Lady Melania broke 3 epic-grade surgical tools and rendered a Legendary one mostly useless by the time she managed to cut into Arthur’s chest. That was when she ran into her first problem. The Originator’s blood—if it could even be called that—reached out from the open wound and attacked her right arm, breaking through her protective gloves like they were wet tissue paper.
Three black droplets managed to pierce into her palm before she jumped away from Arthur’s unconscious body. The corrupted blood burrowed through her flesh, destroying muscle and machine alike with no regard for the centuries she’d spent refining her body. Cursing, she turned the mostly useless legendary tool on herself and cut the arm off at the shoulder.
She pulled a replacement out of her storage ring and attached it. Melania had spent decades making such replacements as smooth as possible, but she winced at the stinging pain of foreign flesh linking with her nervous system. It would take a few hours before she could use it with the same ease as her former arm. Some would argue that healing the normal way was more efficient. They hadn’t seen just what her enhanced limbs could do. Evidently, her lacking durability needed to be improved, though.
Melania's severed arm had meanwhile gone through a kind of metamorphosis, growing almost twice as large. Her fingers had become five spindly legs, now pitch black and ending in claws that dripped poison. The rest of the limb had transformed into eleven writhing tentacles, four made from bone, and seven from mechanical flesh. It wasn’t a living creature, no matter how much the disgusting nether puppet might behave like one, but that didn’t change the fact that it was alive—a soulless biological weapon bent on spreading its corruption to anything opposing its master.
Melania analysed the monstrous puppet with detached horror. She’d created some dastardly evil things before, but Arthur’s blood earned her begrudging respect. It was a weapon of mass destruction in and of itself, comparable to a weaker apocalypse beast in its capacity to reap life. The blood completely destroyed an enemy's body and repurposed it as a puppet of nether, one that was hell-bent on spreading and infecting anything it considered a target.
The newly made puppets would form their own version of corrupted blood, utilising the remnant energies of their deceased vessels. Melania estimated her severed arm could infect three or four creatures below level 100 before losing its ability to spread its corrupting influence. Had she not severed her hand, Melania wondered how much blood it would take to convert her in her entirety. Ten litres if she were healthy and whole. Significantly less if she were injured.
As interesting as the creature was, she had bigger fish to catch. Isolating the puppet was very easy. She’d trapped far stronger monsters before. By the time she reached Arthur Ward, though, another problem had reared its ugly head. In the seconds she'd been away, the incision she’d agonisingly cut into Arthur’s chest had already healed. A minute of her precious time had gone, and she had nothing to show for it.
That’s when the impossible happened. A slight twitch in Arthur’s eyes. Most would say it was an involuntary muscle spasm, one of many that naturally occurred when someone was unconscious. Melania wasn’t most people, though; she perfectly calculated every variable when it came to keeping her experiments asleep. She’d also injected him with a tranquilliser potent enough to knock out an adult dragon. That movement, slight as it was, should have been impossible. Tapping into the spatial array laid over her city, Melania stepped through space, reappearing a half-dozen kilometres away.
A second later, Lady Melania's paranoia was rewarded. Against all her calculations, Arthur Ward's open palm clenched into a fist. She felt a sinking feeling in her chest when she recalled The Weaver's warning. Maybe I should’ve just killed him when I had the chance.
~~~
Transforming into The Nether Beast for the first time was a little underwhelming, though he chalked that up to his current state as a disembodied piece of consciousness. Something should certainly be happening to his body, at least if he’d managed to engage his trait in his current state. Nothing seemed to change at first, but slowly, sensation began to return.
It came in fits and starts, an impact on his chest that felt like a cargo ship had crashed into him, followed by a burning sensation that engulfed his entire head. It appeared that his body was currently engaged in battle, and his brain was playing catch-up. A few minutes later, his consciousness returned, and he could finally see again.
The sight that greeted him was insanity. It was like hell itself had descended onto the mirror world. As far as the eye could see, only destruction greeted him. There wasn't a single building within the fifty-mile arena that remained standing save the spiral tower at the centre, which was protected by a barrier of green magic.
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In this form, his domain easily reached the edges of this mirror world, and what a thing it was. It was an amalgam of every monster core he’d ever consumed, and tinged with the horrifying unreality of nether. He could easily recognise the origins of the most potent parts of it: the bleak darkness of the shadow panther that sucked the light and life from everything it touched, quite literally draining you of the will to live.
Then there was the stifling heat of the fire dragon that made Haadran look like an arctic winter, black flames burning randomly across the landscape. The air was thick with poison and corruption, and mirrored reflections of his slain enemies prowled about, visible only fleetingly at the edges of your vision. That was the hydra’s and Samuel’s influence at work. There were more subtle magics too, devastating winds he attributed to the Water-claw Kingfisher and a wildness that smelled of the Draconic Liverthion.
Finally, Arthur turned his attention to his body. He was significantly larger, almost nearing four metres in height, and his every limb ended in wicked claws that dripped poison. From his back, two draconic wings loomed, holding him aloft in the sky, and he instinctively recognised they could be retracted at will. His throat, forearm and shins were covered in scales that were simultaneously soft and malleable, and also the strongest substance Arthur had ever come across.
The rest of his body, save his face, was covered in black fur, tinged dark maroon at his chest. His mane of hair had been replaced with writhing serpents, the hydra’s influence for sure, and he sported a thick tail that felt as strong as any one of his other limbs. Arthur's skull had obviously grown larger with the rest of him, but it had remained the same for the most part, the only tangible difference being his bigger teeth and pronounced canines.
Unfortunately, his transformation had come with a few downsides. Just as he had feared, The Nether Beast was too powerful even for this tier 3 mirror world to support. Hell, the realm itself seemed to be strained by his very existence, fragile and brittle, like any sudden movement would tear it apart. It was like he had become a black hole, too dense for the fabric of reality to hold him. With the current speed he was guzzling energy, Arthur suspected he had minutes before he reverted back to his original form, which meant Melania could knock him out again with whatever trick she’d used the first time.
Arthur grinned. It was time to level the playing field a little. Lady Melania had chosen the arena. Now he would make it his. Arthur summoned The House Of The End, the tension in his muscles easing when he felt his energy expenditure lighten significantly. While he hadn’t planted the house's seed here, just summoning it greatly reduced his maintenance upkeep.
Arthur exhaled, in relief, momentarily startling at the black flames that erupted from his nostrils as he did so. He tried to pull up his status sheet, but was unsurprisingly met with an error notification. They were a familiar sight at this point.
Error… The Nether Beast exists outside the scope that the System can quantifiably measure…
That made sense. With three times his base stats, Arthur's Draconic Vitality should’ve crossed the 20,000 point mark; only he didn’t think such a figure was truly possible.
“It seems you’ve finally returned, Mr Ward.”
The sound of Melania’s voice echoed from all around him, her body hidden from sight. “It was getting annoying watching you rampage through the city. Powerful as your transformation may be, without you behind the helm, it’s not very difficult to throw the beast off the scent.”
“You’re in the tower, aren’t you?” Arthur growled. It was a literal growl, like someone had granted a lion the ability to speak.
“No comment. Perhaps I am. Perhaps I’m somewhere else entirely.”
“Why are we speaking?” Arthur asked.
“Because I was waiting for your transformation to wear off before coming out to kill you,” came the fast reply. “With your new summon on the scene, though, the transformation will last for the duration of our entire battle. In that form, I have no conceivable way to harm you that isn’t detrimental to myself, too. I’ve thrown the equivalent of dozens of hydrogen bombs at you, and I haven’t even got a drop of your blood to show for it.”
The next words were muttered under her breath, but still echoed from all around him. “I don't want to even see you bleed right now. It'll probably turn into a bunch of fucking apocalypse beasts.”
The words were confusing, but he chalked it up to something that had happened when he was unconscious.
“We're at an impasse, Arthur. This shield is one designed to protect the entire planet. It can hold up to your attacks for days, perhaps even indefinitely. Let's make a deal. We call off the sanctioned battle. I’ll cover the penalty fees for both of us. In the remaining time, let me run some—”
“Fuck you,” Arthur spat, the flames in his domain briefly flaring up in response to his words. “You die today bitch.”
Melania began speaking again, but Arthur shut the incessant droning out. Instead, he summoned Wovan. The Ender-class spider popped into thin air. For once, she wasn’t the most monstrous thing around. That title belonged to Arthur today. She whizzed around him, excited at his new form. He could feel a vague sense of approval coming through their link.
“Bringing the spider into battle won’t help you, Originator.”
Arthur smiled. Melania had no doubt set up the kinds of wards that made teleportation a death sentence. This barrier had probably foiled hundreds of dimensional mages over the centuries. She’d never met someone like Wovan, though. To date, he had never encountered a defence she couldn’t teleport through. Arthur gave the order. Space twisted around him, and the next moment, he was on the other side of the barrier.
Arthur grinned.
“Well, shit.”
Links to the audiobooks.
Etherious: Originator
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