Chapter 135: That’s a lot of blood (Patreon)

Turned out a refraction Spinner couldn’t see. How could they with a constantly diffracting surface in front of them? And no eyes.

The sudden lack of senses brought Calvin’s swarm to a grinding halt while he tried to interface with the alien creature’s senses.

Thank the gods he’d had a Tarak skin for a while now, because that was the closest analogue he was able to make, and it helped him quickly acquaint himself with what was going on.

As it turned out, the many fingers of the refraction spinner are maddeningly sensitive. It felt to Calvin like the whole world was trying to crawl its way up his arms through the tips of his fingers, where the vibrations of reality fed them information.

He slowly became able to process what his fingers were telling him was there, referencing it against what he already knew was there. It only took a few seconds before he was able to feel what was going on around him. That’s a tree, that’s a leaf, that’s the ground, that’s a nightmare crab-monster leg.

Now, the other problem, flight. When he took direct control away from the creatures, their flight stabilized and they were able to move where he directed them, but when he assumed direct control over the monsters, they tumbled out of the sky.

Why?

The most obvious thing he could see was that they didn’t seem to have wings, or any other form of propulsion for that matter, just a toothy sphere with a dozen arms.

Calvin directed the swarm to scatter in every direction, and tried to jump his consciousness into one spinner after another, jumping out before they hit the ground.

He tried everything he could, moving the creature’s arms in every direction he could think of, until one of the spinners dropped onto a branch in its fall.

Ow, my ass.

The spinner nudged forward.

No.

Oh, yeah. it’s kegel time. Tighten your sphincters and let’s put this baby into gear.

To be fair, it wasn’t kegels, exactly. There was some kind of internal use for the spinner’s ability to warp space that actually allowed it to hover in midair, and it only felt like clenching his butthole because he didn’t have his own space warping flight muscle.

Close enough. Forward, ass captain! Also, remind me to bring up FTL travel and how it pertains to space-warping later.

It took a few tries, but eventually Calvin got the hang of flying with internal muscles. There were more than six pairs of them, and it was confusing at first, the refraction spinners he was flying wound up causing a lot of damage to the forest by reducing large chunks of wood to chips as they crashed into them.

Thankfully that was the exact amount of damage he intended to do to the crab monsters.

Normally, a spinner wasn’t particularly fast, tough, or smart. Its only offensive ability was the impenetrable field of tangled space that julienned anything going through it, and that only faced one direction.

With Atom Ant multiplying all of their physical abilities by twenty-five and Calvin directing them? They became fairly dangerous. They hissed through the air at high speeds, not as fast as a wasp with a similar enhancement, but still difficult to track, and their fields of warped space were roughly the same size as a full grown spinner’s.

Turn this jungle into a hurricane of flesh-chunks.

Calvin ‘watched’ from one of the nearby spinners as one of them slammed into the side of a crab, cutting through to the other side in a shower of viscera. Another head-sized spinner impacted against a crab leg that exploded into chunks as the spinner passed through, staggering the creature.

At Calvin’s direction, they spread through the jungle and began grinding it to shreds, blending wood and flesh into a red pulpy mess like..some kind of machine made to blend things.

It’s called a blender.

What is this strange device you speak of? Is it magic, good sir?

Now I know you’re fucking with me.

Hand blenders have existed for a thousand years.

A massive crab gave a guttural moan as it toppled onto its side, sending a shockwave through the forest, picked up by Calvin’s many, many fingers.

You know, I think if I took the space-warping organs out of the fingers, this thing would make a good spy summon, seeing as it can fly silently and has ultra-sensitive fingertips.

I’ll write it down.

New ideas were always occurring to Calvin during a fight, like being in mortal danger was the only time he could really think.

That and experimenting with magic…and Kala…and Ella…

Focus.

Right. Mortal danger. You think the spear hit my liver?

Yeah… I think it mighta nicked it. Good news is it probably isn’t going to kill you instantly. The spear wasn’t big enough to shred the liver. So as long as you don’t have any major bleeding, Medi-tate can ward off peritonitis, since the infection wouldn’t be able to keep pace with your rate of healing.

Any abilities that might help me get it out of me without causing any more damage? Calvin thought, searching his internal list of powers. Knick-knacks were programmed with the ability to perform emergency surgery. I used them on the villagers, after all.

You might be able to make the Mage armor spell function like a bandage.

Maybe I could alter the viscosity on the joint connecting the barbs, sheer them off.

That might leave bits of spear inside you once the spell expires.

Letting the knick-knacks clip them off might cause more damage overall. The clips won’t be perfect.

As they commiserated about how best to remove the harpoon in his guts, Calvin’s swarm of spinners focused on taking down the crabs, specifically the ones with the anti-magic lumps on their backs, tearing them to pieces one at a time. The harpooners weren’t as much of a pain in the ass.

Calvin had just driven a head-sized projectile through the last anti-magic crab when he exploded.

There was a sudden sensation of blistering heat and each and every spinner detonated.

Calvin’s center of mass was ten feet off the forest floor, and he suddenly appeared, imploding out of green mist, dropping face-first to the ground in a heap.

The fall shoved the harpoon’s barbs the rest of the way through his stomach, covered with dark blood, a good sign his liver had taken damage.

Fuck. NOW it’s the most painful thing I’ve ever felt. Calvin groaned, hand reaching down to make sure all his guts were inside.

Spear’s stopping you from bleeding, don’t take it out yet.

No shit. Who in the abyss do you think my mother is? Calvin thought as he tried to lever himself to his knees. His arms and legs were too weak to support him, though, and he remained face first in the dirt.

This is what weirds me out about your upbringing. I sure as hell didn’t learn that kinda stuff from my mom.

Oh yeah, what’d you learn?

Not much. Unwarranted high self-esteem I suppose.

Yeah, I can see that.

Shifting.

17/33 Bent remaining.

Calvin poured his weight into the ground, and suddenly he was not too weak to lift himself, able to push up to a sitting position with ease, gritting his teeth against the pain.

Trait Doctoring.

Viscosity.

16/33 Bent remaining.

Calvin reached back and located the place where the spear jutted out of his back with his finger. He cut the harpoon by making it fluid just at the point his finger touched it.

Multi-shaping

15/33 Bent remaining.

Calvin made a leather strap using the leather of the belts over his shoulder, then wrapped that around his stomach, the remaining harpoon stub settling into notches designed to hold the damn thing in place.

Calvin let out a groan of pain as he tightened the belt, then stood. Calvin’s stomach hammered home that he was injured with a throbbing pain that made him want to curl up in a ball and pass out. But it didn’t leak.

On the outside.

A deep burning sensation was beginning to spread through his stomach, radiating outward from his wound.

“Okay, what in Vashniels hoary ass happened to my summons?” Calvin asked, glancing around, trying to find a reason for the sudden loss of cohesion.

One’s avatar catch you? I remember when it was puppeting Nadia it was able to spank you pretty readily.

“Nah, this didn’t feel like that, plus One just countered me as I was casting, not after. It felt more like…

Charlotte.

“Charlotte.” Calvin groaned. Why not?

Still sure you don’t want to get out of here? maybe turn into a stalker and get out? Stop the clock on that wound until you can fix it?

“Yeah, I’m sure,” Calvin said, head spinning as he leaned against a tree. “Wizard kings win by…” Calvin’s thirty-pound body was starting to get heavy, and cold.

Shit. Need some first aid.

Calvin leaned against the tree and slumped against it, sliding down.

Calvin, you need to get in another surrogate body asap, buddy.

Shut up.

Visualize.

Calvin brought up an image of himself, slumped against a tree, large as life

Can you do that thing where you add the information from the System?

Sure.

The image flickered like a candle for a moment, then Calvin was able to look inside himself like he had with the wasp, He inspected the wound, his eyes peering straight through the intervening muscle and organs, until he spotted the large tube leading to his liver that’d been nicked by the barbs.

It was pumping blood into the left side of his stomach, flooding his organs and putting pressure on them while other parts of his body, namely his head, were beginning to feel the lack of bloodflow.

That could be a problem.

Ooh, Calvin, I don’t mean to be alarmist, but that spear nicked your hepatic artery, so you’ve got about three minutes to live.

It’s fine.

Calvin raised his heavy hand and pointed his finger toward his chest, watching the image of himself until he was aiming exactly at his own heart.

Two inches deep. One, two, three, and…Now.

Gradual split.

14/33 Bent remaining.

Calvin targeted a tiny bit of the blood that was at the center of his heart and reproduced it, flooding his heart with a steady supply of new blood.

“Ugh,” Calvin coughed. “That feels weird.”

I should think so.

Shaping.

Calvin targeted the knife in his hand to make a narrow sharpened tube, found a good spot on the image of himself without too many important pieces, and jabbed it into his gut.

The blood flooding his stomach finally had somewhere to go, gushing out onto his pants in an alarming amount.

Four hundred pound blood pack, huh? You know if all your blood disappears in an hour, you’re gonna be in the shit, right?

“Better than three minutes,” Calvin said, refocusing on the nicked artery in front of him. How to close that in the most elegant way possible?

The humming of One’s insect swarm brought his attention back to his current situation.

Crap. From what Calvin remembered, the insects were a little bigger than someone’s head, most likely used for scouting and blocking his own swarm from killing the crabs. In his current state, they were pretty dangerous, though.

Calvinian Summoning.

13/33 Bent remaining.

12/33 Bent remaining.

11/33 Bent remaining.

10/33 Bent remaining.

9/33 Bent remaining.

8/33 Bent remaining.

Calvin flooded the area with wasps, spinners, Spinner-wasps, worm-wasps, worm spinners, any novel combination he could think of.

A moment later, he heard the telltale sound of wasps catching fire, a soft wumph.

It’s definitely Charlotte. She probably thinks she has the upper hand.

Which is why we should run away.

“Nah,” Calvin said, levering himself to his feet, blood still gushing out of the tube in his stomach at an alarming rate. “I think I’ll go say hi.”

By the way, do you think it would be a better idea to create a patch using glue and my own artery flesh with dupdomancy, or send a tiny knick-knack into my chest with a tiny needle and some of the silk thread in my belt?

The silk thread, hands down. Better to get a semi-permanent solution there.

“Aw man, I was afraid you’d say that.” Calvin muttered as he mentally commanded everything that was left to spread out and find her. A woman with gold hair had the tendency to stand out on this continent.

Knick knacks in the chest was going to hurt, a lot.

Unsurprisingly, the plain wasps were knocked out of the sky almost immediately, as well as the spinners, but the multitude of hideous chimeras, she had a harder time getting a sample, and she wasn’t able to get rid of all of them before his summons found her.

0/34 Bent remaining.

“Nadia. If you wouldn’t mind,”

Nadia’s thoughts brushed against his own.

I was thinking that this was an excellent time to renegotiate the terms of our arrangement.

Calvin kept walking toward the clearing in the middle of the jungle, ignoring Nadia’s power play. Either she did as she was asked, or they died, to whatever fate that would lead them. She had no leverage, not when Kurawe would be willing to do her job.

Calvin emerged into the clearing where the blonde sorceress was sitting with a glass of wine and several attendants fanning her off. There were several large fires burning nearby and some in the midst of being relighted by her other attendants.

“Gadvera is disgusting, you know.” She said sourly as Calvin entered the clearing. “Wet heat is the bane of man’s existence, as far as I’m concerned. And don’t get me started on what it does to my–“

The sorceress glanced down at the constant stream of blood splattering down on the ground in front of him, looking fairly disgusted.

“You’ve got a leak.” She said dryly.

“Don’t I know it,” Calvin replied with a smile, pulling out the extra seat and carefully sitting down in front of her, wincing as his stomach send up an especially painful flare.

Charlotte moved her pristine white shoes away from where blood was streaming out of the tap in his stomach.

“I just stopped by to let you know you can’t beat me,” Calvin said. “And if you keep trying to stop me, not only are you going to run out of Bent and get killed by me, you’re either going to be added to my collection, or the collection of the thing you’re working for.”

“With.”

Calvin made a pained expression and waggled his palm. “You’re working for it. Don’t get confused. You aren’t going to be able to stop me, because I’ve got more Bent than an entire city.”

You suck, you know that?

With that last complaint, Nadia did her job.

1/33 Bent remaining.

2/33 Bent remaining.

3/33 Bent remaining.

….

“Oh? Forgive me if I seem doubtful.” Charlotte said with a smile.

She raised her hand and a bolt of red energy darted toward Calvin’s face.

Iroh Special

17/33 Bent remaining.

Calvin created a cloud of the reactive Bent in front of him in the blink of an eye. The red spell disappeared as though it had dove into a lake, then the formless energy coalesced into an identical red bolt, following the trajectory back to Charlotte’s chest.

The woman held her palm up and the bolt careened off of it, hitting an attendant. The man collapsed, eyes rolling back in his head while the other one scrambled away.

Calvin shoved Bent outside his body, creating the five wisps of Bent that would serve to deflect and catch spells and attacks.

He deliberately reached down toward his belt with the Crystal spear components.

“You’re supposed to be out of Bent! All the..” She gestured at the air furiously. “Shit I got rid of. The fight with those crab things! That!” she pointed at the faucet of blood in his stomach. “How are you doing that!?”

“Last chance to leave.”

“Do it!”

Calvin felt one of the attendants pull a crossbow and shoot it at the back of his head.

He caught it with Beli Ma before it hit him, not moving a muscle.

“Gah!” Charlotte snarled.

Calvin tapped the ingredients of the Crystal Spear and placed the start of the spike at his bloody feet.

Charlotte reached out and Calvin could feel her Bent entering the area of Beli Ma. So he shredded it, preventing it from interfering with his own spell.

Bent Manipulation has reached level 5!

+1 Intuition

Pleas-

After the crystal spear’s ingredients formed at his feet, it was no longer able to be interfered with. It was an alchemical reaction that simply grew in the direction of his choosing.

Perhaps not understanding that, Charlotte tried to use her Bent to tear the thing apart, and finally to shield herself.

The crystal pierced her Bent with a little puff of blue light, given off by her shield as the crystal tore it apart and absorbed it.

The woman gave an unladylike ‘Hurk!’ as the spear shot through her stomach and lifted the sorceress off the ground, suspending her in midair on thick crystal.

Calvin stood, glancing around. The attendants had fucked off, which stood to reason. Calvin didn’t know how well they’d fare with One infesting the woods, but he didn’t really hold anything against them.

Charlotte on the other hand…

“Sorry, ma’am.” He said to the blonde suspended on the crystal. “Charlotte’s not there anymore, is she?”

“What?” The woman asked, looking down at the crystal in her chest before her eyes glazed over. a puppet. Calvin felt a brief moment of guilt for killing an innocent woman, but it was Charlotte that had been hiding behind her.

Ilethan mind mages are the worst.

Some offense taken. Nadia said.

Think she got the message?

I think I put the fear of me in her. Calvin thought, straightening his shirt. Now, let’s plug this damn leak.

Chained Spirit.

***Charlotte***

“What in all the Abyss was that!?” Charlotte screamed, ignoring her startled nephew as she tore the sense-dep hood off her face.

“I take it the job didn’t go well?” Brendan asked, cracking another nut between his aging knuckles. “Not getting paid now?”

“Monsters.” Charlotte said, running her hands through her hair as she paced back and forth. “Goddamned monsters running around in Gadvera. And I’m not talking about the giant crabs, although Malkenrovia is proving to be….worrisome.”

Charlotte pointed an accusing finger at Brendan. “That cannot be the same person we fought. That was some other wizard. People don’t get that good in…months.”

“Well, if they Break, they might.”

“No,” Charlotte said, shaking her head slowly. “Breaks do not account for this level of improvement.”

“He’s got some kind of Bent repository, or suppository, or whatever. I counted. It’s common sense to count your enemy’s Bent as they cast spells.”

“Yeah?”

“He was somewhere around fifty before I lost count.”

“Wow.” As usual Brendan didn’t seem particularly impressed.

Charlotte shuddered. “I have to report this to the crown.”