Forty-Three
 
“What happened here?” Alice said as Kon laid on the ground, gasping. Blood welled in the gashes in his leathers as he groaned in agony. Those talons had scraped through them with little effort as he ran out of the rift. Those birds had attacked him constantly as he ran across the forest. The final battery for the laser rifle had been drained before he had made it halfway across the valley.
He had managed to send two of the monstrous lizard birds to the ground to lay forevermore. Hadn’t slowed down the rest of the voracious monsters as they tried to pluck him from the ground and eat him. It had been a race against time, straining his senses as he burned through the F-Grade cores he had taken from the small birds outside of the rift.
It had helped keep him alive, his nodes burned as he ran. All of those small bird cores had been turned to nothing more than ash as he ran. He had nearly made it to the rift when the last of the birds had swooped down on him, slashing him open as he threw himself to the ground.
Kon couldn’t tell if the bird was after the mushroom or him. His right shoulder blade and pectoral muscle were turned to pulp by that grasping talon. Kon had physically dragged himself out of the rift, fingers digging into rocky soil as he pulled himself free of the rift and back into the clearing.
Alice had been there, standing with her arm on her hip and a foot tapping impatiently. She had sighed and picked him and the mushroom up and then carried him back to their shelter. Diur had been sitting there looking a bit ragged as Alice dropped him to the ground with an unceremonious toss.
“Birds. Big birds,” Kon grunted out between gritted teeth. Alice rolled her eyes and then lifted her hand and the Regrowth rune popped to life. Kon felt his skin stitch back together, the cracked ribs repair themselves, and a strained ligament in his knee pop.
“Oww. That sucked.” Kon let his head thump back down to the ground. Diur snorted while Alice slumped slightly to the side. She was getting better at not being overwhelmed by using that powerful healing rune.
“Ready to integrate that mushroom?” Alice said. Kon stared up at her with incredulity.
“I was just flayed. Can you give me a minute?”
“Are you flayed right now? Seems to me that you're not bleeding out. A full healing like that and you should be fine.” Alice glared down at him with no sympathy.
“It’s better to do this now before the treasure begins to lose its strength,” Diur said, rising as she agreed with Alice. Kon groaned, but got to his feet. He felt good, great even. Those full healings were like a perfect reset that left him physically fresh.
Mentally he was still tired. The wash of adrenaline, the stress of battle, all of it left him with nearly nothing left in the tank. It had to get done regardless.
Alice and Kon watched as Diur cut open the mushroom with a D-Grade claw that Alice had pulled from some monster she had killed. It was only a few inches long with a slight curve to it that split apart the F-Grade treasure with ease. Power radiated out of the mushroom, filling the small area.
“Start eating,” Diur said with a sigh. She shook her head in dismay.
“This is the least efficient way to go about this. It should be in a bath with other powerful herbs and treasures to help balance out the growth. We’re losing so much of the power like this.”
“Does it look like we have a bath? Kon is a greedy whore for energy. He’ll suck down plenty,” Alice said. Kon glared at her but knelt down by the giant mushroom and started to scoop out the stringy meat and bit down on it.
Musky water filled his mouth and he almost gagged as he chewed. Energy coursed through him and filled his body. A convulsion shivered through him, shaking his core as he struggled to breath for a second. His abused nodes greedily sucked in power but quickly became overwhelmed.The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
“He’s starting to overflow. Keep eating,” Diur commanded. Kon gagged but nodded as he scooped out another handful of the mushroom and bit down.
“Start the meditation process. Focus on the energy in your body and direct it downward. Past the skin, past the muscle, tendons, nerves, and into the bones themselves. Fill each and every bone till it's ready to rupture.” Diur’s voice was in harmony with his beating heart, keeping pace as Kon began to drift downward.
Scoop by scoop, the mushroom slowly dissolved into him. Kon drifted into the floating state of mind that allowed him to see his body from outside of himself. Three nodes burning like stars inside of him shone brightly. Translucent green-brown energy pulsed through him, radiating from his stomach and overflowing his body and out of his corporeal shell.
Kon focused and grabbed the energy that was escaping and forced that energy down deeper and deeper. Diur’s words continued on like a metronome, keeping him steady as he continued to compress the energy. Deeper, deeper, and deeper. At first the energy sank easily, through the skin and muscle until it hit his bones.
There was already something in there, something strong but flexible. Kon gritted his teeth and took another bite. A bomb blast of power that he pushed towards his hips, the center of his body. It took a moment, but the green-brown energy sank into it and began to overwhelm the natural energy there.
Kon screamed. It was a distant sound, as if someone far away was doing it and it was ripping his throat. A cool hand pressed against his forehead, a grounding moment that helped him breath and focus on the wash of energy that threatened to sweep him away.
“It’s not as bad as the last time.” That thought kept him grounded as he drowned in a sea of pain. Every breath hurt more, but the energy was filling his bones. Through his hips, down his femurs, tibia, and then through his feet. It rocketed up his spine, using it as a highway to reach the rest of his body. Everything became suffused and burned, cooking him from the inside out.
“You’re doing so good. Just keep eating. Nerves, tendons, muscles, skin,” Diur repeated the words in a mantra as Kon continued to move the energy around. Eventually his hand found nothing left to eat of the mushroom. He kept kneeling there, focused on the rampant power in him.
“God, he stinks. I thought he got rid of this last time?” Alice said. Kon hardly heard them. He was a pressure cooker, all the energy of the treasure pressing on his skin and forcing out all of the last wave of impurities in him. It seeped out of his skin like a sludge.
“It’ll take a few rounds to fully purify him. This and the last one should be the primary driving factors to purify himself. The first wave purified and helped strengthen him in general. Helped improve his baseline. This one will be more of the same. If he goes the path of a body cultivator he’d spend years in and out of medicinal baths slowly strengthening his body and trying to attune it to an attribute.” Diur paused and murmured in his ear again, encouraging him to continue holding the power inside of him. To not yield.
“This way is what a sectless cultivator would do. One who has no roots would try to use. It is a poor substitute,” Diur continued on. Kon heard it all and contained the knowledge but he couldn’t respond.
“Well, Kon is the leading edge of new cultivation techniques. There’s going to be some hiccups.” Alice slapped Diur on the shoulder, the slap loud enough he could hear it. Kon gritted his teeth, the pressure peaking as he held it in. The stress of it was similar to coal being pressed into a diamond.
Kon could feel his bones hardening, strengthening under the pressure. The pain was enormous, but he just had to hold on. Time lost meaning as he knelt there, Alice and Diur’s voices lost to the haze that consumed him. He continued to focus on the feeling of power in him, how it filled and reinforced his body. All three nodes were consuming as fast as they could, drinking up all the energy that was possible.
Feeling his body growing stronger by the moment was a revelation. Each and every fiber of muscle grew denser, his nerves faster, bones stronger, all of it with every second growing slightly stronger.
It ended slowly. Faded away like a sunset that left him sitting there in a mess of sludge and sweat. Diur and Alice had walked away to let him molder in his own juices, both of them staring at him with undisguised disgust.
“It’s not my fault,” Kon groaned. The stench was enough to make him grimace as he got out of the shelter and into the woods. Both of the girls rotated around him so he stood by himself.
“I don’t care if it’s not your fault. You need to wash. Vigorously.” Alice pointed off to the side. Kon poked his head around a tree and saw nothing.
“What?”
“Go stand over there till it rains again and you wash some of that muck off of you. Then afterwards we’re moving. I want to see how well that upgrade of yours has improved you.”
“I do want to reiterate that we have used a powerful treasure like barbarians,” Diur defended herself. Kon groaned as he stood off to the side and looked up at the thick clouds.
“I really hope it rains soon.”