Things had been going extraordinarily well for Lady Melania lately. First, she’d managed to break through to the journeyman tier on her law of Genetics, something she’d been working towards for the last fifty years. Then she’d finally managed to solve the resonance rejection she’d been working against for centuries. To all intents and purposes now, there was no distinction between her biological self and the metropolis she’d built over the last thousand years.

  Finally, just when things had started to wind down, tales of an Originator wielding soul magic had begun to spread. Melania had no idea why her slaves had continued pursuing the man when everyone had thought him dead—she’d never managed to iron out the defects from the pair—but their strange quirks meant she’d been the first to learn that Arthur Ward was still alive.

  Melania had expected a reward for her service, perhaps a resource-rich mining planet, or a fruit of evolution to finally push her to the peak of A-tier. The Council had gone above and beyond, though, granting her an hour to experiment on The Perfect Homunculus so long as she executed him at the end of it. Melania hated being wasteful, but she wasn’t greedy enough to try to sneak the boy away under The Council's watchful gaze.

  Tempting as it may be, if she were so tired of life, there were easier ways to kill herself. Besides, with the sanctioned battle taking place in the very heart of her power, an hour might as well be all the time in the world.

  She made her way to the central tower, the nexus hub that provided power to over a third of the planet. The mirrored replica before her was perfect, down to the last second adjustments she’d made for the fight. While you couldn’t make drastic changes to yourself before a sanctioned battle, the same rules didn’t apply to the arena in which the fight would take place. In a few minutes, all that power would be focused on bringing Arthur Ward to heel. Thinking of all the experiments she could run almost made her salivate, which was outstanding, really, since she’d programmed the biological function out of her body centuries ago.

  There was a sudden twist in space, and then The Weaver stepped into reality. The woman had always unnerved Melania, and her presence was no less terrifying today. The Cult of The Weaver peddled a lot of bullshit, but the one thing they got right was how powerful Makora was.

  “Are you ready, Melania?” The Weaver's voice, rumoured to be melodious by many, sounded like nails on a chalkboard. For Lady Melania, it always had. She ignored the blood dripping down her ears, something that should have been impossible since she no longer had any running through her veins. In front of the Weaver, however, impossible was just a suggestion.

  “I’m bringing the sun against a juiced-up child. The only match-ups in history worse than this were the broadcast executions they used to air before they were outlawed.”

  “It would do you well to remember this juiced-up child is an Originator.”

  “I never underestimate my opponents,” Melania replied. “Especially when they gift me a present with so many strings attached.”

  The Weaver stared at her incredulously before bursting into laughter. “You consider me an opponent. Me!”

  “The same way a commoner does mother nature. You are a natural disaster I must navigate around.”

  “Natural disaster,” The Weaver repeated, as if tasting the word. “I’ve never been called that before. I quite like it.”

  “What's your game here, Lady Makora. You never do anything without a plan.”

  “A test, I guess. Right now, you're both pawns on the board. I’m trying to find out who’s more valuable.”

  Melania took in The Weaver's words. “I know he’s an Originator and all, but is he really that powerful? You think he actually stands a chance against me?”

  “The boys surprised me one time too many already. He grew too fast, too quickly. Now he needs culling. I pulled a lot of strings to give you this opportunity. Don’t disappoint me, child.”

  Melania hated the way Makora called her that. It was so demeaning, and coming from The Weaver’s lips, it was literally poison that attacked her mental sense of self.

  “The boy will be here any minute now. I expect great things from you. Fail to meet them, and it will be the last thing you ever do.”

  With those ominous words, The Weaver twisted reality once more and stepped away. Eleven seconds later, Melania's body was frozen in place, so completely that she couldn’t even blink. It would have been terrifying if she hadn’t been expecting it. Standing opposite her now was the only other living being in this mirror world: Arthur Ward, the Originator she’d been tasked with killing. For the first minute of battle, they would be kept in stasis by the mirror-world, the final few moments they had to mentally prepare themselves.

  Melania took her opponent in. Arthur Ward certainly had a presence about him, she’d give the boy that much. Still, as she read through all the biometric data her scanners had picked up on, she couldn’t help but feel a little let down. Four affinities with a hint of corruption about him, nothing extraordinary besides his soul affinity. His stats were something else, though; vitality that had been enhanced by a dragon's touch and a healthpool akin to a hydras.

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  Relative to his level, Melania had to admit that Arthur Ward was a terror the universe would probably never see again. He’d blown her every prediction out of the water. Unfortunately for him, that wasn’t enough to save his life today. Hopefully, dissecting him would reveal his more interesting secrets. His skull was already showing some anomalous readings she couldn't wait to investigate.

  ~~~

  Arthur Ward stared at Melania. For a woman who’d given him so much grief, she looked entirely too normal. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, a cyborg monstrosity or at least someone who looked a little evil. Lady Melania was neither, appearing like a stereotypical grandma who covered library shifts over the weekend.

  Moving was a struggle right now, perhaps even impossible. He would’ve panicked if Melania didn't seem to be caught in the same stasis field. Arthur took the time to go over his trait for the last time. It had changed a little since his second refinement.

  This was a trait Arthur had never dared to use before. For starters, Arthur had never been on a planet with enough ether to support this form, even with his Hyperefficient trait. That changed today. Wherever Melania’s capital may be, it certainly wasn’t lacking for ether. The main reason he hadn’t tapped into this form, however, was because of the costs associated with it, both mental and physical.

  The coma had previously had a limit of 100 days, and while it had been halved now, that was a long time to spend being so vulnerable. With his new Soul Splinter, though, Arthur now had a safe space to rest, and his recovery time would be five times faster. He would’ve tried attacking Melania already, but that was strictly against the rules. You could do nothing until the battle was officially declared. Ezrial had managed to tell him that much before he’d been teleported here, which meant that until his stasis was lifted, Arthur’s hands were tied.

  The rules hadn’t done much to stop Melania, though. Since coming here, Arthur had been bombarded with dozens of System messages telling him of the dozens of poisons he'd resisted. It turned out that quite a lot fell under the umbrella of preparing the battlefield in advance. Still, Arthur had to respect the fact that Melania had built up immunity to so many different kinds of poisons. Evil as she may be, the woman had the grit to experiment on herself, too.

  Arthur waited the agonisingly long seconds for the stasis to wear off, which was annoying when he didn't know how long the wait would be. That critical lack of knowledge would prove to be a fatal mistake. When the stasis finally dropped, Lady Melania acted a microsecond faster.

  Arthur Ward's body bonelessly dropped to the ground. He'd been knocked unconscious in less than a second.

  Lady Melania approached the prone Originator, relying on her diagnostic tools to ensure the man was actually unconscious and not faking it. She almost sighed in relief when her results came back positive. It seemed The Weaver's warning had gotten under her skin a little. Melania prodded Arthur's cheek with her foot and rolled him onto his back. She almost lost balance at the unexpected resistance, having forgotten just how damn heavy the boy was.

  "I know you can't hear any of this, but on the off chance you do, I'll grant you the courtesy of knowing why you failed today. Without getting into the complexity of it all, that tower over there controls the power supply of nearly half the planet, which, surprisingly enough on this ether-rich world, is electricity. It also possesses the power to render the energy obsolete should the occasion ever call for it," Melania explained.

  "You're durable enough to survive any magic I throw at you, but when I concentrate the nullifying effects of the tower entirely on you... Well, your brain stops working. Surprisingly enough, you haven't trained your brain enough yet, which means it's still reliant on electrical impulses for everything, even as enhanced as those impulses may be. I just turned the power off, which in turn shut your brain down."

  "Honestly, it's such a simple method to deal with you, it's anticlimactic," Melania sighed. "People always chase the next level up; they forget what you can do with some simple science. Even your sub-brain's still running off electrical impulses. You had the perfect setup for some nifty defence, and you went and squandered it. What's the phrase? A swine adorned with pearls. That's you, Arthur Ward."

  "Ah, what am I even doing?" Melania muttered to herself. She really had to drop the bad habit of talking to her experiments.

  ~~~

  When Arthur realised where he was, it took all his willpower not to scream. A second later, or an eternity—he couldn't tell—Arthur remembered he didn't know how to scream. This was all so familiar now. It seemed he'd returned to hell, or perhaps, he'd never left. Had everything since Wovan's evolution simply been a dream?

  A second later, or an eternity, Arthur realised what he had to do. It was honestly freeing, really. When nothing truly mattered anymore, and the lines between fiction and reality blurred, all his reservations about becoming a beast disappeared. Right now, Arthur Ward needed to be a monster.

  Who knew what would happen? Either he would wake up, or he wouldn't. It was time to find out if The Perfect Homunculus lived up to the hype.

  Links to the audiobooks.

  Etherious: Originator

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