Vraxious- The Forsaken Lands
The field of tall grass rolled ahead of him, leading right up to the mighty river coursing past the ruins of Terminus. That wasn’t where Vrax was going just yet, though; to his right was the familiar half-falling-down mill, an overgrown orchard spilling past its ruined fences, and more importantly, nearly a dozen cottony white forms bobbing about curiously. The Devourers were, as always, deceptively adorable; nothing in their appearance gave hints of the berserking hunger hiding just beneath the surface. Hey there, you little murder-y fluff balls. Sorry it took me so long to get over here, but don’t you worry, all of you are coming with me.
Vrax coated himself in that vile brackish concoction he used to hide his delicious scent from the Devourers and made his way down to the orchard. It was a bit of a chore getting over the fence this time; he was lugging around a suit of shiny golden, very chewed-on armor that was filled with chunks of fae corpse. He hadn’t been joking to The Nyad about her being fertilizer; the fae were synonymous with magical blooms and rapid growth. Did Vrax know if her corpse actually would have any magical gardening properties? No, but he was going to find out. Especially with how much of a pain in the ass it had been lugging around her mangled remains the last day without Torvald here to use as a pack mule.
Vrax dropped his pack against a tree that looks like eons ago its ancestors had produced oranges. Now it still made oranges; they just hissed at you if you got too close to them. I'm going to have to revisit that tree later; that thing is neat. Vrax spread his arms wide as he strolled deeper into the orchard. “Come to me, you adorable monstrosities. Feldwin isn’t around to give me shit about this. Who wants a hug!” The Devourers bobbing around the orchard slowly and curiously converged towards Vrax, making the oddly cute yet off-putting cooing sounds they were famous for.
He grabbed the first one to get close enough and gave it a good squeeze. It squeaked and then sputtered a bit in confusion as it was unable to drift away from his grasp. “Alright, buddy, you can be the first!” Vrax held the devourer above his head like he was presenting it to the world and channeled [Adapt Life]. The Devourer flock paused momentarily as their brethren was suddenly a downy bright green color. Alright, color change is my standard benchmark. How much mana did that take?
[Mana 157/163]
Oh hell yes, come here, guys. It turns out the system doesn’t count you as very strong, which means we can go ham with the upgrades! They are level one and half cotton balls, so I suppose that makes sense. Vrax rotated the green orb in his hands so that the oversized eyes were face-to-face with his own. Vrax leaned up against the nearest hissing orange tree with a truly wicked smile on his face. “My dad said I could end nations with nothing but a flower and time; let’s see…”
The other Devourers gathered close as Vrax began. He didn’t want to change how they looked, at least not much on the outside. They were bloodthirsty vampiric nightmares when they attacked, but everyone underestimated them because of how peaceful they looked at rest. Vrax focused [Adapt Life]. He started with a talent, a simple concept that was anything but simple: make it bigger on the inside. Mana flowed freely as the very body of the Devourer became a pocket dimension of its own as a new talent was written into existence.
[Mana 122/163]
Good, plenty of room now. Let's start with how you feed. Normally long tubes protruded from within its fur, violently lashing out to dig into open wounds and suck its prey dry. Vrax started by warping the mechanism of its maw, changing a small slit into a horrific structure that spanned more than half of the orb-like body. Now it would peel open backwards like a four-petaled flower, exposing the gory interior of the beast.
[Mana 115/163]
He changed everything about the too-large interior, stuffing a fleshless apex predator inside of the fuzzy exterior the Devourer held. A dozen spiderlike green eyes dotted the top of the interior. Each capable of seeing far more than a normal eye. He moved down slightly; the feeding tubes were widened and reinforced, making them more like steel mesh tubes of woven cartilage and bone tipped with hollow needles as thick as a thumb. Vrax placed ten of them total inside the body, spaced so each had room to move and bend as they sought prey.
He didn’t stop their adding fine sharp wires of hair the Devourer could shoot from the hollow needle tips into its targets and wind and unwind at speeds that would liquefy nearby tissue and even eventually drill through metal. Good, that’s a solid start; the feeding tubes are much better now for the rest.
[Mana 101/163]
He moved his intent inside the beast, attaching the feeding tubes to brutal corded sacks of muscle that could suck inwards with enough force to implode a skull if they found purchase. He had to add two holes through the top of its skin to allow ventilation out the back of the beast so things wouldn’t get bound up with opposing pressure. It would probably shoot some blood and gore out of them when it fed, but he was confident most of it would go into the impossibly large stomach it now held.
Next he crisscrossed layers of sharp compacted cartilage across the exposed interior organs, not hiding them, just to add a bulwark against the forces it would exert on its charges. He did add a slight shield of bone over the exposed heart that dripped steadily with every powerful pulse; Vrax added the symbol of Vurune etched into the heart plate just to be cheeky.
[Mana 67/163]
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Goddamn exposed organs literally spilling from it as it peels itself open and inside out, a writhing mass of whirring hollow needle tentacles, and those fucking spider eyes… I would shit myself if I ran into this and it wasn’t on my side. Haa, and still fluffy on the outside! You know what? I can do worse, better? More I can do more.
Vrax took a long look at the spilled-open Devourer just hovering there happily as its family poked at it. I should add some form of protection to you. I still have so much room on the inside…wait, I still have so much room on the inside….
Vrax was so excited he was almost panicked as he forced a jagged shark-like maw into existence towards the bottom of the slightly hanging intestines; it split open, leading to pure darkness. All of the extra space he had created with the dimensional talent was here waiting to be used. The Devourer didn’t need a mouth, though; that wasn’t how it fed. He angled the Devourer so he could see inside with the sunlight; the back wall of the maw was fleshy and nearly two strides away.
Ha, could store a whole other Devourer in there in case this one gets pulped…Vrax stood stock-still for a moment, wondering if the fucked-up idea he had was even possible. He had a lot of mana left over... Vrax focused into the spare space inside the beast, filling it first with redundant organ after organ, hearts, lungs, and feeding tubes, growing from a lattice of easily detachable veins. Hunks of flesh and meat were added in piles, and then finally a large patch of fluffy fur just in case. It took him hours to get the arrangement satisfactory and self-sustaining before he moved to the next step.
[Mana 50/163]
A second brain hidden away within the interior of the abnormal space tucked behind strides of meat and organs capable of two things: keeping the Devourer fighting if the primary brain was destroyed and controlling the hundreds of small surgical tentacles he added to the space. They were fine things, a blade on one side and fingerlike protrusions that excreted a biological glue from the other side. If this worked like he thought it would, the Devourer could now pull spare organs from inside itself and replace tattered ones mid-fight. Shoving them into place, cutting away the broken meat, and glueing the fresh meat into place.
[Mana 0/163]
“Really sorry about this buddy!” Vrax flinched; he hated to do it, but he needed to test it. He pulled out his dagger, keeping a health potion at the ready just in case this went horribly wrong. He reached past the tubes, brushing them aside until he had ready access to one of its fluttering lungs. He slit it from top to bottom with a quick stroke of the knife. Immediately the devourer sagged for a moment before fine tentacles spilled from the maw, ripping the torn lung free in a shower of gore and roughly slapping the new one into place, working dexterously to seal each vein and capillary back to where it should be.
Holy hell, I think I just managed to make a fucking physical version of an actual regeneration talent. I mean, it does have its downsides compared to real regeneration. Vrax looked at the meaty lung sitting on the grass next to him. But fucking good enough!
The sun had already set, leaving Vrax in the darkened orchard with his flock of friends and their one very upgraded family member. “Alright guys, let’s go cuddle in the tower! Everyone gets a color palette change tonight! It’s going to take me a while to make all you guys into a self-medicating, reality-breaking horror, though!” Vrax cheerfully went back to his old campsite on the top floor of the tower and settled in, adapting each Devourer to a different shade of green in turn as his mana slowly regenerated.
The next day Vrax unwound a large spool of rope, carefully tying it in loops around each member of his newest flock, and began towing their gently cooing, bobbing forms towards his domain. He made it across the old broken bridge without issue but stopped suddenly at the sound of voices. There wasn’t a damn place to hide nearby; he was on the edge of a ruined street at the end of a bridge. So he went with confidence, summoning his armor and turning to face the approaching voices as his bushel of floof bobbed gently at the end of their ropes.
A pair of gnarled, weathered-looking adventurers strolled around the corner of the nearest street. The one in the lead had a solid pitted axe thrown over his shoulder and thickly layered monster hides bunched across his form as armor. The wild look was finished by the stone drake lumbering behind him, half dragged along by the leash in his hand laden with saddlebags.
His companion, half a step behind, fussing over the massive beast, was a laughably opposite fellow, thin with a filthy complexion; his white robes were soiled somewhere between brown and red now. He dragged a staff behind himself, obviously suffering from mana exhaustion. “Dammit, Ragnar, Wait just a second, Fluffles. Still has a thorn in his claw pad!” The half-conscious healer huffed out, trying and failing to cast another healing spell.
The wildman Growled actually growled, “Stop your damn futzing over him; he is fucking fine! He just ate a goddamned daisy from hell; the little thorn in his paw isn’t going to kill him! You got all the gashes, bites, and tears. You keep trying to cast when you are running on empty, though, and I'm going to stuff you in a saddlebag so I don’t have to carry your unconscious carcass back to Hopes End.” Ragnar froze awkwardly as he made eye contact with Vrax standing there with a bushel of Devourers above him.
Vrax awkwardly gave a little wave, pulling the rope tight as the Devourers shifted to get a better look at the newcomers. “Uh, hail travellers!” Vrax offered.
Ragnar looked at him hard for a moment. “Paladin?”
Vrax sighed, “Yep, is that a fucking problem?” He shifted his feet, getting ready to summon the newly improved sunshine if he had to.
Ragnar noticed his stance change. “Nope, not for me. Thanks for leaving up warning signs.”
Vrax relaxed a bit, walking wide of them to go down another side street. “You are welcome. I have no wish to harm anyone who leaves me be.”
Ragnar snorted, “I can respect that. You have a good day now.”
The ragged healer interjected. “Wait, are the daisies poisonous? Fluffles ate one, and I'm worried about him! I know they are your...well, pets? Creations...sorry, Fluffles ate one; he was just defending himself.” The healer trailed off, realizing that this tense conversation was not the right time for his inquiry.
Vrax couldn’t help but let out a heartfelt laugh. “Nah, man, they are just mean as fuck. As long as it doesn’t climb the hell back out, Fluffles will be just fine.”
“Oh good!” The healer breathed a sigh of relief.
Ragnar lowered his weapon a bit. “So, since this is your… territory and all, is there anything we should watch out for?” He probed opportunistically, realizing the paladin might be more conversational than he had been led to believe.
Vrax thought for a moment, then responded, “Yeah, honestly the trees. If you see a tree moving, just don’t in the city, I’m afraid I made those things with way too little chill; they make the daisies look calm sometimes.
Ragnar's expression fell in horror. “Makes the Daisies look calm?” he asked incredulously.