It was like being caught flat-footed in the gaze of a serpent.

Lukas and Tanya had traveled a long way, but there was no telling how much farther he’d have to go. His instincts told him it was the right way, but there were fewer and fewer monsters on their path.

And then the screen went crazy.

Prey Found You

He turned around, glancing at the path they had just traveled from.

Prey Found You

Right. Left. Up. Down.

All the same.

Prey Found You

Analyze.

INCOMPLETE

INCOMPLETE Parts that are INCOMPLETE without AGGREGATION

“…what are you doing?” Tanya demanded.

“There’s…something around us,” he quickly responded, the urgency in his tone conveyed with steel-like composure. The Scan function was going haywire, and he could feel something dark and hungry coiling around him. It was eerily similar to the time he’d encountered the khorkhoi. Something stirred against the moss-covered walls, slowly extending inward from all directions. The bioluminescence from the moss did little against its inky blackness.

“What is it?” Tanya hissed, falling into a familiar fighting stance.

“Don’t worry, it’s not going to attack us. Yet.”

“What’s not going to attack us? I don’t see anything,” she said, looking around. “I’ve been gauging the lifeforce around us. It’s just moss.”

She’s got a method for discerning strength?

“What do I register on your gauging scale?” Lukas tried to sound casual.

“In the upper three thousands. Why do you ask?”

…Shit.

He hadn’t considered the fact that other people, or creatures for that matter, could sense his strength. Sense how much lifeforce flooded through his veins. Sensed how much mana he could use. Maybe even more than mere specifics.

Was this why Solana was so cool when dealing with him? Because she could gauge his strength and knew he was little more than an amoeba in front of her? Sure, an amoeba with interesting skills, but an amoeba nonetheless. Had she known that he’d be able to fight Quonnan and survive? And if so, what else had she known?

Suddenly, his control over his yokai situation didn’t feel as concrete.

“About time you learned that lesson yourself.”

Solana had perfectly known his power levels, but his personal confidence and his ability to Soul Siphon must have sold the idea that there was more, a lot more about him that she couldn’t read.

“Is something wrong?” Tanya asked.

“No. Everything’s alright,” he replied. “It’s just, whatever spell you’re using isn’t giving you the full picture.”

“Excuse me?”

Lukas attempted to find the right words. “The best way to describe this thing is ‘incomplete.’”

“That doesn’t make any sense. You mean it’s dead?”

No, it definitely wasn’t dead. But he half expected it not to make sense. It was just one of those quirks that came with being an anomaly. He instinctively knew how certain things worked, but the reasons behind them were blurry at best. A plus B was C, but why that was true was beyond him.

“I’m…not particularly knowledgeable in this branch of analysis,” he began explaining, careful not to use any words that could give away his own nature. “The thing around us is part of a set. An extremely defined set. Somehow, this has been, for lack of a better term, emphasized exponentially, to the point where it’s almost a rule in itself. The set is somehow more important to this thing than being, if that makes any sense.”

If Tanya’s deadpan expression was anything to go off of, she was far from enlightened.

Lukas nervously rubbed the back of his neck. “How do I explain this? The thing—or things, whatever they are—exist. That means the rest of it must surely be around.” He glanced at the walls before continuing. “It’s a basic concept being pushed to the extreme, but I can’t tell how it’s being implemented. The things around us are part of the greater whole, and it’s this greater whole that gives it its identity. Without the whole, they may as well be pebbles on the ground.”

“…Right.” She frowned. By the looks of it, she was having a hard time following his bizarre, circular logic. “So where exactly is this greater whole you’re talking about?”

“Somewhere around us. It’s assimilating, I suppose,” Lukas said, his voice slightly hollow. “That’s why I think these things won’t attack us.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Whatever these things are, they’re effectively inert until the greater whole comes into the picture. But it’s already surrounded us from all sides.” There was no escaping this place. Lukas could feel something nagging at the back of his mind, telling him that the greater whole would be incredibly dangerous. What this creature was, it was stronger than anything else he had ever faced before.

“I’m impressed, mortal,” Inanna praised from within his mind. “Attempting to explain an alien mindset is no minor feat.”

Sighing, he plopped down onto the rocky floor. Glancing toward Tanya, he patted the spot on the floor beside him. “Come sit. There’s hardly anything we can do until the fight begins.”

Tanya just stared at him, mouth slightly ajar.

“Yeah, I know,” he murmured, eyeing her with amusement. “Sucks to be me.”

With nothing else but time on their hands, Lukas and Tanya sat down and ate the last of their food. Spelunking through underground caverns was much easier when you could ignite fire with just a snap of your fingers. Years of living with his grandfather had made him self-sufficient at cooking. He was no Thomas Keller, but he could do a decent grilled lamb. Tanya had requested a sauteed meat dish, but since he was the cook, he’d sternly informed her that this was no democracy, and that they would gratefully eat grilled steak.

When the monster finally formed, it was strangely calm, much to Lukas’s disappointment.

No sudden explosion of power. No massive tentacles erupting from the floor. No glowing eyes forming in the air radiating destructive, unadulterated malevolence. Instead, there was this weird power twisting and writhing into something else—that in itself was grounds for running for the hills, if there were any.

And that wasn’t all.

The power was flowing inward. Alien world or not, Lukas wanted to believe that the law of conservation of energy still held true. If the things around him were sucking in energy, then it had come from somewhere else. Considering that this monster—if he could even call it that—was everywhere, the chances of finding its source of power were practically zero. Already, rocks and debris started to fall around. Cracks formed on the walls. They were thin, jagged lines so far, but still enough cause for caution.

“I don’t believe it!” Tanya murmured. The girl was practically quaking in her boots. “Its power—”

“How much?” Lukas interrupted. The fact that she could sense the amount of energy in something else while he, an anomaly, could not, felt like a slap to his face. Maybe he would unlock this capability with future upgrades on the Analyze function, but until then, he reserved the right to be grumpy about it.

“Twenty-six thousand.”

Lukas whistled. “Must be an eat-all-you-want buffet for you then.”

Tanya turned away. “It’s not that simple.”

“Your frost consumes life—lifeforce,” Lukas replied nonchalantly. “This thing has a lot of lifeforce. Doesn’t get any simpler than that.”

She shook her head. “It’s true that my Frost can consume lifeforce. But it—” She frowned. “How do I put it? The frost simply channels the lifeforce into me, and replenishes my reserves.”

He goggled at her in total disbelief. “You’re telling me you can just absorb lifeforce from others and use it to fuel your attacks? That means you’re capable of fighting endlessly!”

“…Theoretically. But sooner or later, the muscles fatigue. The lungs, the heart—they can only run on overdrive for so long. After a certain point, they accumulate damage. No lifeforce can heal that.”

Lukas thought back to Inanna’s Alleviation technique: a skill that literally returned the host body to a backup of itself. “Yeah…that’s true,” he lied.

“Also, too much lifeforce flowing through your veins can have…side effects.”

Lukas looked at her, or rather, the faint color in her cheeks.

Oh.

Oh.

“…Yeah, I get that,” he replied, feeling a little uncomfortable.

Tanya rummaged through her waist bag and pulled out a pair of thin, cylindrical canisters. She tossed one of them at him. Looking at it up close, he could see strange sigils etched on its surface. Sigils that looked no different than the ones he had seen at the yokai territory.

“Not true,” replied the goddess. “This one represents illumination. Light that brightens. Light that disperses the shadow. And nothing else.”

He faltered. Nothing as in—

“No heat. No destruction. No growth. No purity. Only illumination.”

“Eternal Light torches,” Tanya said, as if the statement was self-explanatory. “I only have two left.”

So this is Eternal Light. Lukas absentmindedly rolled the canister around. Eternal Light, an illumination that yokai feared to tread into. The magical flashlights of this world.

“Best not to use both at once,” Tanya said, her attention focused on the miasma rolling on the walls. And then she switched on her light.

There was no radiant beam shooting out of it. Instead, something white exploded around them, inundating the area with light. It was like daytime, only there was no sun overhead. No sense of heat either. Only an eerie illumination that somehow made the cavern feel colder.

This—this wasn’t what light was supposed to feel like. This was a twisted facsimile of the real thing, a terrible parody crafted by someone playing God. Just being in its presence made him want to throw up.

Alien TRUTH from PRESENCE registered.

Initiating Activation of LIVING ANOMALY state…

New OMPHALOS FUNCTION Added!

FUNCTION

LEVEL

ENERGY COST

Living Anomaly

N/A

Variable

DESCRIPTION

The User is a Living Anomaly, an enigmatic being that exists within a System while escaping its Rules.

VOLUNTARY

Currently Set to OFF

Set STATE to ON?

“Keep it off,” Inanna advised. “You do not want to stand out so soon by ignoring the Truths of the divinities of this World.”

Lukas did so, and looked back at Tanya, finding her staring at the walls, transfixed. He followed her line of sight to the walls. Every inch was now covered by…it.

Someone screamed, he dimly noted. His eyes were transfixed to it. Flesh, dead and dried. Flesh, alive and writhing. The languid, arrhythmic pulsing of corpses filled with maggots. Claws and nails on a chalkboard. Bone. Flesh. Slime. Metal. The Analyze function threw him a set of contradictions that he couldn’t make heads or tails of, except that the stomach-churning, nightmare-inducing wrongness was now all around him. Seeing it in the illumination only made it appear more grotesque. It took everything he had not to just throw up on the spot.

Instead he watched as the thing became more.

Gathering. Twisting. Churning.

Then, they began to form.

Utterly pitch black, it was a monstrosity made of ropy tentacles, each easily three times his size, standing on stumpy, hoofed legs. Another mass of tentacles, their surfaces shining with a metallic luster, protruded out of their necks, spiraling upward before combining into puckered maws, dripping silvery-green goo that covered their flanks. The ghastly caricature resembled trees in silhouette, with the trunks being short legs and the tops of the trees representing ropy, branching bodies. The macabre things twisted and trudged around on legs too short to carry them, shaking the very floor with every step.

“S-six,” he heard her stutter, as she carefully bent over to pick up her flashlight. “There are six of them.”

“For now,” he replied, cracking his neck as the screen flashed with new information.

DRANZITHL

Chimeric Miasma brought to life. Extremely thick dermal layer with regenerative miasmatic tissue underneath. Compound 360-degree sensory awareness. Capable of DECAY synthesis.

Probable progeny of [INCOMPLETE]

Decay? That was new. And potentially dangerous. The Screen rarely warned him about skills.

“Congratulations. You have awoken the guardian. The greatest defense an anomaly can have. Its failsafe.”

“Yomi has well and truly opened up on us,” Tanya cursed. Frost began to coat her arms. “These creatures are made of flesh. I think I can freeze them.”

Lukas watched her discreetly from a corner of his eye. This was the first time he was going to work in tandem with someone. Facing her had given him a good idea of what she was capable of. All that remained was to see how much Inanna’s spell would affect her performance.

“I suppose we shall find out.”

The things in front of him roared. Not the cry of an animal, but the howling of a hurricane ready to make landfall. It shook the cavern, deepening the darkness within. Even Lukas felt the cold against his skin. Not the sudden frosting that Tanya was capable of, but actual lowering of temperature all around him.

It took him a second to register what exactly was happening.

“A monster so antithetical to life that merely being in its proximity triggers such a reaction? What is a gem like this doing in this decrepit pit?”

…No. He wasn’t going to dignify that with a comment.

“I do not jest, mortal. You would do well to assimilate this creature into your arsenal. The applications of Decay are nearly limitless.”

Decay, huh?

DECAY EFFECT

Lifeforce condensed to 87% potency and above. Upon direct exposure to living tissues, it causes instant weakening, followed by withering, rotting, and eventual death.

This anomaly was a gift that just kept on giving. Fighting a slime was like fighting a hydra, where every head that was lopped off would be replaced by two more. Add in bone, flesh and metal, the power to Decay, and access to far more lifeforce than he could use in a week, and you got one crazy creature.

Kinetomancy would be near useless against this one. As would his general combat style.

He needed an alternative.

SKILL ATTRIBUTES

SKILL

LEVEL

CONSUMED SOUL CAP

Raw Lifeforce Manipulation

3

5000

Momentum Manipulation

3

5000

Friction Modulation

2

500

Pressure Modulation

2

500

Kinetomancy (FRAGMENTED)

APEX

1279

Fire Creation

1

50

Fire Manipulation

2

500

Temperature Modulation

1

50

Perception Manipulation

1

50

Conjuration

1

50

Disintegration

1

50

Seismic Sensing

1

50

Shatterpoint Intuition

2

500

Psychomancy

1

50

Fire was always an option. But this wasn’t just some regular, singular thing. It was a conglomeration that covered the entire chamber—the floor, the walls, the ceiling. Given his luck, the creature would probably just explode in one go, taking him and Tanya with it.

He needed a safer option.

Tanya’s frost could drag lifeforce out of it. But that alone wouldn’t work. It was a perfect knife, one that could be used to segregate. He needed a hammer. One that would allow him to constantly fight this thing without being exposed to the Decay.

Lukas Aguilar wasn’t an entity suited to fighting against monsters. Instead, it would be more apt to say that he was designed to fight against their powers, skills, and weapons. Countering strengths and exploiting weaknesses, rather than taking on the ones that possessed them.

The more he knew about his enemy, the easier it was to strip them of what made them strong, and strike at their core with the least resistance possible. Literally. That meant finding yet another new set of skills to add to his list of options for combat. A new way to fight. A new way to win.

Accessing Monster Prototype Array…

The kasha was a bad idea for obvious reasons. The yurei was out as well. The reiki needed him to possess something else, and focused extensively on high-powered lifeforce attacks. The neothelid was admittedly a good start, as its passive powers would provide him a resistance against the Decay. He wasn’t sure what channeling electricity would do to his nervous system, but he didn’t want to try that mid-battle.

The marid might work too. With its ability to manipulate water, and possibly other liquids, Lukas was certain he could use it in conjunction with Tanya’s frost to freeze the thing to death. However, doing that would raise all kinds of questions about how he was able to use both fire and water.

He needed something else. A skillset of pure offense, one that didn’t require tremendous quantities of lifeforce or access to any of the elements. Yet something that could destroy this enemy without leaving any lasting repercussions on himself.

It was an utterly selfish, unrealistic thing to demand when backed into a corner.

And it was sitting right there, in his Monster Prototype Array, waiting to be used.

Something that fought, not as a human, but a slime.

Activating Monster Prototype Thoggua…

Initiating Consciousness Shift…

Enact.