It was a losing battle for the Crypt’s genius loci. He-It was simply too powerful. With Lukas’s tinier form, the khorkhoi had too much energy to release. Too much harm to cause. Too much power to annihilate.

Yet the genius loci came at him-it anyways.

The genius loci had foregone its strictly human form and upped its game. The enormous mass of aqāru rose into the air, forming spears as it shot towards him-it.

Shoulder. Neck. Kidney. Heart. Lungs. Abdomen.

Someone should have told him-it that he-it ought to be dead.

Lukas-Khorkhoi seemed not to notice—

Inanna had been right. The khorkhoi’s skills were ruled by its instincts and anima. No amount of training could elevate his own understanding of the creature to a state better than its ability to understand itself.

Still, she was also wrong.

Shifting— the art of allowing alien monstrosities to take over his body. It wasn’t possession, at least not the way the goddess had described it to be. She had warned him he would risk losing himself every time he shifted. Perhaps that would have been true, had the ritual gone the way she’d anticipated.

But it hadn’t.

Lukas had not stayed human. He had become an anomaly.

And that alone made a world of difference.

“You’d choose to follow the demented path of a monster than a rational approach to the solution?” The Crypt spoke through a human-head that had formed on a raised metal wall. Lukas-Khorkhoi would have thought it eerie had he-it cared at all. No, conversation had no place in battle. He-It was there to destroy. To annihilate. To tear and rend and leave nothing but devastation in his-its wake. If the Crypt was willing to die trying to converse, then he-it would oblige.

A miasma rose from the floor and hit him-it from behind. Losing his-its balance, he-it fell face-first. A thick blade erupted out of the floor and impaled him-it through his-its abdomen, tearing all the way to his-its genitals. Even discounting the loss of his-its family jewels, the sheer damage should have brought him-it to pause.

Lukas-Khorkhoi seemed not to notice.

He-it snapped the blade in half and pulled it out, raising it like a sword. With the force of a hurricane, he brought down the sword with all his wrath at the aqāru sludge. One, two, six, ten, twenty, fifty— it was not possible to strike so many times within a pair of seconds.

Lukas-Khorkhoi seemed not to notice.

The ever-expanding metallic wall was next. He-It would shatter the wall, and then—

This was the first time Lukas had actually allowed the khorkhoi to take over. But unlike before, he was not drowning in a violent insanity-laden haze. Instead, it was like allowing someone else to be in the driver’s seat while shifting to the seat beside him. One still remained in the front, but as a co-passenger: free to see, feel, and experience everything that took place, even though the decisions were made by something else entirely.

It was a subtle difference, but a vital one. The trick was not to think of himself as Lukas, but as an Omphalos. His body was its anomaly. The prototypes were its monsters. Their skills were its skills. He was Lukas, but he was also an array. So long as the array existed, everything else existed. The body, Lukas’s own mind, the prototypes— none of it was foreign.

They were all him. And he was them.

A complex entanglement that existed in the form of the anomaly named Lukas Aguilar.

It was this simple truth that Lukas hadn’t fully grasped until now.

I’m fighting it as a human, when I should’ve been fighting it as an anomaly.

The Crypt was constantly raising walls, one after the other, in hopes of killing everyone on the other side before he could reach them. No matter how many times his khorkhoi-instinct version tried to shatter it, there was always another obstacle in the way.

That was fine. He now had another way.

One that he should’ve thought of before.

The Screen rose up.

Activate Puppeteer Protocol.

Tanya let out a feral growl.

The problem with fighting the genius loci was that it was only half-stupid.

The pathetic mass of sludge was not terribly skilled at combat, nor did it have any military or strategic experience. When things were not working in its favor, it just broke down completely. All these factors combined meant it was not a significant threat. It was a cascade of failures, until the genius loci was left with nothing but a basic instinct to lash out in rage.

The issue, however, was getting it to make that mistake while keeping everyone else alive. When it was certain of victory, it tended to prowl around like a mighty predator playing with its prey. When victory was not certain, it tended to do things like…

Coalescing into a giant, murderous, dragon-like creature, with a dozen serpentine necks ending in deformed razor-lined mouths all lashing out at once.

Like now.

Combined with the feelings of rage and frustration mounting within her, being forced to stay on the defensive when every inch of her being wanted to rush in and devour them all was aggravating. Not to mention her confusion with how the genius loci had morphed to look exactly like Lukas, even more than willing to trade quips with him like—

Like he was the only thing in its vision. Everything else was worthless, no more important than empty air. As someone hailing from a noble family herself, Tanya liked to believe she could be rather arrogant when she wanted to. But even she was unable to look through people like they didn’t even exist.

It took a very specific kind of mind to rewrite its own perception of reality for no purpose other than to make someone else feel inferior.

In hindsight, fighting this beast was not unlike the mass of shadows and sludge from earlier. Only this time, it was more… metallic. And grating on her nerves, especially with the way new tendrils lashed out at frozen bits and freed them, reducing her results to zero over and over again. It reminded her of Lukas’s stupid cat— his metallic murder-happy, cuddle-loving, purring familiar. Last time she checked, the familiar was keeping Elena safe from anything that came within a certain radius of her. She had no idea what it was about the changeling that sparked such reactions among monsters, but she sure would love to find out.

After she got home and had a proper shower. Or ten. And got her nails and hair done at the salon.

“Zuken, how much longer?” she demanded.

The Earth-type spiritist was so caught up in his chanting that he didn’t even bother to answer her. Whatever the Banksi was up to, it was clearly something complex and esoteric to require a chant for this long.

“Looks like we’re screwed, huh?” Olfric panted, taking a stance beside her as he battled exhaustion. Using that much mana in such a short span of time was taking a visible toll on him.

“The attitude isn't helping,” Tanya bit out, but the rage was absent. “I don’t need to say it again, but the only way to end this would be to destroy all of it at once. My frost can freeze parts of it, but as long as it keeps freeing itself, it’s all redundant. And Ezzeron, as powerful as he is, isn’t compatible against this creature.”

“So Banksi’s our only shot. Except he’s not done yet, and we’re already out of juice.”

“Speak for yourself,” Tanya retorted. “I’ve been in this stupid place for months now, and I am in dire need of a shower. Until I get that, there is no way I’m going to die.”

Olfric stared at her like she was an otherworldly creature. “You’re weird.”

Tanya openly laughed, relishing the look on his face and wholly giving into her reckless side. As much as she’d love to say otherwise, her annoying ally was right. Given the way things were progressing, it would take a miracle to survive this fight, much less win it.

…

And then, a miracle happened.

From behind her came a massive silver creature with four arms and a humongous pair of jaws for a head. It smashed against the metallic sludge, tearing through it like a knife through parchment. The jaw-head grabbed the serpentine structures that rose from the puddles of aqāru with its hands, each of which ended in pincers, and chomped on it like it was a tasty morsel and not a poisonous, metallic, sludgy mess.

“Did you do that?” Olfric asked, gaping at the sight.

Tanya nervously swallowed. “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

[CRYPT] had tried to harm [LUKAS], and it would die.

It was the closest thing to a thought that [TABBY] could have. Its ‘mind’, which would normally be filled with rudimentary behavioural patterns, was currently an empty, red haze that could not truly hold any concept save for the obliteration of any foe that stood before it. But piercing that haze now was something that came from outside that programmed, inhuman violence.

[CRYPT] had tried to harm [LUKAS], and it would die.

A familiar darkness blanketed its thoughts as a MONSTER PROTOTYPE began to fill its mind. And as its mind changed, so too did its body. A four-handed, two-legged monster called a [GUG] replaced his default aqāru-based heteromorph form that carried the attributes of a [CAT].

Every atom of its being sang with brutality, longing to tear the attackers limb from limb and smash away at the remains until nothing was left but a bloody smear on its pincers. [TABBY] did not fear the attacks, even though it could sense each one was a deadly threat. To feel fear would be to value its own existence, and it was not capable of such. Only the commands of [LUKAS] held sway over its urge to destroy, and [LUKAS] had allowed it free reign.

[CRYPT] had tried to harm [LUKAS], and it would die.

[TABBY] charged at the enemy. The two-legged creatures that fought the enemy were inconsequential. It would have chomped the heads off of the rest of them, but [LUKAS] had manifested it to ‘kill the enemy’ and nothing else.

Walls of metal rose from the ground, and a giant two-sided blade pierced into it from behind, tearing one of its knees apart. Red hot agony flared across its senses, and then something decapitated its neck.

[TABBY] died.

Puppet GUG eliminated.

…

…

Create New Instance— GUG

That did not stop it.

Metal-made flesh reformed.

Puppeteer Protocol: Enacted

Monster Prototype Installed: GUG

Function: Kill the Enemy

A new [TABBY] stood on its hind limbs. Its mind was an empty program, filled with nothing but violence and a command to ‘kill the enemy’.

The fact that [GUG] was not its real form— built with veins of aqāru, sentient metal replacing flesh and blood —was irrelevant. Ever since [LUKAS] allowed it to manifest, every atom of its being sang with brutality, longing to tear the attackers limb from limb and smash away at the remains until nothing was left but a bloody smear on its pincers.

[TABBY] did not fear the attacks, even though it could sense each one was a deadly threat. To feel fear would be to value its own existence, and it was not capable of such. Only the commands of [LUKAS] held sway over its urge to destroy, and [LUKAS] had allowed it free reign.

[CRYPT] had tried to harm [LUKAS], and it would die.

With a piercing screech, it rushed towards the enemy.