tearing into today. The chamber was noticeably warmer than the ones he had been in before.

    Mitch squinted upwards, he thought he saw movement on the ceiling but maybe he was wrong. A few seconds later he managed to spot a tiny ant silhouette gliding across the rough ceiling on a thick line of orange mucus. By the point Mitch has managed to spot the vespa sized ant it was already almost directly above him.

    Uhhh. huhhh¡­ I don¡¯t know what I''m looking at. Mitch rubbed his chin once again looking up at the ant. He felt as if he shouldn¡¯t tempt fate, but the ant was small enough that he was too curious and mentally unthreatened enough to see what would happen next if he didn¡¯t bolt for it.

    Suffice to say, Mitch regretted his sloth immediately. The ant as it reached right above him stopped. Mitch had been expecting for the ant to drip mucus on his head or something but instead the slime surrounding the monster began glowing like the crystals on the ceiling. In one instant the ant was a hundred feet above him and the next the vespa sized ant was on his head. It¡¯s horrifically large speed and inertia slammed him into the hard stone ground at three hundred miles an hour.

    Mitch impacted the stone ground with a loud crack as the ant scuttled off of his head no worse for wear. Mitch saw stars. His regret was palpable.

    Mitch heard a sizzling sound as the ant began sliding on its stomach around him spreading glowing orange slime in its wake. Within a second Mitch was encircled by a trail of ominously glowing orange.

    Mitch snapped to his senses and slammed his palms backwards into the stone below him. He attempted to fling himself out of the slimy circle. However, with his self limited strength he was too slow.

    With a clap of thunder Mitch was catapulted directly into the crystals in the ceiling above him. Mitch screamed out in agony as the orange crystals flared to skin obliterating temperatures as he touched them. Mitch pried himself off the crystals in an instant. His upper chest and face were now covered in patches of charred and burned skin. He fell to the ground in a daze.

    He landed in a pile of yellow goop as his carbon behind smashed through a dozen oversized ant eggs. Undercooked fetuses, gross protein slurry and larger pink and soft half baked ant abominations spilled out from his impact.

    Mitch quickly tensed his energy substitute muscle to give his hyper immune system the best chance to quickly repair the obvious brain damage he had accumulated so far. Mitch slowly stood from his daze. Careful to not make any sudden movements and launch himself into another stone surface.

    Mitch was now at the opposite side of the chamber. He began walking towards the nearest tunnel he could see in a hope to not need to engage with the explosive monster.

    Mitch was not so lucky. As he turned, he heard what sounded like a cacophony of fireworks going off and the orange vespa sized ant blurred in front of the tunnel he was making his way towards.

    I uhhh¡­. Uhhh. Am I going to die? Even my marginally more elastic brain and organs cannot take more impacts like that. I need some time to recover even now¡­ If next time it launches me, if I can twist and land on my feet I should be able to handle the impact easily. Accomplishing such acrobatics is another problem entirely though.

    Mitch¡¯s brain fog cleared. Mitch quickly relaxed the mental energy muscle just above his baseline. He needed a slight boost to get out of this situation.

    Mitch focused on the opponent in front of him. He watched the joints of the ant for any movement. At the slightest twitch he would dodge.

    The ant didn¡¯t move a single limb, the pile of slime underneath it¡¯s stationary form just instantaneously detonated in a horizontal cone like shape. The ant slid across the smooth stone chamber floor with zero friction at blurring speeds. It slid straight for Mitch¡¯s legs as if a motorcycle sized hockey puck. Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

    Mitch now prepared for this ant¡¯s shenanigans just barely managed to leap over the blurring form. He landed and immediately began sprinting for the tunnel in front of him. A barbaric and simple plan began building in his mind.

    I can accomplish around one fully powered movement before needing to cool down. What is a way I can guarantee some sort of impact with a single movement?

    Mitch skidded to a stop a hundred feet into the tunnel. Hefted the largest loose bolder in the cave he could find. The hardest part of lifting the damned thing wasn¡¯t the strain on his muscles but the balance needed to not fall over leveraging a multiple ton weight over his head.

    Mitch stood tensed and ready at the end of the tunnel with a four and a half foot diameter boulder resting in his palms. He tensed the energy muscle in his skull to the utmost degree. As he increased the tension in the muscle he felt a massive well of energy begin flooding his system. The muscular strain causing weight of the boulder vanished in an instant. The multiple tons of limestone felt as light as a feather quill.

    Mitch smiled as within the next second he spotted the expected orange streak of light engulfing the monstrous ant chasing after him. The explosive slime ant within the next second was a mere twenty feet away from him. It would only take another quarter of a second for the ant to take out Mitch¡¯s knees.

    Mitch tensed with all of his might and pushed the boulder forwards. A blinding plasma as if a meteor entering the atmosphere flashed into existence covering both the boulder and his own body. The air heated due to the horrifically fast hypersonic movement.

    An earth rippling shockwave shot down the tunnel as the boulder of limestone detonated and blasted down the tunnel in a spray of superheated hypersonic shrapnel.

    Mitch instantly could no longer hear as the shockwave turned his eardrums to mush.

    The meager friction between Mitch¡¯s dried blood covered feet and the smooth limestone below was not enough to hold him in place during the astronomical scale impact.

    Mitch was lifted off his feet and flung down the long curving tunnel like a pinball. He tumbled around the curve in the tunnel across the wall. It was at this moment Mitch blacked out as the repeated impacts to his skull turned him unconscious.

    If Mitch at this very moment were to look down the tunnel where he had pushed forward the boulder, he would see nothing but a dimly glowing crater twelve feet across. Which a few seconds later was filled with rubble as the cave entrance collapsed. The movement had around half the energy release characteristics of the Xk9399 fission grenades he had used not but the day before.

    <hr>

    Mitch awoke with the world''s most painful headache. It felt as if someone had taken an entire sports store worth of icepicks directly to his skull. The second thing he noticed was his horrifically high fever. It was to a point where steam was rising from his nostrils even though he wasn¡¯t breathing.

    Mitch quickly began checking himself over in his sixth sense. All of his internal organs not made of graphyne smooth muscle like his liver, kidneys, lymph nodes & half of his nerves were in a variety of damaged states.

    Mitch pushed past the racking pain going through his body and tried feeling for his pulse gas reserves. He was relieved to feel that he was at around thirty percent. Not good but nothing catastrophic.

    Mitch wasn¡¯t currently dying, and repairs were going smoothly. I have so many regrets about how that went. In hindsight, I''m pretty sure I could have used a hundredth of that power and still obliterated that ant with a single throw. I really need to find time to test my limits with the alternative energy use. Being unable to move for eight hours due to catastrophic damage from a single movement is not sustainable. I¡¯ll assume the damage is worse this time around due to hitting solid bedrock instead of coming to a gradual stop on an ant corpse like last time.

    I¡¯ll just count my blessings and be glad I''m alive. If I had stopped dead in my tracks when hitting the tunnel wall instead of rolling, I¡¯m pretty sure I''d be dead at the moment.

    Mitch laid in the cold, dimly lit tunnel for hours. He thought of his family, his ex and how uncomfortable laying in a pool of blood and monster juice really was. Somehow the experience was a hundred times worse than in Eldoria. I¡¯ve got a feeling it¡¯s not due to the sensation but the inherent consequences of bleeding out as compared to respawning back in town.

    You know, thinking about it, I could technically get back to modifying my genes. All I''d need to do is manually create TALEN and CRISPR proteins using my microscopic tweezer ability. I know the structure of multiple relevant gene editing proteins like the back of my hand¡­ However¡­ I don¡¯t have any reference material to work with. If I try fudging together a cooling system, I''m just going to end up as a cancerous blob.

    So if I want to fix my pitfalls I''m going to need some reference material. To fix my more catastrophic neurological shortcomings I''m going to need some sort of stasis chamber¡­

    Mitch with a weak wobbly arm slapped himself on the forehead. Why am I even thinking about this? I should be focusing on a plan for getting out of this forsaken cave. Or at the bare minimum reflecting on my very recent fuckup which resulted in my current state.

    After a few more hours of self reflective blood & juice pool soaking, Mitch¡¯s body had finally managed to knit back together all of his internal organs.

    Now that I''m thinking about it, how did I bleed so much? My modified platelets and graphyne skin graft should have prevented such a thing. It was at this point the nerves in his mouth had come back from numbness and Mitch immediately tasted a large helping of blood coating his mouth, throat and sinuses. He gagged.

    Turns out, if you turn your lungs into mush they don¡¯t like staying put.

    Mitch finally rose from the ground. His face held a look of deep determination. If anyone else were to see him, they would run in fear. The wet red and yellow blood marbling across his regenerating skin made him look more ghoul than human.

    He grabbed one of the detached pulse gas dense ant legs laying near him, an attempt to refill his reserves. How is this thing still leaking blood?

    Mitch shook his head as he stood fully, this was no time to be asking such questions. It was time to get out of this ant hill or die trying.

    They say the eyes are the windows to the soul. But, what stared down the dim orange tunnel were no windows, they were weapons.

    Mitch¡¯s scleras were covered in a fractal of emissive sickly green veins. Mitch found himself tearing into an ant leg for the tenth time today¡­

    <hr>

    Mitch wandered the caverns, his ghoulish appearance was even more prominent. He was covered head to toe in shades of drying blood. His gate was predatory, his face scrunched, his gaze filled with annoyance.

    Mitch continued to wander the halls thinking of all the hundreds of ways he was going to tear the next ant he sees into pieces.

    Such a familiar scene was beginning to force Mitch back into his Eldoria mental patterns.

    His eyes flitted across the cave ceilings and walls, a habit born of a lifetime of virtual bloodshed. A habit that was wholly useless to Mitch in this tight cave fully covered by his perception sphere. He continued with eye motions on the grounds of it being paranoia soothing.

    The grey and brown limestone surroundings turned into a mental blur as the combat ready walk turned into a sullen trudge down the concerningly barren, empty and dark tunnel system. Even after what felt like a mile of walking there wasn¡¯t a single offshoot or chamber to explore.

    Mitch walked for so long, his regenerating skin had begun to coalesce and evolve his complexion from ghoulish to newborn baby. Chunks of char and old skin had continuously sloughed off his form cleaning off the blood at least.

    Mitch considered using his holoskin belt as a light. But, the slight moral boost was not worth the chance of drawing any unwanted attention.

    This may be horrifically optimistic, but I''ve been walking for a while now without a single ant being present in the cave or surrounding walls¡­

    The millions of nerve cells in Mitch¡¯s skin finally stopped going haywire from the rapid regeneration. And Mitch realised something very concerning.

    The cave air is scorching! Now that I''m thinking about it the cavern exit I took was pointed in the same direction as that heated cave¡­

    Mitch began mentally praying as he continued his march forwards. He prayed for the surface or a mundane magma pit. But knowing his own luck, there¡¯d be a dragon at the end of this tunnel.

    Mitch spotted a dim orange glow around the next cave curve. As he made the right turn he found himself blasted with a gust of superheated air causing him to snap his eyes shut to avoid them drying out.

    I mean what are the chances that something lives down her¡­

    Mitch opened his eyes. What he saw was a massive black obsidian chamber. It was at least three hundred meters in diameter, and rose just as far in height. The second most concerning portion was the violently bubbling magma covering the inner thirty percent of the chamber floor. The most concerning portion was the orange¡­ glowing¡­ titanic¡­ ant head¡­ poking out of the magma. It moved. The head was pointed directly at Mitch.

    You¡¯ve got to be fucking kidding me! God, I''m not praying again for at least a year as you clearly have a hard on for screwing me! I¡¯d take a dragon over another fucking ant!

    Panic planning time. Ant large. Ant size of semi-truck. It¡¯s too hot here. Find exit. Run like lightning. I ain¡¯t fighting this thing in its magma death pool.

    Mitch spotted only one other exit in the black shiny chamber. A massive tunnel at least ten feet across which looked to go on forwards for a while.

    Mitch heard a loud rumbling and saw the glowing ant stand up from its magma bath. It was confidently strutting in his direction.

    Mitch stuck out his tongue in focus. Crouched down. Aimed his upper body towards the cave exit. Ever so slightly tensed his mental energy muscle to the two times baseline mark. And he leapt for it.

    Mitch gleefully watched the massive ant sore under him as it seemed like his jump was nearly perfect. He could tell that the trajectory was going to land him just a mere five meters away from the cave exit.

    But¡­ At the apex of his jump, Mitch noticed the ant¡¯s head tracking him through the air. The ant in a jerky motion shoved its odd horn-like head protrusions into the magma pool and flicked its neck upwards towards Mitch.

    Mitch watched in horror as a shotgun of high speed magma droplets soared towards him. He twisted and turned around his center mass as well as he could, and¡­ he managed to dodge every droplet¡­

    Uh what? I swear a few of those hit me, but I don¡¯t feel any pain.

    Mitch smiled then looked away from the ant, he mentally prepared himself for landing. It was at this point Mitch spotted a gigantic curtain of magma droplets in front of him. They were frozen in the air as if they were a photo of rainfall in motion.

    Small intricate runes began to snap into reality on the droplets of magma. As the runes appeared fully, the droplets began to glow like miniature suns.

    An explosion larger than anything Mitch had managed to produce himself rippled through the chamber. More importantly, the heated shockwave slammed into Mitch. It catapulted him with triple the velocity of his original jump, but now in the opposite direction. He tumbled through the air like a ragdoll as the pressure wave had shredded his eardrums and sense of direction.

    For the second time today, I think I''m going to die. How do I even fight that? That was like an explosive grapeshot cannon blast coming from a damned ant.

    Once again, Mitch¡¯s skin had taken a beating. His whole frontside was nothing but a layer of black char, with exception of his eyeballs. He had managed to flinch them closed just in time.

    Mitch cracked his eyes open to see the ant preparing another volley of magma grapeshot.

    Uhhh! Time to hoof it! Fuck the consequences! One more of those shots am i¡¯m dead anyways.

    Mitch tensed his energy alternative muscle to its half flexed position. He dropped onto his hands and toes into a spider crawl. He flexed his forearms and shattered the smooth volcanic glass beneath both of his hands with satisfying cracks. He pushed with his legs and pulled with his arms.

    Mitch blurred across the cavern floor with a sonic crack echoing behind him. As he made his second step a hundred meters away from where he started, Mitch felt vibrations in the stone from the second magma volley detonating far behind him.

    Mitch glanced at the ant, it hadn¡¯t even seen him move yet. Its weird head movements combined with the shrapnel kicked up by the droplet detonations gave Mitch a clean escape.

    Realising he had time and how overheated he was, Mitch tamped down his energy alternative muscle to two times baseline. He maintained his earlier momentum from the explosive crawl start and kept himself horizontally aloft until he was fifty feet into the cavern exit.

    Cold air blasted against Mitch as he stood up from his crawl. It felt heavenly against his back, as he couldn¡¯t feel any of the skin on his frontside.

    Can¡¯t stop. Must keep running. I can feel it in my bones that ant is going to start following me for some god forsaken reason.

    Proven to be right. Mitch heard rumbling and crackling as the ant¡¯s sharp legs shattered the obsidian beneath its feet.

    Mitch looked at his pulse gas reserves and saw they were down to a measly twelve percent.

    Jesus Christ! Regeneration is expensive! If the chase with this ant goes on any longer than ten minutes of sprinting I''m going to run out of energy. And that¡¯s only two times the baseline!

    Spotting a rocky dark crevice that would easily hide him if the ant were to rush by, Mitch ran for it hoping to hide from the ant.

    Wait hold on, who says the ant doesn¡¯t have a perception sphere like I do? I might just be cornering myself.

    Mitch noticed a substantial increase in the orange light intensity around him. Mitch froze then looked up and realised the ant was right above him. Terror flooded through his veins. But as he stared down the beast an icy calm forced its way through his brain.

    Alright plan c. I¡¯m killing this overgrown bug and eating ant legs for the eleventh time today! If I run down the tunnel I''m going to get scatter shot by magma and hiding is not going to work. I can feel the heat radiating off its exoskeleton, it is also giving off visible black body radiation everywhere except for its overly huge eyes. I bet I could crawl into those sockets if I could pop one of its eyes.

    Mitch immersed himself in the delusion that this was a fight in Eldoria and not a fight for his life. Distractions such as death would do nothing for him at this point. This ant needed to die.

    Mitch dashed forward and grabbed a nearby chunk of sharp obsidian.

    The ant plunged its glowing orange horns into the ground and flung its head upwards. Droplets of magma flew off the horns. However much less than the head flick in the pre melted magma earlier. Mitch let his weight fall backwards and performed a knee slide under the magma droplets. The charred skin on his knees acting almost like a carbon lubricant against the smooth obsidian.

    Mitch tensed his core and jumped to his feet. He immediately twisted downwards, gripping the obsidian shard tightly. He put fifteen percent alternative power through his body and went through with the throwing motion.

    The fragile obsidian rock shattered as it left his hand. The cloud of supersonic obsidian shards thumped into the ant¡¯s left eye. The ant¡¯s head raised from the pain, it screeched out, and began trying to guard its damaged eye with a foreleg. The screech sounded more human than it had any right to.

    Mitch, seeing the ant distracted, kicked himself up the cave wall. He held onto the wall with a single hand cracking the obsidian into a custom handhold. Mitch planted his feet and tensed his legs. He felt the obsidian crack and shatter beneath his feet as he rocketed horizontally. He barely managed to slip over the forelimb and into the goo and mush filled eye socket.

    Mitch smiled. It was a deranged smile. A smile that would haunt generations to come. A smile of a soon to be multiverse renowned killerl.

    Mitch quickly punched two hard handholds above himself in the eye socket keratin. He held on tight as at this point the ant was thrashing its head around violently. Mitch hung his weight by his hands then explosively leveraged himself forwards and kicked out with both legs.  He went at the back of the eye at fifteen percent power. All it took was two good kicks to break through the chitin behind the ant¡¯s eye. Mitch crawled into the ant¡¯s brain.

    Mitch had now evolved from a human to an ant brain parasite. He closed his eyes and immersed himself in the oddly smelless cranial fluid and blood mixture within. Mitch considered eating the brain first but knowing his past experience he needed some pulse gas first. In turn, he began drinking the cranial fluid and ant blood like a water starved man.

    After getting a poultry amount of pulse gas from the arthropod blood. Mitch began tearing into the Ant¡¯s brain. He ripped the pink soft jelly apart like a steroid using groundhog digging through soft soil. Once Mitch sensed that the Ant had stopped moving, he swam his way out of the mush filled skull. He came out the way he went in. He hadn''t eaten a single piece of brain so far, there just wasn''t enough pulse gas in the brain fluids.

    Mitch, now royally boiled and charred, crawled out of the massive ant corpse¡¯s eye like a spider wasp larvae being spawned from their egg. A waterfall of yellow blood poured from the wound along with thick brain fluid.

    Now that I can see this ant¡¯s internals after the sixth sense noise disappeared. It doesn¡¯t look anything like an ant on the inside. It has a heart, cranial fluid, large brain, full digestive tract, some weird set of twelve lungs? I mean the other ants looked weird but I hadn¡¯t actually stopped to actually focus on it¡­

    Anyways, disgusting chow time. I shall speak of these deeds with no one once I get out of here.

    Mitch cracked open the back of the ant and dove into its chest cavity. He ate it from the inside out, he had no need to breathe and making holes in the ant chitin was good enough to relieve himself of excrements.

    <hr>

    Mitch stood there basking in the filth. He thought his nose had been desensitized to the smell of ant innards hours ago. But there was just so damn much. Mitch¡¯s blinding, drug fueled hunger had masked the smell fully at the start but the longer he scraped at the innards of the exoskeleton the worse it began to smell. Although it might just be the multiple piles of turds outside of the ant.

    Mitch had managed to consume around eighty percent of the ant body and his pulse gas reserves had hit some sort of soft cap. He ate more ant meat but the gas would just quickly radiate out from his body into the air instead of being stored in his cells.

    Hrmm, seems like this is the best I can prepare. Time to get started on the brain. I might need to come back for a bit more body meat if the brain is too potent.

    Mitch emerged from a new hole in the back of the truck sized ant corpse. The view was alien and disturbing almost as if a parasitic worm bursting from a host. Strings of flesh and internal tendons stuck to his outer form. The flesh tore and snapped with wet pops as he yanked himself forwards.

    My suspension of reality is starting to break down. The pungent smells of shit and blood are really getting on my nerves. My self serving delusion that this is a vr game instead of reality can¡¯t handle many more wet gory experiences before I snap. Mitch managed to postulate surprisingly coherently despite the circumstances.

    Mitch crawled into the eye socket of the massive ant for the second time this evening. He began with the closest bloody yellow chunk of ant brain. His stomach told him that this shit was too disgusting to even consider eating. However, the secondary green neural net was urging him to consume the vile meat. Mitch felt helpless to stop himself. The impulse was so strong. It was as if he was staring at an open bottle of daniels, one year sober.

    I need it!

    Mitch shoved the jelly like meat into his mouth. The taste was vile, the texture was anything but satisfying¡­ However, pure pleasure shot into his brain as the quantum threads were torn from the ant neurons in his guts.

    He witnessed the secondary neural network squirm and spawn more nodes. It grew ever so slightly denser in all areas with every bite. The oddest part was that the neural network would take the threads, split them in half, and inject one portion into Mitch¡¯s biological neurons instead. It was like watching wet hair stick to a smooth surface as the quantum threads stuck to Mitch¡¯s neurons. Although that wasn¡¯t an accurate metaphor, it was as if the threads when injected vanished in their entirety. No new neurons were born of the substance intake, Mitch couldn¡¯t see any new developments in any of the affected cells and frankly he did not care at the moment.

    The sheer number of endorphins flooding his brain from the secondary neural network gave him a very short attention span to say the least.

    After ten minutes of drug-filled vile work Mitch had finally finished eating the ant brain. He needed to take frequent pauses as when the threads integrated into his own brain he¡¯d get a sudden sense of extreme vertigo.

    Mitch crawled his way out of the empty skull, he felt surprisingly good. His skin was back to the newborn baby stage after a few hours of eating. Mitch also noticed his perception sphere was significantly bigger than before, it went from twelve feet to a whopping fourteen! I¡¯d call that f-ant-astic! Ha!

    That ant, based on its pulse gas reserves and threads was at the same level as that bear. The bear brain got me twelve feet and yet the ant only got me two¡­ Must¡¯ve gotten ten as a baseline then the bear gave me two on top of that? Sure, let''s go with that.

    Mitch looked down the new, dark, empty tunnel he needed to walk down. Once again covered head to toe in ant blood and guts. I¡¯m going to come back here with the galaxy¡¯s largest magnifying glass and burn this ant colony to ash. If I get an ear infection from alien ant blood I''m not going to be a happy camper.

    <hr>

    Mitch had jogged down the one large tunnel for around ten minutes. To his surprise and relief there were multiple branching paths for him to explore instead of the horrific monotony of a straight tunnel. Mitch explored a new much less ant dense cave system than before. Sure he had to kill off a few worker ants here and there but there wasn''t a single notable incident for hours of exploration.

    So to recap, what I''ve found so far has been, grey rock caves, black rock caves, worker ants, moss, water ponds, purple cave weeds and more damn ants! How are these ants surviving down here? Eating rocks and weeds? If so, there shouldn¡¯t be this many of them!

    Mitch continued to grumble to himself for another hour as he tore into ants and kept running through tunnels with no daylight in sight. The only source of light he ever got was a rare ceiling mounted fuzzy magic crystal. So far he had seen three different colors of them, orange, violet and magenta. The magenta one gave him bouts of dizziness as he stood in the cavern below it,

    so he evacuated from that one extremely quickly.

    There was one interesting landmark though. In one of the caves filled with violet crystals a lightning surrounded warp in space was writhing around like a living creature. Mitch had stared at it for far too long, but his cautiousness prevented him from getting too close. But he swore at random intervals the view of a metallic room with a human like figure hunched over something would appear in the distortion. The room seemed awfully bright as well.

    Mitch ended up walking away from the distortion chamber filled with questions. He didn''t dare walk too close. He continued on his way looking for a way to the surface.

    For all I know that distortion is so unstable the moment I get too close I''ll get spaghettified.

    Mitch at this point had managed to get comfortable with the one and a half times energy baseline he was using. He could now accurately feel what movements would trigger the alternative energy instead of his organic sugar reserves.

    After another thirty minutes of throwing rocks at ants, jogging through caves and grinding moss under his heels out of spite¡­ Something interesting happened.

    The earth shook. It did not stop. The vibrations slowly began to resonate. From the noise a man¡¯s voice.

    ¡°Mitch Korrigan, this is force herold Hugo Smedberg. Reaper base defender for the Archid system. Colonel of the Emperor''s Legion. Under the jurisdiction of the empire you will remain where you are and wait for rescue and arrest. Do not make me repeat myself!¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m locking in on your location now. The empire requires your service.¡±

    Mitch¡¯s brain was short circuiting. The empire is after me still. They sent someone who can cause large scale earthquakes¡­ But there was one word that stood out to Mitch the most. A word that he had dreaded for his entire life. A word that had consumed his father: ¡°service¡±. I will not be tossed into some war front-line! I deserve to live the life I want!

    Emotional platitudes aren¡¯t going to get me anywhere. I need a plan. I don¡¯t know how much time I have. What can I even possibly do?

    I don¡¯t have time to search for a way to the surface¡­ I really only have one option. Try to dive through the space distortion. Hah, fuck my life.

    Mitch began sprinting full tilt at four times baseline towards the distortion cavern. He had kept a thorough mental map of the cave system as he was sure he¡¯d be running for his life again. He had expected an ant but humans are just as scary.

    Left, right, forewards, two o¡¯ clock, eleven o¡¯ clock, sharp right, sharp left, wide u turn through this tunnel, sharp right. There it is!

    Mitch heard Hugo¡¯s voice rumble through the cave system once again,  ¡°Mitch Korrigan, your actions here will be considered evading arrest! It¡¯s only a matter of time before I track you down. Actually¡­ I see you!¡±

    A split second afterwards Mitch began hearing ten times louder rumbling from above.

    Mitch stared at the pulsating fractal of violet energy which was the distortion. It was at least fifteen feet across. The good thing was Mitch didn¡¯t feel any sense of vertigo standing just a mere twenty feet away from it¡¯s center.

    I just need to wait for it to coalesce¡­ when I was watching it earlier It would do it every minute or so.

    Mitch stared intently at the distortion center waiting for the instant it flickered into a portal. The rumbling above him began to get uncomfortably loud. Mitch could feel himself accumulate hearing damage by the second.

    There!

    A seven foot tall, meat mountain of a form slammed into the cave floor at blurring speed. Shockwaves cascaded around the chamber, jostling Mitch violently. The stone below Mitch¡¯s feet had risen from the astronomical impact Hugo had with the ground. The stone catapulted him directly through the unstable portal.

    Mitch heard a faint and gruff, ¡°What the fuck?!¡± behind from the other side as the strongest feelings of nausea and vertigo overtook his body.

    He found himself tumbling in a heap with what looked to be an unconscious bronze skinned elf wearing some sort of half constructed organic looking metal suit. To top it off the elf¡¯s twitching right arm was bobbing up and down into and out of the metal floor as if it were a dense fluid.

    Mitch looked around the room and the distortion was nowhere to be found. The chamber looked to be nearly the same make and design as the empire base Mitch found himself in days earlier.

    Looking back down at the elf looking¡­ male? Mitch noticed it¡¯s right eye twitch. He immediately reached for his holoskin, he pressed confirm on the device the instant the elf¡¯s eyes began to open.