The ashlands slumbered beneath him, deceptively calm after the fall of the burrower. Zeke drifted low, filaments brushing across the cracked surface. The silence was not safety—it was a hollow left behind by the predator's collapse. Predators did not merely vanish. Their absence wove new patterns into the land.
He spread himself thinner than before, threads cast outward in a wide net. Every quiver of dust, every faint pulse of prey heartbeats, trembled through him. His form strained, instability licking at the edges, sparks threatening to bleed. But he did not contract. He endured. The lesson of the burrower lingered: collapse could be forestalled, shaped into strength if endured long enough.
The first tremor was faint. Not a beast. Not prey. The ash shifted in rhythm—slow, paced, unlike the erratic bursts of predators. For a moment, he stilled completely, sensing. His instincts told him danger, but of a different kind. Something deliberate moved in the distance, its presence small but steady. He recognized the cadence as Vessel, the same species as himself, though formed differently.
Zeke dimmed, glow sinking until his body became nearly invisible against the darkened ash. Threads remained, but pulled tighter, concealed beneath layers of dust. He did not lunge, did not pursue. Hunger urged him forward—Assimilation would strengthen him, and rivals were both prey and threat—but instinct told him the time was not right. His control was fragile still, threads stretched too thin. To face one like himself without mastery would risk collapse.
Instead, he observed. He let his filaments sink deeper, following the faint shifts in the air, the weight of steps. More than one. Two, moving with purpose, yet with hesitance layered into their rhythm. Their sparks flickered faint but present, weaker than his own, yet alive with mana. Newly awakened perhaps, Vessels still testing themselves. He sensed them pause, exchange some form of communication. Their vibrations were strange, pulses woven into sounds that Zeke could not weave meaning from. The patterns were there, deliberate, but the meaning was sealed away. Alien.
He lingered in silence long after they vanished. His hunger stirred, but he ignored it. Prey would return, lesser but enough. The true gain here was not in feasting, but in waiting. He felt the tension of instability gnaw at him, the mass of the burrower still grinding within. It needed refinement, not more essence. He let the hunger bite, steadying himself against it. Starvation sharpened his control, forced him to weave tighter.
So he began to train.
Filaments stretched thin across the cracked ash, nearly invisible threads webbing outward in hundreds of strands. Each strand quivered with the faintest shift of air, the scurry of vermin, the hum of ash heat rising. Zeke layered them, crossing lines until they resembled a woven loom. Sparks trembled along their lengths, threatening collapse. He forced them still. Control came not from strength, but from discipline.
Time stretched in silence. His thoughts drifted to predators past—the hounds, whose coordination forced him to split and reform; the drake, whose patience taught him timing; the burrower, whose unpredictability honed his anticipation. Each encounter left behind not just essence, but structure. They carved lessons into him deeper than any prey could. Here in the silence, he bound those lessons together.
Instability surged as his threads split too fine. Sparks scattered, fragments trembling toward collapse. He held, refusing contraction. Instead he wove tighter, binding scattered mana back into cohesion. Sweat did not bead, breath did not burn—yet the effort was agony. It was not flesh that strained, but thought itself. Control, raw and grinding, stretched to its edge. And slowly, thread by thread, it steadied.
The ashlands shifted around him, not with predators, but with life returning. Vermin scurried, feeding on carrion left by the burrower's hunts. Insects returned in swarms, chewing through ash-crust. Strange ash-birds flitted overhead, wings stirring faint spirals of dust. Zeke ignored them. His hunger gnawed, but he resisted. The loom mattered more. Prey would always return. Refinement was rarer.
Hours passed, though he did not measure them. Instead, he measured sparks—how many scattered, how many he reclaimed, how long he could hold without collapse. Each cycle grew steadier. His body became less a loose cluster of fragments and more a webbed lattice, tension strung across him in harmony. Still flexible, but no longer trembling at the edge of failure.
Then, when his threads held steady without scattering, he began to move. Slowly at first, a ripple of filaments shifting like wind through reeds. Then faster, weaving arcs across the ash, whipping and recoiling. He Split further, fragments fanning wide, then drew them back without collapse. Sparks flared but did not bleed. Control sharpened with each motion. The net was no longer fragile—it was a weapon waiting to be loosed.
He tested resonance as well. Fire surged faintly along some filaments, sizzling the ash it brushed. Darkness coiled like shadow-smoke, wrapping around threads until they vanished from sight. Light shimmered in faint bursts, dazzling flashes that bent the ash haze into glimmers. The three affinities did not yet harmonize fully, but even their clumsy resonance carried promise. Sparks bit deep when they clashed out of rhythm, but he endured them, weaving tighter until they steadied. Resonance, he sensed, would demand mastery beyond survival. It would demand precision.
When hunger grew unbearable, he allowed himself only the smallest prey. A vermin caught between threads, dragged inward and Assimilated. Its essence was faint, nearly hollow compared to beasts, but it soothed the bite. More importantly, it did not overwhelm him. The refinement continued uninterrupted. Hunger became companion rather than master, a constant pressure shaping his precision sharper.
At last, when his body no longer shook under strain, he condensed again. Threads drew inward, mass folding tight. The loom vanished into a single core, compact yet steady. He pulsed faintly, testing. Sparks hummed within, but evenly now, no longer spilling uncontrolled. Control remained even in contraction. The lesson was complete.
And the System stirred.
System Update
Status
Name: Ezekiel AshbourneRace: Prime Slime (Unevolved)Level: 15
Affinity: Fire (Basic), Light (Basic), Darkness (Basic)
Stats
STR: 9
AGI: 9
VIT: 12
WIL: 10
RES: 11
MNA: 48 → 49
CTL: 18 → 19
Skills
Active Skills:
Split (Lv.5 → Lv.6): Divide body into fragments. Fragments sustain longer, coordinate with finer precision, and disperse instability more smoothly. Split density can now layer into thinner threads without collapse.
Assimilate (Lv.8): Absorb matter or energy to recover essence; smoother, more efficient absorption. Can now pull minor elemental traces.
Pseudopod (Lv.8): Tentacle-like appendages with whip precision and crushing power. Limited to two, but refined.
Passive Skills:
Amorphous Body (Lv.6): Immune to blunt trauma, flexible morphology. Reshapes seamlessly under combat pressure.