Hello, hello, nameless existence here. I wasn’t dead yet, but I sure wished that I was.

Was I still myself? I wasn’t really sure, but something didn’t feel right.

I was drifting.

An empty world with no light, an endless smattering of red stars. Nobody but me in the endless sea.

In this world, I was alone. I brought the end with my own two hands by killing everything that came across me.

Well, that can’t be helped. Maybe I’d have better luck in the future, in a world different from this one.

Oh, I hadn’t finished eating yet.

Thank you for the food, me.

You’re welcome, me.

I took the rest of White Tiger’s core and nibbled. Could’ve used a bit more seasoning, or any seasoning — it sounded like ringing metal and reeked of resentment, complemented with a touch of wasted potential.

Salty.

I’d say it could use some spicy barbeque to cover the taste of ash, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

This, after all, was the only thing left.

I wasn’t nobody. I was nothingness itself, a broken piece of the incomprehensible that wandered into a delicious buffet.

It only makes sense to enjoy the nightmare I’ve inherited.

Thank you for the food, me.

You’re welcome, me.

When I came to, I was all alone again.

The caverns were completely devoid of any life. No plants, no animals, and no white tiger either. Rolling over to where I stashed the beacon and the rest of my belongings, I learned that three days had passed since my duel with the tiger. Three days was enough for everything to wither to nothing.

I couldn’t remember what happened since then, but given the complete lack of tiger corpses and the tiger-sized expansion to my limiter, I think I actually ate the poor sod whole.

Well, it’s not like I could vomit him out. I couldn’t feel the presence of any other minds or beings in my core, so I guess he was gone now.

Oops.

Soul cannibalism aside, I wasn’t actually that much stronger. I reached a core concentration of around 3.5 EXs after that mess, but my winds were only a smidge faster. What I did notice, however, was that my area of influence was much greater — I could summon wind and effectively manipulate Ether from a pretty decent distance now. Not only that, I developed my greatest strength yet.

Precise wind control.

I could cease all air and pressure movements in an area. You know what this meant?

I could snap.

Screw raw power, this was what I was missing.

Me, the stone cold survivor, snapping their way down a dingy city alleyway, backed by an invisible jazz band. This is a mental image I could get behind.

Wind bullets and any useful techniques were out of my reach, but I could keep a steady rhythm.

Upgrade me into a conductor, baby. We’re running this show.

I could make currents as big or as small as I wanted, as long as there was air to be manipulated. I still couldn’t overcome gravity, but I didn’t need to fly to slide and groove out while I was at it.

I still needed to shut down that reactor to escape from here, but as soon as I opened the overground doors, I had to deal with the unspeakable horrors that were hiding out in the halls.

The situation was still bad, but I was more motivated than ever before. If it took a dirty trick to keep moving forward, I’d stain my hands black — at least, when it came to this place.

During my stay down here, too much pain came to me. When people say they get numb to pain, it’s because their nerve receptors are dying and their brains are learning how to cope with it. For me, an abomination that could recall everything perfectly, those scars never healed. Those humiliations and agonies weren’t going anywhere.

I vowed to rewrite those memories with moments of happiness, the world itself be damned. I was going to avoid pain as much as I could, while also living for myself.

To achieve those small goals, I’d have to break out of this damned place. I had a feeling there were more creatures like that white tiger down here, so I needed a way to dispatch them as quickly as possible, should I come across one.

Thinking about how scary my enemies were could wait. After all this time, I finally had the means, the knowledge, and the tools to engage in some fine craftsmanship. The only sacrifice I had to make was all the life here to acquire a blank canvas to work on.

With the new glut of peace and quiet, I scraped up the remnants of my broken allies and carefully scanned their structures, as well as anything else useful looking.

Whoever designed the original plasma gun understood this world’s physics. Any mystic phenomenon seemed to be the result of manipulating Ether in one of two ways: channeling and gates.

The animals down here naturally processed and utilized Ether through their muscles and bodies, but there was no way I could learn about that. Without any organic parts in me, I couldn’t even test this branch of research. And so, I decided to shelve that approach and work with the one I could actively experiment with.

Gates were specific patterns of circuits that transmuted Ether into a phenomenon of some sort. Within the tortoise’s stones were miniature gates that created raw, kinetic energy from Ether; the three inside the gun produced Ether velocity, centrifugal force, and superheated gas. As long as I could study any given gate once, and could replicate them endlessly as long as I was willing to pay the price.

That was going to be a last resort, however. With nine previous breaks still fresh in my eternal memory, I’d rather find any other way to deal with my problems.

I had one acceleration gate, one vortex gate, and two plasma gates of varying size and quality left after my duel with the white tiger. To my surprise, the kinetic tortoise stones that got smashed to pebbles and dust barely functioned instead of being useless. They utilized some linking mechanism that made them stronger when connected on a structural level, but the tiny chunks barely budged when I fed them Ether.

Everything goes back into the sack, then.

First things first, I had to focus on self-improvement.

It embarrassed me to perceive myself. I was tiny, tiny enough to fit in somebody’s pocket, and I was quite literally starting to crumble apart. What I needed was a way to reinforce myself before I got dusted.

Creating new material would be nigh impossible without hands or tools, but I didn’t have to worry about that. Somebody already did all the work for me.

The hall leading up to the cavern’s heart was man-made, and that door looked awfully mighty. There was simply no way to open it from this side, other than brute force. I suppose the tiger and whoever he was with had a way to let creatures in, but I didn’t care about that.

I had a plasma gun. If fed a continuous stream of fuel, it was a plasma cutter.

Using the shattered kinetic fragments to propel the third gate, I cut two fist-sized chunks out of the door for myself, tucked them away into my rucksack for later, failed to find Stony Tony, then painstakingly sliced a me-sized hole in the barrier.

Beyond the door was a desert of white sand saturated with Ether. A red spire rose from the center, a pyre that was channeled into countless roots and pipes above ground, but I really didn’t care about any of that.

Do a better job of showing me things next time, world, and I might pay attention. I was busy with self improvement, and there were greater wonders in front of me.

There was a desert laid bare before me, meaning I found my first true treasure.

Sand, the gritty nitty grains that get everywhere. It was the perfect thing for an impromptu mould.

Whoever originally designed the plasma gate had accounted for prolonged use. It propelled plasma fast enough to minimize harm to the user, and since I was using it conservatively, I could use it as much as I wanted.

I was a psychopath with a blowtorch. Nobody could stop me from melting myself into a better body.

I dug a hemispherical hole and heated the door chunks until they turned into a metallic slag puddle that was quickly melting the sand it was held in. With only a moment of hesitation, I tipped myself in.

Turning into liquid was a strange experience. I wouldn’t say it was pleasant, but it felt like I was shunted out of my body, unaware of temperature or the presence of my body. To make sure I didn’t end up as some horrifying oblong shape or immediately shatter on cooling, I conjured a shroud of wind to compress and shape myself into something resembling a disk while also attempting to skim away as much molten glass as possible.

My new form, after much trial and error, was a flat silvery rock that could have easily been used in a discus throwing competition. The handiwork was below subpar, but considering the circumstances, I was very proud of myself.

Alas, this was only the first step in my escape preparations.

Technology, to refine it to its most basic terms, is the collection of techniques and processes used to survive, then thrive in an environment. With my disadvantage of being stuck as a mostly inanimate object, I had to utilize absolutely everything at my disposal.

Now that I had all the free time in the world, I had a few ideas that were long overdue for prototypes.

In truth, after the grueling struggle to reach where I was, the rest was another bad joke.

Despite my enthusiasm for the mechanical arts, putting theory into action without blueprints or design was a travesty. As it turns out, the plasma gates were better for melting and destruction than it was for careful construction. I found this out when the first four batches of rock sheets and metal plates ended up as lumpy puddles that were only good as projectiles.

I took a break from the stacks of Etherite and materials I had collected to wander the white sands, deciding to conduct proper reconnaissance on what I would eventually have to fight.

The heart was empty, save for the occasional ruin and the three beasts that constantly roamed the sand. I tried to avoid them, but they attacked on my very first foray.

There was a red bird, a giant tortoise, and some oversized lizard with a feathery mane. These creatures, who had completely mastered Ether usage, had finely tuned pathways and bodies that burned like suns as they approached.

I dodged a blast of blue light from the lizard and a dive from the bird whose feathers left a flaming trail. Then, without really thinking, I counterattacked.

At that moment, I saw everything these creatures had to offer. Their inner circuits illuminated what would happen next:

After failing their initial attacks, their strategy would change. The lizard and bird would play distraction until the giant tortoise came, then would slowly corner me until one of them could crush me.

They had no interest in speaking to a murderer.

However, I noticed something then.

These creatures had perfectly defined pathways that overlapped with placements of their inner organs. As an experiment, I reached out and tried to touch them.

One moment, my song graced them.

The next moment, the bird froze mid-flight and crashed into the sands, tumbling to a stop. The lizard fell to the ground and convulsed. The great tortoise, the mightiest of them all, his legs gave out and he never moved again.

Only when I saw their crumpled bodies and bloodied eyes did I truly comprehend what happened.

With a single thought, I summoned a pitiful gust near their circuits.

With a single thought, I shredded their hearts.

With a single thought, I minced their brains.

I slid over, baffled into silence. These animals too had cores filled with Souls and Ether, but with their vessels destroyed, they were already fading.

Even though I could comprehend what I did, I couldn’t understand it. I pushed forward, nudging the corpses.

Why were they leaving so early? Our fight just got started.

Their cores crumbled into light when I touched them with my core’s tendrils, unable to resist my pull. Before I knew what was going on, I was assaulted by a stream of images and alien sensations.

Breaking out of an egg. Care and nurture underneath strong feathers and scales. Learning.

Vows borne from bloodshed, strength from grief, and a promise to protect a world.

Memories. Countless memories from three different lives filled my head, summoning distinct floating pictures in my bleak world.

In their final moments, they all had the same thoughts and wishes. All three of them wished to protect life as they knew it.

In my daze, I began to wander towards my original objective, towards the gently pulsating heart of the caverns. It all seemed like a bad joke at the time, an anticlimactic end to this tale of escape.

I only made it so far before the claws of the dead sank into my back.