God of What? 25 (Patreon)

Commissioned by Kejmur

God of What?

Chapter 25

-VB-

Yor

He looked down at his hands.

Did he change? What about him? He didn’t feel like he had changed. Yet Victor could not be wrong because a change had happened in the original, which meant that they, the “subroutines” of the greater “whole” were affected, too.

“Yor?”

He looked up and saw Bell looking concerned.

“Are you okay?”

He stared at her mutely before finally nodding.

So what if he had changed? It changed nothing. He was still the captain of the Marris Familia. He was still Bell’s friend. He still taught the street rats how to be better street rats and adventurers. He still thought broccoli was a sin forced upon humanity and curry needed to be spicer everywhere and everywhen because mild curry was an inferior product of primitive minds.

… Perhaps that was too visceral of a reaction - thought - over food that a lot of people enjoyed.

Where was he going with this?

He wasn’t sure.

Shrugging, he went back to digging through the monster’s corpse.

Today, he and Bell had descended into the Dungeon to see how much they had improved. For Bell, this was how much their training actually helped her in all fields but her stats. For him, he was secretly testing out the improvement and new features the originals had rigged into him.

So far, he felt a definite improvement in strength, and in it was another assurance of being part of the hive. They always had each other even when the world might reject them.

Since Freya would be watching them a lot now and this also meant that a lot of other familias would as well, Alan had opted to give both Victor and Yor more internal upgrades than external ones.

For Yor, it wasn’t just strength but the reserves of energy he could keep stored for each attack. Copying the old age trick of copying nature, there were muscles within Yor’s joints that acted like mantis shrimp’s arms, not the smasher or the spear. See, how the mantis shrimps produce the power they do was based all on their muscles but more importantly in their shells and joints. The mantis shrimps would lock their joints and shells into place, and these “locked” mechanism of springs, levers, and pulleys - all of which were biological - were like a spring with too much energy. Or a weight having high above in the sky. So when the trigger released the mechanism, all of that force would explosively unleash.

In the case of the mantis shrimp, their “hot as the surface of the sun” punch.

In his case, either divinely or otherwise altered body striking with enough force to “explosively fragment” bones within monsters. Unlike a mantis shrimp, he did not have it just in his arms but all over his body. Torso turning at the waist had a similar mechanism which added to the force of the bone vaporizing punch.

Yor had too much fun today literally punching heads off of monsters most Level 1s and some Level 2s would have trouble with.

Well, he -.

Oohh…

He paused.

“Bell, did you hear that?” he asked as he stood up.

Bell looked confused. “Hear what?”

Ooohhhh…

“That.”

Bell looked around.

Ooohhh.

Bell blinked. “What was that?”

“Something that’s coming closer to us,” he grunted. Was Freya doing that minotaur bullshit?

The current section and floor of the dungeon they were in was a misty zone with no real barrier. So for all he knew, the sound could be coming from any direction…

Or that’s what he would end with if he also didn’t get other upgrades from Alan.

While his hearing wasn’t too advanced, he did have minor upgrades there along with improved cerebellum and associated nerves and structures.

It took me only three more minotaur roars before he knew exactly which direction the monster was coming from.

Grunting, Yor grabbed one of the dead orc’s broken clubs and hurled it. The air whooshed as the thick tree trunk spun in the air and disappeared into the mist.

There was a crash in the distance.

Yor sniffed.

But the thundering bellow and the tremor-inducing charge hadn’t stopped, merely redirected for a second. He glanced over his shoulder at Bell.

She … was not ready for this. She possessed none of the conditions available to canon Bell: the spell, practical skills, or stats.

This was his fault. He had been so … he admit that he had been too enamored with her. Wanted her.

‘So this is what it is like to hold someone back,’ he thought with a disgruntled admission.

And soon, the visage of the charging minotaur began to darken in the distance through the mist.

‘Then I’ll show her something to catch up to. Not just in sparring but in the field.’

He locked up all of his muscles.

The minotaur, wielding giant clever, roared as it came charging out of the mist.

And Yor punched.