“Those stupid beasts don’t know what’s going on, they just know to follow the commands of the leader before them. I have been waiting here for hundreds of years and I’m not about to stop now,” an ancient crackled voice speaks.

“Ahh, that beautiful insect, once they reach a certain intelligence, they start to adopt a humanoid figure but it’s hard to raise intelligence. It’s incredibly rare to find one that is able to appear so human-like, I shall take her once I completed the plan.”

A giant black squiggling mass moves about a clear liquid, it pauses on a spot in the fluid as if it's able to see through the thousands of tiny tendril-like tentacles. A large cave area is out before him as thousands of beasts crouch towards this mass.

None of the beasts are moving, even the giant serpent like beast is bowing its head towards the black-mass and the altar placed between them where a single item has been placed.

An egg stands on the altar before them all, an egg with many runic symbols that seemingly float about it.

“A universal egg… once I get that and the mlt-fluid container I’ll be reborn in my true body, no more waiting for the one that shant appear. Those foolish humans better not have been too weak…”

A strange sparkle appears in the air near the black mass causing the mass itself to shimmer and lose focus, breaking down into a swarm that swims around the triangular prism shape object randomly. All the squirming masses eventually congregate together again.

“I felt something, where did I feel something. It felt like someone undergoing… a blessing.”

“That cannot be… it must be a mistake.”

—

Sam picks his body up off the ground, the white suit around his body feels odd as if it's jittering about in tiny motions as he stands there looking around. There’s no change in the surroundings, yet something does feel off to him.

He approaches the monster egg like orb.

A wave of pressure hits him as he looks around, he looks above and spots the black wiggling mass squirming about rapidly, all of them working in unison compared to the previous one.

Sam nods his head and prepares himself, it seems that’s what this test is.

He reaches for the orb, his pale white hand touches the black orb.

It immediately shifts into liquid and envelopes his body, but he knows what is next as he grits his teeth.

An immeasurable pain comes over Sam, it disables his body as another 8 sets of wings appear out of his back but in all sorts of forms, draconic, parrot, phoenix, roc, bone, water, ice, crystal all appear on his back alongside the 4 white sets of wings there.

Sam doesn’t know what the hell is going on as it wrecked his body with pain. A crackled voice is heard.

“No….,” the feminine robotic voice crackles and cuts out, “Compatible secondary mind found, operation begin! ….ubject: ...0000001.”

Sam grits his teeth, he can feel this new thing pierce ever deeper inside him, he suddenly feels a sharp pain come across his mind as his nose bleeds profusely, something is going on as screeches and roars carry on.

His body feels cold as frosted-chilled air comes out of his mouth, then with the next breath a flame.

“Ok.”

The glass shatters and the liquid surrounds him, he finds himself immediately restrained by some sort of entity that appears like a giant face.

“WHO ARE YOU!? HOW DO YOU HAVE P-Y3?!”

Sam finds himself unable to move, but he feels strangely calm, the black liquid is travelling further inside him but he doesn’t mind. He can feel his energy roiling about but he doesn’t mind.

“I’m kind of tired of people asking me questions I don’t understand, or blaming me for things outside my control. If you want to fucking know the answer then find it out yourself!”

Sam finds his body restrained as the large face entity approaches him.

“FINE I’LL DIG IT OUT OF YOUR BRAIN!”

“Try it!”

“Like you can stop me!”

Sam can feel some sort of force enter through his head, he can feel his spirit being ripped apart but thanking his diligence in practising them, he’s able to withstand this initial assault as the sensation disappears.

“Tch, you think you’re clever. I have other ways.”

Sam finds himself released from the hold that was on his body and collapses on the ground, he looks up and then around, finding the mass has surrounded him with numerous sparkling specks of lights.

“I am the supreme mind! I am the one that will rule the omega suit! you cannot have the alpha suit too!”

“SHUT UP!”

Sam points his finger towards the voice, “Devour!”

A crack comes from his mind, his nose profusely bleeds as he can hear the voice.

“HAHAHA, YOU THINK YOU CAN HURT ME! WAIT, HOW WHAT! HOW DO YOU HAVE THAT ABILITY?”

Sam can hear the voice degenerate into gibberish before the mass breaks into smaller black squiggling masses, each with a tiny rainbow light on it floating about. He touches the largest glowing mote of light, the one that was the source of the voice.

His white skin-suit finger touches it, it parts ways as the black liquid from the new egg appears and touches it. They dance about as they tap one another in various way, integrating together but never combining colours.

The skin suit unravels from Sam as the liquid surrounding him disappears, the countless motes of rainbow light surrounding him are there but he feels weak and exposed, badly injured, unable to move.

The black liquid stops moving, causing the ball to collapse and fold in on itself and reforming in to a new black and white liquid in equal and smooth proportions.

His heart suddenly thumps, this ball feels powerful and within his grasp, yet it doesn’t feel right like it shouldn't exist. The ball suddenly jumps on his skin and invades deep inside it again, covering every part of it.

He is about to inspect internally when,

*CRASH* *SHATTER*

Sam looks around and spots several people wearing uniforms breaking through the glass. They’re all wearing various animals hiding their appearance, their uniforms each have a distinct golden stripe on them.

The land on the ground with a loud thud as Sam feels something change internally, he can feel a rush of energy suddenly accumulate.

*SCREECH*

A wave of pain hits his mind, but he forces it out of mind as he looks at the crowd of people standing around him. They’re all standing in a formation around him.

“What?” Sam asks from his crouched position, controlling his internal energy. Something is going on and it involves something beyond him.

“Who are you?”

“What are you asking for, just check his collar and it’ll tell. It’s clear that he’s one of the prison camp workers. I thought we selected everyone that didn’t have a monster.”

“It must have been from Jason’s crew.”

“Ah, what do we do?”

One of the people in the crowd pulls out a scanner and retrieves Sam’s information, reading it aloud.

“Tonak, several life counts for crimes against the state. He was assigned part of SD-34, the one that was on the crashed transporter. Hatched a pet, unknown type elongated octopus. Level 0, entered bootcamp but AWOL.”

“Oh, him.”

The crowd is silent as though they have a prior understanding about him, he bites his tongue for a moment but can’t hold out.

“What do you want? I can’t tell you what’s going on here.”

A tall yet feminine figure walks forward and slaps Sam across his face, he tumbles several metres away, dragging along the ground before stopping before someone else.

This person reaches down and picks Sam up by his throat, he’s unable to breathe as this person with an ape face mask looks at him. Sam can feel his entire body exposed body this person.

“He’s undergoing the blessing, 444. It’s going to be a 4-4-4 tide.”

Everyone stands around unmoving. The feminine figure who struck Sam approaches the ape-masked man and holds the captured Sam’s wrist.

“I can’t probe his mana. Is he undergoing it?”

“Do you want to wait to find out, it’s the 4-4-4 tide. We have to either leave or be prepared now.”

“We could kill him.”

Sam opens his eyes wide as he feels something happening inside him, he doesn’t know what they’re talking about but this pause gives him a moment to look internally.

The scene has radically shifted as millions upon millions of thin needles are stabbing into the tiny little orb, a crack has appeared on the surface of the now smooth sphere that was his mana cloud.

The needles are each a white or black colour, Sam is unable to do anything about them as they suck the energy from the sphere. The crack dims slightly as it slowly grows, this continues to happen while outside.

The white layer of skinsuit is reappearing, it spreads over his body as the people are arguing unnoticed.

“What are the rainbow motes floating around?” someone asks, their voice sounds curious.

“I don’t know but don’t touch them, none of this stuff is ours.”

The rainbow motes float about in the air rainbow, up and down never in accordance to any sort of law or property, one of them lands on Sam’s body where the white suit has developed, a new mark appears on the surface of the suit as the rainbow light disappears into his body.

Symbols and markings develop on the pure white skin before disappearing into a rainbow dot, this happens time and time again as the rainbow motes floating in the air land on Sam’s body, he’s unaware of any of this as he feels his body changing.

A wave of energy spreads out through his body as the needles shimmer a white and black, the crack appears larger on the sphere, suddenly a wave of pain comes over him. It’s like his entire body is trying to turn inside out.

“AHHHH!” Sam cannot help but yell, the pain is unbearable.

Everyone is drawn to his sudden change, the ape-mask man shakes Sam several times while the woman walks forward to hit him. She strikes Sam in the man’s hand causing ribs to break and cough up lots of blood.

His screaming stops as his head slumps over.

The woman walks forward to check what happened while the man shakes Sam’s body gently.

Sam can feel the energy leave his body, the pain courses through his body as all the feeling leaves him again. He feels on the verge of death, unable to breath, blood filling his lungs captured by the enemies.

‘Is there really no way out?’

A simple melody comes over Sam’s mind to snap him out of it, ‘Stop!’

Sam yells internally as the entire world shimmers, a screech comes over his mind as the crack becomes larger yet not shattered, he actually feel communication from the ancient devourer beast. It’s telling him how to resolve the situation but it cannot.

The information it could convey was, ‘destroy the bad minds.’ so teach them to behave essentially. Sam looks internally again and spots that all those millions of needles actually lead to various points on his body.

There’s 444 points in total, each of which have a different appearance.

Sam looks at some of the points that are larger than the others, only 4 of them are much larger than the rest, they’re each over 100-300 times the size of the rest. He looks at these points for a moment thinking it over, he starts to exercise those points.

The muscle exercises that he has always done, they force the activation of the mana gate or ML-Gate, so doing this should force them to give up their excess energy.

“It… works?”

Sam does this for the first point, the easiest muscle grouping near his heart, the light has decreased in size. He repeats this until it has returned to normal size, doing the same for the next 2 with success but the last one.

The muscle grouping near his tailbone, Sam can feel something greedy that he cannot even contain within it. He does the exercises for that group but it only seems to fuel it, ‘Devour’.

Sam commands the beast to devour it, a bunch of worms appear on his skin suit and bury into it.

A weird shrill double-tone screech comes over the space as everything is frozen, it lasts several seconds before disappearing. The crack on the sphere appears larger, a tentacle appears out of it and smashes all the needles.

Sam can feel energy course through his body, he can feel each point on his body become filled with energy suddenly.

It’s almost uncontrollable, another tentacle sweep reveals more energy when finally,

*SCREECH*

This is unlike any noise Sam has heard from the beast before, the sound strangely echoes throughout the entire room. This lasts a few minutes before silence, Sam just feels the throb of energy coursing through his body.

“This is it… this is the surge but it must be acting weird because of the effect going on. I just have to finish the process of cracking it and threading the energy…”

Sam takes a deep breath and settles his body. This is it. This is one of those moments where he’ll need to perform perfectly or suffer the consequences. He lets out a few punches at the groin of the person holding him and says.

‘Stop Stop.’

A shimmer comes across the world as things come into motion, the man holding him releases his grip.

Sam kicks away trying to move away as the woman shrieks, she punches out yelling.

“OBEY!”

Sam is hit by this blow, his body is thrown back a few metres with a loud crunching sound. His body remains motionless on the ground, the woman stands before the man who is nursing his groin.

“Did you hear that?” one of the people in the crowd asks.

“The crack? Wasn’t that his bones?” someone replies.

“No, it was somewhere else, like inside my inner realm.”

“What? Your inner realm? That’s impossible unless your monster is playing up, you can’t have that for this operation.”

The woman walks up to the man, “What happened?”

“I suddenly got a massive pain in the groin, but something is weird with him. We should leave, we can still get the universal egg.”

“No! I want answers and I’ll get them. He knows where the mind went. I need to talk to it.”

The man with the ape mask shakes his head when suddenly,

*ZZT*