I. The Fracture Point
Absolutum moved deeper into the hive. The environment had shifted completely from the cold, dead stone of the Crypts to something wet, hot, and alive. The black resin on the walls grew thicker, pulsating with a faint, bioluminescent rhythm that mimicked a slow, gargantuan heartbeat. The heat rose, humid and suffocating, smelling of ammonia, ozone, and the copper tang of gestation. It was an invasive biome, overriding the sanctity of St. Kael with alien biology.
He needed his blades. The threat density here was too high for unarmed combat.
He stopped and bent his knees slightly, rooting his Anchor Leg into the resin-coated floor. He focused his intent on his thighs.
"...Deploy..."
The skin of his femurs split open with a wet click, the marrow parting like the sea. The hilts of the Dual Acid-Bone Katanas emerged from the bone, pushed out by the hydraulic pressure of his own internal fluids. He gripped them and pulled. They slid out of his legs with a rasping sound, like a sword being drawn from a scabbard made of dry stone. The bone sealed instantly behind them, leaving no scar, only the smooth surface of the femur.
They were magnificent weapons—serrated, acid-etched, and perfectly balanced to his specifications. But as he swung them in a test arc, slicing through the humid air, he felt a sharp, warning vibration run up his wrists and into his forearms.
Crack.
A hairline fracture appeared on his right Elven radius. It was microscopic, but to the System, it was a canyon.
Hiss.
Before the sound had even faded, the fracture vanished. A pulse of violet Marrow Aura surged through the bone, knitting the calcium lattice back together in a microsecond. The repair was flawless.
[SYSTEM ALERT: REGENERATION CYCLE ACTIVE.] [DAMAGE REPAIRED: 100%.] [WARNING: FUTILITY LOOP DETECTED.] [ANALYSIS: Host structure repairs instantly, but structural density is insufficient to handle the weapon's inertia. The kinetic recoil of stopping the blade is greater than the tensile strength of the Elven bone.] [PREDICTION: Sustained combat will result in a Break/Heal/Break cycle. Energy drain will be critical within 40 seconds of engagement.]
Absolutum stopped, looking at the pristine, newly healed white bone. The regeneration worked perfectly, but it couldn't change the fundamental laws of physics. He could heal the Elven bone a thousand times, but it would shatter a thousand and one times against the mass of these weapons. He was trying to fire a cannonball from a tube made of paper.
I am an immortal glass cannon, he realized with cold frustration. Invincible in recovery, pathetic in durability.
He pressed the blades back against his thighs. The bone softened, accepting the foreign objects back into the dock. They sank into his legs, re-integrating into his structure. He couldn't rely on percussive strikes until he upgraded the chassis to something that didn't need to be fixed every time he swung his sword.
II. The Gallery of Hosts
The corridor didn't lead straight to the guardian. It widened into a grotesque gallery, a mockery of the crypt's original purpose.
The ancient stone archways of St. Kael were barely visible, suffocated beneath layers of the alien secretion. The aliens had plastered over the holy masonry with thick, translucent slime that had hardened into amber-like walls. Embedded within this biological resin were shapes—a pantry of the living and the dead.
[SCANNING ENVIRONMENT...] [OBJECTS DETECTED: Organic Resin Cocoons (Host Storage).] [STATUS: 14 Deceased. 3 Critical. 1 Viable for Harvest.]
Absolutum walked past the rows of victims. They weren't in clean glass tubes; they were glued to the walls, encased in the hard, yellow secretion like insects in amber. Some were Goblins, shriveled and dry, their essence long since sucked dry. Some were mercenaries, their faces preserved in a silent scream behind the resin layer, their hands frozen in defensive postures.
He stopped at a cocoon that was twitching.
Inside the semi-transparent sludge, a human mage was trapped. He was suspended in a gel that kept him barely alive, paralyzed but conscious. His eyes followed Absolutum, wide with terror. He was mouthing the word Help.
Absolutum leaned in, his eyeless sockets staring through the resin. With his enhanced perception, he saw the movement inside the mage's chest—a dark, writhing shape wrapped around the lungs. A gestating drone.
"...Incubator..." Absolutum whispered, the sound grinding in his throat.
He ignored the mage. There was no bone density there worth saving, and the parasite had already compromised the biological integrity. To free him was to release the drone.
He moved to the next cluster. Here, he found the prize.
Caught in a massive, thick glob of hardened resin was a towering Orc Berserker. The creature must have been part of a previous raiding party that breached the deep levels. He had died fighting; his hands were still gripping the haft of a shattered greataxe, now frozen in the amber. The Orc's musculature had rotted away inside the air-tight seal, leaving only the massive skeletal frame suspended in the dark gold fluid.
[TARGET IDENTIFIED: Orc Berserker (Deceased).] [COMPONENT MATCH: Scapula (Shoulder Blades) & Clavicle (Collarbone).] [GRADE: High-Density / Muscle-Anchor Specialized.]
Absolutum paused. The System had warned him about the Praetorian's arms—they were massive, siege-grade limbs. If he attached 100-pound arms to a 5-pound Elven shoulder socket, the torque alone would dislocate his shoulders the moment he lifted a sword. He needed a heavy-duty mounting bracket.
He shattered the resin cocoon with a precise, piston-like kick from his Anchor Leg. The hardened shell cracked like glass, and the Orc corpse tumbled out in a shower of dried fluids and dust.
Absolutum knelt. He used his mandible-scalpels to carve through the desiccated trapezius muscles, which snapped like dry leather. He exposed the Orc's back. The shoulder blades were massive, thick plates of bone, shaped like triangular shields, pitted and scarred from a lifetime of violence.
"...Harvest..."
[PLASTICITY INDUCTION: REINFORCEMENT.]
He ripped the broad, heavy bones from the Orc. He removed his own chainmail, exposing his fragile Elven back.
He pressed the Orc Scapulae against his own shoulder blades. The System fused them, not by replacing the Elven bone, but by layering the dense Orc bone over it. The Aura acted as a mortar, bonding the two calcium structures. The socket depth expanded, the collarbone thickened to the width of a wrist, and the spine connection points reinforced.
He rolled his shoulders. Grind-Click. They felt stiff, heavy, and incredibly solid. He was no longer wearing a shirt of bone; he was wearing a yoke of iron.
[INTEGRATION COMPLETE: Reinforced Shoulder Girdle.] [CAPACITY: Ready for Heavy Arm Assembly.]
He stood up, leaving the mutilated Orc and the dying mage behind. The support structure was built. Now he needed the weapon.
III. The Gatekeeper
The tunnel opened into a vast, spherical chamber. The floor was covered in hundreds of leathery, translucent eggs, pulsating in the humid heat. In the center, guarding the path to the Queen's sanctum, stood the Praetorian.
It was a monstrosity of evolution, a creature bred solely for violence.
Unlike the sleek, agile Drones, the Praetorian was built for siege warfare. It stood eight feet tall, encased in thick, lustrous black chitin plates that looked like medieval plate armor fused with insect biology. Vents along its back released hissing jets of steam.
But Absolutum's eyes locked instantly onto its Arms.
They were massive. The forearms were disproportionately large, shielded by flared chitin crests that resembled tower shields. The upper arms (humerus) were thick cables of muscle and exoskeleton, designed to crush stone walls and rip open bulkheads.
[TARGET IDENTIFIED: Xeno-Praetorian (Royal Guard).] [COMPONENT MATCH: Arm Assembly (Full).] [GRADE: Void-Hardened Chitin. Acid-Proof. Impact Immunity.]
The Praetorian hissed, a sound like high-pressure steam venting. It didn't rush. It stepped forward, slamming its massive shield-arms together. THOOM. The sound wave was physical, rattling Absolutum's brittle teeth in his skull.
IV. The Failed Gambit
Absolutum assessed the tactical spread. Melee: Suicide. Even with the new Orc shoulders, his Elven arm bones would snap like dry twigs on the first block against those shield-arms. Range: The Praetorian's armor was too thick for standard quills to penetrate.
He reached over his shoulder. He grabbed the ridge of his spine.
"...Release..."
The Vertebrae Recurve Bow detached from his back with a series of sharp clicks. It snapped into his hand, the jaw-tendon string tightening automatically as it deployed.
He planted his heavy Anchor Leg into the resin floor, rooting himself. He placed the bow grip against his knee, using his leg as a stabilizer. He hooked the string with his mandible-fingers and pulled.
The draw weight was 400 lbs. The new Orc Shoulder Blades held the tension effortlessly, absorbing the strain that would have crushed his old collarbone. But his Elven arm bones groaned under the compression.
Shoot.
He loosed a Toxic Quill arrow.
THWIP.
The arrow flew true, a blur of white aimed straight for the Praetorian's sensory cluster.
The Praetorian didn't even dodge. It simply raised a forearm. The quill struck the black chitin shield. Tink. It bounced off harmlessly, unable to find purchase on the void-hardened armor.
The beast roared and charged. It moved with terrifying speed for its size, a biological freight train accelerating to ramming speed.
Absolutum engaged the Shadow Spring. He flickered to the left, the tendons in his leg snapping him out of the path of destruction. The Praetorian's shoulder smashed into a stone pillar, pulverizing the rock into dust.
Absolutum saw the opening. The beast's flank was exposed.
Instinct overrode logic. The Martial Archive demanded a strike. Absolutum slapped his hands to his thighs, drawing a Bone Katana mid-dash. The blade erupted from his leg into his hand, and he slashed at the exposed gap in the armor.
Impact.
The Acid-Bone blade bit deep, slicing through the softer side-chitin. Green blood hissed as the blade made contact.
But the kinetic recoil was instantaneous. The Praetorian shifted its weight, turning into the blow. The force of the strike reflected back into Absolutum's arm.
SNAP.
Absolutum's right Humerus (upper arm) sheared in half. The bone couldn't handle the sudden stop.
[CRITICAL DAMAGE: Right Arm Disabled.] [INITIATING RAPID REPAIR...]
The arm went limp, the katana falling from his grasp. Pain flared, then vanished as the System frantically began to knit the two halves of the bone back together. He could feel the marrow boiling, trying to bridge the gap.
Too slow.
The Praetorian backhanded him while his arm was still knitting.
The blow caught Absolutum in the chest. The Dwarven Ribcage held, absorbing the impact that would have pulverized his original torso into dust, but the force launched him across the room. He smashed into a cluster of eggs, crushing them under his weight and covering himself in sticky amniotic fluid.
V. The Tail and the Trap
Absolutum lay in the slime. His right arm was bent at a sickening angle, but even as he looked at it, the bone snapped back into place with a wet pop. The fracture line glowed violet and sealed.
[REPAIR COMPLETE.] [STATUS: Arm Functional (Base Durability).]
It was fixed. But it was still just an Elven arm. If he hit the beast again, it would just break again. It was a cycle of futility.
I cannot out-hit it. I cannot out-block it. Not with these twigs.
The Praetorian loomed over him, raising both fists for a crushing overhead slam. It intended to flatten him like an insect.
Absolutum's mind went cold. He accessed the Martial Archive: Jeet Kune Do - The Way of the Intercepting Fist. But he had no fist strong enough to intercept. He needed a limb that the Praetorian didn't know existed.
Use the Arsenal.
He triggered the Bone Tail.
It uncoiled from his pelvis, hidden until this moment. It snapped out like a scorpion's sting, low and fast. It wasn't strong enough to pierce the armor, but it was fast enough to tangle.
Whap.
The tail whipped around the Praetorian's ankle.
Absolutum engaged the Shadow Spring in his left leg. He didn't jump away; he jumped toward danger, sliding directly through the beast's legs.
The cable-tight tail pulled taut. The Praetorian, top-heavy and committed to the downward swing, lost its balance. Its center of gravity shifted. It crashed forward, its massive chin slamming into the resin floor with a bone-shaking thud.
Absolutum didn't hesitate. He scrambled onto the Praetorian's back like a spider.
He had mandible-scalpels. And he had Alchemy.
He didn't strike the armor. He jammed his left hand into the wound he had made earlier—the deep cut where the katana had bitten.
"...Drink..."
He expelled his own Marrow, but it was no longer just bone fluid. It was a Binary Weapon, synthesized from his conquests.
[PAYLOAD DEPLOYED: TOXIC COCKTAIL.] [COMPONENT A: Caustic Marrow (Acidic Dissolution).] [COMPONENT B: Bulldog Ant Neurotoxin (Systemic Paralysis).]
He flooded the creature's open wound with hyper-concentrated acid mixed with nerve poison.
The Praetorian thrashed, bucking like a rodeo bull. Absolutum locked his legs—the heavy Anchor and the Shadow Spring—around its torso, riding the nightmare.
The acid ate through the internal organs, melting the lung sacs and burning through the diaphragm. Simultaneously, the neurotoxin raced through the bloodstream, seizing the synaptic pathways, shutting down the motor control centers.
The thrashing slowed. The roars turned to wet, bubbling gurgles as the lungs dissolved and the vocal cords paralyzed. Then, silence.
VI. The Void-Forged Arms
Absolutum rolled off the carcass. He stood up, flexing his right arm. It was fully healed, perfect and pristine white.
And utterly inadequate.
He looked at the dead Praetorian.
"...Yours... for... mine..."
He knelt by the massive black arms.
[DISSECTION PROTOCOL: Active.]
He used his mandible-fingers to slice through the Praetorian's shoulder joints. The chitin was thick, but the joints were soft cartilage.
He severed both arms. They were heavy, terrifying limbs—black, glossy, and spiked.
Then, he turned the scalpel on himself.
He cut the perfectly healed sinew of his right arm. It fell to the floor with a wet thud. The System screamed a warning about self-harm, trying to initiate regeneration on the stump immediately.
Suppress.
He willed the regeneration to halt, holding the wound open with sheer willpower. He switched hands, awkwardly cutting off his left arm at the shoulder.
He was now a torso with legs and reinforced shoulders, standing in a pool of alien blood.
"...Integrate..."
[INITIATING PLASTICITY INDUCTION.]
The green fire of the Aura erupted. It lifted the massive Praetorian arms. It pressed the alien ball-joints into Absolutum's newly reinforced Orc Scapula sockets.
[SOCKET CHECK: REINFORCED.] [LOAD BEARING CAPACITY: SUFFICIENT.]
The System went to work. It was violent.
The massive shield-crests on the forearms hissed and retracted, folding in on themselves to create hyper-dense bone plating. The thick, cable-like muscles of the upper arms compressed, turning into sleek, dense ropes of biomechanical power.
The giant, three-fingered alien claws dissolved and reshaped, splitting to form five humanoid digits, but tipped with black, diamond-hard claws.
The Ant Mandibles he had on his old fingers were not lost; the System recognized their utility and transcribed their serration pattern onto the new claws, creating a hybrid grip designed to shred.
The green fire faded.
Absolutum stood up. He flexed his new hands.
They were black. Not the white of bone, but the deep, glossy black of the Void. The arms were humanoid in shape and proportion, thanks to the Normalization, but the texture was unmistakably alien. They looked like they were carved from obsidian.
But the room was not silent.
Skitter. Hiss.
The eggs on the floor were hatching, triggered by the death pheromones of the Praetorian. Dozens of smaller Face-Hugger variants began to uncoil from the leathery shells.
[THREAT DETECTED: Larval Swarm.] [OBJECTIVE: Secure the Perimeter.]
Absolutum looked at the swarm. He didn't draw his katanas. He raised his new Void-Forged Arms.
He slammed his fists together. THOOM.
He waded into the eggs. He crushed them. He stomped them with the Anchor Leg. He ripped them apart with his new claws. He unleashed the Bone Tail, whipping it in a frenzy to smash the unhatched shells.
It was not a battle. It was an extermination.
He moved through the chamber methodically, ensuring that every single potential threat was reduced to paste. He found the Queen's birthing sac at the back—bloated and dormant—and tore it open, flooding it with his Caustic Marrow until nothing remained but smoking sludge.
Silence—true, absolute silence—finally fell over the chamber.
[AREA SECURED.] [THREAT LEVEL: ZERO.] [ENVIRONMENT STATUS: Non-Hostile / Safe Zone.]
VII. The Great Recalibration
Absolutum sat down in the center of the cleared room, surrounded by the ruin of the hive.
He was a mess of mismatched power. His Orc shoulders felt tight against the Dwarven ribs. His Praetorian arms felt too heavy for his Elven spine. His legs were powerful but disjointed in their marrow flow.
"...System..." he rasped. "...Fix..."
[COMMAND ACKNOWLEDGED.] [INITIATING DEEP DIAGNOSTIC & HARMONIZATION PROTOCOL.]
Absolutum closed his eyes. This wasn't the violent, hot welding of battle integration. This was cool, soothing, and comprehensive.
The green Aura enveloped him completely, forming a cocoon of light. Then, a new notification chimed—a sound like a golden bell, distinct from the usual clinical alerts.
[ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: Apex Predator Eradication.] [REWARD: SYSTEM UPGRADE - "SYSTEMATIC SYMMETRY".]
[DESCRIPTION: The System no longer treats the skeleton as a collection of isolated parts. It now treats it as a unified lattice. Density and Attribute improvements from high-grade components (like the Praetorian Arms) will now partially distribute across the entire skeletal network to maintain equilibrium.]
[EXECUTING SYMMETRY PROTOCOL...]
[STEP 1: SKELETAL REALIGNMENT.] The System adjusted his center of gravity. It thickened his lumbar vertebrae to support the weight of the Praetorian arms. It broadened the Dwarven ribcage slightly to allow for a greater range of motion for the Orc shoulder blades.
[STEP 2: DENSITY DISTRIBUTION.] This was the welcomed upgrade. Absolutum felt the crushing weight of his new Void-Forged arms lighten—not because they lost mass, but because his spine, pelvis, and neck gained it. The System siphoned excess calcification from the heavy limbs and plated it onto his weaker Elven bones. They weren't replaced, but they were reinforced, bringing the "Old" parts up to a survivable standard to match the "New" parts.
[STEP 3: NEURAL MAPPING.] The Martial Archives of Bruce Lee and Jet Li were re-mapped. The System adjusted the neural firing rates to account for the 3-fingered origin of the Praetorian claws (now 5-fingered). It calibrated the grip strength so he wouldn't accidentally crush delicate objects. It synced the Shadow Spring leg's reaction time with the Anchor Leg's planting speed.
[STEP 4: MARROW FLOW OPTIMIZATION.] The violet marrow was pumped through the dense channels of the Void-Chitin arms, ensuring that the Acid/Poison Payload could be delivered instantly to the fingertips. The resistance channels were widened, ensuring his own acid blood wouldn't corrode the connective tissues between the different species' bones.
[STEP 5: ARSENAL DOCKING CHECK.] The Bone Katanas and Bow were ejected and then re-absorbed, the docking cavities smoothed and lubricated for faster deployment.
Minutes passed. The grinding sensation in his joints vanished. The feeling of being "stitched together" faded.
When the Aura dissipated, Absolutum stood up.
He rolled his neck. Crack. A clean, sharp sound. He punched the air. Whoosh. A perfect, snap-strike with zero recoil.
He was no longer a collection of parts. He was a unified machine.
[RECALIBRATION COMPLETE.] [EFFICIENCY: 100%.] [HOST STATUS: OPTIMIZED via SYSTEMATIC SYMMETRY.]
Absolutum looked at his hands—black, deadly, and steady as a rock. The brittle weakness of his Elven core was gone, replaced by a shared strength drawn from his conquests.
"...Better..." he rasped, testing the weight of his new reality.
He looked at his reflection in the black resin. He was no longer a victim. He was a predator. But he was not a god. Not yet.
The distance between Functional and Absolute was still infinite.
"...But not Perfect."
He looked at the tunnel leading back to the surface. The machine was built. Now, it had to feed.