“Kyr you need to get out of here before it eats you.” The ancestor informed him.

“I’m trying.” Kyrion pulled at his limbs, only for pain to shoot through him.

The maw began to descend.

“This is the fifth time. The fifth bloody time. Turtle thing. Don’t you know what tends to happen to those who try to eat me? You’d think I was poisonous or something.” Kyrion struggled as he felt his energy flow into the l plants.

“Eighth actually.You aren’t counting the mushroom, giant trap plant, and betrayer.” The ancestor informed Kyrion.

“D-Do I taste delicious? Agg!” Kyrion looked at his arm, considering if he should chew it off as pain shot through him. That’s when it hit him.

As the plants pulled power from him, he pulled from the plants. And his pull was greedier and faster than the plants could handle.

The trees began to wither before disintegrating into nothing. As the power entered Kyrion’s body, he felt a small buildup. Still, the branches and thorns that cut into him had fallen off, giving him more time to work.

As Kyrion landed, two vines shot from the ground and wrapped around his legs to drain again.

“Really!” Kyrion yelled as the maw continued to fall. From there, he began to pull from these vines only to discover that these had much more D.E. and shared a source.

The maw increased in speed as though it was now in a hurry.

“No! Get back you overgrown snail!”

“I am a tortoise, you insignificant worm.”

“Listen buddy.”

“I am not a dog!”

Kyrion’s left eye twitched as he imagined a tortoise playing fetch and rolling over for belly rubs.

“Listen. I’ve already committed to eating two species to near extinction and now you’re going to give me a taste for Humongous Turtles.”

“Tiny human can’t eat Tortoise lord Toragellion.”

“Listen, Tora. I’m a eat you. If you keep coming towards me I’ll be slow about it.” Kyrion continued to pull from the plants, draining him and the plants around them in an explosion of black triangles. Kyrion was unpinned and free.

Toragellion sped up and attempted to bite Kyrion’s head off.

Kyrion moved out of the way at the last moment as the maw snapped closed. As he evaded the chomp, he placed a hand on Tora’s head and plunged it into the creature’s eye.

Tora raised its head in pain and began shaking in an attempt to knock the rider off.

Kyrion slowly sent fire through his left arm and condensed it. Burning the creature’s eye out, creating a solid red gauntlet around his right arm. From there, fire filled the beast and rushed into its core.

Then Tora brought his head down and crushed the wind out of Kyrion, or would have if he had lungs. Still, he was stunned and couldn’t think much as he forced fire into the tortoise. Each slam was harder than the last until it nearly turned the boy into a pulp.

As the head descended a fifth time, Kyrion rolled to the side and punched it in the beak with his right hand. He felt a snap as his limb fell to the side, nearly useless. He jumped to the side to avoid a head bash and landed on another patch of grass.

More vines shot from the ground and pieced through his body at various angles, pinning him in place temporarily. Still, with his right arm down, he wasn’t able to escape fast enough to evade the bottom of its beak slamming into his head. From there, a vine pierced his throat and pinned him in place like a fork.

As Kyrion lay stunned, he found himself unable to react as his body was lifted up and swallowed whole as though he were a snack. Removing the vines in his neck allowed him to move again, but it wasn’t enough to get out unharmed. His right arm was removed quickly as it was caught on razor-sharp teeth as he fell down the creature’s throat and moved into the digestive organs.

As Kyrion looked around him, he noticed that the creature had an actual anatomy. That delicious being he fought on the tower also had an anatomy. Kyrion looked at the gauntlet and scowled. From there, he felt he still had a bit of D.E(Divine Essence). A shame he didn’t have his various injectable medications and painkillers here. He could have made this creature trip out and possibly die from a stroke and crawled out. That, however, would take more medications than he usually kept in his domain, so it wouldn’t have worked. Not after he dumped his supply in the dragon.

“Drugs are out.” Kyrion sighed as he fell to the bottom of the creature’s throat. His expression was mischievous as he hadn’t hit the stomach, which meant he wasn’t dead yet.

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“I don’t know turtle anatomy. But this I think I can work with.” Kyrion started before the walls began to close in an attempt to push him forward.

As they did, pain shot through his stump as his D.E. was torn from his body due to the opening.

“Not that though.” Kyrion screeched as his energy was being digested. With his left hand, he plunged his left hand into the creature’s esophagus and let loose a burst of combustive flame that burst into the creature’s trachea. When it entered the creature’s lungs, the explosion spread rapidly and burst the organ altogether.

The tortoise yelled in pain as it was nowhere near as protected on the inside as on the outside. The following explosions chained throughout the creature’s body, which soon caused various organs to rupture.

As Kyrion tried to climb out, the creature’s core ruptured, and vine spikes filled the esophagus, turning him into a pincushion. He was trapped, dying, and helpless. Well, at least he went down fighting. If only he could just move through the creature’s space. Kyrion held out his right arm as the world around him faded.

“I just needed a bit more power,” Kyrion said as the D.E. around him began to flow into his body. The creature finally died, and now its power was flowing into him. From there, he could feel the thorns feast on him like a parasite. Insintualley, he knew that if these thorns killed him, he’d become its new puppet.

“I am nobody’s puppet.” Kyrion began to pull at the vines with the force of his will.

The thorns flowed in, thinking the boy had given up, and as its mind made contact with his head, Kyrion’s will proved to be much more ravenous than the thorns expected. The thorns fell to the ground before flowing into Kyrion’s right stump, forming an arm made from plant fibers. The plants tried to take over and found they couldn’t possess him. They attempted to flee and found themselves locked. They tried to break Kyrion’s mind only to shatter their own due to underestimating their target’s thin aura. It hadn’t factored in Kyrion’s currently insane energy drawing range. It was as if a plankton tried to eat a whale. At least, that was what he was projecting with D.E.

“You got greedy. You need a lot more thorns if you hope to beat me. Not that it matters as you should just give up. If not I’ll reduce you to ash instead of treating you like an ally.” Kyrion put on a cocky expression he had practiced with during his time as Rion.

The thorns in his arm stopped fighting and surrendered, and from there, the battle was over.

“Ancestor. I didn’t die. So you better keep your mouth shut.”

“Whatever do you mean?” The ancestor said smugly.

Kyrion scowled, realizing he had gotten played, but wasn’t too mad, as that had helped him survive. Kyrion then scowled and looked about. “You aren’t manipulating my emotions, are you?”

“My don’t you catch on quick. I needed you in an enraged or determined state to get you out of this alive.”

“Great…” Kyrion looked down and noticed his body was leaking D.E. as though he couldn’t heal himself. His tower was a ten-minute sprint away. But going by his math, he’d be long dead in seven going that way on foot.

Luckily, he could fly using fire D.E. The area around him was clear, and the beast had been fully absorbed. As Kyrion looked around, dread dawned on him as he saw that thousands of legs the size of hills slowly headed towards him, and as he looked up, he noticed an army of those giant tortoises, each covered in thorns. What he had beaten wasn’t special or the head of a pack. No, he managed to land on a grunt with grand ambition that had fallen behind, and now he had more incentive to run for his life.

Kyrion sprinted, his body still leaking D.E., a waste, one would think. Still, Kyrion ran and ran. As his body reached enough speed, he jumped and ignited the trails of D.E. left behind like a fuse of combustive power. When it finally connected with him, he managed to blast himself forward and upward. His body broke the sound barrier as he propelled forward, leaving behind a shockwave that left behind a trench.

Kyrion flew forward and forward. Soon, the tower was in sight, and he was headed straight towards it, his speed still increasing. As the building got bigger, Kyrion began to worry as he wasn’t slowing down. So, he tried to use his remaining power to slow his travel.

Nothing happened.

Kyrion plunged his hand forward. “Thorns form a shield! Slow me down!”

The boy commanded the thorns to cushion his landing. The vindictive servant pretended as though it couldn’t hear him.

“Ancestor? Any ideas?”

“You lasted a lot longer than we thought. I’ll be sure to put your confession on your gravestone.” The flippant figure appeared right in front of him, keeping pace.

Kyrion threw a punch at the mirage, and all it resulted in was his head now facing forward, making him more aerodynamic. So, instead of going splat, he might pierce the building. In fact, with his current velocity, he’d find out just how durable the tower is. Kyrion decided to at least shield his face as he flew into the window.

The window led him into the boss room on the eighth floor. An eight-armed rabbit humanoid hybrid plucked him out of the air as though he were some sort of sacred family heirloom falling to the floor. He could now see the use of eight arms as each exponentially slowed his fall.

Kyrion was fading as he looked the floor boss in the eye. “You better not try to eat me.” From there, his body, nearly empty of energy, entered a state of absorption as golden Divine Essence from all over the area flowed into his unconscious form, slowly but surely.

Gamodren scowled as he watched his student fight one of many giant creatures migrating after accidentally crashing into one. It wasn’t stronger than him, yet Kyrion struggled more than he should. From there, he noticed that his dear student had run out of energy before fighting the beast, and when it ate him, he considered jumping in to assist.

But no, Kyion had blown the creature up from the inside, having formed a part of his soul’s armor. It may have only been a gauntlet, but it was a start. The power behind it was intense, yet the wielder could not use it to his full potential. What was interesting was how he tamed his foe and made it a part of himself despite putting on a show of pitiful force. No, that wasn’t right.

“For me to feel that from this far away means it’s quite massive.” Mana is a diluted form of Divine Essence that experts get access to when they reach that tier.

Kyrion has had a bit in him since they met, albeit hidden in his nervous system, with a core hidden within his brain. He was informed of an atrophied fire affinity that had been burned out and removed in the past. It wasn’t something he could get back quickly, and it would take an absurd amount of resources to access it. As such, he hadn’t informed his father of it and had Kyrion learn how to boil water to exercise it slowly.

As Kyrion flew forward, Gamodren used his ability to remove the effects of gravity around his student before heading down the tower. Getting to that floor was quite a warmup, and his student’s bosses needed better tactics. Most still thought that some Squallia thing was still their leader.