It was incredibly hot.
Silas Vane was currently stuck inside a vat of highly corrosive stomach acid. The digestive tract of the Cloud-Cobra was a pitch-black nightmare of crushing muscular walls and bubbling green bile.
Every time the serpent moved above ground, the internal pressure squeezed him tighter and ground his regenerating bones against each other.
'If I make it out of this,' Silas thought while squeezing his eyes shut as a wave of acidic bile washed over his face. 'I am never complaining about the Institute cafeteria food again.'
He was caught in an endless loop. The acid would melt the flesh from his arms, exposing the white bone underneath. The pain would spike, his brain would scream, and then the Ever-Sustain Protocol would forcefully stitch him back together.
[Ding!]
[Host sustains severe chemical burns! +150 Carnage Points!]
[Host sustains crushing trauma! +80 Carnage Points!]
[Accelerated Cellular Reassembly healing in progress...]
The translucent blue prompts illuminated the darkness of the snake's stomach, floating right in front of his face like a cruel video game interface. It was the only light he had.
Silas wasn't dead, but he was trapped. He tried to kick his legs, but the muscular walls of the stomach clamped down with heavy force.
His newly reformed muscles were dense, but he still possessed the raw physical strength of a Low-Chain student. He couldn't just punch his way out of a Rank 1 Dire-Kin.
"System," Silas choked out. His voice was a raspy gurgle through the acidic slime. "Show me the shop. Show me what I can afford."
A new panel materialized instantly.
┌──────[ System Shop ]──────┐
│ Current Carnage Points: 11,430
│
│ [Physical Enhancements]
│ - Iron-Skin Tier 1 (Cost: 5,000 CP)
│ - Muscle-Density Doubler (Cost: 8,000 CP)
│
│ [Combat Arts]
│ - Basic Brawler Stance (Cost: 1,000 CP)
│ - Obsidian Blade-Dance (Cost: 3,000 CP)
└───────────────────────────┘
Silas locked his eyes onto the bottom option. The Obsidian Blade-Dance.
He knew of it from the Institute's theoretical combat lectures. It was a legendary and notoriously difficult saber art. Instructors claimed it took thirty years to reach the foundational third tier.
"Purchase Obsidian Blade-Dance," Silas commanded mentally. "And spend the rest upgrading it as high as it will go."
[Ding!]
[Processing request... Obsidian Blade-Dance purchased. (Cost: 3,000 CP)]
[Upgrading to Tier 2... (Cost: 500 CP)]
[Upgrading to Tier 3... (Cost: 1,000 CP)]
[Upgrading to Tier 9 (Maximum Mortal Limit)... (Cost: 6,500 CP)]
[Remaining Carnage Points: 430]
[Warning: Forcible integration of Ultima-Tier muscle memory is highly traumatic. Brace yourself.]
"Wait, what does that mean?"
Silas didn't get to finish the thought.
It felt as though someone had driven a hot iron spike directly into his brain. A torrent of information and raw physical experience violently flooded his consciousness.
He saw phantoms of himself practicing with a blade under a bleeding sun. He felt the precise angle of a wrist flick and the exact distribution of weight required to execute a flawless parry.
The system wasn't just giving him knowledge. It was rewriting his physical nervous system.
His muscles spasmed violently in the snake's stomach. His tendons snapped and knitted back together, adjusting to the impossible demands of the Tier 9 technique.
Silas screamed and thrashed wildly against the acid. Blood poured from his nose and ears.
[Ding!]
[Neural and Muscular restructuring complete.]
[Host has survived extreme cognitive trauma! +2,000 Carnage Points!]
[Genetic Shackles loosening. Cell Activation has reached 25%!]
Silas gasped and inhaled a lungful of toxic air, but it didn't burn quite as much this time. The world felt completely different.
The crushing pressure of the stomach walls was no longer overwhelming. His muscles hummed with a taut and explosive energy.
Twenty-five percent cell activation. He had just skipped three years of Institute training in five seconds.
But a technique was useless without a weapon. His standard-issue short-sword had been lost in the arena sand.
'Think,' Silas ordered himself, using his newly enhanced senses to map his grim surroundings.
He shifted his right arm and ignored the sickening sound of melting flesh. He reached down into the deepest part of the stomach where the acid was thickest.
Snakes couldn't digest certain materials. If this Cloud-Cobra had been fed Institute defectors, there had to be something left behind.
His fingers brushed against something hard and sharp.
Silas gripped it tightly and pulled. It was a jagged shard of tempered Void-Steel roughly the length of his forearm. It looked like the broken tip of a heavy broadsword.
'It is not a saber,' Silas thought as he felt the comforting weight of the steel settle into his grip. The centuries of downloaded muscle memory adapted instantly. 'But it will do.'
He adjusted his grip. His mind automatically fell into the opening stance of the 9th Tier Obsidian Blade-Dance. The panic evaporated and was replaced by a cold focus.
He didn't need room to swing.
"Phase-Cut," Silas whispered.
His muscles coiled like springs. He channeled every ounce of his new cell activation into his wrist and shoulder.
He thrust the jagged shard of steel upward.
The movement was so fast and flawless that it created a localized vacuum inside the stomach. The blade sheared straight through the tough muscular lining of the Cobra's digestive tract.
Silas twisted his wrist and dragged the blade in a vicious horizontal arc.
The blade effortlessly sliced cleanly through the serpent's internal organs and bit deeply into the massive thumping muscle of its heart.
The Cloud-Cobra's heartbeat stopped instantly.
Above him, the beast let out an ear-shattering screech. The stomach walls convulsed in a violent death spasm, but Silas just tightened his grip on the steel shard and kept cutting upward.