—— ❖ —— —— ❖ —— —— ❖ ——
Then came the appendages—five, six, eight, ten in total, each pale and unnerving. A head forced its way through after them, monstrous and fur-covered. The whole body followed, pale fur alive with static, its surface crawling with whisker-like tendrils that trembled as if tasting the air.
Up close the coat wasn't soft; it was a mat of guard-fur over something harder, plates glimpsed between tufts when it moved. The tendrils feathered out and recoiled again, cilia rippling as though sampling the Luminary Essence in the air.
It stood on six limb-columns, double-jointed and wrong, the joints flexing forward and then sideways with insect precision.
Each tip split into a splay of narrow digits, pads ringed with tiny hooks that clicked against stone. A thin sheen filmed the contact points, some kind of secreted gel—so when it shifted its weight it did so without sound, like rubber sliding over glass.
Slk-slk.
The smell hit next: wet hair scorched by ozone as if it had come through a body of water, sweet-metallic underneath. It let out a sound that wasn't a growl so much as a layered rasp, air pushed through a set of hidden slits along the throat, breather ports that opened and closed in a slow cadence.
Its face was worse. A mammal's muzzle at first glance, but the lips peeled back to reveal a second, Its outer muzzle split open like torn fabric, revealing a second, maw lined with sharp, valve-like teeth. From within, a long, muscular tongue lashes outward, barbed along one side, flexible on the other. Tasting the air as if it were alive.
No eyes that Arion could see, just fur and those questing tendrils sweeping in arcs, mapping the world by touch and pressure.
A hybrid of insect and mammal, engineered by a joke with bad taste. That was enough.
Arion just watched, caught between horror and fascination at whatever this thing was. But he wasn't stupid. He circulated his Vitalis, breath slowing, muscles tightening. Every nerve in him was ready.
The creature tore wider, ripping itself from its reality into his. Drawn by the rich Luminary Essence saturating the area, it forced its way through the narrow spatial window.
Within seconds it was through, landing hard, then rising immediately. Its head turned in slow, deliberate arcs, feeling the air as though tasting this new existence.
Then it froze.
Still as death.
It knew it was being watched.
It unfolded itself and Arion finally got scale.
It stayed low at first—hunched and coiled—about a metre and a half at the shoulder. Then the front limbs unfolded too far, joints bending the wrong way as it rose past two metres, spine unspooling in twitching, armor-like links. The movement made no sense; it grew upward like something remembering how to stand.
From muzzle to haunch it stretched a little over three metres, gaunt yet heavy, its weight pressing a low groan from the stone. The proportions fought each other—shoulders too broad, hips too thin, every limb a little too long.
Big. Fast. A few hundred kilos at least. Great…
And it seems like it doesn't even need eyes to find me.
Its head snapped toward Arion.
…Shit.
A chill ran down his spine as its awareness locked onto him.
They stood motionless, statues in the wind.
Then—
A shard of ice cracked loose and fell.
The sound—sharp, metallic, like the trigger of a gun.
Crack.
The creature tore forward across the scarred clearing, using its ten appendages like pistons, covering the distance between them with terrifying speed.
Arion bent low, angling himself and pulsing Vitalis through his core. Luminary currents bent through the ice beneath him. The frozen ground responded—melting, rising, reshaping into water. He flung it forward with one hand while the other readied an Ice Snap.
The wave surged toward the abomination—only for it to twist, body swivelling unnaturally, joints and muscles bending like separate creatures moving in unison.
Arion blinked, startled, but only for a heartbeat.
The Abomination rushed straight for him, uncaring for his pathetic splash attack.
Arion side-rolled in a panic as the abomination barrelled where he was just standing, missed him by a hair's breadth, creating cracks within the mirror-like surface.
With all his wit and intellectual mind, he… ran? Running like a maniac, chased by a rabid mutated dog.
The chase was on, Arion sprinted, slightly slipping on its surface, screaming, the abomination followed behind, also struggling, with its appendages sometimes failing to catch friction.
"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!"
Thud-thud-thud!
Like a comedic chase scene, the two were slipping and sliding, one was hungry and the other was dinner, but Arion never seemed to see the joke in this, for once.
"Go back into your dimensional dog flap you ugly bastard!"
He flew past an obsidian tree, grabbing it and sliding around, instantly changing direction. The abomination didn't have this luxury and slid whilst trying to quickly manoeuvre the slick surface, flying across the surface for a few moments.
Whhhrrr.
Giving Arion Spare moments.
Think you idiot! What's the point of this bloody intelligence if you end up being eaten by an ugly stupid dimension dog!
Arion turned to his crumbled ice shield which was now turned to water, some paces away on the other side of the charred expanse.
Offensiveness is not going to help me—I need something that can hold this thing back.
Quickly rolling, anticipating another lunge from the abomination, Arion sprinted straight for the crumbled ice.
The abomination flung itself at Arion, closer and closer. Sliding, he got as close to the ice as he could in time to avoid becoming dinner.
A plan B. One that had just been invented.
As he slid to the ice and water, he pulled the remaining water toward him.
Vapour and steam spun under his command, directing it with his hands and arms, it condensed instantly into a swirling film of boiling water—thin at first, then thicker as the spin accelerated. The denser it grew, the faster it rotated.
He instantly turned his arms to the side to face the abomination, it was just about to smash into him but it was suddenly met by a dense, rotating body of boiling water.
Motion slowed. Arion lay on his back, the abomination impacted straight into the body of the water, scraping right above it. His body pressed hard into the black scar surface, cracks surfacing.
His face had an expression of appallment, with front-row seats to something he didn't want to see.
Unprepared, it slid right off it, its momentum carrying it some metres away, skidding along the obsidian surface. Arion rose with the body of water, studying it.
This won't work. A barrier of water—No I need a solid shield…
He commanded the water, through Luminary Essence by his Vitalis, like a medium of communication, it rotated further, condensed and shaped itself to his command.
Vhhhmm-sssshhhh
A shield formed, fluid and searing—anchored to his arm, Vitalis coursing through his arm connecting to the flowing Luminary Essence within the shield of water. He skidded his back foot, sending a pulse down to freeze the ground beneath his boots. Solid footing. All within good timing.
Explosion of kinetic energy.
Water and steam detonated together.
The abomination crashed into the spinning shield; a shockwave rolled through the clearing—ice shattered, dirt erupted. Arion skidded back a step but held his stance.
Smell. Noise. Vibration, which is it?
Arion reset his stance, bracing for the next rush.
Doesn't matter. It has the upper hand—that's the issue.
This isn't about strength; it's endurance. I can't keep this up indefinitely.
…It can.
He glanced at the rotating shield of boiling water, then at the abomination—its fur still smoking as it sprinted toward him again.
He crouched lower, grounding his weight. Harder. More stable.
The creature lunged, hurling itself forward, arms snapping back like springs, gaining as much power as possible .
Six fists fell like hammers—pounding into the shield in rhythm, blacksmith to anvil.
Shockwaves rippled through the clearing; dust rose in clouds.
Arion's arm rattled, pain screaming up into his shoulder. His face twisted.
Argh—fuuuck!
Okay! Maybe. I was wrong!
They locked in stalemate—Arion holding firm while the creature kept hammering. Each strike sent a ring of steam shooting outward.
When brute force failed, it clawed instead. The spinning water sliced through the reaching talons, jets of steam bursting from the contact and blasting the creature's face. It shrieked, reeling away.
Arion's mind flashed.
Without hesitation, he thrust his glowing hand toward the shield, Vitalis flaring bright.
Scald Burst
The shield's core flashed, pressure peaking at the centre as its rotation hit critical speed. The inner ring erupted, venting high-pressure steam in a spiralling ring that shot outward like a circular blast.
Overwhelmed, the abomination raised its arms, stumbling back from the searing torrent.
Arion punished the mistake.
He lunged, driving the shield into its upper body. Steam exploded on impact, keeping the creature stunned.
Arion roared, pushing his body to its limit.
They ploughed across the scarred ground, adrenaline pounding through him, until they hit an obsidian tree. The trunk cracked from the impact, fragments scattering through the air.
Arion pushed harder, slamming again.
The abomination flailed, all six limbs whipping to dislodge him, but he held on. Steam scalded them both; claws tore shallow lines across his sleeves.
He grimaced. The shield's rotation was slowing, its water depleting. He was running out of material—and time.
This wouldn't kill it.
Definitely stronger than the chicken.
Adapt or die.
He disconnected the shield but kept its rotation spinning—self-anchored, feeding on its own momentum.
Stepping back, he spread his arms wide—hands open, fingers splayed.
Like the hands of a clock, he turned them in opposite directions—motion precise, breath steady.
The world narrowed to heat and rhythm.
Vitalis flowed. Luminary Essence coiled. Every movement proportional, balanced. No mistakes.
Stabilise rotation… equalise pressure.
Same framework as Heat Coil—just bigger.
An orange glow flared, faint at first, then sharp, outlining his arms in molten light. The air bent around him, rippling like glass. The ground hissed.
Focus the gradient. Keep the symmetry.
He felt the resonance—the right frequency, vibrating through his bones.
His arms flashed, completing the circle in a heartbeat.
The macro-coil roared into existence, vibrating with violent stability, birthing radiant heat so dense it bent the air around him.
He compressed it—denser, flatter, faster.
The reaction hit threshold. The remnants of the water shield ignited, heat cascading outward in a shock-chain of hissing pressure and light. Steam erupted in all directions, a white wall consuming the battlefield.
His old barrier was gone, replaced by something far deadlier.
The abomination staggered, fur singed and smoking. The spinning anomaly that had stunned it seconds ago was gone, but it felt the new heat building.
Arion planted his foot forward. The steam parted.
VFFFFMMMMM.
A huge orange disc spun into view, Heat Coil, a rotating disc of death, roaring as it carved through the air.
He shoved it forward, Vitalis and muscle straining against its raw power.
The ground groaned beneath him as the disc bit in.
Reaching the creature within a second, the abomination had no chance to react to the obliterating heat roaring toward it.
Like an electric grinder on flesh, the roaring disc carved through the abomination—heat shearing fur and bone alike, sparks of molten tissue flaring with every rotation.
But the abomination was abnormally resilient. With its body and six arms it resisted the grinder, the two forces meeting in visceral brutality.
Even as flesh vapourised it held its ground, driven by something beyond pain.
Arion gritted his teeth, every muscle screaming. The usual Heat Coil devoured a chunk of Vitalis; this monster was draining everything.
Vitalis burn incoming… push harder.
He did—praying the other side broke before he did.
How is it still standing?
S-shit!
His foot slipped, he was being pushed back. He'd underestimated its raw strength.
Even with the mother of all grinders, this thing's still holding!
Face twisted, eyes shut, body trembling, his mind flashed to that first accident, the plasma burst that turned dinner into glass.
He exhaled through clenched teeth, eyes snapping open.
Looks like we're going nuclear.
Hands hovered dangerously close, every tendon tight as he fought to keep their position.
Tighten the confinement.
Smaller, denser radius triggers temperature spikes.
His palms skimmed the surface; the disc constricted, its orange hue sharpening into a sterile, surgical white, as if obeying command.
Adjust the feed—Luminary Essence up… fifty percent.
Whmmmmm!
"Gahhh—!" Arion winced as pain tore through him, blood threading from his nose.
The vibrating disc drained his Vitalis, pulling at the surrounding Luminary Essence like a collapsing gravity well.
It no longer roared—it pulsed, a newborn white star trembling between his hands. The heat shimmered across his face, warping his reflection in the air.
The world blurred; colours bled at the edges. Pressure climbed. The sound became a scream.
Counter-spin.
"Enjoy this, asshole—!"
Light folded.
A burst of light—
blinding, searing.
Both tree and abomination broke.
Light consumed everything.
Overwhelming obliteration.
Before he knew it, Arion smashed into the ground, bouncing until he slammed into a tree.
The pressure pinned him there, eyes forced open—made to watch his own creation carve the horizon.
The Plasma Coil tore across the landscape, taking the abomination and everything with it, cutting and vapourising earth in its path.
When the pressure finally faded, he collapsed. Strength gone, body numb.
The world went dark, and the last thing he heard was the fading hiss of plasma dying in the distance.
Hssssss…
…
..
.
—— ❖ —— —— ❖ —— —— ❖ ——
Black obsidian.
Darkness.
Searing white flame. Tunnelling vortex—
Then darkness again.
A groan. Agonising pain.
Crunch
Steps crunching through the debris.
Body beaten, blood dripping.
Texture, planks of wood.
Foothold. Grab—pull.
The creak of wooden planks felt like needles to the ear.
A chair drops. Vision flickers.
The room rocks back and forth.
Consciousness fades, then the feeling of rough cloth and thin cushioning. Heaven compared to the obsidian ground before.
…
Time slipped by.
—— ❖ —— —— ❖ —— —— ❖ ——
Sunlight breaches the cabin, tearing away the dark.
A wooden ceiling etched with sunlight.
A slow blink, then a few rapid ones.
Arion lay there, raising his arm, fingers flexing, making sure he wasn't in another new body.
Still in one piece, and same body. That's good…
He slowly scans the small cabin and tries to peek through the doorway.
How long was I out for?
He pushed himself up, but pain stopped him—blinding, overwhelming.
Teeth clenched, face twisted, he winced and dropped back down. Groaning like an old patient.
"If this was me from before, I'd be in the hospital, or dead."
Studying his body, he assesses the damage.
"It hurts like hell, I look like hell… but, not as bad as I thought. Does Vitalis have innate healing when it recharges? Absorbing Luminary Essence, could it trigger cellular replacement as the body recharges? Like some kind of luminary-panel battery hybrid…"
He pauses.
If that's true… I could calibrate it, tune efficiency, maybe even—
He stops himself mid-thought.
Actually, let's not blow myself up in the first few weeks.
Frowning, he exhales and lets the thought go.
As he was remembering the fight with the abomination, he remembered something.
"That nifty shield saved my ass, was some quick thinking. Something to explore further"
Let's keep the Plasma Coil in the workshop for now… I can't be throwing out suicidal fusion reactors every time an ugly ass creature shows itself.
Twin-headed birds time their chirps perfectly outside.
In the end, It wasn't triumph, just survival. Every win here felt like proof that the world wanted him gone.
Neither world seemed to want him.
Sunlight fell warm on his skin.
He lied there, more alone than usual.
Sigh… If only I had a cute nurse to heal me back to health.
—— ❖ —— —— ❖ —— —— ❖ ——
Moonlight shone through where sunlight had been previously. Arion finally managed to get himself up, surprised by the body's natural healing factor, though still groaning and aching, nowhere near back to normal.
After sloshing his waterskin, he was relieved to find there was still enough water inside. After gulping down the remainder, he stretched—awkwardly and painfully.
"Ahhhh… Ow. My everything…"
Feeling sorry for himself, he slowly made his way down the crooked ladder, half-hoping it wouldn't break and deal the last bit of damage to his lingering health.
As he reached the final plank, he chuckled to himself.
"Haha, now that would be pretty hilarious—"
The second plank snapped under his weight. He fell straight back, landing hard on the ground below.
"Owww—am I crazy or am I jinxed? Or is it just the universe trying to correct itself, displacing the anomaly… just like that tear in—"
Crap!
He jumped up, ignoring his half-beaten condition, limping toward the scarred campground. What he saw confirmed that what happened wasn't a nightmare.
"It's still there."
His eyes darted around the clearing, more importantly, behind him—a pure instinct overriding pain.
Silence.
Nothing. No more abominations seemed to have come through, and if they did, they weren't here. Meaning they weren't his problem.
"But it still can be…" he muttered, staring at the strange, reality-bending rip.
Raising his hand reluctantly, he moved Vitalis through his body, commanding the air around the ripple.
Arion drew the heat from the air; the temperature plummeted in a heartbeat. Vapour coiled around him in silver ribbons as Frost Snap took hold, every strand pulled toward a single point. The mist thickened, then hardened, each thread freezing mid-motion until it became glass.
Fractal branches burst outward, racing up the air like lightning captured in slow motion, while translucent roots plunged into the soil below. Luminary Essence coursed through the forming structure, veins of light running through a body of crystal.
In seconds, the Cryoform lattice towered above him—an ice-born tree, its branches humming as it locked the rupture in place and sealed the chaos beneath a shell of frozen radiance.
"I doubt that'll hold whatever crawls out next."
Arion scanned his new ice-tree sculpture.
"But it'll at least give me some sense of ease… for now."
Not feeling too confident, he moved on.
"Now let's see the damage."
He eventually made his way over to the scene that decided the fight of his life.
The landscape could only be described as if a massive drill had torn through it, half-buried, carving through the ground like a vortex and scorching the edges as it passed.
Arion followed the vortex-like wound. It spanned at least ten metres, slowly shrinking as if the disc had lost energy and started to dissipate. At the end of the destruction lay a crushed tree.
Squlch. Slop. Blop.
Boots stepped in something unsightly.
When Arion saw it, he immediately regretted his decision.
"Bluurrrgggghhh—" He doubled over, retching up whatever his stomach could give.
There lay the scene of an impact crater, a crushed tree and the abomination, or what was left of it. Its remains were strewn everywhere: blood, limbs, guts, what he could only call eggs, tendrils, burnt fur. Something he'd rather not look at.
"Ugh. Well, I'll be damned—it took a magical fusion reactor to finally put you down."
Tired and still beaten, he decided the best thing to do was retire for the day and rest.
—— ❖ —— —— ❖ —— —— ❖ ——
A few days went by—luckily with no more creepy abominations. Fortunately, he still had some frozen fish to munch on until he recovered, though water would have to be retrieved from the river.
When the sun climbed toward midday, Arion decided on his afternoon soak.
He entered the small spring, feeling the effects immediately—the rejuvenating, Luminary-rich water clinging to his body, drawn to his Vitalis. As it healed the last of his wounds and bruises, he busied himself reading, going over the journal again.
This world's too unpredictable. I'm completely in the dark, and I nearly paid for it…
I need intel—concrete data to let me prepare for unseeable problems.
His eyes slid over the adventurer's entries, stopping at the last one.
"Filled with unmatched knowledge, recorded in his own sacred library. It was said he was obsessed with it—knowledge of this world."
Arion sat there, pondering.
…
Seems about time I venture out.
—— ❖ —— —— ❖ —— —— ❖ ——
Field Entry:
Plasma Coil [Mother Variant] — Thermodynamics / Critical Resonance
──────────────────────────────
Derivative of Plasma Coil. Counter-spin introduced during the overcompression phase triggered runaway resonance. Vitalis confinement collapsed inward; Luminary feedback sustained ionised plasma beyond threshold—fusion-class output.
Science:
Resonance inversion converts stable magnetic-like confinement into a collapsing pressure loop. Heat multiplies exponentially as the field cannibalises its own structure.
In Layman Terms:
I forced the Coil to eat itself. It became a miniature sunstorm — tore the landscape apart and nearly took me with it.
Maxim:"Every creation waits to outgrow its maker."