As I dislodged my poleaxe from the wall, I had an opportunity to take a proper look at it. Its colour was difficult to ascertain due to the lack of proper light, but I guessed it to be close to the darkest, venous blood. The weapon itself apparently did not sustain any damages from the throw, and it felt as familiar as a part of my body when I held it in my hands.

I tried to withdraw the energy I had infused the poleaxe with, but it ignored my call. I felt ill, when I thought what could have happened if I had not discovered that I could absorb some power from my kills. I estimated that a chance to find other Beating Iceheart gems to recharge myself was far too low.

Having ascertained that I still had a weapon, and even improved it, I turned my attention towards my injuries. Torn and twisted tissues in my shoulder had displaced the joint, and I had to smash it against a nearby pillar to set it right.

The pillar had several cracks in it by the time I got rid of crude quickfix I had applied while in combat.

Then I carefully reconnected and repaired all the damaged parts. Another option was to recreate the whole shoulder from scratch, but that would have taken ages to do it properly. And I was not even sure, if I was actually able to do that without fully remaking my whole body.

After that I checked my leg. Huh, that was a nice cut. I had made my skin as strong as possible while keeping it flexible and sensitive enough, so that was still on the level of my best imitation of modified carbon nanosheets. And it was actually cut through, those were amazing claws those creatures had. While it did not actually hinder me, what drew my attention was blood.

Originally, when I had formed my body, I created a biorobot. It had no blood, except for channels for circulating necessary repair materials, digestion and excretion in case of food consumption. But after the body-spirit fusion with the body makeover, something I had not previously noticed, apparently changed.

From the cut, down my leg, tickled a thin line of blood. It seemed to be of proper bloody red colour, which was reassuring. Blue would mean I was a horseshoe crab or something, which would be disagreeable.

What was wrong was the glow. Yep, my blood, oddly thick like a syrup, was glowing. Like goddamn lava. Magma run through our veins, my ass.

As I studied the few drops that had dropped, I could feel that they contained dense magical energy. Well, and emitted a shitload of a whole variety of stuff, including radiation and other particles I was not sure about. Being capable of observing neutrinos and other particles without the knowledge to recognize those would likely make hordes of physicists die of envy and anger, I am sure.

Luckily, those blood drops still counted as parts of me, so I simply reabsorbed them. Hopefully there was no ionizing radiation and no nasty aftereffects of my passing remained. Being a walking potential radiation hazard would be plainly inconvenient in life.

“Hgrsssh” - I had totally forgotten about one crippled but still alive enemy, when a loud gurgling hiss reminded me of it. I had smashed all of its limbs on one side, so that it remained there where it crashed.

I tried to crack my finger joints in anticipation for some research, when I noticed that my joints did not pop any more. Damn that robotlike body. Good that I was not a fan of snuff tobacco, otherwise that would be a total bummer, as I doubted I could sneeze now either.

It took some time to drag all the corpses to the place where the wounded specimen lay. Their huge build made them really cumbersome to drag around, and the long limbs got stuck whenever possible. All the while the last survivor kept trying to take a swing at me with its intact legs, so I had to break those too.

Finally, in front of me was a row of five creatures, on the far left was the living one left for last. Now I could observe them without any annoying fog that they used to emit. Not having to guard against snapping pharyngial jaws was a welcome change too.

I started mumbling to myself as I began the research, remembering the stuff from school, TV and magazines - “Reptilian looking head covered in narrow but thick greyish scales. No ears, eyes with elongated pupils protected by third eyelids. Weird, is it warm-blooded? No, even that does not explain how it survives in such cold…”

“Body and legs covered in fur. Or, ugh, I think it is fur, what’s with that ice?”, I complained as I had to use my poleaxe to break through the mass of ice that formed a veritable carapace over the fur spikes - “Yes, thick, rather crude fur. Mmm, there are holes in the surface of the body? Mist-generating glands perhaps? Or used to help to form the ice layer? Spiracles like in insects for breathing?”

After the basic body examination, during which I found that the excretion was likely done through the gland below the neck, I reviewed the rest of the body.

Those five pairs of long legs, arching above the back like those of a spider’s posed special interest. Peculiar physique that was, especially considering the size reaching almost three meters in length and one-eighty in height - slightly larger than I originally perceived. Not to mention that no modern animals on Earth had exactly ten legs.

Limbs had rather short, but thick and very sharp claws at the end. Those thick callused knuckles on four fingers made it likely able of knuckle-walking like some apes, giant anteaters and ground sloths - likely to protect the claws from damage when those were not needed.

“What is going on with that?”, I complained as I finished the external examination - “Analogous traits caused by convergent evolution? Random mutations? Magical or alchemical creations? Tiny green men doing experiments in flying saucers? Fuck that shit, I am quitting the job, haha! Pity I am not employed though, sigh.”

External examination concluded, I hefted my poleaxe. It was time to dissect these spiderlizards. Or lizardspiders. Spizards?

“Spirds”, I said aloud, checking how it sounds - “Good enough.”