Chapter 38: A Body Of Adaptation Tales
In the Headquarters of the Hero Association, Aide Lance sat slumped in his office, leaning back in a black leather single-seat chair. A flood of paper stood stacked high around him, over him even, spilling across the desk to cover his face.
His tie was loose, his white inner shirt sloppily tucked in.
He lay languidly across the chair, exhausted, dozing off, when the door slammed open.
"Sir! Sir! You need to see this!!"
The poor guy jolted awake, almost staggering off his seat.
He rubbed his swollen eyes and looked at the tablet his subordinate was placing in front of him. It took him more than a moment to place what he was seeing.
"Huh? What’s this? Why are you showing this to me?"
"It’s a Gate sir!"
"Yes Frank, I can see it’s a freaking Category two Gate. The question is why the hell you’re showing it to me. Do the needful and send Heroes, or better still, contact any Agency close to that place for assistance. That’ll be faster."
Frank hesitated but still tried to lean in.
"You’re not getting it, sir. We were about to dispatch some Heroes when we discovered something."
This time Aide Lance slowed down... and looked at Frank’s face. His eyes went back to the screen as the agent explained.
"Look at this place, sir."
Frank zoomed in on the map, toward the one spot that was blinking.
"This is the address of Mr Theolyne. We’ve been trying to process his information, so the address came up quickly. But isn’t it weird? The one SS rank we might be about to get, and suddenly there’s a Gate our forecast radar never picked up."
Aide Lance spaced out for a moment, the paper and the exhaustion forgotten, then lifted his head to look at Frank.
"Hey. Better be a little dull, for your own sake."
Lance shot up.
"Ready any available agent, and make sure this information doesn’t reach even the next door. I’ll go check on this myself."
Frank straightened, smiling, his eyes searching for something more.
"I’m not going to compliment you," Lance said, his voice even.
The agent’s face fell at once.
"Isn’t this enough to prove I’m more than enough to be your Aide? Let me!"
"So far so good, you’ve only proven you don’t know how to pretend you didn’t see things. That kind of thing gives me more work instead of taking it off me, and that’s exactly what I’m trying to avoid."
They talked as they walked out of the building.
***
The snakes pooled across the rooftop, and Theo had one job. No. Now, he had two.
The first, and most important, was to protect his wives. His second, though, was to gain as much as he could from this.
The thing was, the more he fought, the more he realized something astonishing about this Limitless Body.
In essence, the Body Art had made his body limitless. He wasn’t bound by conventional angles anymore. His limbs could bend almost any way he wanted, the only cap being his own mind. Twice now he’d folded his spine at an angle that should have snapped it clean, and felt nothing back but muscle pulling taut and obeying.
His body could self-heal too, but that wasn’t the crux of it. Theo watched the same kind of wound struggle to land twice, each cut closing faster than the last, the skin drawing itself shut before the pain fully registered.
His body was taking in everything that happened to it and using it as a foundation, building itself a little better than it had been a second before. Just like it had done with the heat.
And that gave Theo the liberty to be reckless.
He spun forward in a blur, his sword cleaving through the air with a cold whistle, and behind him he tore down another snake. Then he was airborne, turning over in the air. His senses had already flagged a Hornback Serpent rushing in from behind, a breath before he finished the last one.
He twisted and committed to another Heavy Shadow Drop.
[You have slain a Hornback Serpent]
[Your skill mastery of Shadow Sword has increased]
Theo didn’t pay attention to the system anymore. He almost couldn’t afford to. His mind was working overtime, cataloging everything pouring through his senses and still sorting out a fitting counter for each one, and he shoved the system’s voice to the back of his head.
As he landed, he wrenched his sword free and fixed his gaze on the next victim, his eyes gone dark and violent.
The serpents showed their fear now, stronger than before, and shifted backward. But Theo didn’t let them.
He closed on the nearest one. Before the snake could react, Theo had caught up, shadows streaming behind him, and he twisted his sword and drove it in from behind, the tip punching out the other side.
The serpent went rigid, violet blood welling from its upper underbelly.
Theo pulled his sword free and moved again, rolling through them, using the momentum to slash through the snakes around him, dealing minor damage. When he reached the main target, the momentum from the roll carried through him, and he struck it clean on the head. The sword sank easily into its jaws.
Theo plunged it down, stepped onto the serpent, and pulled the blade back out. He spun the sword once and raised his gaze.
"None of you... is leaving here."
Unlike a couple of minutes ago, the number of snakes had dropped hard. They could barely stand against the edge of his sword.
And even though he’d been feeling tired earlier, now, when the shadows moved, his exhaustion seemed to lift instead. There was movement inside his body too, something he hadn’t noticed before, a slow current gathering low in his gut and threading out toward his limbs whenever he pushed off into a strike.
Theo didn’t know much about Mana, mostly because he’d dipped the class back when they were on the topic in school. He’d only ever read a few adaptation books about some Heroes, where they spoke a little about Mana and what it did to the body.
The one takeaway he’d managed to hold on to, even now, was that mana was the fuel a Hero’s skills ran on.
And when he leaned into that feeling, it was a lot easier to improvise, to spin off new sub-skills on the fly. He’d also figured out that pouring more mana into his movements, out to the tips of his fingers, made his strikes hit incredibly harder.
And even though the battle had started off terribly, with no victory anywhere in sight, the way he moved now, like a shadow hunter, he was sure he could handle every last one of these monsters.
***
[System Notice]
[Things have changed says the Author. The new rule for bloodthirsty readers who want more bonus Chapters goes as thus: Every 100 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter. Every 100 Golden Ticket = 2 Bonus Chapters]
[Author’s words: Let’s see how hungry you are! Rage-vote!!!]