Savage Awakening 205. Colossal Tendons (III) (Patreon)

It was weird. Zane knew he was not invincible. But in a battle, he fought like he was. He would never go in doubting himself.

In his mind, once he committed to a battle it was do or die. Then belief was everything. He would always believe he could not be beaten. Somehow, in those close hard fights, that made the difference.

He could choose his fights well though. Be judicious like Reina would say.

This was not really relevant right now. There was no fight he could not pick on Earth. This place was his, and nothing and no one could challenge him here. He was sure of that.

In the future though. Once he came up against those extremely powerful beings. It was something to consider.

He knew his first instinct was to throw himself at things. He was made to fight. It was what he did—it was the core of him. Safety did not register much to him. But he had people who were counting on him now. People he had to protect. Reina came to mind first, and he felt a rush of heat at the thought of her. And Evan and Avery and some of his Faction, and even further, Earth. His home. He couldn’t afford to let any of them down.

And he would not. 

He clenched his fist.

***

He felt good. Like he had untangled a knot in his mind. 

Now for the meat of the thing. Colossal Tendons.

He gave the Tome one more run through, went through the gauntlet of visions. He ached deep in his heart when he saw that great Titan Rhino felled. Seeing something so strong brought low… 

It would never be him, he vowed.

Then he had it.

He held the Titan Rhino’s tendons in his mind. The way its Bloodline rushed through it… 

It was like some dam within him broke. 

And all that Titan Rhino Bloodline inside him—waiting at the edges, swirling in his muscles—broke out. Rushed down his tendons. Flooded them with new life.

He hissed.

Every joint inside felt like alcohol smearing on a wound. A heady cleansing burning. Bloodline steeped into every last joint it found, seeking out the weakness inside him. And smiting it white-hot. Stars of pain lit up down his arms, his legs, burning up his hands, his fingers, and he could feel every little stretch of soft tissue there crying out, rippling with stabbing, searing feeling—

That pain was weakness leaving his body. He saw it. A black gunk, something lower than ash, seeping out of him like a foul sweat. It had a foul smell too—it smelled like all that was burnt and rotten.

As he sat there, taking the fire, he got why so many were bottlenecked by the Titan Rhino Bloodline.

Even Zane had to clench his teeth hard. And you could do a lot of very intensely painful things to Zane before he even grimaced.

This hurt. Not in a way where you could lie there and take it and scream a bit and be fine after. It stabbed at the soul itself. The sensation just kept spiking—like it meant to rip you apart body and spirit. White-hot tongs stabbing, stabbing, stabbing—

He knew if he let himself black out from the pain he knew it would consume him, and he would be done.

It was like this when he got Behemoth Muscle too. Only the pain seemed to get more intense the further he went. It lit up every inch of his soft tissue; he could feel it viscerally, feel it remolding him, reshaping him at the cellular level. Injecting godly levels of elasticity. Explosiveness. Springiness. Durability. Then linking together, making bigger, pure chunks, making full-sized tendons…

It was all erupting inside him, a thousand little explosions going off over and over—Bloodline and essence raging together—he groaned. 

He clung on. This thing could never defeat him. He did not need to try to pretend like it was nothing; he didn’t need to try to trick himself. He was confident in his soul. He stared that pain dead in the eyes, saw it for what it was, and gritted his teeth, and took it head-on.

It kept going. And going. He felt sweat and gunk mixing over his taut reddening skin, felt his jaw start to ache from the hard clenching, his fists start to ache from the clenching. His breathing was heavy, thick, deep, ragged. Sweat drip-dripped down his brow, dripped down his thick heaving chest.

Through that veil of pain he started noticing how his body was changing. Feeling the way each tendon lit up inside him—feeling a new material rising from the ashes of the old. Something that could take so much more power it felt wrong to even compare them.

Now that the power of his tendons was made so clear to him—highlighted so intensely in his body—he was realizing his muscles had actually been limited by his body before. They did not act alone. His body was one big machine. His tendons and muscles especially gave power to one another.

His muscles could do so much. They could generate a huge amount of raw power. But with his tendons it was like trying to squeeze an ocean through small pipes. Godly power through a mortal conduit. It was a mismatch. He could make do with it. And when he revved up hard, he could force the flow of power to go faster and faster—but what happened when he broadened those pipes? When he blew them up to ten times the size—or more? How much more raw power could he ram through?

That was how it felt like to him. His body, unlocking. Unleashing tendon by tendon. From the little ones in his fingers, to the big springy ones in his calves. 

It was glorious. 

Soon, though, his breathing was going ragged. He could feel his whole body heaving. He was sweating up a storm. He found his big hands clawing into the ground, denting the steel…

It was hard to tell time in all this hurt. But it had to have been a while. He frowned. He could really feel it starting to weigh on him now.

It had not pushed him to his limit, though. So far he had found no raw pain enough to do that. And if he did get to his limit he would find it inside him to surpass it. Even as the pain stacked on, and on, and on, his confidence never wavered.

He would make it through. 

Until—

Skill comprehended!  

Colossal Tendons (Passive) [Rare (E)]

He let out a long, deep, dragging breath.

He was like a chimney. Blackened smoke poured out of his mouth, streaming through the air.

He sat there for a bit, head raised to the sky, just panting. Eyes closed. Feeling wrung out—a good kind of exhaustion. The exhaustion of hard-won achievement.

He felt incredible. It felt like every cell in his body was singing, flaring bright. Especially deep in his arms. His legs. His calves. That connecting soft tissue had come alive. It felt like the great engine of his body just got fitted with some new turbo-boost.

He was eager to test drive himself. See just how fast he could go from zero to one hundred now.

Slime and gunk kept sloughing off him.

Then geysers of steam started shooting at him. From vents in the ceiling, the walls, the floor—scraping off the gunk, dissolving it in a cleansing acid. Bright-blue arrays flared up all around him, sucking mightily, drawing away the black. Clearing up the muck.

Soon the room was pristine clean, white-padded walls, floors, and ceilings again. Then there was a flux and his body got splashed with warm essence. Rejuvenating his skin. Helping replenish lost essence, helping the recovery go a bit faster after all that rush.

This cultivation room was state of the art. Reina was constantly adding new functions, custom-built to contain him. She was thoughtful like that and she knew his body better than anyone. He was a growing Zane and he needed the best facilities, she felt.

The problem was no matter how much she upgraded he kept outpacing everything. He was growing a bit too fast. Not even this E-grade planet could keep up with him. He never used his muscles full-force nowadays, unless in battle—he tried to be very careful and tender in everyday life. Things broke too easily. Even the fabric of reality here broke too easily. Just a little hint of his muscles firing made the air shiver and quake around him.

On Earth, he had become the definition of overkill. He was already at the peak. But then… he frowned. He also knew he had a long way to go. He was thinking of the vision with the Titan Rhino. The elf with the bow. 

He was about to go into the Superdungeon. And that was supposed to be the quarantine of the universe. There were supposed to be corpses of old gods in the lowest floors—there were probably things as powerful as that elf hidden in those depths.

Zane doubted he would meet them. But still. He blinked at his hands.

He knew he was strong. But he did not know the meaning of strong enough. There was something beautiful, something simple, about absolute brute raw power. There was a purity to it that warmed his heart like nothing else.

He wanted more. He would never stop wanting more. This latest power-up would sate him, for now. He was very pleased. He hadn’t even tried it but he could already tell it was a big leap. 

It was a pity right now though—he itched to put his new power to good use. Maybe have a good old slug it out fight, get his heart going, his blood pumping hot… he looked around.

This was not the place. He sighed. Soon. The Superdungeon. He clenched his fist. Soon. 

He stood, readying himself to go.

This was something of a lapse in judgment.

He forgot he just upgraded his body. He was still thinking his body would move like it had before.

It was like seeing a rocket blast off.

Zane stood up—and shot through the ceiling. Then another ceiling. Then another.

CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK! 

Marble shattered. Pools of water exploded. Floors full of delicate instruments got smashed by one flying Zane body. Five ceilings, warded over to be indestructible even to him, ceilings of high-grade Spirit Steel, went up against Zane’s skull.

Zane’s skull won out.

In the moment though all he registered was—Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow.

There was a chorus of harsh clangs—his head going through a bunch of steel pipes? Vents? Then he was soaring through open air…

*** 

At the same time, Reina was giving a meeting in a skyscraper a few hundred feet away. A very important meeting—she had gathered all the Luminous Faction’s regional leaders. She had gathered the best and the brightest she could find and put them to good use. She ran a tight ship and she was proud of it.

She was just giving her quarterly outlook—how a budget of 400 max-grade essence stones would be spent to develop new Law Area Dojos and mass-produce Soul Saunas, which would hopefully double their ranks of World Rankers in the next six months.

She was deep into conversation when she blinked. She heard a rumbling far above—a meteor? She looked behind her, through the huge floor-to-wall windows. Looked up.

A big hunk of muscle cratered right past. And smashed face-first smack-dab in the middle of the town square. There was a big SPLAT. A bigger plume of dust.

For a few seconds Reina panicked a bit; she thought they were under attack. Then the dust cleared and she saw a spread-eagle-shaped hole in the ground. It went pretty deep, a huge stencil, larger-than-life. A man with limbs thick as logs.

She knew that shape.

She watched her boyfriend climb out of it dust-soaked, shirtless, blinking. Looking vaguely baffled. Zane scratched his head.

The sub-Faction leaders in the conference room had all rushed up to the windows, gasping. Their eyes bulged, jaws dropped when they saw just who it was.

Shouts came from the crowd all around—luckily Zane had cast such a big shadow that everyone had had ample time to run out of the way. They were all gaping at him.

Reina blinked. Then she covered her mouth like she was trying not to laugh.  

“Oh Zane,” she sighed.

//

A/N: Sneak preview of the book 2 cover sketch! 👀