I. The Hole in the World
The Deep Canopy was not merely a forest roof; it was a vertical labyrinth, a chaotic suspension of life held three hundred feet above the unforgiving marsh. Massive cypress trees, their trunks as wide as castles, wove their branches together to create a suspended floor of moss, parasitic vines, and rotting wood that blocked out the sky.
Absolutum did not climb; he flew.
His Omni-Vane Wings buzzed, a high-frequency saw-blade sound that vibrated through his new Orcish shoulder blades. The bone struts generated just enough lift to keep his heavy, reinforced frame drifting through the gaps in the foliage.
His new Spherical Vision—the gift of the Dragonfly—was a storm of data. It processed millions of visual inputs per second. He didn't just see; he monitored.
Sector 1 (Front): The humidity rising from the moss. Sector 2 (Rear): The heat signature of a vampire bat roosting in a hollow trunk. Sector 3 (Above): The vibration of moths beating their wings against the leaves. Sector 4 (Below): The endless drop to the black water.
It was overwhelming, a kaleidoscope of survival information that would have shattered a human mind. But the fused consciousness of Bruce Lee and Jet Li processed it with the cold efficiency of a combat computer.
He was looking for everything, yet he was looking for nothing.
The Mist-Veil Chameleon was not a predator that hid behind leaves. It was an ambush hunter that bent light itself. It didn't just blend in; it created a hole in visual perception.
Absolutum hovered, motionless, his wings blurring. He switched his visual processing from "Image Recognition" to "Distortion Analysis."
Don't look for the lizard. Look for the error in the matrix. Look for the lie.
He scanned the massive branch to his left. It was covered in grey bark and lichen. To a normal eye, it was empty. But Absolutum's compound lenses detected a micro-discrepancy. A patch of bark didn't just sit there; it rippled. Light waves hitting that specific spot were delayed by a millisecond, bending unnaturally before reaching his eye.
[TARGET ACQUIRED.] [DISTANCE: 40 Meters.] [STATUS: Cloaked (High-Fidelity Refraction).]
The Chameleon was massive, the size of a crocodile, clinging upside down to the underside of the branch. Its tongue—a sticky, muscular harpoon capable of snapping a man's neck—was coiled and ready in its throat.
Absolutum needed to kill it without damaging the skin cells. Or rather, he needed to preserve the specific prismatic residue on its scales. A direct strike to the body risked ruining the harvest.
He reached over his shoulder. The Vertebrae Recurve Bow detached from his Iron-Coil Spine with a satisfying magnetic click.
He didn't reach for a quiver. He had no need for bags. He reached down to his Anchor Leg.
Grow.
A single, obsidian-black Void-Toxic Flechette erupted from the dense bone of his shin. It was pushed out by hydraulic marrow pressure, sliding through a pore in the bone like a missile leaving a silo. He plucked the black spike free, the tip sizzling with the binary poison generated from his own core.
He nocked the bone arrow against the jaw-tendon string.
He didn't aim for the body. He aimed for the anchor.
Thwip.
The arrow flew silently. It struck the branch above the Chameleon's rear claws. The acid payload detonated upon impact, dissolving the wood instantly into a smoking sludge.
The branch gave way. The Chameleon lost its grip. The "invisible" patch of air suddenly flailed, gravity taking hold. As it fell, its concentration broke. The camouflage flickered and failed—flashing green, then purple, then revealing the scaly, terrified beast underneath.
Absolutum engaged the Shadow Spring leg. He kicked off the tree trunk, intercepting the falling lizard in mid-air like a hawk snatching a fish.
He didn't slice it. He grabbed it by the thick, scaled neck with his Void-Claws.
[GRIP FORCE: 1200 PSI.]
He squeezed. The spine shattered instantly. The Chameleon went limp, its colors fading to a dull grey death-pallor.
II. The Mirror Bone (System Optimization)
He landed on a lower branch with the carcass, the wood groaning under his combined weight.
[COMPONENT HARVESTED: Prismatic Dermal Scales.] [SYSTEM ANALYSIS: Extracting Light-Bending Properties.]
Absolutum stripped the creature with efficient brutality. He held the shimmering skin in his hand. To the naked eye, it was just skin. To the System, it was a blueprint for optical dominance.
[BLUEPRINT ANALYZED: Biological Chromatophores.] [MECHANISM: Pigment dispersion via fluid sacs.] [EVALUATION: Inefficient. Reaction time is limited by biological fatigue (0.5s latency). Pigment requires sustenance.]
The System rejected the lizard's method. It was too slow for a god of war. It was biology trying to do the job of physics.
[PROPOSAL: OPTIMIZED RECONSTRUCTION.] [METHOD: Nano-Scale Etching.] [LOGIC: Do not copy the pigment. Copy the geometry of the light refraction. Carve the bone surface into a Static Meta-Material.]
"...Make... Better..." Absolutum commanded, dropping the useless skin.
[INITIATING OSTEOLOGICAL REFRACTION.]
The System began to carve his bones. It wasn't a transformation; it was an excavation. It felt like being sandblasted by a million diamond-tipped needles. Every inch of his exposed skeleton—the smooth Elven skull, the dense Dwarven ribs, the obsidian Void-Arms—was grooved with millions of nano-channels designed to guide light waves.
The lizard used skin to mimic color. The System used math to bend light.
It created a Negative Refractive Index on the surface of his bones. Light didn't bounce off him anymore; it flowed around him, like water flowing around a smooth stone in a river, reconnecting perfectly on the other side.
When the process finished, Absolutum raised his hand to his face.
He didn't see black obsidian. He didn't see the green moss of the tree. He saw... nothing. A void in visual processing. He could see the bark of the tree through his own hand.
It wasn't the blurry, predator-style distortion of the lizard. It was absolute. If he stood perfectly still, he was effectively a hole in reality.
[UPGRADE COMPLETE: Absolute Active Camouflage.] [LATENCY: 0.0s (Passive Physics).] [VISIBILITY: 0.01%.]
III. The Silent King
He was invisible. Now he needed to be silent.
The Omni-Vane Wings were powerful, but they buzzed. The vibration of the bone struts created a hum that alerted prey miles away. It was the sound of a machine, not a phantom.
He looked higher. To the apex of the canopy, where the moonlight touched the leaves.
There, perched on a dead limb like a gargoyle, sat the Great Horned Owl. It was a "Terror-Bird" variant, an apex predator of the night skies with a wingspan of twenty feet and talons the size of scythes.
It was hunting him. It had heard the buzz of his wings before he even landed.
Absolutum engaged his new Prismatic Etching. He faded into the background of the tree trunk.
The Owl rotated its head, its massive yellow eyes scanning. It couldn't see him. The light bent perfectly around his ribs. But it could hear. It could hear the faint hydraulic hum of his marrow pulsing if he wasn't careful.
Absolutum waited, a statue of nothingness.
The Owl spread its wings to relocate. The feathers were velvet-soft, possessing a serrated leading edge designed to break up air turbulence. It took off without a whisper, a shadow detaching from a shadow.
Now.
Absolutum didn't use his wings. They were too loud.
He crouched, loading the tendons in his Shadow Spring leg to their absolute breaking point. He calculated the trajectory, the wind speed, and the bird's velocity.
Launch.
He shot upward like a cannonball, completely silent. He aimed not for the bird, but for the empty space above it.
As he passed over the Owl, he uncoiled his Bone Tail.
Snap-Lock.
The tail whipped out and wrapped around the Owl's neck.
The bird shrieked, a terrified sound that echoed through the swamp. It thrashed its massive wings, trying to generate lift. But it couldn't. Absolutum weighed over 400 pounds with his Void-Arms, Dwarven Ribs, and Anchor Leg. He was an anvil attached to a kite.
[GRAVITY: ENGAGED.]
They fell.
The Owl flapped frantically, feathers flying, but Absolutum was a dead weight dragging it into the abyss. They plummeted through the canopy, smashing through branches and vines, a tangle of feathers and invisible bone.
Absolutum didn't let go. He used the fall. He activated the Kinetic Constriction (Iron-Coil Upgrade) on his tail.
As the ground rushed up to meet them, he tightened the vice.
CRUNCH.
The Owl's neck snapped mid-air.
Absolutum saw the ground rushing up—dark water and massive cypress roots. He didn't deploy his wings. It was too late, and the velocity was terminal. He braced himself.
IMPACT.
They hit the mud with the force of a meteorite. Water and peat exploded outward in a geyser of filth.
The Owl shattered. Its hollow avian bones disintegrated upon impact, its organs liquefied by the sudden stop. It lay broken, a heap of wet feathers and twisted meat. It was dead.
Absolutum shattered too.
[CRITICAL DAMAGE DETECTED.] [LEFT FEMUR: FRACTURED.] [RIBCAGE: STRESS CRACKS (X4).] [SPINAL ALIGNMENT: SEVERED AT T-4.] [LEFT VOID-ARM: DISLOCATED.]
His legs were twisted beneath him at impossible angles. His spine was snapped, his upper body lying flat in the mud while his hips faced the sky. His arm hung by a thread of sinew.
But then, the Violet Fire roared.
SNAP. CRACK. POP.
Absolutum's body convulsed. The violet marrow surged across the gaps, brighter than ever. The femur knit together with a wet, grinding click. The spine realigned, the snake vertebrae locking back into place like magnets finding their polarity. The ribs sealed. The arm snapped back into the socket.
In three seconds, he stood up.
He looked down at the Owl. It remained broken. It would always be broken.
[REGENERATION COMPLETE.] [STATUS: OPTIMAL.] [TARGET STATUS: DECEASED.]
The flesh breaks and stays broken. The bone breaks and becomes whole.
IV. The Ghost Upgrade
Absolutum stood over the massive avian corpse, pulling his heavy boots out of the mud. He harvested three things, stripping the king of the night to build a better monster.
1. The Leading Edge Feathers (Silence): He didn't graft the feathers themselves; they were too fragile. The System analyzed the geometry of the silence—the serrated comb-like structure that broke up air currents into micro-turbulences.
Application: The System re-grew the edges of his Omni-Vane Wings, adding microscopic bone serrations to the struts. Result: When he vibrated his wings now, the sound was dampened to a sub-sonic frequency. Silent Flight.
2. The Ratchet Talons (Grip): The Owl's feet had a unique tendon locking mechanism. Once they gripped, they locked mechanically, requiring zero energy to hold on.
Application: The System wove this mechanism into Absolutum's Void-Claws and his Bone Tail. Result: He could now hang from a ceiling or crush a throat indefinitely without tiring his marrow. A dead grip that required conscious effort to release, not to hold.
3. The Telescopic Aperture (Vision): The Owl's eyes were not spheres; they were tubes, designed for extreme low-light focus and depth perception.
Application: The System harvested the tubular lenses and superimposed them over the Dragonfly's Crystalline Lattice already in his skull. Result: Variable Focus. Mode A (Dragonfly): 360-degree Spherical Grid (Motion Detection). Mode B (Owl): High-Fidelity Zoom. He could now focus the grid on a single point miles away, seeing the pulse of a vein in the dark.
V. The Complete Assassin
Absolutum launched himself from the mud.
He triggered the wings. They vibrated, but there was no buzz. Just a ghost of air, a slight displacement of wind.
He triggered the camouflage. The light bent around him, and he vanished into the night sky.
He flew over the swamp, a silent, invisible void. He could see everything in 360 degrees, zoom in on a heartbeat at 500 meters, and lock onto prey with an unbreakable grip. He was no longer a brute smashing his way through the world; he was a phantom.
But he was far from perfect.
[SYSTEM AUDIT] [SKELETAL COMPLETION: 45%.] [NIGHTMARE ADVANCEMENT READINESS: 0%.]
He was invisible, but he was still slow to heal. He was strong, but he was still structurally incomplete.
He turned toward the Black-Root Sump.
[NEXT OBJECTIVE: THE SWAMP HYDRA (REGENERATION).]