Bonus Chapter Today Up!
Awesome news! We hit our first 700 voters today, so get ready for a bonus chapter! Thanks, everyone! š¤Æš„ā¤ļøā¤ļø From Now on every 100 Voters will give you bonus chapter. š„ā¤ļøā¤ļø
Get those stones going boys and femboys, we need to get those numbers up!
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*****
She walked down the plush carpet toward the end of the hall. The screaming had stopped, replaced by a heavy, ragged muffles that was almost worse.
It was a stroke of luck that the neighboring suites were empty for the weekend. If they hadn't been, the police would have already been called.
Lucy stood before the door of Room 303. She smoothed her skirt, adjusted her expression to one of polite concern, and raised her hand.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
"Mr. Atlas?" she called out, her voice projecting clearly through the wood. "This is Lucy, the Hotel Manager. We received a report of... distress. Is everything alright in there?"
Inside the room, the world was spinning.
Atlas was lying face down on the bed. His body was a wreck. He couldn't move his legs; his new, denser bones felt like iron weights anchoring him to the mattress. His jaw, freshly realigned, ached with a phantom fire.
He heard the knock. He heard the voice.
'Manager...' his mind processed sluggishly. 'Female. Mature. Confident.'
He forced himself to roll over. It took every ounce of his strength to simply turn his body in pain.
He stared at the ceiling, gasping for air he didn't need.
"Do you need medical assistance?" Lucy's voice came again, sharper this time. "I have a master key. If you don't answer, I am required to enter."
"DāDon't..."
Atlas forced the word out. It sounded ragged, like gravel in a blender. He swallowed, forcing his vocal cords to obey. He couldn't let her in. The room was a disaster zone. The bed was shredded. And he... he looked like a monster in midst of transformation.
He took a deep breath, channeling his Mental Stability.
"Don't worry," Atlas called out, forcing a tone of casual, albeit strained, amusement into his voice. "I'm fine. Just... a cramp. A very severe, full-body cramp. Old war injury."
Outside, Lucy raised an eyebrow. The sounds she had heard were definitely not cramps. They sounded like an exorcism.
"Are you sure, Mr. Atlas?" she asked, leaning closer to the door. "It sounded quite... intense. We have a doctor on call."
"I am 100% fine," Atlas lied through his teeth. "Just... testing the limits of your mattress. It's very durable, by the way."
He paused, a smirk touching his lips despite the pain radiating from his spine. He decided to go on the offensive. Distract her with charm.
"Although," Atlas added, his voice dropping to a lower, raspier register that vibrated through the door, "it is a pity I am testing it alone."
Lucy blinked. A flush rose to her cheeks, surprising her. She was used to wealthy men hitting on her, but there was something about the raw, exhausted timbre of his voice that bypassed her professional defenses.
"I see," Lucy replied, her voice regaining its cool composure, though a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. "Well, I am glad to hear the furniture is up to your standards."
"If you need anything else," she continued, "just call room service."
"What if I need you?" Atlas shot back.
He couldn't even lift his head off the pillow. His fingernails were dug into the ruined sheets. But the predator in him refused to show weakness.
There was a pause on the other side of the door.
"That," Lucy replied, her tone playful but firm, "is not on the room service menu. For now."
"Pity," Atlas groaned, closing his eyes. "Check back in an hour. I might have found my wallet by then."
Lucy chuckledāa genuine, throaty laugh. "Rest well, Mr. Atlas. Try to keep the screaming to a minimum. You're scaring the maids."
She turned and walked away, signaling the security guard to stand down.
"He's fine," Lucy whispered to herself, fanning her face with her hand as she entered the elevator. "Just... eccentric."
Inside Room 303, the facade crumbled the moment her footsteps faded.
"F...ck."
Atlas let out a long, shuddering exhale.
"Huff... huff..."
He lay there for several seconds, unmoving.
Not because he was tiredāhis Stamina was infinite. The new phenology ensured his muscles never ran out of ATP.
But himself? His mind felt like it had been run through a meat grinder. The neural feedback of having every bone in his body shattered and reformed had overloaded his pain receptors.
His body was trembling faintly, the aftershocks of the evolution rippling through his nervous system. If his body were still capable of sweating, the bed would have been soakedāclothes drenched, skin slick, heart hammering against his ribs.
Instead, he lay perfectly dry on the ruined Egyptian cotton sheets. His chest rose and fell out of habit, mimicking the recovery of a human, but his physiology remained coldly efficient.
He looked around him.
The bed was a casualty of war. The silk duvet cover was shredded into ribbons. The mattress foam underneath was gouged with deep, parallel furrows where his claws had involuntarily extended during the peak of the pain. Feathers from the pillows drifted in the air like snow.
[ Evolution Complete. ]
The blue notification hovered innocently above his face.
"...That," Atlas muttered internally, staring at the text, "was too excessive."
He tried to lift his arm.
It moved, but it felt different.
It wasn't just stronger; it was smoother.
He slowly pushed himself up into a sitting position. The mattress creaked loudly, protesting under his new strength.
He looked at his hands.
They looked the same on the surfaceāpale, strong, elegant. But the knuckles were raw and pink, fresh new tissue knitting together where the claws had torn through.
He flexed his fingers.
Creak. Pop.
The sound wasn't the dry crack of knuckles. It was the heavy, solid sound of stones grinding together. His bones felt solid. Immovable.
"Phew..." Atlas wiped a smear of black, viscous blood from his lip where he had bitten through it. "This is getting too excessive with the pain. I feel like I just went ten rounds with a cement mixer."
He swung his legs over the side of the bed. His feet hit the floor with a heavy thud, cracking the floorboard slightly under the carpet.
[ Skeletal Reinforcement Successful. ]
[ Bone Density Increased by 400%. ]
[ Hematopoietic Efficiency Increased by 200%.]
[ Passive Bone Durability Increased: 50% ]
[ Passive Durability: Small Arms Fire Resistance Acquired. ]
Atlas read the notification logs, a grin slowly fighting its way through the fading grimace of pain.
The words glowed in the air, promising a level of safety that was almost intoxicating in a city teeming with guns.
"I am now... small arms fire resistant," he whispered, testing the words on his tongue. He ran a hand over his forearm. The bone beneath the muscle felt differentāsolid, immutable, like a steel bar wrapped in velvet.
"Soon, I will be bulletproof. Literally bulletproof."
He stood up from the ruined bed. The mattress groaned as his weight shifted, but he launched himself to his feet with a grace that defied physics.
He felt like a tank wrapped in silk.
The pain of the restructuring was fading rapidly, retreating like the tide, replaced by a surge of raw, intoxicating power. The headache from the timeline research was gone. The existential fear of the exponential math was gone.
There was only the body. And the body wanted to move.
Atlas began to pace around the room, testing the chassis of his new vehicle.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
His footsteps were heavier. Much heavier.
"Mass," Atlas analyzed, stopping to look at his feet sinking slightly into the plush carpet. "I was around 195 pounds before this evolution. Lean, dense, but human-range."
He did a quick mental calculation based on the feeling of gravity pulling at his frame.
"I feel... anchored. I've gained at least sixty pounds. Maybe seventy."
He was pushing 270 pounds now. But there was no bloat. No fat. This was High-Density Matter. The System had packed lead-heavy calcium into a human-sized container.
In a normal human, adding seventy pounds of weight instantly would make them sluggish. It would strain the heart and slow the sprint.
Atlas moved.
Zip.
He crossed the room in a blur.
"Fast," he noted, stopping on a dime. "I'm not slower. In fact... I have more traction."
The added weight gave him kinetic energy.
When he moved, he was a human battering ram.
When he stopped, he was a bollard. He felt no restraint on his body; the upgraded muscles handled the new skeletal load as if it were nothing.
He dropped to the floor.
"Calisthenics," Atlas muttered. "Let's check the hydraulics."
He assumed a push-up position.
Down. Up. Down. Up.
He moved like a piston. But it wasn't the speed that surprised him; it was the feeling inside the joints.
Before, his elbows and shoulders would click or pop under stressāthe standard friction of human anatomy. Now?
Silence.
It felt as if his joints were gliding on oil.
"The Synovial Fluid," Atlas realized, picturing the biology text from his own thoughts. "It's adaptive. Like Non-Newtonian."
He could feel the fluid between his ball-and-socket joints behaving intelligently.
When he moved fast, the fluid thinned, eliminating drag, allowing his limbs to snap like a whip. But when he held the plank position, pressing down with force, the fluid thickened, becoming a shock-absorbing cushion that protected the cartilage.
"Lubrication and armor in one liquid," he grinned. "I'll never get arthritis."
He transitioned into squats. Deep, ass-to-grass squats.
Creak... went the floorboards. Silence went his knees.
His spine, which had been forcibly straightened during the agony of the evolution, felt incredible. The lumbar curve was perfect. The discs between the vertebrae had thickened and hardened, turning his backbone into a flexible steel rod. He felt tallerāstraightened out to a full 6'2", his posture naturally imposing.
He stood up and walked to the center of the room. He took a boxing stance.
"Test the anchors," he whispered.
He threw a right cross.
WHA-POW!
The air cracked. The punch was so fast it created a very small vacuum pocket.
Usually, when a human punches with full force, the limiting factor isn't the muscle; it's the tendon. If you punch too hard, the muscle rips off the bone.
Atlas felt the difference immediately.
"Bone-Integrated Anchors," he diagnosed.
He could feel where his tendons connected to his new skeleton. They weren't just glued to the surface; the bone texture had changed, becoming rough and porous at the connection points, allowing the tendons to weave into the bone matrix like tree roots digging into bedrock.
He could strike with 100% of his Strength without fear of tearing a bicep.
"I can hit a brick wall," Atlas laughed, looking at his fist. "And the wall will break before my wrist does."
He turned his eyes to the king-sized bed. It was a heavy piece of furnitureāsolid oak frame, massive mattress, ruined sheets.
He walked over to the foot of the bed.
He didn't brace himself. He didn't widen his stance. He just reached down with one hand, grabbed the frame, and lifted.
Scrape.
The entire bed rose into the air. He held it there with one arm, his bicep bulging against the sleeve of his robe, but his face showed no strain.
"Leverage," Atlas noted. "My bones aren't bending under the torque. The fulcrum is solid."
He tossed the bed back down. It crashed with a heavy thud that shook the room.
He walked to the bathroom mirror, wiping the steam off the glass.
*****
Get those stones going boys and femboys, we need to get those numbers up!
If you want to discuss the story or just meme about join my discord server: 76ybzdTK
*****