After the cooldown room, we didn't head straight back to the surface. Felicity veered instead toward the lower market district—just below the arena tier. A place where the walls were etched with trademarks, not clan sigils. Where eyes didn't follow you out of pride or fear, just profit. Stalls hawked recharge vials, fang energy bars, coagulant patches. Vein life essentials. We passed a stall where a lizard-beast accepted a throbbing muscle shard in exchange for a cloak made from transparent spider-hide. No credits. No coins. I gestured at a glowing cube rotating inside a pressure vault.
"What's the currency here?" I asked. Felicity smirked. "Depends on who you ask. But if you're legit? You trade in Digi coin and or Tail Marks." She tapped the screen of a vendor kiosk—it displayed three icons. "These are crystalized Orgone Units – Red-orange shards. Standard trade for services, gear, and mods. She picked up two wrist devices from the kiosk and synced one to her bio-field. She handed me the other, "Sync this to your bio-field, hold this button until it beeps."
"When we complete a mission, our pay will automatically be deposited into our wrist wallets, convenient huh!"
I did as she instructed while Felicity continued her explanation. "Digi Coins are mostly earned through sanctioned bounties or ring wins. Then there are Tail Marks also known as chops of respect. Only issued after high-level beast kills or trials. We can use them to gain favors, unlock rare missions or gain entry to mod access.
Finally there are Pulse Credits. Pulse credits are the surface worlds proxy cash, good only in Beast City. Converts like crap. Not respected below Layer 1."
She grinned. "We're broke at the moment. But now that we're blooded we automatically have accounts registered to us in the Beast Vein. We can now accept missions!" We returned to the Beast Bounty Board. The crowd had thinned. The glyphs pulsed calmer now—less chaos, more hunger. Felicity tapped the board. Sorted the list.
"Here," she said, eyes gleaming.
TIER 2 FUSION BEAST HUNT LEVEL 4
Threat Level: Moderate!
Reward: 1200 Digi Coins.
Description: Retrieval of Fusion Beast Core. Exact coordinates known. Nest activity high. Authorized for 2-person team.
"You want to get paid?" she said. "This one's on me."
"Level 4?" I asked. "Aren't the clans the gatekeepers?"
Felicity smiled, We're blooded now, we can enter the fourth level, but no further. Besides this one's a grey mission. Clan-affiliated—but unclaimed. Whoever failed to collect that core didn't report it through channels. Probably ashamed they failed. Or dead." I stared at the listing. Felt the weight of it settle in my gut.
The reward was real. 1200 Digi Coins. "This is our first real step huh?" I asked. Felicity nodded. Serious now. "Level 4 isn't Beast City anymore. It's the Threshold. Ruins. Bio-spires. Forgotten experiments. What they buried."
"Can we handle it?" She didn't smile this time. "If we can't, we don't belong down here."
The drop to Level 4 wasn't marked by signs. It was marked by silence. The shaft we took was narrow—lined with old bone-rail supports, long-rotted wiring, and veins of darkened bio-flesh no longer pulsing. The elevator cage groaned with every shift. I felt Herja go quiet inside me. Not tense. Not afraid. Focused.
Like something familiar was drawing near. Felicity barely spoke. Just checked her weapons—thin fang-knives and a viper-coil whip she hadn't used yet. When the cage clanked to a halt, we stepped into shadow. We had finally reached level 4, the bio-spire wastes. It had once been a center of living Mod-Works—where early splicers experimented without restriction.
Now?
Now it was a grave. Twisted towers of grafted bone and failed biotech jutted from the ground like tumor-trees. Everything curved inward—like the whole zone had inhaled and never let go. The walls throbbed weakly with power. Just enough light to move by. "Why's it look like this?" I whispered. Felicity scanned the air, "The spires rewrote themselves. the tech rot got recursive. They built smarter... and hungrier."
"And the Tail Core?"
She pointed toward a ruptured spinal column of a structure half-collapsed into the basin ahead. "There. Inside that broken node tower. Coordinates match." We moved carefully, beast feet kicking through broken mod-husks. Failed bodies. Flesh half-melded with steel. Eyes still twitching, long after the mind was gone. I stepped over a torso with three heads fused into one knot. "Failed merges," Felicity said softly. "Too greedy. Or hacked." My tail tensed. We reached the node tower.
The node tower itself had a musty, damp smell, the scent of old, neglected machinery and the faint, underlying stench of something long dead and forgotten. Inside, it was worse. The walls were stitched with neural cable. Vein-glass monitors blinked random glyphs. In the center of the room was a fusion beast skeleton, it was suspended mid-modification in a vat of cracked fluid. The walls of the node tower were covered in a network of pulsating veins, casting a dim, flickering light that made the shadows dance and twist.
The creature's body was a grotesque patchwork of failed experiments, with limbs and organs fused together in a chaotic, unnatural way.
I stepped toward it—
—and froze.
The air got thick. My vision rippled. The fusion beast's eyes, if it had any, glowed with an eerie, unnatural light, casting a sickly hue on the surrounding area. Felicity dropped into a crouch. "It's waking up, that's the fusion Beast!" Then I heard it.
Skritch-skritch-skritch.
The vat exploded!
Shards of glass flew everywhere, as I dove for cover! Out from the tank slithered something massive and wrong. The fusion beast's movements were accompanied by a cacophony of sounds. The wet, slithering noise of its limbs moving, the creaking of its bones. It hissed through a dozen mismatched mouths with buck teeth.
"Guardian construct," Felicity shouted. "Last-gen security mod!"
I dropped low, claws extended. "You want that core?" she growled.
"Then tear it from the bones!"
The Fusion-Beast hit the floor hard enough to shake dust from the spire's cracked ribs! It had no eyes. It was Just a mass of wet muscle wrapped around carbon. Tails—plural—whipped in every direction, each tipped with bone-hooks or injector barbs! Arms kept growing in and out of its sides—some snapping off, others forming anew.
Felicity moved first with a burst step, low and fast! Her talons flashed—slice-slice—cutting deep into the left flank before leaping away like a ghost. It shrieked through six mouths. One of them spat caustic mist! Another howled a mimicry of pain that didn't belong to it. Now it was my turn. I closed the distance—dropped into Herja's forward stance. Tail sweeping, claws cocked.
"Right side's softer!" Felicity yelled.
I punched into its ribcage—bone crunched! Then I raked my tail up into what should've been a spine. Black ichor sprayed! It stumbled. New limbs regenerated right out of the wound. I could feel the vibration of the fusion beast's movements through the ground, a deep, rumbling sensation that seemed to resonate in my bones.
The air was thick with the creature's scent, a mix of decay, metal, and something acrid and chemical, making it difficult to breathe. It lashed out—three tails sweeping in sequence! I blocked the first. Dodged the second. The third cracked across my shoulder and sent me tumbling into a vat wall hard enough to burst a pipe. Steam hissed.
I coughed—tasted metal. Felicity was already on it again—this time with her whip. The viper-coil whip snapped forward—wrapped around one of the creature's thrashing arms—and she yanked hard. The arm ripped off! The beast wailed—but didn't stop. Another limb grew out, halfway fused with an insect leg and a saw blade. "Cheap mods," Felicity spat.
"Still sharp," I muttered, pushing off the wall. I leapt forward with a talon and tail attack! I could feel the resistance of the fusion beast's flesh and bone as they cleaved through, the sensation of tearing through its unnatural body. We drove it back together—me and Felicity synced like dancers in a brutal duet. The adrenaline of the fight made my heart pound in my chest, my breath coming in short, sharp gasps as I dodged and struck. I leapt on its back slamming my claws into the shoulder blades and raked downward!
Felicity rolled under, slashed upward into the throat-joint, then leapt away! The fusion-beast collapsed.
Dead weight. No movement. Felicity lowered her stance, panting.
"Did we—?"
Its body convulsed. The fusion beast smelled of rust, decay, and something electrical, like the scent of a dying battery. It was a foul, overwhelming stench that clung to the air and made my eyes water A hiss from the tail cluster. Every mouth opened at once—howling in reverse.
"IT'S FAKING!" I shouted.
Too late. A barbed tendril shot from its belly—straight for Felicity's chest. I moved on instinct.
"Burst dash!"
Herja's legs coiled like a spring. I tackled Felicity aside—but caught the barb through my right oblique! Pain flared white-hot. But Herja didn't scream. She laughed.
"Good," she growled. "Now we kill it." I stood and let go of the restraint and felt my orgone energy flare! My skin split down the spine—bio plasmic ridges hardened my tail became segmented. Claws elongated. Felicity popped up beside me—eyes glowing. Aura thrumming violet. She was in full succubus form now. Horns. Fangs. Wild raven hair. "You good?" she asked.
"Better than good!" I replied. Together, we surged in. I broke left. She broke high. I tackled the fusion-beast mid-growl, lifted it by the jaws—and tore. Its top half separated from the base. Felicity dove with her knives in a spinning double slash, carving out the core cavity from the exposed torso! One last mouth bit into my arm—deep.
I bit it back. It twitched. Twisted. Tried to regrow. But Felicity already had the fusion Core in hand. "Back off!" she shouted. She jammed her talons into the beast's spinal cord! The whole thing spasmed and shrieked. Then ignited from the inside. Vein-light burst from its wounds as every mod screamed in rejection. The fusion beast collapsed inward and crunched down onto the ground.
Silence.
I collapsed to a knee. Felicity wiped blood off her cheek. The fusion Core sat in her hands. Now glowing a steady crimson. She handed it to me.
"Yours."
I looked at her, "Are you sure? we both earned this."
Felicity smiled kindly at me with a mysterious look in her eyes, "You earned this master." I gave her a strange look, "That's the second time you've called me ''Master'' you're starting to weird me out Fel."
Felicity nodded as she snickered, "Oh, I'm sure. I want you to survive what's coming next." She strode up to me wrapping her arms around my waist, Herjas waist, pulling me hard into her. "As for calling you Master, well you'll find out why eventually." She looked up at me with those big silver eyes of hers, raven dark hair sweeping across her asymmetric face, "You could say that I want to help you remember some things about yourself."
She licked my lips with her tongue, and I slid mine out to greet hers. We stood there for several moments engaging in a naughty wet kiss. I could feel her heartbeat against my own as I let my hands trail down over her spine to grip her but with my left hand. Felicity let her hands trail down to Herjas butt, she began to grind her sex into mine as the heat grew between us.
Just then there was a chime from our wrist wallets ''1200 Digi coins have been deposited into your account'' Felicity broke away from the kiss with a little twirl, "You see Master! we're already raking it in!"
Felicity gave a naughty smile as she took my left hand and led the way back to the upper layers. I held the fusion beast Core in my right hand. Felt the hum of it's energy. It wasn't just power. It was a key to the next step. Returning to Level 2 felt like climbing out of a nightmare and stepping into a lucid fever dream. Bio lamps glowed warmer here. The scent of synth-flowers mixed with sterilized oil and incense. Modders barked over haggling. Vein-glass storefronts pulsed with ads and twitching samples.
Felicity was practically skipping through the avenue.
"You know what time it is, Sensei," she said, twirling a streamer like a toy. I followed—blood crusted in the joints, body half-splintered but still grinning. "No, I don't, do tell." I spoke. Felicity stopped in front of a black-metal archway shaped like a predator's open jaw.
The sign glowed crimson: SPLICE: FUNCTIONAL EVOLUTION DIVISION
''If it twitches, we can attach it!''
She gave me a wink. "This one. They specialize in tail systems. No fluff. Pure combat." Inside, a tall, hunched splicer greeted us. Four eyes. Three arms. No bullshit. "Base-tail chassis?" the splicer asked. "Base-class," I said confidently. "Will you be branching into a new evolution circuit today?" "Yes," I said as I handed over the fusion beast Core "I want it in the tail." Felicity chimed in, "Her Core's compatible. She's got the beast blood for it." The splicer nodded as he took a drag from a cigarette, "It'll burn like hell. But it'll fit."
I laid face-down on a grafting slab. Vein-locks hissed. The fusion core was inserted at the base of my spine. Muscles convulsed. Bone cracked. Tail segments snapped outward reforming. The new segment became a chamber. The chamber glowed. Then a hum—low and dangerous—began to build in my tail like a jet engine charging up.
My base tail evolved into Plasma-tail! It could now charge and transform orgone energy as plasma. I could now discharge rounds in explosive bursts! The tail canon had weight; I could use weighted charged tail sweep's that emitted short-range plasma arcs. Or at full burn my tail could fire a focused plasma bolt, but with high mana cost. Felicity leaned over me during the recovery phase. "Your ass is hotter now," Felicity grinned as she teased. I coughed smoke, literally.
The upgrade was done. My new tail hissed behind me in slow, molten arcs—segment plates adjusting with new weight, new burn. I could feel it in my bones now. The hum. Like a second heart coiled at the end of my spine. The splicer wasn't smiling. He extended a long, pale hand. "Payment 700 Digi tokens please"
I passed my wrist wallet over the splicers, and the funds were instantly transferred! I authorized the payment. The credits drained instantly. I had 500 Digi tokens left from the mission. The receipt burned into my memory:
[TAIL: PLASMA CASTER]
[Paid in Digi. No refund.]
[No warranty on evolution. All mods final.]
Felicity watched me carefully as She grinned, "Welcome to the underground hustle Ash."