Refracting crystalline wings that flared with the light as they flapped in maniacal, irregular rhythms, distorted the reality like two sigils cut into the air itself. Buzz Windbreaker, who now knew full well of his hideously transformed shape, was hovering with jerking limbs over a tangle of fungal canopy, and his compound eyes were flashing a blend of emerging intelligence and savage desire.
All flaps were not mere movement gestures. Both were life lines. Both required mana, micro-calibrated airflow manipulation and adaptive sensory feedback to overcome gravity, turbulence and psychic interference. Floating was now magic.
Only a few minutes had passed since he sucked the blood out of the rodent, but the hunger in his belly beat again like a damaged engine of God coming back to life.
Buzz clenched his little mandibles. The mental reminder of death was still ringing: One hour. His leash was that. Every breath, every twitch, was a countdown carved into the soul's bones. Unless he could gather vitality with arcane exactitude, unless he could allow no hesitation to postpone the next draught of life essence, then oblivion would come--not in a scream, but in a deletion.
"Not yet," he thought, his voice a warped echo behind twitching antennae. "Not before I drink a whisky older than time itself."
A dream. Faint. Human. And absurd.
He twitched once more, and sent a sonar-pulse of lifespan-sense. Warmbloods near, ripples came back to his mind. Prey areas in operation. He rode in on a ley-thread of wind soaked with ambient mana and swamp essence, through hanging roots and clouds of pollen.
The world was horrible. The trees grew as fungus towers, the leaves dripped viscous nectar which faintly glowed in shadow. There were bioluminescent insects flying overhead like spell motes, some of them transmitting magical frequencies, some of them riding psychic turbulence in flocks.
Something changed.
A weight, a keenness. A mystic weight.
Buzz stood still in the air.
Below him lounged a beast of sleek terror—a forest panther, its musculature etched with predatory beauty, each breath a hymn of destruction. Its fur shimmered in subtle mana strands, gold-flecked eyes scanning without moving. Mana circuits pulsed behind its gaze like glyphs inked in living flame.
It was not a beast. It was an executioner.
Buzz barely dared to process. Even the air near the creature trembled. He attempted to flutter away, but then—
Movement. Calculated annihilation.
The air split as the panther blurred, body vanishing and reappearing mid-lunge. Claws like soul-carving blades shredded into a hidden rodent. Flesh yielded. Lifeforce vanished.
Buzz's entire nervous system buzzed with fear, and awe. He had not been the target. But he knew with soul-level certainty: had he twitched wrong, he would've been erased.
The predator did not feast. Instead, it toyed. Nudged the corpse. Purred at its conquest.
Then it turned away.
The corpse remained.
Buzz dove.
Blood misted in the air. Lifespan vapors clung to the cooling meat. The fly landed softly, body shivering with barely controlled greed.
His proboscis lowered—not just a needle, but now a refined instrument of magical architecture. Runes shimmered faintly across its surface. He adjusted angle. Pierced.
The moment the blood entered him, it was fire. Ancient, hot, textured with the prey's last emotions. His wings jittered. Sigils inside his body flared.
[+20 Minutes Lifespan Absorbed]
Buzz shot into the sky like a flaring glyph.
It wasn't enough.
It was never enough.
Five minutes passed. Then ten. He hunted a squirrel, drained a swampbird, caught a frog mid-croak. Each victim added time. Each kill brought psychic stabilization.
[Lifespan: 2 Hours Accumulated.]
And then the message came:
[Sufficient Bloodline Essence Absorbed. Lifespan Threshold Expanded.]
[Lifespan Doubled. Rank-Up Conditions Fulfilled.]
Buzz's wings spasmed. His vision split. Hunger shifted from the physical to the existential. Not blood—power. Evolution.
He fell under a fallen mushroom stalk, and hung to the rotten underside. His body shook.
The change started.
His shell toughened, and flaked off. It became a red cocoon that pulsed with sigils as surrounding mana was sucked in. Internally, his cellular structure broke and re-wrote itself. Memory threads were organized into coherent structures of skills. Mana ducts were created. Psionic reinforced neural pathways.
Time lost its sense.
Buzz appeared when the cocoon broke.
His wings were changed. Now every stroke sent out slight vibrations of spent spellforce. His eyes were in and out of focus at several distances. He could observe heat, hear mana and smell magic.
He was no longer just living.
He was growing.
[Rank Up Achieved: Stage 1, Rank 2 Confirmed.]
Buzz murmured a thing. The machine complied.
[Status Window – Stage 1, Rank 2]
Name: Buzz windbreaker
Race: Tsetse Fly (Stage 1 – Rank 2)
Bloodline: Unawakened (Progress 15%)
Lifespan: 1 Day (Base)
Abilities:
Lifespan Sense (FF-Rank, Passive) – Can now detect lifespan-rich organisms within a 10-meter radius through pulsating heat fields.
Micro Drain (FF-Rank, Innate) – Absorbs multiple lifespan units per precise puncture.
Blood Infusion (F-Rank, Active) – Burns stored lifespan to increase flight speed, piercing damage, and cognitive sharpness for 10 seconds per use.
[New System Protocol: Lifespan may now be used to upgrade skills or unlock new spell constructs following successful feeds.]
Buzz spread his wings.
He laughed, but no human voice could now give form to the sound. It was chittering happiness, interwoven with the insanity of progress. The system was rewarding pain. It was beautiful.
But as he was planning the next stream of prey, a psychic ripple struck him. Familiar. Predatory.
The panther.
It was back.
And this time the game was long from over.