Days turned into a blur of routine, a strange new normal carved from lies and hidden power.
I worked. I swung my pickaxe, my muscles moving with an efficiency that was no longer entirely my own. The "Seed" had subtly rewired my body, optimizing it for survival in this harsh environment. My stamina was immense, my senses preternaturally sharp. I could work a full shift with minimal fatigue, my body sustained by the thin, constant trickle of energy I drew from the mine itself.
The other slaves gave me a wide berth. The name "Stone-Eater" was now spoken in hushed tones, a title of fear rather than mockery. I was a ghost in their midst, a silent, dangerous anomaly. The man I had saved never spoke to me again, but sometimes I would catch him looking at me with a complex expression—fear, yes, but also a flicker of something that might have been... hope? It was confusing.
Borok maintained his cold, distant hostility. He no longer assigned me to the most dangerous tasks, not out of kindness, but because he understood that what was dangerous for others was often an opportunity for me. He was waiting, biding his time, looking for a chink in my armor, a moment where Yan's interest waned or my own power faltered.
Overseer Yan was a constant, shadowy presence. His summons became less frequent but more intense. He was no longer testing my basic limits; he was probing the nature of my symbiosis. He would have me sit for hours in his lab, holding different types of Spirit Ore, contaminated plants, even small, captured toxic insects, measuring the "Seed's" reaction, the rate of absorption, the residual effects on my body.
He was particularly obsessed with the Soul Mist incident.
"You rejected it," he would mutter, staring at his notes. "Not absorption, but rejection. A defensive mechanism. Was it the 'Seed'? Or was it you?"
I never gave him a satisfactory answer. I couldn't. I didn't fully understand it myself. The line between Wa Lang and the "Seed" was blurring. Its hunger was my drive. Its instincts were my reflexes. Its survival was my own.
During one of these sessions, he placed a small, pulsating purple crystal in front of me. It was unlike any Spirit Ore I had seen. Its energy was dense, complex, and throbbed with a malevolent intelligence.
"This is a 'Heart Shard'," Yan explained, his voice clinical. "A fragment of a powerful Earth Vein elemental's core. Highly unstable. Lethally toxic. I retrieved it from the site of your... encounter."
My "Seed" stirred, not with the frantic hunger it had shown towards the full elemental, but with a deep, resonant curiosity. It recognized this energy. It was a refined version of the feast it had enjoyed.
"Touch it," Yan commanded.
I hesitated. The raw elemental had nearly overwhelmed me. This concentrated shard...
"Now, Wa Lang."
I reached out, my fingers trembling slightly. The moment my skin touched the cold, smooth surface of the shard, a jolt shot up my arm.
It was like plugging into a high-voltage cable.
Power, vast and savage, flooded into me. But this time, it wasn't a chaotic torrent. It was a structured, violent symphony. The "Seed" didn't just swallow it greedily. It analyzed it. I could feel it unraveling the complex energy patterns, breaking down the toxicity, and integrating the pure, potent core.
The pain was excruciating, a feeling of my veins being filled with molten lead and lightning simultaneously. But beneath the pain was an ecstasy of power I had never known. My vision whited out. I felt my consciousness expanding, touching the edges of the room, sensing the terrified spiritual energy of the other slaves in distant tunnels, feeling the slow, grinding pulse of the entire mine.
It was intoxicating. It was terrifying.
I was no longer just a man with a parasite. I was becoming something... more.
Just as quickly as it began, it was over. The purple crystal turned dull and gray, crumbling into dust between my fingers.
I slumped in the chair, panting, my body trembling uncontrollably. Sweat poured down my face. But inside, the "Seed" was singing a song of pure, primal satisfaction. The energy it had absorbed was immense, orders of magnitude greater than anything before.
Overseer Yan was scribbling furiously, his eyes alight with a fanatical fire. "Fascinating! The absorption rate... the energy conversion efficiency... it's increased exponentially since the first baseline test! The symbiosis is evolving! You are adapting to each other!"
He looked at me as if I were the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. "Do you understand what this means, Wa Lang? You are not just surviving the Seed. You are integrating with it. You are charting a new path, a path of consuming the impure to forge a new kind of purity!"
His words should have filled me with hope. Instead, a cold dread settled in my stomach, a dread that was entirely my own, separate from the "Seed's" joy.
He saw me as an experiment. A successful one. And what do you do with a successful experiment? You push it further. You test its limits until it breaks.
I was being groomed for something. Something bigger than surviving Borok, bigger than mapping energy flows.
As I was led back to my cell, the world felt different. The colors were sharper, the sounds clearer. I could feel the weight of the rock above me, not as a threat, but as a presence. I could sense the life forces of the slaves around me, small, flickering candles in the vast darkness. And I could feel the "Seed," a now-significant sun burning at my core, its warmth spreading through me, mending my fatigue, strengthening my body.
Old Man was waiting, as always. He took one look at me and his ancient eyes widened almost imperceptibly.
"You have taken a big bite," he whispered. "The taste of the mountain's heart is on you."
I didn't ask how he knew. He always knew.
"He's changing me, Old Man," I said, my voice low. "The Seed. And Yan is encouraging it."
"Change is the only constant in this pit," he replied cryptically. "The question is, who are you becoming? The master of the hunger? Or its most powerful vessel?"
I had no answer.
That night, for the first time, I didn't dream of Earth. I dreamed of deep, dark places underground, of rivers of molten energy, of vast, slumbering consciousnesses made of stone and shadow. I dreamed of hunting, of chasing glowing prey through labyrinthine tunnels, my "Seed" pulsing with a rhythm that was both mine and not mine.
I woke up with a start, the taste of ozone and stone dust in my mouth.
The routine was a lie. The calm was an illusion.
I was on a precipice, hurtling towards an transformation I couldn't comprehend. Overseer Yan was pushing me, the "Seed" was pulling me, and I, Wa Lang, the man from Earth, was stuck in the middle, trying to hold on to the last shreds of my humanity while being remade into something else entirely.
The hunt was no longer just for survival. It was for identity.
And the next prey, I feared, would not be a mindless elemental, but something far more complex.
Perhaps even myself.
---