Chapter XVI: In the Garden of Flesh and Blade
Another year slid past like the shifting plates of some great planetary crust, and in its wake, my body had become something approaching a divine biological thesis. The gene enhancements continued at a pace I deliberately restrained—not because I feared the power, but because I respected the margins of error. I had no enemies clawing at the gates of my life, no existential war looming on the immediate horizon, and thus no need to rush the perfection of my form. The cautious scientist nestled within me—the ghost of a past life, perhaps—insisted that each enhancement be stress-tested a dozen times over until even the most obsessive compulsion would declare it flawless.
Nearly every organ, tissue, and gland had now been subject to improvement. My blood, once mere red sap of mammalian life, now clotted with eerie swiftness the instant it touched oxygen, knitting itself back together like it resented the idea of bleeding at all. Injuries? Already scarce. But when they did occur—minor abrasions, muscle tears, the occasional dislocation from overtraining—they healed faster than human medicine could track. My bones, forged under the pressure of this high-gravity world and tempered further by my blossoming gyrokinesis, had hardened into lattices of reinforced biological alloy, creaking under potential rather than stress.
Muscles too, while not yet carved into the statuesque definition of an adult war-beast, now rippled with potential. Though I remained six years old chronologically, pound-for-pound I could outlift and outsprint a well-trained fifteen-year-old human with enough margin to make it a fair bet at a circus.
But there remained one forbidden temple I dared not touch.
My brain.
Kimchi warned me early on, with a rare seriousness that halted even my most fervent enhancement fantasies: "Your psionics are not just part of your mind, Irvine. They are your mind. If you try to enhance your brain, your own powers might interpret the alteration as a hostile act. The consequences would not be academic—they would be catastrophic."
She said this while threading her claws through my hair, not unlike a mother brushing a dangerous thought out of her child's head. The warning stuck. I filed it under definitely revisit later with extreme caution, probably while surrounded by medical tanks and backup minds on standby.
Meanwhile, Crystal was still… rebooting? Rebuilding? Something-ing.
Apparently, my idle musing about fusing matter manipulation with psionic command had activated something unspeakably complicated within her. The poor girl was stuck in an internal feedback loop of conceptual processing. Her hive-brain—which was already skimming the theoretical apex of what neural mass could do—was now redlining, trying to model the combined metaphysics of willpower, particle physics, and interdimensional calculus.
The fact that it was taking this long meant one thing: my throwaway idea was actually possible.
So while she computed the secrets of godhood in low-power mode, I entertained myself by binge-watching hive assaults on my bio-pad. Tactical logs. Battle replays. Memory threads from the frontlines. Pure brain candy. I watched swarm tactics like a sports addict watching playoff finals, absorbing everything—flanks, pincers, feints, misdirection, psychic suppression, terrain manipulation.
And the more I watched, the more a heretical thought germinated in the back of my skull: I could do better.
If I were deployed with even a small, elite detachment—custom-tailored, psionically bonded, and tactically drilled—I could tear through defensive lines like a vibroblade through meat-paste. Create breaches. Collapse morale. Make the swarm's job ten times easier.
But alas—reality intruded.
Because as I was now, I would last maybe ten seconds in real combat. Less if the enemy had sniper drones. My mind? Sharp. My instincts? Well-fed. My experience?
Zilch.
No practicals. No live fire. Not even a damn slap-fight to my name. That, however, was about to change.
While I'd been playing war voyeur, Kimchi had been studying—actively integrating battle memories from every bipedal species consumed by the hive. Her mind, now capable of processing twenty times my speed when synced with the hivemind's echo-stream, was having daily strategy chats with other free-thinkers. They coordinated what to remember, what to discard, and which muscular micro-movements mattered.
She wasn't just prepping to teach me.
She was building the dojo.
Speaking of the six-foot-six jungle nightmare queen, I hadn't even noticed when she slithered into my bed and wrapped herself around me like an affectionate constrictor snake. I was so locked into my bio-pad, watching a neural-strike sweep a bunker line in 3.2 seconds, that her full-body embrace barely registered.
"Kimchi," I muttered, only half-present, "why are you coiling around me like a hentai octopus with separation anxiety?"
She giggled. That infuriating, low-voiced, syrup-and-steel giggle. Then sent a psionic whisper laced with amusement:
> "Kimchi has been here for twenty-three minutes, dear Irvine. You were in a delightful analysis frenzy. Kimchi did not want to interrupt. It is rare to see you so focused. Also, this position is comfortable."
"Oh?" I replied, smirking through the link. "And what does my clingy cuddlebug wish to inform me of?"
I had made a mistake.
Her arms tightened. Her thighs—somehow also involved—tightened too. Her grip felt like living rebar.
> "Nothing, Irvine-mate. Your hug bug is simply doing its job."
She stayed like that for another two hours, cuddling me with militant efficiency, ignoring every one of my increasingly dramatic pleas for freedom. Finally, on my twentieth request, she relented just enough to breathe into our link:
> "You once asked Kimchi to inform you when she was ready to teach you bipedal combat. Kimchi is now ready."
My entire body lit up like a stolen star core.
"Do we start now?" I asked, squirming against her iron-wrapped limbs. "Or are you going to keep violating my airways with affection?"
> "Not tonight, Irvine-mate. You may be genetically enhanced, but you are still a growing child. Sleep now. Fight later."
Grumbling but acquiescing, I eventually drifted off—though excitement curled in my belly like a coiled serpent made of caffeine and ambition.
When I woke, she was still wrapped around me. It took ten solid minutes to escape her snuggle-lock, which I'm fairly certain was half genuine and half trollish. But I still took two hours with a psionic agitator afterward—my daily mental defense drills weren't something I could afford to skip.
On returning to my room, I found Kimchi already waiting for me.
She stood like a monument to elegance and lethality, each of her four arms holding an identical blade. White-metal swords with serrated lower halves and curved upper edges—savage, alien, but with a certain ceremonial grace.
"Nice cutlery," I commented, nodding toward the glinting weapons. "They remind me of your old scythes. Brutal and sexy."
> "Yes," she responded with quiet fondness. "This new body is sacred to me. But the memory of what I was is also worth honoring. These are echoes. Blades shaped from remembrance."
I nodded in understanding. I too had a past life I could barely remember—yet sometimes, in dreams, I saw glints of who I'd been. One day, I might forge my own weapons of memory.
"So," I clapped my hands together, "do we skip the boring part and go straight to spinning swords like a movie protagonist?"
Kimchi laughed. "No, Irvine-mate. First you must learn to move."
Reader, I was cocky.
Reader, I got my ass handed to me.
Basic movement, as it turns out, is not basic. It's a rewiring of posture, balance, reflex, and instinct. One foot slightly forward, the back foot angled 90 degrees. Knees bent just enough for fluid motion. Shoulders loose. Center of gravity adjustable. The goal was to always keep Kimchi in front of me as she moved in impossible patterns.
At first, I managed. For ten seconds. Maybe twelve. But my body, still used to human defaults, kept reverting. I'd stumble. Overcorrect. Trip. Catch myself. Repeat.
Every time I started adapting, Kimchi would change her pattern. New angle. Faster shift. Random pivot. It was like dancing with a goddess who hated rhythm and wanted to break your ankles out of love.
We trained for hours. My skin gleamed with sweat. My heart thundered like a ritual drum. My breath came ragged and sharp—but fuck, I loved it.
All these enhancements, and finally something to use them on.
When I could finally keep up with her basic steps without falling over like a drunk toddler, Kimchi halted and gave me a proud smile.
> "Well done, Irvine. You learn fast. Prey your age rarely gets this far this quickly. But then… you're not prey."
Her chest armor flowed back into her skin, revealing her bare upper torso, and I sighed as I walked over to feed. I had considered quitting this method of nourishment—mostly out of pride—but they simply wouldn't let me eat anything else, and honestly, the nutritional density was unmatched. A superfood from a superwoman.
Kimchi, however, had… evolved feelings about the process.
As I suckled from her, she did her best to hide her expression—hand over mouth, trying to muffle the moans. Her legs shifted. Her breath hitched. Her pupils dilated like a drug hit.
She had developed a feeding kink, and she was terrible at hiding it.
Crystal never acted like this. She fed me like a mother feeding her beloved child—warm, proud, reverent. But Kimchi? She looked like she was about to commit a war crime in her own brain.
Once I finished, I stepped away feeling completely recharged. Kimchi, however, stood bow-legged and trying very hard to pretend she was totally fine.
She was not.
"I need thirty minutes," I announced casually, pretending not to notice her state. "Catch my breath, digest the protein, maybe not get stabbed by a horny insectoid."
Her eyes lit up with entirely too much glee.
> "Of course, dear Irvine. Take all the time you need. I'll… be over there."
She waddled away, and I chuckled quietly as she pretended not to waddle.
> Get it together, Kimchi. Your mate is too polite to call you out. But if he ever does, you're getting hit with the stick again.
And thus, my training began—in sweat, in steel, in deeply awkward pseudo-sexual undertones.
The path to godhood is weird, reader.
But I never said I wanted to walk it sober.