Chapter 7 – EVO
***Tirnanog, The Old Camp***
***Astra Frost***
I groggily opened one eye, still feeling a little spent after yesterday. Braving the forest alone wasn’t something that should be taken lightly, even for people who had lived in this world for most of their lives.
Sadly, spending the night in supposed safety hadn’t been exactly restful. Alarms had gone off four or five times throughout the night as some very stubborn critter tried to force its way into the bunker. But the combined forces of several strong warriors repelled the creature each time.
The safety of the bunker was a matter that all the clans were interested in, and so there was always at least one capable person on watch. Though, that didn’t mean I hadn’t woken up each time they activated that damned siren. Full of adrenaline, I rushed out of my room, again and again, to check whether my help was needed.
Moaning, I rolled out of bed and flopped onto the floor of my little, spartan room. It offered barely any comfort aside from the bed itself, but that was more than most exiles would ever get.
The cold concrete greeted me on the ground. It was always a good way to get me going in the early morning hours.
Grumbling, I stayed down until I couldn’t stand the cold any longer.
So I got to my feet and untangled my filaments. They had the uncanny tendency to move on their own when I slept, and come morning, I had to suffer the joy of untangling them. They were attached to the back of my neck and ran all the way down my spine which could get problematic at times.
Normally, sorting them out took me just a few seconds. But today, I had somehow gotten a nasty knot right between my shoulder blades. Groggy as I was, I spent at least five minutes getting that taken care of, one filament after the other because my brain simply couldn’t handle more. And I had over a hundred of them, each between ten and thirty metres long.
Once I had taken care of the worst of it, I slowly intertwined them over my body to create the illusion of clothing.
Today, I created a skin-tight suit that covered me from the shoulders down to my toes. To add a little variety, I touched myself up with a split skirt and a double-layered cloak which took care of all the excess filaments still left over.
I placed my hands on my hips and studied myself proudly in the mirror. If I went out like this, nobody would even think about calling me a monster. This getup had the style of a queen!
My feelings promptly shone through which involuntarily had my filaments glow a little brighter, making me shine like some deep-sea jellyfish. The luminescent markings on my skin flared, adding to the ambience. I rubbed at the ones underlining my eyes like makeup gone overboard.
That brought me back to reality.
I sighed and forcefully controlled my emotions. Once my colourful outburst was under control, I allowed my clothes to sag a little in all the wrong places, making my figure look ungainly and malformed. This may seem strange to someone who hadn’t lived in my shoes, but there was a method to the madness.Follow current novels on novelb((in).(com)
Once I was sure I would no longer attract certain men like shit does flies, I left my room to look for breakfast.
There were three ways people would react to someone like me a person who had a little more radical mutation than was normal.
First, and most common, were those who went apeshit once they saw the ‘tentacles’. They would think of me as yet another monster, followed by them doing something stupid. This was why I avoided using my filaments full capabilities while I was among people.
Then there were those who ignored my uniqueness and tried to woo me, mainly because they wanted a ticket out of the Old Camp. They nonetheless thought of me as a monster.
And finally, there were the creeps. Those who were genuinely attracted to me, for whatever reason. Or those who simply wanted me for my power and nothing else. Sadly, I had noticed the hard way during my early adulthood that ninety-nine per cent of those types had a few screws loose.
Hence my decision to give up on something like love and to choose my partner purely with rationality and survival in mind. The gods knew I would need every scrap of power once I officially ascended the clans ranks further and got to my parents’ level.
I reached the common room and helped myself to some broth that one of my peers had left steaming in a pot. It was a common ritual for most of the people who belonged to our clan to eat together in the morning before they went out to do whatever they had planned for the day.
Since I had slept in, I had missed the others.
I have to get going, or will be late, I mumbled to myself and spooned the food into my mouth as fast as I could.
Once I was done, I deposited my plate with the used dishes and headed out. On the way, I greeted the lone guard who kept watch on the entrance to our section of the bunker.
Outside, I walked directly to the arena where people without affiliations could demonstrate their merits. On my way there, I noticed the camp had already been reclaimed by the common people. The guards likely had already driven out the last of the creatures which had made their way over the walls during the night.
I returned my attention to my goal and headed to the table where the arena organizer had made himself comfortable.
Gurney, how is it going? I said and raised a hand in greeting.
Well enough, he harrumphed. The thing that bothered the bunker last night broke into one of the common shelters and took all of its inhabitants. Ten people, and four of them owed me goods. Couldnt you guys have just killed the beast so that it wouldnt search for easier prey?
I smiled and decided saying nothing was the best course of action. Defending the bunker was one thing. Running out into the night after some alpha predator to fight it on its own terms, that was an entirely different pair of shoes.
Safety was relative in this world.
Pointing that out to Gurney wouldnt tell him anything new, so I kept silent.
There was a good reason why I travelled each year back and forth between the clan-grounds and the Old Camp.
Sadly, his evolutions didnt seem to match with mine at all. He had the minor healing that most new exiles got once they ate a starfish. The critters were pests and infested the lake at the mens arrival point. But the regenerative ability they granted could fix most things in time. So it wasnt the worst thing to have.
Another evolution allowed him to spit poison and had his blood turn to acid.
I considered the benefits of joining with him.
Best case, I got the ability to deliver poisonous attacks with my filaments.
Worst case, I would simply get his abilities added to mine, affecting just my main body without the filaments. And since my filaments couldn’t bleed, it would likely be the latter. Anyway, relying on anything which forced me to lose or damage some of my filaments was bad, given their slow growth.
My fighting style relied strongly on stealth. While hiding my main body, I often relied on my filaments strangling the enemy. So having poisonous spit and acidic blood wouldnt help me in most cases. Many predators were so powerful that when it came to the point of being discovered, I would likely die before poison or acid could take effect against my enemy. It really depended on whether I could deliver the poison with my filaments.
Whether or not that was possible was a gamble. One I wasnt willing to take.
My filaments were strong enough to contest with a strength-based mutation like Gurneys, but the rest of my body was fairly weak. Even someone like Roderick could easily snap my neck if he got a hold of my main body.
Ideally, I would want a partner who provided me with a strong defensive mutation that would guarantee protection for my main body while I used my filaments offensively. Then maybe something that provided utility or more offensive capabilities.
As good as acidic blood sounded, I found it to be kind of a waste of potential.
Even with improved healing, shedding your own blood meant that something had injured you. And on Tirnanog, the things that managed to injure an evolved human more often than not could also kill them in one hit.
And now that I thought about it, shedding my own blood intentionally was an absolute no-go. I couldn’t even count the number of predators that were magically drawn to the scent of blood.
Lurkers would be drawn from kilometres away if they scented something that smelled like wounded prey. Getting a scratch in their territory meant you had to prepare for waves of attackers until either they expended their last hive-member or you were dead.
On top, I didnt care whether my attacker died to poison and acid after eating me.
Dead was dead.
I put the first sheet aside for now and turned my attention to the next.
The first clanner was a similar case to Mark. He provided a pure strength evolution, but his other skills were mediocre at best. Minor healing, same Spiel as before.
Though, he had a sensory ability that increased his hearing dramatically. Kind of like echolocation. The issue was that my filaments already provided me with something similar. Not so sophisticated, but I would yet again waste some of my potential.
The second clanner also fell through. He was a pure evasion type with no offence to speak of. He had the ability to camouflage himself by changing the colour of his skin. According to the file, the effect was so sophisticated that he could turn almost invisible.
Again, I didnt think I needed to improve on my ability to hide, something that was easy enough in this worlds flora. It would be nice if I got better at it, but it felt like doubling up on a skill I already possessed. Once I found a partner to unlock further evolutions, I could improve that aspect naturally. There was also the downside that this guy offered no offence to speak of.
Not to mention that joining up with a Thich would result in a political disaster at home.
I gave the invisibility a few more moments of thought, but the longer I did, the less interesting it appeared. This type of invisibility was purely visual. With the number of sensory abilities, mere camouflage wasnt going to cut it. Things like thermal vision or even my own mediocre echolocation could defeat such a skill easily enough. And I couldnt even count the number of exiles whose improved smell would probably allow them to point out an individuals exact position.
Both papers went to the side.
The last one was the newcomer who had survived the trek through the forest. It was immediately clear that he had eaten from the omnieye I had killed to save the group.
Surprisingly enough, he was one of the few who hadnt gone insane.
For some reason, gaining an evolution from an omnieye could have one of two outcomes.
The most common result was that you mutated into something utterly inhuman and went batshit crazy. I assumed there was something about the omnieyes DNA which made it incompatible with humans.
The other possibility was you came out relatively sane at the end, but were turned into a monster. Often enough people ended up with some form of mental malfunction, like heightened aggressiveness, or the inability to cope with the social aspects of human life.
The clans had researched the problem out of necessity, and it was common knowledge that an evolution should always be started with a lifeform that was preferably not something completely unrelated to human biology. A second criterium was that the lifeform needed to possess some social aspect. Some herd or pack animal was preferable to something that lived most of its life in solitude.
Many evolutions brought instincts with them that made it easier for the evolved human to use his or her new abilities. This could be a boon or a bane, depending on what you got.
I sighed dejectedly when I noticed Gurney waddling into the arena, leading two blokes who I assumed to be the two clanners.
Well, if they werent partner material, then they may as well be entertaining.