138 (II)

Regenerate

“Gestalt?” Shiv asked. He didn’t remember ever hearing that word before.

“It means by collective consciousness, to some extent,” Helix explained. “Effectively, it is the biggest reason why most mages suspect that the System is something of a hivemind. Or a unified subconscious that takes from our knowledge and shapes our skills based on collective experience.”

“Huh,” Shiv said. “Are there other theories about the System? If it’s shaped from everyone’s thoughts—”

“Yes. It would be influenced by you as well. Everything you do. Everything you believe. Lores of magic are separate because there are unified beliefs and an ordered structure to their patterns within Integration. Consider Cryomancy and Pyromancy. From a non-magical perspective, they technically fall under a unified theory called thermodynamics, yet they seemed so different to the collective understanding of beings that they forked in opposite directions and became parted lores. Thus, beyond the natural state of the world, belief also reorders these natural patterns. Psychomancy as well, for the mind, even more so than the body, is chaotic and varied, but has a unified lore encompassing all its intricacies. Biomancy, comparatively, simply had to be a Magical Skill. It could not be anything else. It was impossible for it to be anything else, because biology is a complex lattice of patterns. Of patterns within patterns. Of patterns upon patterns.”

The entire topic was still a bit esoteric for Shiv, but he felt like he understood things a bit better than before. Magic always seemed a bit weird for him. That’s why he wanted it so bad when he was young. That’s why he wanted to get into it. Because it was the ability to affect the world, to change things beyond himself.

Philosophy 10 > 11

“Well,” Bonk said, poking at the leg of adamantine bone drifting in Shiv’s field. “You wanna—”

Shiv assimilated the front section of the orc’s club into his field. The strain grew heavier, but there was still a lot more Shiv could hold within his mana before it finally became unbearable.

Bonk frowned. “Hey. Spit that back out. I was going to hit you with that.”

“You still have most of it left,” Shiv said. He licked his lips as instinct provoked him to try something. He took the spell patterns rendering the wooden club and pulled them into the patterns that made up his bone armor. As Shiv brought the chains of spells together, there was a brief clash as parts of both architectures lit up while other microspells remained dim. All the orc Biomancers leaned in.

“Oh, look at him,” one of the orcs breathed. “It’s like watching a One figure out how to slit his first throat. He’s figuring it out using instinct alone.”

“Quiet,” Helix said. Shiv looked at the orc, but he just got a nod in return. He wasn’t sure what Helix wanted him to do, but the Deathless continued following his instincts. He carefully pulled the glowing chains and tried to move them closer. As spell patterns from the bone armor were drawn into the vicinity of spell patterns that made up the wooden club’s tip, they suddenly magnetized together, as the glowing chains snapped tight to one another.

“Broken Moon,” Shiv grunted, taken aback by how sudden and violent the joining was. But when it was done, he found himself looking at a bounded pattern. For a few seconds, he just studied the once separated spell chains. Then, he pushed them out from himself and watched as a club that seemed to be made from both the texture of wood, bone, and adamantine emerged. “Oh, shit. Didn’t know I could do that.”

Helix laughed as he gestured at the new weapon Shiv just created. “And now you behold the great gift of assimilation. Certain biological architectures can be easily combined. And even unlikely biological patterns can fuse together if enough effort is applied. And if one can handle the cancers that follow. But you… The field is projected out from you. So, strain will be your issue so long as you don’t use your mana on yourself.”

Bonk pushed the rest of his club into Shiv’s field. “Fuse the rest of it to your bone stuff.”

“So you can hit me with it?” Shiv asked.

“Yeah. Of course. Adamantine’s better than just ironwood.”

The Deathless considered that and nodded. That made sense. If he was going to increase his Toughness, he might as well give the orc the best weapon possible for the job. He assimilated the rest of the orc’s club into his mana, but did something different this time. Instead of just fusing the brightest chains together, he compressed everything into a unified shape. Some of the spells deformed, and, rather than breaking apart, they shattered and folded over each other. Then, they began to mutate before Shiv’s very eyes. They filled with glowing dots of Biomancy, and the gaps left in them came aglow.

As Shiv cast the new creation out from his field, his eyes widened as a dense lump of adamantine cancer with small patches of wood and bone emerged into physical reality.

“What the hell did I just make?” Shiv muttered to himself.

“Cancer, Insul,” Helix said, folding his arms. “Everything is cancer if you push it hard enough. Utter cellular instability and chaos. Such for the body, so too for Biomancy. Except you managed to avoid the worst of this yourself. How fortunate.”

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“Yeah,” Shiv said. He directed two of his mana hydras to straighten out the club as best he could, and he offered it back to Bonk. The orc took it without complaint and tested it on his own head a few times.

“Damn,” Bonk said as the club bounced off his face. “Adamantine Adaption. Real useful skill. Good thing you had that instead of some worthless pussy-shit individual Toughness Skill to make their armor better. Good club. Gonna thank you by whacking you with it.”

“Sure, but wait, is this why the Court Leviathan doesn’t develop cancer?” Shiv’s head snapped to Helix. “Because it didn’t have any Biomancers, and it regenerated fine. Is it because it integrated regeneration-capable biology into itself? Like… from a basilisk?”

Slowly, Helix’s face spread into a wide smile. “Maybe. Do you have an idea, perchance?”

Shiv’s heartbeat picked up. “Yeah. Yeah. For a moment there, I was thinking about cancer bone armor, but now? I wanna see if assimilated biomass from a basilisk lights up with everything.”

***

Practical Metabiology 42 > 43

“It motherfucking does!” Shiv cheered.

The orcs around him cheered too. The only thing that didn’t cheer was the basilisk he assimilated a whole chunk of flesh from. Already, its body was regenerating. The missing tissue was fusing back together, and Shiv noticed strings of mana pulse between the spell patterns from the basilisk’s flesh.

“Regeneration comes in a few forms,” Helix said with a proud smirk on his face. “The first is the rawest, crudest, and stupidest way: imprinting. You have someone constantly cast their stable-state body architecture onto yours so your body always knows how to rebuild itself. This is what the vampires do with their Lineage Cores. Each of their bodies references an elder that came before them, and so they just rebuild that way.” ɪꜰ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴀɴᴛ ᴛᴏ ʀᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴏʀᴇ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs, ᴘʟᴇᴀsᴇ ᴠɪsɪᴛ novel[f]ire.net

“Is bioelectric signaling another?” Shiv asked.

“Correct,” Helix said with a nod. “Complex bioelectric signaling. Hydras have this. Basilisks have this. Certain demons and lizardfolk have this. For whatever reason, their body has developed a natural capability to communicate and signal complicated commands for its cells. This allows them to regrow limbs and regenerate parts of their body outright. Even if they are not consciously aware how.”

The other four basilisks had been delivered in the interim, and to Shiv’s surprise, the orcs had started taking care of them. Some orcs were actively scrubbing the large monsters down, others were cleaning their teeth, and a few others were bringing them food in the form of corpses. The orcs didn’t torture the basilisks at all. This caught Shiv’s attention as much as the wonders of basilisk biology did. But he didn’t mention it to the orcs. While he studied the new spell organism he’d assimilated, he also studied the orcs.

They were fine with killing and hurting people, but monsters didn’t seem to provoke their urge to torture as much.

Maybe it’s the misery and fear that feeds them. Maybe it’s just the fact that someone has to lose an emotional struggle against them as well. Shiv frowned slightly, but his expression brightened again as he watched the spell patterns rendering the basilisk biomass come alight—and his new set of bone armor lit up slightly as well.

“I think I can make a set of regenerating armor,” Shiv declared.

Bonk chuckled as he tested a few swings. “Well, this will be fun. Insul. Let’s do this on top of Courtney later. I want to see how far I can send you flying.”

“Yeah, sure,” Shiv said. He wasn’t even really listening to Bonk right now. They could do all the goofy stuff later. Right now, he wanted to see what might result from this fusion. As he pulled the spells free from his mana, what emerged was a set of armor that held multiple qualities at once. First, the armor was now gridded with gleaming basilisk scales, but instead of gems, they had wedges of jutting adamantine bone. Shiv pulled out his Skysplitter and slashed at the armor once. The cut passed through and left a series of chips across the armor. Chips that fused back together a moment later.

“Yes!” Shiv cheered. “It worked! It felling worked!”

“And here was another reason why I wanted you to get Chimeric Assimilation. So you can—” Before Helix could finish, Shiv sent out another mana hydra. It dissolved a chunk from another basilisk’s body, but with how assimilation worked, the large serpent just shuddered slightly.

Right after, Shiv drove the piece back into himself—but this time, he used it to breach his inner membrane protecting him from the hydra. The membrane tore. Shiv snarled in pain. But he pushed on, watching as his own body ignited into spell patterns for the first time.

Helix blinked. Practically every orc near the gateway gawked.

Shiv let out a rasping chuckle as he watched the hydra biomass light up with his own bio-mana architecture, and he pushed the basilisk’s flesh into himself. As soon as he did, he felt his body shift and twist from the inside. Something slithered under his skin and through his cells. A static undercurrent ran through his person, and the faint outlines of scales appeared all across his body.

Aegis of Assimilation 104 > 105

“Yes!” Shiv cackled. “Now I have—” And then his insides ignited in agony as he felt his stomach twist violently. Shiv clutched his chest and groaned.

Helix pinched the bridge of his nose. “Well. You’re likely going to die from severe metabolic dysfunction in a few seconds, so I might as well explain this to you now: regeneration isn’t the only thing you need to consider, Insul. It’s only part of the complexity of your biology. You can likely heal from a great deal of things now, but your mitochondria and energy production are not quite congruous with those of a basilisk. Or most creatures, for that matter. Again: no easy power. Stop trying to emulate the vampires—you’re losing out on Practical Metabiology.

“Yeah,” Shiv wheezed. He tried to pull out the basilisk’s spell chain, only to realize he couldn’t separate it from himself. “Shit. Helix—”

“No. I will not help you. Perish. It will be a good lesson.”

Shiv winced but agreed. “Yeah. Teach me to be impatient again.” He paused. Then he turned to Bonk. “Hey. What say you see if you can kill me before my body does?”

Bonk drew in a long breath and closed his eyes. “Finally.”

“Have all the other Heroes join in too,” Shiv added. “I’m gonna put on my regenerating armor. Let’s get my Toughness a few levels if we can.”

An orc raised a hand in front of his mouth and gave a sarcastic sob. “He’s the best humie ever.”

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