Chapter 220: Absorption (3)

The energy emerged slowly at first.

Even so, what was gathering above him now far exceeded the small pool he had witnessed last time. The gray rose until it obscured part of the cave’s ceiling, spreading between the piles of bodies that steadily dwindled as the absorption continued.

The Ninth-Rank bodies, however, made the array falter for the first time.

Their energy emerged heavier than any that had come before it, mingled with various remnants of power; some surged violently outward, while others clung to the flesh as though their owners’ deaths were not enough to make them relinquish their hold.

The heat inside Ravian fluctuated, and his abdomen contracted sharply.

"Ugh..."

The groan escaped through his teeth despite himself, and he lifted one hand from his chest before returning it to its place, trying not to move any more than necessary.

His body could withstand what was entering it, but he was beginning to feel the weight of everything that had yet to follow.

His smile faded.

’Is all of that going to enter at once?’

[The Host’s body cannot accommodate that energy in its current form.]

’Wonderful. That’s an incredibly reassuring answer.’

[The purified energy will be condensed, then used to reconstruct the physique in stages.]

Ravian turned his eyes toward the gray mass overhead, liking neither the idea of his body being reshaped nor the prospect of going through it all over again.

The last time he had heard anything like that, he had ended up watching the skin fall from his hands.

But he kept his mouth shut and used Absolute Focus to follow what was happening instead of surrendering to those memories. Some pulses of energy were reaching his muscles, while others gathered around his bones without entering them yet, and the array held the greater portion outside his body.

He did not need to control every thread, but he did need to remain aware of what he was receiving.

And that, apparently, was going to be more troublesome than the pain itself.

The sounds around him subsided after the last Ninth-Rank body disappeared, allowing him to hear the commander’s breathing clearly over the movement of the energy.

The orc’s chest rose with difficulty as the color drained from its skin. It no longer tried to form a weapon, instead gathering its strength around its torso whenever the array drew some of it away, repeating the effort with every breath it managed to take.

Ravian watched in silence.

The body that had hurled him through tents and trees was now struggling to hold on to whatever remained inside it, and the array needed everything it had collected from the camp to keep extracting and purifying that power without allowing it to reach Ravian in its original state.

’So this is what you meant by the main component.’

[The source’s vitality remains cohesive, retaining what bodies lose after death.]

[The energy extracted from it will determine the quality of the next stage.]

Ravian’s eyes met the orc’s one last time.

Fear was now unmistakable in them, and the commander was no longer trying to hide it.

"Stop..."

Ravian did not answer, and the array continued its work.

The green resistance weakened with every breath, until the orc’s chest failed to rise and the last gleam left its eyes at the same moment a dense wave surged toward the outer ring.

Ravian tightened his fingers against his chest, feeling Pride stir in the depths of his soul as that power approached the purification ring before it could be fully refined.

The old sensation returned: a sharp revulsion demanding that he cast everything belonging to that creature far away from his body.

But this time, he recognized it and refused to let it seize control of the process.

’It will enter once it becomes mine. Just keep working.’

The gray closed around the wave, and the green gradually faded until not a trace remained.

When Ravian looked up again, the spot where the commander had lain was empty.

[Extraction of the main component complete.]

[Purification of the energy required for physique advancement complete.]

The cave seemed strangely spacious now that the bodies had disappeared, yet Ravian could barely see its walls through the dense gray surrounding him. That entire camp now hung above him in the form of power that bore no resemblance to those it had once belonged to.

The mass began to contract.

It did not descend toward the ground, instead compressing around a point above his chest until the weight it generated seemed to press against him, making it harder to draw breath.

[Beginning reconstruction of the Sovereign Pride Physique.]

Ravian swallowed, then clenched his jaw in preparation.

’All right, show me what I’ve gained from all this trouble.’

The first pulse descended into his body.

For the first time since the absorption began, he did not feel it enter through his skin.

He felt it appear inside his bones out of nowhere.

Ravian’s back arched off the ground before he even realized he had moved.

Pain shot from the base of his spine to the back of his head in a single instant, and his teeth clamped together so hard that he feared he might shatter them himself as gray energy surged through the bones that had already been rebuilt once in this very cave.

He remembered the sound of them cracking all too well.

This time, however, it began in silence.

He felt pressure building within his marrow and something dense expanding inside the bones of his arms and legs, until each limb seemed too narrow to contain what was moving through it. He tried to draw a deep breath, but his constricted chest allowed only a short gasp, followed by a strangled groan.

"Fuck..."

He raised his hand slightly before his face and saw gray lines appearing beneath his skin, fading beneath the flush of blood before returning more clearly than before.

They were not veins.

He remembered the markings that had appeared on his bones during his previous transformation and realized that he was now seeing their traces as they began to spread and change, until he could sense their positions without even looking at them.

Then he heard the first sound.

Crack!

His fingers trembled, and he lost control of his hand for a moment before steadying it again with Absolute Focus.

A System window appeared amid the pain.

[Beginning skeletal reconstruction.]

’Just get the fucking thing over with!’