Chương 31: One Way To Burn Calories

June held the final aspirant's face with his burning palm. His seemingly indifferent eyes glimmered in the darkness. In reality, June was having mixed feelings.

'Disgusting' He wasn't a fan of hurting other people; if Lilia wasn't in danger, he wouldn't be fighting. Instead, he probably would have been gagged and thrown into a van. June did like fighting; he was new to it, but it felt like something that was able to wake him out of a coma. The danger made him feel alive, but at the same time, he would rather be hurt than inflict it on others. He has always been the sort who would ready themselves to fight for someone else.

He grimaced as liquid flesh dripped onto his hand; he felt kind of bad. But if someone were going to kill him, he would kill them first. He wasn't noble, but he did his best to reciprocate intent. Even if it were killing intent. Emotion are easy to distinguish when you can see eyelids and facial muscles, but as they were now, his opponents could only see his wide glowing eyes.

Some aspirants were able to see in the dark, so he went for the ones that saw him first, and for the other mundane and aspirants who were reliant on NVGs, he simply tore them off. Sometimes with the heads of their wearers. His powers frightened him. But at the same time, it excited him. He was ecstatic about his new discovery; he would thank his current opponent if their face and ear hadn't melted off already.

'Flame Hands''God, they hurt, but they are cool as hell.' June tried something in the middle of his fight with the unlucky aspirant, an experiment of sorts. June was able to absorb the blood of his opponents.

'I'm glad it worked; it was a throwaway guess at best.' Seeing the Aspirant with their flame weapon reminded June of something.

'Fire was hot.' If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. But so were calories; in fact, they were energy. Burnable energy But June would have to risk nearly dying to try something so dangerous out; using his own limited calories was a big nono, and that's when the idea dawned on him. If he could steal blood, what about flesh? What about bone? What about body oils? What about calories?

So he stole the leftover calories from some of the opponents he wounded and then channeled them into his hands while leaving some for his body to use. Other than the fact that June had to vigorously rub his hands together to make them catch on fire, his idea worked flawlessly. Sort of. Calories burned fast when they were literally on fire, so they needed to be sustained. They were a nice bright yellow flame.

'A win's a win.' His next idea was a bit more crazy; he grabbed another one of his victims and absorbed their calories again and all their body oils. He coated all their body oils onto his thumb and saturated it with all of this survivor's calories. He forgot his hand was on fire; the pain was blinding, but his ideas put him on a one-track mind. The finger immediately ignited a bright white. He had to rip his finger off and throw it before it exploded, and it did, with a disgusting noise.

It took him a slight bit longer to regrow one; still, it took seconds. He had to change his idea of perfect hands repeatedly until he could find ones that both let the fire burn continuously without melting much. Additional pain tolerance was a waste. His experiments had worked; he had something resembling an actual power now, which made him feel a bit giddy. The body of the final aspirant was collapsed on the ground, with wisps of smoke and a terrible stench coming off their face.

'What's next, a shield maybe?' With a bit of hesitation, June punched into the gut of the dead aspirant, tearing through skin, flesh, and organs equally. He wanted to test a new experiment in the lull of combat. His own body worked when he warped it. But trying to warp a living being required a distracting battle of will. But dead bodies didn't mind their own desecrations.

'Maybe ghosts did.' He channeled his will into the rib cage of the poor aspirant.

'Sharp' He pulled slightly, and the rib cage tore out of its flesh almost like a blade. June's will was potent. And a Dreamer's will made an Aspirants look like child's play. June shook it around, getting bits and fluid off.

'Yuck.' He had failed to do something similar to a nightmare he found during the trek. It was during the beginning when he had enough function to remain curious, but his skill was nowhere near as developed as it was now. Even if it was developed in an unorthodox fashion, he was self-taught after all. But now he was able to be curious; he was rested and had a meal too.

'I'm surprised my meal isn't on the ground yet.' June had seen dead bodies before, rotting corpses, and even a couple murders in his lifetime as a mundane; his neighborhood was lively to say the least. His own powers were probably the deciding factor when it came to his desensitization to the current carnage he has been wreaking. June tried to imbue will into the rib cage, and it worked, but its shape didn't change. June had a secondary thought immediately after his failure.

'Assimilation' Instead of treating it like a tool or the body part of an enemy, June mustered his will in a different direction." MY RIBCAGE" His voice billowed. He commanded the world and told it of HIS ribcage instead of the Aspirants' ribcage. And the world responded; the ribcage wasn't as malleable as his own bones, but that had changed after it sealed itself onto his skin.

'Groovy' He willed it and shaped it like his own body; it wasn't able to grow like his own, unfortunately, but it was capable of being shaped into a small buckler. June looked at his new ribcage that took the form of a small buckler shield. He looked intently and he saw wisps of red coming off of it. It was a remnant of its previous owner. A revenant even. A revenant of flame.