A thunderous boom sounded in the distance.

Hearing it, an aged bearded man in robes with a hardened expression called out to the war party of hundreds, “Get ready, we’re close!”

The army of horned warriors raised their weapons and spirits as they prepared to move out. The eldest of them stepped forward as he exclaimed, “Move out and surround the region! We cannot let this Fallen escape! Should we fail, consider our lives forfeit and our ancestors shamed!”

A surging wave of Kaijin warriors spread out to cover as much ground as they can. Moving quickly to encircle the area where the explosive boom originated.

Several non-Kaijin fighters moved along with the old man, Jortus. One of them, a blonde man wearing a hood and light leathers with a bow at his back and quiver at his side, stepped forward and asked, “We never really had a good to chance to talk, old man, but what exactly are we fighting? I didn’t wanna bring it up earlier with all of Rakai’s folk glaring like death. Them horned folk always seemed so easy-going, so it was quite a shock seeing all of them bloodthirsty like Orcs.”

Jortus looked at the blonde archer then looked towards their destination as he answered, “Your worries are understandable, Geral. The Kaijin are a simple and affable people, but nothing riles them more than what we’re about to face. You’re young, so you may not know this, but the Fallen; as the Kaijin calls them, are… in the most basic sense, entities that have breached our world from the Outrealm.”

Geral and some of the others behind them wore a shocked expression when they heard this revelation.

“You mean… it’s an Outworlder?”

Scrunching his brows, Jortus raised his hand to cup his chin while mulling over on how to answer. “Hmm… not quite.”

“It’s not? Then…” Geral visibly shuddered when he tried to voice his next words, “…Niskari?”

The others tensed upon hearing the word. A very few even shivered with an expression of fear.

“No.” The simple short answer made the others ease up with relief.

“How do I put it… it’s not Niskari, but at the same time… it could be just as bad.”

His words this time brought confusion to some of the group.

“The Fallen, as the Kaijin describe, are entities that manage to breach the Materium of our world but cannot completely manifest. Unlike Outworlders who are physically here, the Fallen are… parts of a being that cannot be physically here.”

As they continued to move, Jortus reached down to grab some earth as he wove mana to manipulate it on his hand to showcase his explanation.

“As some of you know, there’s a parasitic worm in the Green Cradle that lives within beasts called the Eye Wart. It has several brains, but one main brain. As long as this main brain is undamaged, the worm can continually regrow its entire body. It even has the uncanny ability to become able to live in any environment as long as its host can live in said environment.”

The earth on Jortus’ hand turned into a flat bean-shaped creature with a spider-like head. The creature made of dirt showed itself getting decapitated then regrowing its body.

“Now let’s say the worm wants to live in an acidic pool. What does it do? The worm finds a host living in the pool and enters it before it gets completely dissolved by the acid. Once it regrows in the host’s body and consumes parts of it, the acid can longer harm it.”

The worm made of dirt then shrunk to show as if it was swimming then it got swallowed by a lizard-like creature. Then finally it showed the worm exiting the creature to show it was fine. After the display, Jortus simply let earth fall from his hand.

“It’s a rough comparison, but that’s the simplest way to put it. The Fallen enter our world using an object here as a catalyst then try to manifest themselves over time. There are details regarding the naming and types, but to summarize; they usually grow through four different stages that the Kaijin have named Seed, Sprout, Bloom, and finally… Disaster.”

Nodding in understanding at this new information, Geral had one last thing he wanted to confirm.

“Why do they call the last stage, Disaster?”

At this question, Jortus stopped and turned to face the others with seriousness in his expression. They wondered what he was going to say that could be so serious, but they could never be prepared for what he would say next as it had shaken them to their core.

“Because that’s what they are… Few know this outside of mage circles, but what I showed you all earlier was also how the Niskarii came to be in our world. Now you all understand why this situation is so serious. The creature we’re facing is a Bloom… on the verge of becoming a Disaster.”

***

The beast was panting hard. The situation was so sudden the adrenaline in its body was still flowing.

It looked down at its right palm and saw the little white fluffball it was able to catch with its eyes closed, but slowly breathing. It turned the pup over to see if it was alright and could find no visible injuries.

It then looked at its outstretched arm then slowly observed the rest of its body. When it previously changed back into the grey beast, it found that it couldn’t completely transform back into the giant beast down to the exact composition.

Normally, when it likes the composition of a genetic combination, it can systematically save the information in order to easily access it the next time it wants to transform into it. An example would be its quadrupedal form with the spiral horn when it first fought a maned beast. Saving that form would now let it morph into it at any time with little to no alteration in the genetic composition.

This is the jelly’s form composition storage that allows it to keep preset transformations until it decides on a gene anchor.

However, the current specialized form it’s using cannot be stored for whatever reason, so the jelly’s attempts to recreate it were all trial and error. This left it dissatisfied since until it decides on a gene anchor, it couldn’t construct an optimized and stable body like that of an actual living creature.

While the little ones fed, it took its time studying what caused it to change the last time and confirmed the main factor to be stress. It also discovered that this state is governed by a program. The jelly knew at the back of its mind that it was an artificial creation, that it was designed for the purpose of assimilating genetic data.

It didn’t know why it was given this purpose nor did it truly care since it had a lot of freedom anyway, or at least it believed so, but regardless it knew its creators left some biological programming within it.

It believed that most of these programs were designed for its benefit, as it didn’t make sense to it to create a program that would interfere with its function. However, it also believed that some of the programs might not have been properly attuned.

That was why it took measures in case the previous program would activate once again should it experience increased levels of anxiety or stress. The sudden increase in its metabolic rate and levels of adrenaline had caused most of its mental capacity to previously shut down, so it judged that this was a lapse in the programming and took certain actions.

For one, it created its own genetic programming where if the “stress programming” activated, another program would trigger alongside it to augment some factors within its parasympathetic nervous system, the system that governs the regulation of metabolism and relaxation.

This way, it wouldn’t interfere with the program’s initiation allowing it to change into the massive form while lowering the degree its body would consume vitality and allowing it to retain some of its consciousness.

This was actually a risky move due to it still being in an experimental stage, but considering it was conscious enough to carefully catch and inspect the little pup, the jelly considered the experiment a success.

The creature, whose head is currently stuck within a tree trunk, remained unmoving as if it was dead.

Normally this would be a good thing, but the jelly’s instincts told it that the creature was somehow still alive and that it shouldn’t let its guard down.

Its intuition proven right; the creature’s body started twitching as its four arms took hold of the edges of where its head was stuck. With surreal strength you wouldn’t expect from such skinny limbs, it tore open the hole of the trunk and pulled out its crushed head.

The jelly didn’t act immediately out of caution but it was surprised to see steam rising from its crumpled skull. It then became horrified when it saw one of the bulbs around the creature’s body shrinking and shriveling until it completely disappeared. When the bulb was completely gone, the creature’s head had completely reformed along with its horns.

Its eyes glowed menacingly red with anger towards the beast before it, its superior size not deterring it in the slightest.

Its limbs started changing as it grew sharp and bony spikes arounds its joints and a carapace grew around its arms, legs, and its main body forming a chitin-like armor. The last thing to form was a barbed tail with pincers that grew out from behind its lower body.

If the creature already looked hideous before, then its current form simply looked like something straight out of a nightmare.

The jelly tensed as the creature completed its transformation and looked at it in complete contempt.

This time it would no longer be caught by surprise. The second round to this onslaught would begin.

***