TWENTY-SIX
In that floating abyss, Kon watched as the rune took shape, forming line by line. Each time one of the lines appeared, slowly forming the greater rune, he felt his body shudder as power rippled through him. His avatar shimmered as power slammed through it, flooded with power it began to glow brighter and brighter. Still, as great as it shone, it couldn’t match that floating star that bathed it in power.
Kon grabbed at his body with all the energy in it, wove power around the bones and organs as they were attacked and inundated with power from every angle. The distant part of his mind recognized that he was burning alive right now, his body being a conduit for power that people ships through space. It was too much for any man to hold but Kon couldn’t yield.
If he was to survive he had to consume the rune, bring it inside of himself to fuel his body rather than be bathed in its power. Kon just had to wait for the hellishly complex greater rune to finish establishing itself. With every moment more and more of his body was consumed by the power, forced to the edge of survival. Kon could feel his teeth grinding in the real world, clenched tight to keep a scream bottled in. There was the feeling of icy fire on his chest as the liquid metal rune continued to seep through his chest.
Minutes, hours, day, Kon didn’t know. There was only the fiery pain as he held himself together with every scrap of willpower he had. Memories flashed before his eyes as he struggled to survive the assault.
“Momma, momma!” The shouts were a distant thing to Kon as he raced after his mother’s distant figure as she made her way to the hydroponic farms. He refused to be left behind, not when his mother was working. Stubbornness kept his stubby legs churning as laughter followed him until eventually his mother turned and saw him, exasperation on her face though softened by a wide smile as strong hands scooped him up.
Another line carved its way into existence and more power hammered into him, threatening to break through his concentration.
“Its not going to work, Kon. Just give up already,” Dad’s voice came from somewhere above and behind him. He was wedged inside of the internals of a hydro unit, searching through its guts to find out why it had stopped working. He didn’t know how he could fix it, but he was determined to see it done as he looked for a solution.
The final lines appeared and snapped together and there was a rightness in the void around him as it became more real. Power exploded forth and Kon felt himself being blasted away, his body soaked as much strength as it could, metal bones beginning to heat and bubble as the greater rune showered him in power.
“Hit me,” Alice’s command was coming from far away. Kon could taste defeat. It tasted like blood and dirt as his shaking body refused to move. He could lay there, exhausted and broken. His spirit roared in defiance even as his body found its limits and he pushed straight through, rising to his feet to see sparkling green eyes filled with pride. He wouldn’t quit, not till he had given everything there was to give.
Kon grabbed at the greater rune with his mind, willpower and rift energy snagging around the edges of the rune and dragging it toward him. It was pain that succeeded in surpassing his breakthrough in body cultivation. It was a scouring of his mind, body, and soul as a fragment of reality was bent to his will and used to empower himself.
“You will stand with me?” Diur’s voice was shocked as her question rang through the hall. Kon could only stare at the woman who had bled and killed with him. There was something there, something he hadn’t realized in that moment. Kon had two families. One of birth who he loved but had left behind to save. And one chosen who he couldn’t abandon, couldn’t leave. That single question was enough to solidify his choices. Alice, Diur, and Benny, they had been the ones to stand with him when he was nothing, and he stood with them forever. There would be nothing that would cause him to break that promise to himself, regardless of where they had come from. His chosen family would be his pillar and damn the rest of the worlds.
His avatar shivered and split apart as the greater rune was pulled inside of him. It filled every inch of his body, the lines conforming to roll along the outlines of his avatar without changing its own shape. Kon watched in horror as his metallic body cultivation roiled like water, its previously solid state long gone.
His six bloody runes were lit up like beacons, lashed out and connected to the rune that filled him. Kon watched as steel colored veins formed between them, linking all together and then toward the core piece of the rune that sat in the center of his body.
From the center of his body the filter rune sent out thicker strands of energy that connected first to his leg and his healing rune, then up toward his brain and his senses. Kon could see them moving in the order they had been created, a trail of history and bloodshed formed inside of his own body.
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The tendril of steel reached his spine and his bone reinforcement rune before reaching back to his mind for his reaction times, before finally oozing across the top of his skin where the last rune was, the one that allowed him to absorb energy. It sat there for a moment and Kon thought it was done.
New tendrils broke free and Kon felt his mind lock up in anticipation and horror as all the runes drove tendrils of power into his body cultivation, the churning sea of sea within his bones. Finally, every rune split a tendril to merge together as they touched the center of the greater rune.
Compress.
The word and its intent flashed through his mind as Kon was forced to endure everything he’d imagined into the rune. He saw space scrunched together as he stepped forward, the crushing ripple of enemies turned into balls of flesh, bone, and metal. More and more he saw everything he had studied and thought of the reality of what compression was.
His body cultivation creaked, cracked, and then condensed. Kon stared in horror as he thought of the days of pain that had just been sacrificed. The moment stretched on and on for a moment before he realized he hadn’t just broken his cultivation. He’d refined it.
Where before each of his bones was a thick bar of steel, now it was only the core of the bones, but they were dense. So much power packed into tight space with more to be added later while impurities, trickles of foreign ideas and other affinities were pressed out and burned away by the greater rune.
His body shone now with energy, each bone wrapped in silver with steel cores that radiated power and strength. Even with just a glimpse Kon could see that there had been a definite refinement even if there hadn’t been a noticeable jump in power.
Then those solid bars of steel began to pulse and Kon felt his stomach sink as knew it wasn’t over. Something was happening that wasn’t supposed to happen, at least not to normal Knights. Nothing that he’d heard had suggested his body would react like this, but there was a resonance between his cultivation and the greater rune, or maybe it was to the treasure it had been carved from.
The great rune diminished slightly as power was pulled out of it and into his body cultivation and Kon could feel himself physically strengthening even as the rune dimmed a bit. Kon bit back a curse as he tried to think if he wanted to stop it or see it through. His body cultivation was rising as layers of liquid metal was added to the newly condensed bones, but it stopped on its own after a moment, an equilibrium found.
“That had better be it,” Kon thought to himself as he viewed his avatar. The silver light had become darker, more gray and steel like now, while the bloody red runes had dimmed noticeably as power flowed through the network of veins, feeding and being fed by the greater rune.
When nothing else happened Kon finally allowed his mind to stray away from his meditation. Slowly his avatar faded from his inner mind as he woke up in reality. Benny was there, as was Alice, and both of them looked haggard with worry.
The stench of bogwater was in the room and Kon gagged instantly as he tried to roll to his side, but his strength had been drained by the effort of simply surviving. Alice reached over and grabbed his shoulder to turn him on his side just in time for him to spew across the deck.
“You just can’t be normal, can you?” Benny asked quietly as he sighed and leaned back against the bulkhead, sighing in relief as he wiped at his face.
“Never see someone cook themselves alive, shrink down, then expand back out. Well…not be alive afterwards anyway,” Alice said as she patted his shoulder, not worried at all about the spatter of bile on her boots. Kon groaned as his brain tried to figure out what they were saying, but he was too focused on how awful he felt.
His entire body felt heavy, dense, like it was weighed down by thousands of pounds. Someone had imported a welder and had begun to do work in his eyes and his flesh felt both fiery hot and icy cold at the same time. Even his damned hair hurt and Kon didn’t know how that was supposed to happen.
“It didn’t look as bad as it felt,” Kon finally whispered and that was enough to break the tension in the room, Alice and Benny both chuckling as they pulled him out of the bed.
Alice grunted in surprise as she picked him up, a bit of shock in her eyes as she carried him toward the showers. He’d managed to find more impurities to push out of his body somehow and now what was left of his clothes were stained with the disgusting mix. Alice didn’t seem to mind as she dumped him into a bathtub he hadn’t seen before, clothes and all.
“We’ll talk after you get a bit of sleep and don’t stink worse than a sewer,” Alice promised as she turned on the shower head and cold water pelted him. As tired as he was it hardly mattered, but the warmth that came out a second later made him feel a bit more comfortable.
“Alice,” Kon suddenly needed her to know. The memories and his own conclusions from surviving them had made it clear.
“What?” She asked as she leaned away from him, nose scrunched in horror as the smell seemed to be spreading.
“You're my sister. Now and ever. I trust you with everything.”
“No, shit. I hate when people get maudlin when they go through traumatic shit. Keep it bottled up and express it in healthy ways like an active and varied sex life like the rest of us,” Alice snapped, but Kon could see the warmth and emotion in her eyes.
“No. I trust you. Completely. It was Compress. My rune.” That broke through the walls as she leaned back as if he’d slapped her, her expression melting a bit.
“Well shit, I might actually shed a tear. Don’t drown in the tub,” Alice said, voice softened as she closed the door behind her.