Chapter 22:

26 Days After Spring’s Beginning

286 Days After The Ra’tok Attack Amia Village

Kalleo, Va’ura Hive

Rua Desert, Rhia Territory

I wake in a viscous liquid, my eyesight filled with an opaque gray. I inhale on reflex, getting a lungful of the liquid. It tastes sickly sweet, and I gag a little.

Desperately, I thrash around and try to find a way out. Which way is up?

I can’t tell, my mind already starting to panic, my lungs burning and straining from the lack of oxygen.

My fingernails scratch a wall in front of me, and I kick myself over to it. I can’t see through it, and I find it increasingly harder to muster strength to try and break through its fleshy surface. I’m going to drown!

Then my mind flashes back to the Traits I had gained. I close my eyes, fighting back the pressing darkness of unconsciousness. I need to breathe, I need to be able to breath this substance.

I can feel my katra shifting, moving around my body in a strange fashion. It clusters around my lungs, mouth and throat, covering them.

I instinctively press my will onto the Gray katra, commanding, Adapt.

Then I can feel a tingling in my mouth, throat and lungs. The katra soaks into them, and I somehow know that something has changed about my physiology.

I inhale, taking a deep breath.

I can feel the slimy liquid pass into my mouth, flowing down my throat and into my lungs. I can feel my lungs filtering it, and then releasing the fluid out of newly shaped gills on my back. There is a strange itch from the gills, and I can’t say I like it.

The katra burn is intense. I can feel the little katra I was able to recover already drying up. Less than a minute is all I have.

With desperation, I send some of my remaining katra to my bandaged hand, the bone gauntlet forming around it. I pull my arm back, then shove forward against the heavy resistance of the liquid.

My clawed fingers pierce the the wall, sinking through it. I drag them downwards, opening a large rent in the strange organic wall. The liquid rushes out, flowing through the tear.

I let the current pull me out of the rent, passing through its torn edges, I flop on the ground. It is at that moment that my Adaption runs out, and I can feel my body reverting back to its original state.

Coughing up the strange liquid, I can feel cold air brushing up against my naked skin. The liquid pours out from behind me, hitting my back and splattering.

I crack open my eyes, blue light stinging them.

Blinking rapidly, I try to stand, but slip on the viscous liquid. Falling back to my hands and knees, exhausted, I press my head into the wet brick floor. The sound of the liquid flowing out of the tear fills my mind.

I hear a door opening, then thumping sounds. A gravelly baritone speaks, “Kardin! Are you okay?”

I can feel large, rough hands picking me up, they drag me away from the liquid. I am propped up against a wall. I spit, getting the sickly sweet tasting liquid out of my mouth. It tastes kinda rotten.

I squint against the blue light, a blurry, simian face coming into focus.

Weakly, I reach out an arm, my hand brushing against the side of his head and smearing some of the liquid on it. “Kamar, is that you?”

Kamar speaks again, but his voice is strangely out of tune with his mouth, his lips moving, and the sound coming a few seconds after. “Yes, it’s me Kardin. Can you focus on my finger?”

He holds up one of his secondary hands, unfurling it from his chest. Holding up a thin, long finger.

I try to focus on it, but it looks blurry and the more I look at it, the more it starts to double. He moves it back and forth, making it worse.

Closing my eyes, I shake my head, “No.”

Kamar grunts, and shakes my shoulder, my head pops back up. I didn’t even realize I was falling asleep.

I try to focus on his face, but I find that there are two of him. That’s not good.

In his disconnected voice, he says, “What do you remember? Can you tell me?”

It takes me a second, my brain trying to catch up. “I was eating the… Spirit Fruits. Then I… fell asleep?”

Kamar chuckles a little, “Yes, you did fall asleep. But it would seem that you did more than just that.”

He shifts his bulk to the side, giving me a clear view of what I clawed my way out of.

It is a fleshy bubble, the viscous liquid spilling out on the floor from it, no longer flowing. It is roughly the size of a human, but laying attached to the ground by strands of Gray gunk. Thick strands have suckered themselves on the nearby table, chair and wall, the deflated sack laying in the center of them.

It takes me a second to realize what it is.

“That’s… a cocoon.” I say, my mind still trying to catch up with reality. My brain’s trying to adjust to my new body, isn’t it?

Kamar rumbles, “Yes. After you fell asleep, one of the Thri-kreen servants came in with your clothes. From what I was told, you were secreeting gray sludge, and it eventually hardened around you. I wanted to get you out, but the Thri-kreen stopped me. The Queen said you were undergoing metamorphosis, that you were changing. I’m sorry.”

I blink, his face coming back into focus. I can see the craggy lines of age on his gorilla face, and the regret, “Sorry for what?”

“Give me a second.” He lumbers off, and comes back with a blanket, which he lays over my naked, shivering frame. He holds up a shiny, polished piece of metal, giving me a look at my face.

My hair is plastered to my skull, but I can tell that it has grown incredibly long. The bottom half of my hair is my normal dark blackish brown, but the top… It is a steely gray.

My eyes seem to pulse with an inner, dim light. The Gray katra pupils standing out even more.

My skin though, it is pale and veiny, as if I haven’t seen a day of sun. My face is gaunt, and when I inspect the rest of my body, there isn’t an ounce of fat, but there are thick, corded muscles. I have an athletic physique, built for running and acrobatics.

This is my Steel body.

The thought’s meaning hits a few second later. I have reached the Steel Realm, from Lowbronze to a Steel.

Excited, I close my eyes. I check my channels. Some of my excitement vanishes swiftly, like a free flying kite on the wind. They are still shattered.

My Katra channels, that run through the entirety of my body, are still broken. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing, they haven’t really hindered me much and seem to bring some bonuses.

If I didn’t have shattered channels, I doubt I would have my Empowered Strength ability, or even the slow healing ability. I might very much be dead if it wasn’t for the fact that my body has been constantly soaked in my Gray katra.

I check my core, and find that strange wall that surrounded my glove from before where my core is, but now I can easily push my mind through it.

I look down at my planet, its bright blue oceans standing out against the darkness, the side facing away from the sun shaded in shadow.

I look through it, to my core beneath.

It has shrunk again, the crust expanding to compensate for it. It stands hallow, the strands of the cyclone lashing at the sides of my core slowly, taking in a tiny bit of Vital Aura.

I’m a Lowsteel. I must have been off about my estimation of how potent the fruit was. I stop to think for a second, the message from the “system” flashing in my mind. Or some of it was used to create traits. Does that mean if I want all three traits each time I move into another realm, I will need extra katra?

It was a question to remember. The message had said up to 3 traits could be gained, which leads me to believe that it is possible to get none. I want to get 3 traits every time.

I move my mind’s eye back to the real world, opening my eyes. Now that I am a Steel, it’s going to get a lot harder to rank up.

Looking back at Kamar, I find it easier to focus on him. There are no longer two of him, and I can make out his features clearly. “I’m okay now.”

Kamar grunts, saying, “Let’s go get you cleaned up and find some clothes that will fit you.”

He holds out one of his huge forearms. I grab onto it, and he helps hoist me to my feet.

My knees wobble and my legs shake, but I am able to stand. I lean on Kamar, and we start walking towards the door.

A few steps from the door, my foot hits the ground, and flies out from under me. I start falling backwards, the blanket slipping off of me.

Panicked, I move my arms behind me.

Then I stop moving, my back arched so I can look at the scale brick floor, and my other foot out in front of me. The blanket flutters to the ground with a rustle of cloth.

I am balancing on one foot, my leg straight and holding up my body.

“This is… strange.” I mutter, the second of panic from falling backwards fading.

I move my foot back to the ground, standing on two feet. I can feel all of my muscles pulling and stretching, my joints working in sync.

Kamar looks at me in surprise, one of his blocky, hairy eyebrows raised.

I hold out my left arm, and look at my fingers. They are long and slender, the nails long from my time spent in the cocoon. I bend my index finger, and it easily curls up with the rest of my hand, my other fingers not even moving a centimeter.

“Wow,” I say, mystified by this new development. This must be my Aberrant Resilience.

Kamar hands me the blanket from the floor, and I wrap it around my midsection.

He nudges me towards the door, muttering, “You can explain once you get dressed.”

I nod, and he leads me through the door.

I look at myself in the mirror, my black and gray hair tied up behind my head. The scar I had gotten from the Siege of Tarna adorning my cheek. My pale, gaunt and veiny face stares back at me, and when I remember my reflection all those months ago, I can only say I look similar to it.

Is this really me now? I run a finger along the scar on my cheek, the fingernails now having been trimmed.

I look down at my chest, which is riddled with scar tissue, next to little normal skin left. There is the massive knot of flesh on my shoulder, where the Tulnar had pierced it. There were the long rakes of flesh over my gut, where the giant chimera had clawed open my stomach.

My entire frame is covered in scars, some old, others from my recent battles.

I trace a curved scar over my heart, Some still from that night.

My mind is pulled back to reality by Kamar, who had been thinking on what I told him.

“So, you have entered the Steel Realm? And that display before was your Steel body?”