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9 - Beginning the Ascent [Cherno]
🕑 Added 2023-01-17 21:07:13 +0000 UTC[LEFT ARM OF CHERNOBOG]
[Tags:]
Inseparable
Self-evolving Graft
Channeling Catalyst
Anathema Container
Outer God’s Touch
Living Item
[Details:]
This graft expresses amplified performance metrics based upon the holder’s attributes and archetype level.
This graft can contain an amount of Anathema based on the holder’s Entropy Tolerance.
Anathema dissipates at a significantly reduced rate while contained within this graft.
“Self-evolving graft?” she thought. Instantaneously, the arm’s description shifted; the tag vanished, and a new line appeared in the details section.
This graft’s characteristics will evolve autonomously based on the holder’s own growth. It may develop entirely new characteristics.
Backing out and opening up her suit’s listing, Krahe chuckled as she found an exact copy of that self-evolution line in its details section.
[TYPE-37 BIOSUIT]
Tags:
Torso
Second Skin
Regenerative Armor
Living Item
Details:
This graft serves as a second layer of skin, providing E3-grade Armor protection. Very effective against Kinetic and Lacerative-category damage. Ineffective against Energetic-category damage. Effective against Arcane-category damage.
This graft is semi-amorphous, and can regenerate back to its full size from a piece as small as 1x1cm.
This graft can be removed as if it were clothing. If left in high temperatures for extended periods of time, it will dry out and need to be soaked in water to regain its properties.
This graft passively feeds on the wearer’s lower-order bodily excretions such as sweat, dead skin cells, and arcane waste (Entropy). The holder may choose to actively feed the graft to accelerate its self-repair.
As a result of its natural metabolic processes, it bestows a slight improvement to Entropy and Anathema Dissipation. It reduces the holder’s fluid loss through sweating and frequency of higher-order bodily excretions.
This graft’s characteristics will evolve autonomously based on the holder’s own growth. It may develop entirely new characteristics.
It stood out that the biosuit’s details section repeated some of the same phrases she remembered seeing on its cold storage box. This, combined with the system’s interface design, made her certain that the system had at least partial access to her memories. It may have been unsettling, had she not lived a lifetime in a world where malware could steal one’s childhood memories for targeted advertising data.
“Damage categories, huh?” she thought.
Flashes of what each category meant ran through her head, mostly confirming what their names already suggested. Energetic meant fireballs and lightning. Kinetic meant bullets and mace strikes. Lacerative covered sword slashes and other attacks effective against flesh, but more interestingly, it brought to mind memory of the very smoke-blasts she’d summoned up to defend herself.
Arcane, however… Well, it was arcane. It implied the bypassing of cause-and-effect, inflicting harm directly, such as forming a ray of pure annihilating magic rather than creating a beam of flame. Its main advantage seemed to be also its weakness - that it always created the same end result, thus being neither weak nor strong against any type of defense.
What exactly those defenses were was a whole other matter… She didn’t know enough to even begin asking questions, and so didn’t worry about it. It was only reasonable to assume that the existence of magic also meant that, at some point, magical defenses would have been developed, if not outright force-fields then at least the use of otherwise offensive magic in a defensive context. She could feel that she was missing something, but not what it was. To her frustration, no convenient flash of knowledge came to elucidate this gap. Either way, she figured these damage categories were not literal in game-like terms, but rather a generalization; at least, she hoped that to be the case, considering the implications it could have otherwise.
She used rags to tie together a makeshift harness for the tablet, tying it to her shoulder before leaving the lab for what she hoped to be the final time. Slowly making her way up the city’s spiral structure, she found that it was largely deserted, but some signs of human habitation were present, mostly old campsites as if this place were a wilderness. Then again, if every major building threatened to be full of such horrid things as she’d been attacked by, it was no wonder that explorers would consider the streets a safer alternative. Unfortunately she soon came upon an area where a building had collapsed, barring passage. Looking around, she saw a tentative path forward and got to work, dragging rubble to the base of a wall, and using it as a ramp to parkour up to the building’s terrace. From where she stood, the only other places to go from the terrace were a hundred-meter drop to the next lowermost level of the city, a fifteen-meter drop to the other side of the rubble-pile, or into the building, into swallowing darkness where monstrosities could await. Leaning over the edge, she could make out a door on the same building that exited the direction she meant to go, so she steeled herself and walked inside, lighting a small flame in her left hand for light.
There was nothing. Not parasites, nor even furniture. Empty slots for what she presumed to have been lights yawned on the walls like shallow wounds. Everything not carved into stone had been stripped from this place. She could clearly make out that this building once had doors, which had been torn off their hinges. Going down to the ground floor, instead of parasites she was met by a room filled with at least a dozen pulsating, vaguely egg-shaped mounds of flesh, her little flame just about sufficient to give her an idea of her surroundings.
One of those nearby suddenly emitted an indistinct, muffled moaning, reminiscent of a tongueless man trying to call for help from inside a not-quite-soundproof body bag. When Krahe brought her meagre light source closer to the mass, it became clear where that sound was coming from… And why these things were here.
It was one of the parasites, fused together with a curled-up, half-molten human, the host’s limbs and head barely discernible amidst a mass of vague flesh. The parasize observed her with utter apathy, seemingly satisfied and unconcerned about anything. Below its head, the host’s hazel eyes could be seen half-concealed by a translucent membrane; they darted about in utter wild-eyed terror before locking onto her. The mewling sound resumed, a faint tone of relief now present. She could clearly see the door. Looking around, she noticed that all of the other flesh-mounds completely lacked any recognizable remnants of human form.
