I almost jumped out of the chair, a huge grin spread tight across my face as I swung my arm about like a new toy. Reaching over with my right hand, I ran my fingers across its surface and marvelled at the feeling. The surface of the prosthetic was smooth and warm to my original hand’s touch, but the sensations I received back from it were the same as I would have expected from an arm of flesh and blood. Feeling the low-friction surface, I worried for a moment that I would be unable to hold things, and glanced around for something to test, before stopping myself to pull the hilt of my sheared-through sword from a ring. Gripping the hilt, I tried to pull it free with my other hand, but found it as unmovable as a mountain.

After a moment of fruitlessly trying to pull the broken things free, I heard a soft, high-pitched creaking and began to look around. The first thing I noticed was DUK3 staring at me, head tilted almost to their shoulder.

“Oh, shit, sorry. I mean, thank you! This is amazing, Dee Yu Kay Three.”

“It was a trade in which we have both benefitted. There is no need for gratitude. You will require some time to acclimatise to your new limb, I would advise you refrain from activating the imbedded functions until you have fully grasped the physical differences, Hunter.”

“Physical differences? Imbedded function? It’s not just an arm? Dee Yu Kay Three.”

“If you would like to look at the item in your new hand, Hunter?”

Frowning, I looked at the broken sword in my hand, but failed to see anything that might indicate what I had to get used to. At least, that is until I opened my hand and found the marks I had apparently pressed into the hilt. For a moment, I stood staring at the now crushed hilt before I realised that that was what the high-pitched whine had been; the metal deforming.

I knew I was strong – fifty times stronger than a normal person, but this was no Earthly metal, it was a metal used to construct a sword designed for people at the Core stage, for people as strong as me. I could bend it, if I swung it into something hard enough, as I had done with the axe in the Black, but I was not strong enough to embed my fingers in it... but apparently my new hand was.

Turning back to the Construct, I spoke without thinking.

“How?”

“De Yu Kay Three. As I informed you, we focus on the efficient use of Experience. This arm is making more efficient use of your Praxis. From the scans and observations, it should be close to twice as strong as your original, and this should increase as you gain access to higher order Experience.”

I could not believe it, twice as strong? That meant that I was as strong as somebody at the Foundation stage, the start of it at least. In one arm.

“You mean, I’ll be able to punch twice as hard? That really is amazing, thank you again, Dee Yu Kay Three!”

Unfortunately, they quickly deflated that idea.

“No, of course not. I have only replaced your forearm; almost none of the force for a punch is generated in the forearm, Hunter. It will primarily affect your grip, though it is true you will also be able to rotate your wrist twice as hard, Hunter...”

That was not quite as fantastic as I had thought, but it made sense, and it was my own fault for not thinking it through. Still, I could see lots of ways having a grip twice as strong as my level would suggest could come in handy, and while it might not double the force of a blow, the wrist thing was bound to add something. Luckily, I was right-handed...

“Well, that’s still pretty good! Thank you. But you also mentioned some kind of additional ability it had? Can I like, fire it at people and have it come back, Dee Yu Kay Three?”

“That seems like a remarkably foolish thing to do. Would that not usually result in losing your arm a second time, Hunter?”

“Yeah, guess. It’s a thing that happened a lot back home. It always looked cool, Dee Yu Kay Three.”

“I am uncertain what the relative observable temperature has to do with the efficacy, Hunter?”

“You too, huh? I meet a lot of people who don’t understand idioms. I mean, it looked... stylish? Never mind. What does it actually do... Dee Yu Kay Three?”

“The function I have imbedded within your arm generated a limited vector field around the arm, resulting in a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree redirection of force. It is a function I would save for those at the most advanced level of replacement, as the energy expenditure can be extreme, however, due to the higher order energy which you are saturating the arm with, at full capacity, there should be sufficient Experience to interact successfully with any attack.”

“... What? I have no idea what you just said, Dee Yu Kay Three.”

“... When activated, any attack featuring a primarily physical aspect will find itself reversed upon impact, and as such, nullified, Hunter.”

“Wait, it can just stop attacks? I need to test it... Dee Yu Kay Three.”

Saying their name every time I spoke to him was starting to grate on me, and I was itching to get some practice in with my new arm, and that may have overridden my reason slightly.

“The arm is not yet charged. Given the density of Experience on this world, you should be able to reach maximum saturation within a week, which is why I advised you to attempt to grow used to the additional strength first.”

A week? I had felt – could still feel – the oceans of power around us, and it was able to fill my Core in almost no time, especially when compared to how long had taken to fill in the first place. What sort of capacity did the glass and gold appendage have if it would take a week? And what did that mean once I was back on my own world, would I need months, maybe even years to refill it?

Mind awhirl, but not wanting to sound ungrateful, I thanked DUK3 one last time and left the room, unconsciously rubbing my new arm, and very eager to put it through its paces.

*

***

*

Standing in the hall I had been using for training, I flexed my crystalline hand and Focused.

Lightning raged for a moment, splitting the air with a whine and snapping against the metal of the floor in small detonations before I wrapped my will about it and dragged it back inside to cycle around my body. I paid careful attention to my new arm as I did, and noticed the electricity that escaped from there was a slightly different shade than the rest. While the escaping arcs from the rest of my body were on the verge between blue and violet, with a white core, those that escaped my arm seemed to be mostly core, the white jagged line being thicker.

With the energy under control, I turned my mind’s eye inwards to focus on my channels. I could feel them as a network running through my body, but it was not the general system I was interested in. Instead, I turned my gaze to the newest addition. Following my channels beyond the point at which flesh met metal, I found... something. Inside the arm, there were no channels like I was used to, no physical lines mimicked my body’s original systems. Instead, what I found seemed closer to my Focus or Exemplar, things that did not quite exist as physical things, but rather semi-conceptual, spiritual additions. Geometric lines of sharp light filled the arm, and while they looked beyond complicated to me, they were also somehow simple, and where my lightning ran through them, it got amplified. Energy does not come from nowhere, and I could not imagine that my new limb was pulling in energy on its own, at least not to a such a degree. DUK3 had said the material had a higher capacity than flesh but took far longer to fill, after all. Which meant something else was going on; it almost felt like more of my Praxis was being converted, but I felt no decrease in flow or increase in expenditure. Was it possible that the way I normally used my energy was just... wasteful? I watched as the coruscating floor flowed out of my arm to re-join my energy system and it soon lost that bright core, becoming as it was elsewhere.

I wondered whether it was possible to increase my efficiency, if that was what it was, to learn from the design within my arm? I knew it was possible to re-burn the energy circulation system, even if the idea of doing so made me shudder. The last time, I had only been held back from the edge of death by the phoenix derived torture serum I had been injected with. Maybe... I could get my hands on more? Or ask the Apex of the Mending Flesh for help.

Either way, there was nothing I could do about it at that moment, so I shook the thoughts free and turned my attention back to my arm. Over the course of the next ten minutes, I slowly built the energy I was pulling through my Focus to what I had accepted as my upper maximum, being careful to watch for signs of strain in my arm. But much to my delight, even at full power, the limb held up without issue. DUK3 had said it would be fine, even at Pinnacle, but after having the last one explode, I had been a little hesitant to simply accept that, but it was apparent that my caution was unneeded.

Taking a deep breath, I turned my mind to my Exemplar, the now tiny neon frog sat lotus-posed in my second centre. I froze, remembering my sword. The last time I had compressed time with something that extended beyond my body, it had been sheared off by the differential. Did my new arm count as part of my body, for the purpose of my Path, or had I doomed myself to losing another limb the moment I tried to use it? There was no way I was not using my Path, so if it came down to it, I would need to wait for my plain old fleshy arm to be regrown. But, having learned my lesson, I knew I had to test it.

Pushing Praxis through my Exemplar, I made myself stay as still as possible as time accumulated around me. Sliding my awareness over the shivering edge of the aura, I let out a sigh as I found it flowing around my latest addition, and much like my lightning, I found the effect magnified, pushing further from my body than anywhere else. Sensing the ballooning aura around my left forearm, I grinned as something occurred to me: If I could shrink my aura to compress time, could I expand it, and take a loss to compression?

Normally, when I compressed my time aura, I pulled it close about me with an effort of will, but this time, I pushed, concentrating on the already expanded coverage of my arm. Pushing was significantly easier than pulling was, and within moments, I found myself with an area around my extended arm that was five times larger than the rest of me. I grinned, still being careful not to move too much; while the arm was certainly part of my body, messing with time differentials could still be dangerous.

Now that I had a proof of concept, there was one other thing I wanted to try. Taking another breath, I both pushed and pulled, trying to shape the aura, to extend out and away from me in a point from my arm while pulling the rest tight. It was a struggle, but after several moments of absolute focus, I had a spike of time aura extending away from my hand, but I could feel the effort stretching the bounds of my concentration, and I knew I would need a lot of practice before I could use it in combat. Letting my Exemplar fall away, I dropped my Focus and stretched, noticing my damp skin for the first time. Despite my lack of movement, it looked like the effort of manipulating my abilities, along with the potential danger had been more than enough to make me sweat.

But I felt like I had made real progress, and a glance at my Exemplar showed that after a week of being stuck, I had suddenly jumped up to 15% completion, the excessive energy of the world already having allowed me to fill it exceedingly fast.

Letting out a woop, I punched the air, excited to be making progress again, and despite the wait I knew was coming before I could get to the meat of my arm’s abilities, the incidental benefits were enough on their own to almost completely make me forget about it.

I wondered if learning the Sigil from Lucas would provide similar benefits, but either way, I knew that when I finally made it back to my adopted home, I was going to be significantly stronger, and certainly better practiced with my abilities. With the daily testing by the two demi-Ascended beings, and the boost to my recovery rates, I might even have enough time to fully incorporate my Exemplar and take a step onto my Foundation.

My friends were in for a real surprise... whenever I made it back.