The grind was supposed to be over, but the world didn't give a damn about the dull throb in my marrow or the way my new bones felt too heavy for my skin. It just wanted to see if the monster I'd carved out of my own meat actually worked.
The old man had spent weeks barking about the Aurelian Heart. A miracle, the scholars called it. To me? It was a battery. A hit of high-octane fuel for my Dantian and the only thing that might stop Marduk from coughing his lungs onto the floor by next full moon.
The morning it ripened, the cove didn't smell like a miracle. It smelled like a wet grave.
I had a plan. Naval Intelligence beat one rule into my skull: if you're the smallest rat in the pit, make sure the bigger ones are too busy tearing each other's throats out to smell you.
The 'Apex' was a bloated, purple-skinned nightmare lounging on a throne of bleached driftwood. It had wings like burnt parchment and a scorpion's tail that leaked a yellow, hissing bile. It looked bored. I hated it for that.
I didn't challenge the bastard. I just made him angry.
I'd spent an hour soaking a mangy goat hide in fermented guts and molasses. I hurled the rotting mess into the tide where the smaller drakes were already circling, then skipped a mana-charged stone off the Apex's snout.
The stone didn't just hit; it bit.
The Apex let out a sound like a mountain splitting open. It lunged. Within seconds, the cove was a meat-grinder of scales, salt spray, and screaming drakes.
That was my cue.
I moved, staying low against the shale, a shadow among the rocks. I reached the hollow, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. The fruit sat there, pulsing with a gold light that made my teeth ache with greed.
I reached out. My skin was an inch from the prize when the simian-striders broke cover.
Gawky, long-limbed bastards with marble eyes and zero sense of self-preservation. They didn't want the magic; they just wanted the shiny toy.
One snatched it. I lunged, but another slammed into my ribs, knocking the wind out of me in a hot rush. My 'surgical' hit-and-run just became a bar fight with hyperactive acrobats.
"Focus," I snarled. [Chessmaster] kicked in, and the world curdled into a slow-motion blur. Blue lines of intent streaked across my vision, tracing the monkeys' paths through the air.
I didn't run like a man. I ran like a goddamn machine.
I yanked on the Gravity Cord in my gut. My weight vanished. My boots barely kissed the moss as I cleared a ten-foot gap. As I landed, I dropped the 'Anchor' behind me.
The air itself seemed to groan under the sudden pressure. The three simians behind me didn't just fall—they were slammed into the limestone. I heard the crunch of ribs, a wet, sickening sound that told me they weren't getting up.
But the sync was off. My body was still screaming at my brain.
I overcompensated on a hairpin turn, pulling too much weight into my lead foot. My momentum inverted. I didn't turn; I catapulted.
I hit a pillar shoulder-first. The crack echoed in my skull—a white-hot spike of agony that should have shattered the bone. The old man's 'welding' held, but it felt like I'd been hit by a freight train. I rolled, spitting blood and copper, and watched a strider toss the Aurelian Heart into the air with a mocking shriek.
"Fix it," I growled through a split lip.
I reached for the Alchemia Morphica. I needed my palms to stick. I needed 'Adhesion.'
I rushed the weave. Bad move.
The mana flared, a searing, toxic white. My right hand didn't become sticky—it turned to stone. The Alchemia over-calcified the joints in a frantic, botched surge. My fingers froze into a rigid, frosted claw. The pain was a jagged needle driven straight into my wrist.
I had one good hand, a right arm that was now a glorified club, and about three seconds before the rest of the troop swarmed me.
I didn't back off. I looked at the gorge ahead—narrow, slick, and deep.
I stopped trying to be subtle with the gravity. I just pulled. I dumped every scrap of mana into a single point at the cliff's edge.
Pull. Hold. Snap.
The monkeys pounced just as I cut the cord. The vacuum of pressure didn't let them land; it slung them forward. They sailed over my head, a tangle of fur and screeching confusion, before vanishing into the churning white water below.
The fruit was tumbling toward a crevice. I scrambled for it, but a shadow fell over the rock. A heavy, sulfurous heat washed over me.
"It was the Apex !" I thought
The drakes were gone, reduced to red ribbons on the beach. The monster stood thirty feet away, its bile-yellow eyes fixed on the gold light in my hand, then on my face. It wasn't just hungry. It was insulted. It knew I'd played it for a fool.
"Shit," I breathed.
It didn't run. It launched. The ground under its claws disintegrated.
[Chessmaster] screamed. The blue line wasn't a path anymore; it was a goddamn executioner's axe aimed at my chest.
No time to dodge. I braced my right arm—the heavy, useless block of 'glass' and bone. I didn't try to heal it. I shoved more power into it, turning it into a dense, frozen mace.
The monster hit like a falling house. Its claw raked my chest, tearing through leather and skin, but I pivoted, swinging the petrified weight of my arm with everything I had.
Thud-crack.
My hand slammed into its snout. The shock vibrated through my teeth. The beast recoiled, dazed by the impossible hardness of my arm, but its tail lashed out by instinct.
The stinger hissed through the air. I saw the drop of green rot on the tip.
I didn't jump. I flipped the gravity under my own boots.
I propelled myself sideways in a messy, desperate heave. The stinger buried itself in the shale where my heart had been, the rock melting into a bubbling, foul-smelling soup.
I landed hard, clutching the fruit to my chest like a lifeline. The Apex reared back, its massive wings unfurling to blot out the sun. It was faster. Stronger. And it was going to kill me.
But I knew this rock better than he did.
I didn't aim at the beast. I aimed at the limestone shelf holding its weight. I dropped the 'Anchor' right on the overhang, decupling the gravity on a ledge already eaten away by the monster's own acid.
"Fall, you bastard," I spat.
The shelf didn't just break; it detonated. Under the sudden, impossible weight, the stone gave way. The Apex roared, its wings flapping uselessly as the ground vanished. I used the last drop of my mana to hook a 'Cord' to its hind leg, anchoring it to the falling debris.
It went down in a roar of thunder and shattered stone, hitting the reefs below with a sound that ended the argument once and for all.
I didn't stay to watch. My head was spinning, my right arm was a block of screaming fire, and my chest was a mess of red. But the Aurelian Heart was warm against my palm.
I'd survived. Now I just had to get home before the island finished the job.