3 prey eliminated.

+49 Experience

Lukas Aguilar, Level-4 Base Host, and current vessel to an ancient goddess, stared at his schema with a mix of amusement and exasperation. He was crouched atop a rocky outcropping jutting from the wall, looking down at a pair of lizards no more than seven feet below. About as tall as the average hen, the creatures had bright crimson heads and neon-green protoplasm covering them from the base of their maws to the tips of their elongated tails.

Three others of their kind lay decapitated nearby. Lukas had watched as the furry lizards—azolgs, according to the Screen—viciously brawled among themselves, ending the fight when only two remained. Then one of them spat out a dark, rancid substance over the others’ remains, causing their flesh to slowly hiss and melt.

What was it with these monsters and acid?

But most importantly, although Lukas had done nothing but crouch on a nearby wall and observe, his schema had registered both kills as prey eliminations and awarded him with Experience. Not that he was complaining, but whoever had designed this system clearly had no qualms over stealing others’ credit.

“All that is guaranteed equally to all is an unfair reality. Only fools become involved in meaningless squabbles over right and wrong. Victors use what is given and push forward.”

Lukas wanted to claim otherwise, but his own arguments felt hollow in the face of his reality. If he wanted to survive this place, he’d need to claw his way out using every dirty trick in the book. This was a jungle. And morals had no place in a fight for survival.

He glanced down at the azolgs. They had tremendous reflexes, were capable of extremely fast short sprints, and could spit corrosive acid. As if that wasn’t enough, their tails were lined with thin metal ridges sharp enough to hack through flesh.

In short, they were the perfect specimens to test his newfound powers against.

SOULSCAPE

NAME

Lukas Aguilar

Type

Base Host

Level

4

Experience

107

Current Threshold

640

Utilized Soul Capacity

1379/1379

ESSENCE

Maximum Lifeforce Output

725

Replenishment Rate

180 / hour

SKILL ATTRIBUTES

SKILL

LEVEL

CONSUMED SOUL CAP

Raw Lifeforce Manipulation

1

50

Momentum Manipulation

1

50

Kinetomancy (FRAGMENTED)

APEX

1279

OMPHALOS ATTRIBUTES

Energy Reservoir Capacity

∞

Current Energy Level

722,437,311 units

OMPHALOS FUNCTIONS

Scan

Level 1

Analyze

Level 1

Only a fifth of the way to the next level?

Lukas looked at his Experience and cursed. He had spent several…hours? Days? He’d spent a long time busting his ass, hunting down small monsters and the like. Keeping track of time was difficult without the sun in the sky or a watch on his wrist. Even his biological clock had gone awry. Between the constant anxiety, a near-continuous discharge of lifeforce, and body pains from trying out experimental techniques, sleep had evaded him completely. It was difficult when a single whisper of the breeze or the slightest shifting of rocks made his eyes snap open.

“Sleep will continue to elude you the longer your lifeforce burns within you.”

Lukas frowned. Does that mean if I keep using lifeforce, I won’t need to sleep at all?

“Let me rephrase my earlier statement,” Inanna harrumphed. “Sleep will continue to elude you so long as you keep burning lifeforce, or until your body becomes brittle from accumulated damage, or until your mind descends into madness.”

You say the sweetest things.

“The faster you level up, the quicker you will gain access to more Soul Capacity to gain skills. Until then…”

Until then, Lukas would be a squishy human being. The implication was not lost on him. He rolled his eyes and looked down at the azolgs he needed to hunt down. There were a few things he had picked up during his recent experiments. Having the power to blast things away with invisible walls of force like Darth Vader was awesome, but not so much if you read the fine print that came along with it.

Point number one: Lifeforce was weird, whacky, and absolutely dangerous as hell.

It was real, yet it wasn’t. There was no scientific basis behind its existence, but it could be manifested as—among other things—a physical force far more powerful than what a human body could normally produce. It could hit you like a baseball bat to the head, and it could be as subtle as a shift in your adrenaline levels. And, if he didn’t pay close attention, it was easy to mistake one for the other.

Point number two: Having a skill only ensured its successful casting. It did nothing to protect him from any untoward side effects.

Lukas could easily use Momentum Manipulation to throw a concussive blast of raw force. But if he couldn’t guide it out properly, or made it too powerful, he’d end up with more than just a broken wrist or fingers bent backward.

Yeah, he was saying from experience.

Point number three, and perhaps the most dangerous of them alll: Lifeforce fiddled with the pain threshold.

Lifeforce didn’t make Lukas any more indestructible, but it made him feel like he was. It was mostly an advantage since it allowed him to go Superman on his prey. It made him feel great, powerful, and confident. Reckless, even. But in reality, it would take his body days to put itself back together. The moment he shut it down, the aches arose and his agony spiked, and the only way to escape it was to use lifeforce again. It was a vicious cycle that would sooner than later render him crippled if he didn’t develop a healing ability.

And that was without considering the impossibly dangerous Kinetomancy.

Shaking his head, Lukas leaped down from his vantage point, a cloud of lifeforce coalescing in the center of his palm. Something invisible tore through the air and struck true at the unsuspecting azolg’s posterior. Before the monster could register any pain, the wave of kinetic energy drove deep, tearing through flesh, shattering bone, and rending through every ligament in the sinewy appendage.

The de-tailed azolg screeched in pain and sprinted ahead, narrowly escaping further amputation by digging into the rocky floor. Meanwhile, the detached tail flailed madly, as if unwilling to accept it had been severed from its owner’s body.

At exactly the same time, the second azolg opened its maw and spat acid toward him. The spurting liquid crossed the distance between and stopped in midair.

Lukas grinned. Raw force exuded out of his palms and splattered the acid back onto the surprised azolg. The rodent hissed as the viscous liquid burned through its fur, but before it could react, Lukas already had. A second wave of motion smacked it in the face like a sledgehammer, hurling it across the cavern floor.

“Adequate performance,” Inanna congratulated. “A seamless combination of motion negation and force.”

I sense a “but” coming…

“It is a waste of energy and momentum, yours as well as your prey’s.”

Lukas frowned. You mean—

The rest of his thoughts were drowned out as the first azolg erupted out of the floor behind him, fangs and claws bared. He whirled around, feeling his lifeforce exude out of his arm and grab the motion of the azolg, and yanked it down. The azolg’s eyes bulged from the sudden shift of momentum, throwing it into complete disarray. Lukas pushed ahead with his left fist and punched a kinetic burst into its face, shattering its jaw.

He lightly panted. Well, that went well—

“Behind you.”

It probably said something about his experience surviving this monster-infested den that Lukas didn’t turn around like an amateur to check what was behind him. Instead, he threw himself into a forward dive, rolled over his shoulder, and came to his feet already moving laterally, just in time to avoid getting slashed by something sharp and metallic. Lukas aimed his fist at the culprit and fired off another round of energy, blasting it out of the air and hurling it away.

“Take that!” he snarled, feeling fierce approval at his own success.

But it faded rather rapidly as something behind him slammed into the small of his back like a tiny locomotive. The impact knocked the wind out of him, snapped his head back sharply, and flung him to the ground. Everything became disoriented for a second. Lukas whirled around once more, only to find three new participants staring at him like he was a piece of succulent meat.

Which, come to think of it, was true in a sense.

“Three more of you damn things,” Lukas spat.

All three pounced toward him, and before he knew it, he was in motion once more, having decided that waiting on his brain was counterproductive to survival.

“TAKE THAT!”

Unseen force lashed out of him and hammered the three in front. With a level of skill that surprised even him, Lukas grabbed a fourth, one of the two from before, out of the air from behind him and smashed it against the floor, before charging an angry, adrenaline-fueled knee upon its face.

1 prey eliminated.

+13 Experience

With indigo blood covering his tattered shirt and parts of his face, Lukas whirled around and stared at the other three—one among them had decided to call it quits and flee. Even the three that remained looked like they were reconsidering a second attempt.

“What?” Lukas taunted. “Scared already?”

One of the creatures let out a furious squeak and lunged at him, but this time, he was ready. Enveloping his arm with lifeforce, he smacked it on the head. It was dead before it hit the floor.

1 prey eliminated.

+13 Experience

The other two took the opportunity to sprint away.

“What?!” he yelled, smacking his bloodied palms onto his knees. “You’re done already? YOU PRISSY LITTLE FU—”

“Mortal,” Inanna warned, “control yourself.”

Lukas felt a sudden surge of anger within him. Goddess or not, she was a renter in his mind-space who wasn’t helping him deal with any of this shit. Instead, she had the gall to warn him like he was a fucking child? A growl escaped his throat, and his hands balled into tight fists. He opened his mouth to tell her exactly what she could do with her suggestion when—

The anger vanished as if it were never there. And in its absence rushed in fatigue and pain, the consequences of constant lifeforce exertion. His ribs felt weak, and his torso was wet. The azolgs had drawn blood. His knees gave way, and Lukas collapsed onto the floor.

“Ow!”

“Your power is an extension of yourself. A tool for you to wield. You must learn to control it lest you be controlled.”

The truth of her statement rang harshly. Had he really been that close to acting like a seedy drug addict? All because he’d used a lot of lifeforce? As if he didn’t have enough problems to deal with.

“How did you bring me back?”

“I cut off your connection to your lifeforce.”

“How did you—you know what? Never mind.” He already had a truckload of common-sense-defying things happening around him. Whatever bit of new insanity Inanna wanted to throw onto his shoulders could wait for another time.

Pushing himself back up, Lukas crawled toward a wall and rested with his back against it. A scratchy, hollow scream escaped his throat, barely louder than a whimper. He kept it up until he was out of breath.

Fuck. This hurts.

He needed to breathe. In and out. In and out. Lukas forced himself into silence, holding back the pain by focusing on his breath. The steady flow of cool air into his lungs. But the raw pain was still there. It wanted him to find a hole and crawl into it. But there wasn’t one.

He could feel every injury marring his body. There were bruises on his left elbow and scratches on his back and right arm, just below the wrist. His knuckles were battered as well from all the smacking, and his jaw felt a bit stuck. And how it ached! Letting out a chagrined groan, Lukas reopened the flow of lifeforce and let it trickle back into his system.

This was his weapon. His medicine and his poison. It would keep him safe from the monsters as it tore his sanity apart from the inside. It would make him feel invincible and under control, while slowly letting him splinter his own body apart.

Until—

Until I find a way out.

“Is there?” he croaked.

“Is there…what?”

He rolled his eyes. Even that minute action was painful. “Is there a way to use lifeforce to heal my body? You know, like actual healing, not just vanishing the pain?”

“Such trivialities do not interest me.”

“It’s not trivial,” Lukas retorted. “I need to know if there’s a way. I won’t be able to find your property if my back is broken, now will I?”

Inanna let out a long-suffering sigh. “You are already aware that such a skill exists. I alleviated your body’s damage when I possessed you.”

He bit his lip. “Okay, yeah, I know the skill exists, but is it the only one? I mean, I’ve seen lifeforce do plenty of stuff I can’t explain otherwise. Can I learn to use it to heal myself?”

“Lifeforce can be used in all sorts of ways, mortal.”

“But can you, or rather, will you teach me how to heal myself with lifeforce?”

“For a price.”

“We had a deal!” he exclaimed.

“To provide you with information strictly relevant to your task.”

“My continued existence is relevant to my task. I can’t fulfill it if I’m dead!”

“Fear not, mortal. So long as you follow my directives, you shall survive. Accompanied by unrelenting throes of agony, perhaps, but alive nonetheless.”

Lukas clenched his teeth. This was getting him nowhere. “Look, we can do this in one of two ways. Either you just tell me how to heal myself, or I can experiment with it on my own. But then maybe I’ll accidentally blow my heart up or something, and you’ll be left with a bloody corpse to help you find your lost property.”

The goddess was silent for a moment. “Nothing but a bluff.”

“Is it?” he challenged. “You can read my mind. You have access to my thoughts. Am I bluffing?”

“Merciless winds, you would hold your own life hostage to attain your desires?”

Lukas shrugged. “Me being alive is the only thing about me that’s worth anything in your eyes. That also means it’s the only bargaining chip I have.”

“And so you would force me into this farce of a bargain to comply with your unreasonable demands?”

“I’m working for a goddess in a den full of monsters.” Lukas snorted. “I can hardly afford to live in fear. Come on, it’s not like you’re performing the skill for me or anything.”

“Merely ensuring that you don’t do anything wrong.”

“Exactly.”

The goddess hummed noncommittally. “I find myself at a crossroads, mortal. On the one hand, I am suitably impressed with your bold play, following a precedent I myself set. An outrageous feat, but one worthy of notice. Perhaps there is some hope for you. However…”

Lukas patiently waited for the other shoe to drop.

“You have proven willing to destroy yourself in the past to force me into catering to your demands. Should you attempt that again, it will be the last thing you do.”

Lukas could taste the raw acidity in her tone.

“You have my word. I’m here to deal in good faith.”

Silence pervaded for two long seconds, but to him, it seemed like an entire hour.

“Be warned. Even if you manage to perform what I impart, your soul will still be denied the skills unless you gain the Soul Capacity for it.” She paused. “Since I am already teaching you, I shall take this opportunity to begin imparting the knowledge you will need to fulfill your end of our bargain.”

“Like what?” he asked curiously.

He could practically feel Inanna’s smile as she spoke. “It is time you understood your reality. About the Origin, anomalies, and your true place in the World.”