Over the course of his life, Kai had become familiar with pain, even friends with it. He'd experienced countless agonies, from overwhelming blows to spiritual burning to the distortions of transformations. Those experiences had built up an unbreakable willpower, and with Behemoth's Heart preventing damage, he could take on anything.
The fruit of the Glorious Tree was different.
His own power was running rampant, breaking apart his body from within. This was nothing like the painful transformations he had experienced before, where pain was the price of rebuilding his body. Chakra flooded through him without rhyme or reason, threatening to destroy him unless he mastered it, yet control alone wasn't enough because no matter how he diverted the chakra, it still tore apart his body.
Armor continued to grow in all directions, stabbing deep into his body, but the worst was the teeth. His jaws grew larger and then his teeth would spike randomly, tearing through his own mouth. Even with his regeneration, his mouth was a bloody mess, a nightmare of teeth piercing flesh in all directions.
He had no idea how long it had been - hours, he was sure, long enough that everything felt unreal. The exterior pain began to numb, even as his body continued to shake violently, but the interior pain was worse. His organs were changing now, in ways he couldn't fully understand - the most he could do was prevent the chakra from destroying him and channel it into a useful route.
Normally his human and monstrous characteristics were in harmony, since despite the Savage Heart transformation changing his appearance, he only had one body: a monstrous one. His heart had permanently changed into monstrous tissue, and now it changed further, growing larger and stronger in his chest. Spikes seemed to be growing from all his blood vessels, tearing through his body, and all he could do was keep it under control. If he hadn't absorbed the Twisted Immortal Carnal Seed he wasn't sure he could have kept up.
Focusing on one part of himself at a time seemed to be the best way to keep his sanity through the rush of chakra and pain. There was an entire hour where he couldn't breathe as his lungs expanded aggressively, Behemoth's Heart desperately keeping the rest of his body alive until they found a new form. Piece by piece, he rebuilt himself.
Finally he lay on the sand, grasping for breath, unable to comprehend a world that wasn't filled with pain. Every twinge of his body felt wrong, triggered instincts that he needed to suppress the reaction. But the rush of chakra... the rush was over and he was alive.
The outside world had been irrelevant for so long, he was surprised to see that it was night - most of a day had passed. Ceryyn sat nearby, watching him with a sorrowful expression... though she perked up when they made eye contact.
"Kai? Are you alright?"
"I... don't know." Just not being in pain was a rush of elation, but he didn't know if he'd obtained the results he wanted. It was entirely possible that he'd made his body into a mangled abomination, and it took him a second to work up the nerve to look.
His body was whole. Covered in blood, but the Beggar King's Robes regenerated around his waist. And he still looked human, though that felt like a false skin over the surface. When Kai flexed an arm, he could feel the monstrous muscles underneath. They took strange and unnatural forms... but effective ones.
When he sat up, his body moved even easier than before. Kai gazed at his hand, shifting the fingers to claws one at a time, marveling at how easy it was. He barely even needed to use the Savage Heart now, or perhaps it was more accurate to say that the transformative power of the Savage Heart had thoroughly saturated his body.
"I made it," he said as he pulled to his feet and smiled at Ceryyn. "Unless you notice something wrong?"
"Open your mouth." She stepped closer and peered up at him until he obeyed. "Huh, all your teeth are pointy now. And your tongue is a bit weird."
"That happens sometimes when I transform." Kai felt at his teeth, then shrugged it off - some of those temporary changes might be permanent now, but that wouldn't get in the way of his normal life. Most importantly, he could feel the new power surging within him.
"Are we going to the Colossus now?" Ceryyn asked. "I've been out of touch with everyone, since I was watching you, so I'm worried about... well, everything."
"No, not yet. This is just one step in the process."
Kai sat back down on the sands and reached within his soul. The transformation had caused an enormous leap in the Savage Heart, bringing it to an even 500 Power, but that had always been just a means to an end. Now that his human soul had expanded, he could create the monstrous fusion that had been impossible before.
When he searched the monstrous essences within him, for a moment he was afraid they would have been somehow distorted, but soon he found all four.
<
Isulfr's Bite - XIII (nu)
Voidmaw's Bite - X (kappa)
Deathmaw Essence - X (kappa)
Silver Demon - X (kappa)
>
Not only were they intact, it felt even easier than usual to fuse them together. Kai reflected on Isulfr's Bite one last time, but he didn't descend into sentiment: he fed together all of his biting and consuming abilities, forging a new ability that would be worthy of the rest.
In a shockingly short time, compared to the agony of the transformation, he had his new essence.
<
Abyss Maw - I (alpha)
>
His new Abyss Maw was powerful... but above all, it felt hungry. Kai's appetite had been increasing ever since his transformation, but now he felt like he could eat the world. He didn't think anything about his appearance changed, but when he glanced at Ceryyn, her eyes widened in surprise.
"Uh..." She managed to brighten again. "Seems like whatever you did worked. Are you ready now?"
Instead of answering, Kai slowly got to his feet, reflecting on his soul as he did.
<
Name: Kai Clanless
Total Power: 1398
Monstrous Hunger - XVII (rho)
Cultivation: Nascent Foundation 99.9% (267)
Savage Heart: 50 (500)
Physique Level: B-7 (535)
Beggar King's Robes: +3 (15)
Soul Level: 9 (81)
Dragon's Might - V (epsilon)
Behemoth's Heart - XIII (nu)
Thunderbird's Wings - XII (mu)
Tyrant's Claw - XIII (nu)
Manticore's Spine - VII (eta)
Baleful Breath - IX (iota)
Abyss Maw - I (alpha)
-
Void Gaze - X (kappa)
Famished World - VII (eta)
Mutefang's Stealth - XVI (pi)
Sahagin's Soul - XV (omicron)
Greatshark's Presence - III (gamma)
Monstrous Tail - VIII (theta)
Legion Bite - VI (zeta)
Wallcrawler's Feet - V (epsilon)
Abominalgum - III (gamma)
Slime's Immortality - II (beta)
Bloodtail's Armor - V (epsilon)
Voidshell Essence - III (gamma)
Sacred Dragon's Qi - III (gamma)
Coiling Island Qi - III (gamma)
>
With nearly 1400 Power and a brand new ability, he felt ready to take on anything, but the Colossus was an Insanity. Under normal circumstances, he would have wanted to experiment with his new bite before using it in such a dangerous situation.
Unfortunately, they didn't have that kind of time. Omilaena, the elves, and even the demons were out there trying to buy time, so he couldn't relax and leave them waiting.
"Yeah," Kai said. "I'm ready."
Ceryyn took him back to the Commonwealth, to an empty hill a safe distance from the Colossus. That space no longer seemed significant, so Kai burst into the air. Thunderbird's Wings extended from his back faster than before and the armored transformation was almost instantaneous, as if the armor was less being formed than emerging from his body.
In the distance, the Colossus was a hulking darkness blotting out stars. It turned slowly, its eyes glowing like emerald moons in the night.
It began to rise to its feet, more slowly than Kai had expected. Something had changed... those eyes were ominous in the dark, but they flickered weakly. Perhaps Omilaena was right and the Colossus had struggled to gain the energy it needed to fight. That made him strangely sad, but there was no time for sentiment.
He shifted his path and shot low, intending to take out one of the Colossus's legs and bring it to the ground. To his surprise, the leg shifted in a surprisingly sharp movement, one knee smashing into him. Kai hurtled in the opposite direction, struggling to regain control of his flight.
The impact had been jarring, but not devastating. It seemed as though the Colossus was also off balance, only slowly turning to face his new position. Still, it was a reminder that this thing was an Insanity, not something for him to play around with. If Kai tried to go toe-to-toe with the Colossus as a monster, he wasn't sure who would come out on top.
But this was where the human side was more important: he wasn't here to fight the Insanity, just eat it.
Kai marshaled himself and flew directly at the monster's head, using Void Gaze. The Colossus stared back, eyes staring unblinkingly, their souls clashing. He couldn't overcome it, but it couldn't overcome him either and they remained locked in a battle of soul and will.
As they did so, Kai's momentum kept him sailing forward. At the last second, just as the Colossus raised a hand to smash him, he broke away. Completely blind, Kai used Thunderbird's Wings to redirect his path and instead slammed into the enormous chest.
His impact knocked it a step back, but he knew that he only had a moment to strike before it would try to grab and drain him like before. Kai didn't hesitate, drawing fully on Abyss Maw. As he opened his jaws, they seemed to open unnaturally far, a void emerging within them.
Then, with the stone hand swinging toward him, his teeth snapped closed.
A bite larger than a house disappeared from the Colossus's chest, but Kai's mouth wasn't filled with stone: he still felt ravenous. His spiritual teeth had cleaved through the stone and bit deep, cutting into something critical: when he opened his eyes, he saw an emerald sphere larger than his body, part of it shaved away by his teeth.
The Colossus began to fall backward, its eyes fading out. When it hit the ground, an earthquake rumbled in all directions, but Kai barely noticed: he was too busy taking a second bite.
By the time Kai had finished consuming the core, the Colossus was truly just a giant of stone, sprawled across the landscape. Even though he had tried to throw everything into that assault, he was brimming with power again. The rush of essence might have overwhelmed him before his transformation, but now he could feel it settling into his soul, filled with the raw potential of an Insanity.
Kai rose to his feet and realized that he was hungry for more.
.
..
.
Normally Inafay spent her time training instead of working with the scouts, but this was different: Fodajix was on the move and no one understood what he was doing. It was too dangerous for someone without a strong grasp of phases to try to follow him - even though he couldn't fly, he might prove resourceful enough to target someone in the air.
As her difficult chase had proved, even with a speed phase it was tough to keep up with him. She was fairly sure that Fodajix didn't know she was following, he was just moving north with unclear purpose. Somehow he had gotten over the Frontier wall, thankfully not damaging it, and now he headed deeper into the wasteland.
Even now, despite her boosts in strength, Inafay knew that she couldn't win the fight. Not that it mattered, because if she somehow beat him, it would just cause the other invaders to begin killing. She wanted to be optimistic, but even she had to admit that the situation was pretty bad.
And, as she understood where they were going, she realized that things could become even worse.
For a brief time she hoped that Fodajix wasn't moving toward the great sealed dome that surrounded the Abhorroid, but that proved a false hope. The only reason for his shifting paths was that he wasn't sure exactly where it had stopped. As soon as he spotted the dome, he started running.
Even if she had wanted to stop him, Inafay wasn't sure that she could have. With startling speed he reached the side and hurled one of the invaders' swords, which flew like a missile. It punched through the side of the shell, piercing deep into the darkness within.
Deadly mist began to waft from the hole... then the entire shell rumbled as it began to crack and the Abhorroid woke.