Okay, how do we handle this cold-blooded murder in the most reliable way? Calvin thought glancing up. He had three Bent available, since he hadn’t spent the one he’d gotten from Ella last night. He’d gotten his second before bed, and one more late this morning. His next bent was only an hour or so away, but in a fight that wouldn’t mean shit.

First, to use a Bent to escape the cage. Yay or nay? If he used a Bent he could duplicate the key that was hanging on the side of the wagon. Quick, clean, and he would be on his way in exchange for a third of his fighting strength.

The alternative was some kind of ploy, which was unreliable, and usually involved smacking some guard who would later recall the details of his escape.

I need a set of lockpicks with blades on the back, then I could absorb them with Blade Body. Cal thought to himself. New things were always occurring to him as the situation changed. As it stood all he had was an obsidian knife, dispersed throughout his body. Maybe some kind of multi-tool?

Food for thought.

When he absorbed blades into his skin, it didn’t rest under the surface like he’d thought, but rather turned was spread out through his bloodstream. It was good that he didn’t have a telltale lump under his skin, or a slightly off-balance body, but thinking of tiny obsidian flakes travelling through his blood gave him the shivers.

No, it was faster, and far more reliable to simply duplicate the key and slip out in seconds while no one was looking.

That gave him two Bent in case things went sour. Next he needed to-

“You there.” One of the Gadveran soldiers said as he approached with two others.

“Calvin.”

“Calvin. Tell your pet here to behave herself. The captain wants to speak to her.”

“The captain speaks Genosian now?” Cal asked.

He felt the briefest flicker of repudiation for the captain’s antics in his gaze, before it was locked under an ocean of duty and training.

“I’m just following orders.”

Good, that’ll make part three much easier.

“What are they saying?” Ella said.

“The captain’s gonna try to rape you. If I don’t show up in a minute or two, feel free to bite his throat out. Don’t let them know you’re a Maje.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Why can’t I just lead with the throat-biting and be done with it?”

“Because, I have a plan that I believe will work better.”

“I’ll give you until the fat man’s prick is out. After that, all bets are off.”

“Your faith in me knows no bounds.” Cal said.

“It really doesn’t.”

“She’s been warned.” Cal said, watching for the key.

There it is.

One of the three men retrieved the key from his belt and used it to open Ella’s door, motioning her out.

Splitting

2/11 Bent Remaining.

A duplicated key appeared in the hand Cal held behind his back.

“Damn, this thing is itchy,” Cal said, shrugging off his hide shirt.

Every second counts.

They gave him a few strange looks, but nobody bothered him. Nudity makes people uncomfortable, even partial nudity.

They pulled Ella out of her cage and escorted her out into the firelight of the camp. The sun had been dipping down the horizon, and now the only light was a few pools of orange firelight, which made this next part much easier.

Cal waited until they disappeared from sight and crawled up to the lock, putting the key in and turning it. If the key didn’t work, he was going to have to get real creative, and possibly wind up running away with Ella, but he didn’t expect the military would put too much effort into making their cage locks works of art.

His cage door unlocked with a soft metallic click. He opened it quickly to avoid screeching, then slid out feet first, landing on the ground and rolling under the wagon in one liquid move, not feeling any gazes land on him. No one had seen a thing, and he knew it.

One of the guys.

Cal suppressed a groan and a shiver as his bones shifted, skin stretched and darkened, becoming the countenance of a young adult male Gadveran. Cal tugged the kilt off, the last piece of incriminating evidence that marked him as anything other than a faceless Gadveran recruit.

He rolled out the other side of the wagon facing the forest, grabbed the fire-worm extract and stalked toward the line of clothes drying between two tall trees.

“What are you doing out of uniform?” a surly voice demanded. He glanced over his shoulders to see one of the sergeants, a short, muscle-bound man of mixed heritage.

“My second pair got soiled during the fight, so my sergeant made me wash mine naked. Sir!”

“You Break today, son?” the man asked. Cal could feel a tiny bit of sympathy in the man’s gaze.

“Yes sir. It was my second.”

“Old Fureth is probably just trying to get you stuck with a Streaking skill or some such. The old bat’s got a cruel sense of humor. Take that pair there.” He pointed at a pair of conspicuously dry clothes beside the other wet ones.

“Beraga isn’t going to need them anymore.”

“Thank you sir,” Cal said, whipping out a Gadveran salute to the best of his knowledge.

“Your salute sucks, kid. Get outta my sight.” The man waved Calvin off dismissively.

Calvin surveyed the camp while he tugged on the shirt and pants. Security was especially strained because of the Break. Most of the new recruits were experiencing their second Break, leaving their more experienced superiors to do all the work, including standing guard.

On the subject of Breaks, Cal had hardly felt a bit of Warp in the air from the six Gadveran and forty or so dead Genosians. It looked like he would have to be in a much larger battle to Break again.

Come to think of it, Cal thought, tugging his pants on, I’m already a 4th Break Veteran, aren’t I. Weird.

Calvinian Summoning.

Give me a five-pound wasp.

A gigantic wasp the size of a large rat emerged from Cal’s hand.

Cal was too hurried to be dumbfounded that the spell had worked, and instead seized control of the thing before it could try to kill him.

Through the bond, he could feel…significantly less desire to cause him harm than he had with the Chained Spirit summoning.

That made it much safer to use.

Perhaps Chained Spirit saved more of the original identity than Calvinian summoning.

Don’t have time to study it.

Sense-Grafting

Cal’s left eye was paired to the wasp’s forehead.

Sense-Grafting has reached level 8!

Sense Grafting Level 8: Sight, hearing, touch, pain, smell, Taste, Balance. Self-only, 64ft range, 40 minutes.

0/11 Bent remaining.

Now dressed, he swept through the camp, power walking with his eyes set straight ahead, like a man on a mission. He knew from years of experience that wandering around like you didn’t have anything to do was an invitation for people to give you work, and he couldn’t really afford that.

Cal leaned over and grabbed a dagger from where it was resting against a sleeping man’s tent as he passed, eyeballing the camp for a weak spot.

There. there was a specific spot where the two Sergeants guarding it were way too far apart.

Cal directed the Wasp to fly out into the forest and then circle around.

Cal staggered for a moment, his mind barely able to sort out which point of view was him and which was the wasp.

Cal straightened and made for captain Skovos’s tent.

Not feeling any gazes on him, he slipped in as silently as a ghost.

“Now we need to make sure you don’t accidentally hurt anyone,” Skovos said with a leer as he forced a thick leather belt into Ella’s mouth. Cal’s Genosian was restrained, her arms tied behind her back with thick ropes, her clothes in tatters.

Cal walked silently up behind Captain Skovos and clubbed him in the back of the head with the dagger’s pommel.

The captain went limp, collapsing forward into Ella’s chest.

At Cal’s mental nudge, the wasp flew down on the opposite side of the camp landing on an unsuspecting guard and pumping him full of venom with a three-inch stinger.

The young man fell to his knees and began screaming like his whole world had become fire. Which was fairly accurate. As long as the guy’s heart didn’t stop, he should recover when the venom disappeared in about fifteen seconds.

Cries went up along the edge of the camp, and pounding feet sounded as people raised the alarm.

Unfortunately most of the recruits were unconscious from their breaks.

Cal made a small cut in the side of tent and peered out, spotting the guards at the poorly defended side of the camp rush toward the distraction, giving him a clear path to the forest.

Cal sliced the tent the rest of the way.

Now the hard part.

Cal threw Captain Skovos over his shoulder, grunting at the bigger man’s sheer weight. He was just barely within Cal’s tolerance. From now on the plan didn’t rely on cunning or misdirection, just sheer muscle and stamina

That’s it, I’m raising my Body if I ever get another Break. Ten seems like a good number.

“Calvin?” Ella asked, spitting out the bit of leather and giving him an incredibly confused look.

Cal spared her a glance and winced. She probably could have put the Captain in his place at any point in time had she used her spells, but she’d waited for Calvin to arrive even as she was being restrained.

Ella had a lot more faith in him than she let on.

“I know not of who you speak, my name is…Cal-veen. And I need to borrow a point of Bent.” He knelt down and placed his hand on her forehead. At the unmistakeably Calvin sensation, she relaxed, and allowed him to channel the substance out of her.

1/11 Bent remaining.

He winked and then plunged through the gap in the tent, heading for the unguarded section of forest.

Must go faster, must go faster! Cal fully expected to be stopped and killed somewhere between the tent and the woods, but somehow he managed to avoid being spotted as dozens of Gadverans gathered to fight the giant wasp, on the assumption that there must be a hive of them somewhere.

The unnaturally quick, darting movements of the giant wasp nearly made Cal lose his footing several times, but he managed to right himself every time, trying to focus only on his right eye, ignoring the wasp’s struggle against the guards.

Cal made it to the treeline, but he didn’t slow down, pushing himself to carry the heavy captain at least…a hundred feet away from the treeline.

If each staggering step is two feet, I need fifty steps.

One, two, three,

Cal began to count out his paces, going as fast as he could.

Once he hit fifty paces, he toppled to the ground, his lungs in searing agony, muscles turning into gelatin. He could taste blood in his mouth as he turned the captain around and started stripping the man, tugging off his vest and shirt to reveal the man’s grey-haired barrel chest, covered in scars.

It’s not over yet. Still gotta get back.

One of the guys.

Cal swelled, his chest and stomach pushing outward, skin darkening even further. He could feel a tickling on his jaw as the man’s beard grew out. His recruit clothes burst at the seams, unable to restrain the man’s girth.

In the darkness of the forest, Cal was barely able to make out the scars on his new chest, matching those of the Captain perfectly.

Thank the gods I’m not included in the average.

Cal had been afraid of that being the case, but it wasn’t a problem.

“..Wha..What’s going on? Captain Skovos said, wincing in pain as he tried to sit up, clutching his aching scalp.

“Nobody fucks with my women.” Cal said softly.

Women, plural? Someone’s got their priorities straight.

The last thing Captain Skovos saw was his doppleganger bringing a dagger down with a murderous expression.

Thankfully Cal had the presence of mind to strip the man’s upper body before he killed him, so the vest, shirt, pants and boots were entirely free of blood.

Cal began dressing as fast as he could, forcing his way through the exhaustion. The key to a good trick was always speed. He needed to be back so quickly no one could imagine what had just happened.

Once he was dressed, he focused on the Fire-Worm Extract.

Mass splitting.

0/11 Bent remaining.

The Captain’s body was instantly covered in Fire-Worm extract and began to burn furiously.

Now he just needed to get back to where he belonged, and everything would be –

“Captain!” A squad of Gadveran came running up, carrying their weapons, attracted by the brilliant light in the middle of the dark forest.

I should have thought of that. Cal began working on a lie, quick.

Cal forced himself to relax. He had to adopt this man’s mannerisms, and act like he belonged wherever the hell he found himself.

“What the hell took you so long?” he demanded to put them on the defensive.

“Captain, you…”

“Enough about me! I left my tent to see what the hell was going on, and what do I see? Our entire West side completely unguarded while you flail around at a damn bug.”

“Sure enough,” Cal said, pointing at Skovos’s sizzling corpse. “There were damn Grinning Apes trying to sneak up on us, one of those Fire-worm tribe I’d guess. Bastard was carrying a half dozen of these.”

Cal held up the Fire-Worm extract.

“And you were just gonna let them waltz right in!” Cal jabbed the leading soldier in the chest with his finger. “They were planning on burning down the whole camp. If I ever see a gaping hole like that in our perimeter again, I’ll have you nailed to a pole and used as a damn scarecrow! Maybe then you’ll learn to stick to your post!”

“S-sir.” The soldier nodded.

“Go back.” Cal said tersely, pointing to the camp. “We don’t have the manpower to chase after the rest of them. Not until tomorrow, anyway.”

“Sir.”

Acting has reached Level 7!

Acting Level 7: Behave exactly as you intend. Convey emotion naturally. 35% correction.

Call idly itched his new beard as he studied the flaming corpse.

Guess I’m the captain now…

What the hell am I supposed to call you, Mysterious System voice?

…You can call me Elliot.