Chương 84: Pushing the Boundary

WARHOL sweated like a pig before slaughter. He had spent the last few days engaged in non-stop anti-Horror operations. His goal was clear — fill the artifact and mutate. At the end of his sweat-soaked time, he succeeded. His artifact rumbled, informing him it was ready. A quick bath later to wash the sweat off and he was ready. In the Grotto once more, he opened his HUD and browsed his selections. Per the norm, there were many choices. He could go for bigger wings. Or a tail.

He didn't see the point in either, though. Besides, when he looked at his behind in a mirror, he already had sprouted a small tail. Unnerving to say the least. When he first spotted it, he thought it was a second penis! Why he thought that he didn't know, but even as a monster-man, he remained a silly one. No. He wanted something practical.

And he found it: [Super-Size]: its description read: [Double over all body mass, including muscles; invigorates brain matter and encourages draconic and demonic features while adding significant boosts to mana generation and filtration. Gains Synergy with generalized inhumane upgrades along the anti-human bloodline]. What that last bit meant — 'synergy with the anti-human bloodline' — he hadn't a clue and he really didn't care.

Maybe it was his going all in to defeat the Horror or maybe it was because his whispers in his head had returned, stronger than ever, perhaps signaling he should return to the Holy Shop and purchase more advanced mental protections. Whatever the reason, though, he didn't care. He confirmed the [Super-Size] Mutation and — crap, forgot to incant [Pain Relief]!

The artifact slammed into his chest and went straight for his heart, sending bone and viscera splattering everywhere; had he been sure the artifact could not actually kill him, he would have been terrified of dying. Instead, he gritted his teeth and screamed. It felt like hours. He knew it was only minutes, but the pain had been so intense, it felt otherwise. When the 'process' ended and he incanted [Pain Relief] on himself, it was as though the weight of all devastation had been lifted from his shoulders.

He twitched like a skinned fish and vowed to never again let himself mutate without first casting a suite of pain deadening spells.

Still on the floor, which, over the weeks, had grown to a steady layer of total filth coverage, so much so, he wondered if a cleaning spell would even be capable of tidying up the disaster zone that had been his Grotto, he opened his HUD and checked his stats: [Name: Warhol Chaucer] [Level: 8100] [Martial Prowess: 51, 200] [Magical Prowess: 16, 384, 000] [Stamina: 768, 000] [Mastery Dynamics: 5, 525] [Unallocated Boon Points: 41, 050] Stunned at his new stats, he couldn't believe his boosts until he saw a secondary notification in his system: [Due to Super-Size, all Stats Bonuses have Quadrupled: New Bonus Configuration Established].

Without thinking, Warhol dumped ten thousand Boon Points into Mastery Dynamics. He had the points to spare. Next... well, what was there to even do? Mastery Dynamics was the only element of his stat page which made sense to give points into since, at this rate, investing in anything else wouldn't give him even an ounce of progress. He got up from the ground and felt... different. He tried to walk but felt strange. He was bigger, slower, but somehow also faster, and lumbered.

He realized belatedly that it was his size. His mutation doubling his literal size made him see and feel to the world differently... it also increased the voices in his head; the voices told him terrible things, to go and conquer and claim domain over life. And he wasn't about to have that! With the grace of an addled crutch wearing wounded trying to ice-skate, he made his way to the tiny shrine he kept in the back of The Grotto. Warhol fell to his knees and began to pray.

Voice in his head did not like it when he prayed. That was fine. It only meant he was going to pray longer and harder and faster! It took some time, but he managed to open up the Holy Shop. Right away, he navigated toward the suite of purchases he had bookmarked last time, all those which were of medium grade, or above which claimed to help protect himself from monstrous forces. He highlighted the whole lot of them, excluding those of the highest grade available, and confirmed his purchase.

[Thank You for your Purchases: -1500 Boon Points Subtracted] Warhol felt his newly acquired Boons right away as the evil whispers faded into the ether and vanished as if they had never existed. He opened his sub-menu again to check his Humanity rating: [Human: 40%]. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. A full ten-percent for that one mutation... It made him worry.

If each mutation took away ten percent of his humanity, he only had four mutations left until he lost all of his humanity. What would happen then? Would he no longer be able to mutate? Was that to be the end of his road? What if he couldn't defeat the Horror after those four mutations, what then? Was he destined to let everyone down? To throw aside his humanity and for nothing? Warhol slowed himself, his thinking. He couldn't let himself think so negatively. He would overcome. He always did.

He had overcome mortal limitations, right? With the help of a God's modification tool, perhaps, but still! He had overcome the Mind Slop parasite... with his son's help, sure, but otherwise! He was a man who knew how to surmount life's difficult moments. Simple as that. Hardly without even a thought, one of his finger's tilted about in a semi-circle, opening a portal to outer space. He had more energy, more stamina than he knew what to do with, literally.

He was through the portal a second later and in the infinite expanse of the cosmic. A blistering series of [Teleportation] incantations caressed the star realm's intricate folds. With a speed that surprised even him, he barged his way through dozens of blockages, caring no more for their petty hopes of holding him back: he appraised each blockage and a second later had the fusion magic solution to cleave apart each blockage. Tertiary tentacles no longer posed a problem to him.

Even moderate tentacles he needed hardly more than a few spells to blast apart to nothingness. He destroyed all that he saw but cared for none of it until he glimpsed his prey — a major tentacle! It came to him with its colossal qualities which extended beyond conventional hugeness. It 'shot' past him as if a whole world had missed him by the thinnest of margins. Which was what he wanted — he sidestepped and zipped around to face the ungodly tentacle and poured immense sum of mana into a single magified punch.

He reared back and unleashed his mammoth punch, landing a direct hit with all his physical might! Little did Warhol know that single punch sent such a strong magical shockwave, that far away, an alien — none other than Signet himself — picked it up from his command station... SIGNET was sequestered in his personal command station near the heart of the station. He spent his time here doing his job — monitoring the comings and goings, mostly the comings, of the cosmic Horror.

That meant taking long-distance measurements, gauging power levels of its body parts, and estimating the number of anti-matter torpedoes they would need when it came time to launch an all-out assault on the horrible creature. His job was as routine as one could imagine. Like the laziest of humans, or perhaps the smartest, he sat in a comfortable chair the whole time. He performed complex calculations and entertained the theories of the less scientifically inclined of his people.

So, when an alarm went off, he thought that his somewhat-friend Warhol had returned for another visit.

"Please tell Warhol that I will be with him shortly," he said into the intercom. Signet finished his calculation then received a message from the staff: "There is no Warhol, sir. The station is empty." Empty? How? That didn't make sense. The machines had picked up Warhol's magical signature. How could it not be him?

"Are you sure? He might have teleported into a different part of the ship. I do not believe his magics are accurate. Search again, please."

"Understood, sir." He expected to receive word back any moment that Warhol had accidentally ended up in the cargo hold or some restroom. Instead, the response he gained was "Sir. Warhol is not on the ship. We've confirmed this twice over, now." What? Not on the station?

"Run a scan on where this energy signature has come from, then," he informed the data crew as he rushed up to the observation deck, where the most powerful telescopes and sensors were placed. He arrived on the observation deck and gave orders to find the signature. He wanted to know what was happening with their equipment. Or if some new and terrible foe had come alongside the cosmic Horror.

He needed an explanation for why Warhol was nowhere to be seen but their equipment picked him up as if he was right on the bridge. After far too many minutes of pacing back and forth, wondering if the Horror had some new trick up its arse for them, one of his underlings reported that the signal had come from deep within the Horror.

"How is that possible?" he asked.

"Probes are being sent now," came the response. Their camera probes could survive just about any condition, even belly deep in a Horror. The probes also traveled a little below the speed of light, so they could begin transmitting information faster than anything the Humans were capable of building, magic included. A screen appeared on the bridge with a new feed. It was the feed showcasing the signal location. The feed showed a picture of Warhol. This was surprise number one.

Warhol truly wasn't inside the observation station, then. Signet's next surprise came when he realized that Warhol was fighting one of the Horror's larger tentacles all by himself; "How did that happen?" he muttered.

"Did he just, whoa, that was an incantation, wasn't it? It looked like an anti-matter bomb!" The screen displayed a Warhol far stronger, far more powerful, than Signet thought possible. Warhol, he had always known to be a strong warrior, or 'mage' as his people dubbed it. But this, where flames the size of moons joined with electro-bolts bigger than starships? Where each joined together in quadrant sized maelstroms?

Signet watched as Warhol threw an electro-bolt wrapped fireball at the super-massive tentacle; the flames and electricity slammed into the monstrous limb, splintering its tough, outer skin, into uncountable flakes as it sundered into gigantic pieces. Over again, spell after spell came from Warhol. Red bolts, blue spheres, yellow beams; he saw Warhol move with the grace known only to the most advanced of Neon machinery; and were those... wings upon his back?! And his skin.

It was hard to tell because of the blackness of space and the domineering form of the Horror, but from his vantage, it looked to Signet as though Warhol was more monster than man, their skin looking downright scaled. What had happened to his acquaintance? Had he fallen victim to some horrible monster? Another parasite? Signet watched the confrontation between Warhol and the tentacle with the same focus as he gave to watching Wrestling-Ball when his favorite team played.

He couldn't take his eyes off the size of Warhol's magic bolts or how he ripped into the Horror's scaled hide with his bare hands — claws? — and personally tore the Horror's tentacles apart. Teh way he shot into the tentacle and blasted out from the other side, taking with him entire pockets of gore the size of cities.

"By science..." Signet uttered, all of his staff watching the fight alongside him.

"What did you do?" When the battle ended, Signet ordered a communication chime launched from the observation drone. He had to talk with his old friend. And he wasn't going to take 'no' for an answer.