Despite what he said, Ixa can't, wouldn't forgo either skill of his, no matter how torturous it is on himself or its victims, they were too useful, and besides-
"It only worked when I focused it onto a single person, so my intent will only result in a painful death if I do just that...I'll only do it if necessary, again..."
'It's kind of funny...I said I would save this morality talk for later, yet I'm already figuring it out, mostly with restraining the disgusting, ugly nature of my abilities...
The abilities refusal to function without express understanding of what I am doing to them...deeming it necessary I figure this stuff out for myself even though it isn't really important at all- I'll still use them to survive, regardless of what pain, consequences they'll inflict to the victims...'
For a moment, the thought flitted around Ixa's mind, the rabbit's body responding with the slightest twitch...
If that really was the case, would he really just ignore the gravity of just what exactly they do to a individual, no matter how much it takes from them.
But before he could get to that answer, System resounded through his mind, silencing any chance of an answer.
[ I have finished my investigation into the state and nature of the rabbit's body. ]
"Oh! That was fast."
[ It has already been nearly an hour since we returned, I wouldn't say that, please return to your main body, I wish to show you something. ]
Confused, Ixa's consciousness which was split across the bodies recollected back together into his roots.
Back in the welcoming darkness that is his lack of vision, he 'sat' and waited for System to explain as he felt with what they said before, they have something big to say.
[ System reviewed my initial scan while studying the current body, as I need all the data I have on the body to determine why it isn't rotting, and I noticed something strange: the body is changing. ]
"I'm sorry, WHAT?! How is a dead body growing?"
[ Calm down, it isn't growing, as I looked through its body, I saw something was developing in the center of its body, and on closer look, it was its own necrotic core. ]
"I- I remember you putting a
[ Actually, yes, as you know, necrotic essence is the elements of death and life with at least a single soul, and your core is made with your very own body and soul as I analyzed, as for why that is relevant, here is my analyst on the body first. ]
A red screen appeared like his status, except it is in a shape of a diamond, not a square, separated into 4 smaller sections.
The one on the right showed a diagram of the rabbit's body, the area in its torso has been hollowed out, with linear structures haphazardly spread about, clustering at its center, an ovular core residing in the center, and these thread-like appendages breach the edges of this space, reaching the rims of the body.
On the left, a rotated triangle laid in front of the diagram, the bottom one has sentences upon sentences of data of the body, like height, weight, amongst other obscure specifications of the body, while the top holds notes seemingly handwritten.
[ As you see, a part of the inner body has been cleared into empty space, the surrounding flesh has been changed into this... ]
On the left panel, the triangle disappeared with the diagram, in its place, a visual on the interior played.
Inside, it was nearly imperceptible, with only a nearly white, dim light outlining strings of shadows, stretching ahead and behind the display, however, a flash of stronger light revealed them to be thin threads of indeterminate material, the edges hosting flakes, firm in their places, hints of the red that was once flesh at the filament's center past the shavings, however, what took most of the attention as the light faded, was a wall of the very same texture, of decaying, structuralized, flesh.
Before being lost in darkness, a new light begin to emit from the base of one of these threads on the wall, and a mote of light emerged, traversing the center of the thread, and right behind, a nearby flake began to weaken at the base, before detaching from the wall, falling towards the center, just behind the mote.
Following the dim light as it moved, moving from one branch of threads to the next, it revealed dozens more surrounding it, with that number decreasing by the second; some were independent, on their own, others stemming off of each other haphazardly, the flake danced akin to a leaf petal falling off a tree, past them, having a close call with a singular thread while weaving between a trio splitting off a singular thread, slowly failing to maintain distance with the mote of light, almost being lost to the dark.
Before it could, the light started to strengthen, and what was the destination became clear.
A translucent core, dark grey, teetering on black sat at the center of this abyss of tissue & muscle, where up or down cannot be told, a single thin strand coalesced into a knot, before untangling into even finer threads connecting to the core; one covered every cardinal direction along with two on its bottom and top.
Within, indescribably small bubbles darted about, apparently liquid yet pressed down by an invisible force enough to where it takes shape as a solid core.
At its center, a flame glowed a bright shine of grey, almost no distinction to white.
As the mote reached its knot, the light, previously weaker than the rest, grew to match them.
Appearing to have triggered the right conditions, the light grew unstable, flickering rapidly as the hundreds of miniscule fibers connected to the core were jostled, and just before the instability reached its peak, the flake landed on the surface of the core, breaking apart and dissolved into pieces.
The light within the space was immediately cut as the light within the knots shot through the fibers and into the core, the flame obscured in the disorderly chaos of activity within the core, bubbles covering nearly any trace of light.
As the torrents within the core subsided, the greyish light shone through brighter, and brighter, revealing the whole interior before stabilizing, leaving it within the dark before, albeit a touch more illuminated, as the flame consumed both light & flesh-
And grew.
[ I cannot determine for how long this has been going on, but the "cavern" has already expanded slightly since I started, and has been at a consistent pace since discovery. ]
[ It converts and drains the normal flesh of its remaining life as a corpse outside of the border and sends it through the structures, causing the interior wall to flake, and they somehow are attracted towards the core like its own center of gravity, avoiding the threads systemically before making contact with the core, sinking into it, and being absorbed along with the life drained. ]
The video ends with the play button back in place.
[ I studied the core and found it wasn't solid, it was just
[ At its 'core', the elements you tug to your whims and control to manipulate the body correspondingly moves about the elements within the body, causing them to interact with your residual magic to overall adapt to your presence as its new 'host'. ]
"...I...I don't know if I'm more amazed at myself for understanding what came out of your text box of a mouth, or disturbed at the matter that anybody I possess is going to become...what exactly?"
[ I am unsure, however, this is where your necrotic essence core comes in, as you are the cause of the transmutation, you can also direct it, as in control the process, to either slow down, speed up, or even halt it in its entirely, this process is tied to your own core as that is the center of your being, be it your abilities, what you are, and who you are, as it holds all of it, and all of it is what this change originates from, and is what the adaptation is basing its development on as it tries to acclimate to your being as closely as it can. ]
[ Anyway, there are other functions of your nectrotic essence core, but not only are they unknown to me, but they are locked behind your physiological growth as a Fallen Treant, so only with advancements and research can I find out what they are; I had only found out this one because it seems to be one of the innate traits of your race, and it collaborates with my research on your core and what is happening with the body.]
"Okay...before I even begin to ask how I do that, I have a few questions, one, you said 'Necrotic Essence Material', as in the elements of life and death without a soul, are you saying its soul isn't in there? Two, does it change anything if it was necrotic essence? And now three, how do I do it?"
[ 1. Yes, strangely, it seemed to have moved on already...considering we haven't confirmed anything about the 'how' a soul moves on besides the method you used, we are in the dark.
2. I do not know, the only reason I figured this out is only due to multiple collaborating factors, being my active study of your core and your racial traits, the rest came about of circumstances, be it you questioning and directing me to look into why the corpse's body, the process of this transformation being an intrinsic reaction to your presence and control over it, and simply the fact that this is completely new territory compared to everything we've seen, which, while little, is comprehensively a lot for the span of not even a day.
3. Try and focus on your core, as it is inherently hard to sense for you not only because it is physically not connected to your body, but also due to the insensitivity of your body, once you interact with it, I reason to believe it to be natural from there.]
"Here's to hoping it doesn't turn out useless or something vile, my abilities are already rather 'unpleasant' to say the least, I don't need another one that is nauseating to know, or even see happen."
Ixa's mind focused on his body, leaving behind the minute feelings before and now that passed, be it how the dirt felt against his roots, the neurotic feelings about what the hell is happening, to the cool air felt at the tips of his body, all through the dim sensitivity his body inherently works with.
Ixa scanned his entire body like this from top to bottom, and he managed to pick out an extremely subtle feeling between the four spikes, again, it was mostly just a cold feeling in the air, what else was he supposed to feel in the middle of nowhere on a cold night in the middle of a dirt field, right?
He concentrated and pushed himself to try and feel more of his core.
The core responded as it started to shine in its red luminosity.
The dark of his absence of vision changed, he didn't know what about it did, but it felt there was some subtle difference, and something had appeared, it was his body, he was viewing it from a 3rd perspective.
He lacked color, the body was like a blank, black canvas, with white outlines.
The only thing that retained its color was his core, which was flickering between grey and red, as if struggling to decide upon something.
As it grew more rapid, Ixa started to feel dizzy, from before where he struggled to even feel anything besides the mental kind of exhaustion, now he felt the bodily kind, and it was overwhelming: the stimuli of nausea and exhaustion began intermix and seep into his body and then into his mind, feeding into a closed cycle... it also didn't help his headache from before exacerbated this situation even if it was almost gone.
Like a dam bursting, sensory swept through his being in its uncontrolled tide, disrupting his thought process like blips, his entire mind goes quiet, then it overclocks as it returns, and paired with the exhaustion, it almost crippled his mind as this cycle was on repeat, nearly sending him unconscious, the only bit of him awake the irrevocable connection to what he was seeing and feeling.
The core reflected his state of mind, the red becoming more dominant, instantaneously taking over every time the grey had even a moment of control, and as if it were infectious, the color started to spread from itself to his body, painting the canvas.
Before he could be pushed out of this state entirely in unconscious exhaustion, he felt something in a singular moment of drastic struggle, between the two as they hit their peak of conflict, as his body would be colored entirely red, he didn't know what they represented, however, something about the confliction gave him some faint idea in his mind of what to do, and so, he firmly grasped the notion, and gave it his all.
Freezing in response due to his sheer concentration, the core stopped fighting with itself in colors, right in the middle of changing colors, a majority of it in red with only a bit of grey.
According to the hidden notions within his mind, Ixa ushered it forward, and the core seemed to finally stop conflicting as a decision was finally made.
The colors swirled in the core, generating an awkward mix of dullish-red, with spots of gray and pink, taking the previous color's place in the 'canvas', and the feeling of exhaustion extinguished with partial remnants holding fast.
The center of his body from his roots to just before his spikes was vivid red with pink speckles increasing with frequency as you went higher, while from that point, the red was flecked with grey spots more and more, till the specks became so constant to where gray overtook the red background and pinks spots, only hints of their coloration showing at the textured surface.
In that moment, another core made its appearance in the distance, water pressed into a sphere, it was hollow besides a grey flame, barely considered grey as it lay on the ground.
Ixa felt 3 separate ideas enter his mind subtly, and this time, he was able to tell what they were thanks to all this experience and time seemingly spent in his mind or simply just not in the physical world.
'Or is it just the world but altered with a different view? Bah! Curious thoughts for later.'
They were as System said, the ability to halt the progress of this 'transformation', slow it, or speed it up.
Basically, to confirm, deny, or delay.
Besides simply figuring out just what the transformation does, there was no real inclination for any of the choice, only once he knows what it does can he decide if he should ignore this ability or apply it every chance he gets with all the bodies he'll gain under his control.
'Let's progress it and see what happens.'
Ixa made his choice and acted on the respective option presented in his mind.
•••
[ What is going on? Ixa? Unconscious...? ]
System saw as his core changed colors without pause, and how it only got faster, with red being the more predominant one of the two.
As it looked into what was going on, System noticed a strange interaction between the body and consciousness, but before System could analyze, a more drastic change took place, it logged what it noticed before and continued to observe.
The core stopped transforming in an instant in the middle of switching colors, and from the center to its further edge, a mixed color of greyish-red appeared.
The rabbit's corpse responded in sync to its appearance; twitching at an abnormal rate.
It continued to do so until is stopped randomly a few seconds later.
Nothing was happening.
That was until a moment later, its flesh started to darken, fur shriveled and fell, eyes sinking even more to the point you couldn't tell anything was there to begin with, and the flesh took on that unmistakable color of grey from before.
The strange corpse of the rabbit started to disappear in its entirety; its insides open for all to see, while a force tugged at this corpse's strings, lifting it slowly off the ground.
As the outside decayed, its remnants gravitated towards the core, and the moment one of the fleshy strings had nothing to attach to, it immediately began to be reduced to ash, falling with the slivers to be absorbed by the core, which strained against the fine fibers connected to it as it was being pulled upwards, few beginning to snap from the struggle, whilst the knots were growing even more unstable than before, flashing wildly and strongly.
At first, the furthest branches of the threads decayed in the same instance, connected to the furthest edges of the body, the tip of its ear to the toe of its foot, then the filaments they grew off of decayed, a knee, the side of its skull; each twine based on one thread snapped off, decayed, then the central one decayed and returned to where it was based.
Each thread was oriented to fall apart only when all the threads based on it fell apart: there was no senseless destruction, perfectly structured around the body's hastened pace of decay.
Collapsing into itself in this manner, the body was finally gone, with small clusters of ash snowballing, ramming forcibly into the core, now floating in the air, and being shoved this way and that into a clump of necrotic material as they force their way into the core, which only enlarged every second it could even be seen under the layer of dust & ash, yet forcing itself down, the material dissolving at an accelerated pace.
It was burning bright like a grey cinder contained into a ball, only the very edges of the flame held a trace of that faint grey it was before, 6 lights covering it, the knots still holding together, however, even more fibers were snapped, the connection flimsy at best as a few kept them tethered.
As the glob tussled and turned in turmoil, Ixa witnessed the same on his end, yet, almost on cue, Ixa's core blew up in the nonphysical realm into a mass of particles retaining the same colors as before.
Tendrils shot out of the storm of particles, encapsulating the core and forcibly keeping it still.
On System's end, the core affixed itself in place in the air as the remaining material flooded into it like no other; the last of it snapping inside like the crack of a whip.
The core was now a solid grey with no alteration to speak, with at most a growth of a few inches bigger in its radius.
Before things could calm down in their entirety, the knots finally snapped completely off, drifted in the air before immediately shooting into the core.
System winced, looking away, yet the core remained perfectly still, yet, with no activity, no bubbles, the light dimmed completely, disappearing, leaving a hollow black, only the figure holding a vestige of color remained.
Suddenly bulging in one direction, then flaring in another, waves of activity complete erupted out of the core.
In both realms, bulging at different parts, like something in it was trying to break out.
A glimmer began to grow at the centermost of the core as it got bigger and bigger but was forced back to a small size, the tendrils in Ixa's realm were being pushed back from the force, almost like it was-
[ Don't tell me all of that was- ]
•At the Same Time•
"-it is trying to-!?"
~BOOOOOOOOM~
An immense explosion sounded within the nonphysical realm Ixa was in, whilst a great grey light basked the forest and sky as the core ruptured in the real world.
The storm covered any visuals for Ixa as the tendrils hold was dented, unable to tighten, but for System, a silhouette was apparent where the core was, amidst the luminescence.
It didn't just flat out explode outward, but into a shape, particularly...
In the shape of the rabbit.
A thought so quiet appeared in the back of their minds, from where they do not know, of a name:
Necrotiasic Rabbit