Last Command of the Witheld Arc 1: Rebirth

Griffin Tucker Vasilias, Great House Scion, Reborn Lvl 3

Mount Discovery, Province of Aragonia

When Griffin returned to consciousness next, it was to a crowd of System messages. He blinked, starting to read through them as he shifted to a more comfortable position. It hit him that although he was a little stiff, the terrible pain that had crippled him before was absent. Kismet appeared on his knee, back in her lab coat and glasses. She watched him but didn’t say anything as he got absorbed in reading.

Monster Bounty

You have defeated 1 Plasma Cybercentipede Mother! It was classified as a Class 1 Level 5 Boss.

The Bounty for Class1 Level 5 Plasma Cybercentipede Mother monsters in this region is [13,255] credits, which have been added to your account. Credits can be used in the System Marketplace to purchase goods and services listed there.

In defeating this monster, you have fulfilled one of your duties as a Reborn of the Witheld. Keep hunting monsters, and keep getting stronger!

Attribute Unlocked!

You have unlocked your Growth Attribute at a score of [7].

The following have been improved: base regeneration, healing factor, tensa throughput, tensa capacity, tensa regeneration rate, graft potency, resilience

For unlocking an Attribute for the first time, your tensa pool increases by 1 ks per Attribute. Your tensa pool is now at 23.9 kilosparks.

Woah, Griffin thought, trying to absorb the flood of new information a piece at a time. This is…a lot. Holy shit, look at my new tensa pool! I used to have 2.7 kilosparks after I absorbed the Data shard, now my tensa pool is like ten times higher. How does that work? He read through the description again and noticed that it mentioned his tensa capacity had been improved.

Hell of an improvement, he thought. Plus a bunch of…money? I guess credits are money. It says I can buy stuff on the System Market. I’ll have to check that out sometime soon to see what’s even on there. Maybe there’ll be a magic key or a hoverboard or flying carpet or something that’ll get me out of here. He decided to ask Kismet about it once he got out of the vent and back to his room. And had a shower. A really long, really hot shower.

He adjusted his position in the air exchange, propping himself into a sitting position with only a little difficulty. He was sore, but he wasn’t hurt anymore. He felt the back of his head gingerly and felt that his hair was matted with dried blood, but there was no cut. Griffin ran his hands over his body, searching for the various cuts and broken bones and other injuries he knew he’d sustained, but other than a few sore spots, he was completely fine. Shaking his head in wonder, he read through his other notifications.

New Graft Obtained!

You absorbed a [Legendary Void Ethershard], bonding it to your Growth Attribute. Because you have not yet chosen a Class, you gain a new, random graft of [Legendary] quality. You have gained the graft [Dread Consumption].

Due to the [Legendary] quality of the ethershard absorbed, your Growth Attribute has been set to 7.

That sounds promising, Griffin thought as he read the name of his new graft. Hopefully, it’s as badass an attack graft as it seems. Dread Consumption sounds like it should shred pretty much anything I point it at. Let’s at least see what the power does. He concentrated on the [Dread Consumption] tag in the description and a new System window popped up.

Dread Consumption [Void] – Growth 12

Next Rank: 1 Uncommon ethershard of the Void, 1 Uncommon ethershard of the Empty Belly

Cost: 10 ks

Cooldown: None

Description: Select 1 dead monster or a volume of 3(Growth) cubic meters. Target is broken down into its constituent parts and absorbed. Temporarily gain any 1 graft or special ability/feature the target had for (Growth) hours. This is a Harvest ability, so any items, ethershards, or materials in the affected area will be transferred to your ownership.

Passive Effect: Anything you eat will give you sustenance, including traditionally inedible things. Some items may grant additional effects. You gain immunity to poison and poison effects.

What in the actual fuck did I just get, he wondered as he read the description. This isn’t an attack graft at all. He felt uneasy about the power, the more he read through it. How the hell can I eat ‘traditionally inedible’ things? I guess the immunity to poison and poison effects is pretty straightforward at least. Chalk it up to another thing to talk to Kismet about once I get out of here. Looks like there’s just one more notification.

Achievement Gained!

Walk Softly, But Carry a Big Stick

Description: Through ingenuity, tenacity, or sheer dumb luck, you have faced a Class 1 Boss monster when you were below Stone Rank and emerged victorious.

Reward: +5 to all unlocked Attributes

Griffin’s eyes widened at the final notification and he pulled up his System profile to see his new Attributes and grafts. He wanted to make sure he’d read that achievement right.

Griffin Tucker Vasilias

Race

Human

Rank/Level

Reborn - level 3

House

House Vasilias

Racial Gifts

Great House Seal, Enhanced System Access, Unlimited Inventory, Monster Rendering, DEMI Port, Overcharge

Attributes

Dominion

?? / 20

Speed

12 [Data] /20

Precision

?? / 20

Growth

12 [Void] /20

Arcana

15 [Mind] /20

Tensa Pool

22.9 ks

Gear

Duffel Bag, Cinnamon Rolls x 34, knife, pillow x 4, soap, toothbrush, pen, notebook

Grafts

Adaptive Conjuration [Mind], Sensor Suite [Speed], Dread Consumption [Void]

Griffin carefully read over his profile, stopping on his Attributes. According to his messages, his new Growth Attribute would’ve matched his Speed attribute at 7, but because of the achievement he’d gotten, they were both at 12. And his tensa pool wasn’t at 10.3 kilosparks, it was 22.9 kilosparks! Clearly, the Growth Attribute had an outsize influence on his tensa pool.

If this Growth Attribute can bring me back from the brink of death like that, then that’s the first thing I’m concentrating on. I’m increasing that to the max as soon as I possibly can.

He tried to wet his mouth, but he was parched. Griffin conjured a glass of water and took tiny sips, even though he wanted to gulp it down in one go. He remembered reading somewhere that if you drank too quickly after being dehydrated, you could get pretty sick. The slow sips of water helped revive him even more until he finally felt like he could speak.

He took another sip of water and cleared his throat. Kismet, who had been watching him intently, adjusted her glasses needlessly on her nose and said, “Please take it easy, you’ve just survived a very near brush with death. I’ve been monitoring your System profile. Congratulations on bonding your shard correctly!”

Griffin grinned, feeling a surge of pride. He’d managed to focus through the pain of mortal wounds caused by a rampaging monster and a whole-ass explosion and had come out on top. And he’d done it without any permanent injuries!

“Let’s get the hell out of this vent,” he said. “How long have I been stuffed in this thing anyway?”

“Three days since you absorbed the shard,” she said. “I worried you would die many times.” Her voice was quiet, intense. “It was close.”

Griffin nodded and pushed himself into the vent, worming his way forward. “Yeah no kidding it was close. Way too damn close,” he agreed fervently. He paused as he crawled, a thought just now occurring to him. “Do you think that other Mother had an ethershard in it like the first one?”

“It is possible,” Kismet confirmed. “The box of shards August Vasilias sent through the portal with you would have been irresistible to any monster who could sense them.”

“Well, that’s something. I guess we’ll see in a few moments either way.” He continued squirming his way through the vent, avoiding the scarred metal from where the Mother’s plasma beam had burned through the vent. As he went, he reconstructed his anima’s sphere configuration and his senses expanded once more. The sudden expansion of his senses revealed the extent of the damage caused by his dynamite. It looked like a war zone out there with twisted bits of wreckage everywhere.

It took just a few minutes of crawling to get out of the vent and he had to conjure another ladder to get down. Once he got down from the ladder, he stood up straight for the first time in almost a week. It felt amazing. He stretched his arms and legs, reveling in the feel of his muscles being able to fully extend. After a little while, he glanced around, trying to make sense of the wreckage.

“Hey, it’s a lot warmer in here than it used to be,” Griffin commented distractedly. “Think it had something to do with my dynamite trick?”

Kismet shook her head. “The warming began before you found the first Mother’s corpse. The tensa batteries powering the enchantments that kept the room cold must have been depleted.”

Griffin nodded absent-mindedly. He was looking at the wall to see if his dynamite had done any damage to the room itself. It didn’t seem to have.

The wall had been scorched but was otherwise completely undamaged. The floor had been covered in wreckage from the room above where a section of the ceiling had collapsed and he could see the corpse of the Mother he had killed, partially buried by the rubble. The footing was unsteady and he had to be very careful to avoid slipping and twisting his ankle or worse as he approached the corpse of the Mother.

He got as close to it as he could before he stopped, balancing precariously as he inspected the dead monster. “Do you think this thing’d be good to try out my new Dread Consumption graft?” He asked Kismet.

She appeared next to the half-buried corpse, flying around it and looking it over critically before she stopped and nodded. “I think it would be a good test.” She paused, tapping her finger on her lip before she added, “But be prepared for…unexpected results.”

He arched an eyebrow. “It’s not like you to be coy,” he said. “C’mon, what does ‘unexpected results’ mean?”

Kismet sighed and replied, “I meant what I said. The monster you killed was a Boss monster. They’re powerful creatures and your Dread Consumption graft specifically tells you that you’ll gain a graft, special ability, or feature that the monster had.”

“Sounds pretty badass, to be completely honest. Maybe this will finally be able to give me the attack I need to be effective in combat. Though the dynamite did the job pretty well if you ask me.”

“And what happens when the enemy you face isn’t a mindless beast bent on your destruction to the point of utter insanity?” Kismet didn’t seem impressed with his dynamite trick. “While that explosive you used was powerful for a mundane weapon, it pales in comparison to even Stone rank grafts and defenses. Remember that if you face other Reborn in battle.”

Griffin nodded, staying quiet. He didn’t like the thought of facing other Reborn in battle. That sounded like suicide. Not only that, but he had no desire to fight against anyone, especially not anyone with grafts that made dynamite pale in comparison.

Deciding that he’d worry about it if he got into that kind of situation. He doubted he would. After all, he’d managed to live his entire life on Earth without ever getting in a real fight once and that was without magical powers. If anyone was too big an asshole, he could conjure a smoke bomb or something and Batman out of there. He read over Dread Consumption’s description again and didn’t see anything about how it was activated or what happened when he used it. He shrugged. None of his other grafts indicated how they’d be used either, so it didn’t exactly concern him.

He activated the graft, feeling half his tensa drain away. There suddenly arose a terrible itching on his left palm like a thousand mosquito bites had popped up at once and Griffin gasped with the sensation. Before he could react, he felt like he got the greatest scratching of any itch he’d ever had. He turned his hand over, staring at his palm and trying to see what the hell was going on.

He saw that a slit had opened in his palm like a terrible paper cut. But instead of bleeding, the cut distorted and filled out with a surreal, cartoonish bounce. Griffin stared incredulously at the perfectly formed mouth, complete with lips. The mouth reminded him exactly of the pair of red lips that sang about science fiction double features at the beginning of The Rocky Horror Motion Picture Show. As he watched, a red tongue darted out and licked the lips, wetting them.

Before he could do more than stare at the horrific addition, he felt compelled to hold his left hand out toward the corpse of the monster by the power of the graft. He felt the mouth on his hand open wide, a moan of pleasure escaping from its lipstick-red lips.

“What in the absolute—” Griffin started but cut off as the mouth abruptly shot out its tongue and wrapped it around the exploded and buried corpse of the Mother.

The tongue just kept going and going, continuing to wrap the enormous body until, just a few seconds after it had started, the tongue stopped coming out of the mouth. With a sudden jerk, the mouth on his hand yanked the entire corpse out of the rubble with supernatural strength far greater than what Griffin possessed. The tongue then surged back into the mouth, taking the wrapped-up corpse with it.

Griffin’s hand grew to accommodate the size of the pieces of monster, but never more than twice its original size as the tongue also seemed to compress what it wrapped. In moments, the entire corpse had been sucked into Griffin’s palm. The feelings that accompanied the mouth cramming itself full of monster bits were indescribably awful. It didn’t hurt. It might have been better if it hurt. No, what made it so terrible was that it felt good. It…tasted good. Just like shrimp scampi. A series of horrific crunches and slurps happened, then the tip of the tongue poked back out of the lips and licked them as the mouth smacked happily. A second later, the mouth faded away as if it had never existed.

Griffin stared at his arm in horror. Nervously, he poked at his left arm with his right hand. “What in the actual fuck just happened?” He asked, more shocked by what had just happened than anything else that had happened in the recent past. “Did…did my…hand just eat that whole damn dead bug? It was the size of a city bus! Where the hell did it all go?!” He poked at his belly, but it wasn’t any bigger, nor was his left arm. “That had to have been the creepiest fucking power ever!”

A message suddenly popped up in his HUD that surprised Griffin again.

Dread Consumption Harvest Result

Items harvested and moved to Inventory

1 x [Legendary] quality ethershard of Void

150 kg [Junk] quality cybernetic parts

23.8 kg [Common] quality cybernetic parts

107 kg [Rare] quality plasma cybercentipede meat

New temporary graft gained! [Plasma Beam] is bound to your [Growth] Attribute for the next [12] hours.

“Woah…” Griffin said as he read through the message. “Did I just eat that monster with my hand and turn it into treasure? That’s…I really don’t know what to think about that.” He chuckled incredulously. “I mean, I know it’s cool. But ugh, that was fuckin’ gross.”

Griffin wasn’t too eager to absorb another ethershard after he’d just absorbed one, especially another Void shard. What if I get another graft like Dread Consumption? He wondered. I don’t know if I even want something like that. Will people think I’m fucked up because I have a mini mouth in my hand? Cuz I’m freaking out a little. He kept his freakout internal, doing his best not to cause Kismet to worry.

He looked at the spot on his hand and knew that the mouth was still there, just hiding right under the skin of his palm waiting to reassert itself. He couldn’t get the feeling of the monster being devoured out of his head. No matter what he did, Griffin would never be able to forget that the plasma cybercentipede Mother had tasted just like shrimp scampi. He didn’t want to think about that anymore, so he focused on the Plasma Beam graft and called up the System entry about it so he could distract himself.

Plasma Beam [Fire] – Growth 12

Next Rank: [N/A] Temporary graft

Cost: 5 ks

Cooldown: 30 seconds

Description: Fire a beam of plasma up to 100 m long that is [Growth] x 1000 degrees Centigrade. The beam lasts up to [Growth] x .1 seconds.

“Okay, maybe devouring monsters with my hand isn’t such a bad thing,” he muttered as he read Plasma Beam’s description. “I actually have an attack graft now!”