Boles was a big country. A man could walk for months without reaching the other side. even the flora knew it was a big country, with the way the trees soared up into the sky as if to make room for all the big goddamned monsters.

The trees were massive, set further apart than jungle trees, and spreading outward above thirty feet to create a canopy seemingly held up by arcing gates.

Things were relatively peaceful on the outskirts of the city where they’d beaten back nature, but as the army of sellswords got deeper and deeper into the wilderness, they became more and more on edge, keeping their hands on the hilts of their weapons.

It wasn’t long after that the attacks started.

On the third day, a strange fish-like creature that seemed to phase through the earth gulped up one of their number while they were getting their kit on for the day.

Tzen managed to save the man’s life by luring the creature to the surface and killing it before the merc suffocated. Everyone cheered pretty hard when the slime covered guy spilled out of the creature’s guts into the fresh air, crying like a newborn.

The guy at the latrine wasn’t so lucky. Some kind of plant monster was attracted by the stench of human feces and released seeds into the shitter.

That guy got strangled and killed before anyone knew about it.

When asked about it, the mercs simply shrugged. Every voyage, a bit of chaff was removed, according to them. Nobody had expected the trip to have no casualties.

It was stunning to Calvin that wilderness could be this dangerous, or that people could be so blasé about it. The monsters weren’t powerful enough to threaten him or Ella, so he didn’t have to worry about their safety, but people getting picked off here and there made the trip difficult to treat as a honeymoon/vacation.

Difficult, but not impossible.

Learner was having a blast. She was actually quite popular with the Bolesian hunters, despite being a Thing From Beyond. It probably had something to do with her bringing back monster meat and valuable trophies every day and sharing them with the others.

Or maybe it was the way she spoke fluent Bolesian with an exotic accent, charming everyone she came across with her bright personality and cutting wit.

Or maybe it was the big titties.

All of the above, perhaps? Who knows. Learner had proven that humans were laughably easy to get along with, if you presented the right behavior and appearance.

Calvin had to admit, she was growing on him, despite knowing what she was. Her ‘brain’ still had a crush on him and she would often look away whenever he glanced at her, diverting her gaze to the ground and walking awkwardly away.

Not really sure how to deal with that.

2 wives and a crazy bitch is already more than I ever bargained for.

I swear to god, if she takes notes during coitus, I’m gonna bust a gut.

Over the long and boring trip highlighted by the occasional death, Calvin was starting to accumulate his own wagon full of exotic monster parts.

Which reminds me…

Calvin brought up the Abyssal Alchemy Notification

Abyssal Alchemy has reached level 45!

Please choose one or more Abilities and/or Mutations.

Blue Magic: Being effected by a Warped creature’s ability provides insight into the user’s understanding of how said ability works.

Chemistry: Abyssal Alchemy's Correction applies to non-Warped (I.E. nonmagical) chemistry as well.

Abyssal Craft: Abyssal Alchemy’s Correction applies to objects primarily created with Warped creature parts.

It’s pronounced Franken-steen!: 1 Bent to fuse an organ to a willing or pacified host. Bypasses antibiotic rejection. 5 Bent to safely remove a Warped Organ.

Concentrated reaction: 1 Bent to boost the potency of a Warped substance by (Correction) for (level) minutes.

Mutations:

Storage: Store 1 Warped organ in user’s Body for later use, +1 Per 5 levels of Endurance. Organs refill as normal while stored, but cannot be used.

^The beginning of a mutation tree

Performance enhancing drugs: Consume warped creature parts to temporarily augment your performance. Effect varies.

Eyes of the Abyss: Abyssal Alchemy Correction applies to identifying the alchemical uses of Warped creature’s organs. Living or dead.

Petri Dish: User may now ingest and replicate Warped materials in larger quantities, not exceeding user’s metabolism. 1 ingredient at a time.

The Blood is The Life: User’s blood becomes more potent, and User may decide to add or remove effects based on their own Mutations or any Warped organs they might be storing at the moment it leaves the body.

^From Maculat racial, You’re Warped, Too

Calvin scanned the options, then took Storage. It looked useful, and he was interested in seeing what the mutation tree had to offer, when he woke up, there were two new Mutations.

Integration: User may use stored organs as if they were their own.

^From Heart of the Swarm, Storage.

User-Friendly: 1 Bent. User may add parts of creatures affected by the Chimera skill to their own body, no possibility of rejection.

^From Chimera, Storage.

This skill is really mutation heavy, isn’t it? Calvin thought. Make sure you double check all of them.

I got, it, I got it. Elliot muttered.

Six left. First thing I want are the useful passives and power boosters.

Calvin chose Blue Magic, Chemistry, and Concentrated reaction, which expanded to include normal chemicals when he took Chemisty.

Blue magic because it would help him decode some of the more interesting abilities. It might even be the push he needed to figure out the random teleportation around the Temple of Awakening.

Chemistry was just a helpful passive, and Concentrated reaction…Most of Calvin’s attacks were based on some kind of chemistry. If he could spend an Extra Bent to supercharge it, that was an excellent option to have.

Okay, three left.

Scanning through again, Calvin chose Abyssal Craft, Integration, and Franken-Steen. He was tempted to take Petri dish, but Undifferentiated Matter made it a bit redundant. He also kind of wanted to take The Blood Is The Life, but Calvin figured choosing a maculat specific mutation might make it that much harder to get his normal, living body back.

Abyssal Craft was chosen because it was another good passive, and he was sure to continue making things out of Warped creatures.

Franken-Steen guaranteed a way to fiddle with Nadia and Kala’s enhancements after the fact in case they started causing trouble,

And Integration would let him use up to nine stored abilities from Warped creatures he might not already possess. He skipped on the one that let him modify himself as if he had Chimera, because while it was useful, it didn’t bring a whole lot of new to the table. He could already create a bottle body with chimera then slip into it with Heart of the swarm.

Those choices made, Calvin dismissed the notifications and allowed himself to fall asleep as the mutations took over.

The rest of the trip settled into a tense monotony, while Calvin butchered the occasional creature and experimented with the Storage mutation.

As it turned out, a Bolesian dragon was nothing like the winged reptiles of fantasy as Calvin had been led to believe.

A Bolesian dragon looked like someone took a frog and chained its ass to a moving wagon, stretching it beyond what was physically possibly.

It had a wide frog mouth and a pouch in it’s gullet that seemed to expand before it did the one dragon-like thing it could do: Spit fire.

Unfortunately, the fire spit didn’t have the bloom of flames that Calvin was led to believe. The spit was more like something Elliot referred to as Napalm, which simply stuck to a surface and burned.

That didn’t mean they weren’t dangerous. They sure as Abyss were, they just didn’t have the same grandiose nature that Calvin always thought they’d have.

Several men were left with severe burns before the ugly fire-spitter was taken care of. Calvin was limiting the amount he helped the mercenaries, both to get a feel for how strong they were, and also because of his Royal status.

He had Champions for that.

So, while Calvin sat and watched them fight the Dragon, Ella and Learner had a grand time. Ella turned a rust-colored red and leapt up on top of the dragon, pummeling its soft brain-case into a fine pulp while Learner simply dived into the creature’s open mouth and came back out a moment later bearing the creature’s bloody fire glands.

They were still beating the creature’s twitching body as Learner pulled out her travel workstation and began carefully dissecting her haul.

Five days later, they heard the distant sound of battle, but by the time they got there, the combatants had been dead for centuries. In the center of the field full of rusted armor was some kind of bell-shaped plant, its edges visibly vibrating as it constantly replayed the sound of battle over and over again.

Calvin saw the way its roots stretched into the nearby skeletons, and heard faint shouting and cries of pain.

Are people reliving their deaths over and over inside that thing? If it was anything like the brain worm, it deserved to be burnt.

Apparently, the plant could be boiled down into a tincture that gave someone a commanding voice for several hours. It was used by politicians and generals most frequently, and commanded a decent price.

The demon bell echoing the calls of the dead wound up chopped down and strapped to the top of a mercenary’s wagon.

Strange place, Calvin thought as they drove deeper and deeper into the country. Ancient battlefields and unexplored ruins abounded, because nature reclaimed territory nearly as fast as Boles could take it.

Among these ruins were ancient treasures and lurking horrors, and all of them looked like a paycheck to the people trudging along with them. Nobody even knew what battlefield it was, or what they were fighting for.

Such is the ravages of time. Have you heard the poem of Ozymandius? In a nutshell it says that no matter how awesome and powerful you are, everything you do eventually gets scoured away by time.

Well then, Calvin thought, glancing back at the empty battlefield. I suppose I should make it a point that any battle I lose scars the planet so badly that it never recovers.

You mean like the volcano I made out of Ritchie cool’s?

I was more thinking a giant trench through a continent, but mountains are pretty good too.

Why stop there? Not even planets last forever. What you need to do is rewrite the laws of physics, then do a no-backsies maneuver so no one else can undo it.

Like the System? Calvin thought, frowning.

Yeah, man, there you go. Like the system.

Neither of them were dumb, they just chose not to talk about the fact the System referred to them as user #1. And everything that implied.

Thinking about the System got Calvin thinking about the Harbingers and how he would deal with them. He needed another Break, then he needed to compact his Skills into Disciplines again before expanding his repertoire.

What Break were you when the Harbingers came for you?

Oh, eighth. You’re actually way ahead of where I was when I was seventh Break. Pretty sure you could give the guys who kidnapped me the first time a run for their money.

“I don’t want to give them a run for their money. I want to win.”

Calvin’s choices were narrowed down to an eternity of soul-prison or growing strong enough to destroy an interstellar empire.

Or suicide. You could always kill yourself and take your chances in your next life. Assuming you get one, that is. The System is finicky.

Nah, not interested in no longer existing.

C’mon, you should try it, being a disembodied voice in someone’s head is just the best.

Your sarcasm is noted, Calvin thought, planning his eighth Break.

According to Tzen, his family was in the middle of a vicious war with a rival clan, and it showed no signs of slowing down.

Well, there you go. We don’t even have to convince people to kill each other, they’ll be doing it for free.