Discoveries

The new skill was incredible.

As soon as she woke up, Alice felt the difference in her perception. Even while completely conscious, she could now feel the flow of her body, how it felt and reacted to the world around it.

When she focused just a little bit more, she sensed her blood coursing through her veins, constantly pumped by the perpetual beating of her heart. She observed her organs producing the substances that would keep her alive for another day and felt the electricity travelling via her nerves to and from the brain.

“I bet I’m gonna be able to do a lot more things now. it is a bit creepy though, feeling everything all the time… it’s like I’m one of those anatomical models where you can detach the organs to check them out,” she kept talking to herself as she completed her morning routine.

When she finally stopped yawning and cracking her neck, she lazily stomped towards her pool to check the progress of one of her experiments which, to her surprise, had perfectly succeeded.

“IT WORKED! I knew it!” she shouted, triumphantly raising over her head the metallic ‘foot’ of the spider leg she had left in the pool.

The final part of the arachnid’s limb had been completely ignored by the organisms of the pond, which had instead consumed all the flesh surrounding it, leaving around twenty centimeters of heavy, pointed metal.

Alice immediately dumped all the remaining legs into the pool and started experimenting with the new material. It seemed some sort of incredibly shiny steel, she couldn’t really see its color given the green light she was working with, but it didn’t look completely grey like normal stainless steel. She tried slamming it on the ground, its sharp end easily cracking the limestone surface with a ringing sound. When she looked at its tip, she found it completely unharmed by the impact. She smiled warmly at her new favorite thing, “oh you’re gonna be extremely useful in the next stage of my incredibly stupid plan.” she promised it.

While waiting for the other legs to be consumed, Alice continued working on her equipment, smoothing out the borders of her claw prosthesis and donning it after wrapping her still-healing stump with some of the cloth from her shirt, which had soon grown too dirty to be used for drinking and had been left in favor of the now quite deep bowl carved into the stalagmite stump.

She also used the remains of her bra as another way to secure the prosthesis, wrapping the elastic material around the hard but damaged chitin.

Once finished with the chelae, she inspected her braided rope, finding the older part especially weak. The uncured skin had started decomposing in the extremely humid conditions of the caves and it most likely wouldn’t support a lot of weight. The silk rope, instead, was still perfect, if only too short for what she wanted to do.

“Damn. I might need to find and kill more of the damn spiders.” she muttered as she coiled both, deciding that even the weaker one could have a use.

When she felt satisfied with her preparations, Alice sat down and focused on her own body. As she travelled deep inside of herself, the young woman realized that the new skill gave her a natural understanding of many of the components of her body, she now knew how and if they worked, what they produced and when.

With this cognition, she easily retraced the way to the small gland resting above each of her kidneys, prodding it to produce a tiny amount of the substance she now was sure was adrenaline.

Somehow knowing that a continued production of the hormone wouldn’t be safe in the long run, she focused on the process itself, avoiding the final step until she managed to achieve a basic automation on the action, even though she didn’t feel the same kind of connection she had experienced when forming Hemostasis. She was missing something.

In the end, Alice didn’t manage to activate it like the previous times and decided to leave it for the moment.

As she lazily swam through her veins as a plump red cell, she thought of her power and what she could do with it.

This can’t be all I can do. The healing is nice and all, but it doesn’t do much, and everything else is only tempora…

She froze in her thoughts.

Not everything has been temporary! I’m in a symbiosis because I somehow made my body recognize the light specks as a part of me!

She immediately rushed to the closest group of ‘guests’ and completely focused on their relationship with the cells all around. Alice could still perceive the small, fixed amount of her power flowing to the cells.

I need to do this or something similar. What if I could permanently power up my organs? Could I get some kind of enhanced body?

She immediately tried pumping some energy into her muscles, feeling them contract faster and harder than they normally would. After seeing a success, she slowly focused on reducing the amount of power flowing in them, instead trying to bind the warm currents of power to the cells themselves. Over the course of a few hours, she completely emptied her well multiple times but, despite her numerous attempts, the connection didn’t come. The amounts felt too overwhelming, and she somehow needed to bind that power to every single cell of a specific type for the energy to actually stick to the cells afterward.

Damn! And it felt so close. I think I need to actually increase the amount of power in the well before doing it with the muscles. I might need something less, huh, comprehensive for the first trials.

That removes bones, blood, nerves, and most of all brain. Not gonna touch that until I know I won’t auto-stroke myself. Heh stroke myself.

A giggle escaped her mouth as she came back to consciousness, soon transformed into a groan as she clutched her once again aching head.

“I’m an idiot,” she whispered, as she curled up into a sad bean of pain.

A couple hours later, she was back again on her feet, quite happy with her progress despite the migraines her intense training was causing.

Her belly rumbled loudly, lamenting the lack of a meal as even the disgusting meat paste had been a welcome change to her thinning body. Despite her successes, she still wasn’t eating enough.

Since I’m done with all my crafting, I guess it’s time to go out and risk my life again.

This time, however, Alice was armed to the teeth.

The large bone knife was tucked in a belt she had fashioned from her long, braided rope, its multiple loops also able to hold the silk cord and a good number of the ‘throwing spikes’ she had made with the ribs of the salamander. Her prosthesis was donned and ready to be used, while her normal hand clutched the last bioluminescent torch she had in her possession. It was time to hunt.

Back in the antechamber, she switched the newer torch with the older, more degraded one, before taking off towards the main cave, which she reached after a short but cautious walk through the tunnel, wary of potential ambushes in the claustrophobic passage.

When she finally stepped onto the ledge, she could see the broken-down shape of the previous torch. It had been knocked over and trampled, probably by the spider that had followed her the previous day.

I need to get more food and more materials, but most of all I need to clear enough of the cave of the monsters to be able to go down without being attacked. I guess I’ll need to take even more risks if I don’t want to keep eating bats for the rest of my life.

She propped the torch against the wall near the entrance of the tunnel, its green light dispelling the darkness in a wide semicircle that reached just over the edge of the platform.

She took a deep breath and launched a rock on the ledge, waiting for her targets.

As many times before, the shapes of the screechlings soon descended on the rock, swarming in the hopes of an easy prey. Nonetheless, she easily noticed the diminished numbers of the creatures, their ‘noise’ now far smaller than the veritable cloud of tiny monsters that had attacked the previous times.

Too stupid to learn from their mistakes, or at least most of them she corrected herself, noticing a few of the little blind bats still attached on the large stalactites hanging from the ceiling and only observing the rush of the rest of their noise. I guess its natural selection.

She leveled her breath and steeled her eyes, soon jumping into the fray. This time, she kept away from the main swarm, instead focusing on the few specimens that had missed their target and were now crawling towards it; one after the other, they were grabbed by one of their wings and thrown into the fissure in the wall, where they flopped around, too dazed to reorient themselves.

When Alice felt she had enough of the creatures, she ran back towards the opening and, fumbling with the silk line in her only hand, she clumsily tied the stunned creatures in a squirming and hissing mass, which she then threw deeper into the passage before turning back towards the main swarm.

And now it’s time to meet the neighbors.

She grasped the bone knife in her now free hand and waited for her foes.

She didn’t have to wait for long, two large centipedes soon emerging from the depths below, soon followed by a clicking, metal-tipped arachnid, which immediately ignored the main heap and headed straight towards the tasty-looking young woman a bit further away, while the insects feasted on the hapless bats.

As soon as she had its attention, Alice sheathed her knife and grasped the ‘torch’ she had placed at her feet.

The spider skittered closer, its frontal spears ready to skewer her without mercy or hesitation. It was only a couple of meters away when she finally acted, expertly tossing the contents of the container in the spider’s face and causing the arachnid to recoil from the unexpected bath, hissing its displeasure at its now shimmering appearance, the luminescent organisms in the water having stuck on its chitinous carapace.

She immediately fell back, leaving the empty vessel on the ground and running into the passage, stopping for just enough time to grasp the very loud ball of screechlings.

Judging by the clicking and hissing behind her, the spider was pissed. A manic smile appeared on Alice’s face, her legs pumping to maintain the distance from the skittering horror behind her.

When she finally got to the antechamber, the girl immediately lowered the screeching bats composition onto the ground. The spider caught up a few seconds later, stopping a few meters from her, wary of the change of demeanor in its target. Alice kept still; her pincer arm pointed towards the dripping fangs of the arachnid.

“You won’t get it easy from me. I’m not the prey here. You may be a spider, but I’m the wasp that will eat you.” She told it, her voice steady and sure despite the sheen of sweat already covering her back and forehead.

The monster surged forward, instantly countered by a flying spike directed towards its eyes. The creature immediately recoiled, barely dodging the projectile by crouching down on the ground.

For a few seconds, the spider stood still before retreating into the darker parts of the cave; or trying to at least, as the glowing particles still shining on its armor gave away its position to Alice, still standing stock still while facing her enemy.

Wait for it.

Wait for it…

Here it comes!

She saw the telltale shadow of a glob of silk coming straight towards her face and immediately ducked, the projectile and its trail landing on the ground with a thud.

The spider immediately started cutting away the first strand and attempted to form a second one in its front legs. Alice didn’t let it, instantly rushing in with her sword while drawing her dagger at the same time.

The spider scrambled to retreat, only to find itself with its back to the wall, and without any sort of cover in the barren cave.

It had only started clumsily raising its frontal legs when Alice plunged the prosthesis into the side of its thorax, eliciting a pained hiss as its legs scrambled for purchase on the slick floor. She ignored the weak but painful jab from one of its sharp limbs to instead swing her knife in a downward motion towards the exposed ‘nape’ of the creature.

The knife sunk deeply with a wet crunch, the body of the spider shuddering and spasming as the sharp blade severed the connection with its brain.

Alice drew back, ripping away the blades from the body as it fell down with a thud.

“I’m the Hunter” she panted.