Lin Huang was ‘weird as fuck’, or so said each and every nurse around. The doctor taking care of him even apologised and tried to put it in milder terms, but it was pretty obvious humans were stranged to him now. He didn’t exactly blame them, though the constant crass language was apparently commonplace in the country rather than something specially directed at him.

He had been quite surprised to wake up with one hand encased in metal he could not break, and hardly move from it’s seemingly magnetic lock, but he had already been warned that it was unlikely he’d be the only one to have surpassed the system’s expectations while inside the tutorial, though Lucy assured him it was impossible for someone to be directly better than him outside of strategic value and utility.

On the other hand, pun intended, he also had a nutritious serum being directly injected in his body by what seemed to be an I.V and constantly visited by two doctors and a couple of nurses who repeatedly fought against the toxins and curses on his wounds, the later keeping them topped with potions and handling the equipment for the semi-cirurgical process of cutting around the necrotic flesh while casting healing magic.

Despite the hospital, which was apparently an enchanted building offered by the system, reducing constant damages and doubling recovery speed, at the end it had simply not been him controlling his body but the demon’s technique, so even without the cuff he would be stuck to the bed due to being almost as rotten as a corpse.

Normally he would have panicked a lot harder when being told that he’d actually developed several tumorous growths through most of his digestive system, but fantasyland made cancer super treatable. Those had been gotten rid off almost immediately, somehow being used as fuel for recovering his body, which was mostly why he could even speak at the moment.

Still, despite all that, he had not expected someone to see right through him considering it had apparently not even been a day since he had arrived.

“Look, having a demon with you is a problem, sure, but as long as you put enough contingencies in place it can be dealt with.” Aki shrugged, looking directly at the ghostly female floating besides him. “And yes, I can see you. Mostly a silhouette and the energy signature though.” He said when she started to point at herself in question.

Having come out and immediately causing shock when referring to the elephant in the room first, the young man had not reacted as he tried and failed to summon his sword, the shackle seemingly doing a lot more than he’d first thought. When the silence lazily stretched, he could only admit that it was rather unlikely the fair skinned man in front of him had bad intentions towards him.

“Did you also get an inheritance?” This was the only thing he could think of, so he ended up blurting it out.

“Technically, I'm it’s progenitor or something, but yes. A shame you don’t unlock paths because of the skill rarity, but mine’s already a cheat, so I imagine someone that got it even better is likely doing some mad shit now.” He calmly nodded and explained. “I take it your’s is either related to some ancient pact or directly improves your soulspaces and it’s growth. You did well to get here with what I imagine should be at least a thousand skill points, maybe even a stat past 100, but that also raises the question on whether you have started on the path of a heretic.”

This made him look at his demon, who only shivered a bit.

“I don’t think I have. What are you referring to?” He asked, thinking of some early warnings from the system.

“You should have noticed by now that your demon is taking something from everything you kill and that your growth is faster than it should be, right? Well, that’s aether, the building blocks of what the system uses and something that people have an intrinsic need for, with a linear increase made by stats and skills, with some jumps by special path rewards and complete bullshit skills that directly grant you ridiculous advantages. If you don’t have enough, you basically eat yourself until you turn to dust, too much and you explode, but a smaller deficit can still make growing much harder while a surplus....” He trailed off, his explanation taking to light plenty of moments where he learned new techniques more easily and how Lucy could barely help him in combat despite claiming to be much stronger.

“You mean this whole time I'm becoming your charger and eventually I will be forced into stronger and stronger environments until you stop starving?” He questioned the demon, the continued dishonesty unexpected after what they’d been through, especially against the gigantic king of the forest in the Impossible trial.

“To be fair, you’re partially demonic as well, so you would die much more quickly without me.” Rebutted the golden haired beauty who was definitely flaring a lot of charm right now.

“She means without someone to help you take in the necessary aether. You would probably figure it out eventually, but it’s unlikely you’d retain sanity. Unless you had a steady source from which to draw from.” Said the young man, a big block of notifications appearing in front of the shackled man.

Basically, it was a series of contracts he could sign. The more freedom he gave up the more Aether he’d receive. The first one was just a non-agression pact, but the last was basically slavery. Despite the ambiguous form of addressing amounts as ‘drops’ however, Lucy was drooling so much that he felt like accepting the slavery contract there and then.

Those were just the demon’s feelings passing through their empatic link however, so he wouldn’t do anything so stupid, but upon giving her a questioning glance, the demoness imediately turned into her lecturing mode, though the drool didn’t exactly help with her image.

“Lin huang, do you know how much aether it takes to condense a drop? Just on that damned tutorial there could have been no more than fifty or a hundred to construct and maintain everything, from monsters to rewards to the salary paid to those guides!” She said, basically shaking with excitement despite her best efforts. “And this beautiful and all powerful lord wishes to buy our services for a monthly quota of FIVE DROPS A MONTH! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MANY PLANETS THAT’S WORTH PER CENTURY?! MORE THAN YOUR PUNY SOLAR SYSTEM HAS, THAT’S HOW MUCH!!!” As she continued talking, the calm fasade crumbled like an old wall being hit by a wrecking ball, her face glued to his as she shouted and spit on him much like a blue haired scientist talking about sauce.

……

After what had been an almost complete victory over a second heroic archetype, Aki was both quite happy and slightly surprised. He had not expected the demoness to count their salary per century, as he himself had only been thinking about the first decade of service stipulated in any of the contracts, though the last one was lifelong instead. At any point, he had not feared anything when paying their first salary with anticipation, though that was mostly because it sped up the demon’s recuperation to the point that she could help heal her distant asian cousin.

Really, finding someone that had already started changing as much as the other boy would probably be hard, and he himself didn’t have anything facilitating such transformations, but seeing that the one who truly completed the tutorial was even more susceptible to changes by aether exposure made him deeply wonder what he’d need to do to obtain a new body type.

Certainly he couldn’t be the only one without any particular attachment to humanity, though he was vain enough to want to keep a similar appearance, so perhaps the system could help him with that? Or better yet, he could collect the essence of several monsters from their soul structure and integrate certain parts into his own structure so as to naturally have better muscles, organs, eyes and all of that without having to repeatedly hypnotize himself during surgery.

Such a procedure could theoretically work for his whole body, yet conducting it without the capability of surviving solely with his soul, in a damaged state that is, would be the same as directly killing himself as he went for the brain area. To begin with, it wouldn’t even be as simple as just eating creatures alive or throwing them into some kind of caustic hellscape, he’d have to dissect their physical and metaphysical till his understanding reached a proper level before even thinking of implanting them.

Then again, he’d already asked Lea and she’d readily admitted that there were more advanced versions for each stat. Several for each grade actually, as those were specialisations and not complete upgrades most of the time. Though the latter existed, they were even rarer than normal specialisations and basically impossible to obtain. There was no bullshit about the allrounder being weaker despite being the same grade, no, they were simply myth for all that people cared about.

What that meant for him however, was that developing a shapeshifting spell that could temporarily give him these specialisations would allow for an astronomical increase in utility and tactical power over any given situation he could prepare for.

This notion would have normally been something that’d make him sigh, become unmotivated over having to do a science project and such, but he was actually quite excited about turning monsters into possible resources. Perhaps he’d even figure out poisons to wipe out whole species, bacteria that could steal away specific nutrients, microfauna that could be made into a proper hivemind under….

Okay, maybe not the last one, but the rest was fair game as long as he produced measures against their results first.

Either way, he had a lot to do and so little time. After all, he had just arrived at Heretic XXV, which lead him to receiving a notification about an incoming tribulation. Honestly, this was just what he needed at the moment.

After his family died, he’d found joy in very few things. Food was still delightful as he could literally force his mouth and brain to register the taste, fragrance and etc, while sex turned out to be a whole can of worms, but his main sources of joy were other two things.

Magic, with his ability to control, change and influence reality into whatever shape he wished, was literally most of what he’d ever dreamed over his whole life.

And then there was killing. Battle was enjoyable, he liked the exertion and the sense of freedom, but he had always known ever since little that there was something about him that made him rather unsuited to be his mother’s child. Someone else could perhaps point out the doubt, the weight of taking another life or even the mess of gore and feces, but he saw the moment where he had absolute control over a whole life, no matter how insignificant, and how much suffering, pain and hatred it’d cause to just destroy that spark of possibility.

During the whole dungeon debacle, he’d even entered some sort of trance even, yet he’d been distracted by his anger and emotional pain, so there’d not been much to comment on, but he was pretty sure that his tastes were good part of the reason for his skill called Psychopath to have gone over level 150 already. The eighteen levels he’d just earned on it for having these thoughts also not the best of signs.

Still, he was no slave to his desires, nor so numb that he’d resort to pleasure at the slightest moment of calm over his mind. Surely a lot of people were going through even worse shit and just smiling anyway or even huddling in corners while catatonic.

Perhaps they did not need to deal with a screaming and cursing Lea as she shouted through their connection about him not telling her that he’d actually robbed the system of an Aether source, but he was fine with this. She was so shocked because she cared, even if a little, for him as well, as she couldn’t actually be anywhere nearby during his tribulation or it’d grow stronger instead.

Without his general lack of levels, he wasn’t even sure he’d have a chance at winning this actually, but his stats and skills would have to do against what the system considered to be a fighter that could counter him.