Azotreh drifted in and out of consciousness as the searing pain echoed throughout their entire body. Something had crawled into their bloodstream and was now eating them from the inside out.
They could feel it; it wasn't like the burning sensation of the wires. It wasn't cold like the scales of the white dragon; it burned like nothing else before.
Without the array active, Azotreh began to receive notifications again.
[Obtained Resistance: Cold Resistance]
[Obtained Resistance: Cerulean Slime Stomach Acid Resistance]
[Ability: Wall of the White Dragon (1) has been acquired!]
The pain kept echoing, but hurt less and less as time passed. Every time they tried to pass out, the two people inside their head screamed at them. The battle raged on, and each time the ground shook, they were pulled back to consciousness.
They felt their tail moving, but weren't controlling it. In the reflection of their body in a broken glass pane, they saw not irises surrounded by a black and a green dot, but instead saw their own pupil spiraling with red, black, and green lights.
Their right hand shot out, and Azotreh felt it get scraped on broken glass more than once. It hurt like hell, but they kept fighting the pain. It was unbearable, but they had to live. They knew they had to live.
Their hand found something, a small vial. Inside was a red liquid. It was thick, and even as blood tried to rise up their throat, Azotreh pushed it down again. Their hand pulled the vial closer, as their tail's sharp point removed the cap.
Some of the fluid within was spilled, but not a lot. The rest was forced down Azotreh's throat. It was hot and sticky as it went down, like someone's blood in a vial. But it was better than nothing.
Azotreh screamed, though the sound was muted by the raging war between gold rankers outside. The monster had to be gold rank; otherwise, it wouldn't be able to stand against two other gold rankers.
The coppery tang of the potion didn't help matters, but Azotreh kept forcing it. Even the advancement to tin rank removed a lot of bodily responses and increased one's control over their own body. Azotreh's small control was pushed to its limit as the potion slid down their throat.
As their body was forced to repair itself, pain once again pushed itself to the center of their consciousness. Their blood was boiling, their body was melting. They looked at their scraped arm, finding their formerly crimson blood now thicker and now shining with a cerulean light.
Over and over, for what felt like hours, Azotreh's body was healed by the overranked potion, and then melted by the thing in their blood. Back together, then melting apart again.
Without a complete set of G-Grade potens, Azotreh couldn't grow more powerful through it. Their body didn't reinforce itself, and while their will held like a vice, that was only because of its reinforcement. Only because three awarenesses fought against the endless pain and the looming threat of death.
They felt it as the room was hit with a sonic burst, sending their already damaged body slamming back into the shelf. More potions shattered beneath them, but this time something changed. The blue blood, or whatever it was, wrapped around the fluids and absorbed them.
Azotreh was still suffering from vitality overload, and the addition of more potions didn't help matters. Blood sprayed from every hole in their body as they desperately clung to life. Their very soul was on the verge of collapse, but just as they felt the cold fingers of death, something changed again.
A slight new awareness touched their soul. An alien awareness that spoke with water and hunger. One that valued only its own survival. A creature bent on the goal of consumption, assimilation, and survival. A weapon made flesh.
The thing's awareness stirred. It was in a pool of its own making, just within some construct of wood. It tried to sense the world and found new senses. Like it could sense everything, instinctively. It knew of the grand pillar in the center of the clearing, of the library just within its senses.
The thing that truly drew its attention was the damage it felt. While the place was odd, it was still slowly collapsing. It felt the glass dome separating its existence from some grand realm of stars weakening. A massive piece of golden something fell from the sky and disintegrated as it hit the clearing.
It reached out a tendril beyond the end of its pool. The grass was soft beneath its touch, and didn't melt. This confused it. All things melted before its touch, from the cold metal fed to it to crystals and organic matter. The only thing it couldn't dissolve was an item it was told was too powerful for anything its rank to break.
It pulled more of its mass out of the pool, finding itself much larger than it remembered ever being. The tube could contain its entire body, but now not even one of the beakers it knew its greatest sibling was in could contain its biomass.
As it tried to investigate further, it found something else that sparked its interest, two things actually. Things like it. It could sense a third something within a different structure, but two somethings were in the central pillar of the realm. So it moved.
The realm was falling apart, Nicholas and Errazorrus knew it was. They kept trying everything in their power to help, but found little worked beyond forcing their will over the realm itself. They couldn't empower Azotreh's body in this state, couldn't empower their soul either. There was some kind of limit on their power, one that Nicholas understood logically, and Errazorrus instinctively. Yet neither knew how to fix it.
Advancement must be balanced carefully, too much of one poten could damage the body or something else. Strength enhanced the muscles and bones, but it did this to exert more physical power. Too much could rip the body apart. So the limits were placed, forcing them to reach a threshold in all potens before trying for the next.
The door slid open, and something else entered. They knew it was there before it entered. The thing was blue, round, and about the size of a dog. Not a small dog either, closer to a golden retriever. It looked at them curiously, watching their efforts. Then it began to exert its own will, finally starting to hold the soul together.
[Cerulean Slime Assimilated. Species changed: Human (modified) to Cerulean Slime (modified).
Archetype changed: Creature to Protista. Sub-Archetype and Infra-Archetype changed accordingly.
Innate ability gained: Devour.
Innate ability gained: Mana to Biomass.
Archetype change has caused- ERROR]
Just as the realm seemed to begin stabilizing, it shifted again. A massive hole opened in the sky, the purple clouds, suffused with golden starlight, looked far less beautiful as it entered.
[Astral energy detected. Note: You are experiencing Critical Soul Instability. Exit situation causing damage.]
[Soul Damage Threshold: 1.22%]
[Astral Infection: 31.97%]
[Resources: Vitality, Vigor, Vibrancy, Vaticence, Vehemence, and Vivacity detected. Unable to replace resources. Archetype change has forced new resources: Dymlon, Dhenmaj, Durosmos, Dlengogn, Dismiph, Dphomonon to generate. Used Spark of Vitalis. Sparks of Vitalis remaining: 0]
Finally, the world stopped shaking. Fully reinforced by the power of four wills, Azotreh's soul barely held together. But instead of reappearing within the realm, Azotreh remained outside.
Azotreh barely remained awake as the cerulean slime was integrated; their entire body ached, but the pain finally stopped. Though unfortunately, that was only for a moment, as they looked around. The little lab they were in was broken, with dozens of miscellaneous items and broken equipment everywhere. The wall, or rather, the floor now facing east, was broken, revealing the facility to Azotreh's eyes.
It was darker from the outside, all black steel and intricate carvings, now unlit. They watched a team of a few dozen scientists flee through the back entrance, hopefully running to the safe house.
The real problem was the giant monster between them and the facility proper. One of its legs was blown apart, dissolving into essence smoke. But with only seven legs, it still stood. More smoke emerged from a dozen wounds across its body as it slowly broke down. Doctor kept up the assault, pulling upon vast energy stores to bind the monster.
The thing was so massive that its feet would cause small earthquakes, so Doctor kept it still. Meanwhile, the giant plant colossus of Commander was striking the monster with a sharpened arm of vibrant green wood. The scorpion tails were already sliced away, and every time the seahorse's head charged another cutting beam of water, the colossus simply absorbed the water.
The monster let out a roar, the sound of which alone pushed grass flat. Then the two wolf heads both began to glow with a pumpkin colored light. It gathered in their throats and eyes, shining straight through their fur.
Doctor managed to impale the right head with a sudden spike of black metal, even as his body faded from existence. Its holographic nature was revealed, with his true body elsewhere.
The head exploded as it was severed, a large crystal falling from its throat and shattering, releasing an explosion powerful enough to level a city. Or it would, if the four bright blue barriers hadn't appeared in the moment of its appearance. Even so, it felt like a category eight or higher earthquake had gone off as some of the energy within was released into the ground.
Azotreh was surprised the ground still existed, but was pulled back to the fight as the colossus grabbed the other head and aimed it up. Then, a thin beam of orange energy launched up. It was only about the size of a needle, but after traveling more than ten kilometers straight up, it exploded.
It looked like a second sun had suddenly appeared as the beam exploded. Azotreh was blinded just looking at it, even without Eye of the Red Dragon screaming about the heat.
The shockwave hit a moment later, and the little bit of remnant lab was tossed away again, right through a barrier. The impact of the lab, combined with the damage of the gold rank monster leaving its zone of protection, made the barrier shatter locally.
Azotreh was launched hundreds of meters into a forest lit by an eternal twilight. They were injured, glass stuck to every limb of their body. But they survived. They barely survived, but they didn't care. All that mattered was that they did.
Not only had they survived the vicious battle between gold rankers, but they also managed to escape. After so long in that horrific place, they were free. With that knowledge, Azotreh finally passed out. No pain wracked their body, no life-threatening quantity of mana was invading their body and soul. They were free, alive, and so tired. So they let sleep take them.
The cleanup crew arrived an hour after the battle had been fought. Doctor had watched his lab get tossed into the Nightshade Forest by the remnant blast of Arcanum. He felt the fragile work leave his area of control and enter the control of the lich. He sighed as he oversaw the cleanup.
It wasn't just that he'd lost his favorite experiment, the one that he had cultivated to be the ultimate weapon. He had lost the cerulean slime, too, since it was in the cabinet set into the back wall. He had also lost all of his potions, and they were some of the expensive ones. Though he didn't really care about them, since they were covered by the war fund.
He turned to Commander. Such a stupid title to give yourself. But it was what he wanted to be called, and Doctor knew that resorting to true names would be a problem.
"Status report?" The projected body of Doctor asked. His true body was tucked into the heart of the facility, so all he had to talk to were these false projections.
"Ninety-one injured, three hundred and seventy-two dead. The holy scion is injured, crushed beneath a steel beam. KO-32 is currently beside him for reasons unknown. The holy guard are on standby in case the Arcanum blast attracts another-"
Doctor cut Commander off with a wave, "I don't care about monsters or the holy scion's condition. I care about my damn experiments, Commander. What happened to the experiments?"
Commander sighed before speaking, "All KOs were killed except for 32. The morgue was destroyed, leaving the bodies of those that had already died destroyed along with it. Otherwise, most of them perished."
"Most?"
"The ones you fused into elementals managed to escape through the gaps in their cells; some of the favorites escaped with the twenty-two escaped scientists, and all but SL-012 are missing."
"SL-009 is destroyed. It was in the lab alongside AZ-087 that got tossed into the lich's domain." Doctor said matter-of-factly. That only made Commander frown a little deeper.
"That brings me to our next steps. AZ-087 must be recovered, as must SL-001 to 011. Assuming 009 is destroyed as you assume, we must still locate the others. Maybe we can reverse engineer another 009 out of 007 or 008."
"Why would we need to reverse engineer it? Don't we have records of its creation?"
Commander just looked at Doctor. Doctor was in charge of the facility; his body was fused into the central computer of the facility. Of course, he already knew why they needed to reverse engineer the cerulean slime. Doctor just sighed.
"What a fucking mess. Any information on the reason?"
Commander raised an eyebrow at Doctor's language choice, but didn't comment.
"Currently, we believe it was the fault of the daemons. Vast quantities of spatial essence were found throughout the facility, tracing back to the warfront. However, the complete shutdown of all facility power is believed to be SL-006's fault."
"How?"
"The thing wanted a gem for its crown, and took the Supreme-Grade mana stone at the center of the facility."
Doctor's day just kept getting worse.