Chương 93: Power Unlimited - 1

How long had passed since he lost consciousness? Days, weeks? He checked the timer. A full month.

"A month?" Warhol mumbled the words as he lay prone on the floor covered in his own sick. He focused his eyes further on the auto-calander, an invention of his own make. It did not lie — a month had gone by between then and now. Warhol blinked and opened his status: [Name: Warhol Chaucer] [Level: 25, 000] [Martial Prowess: 171, 000] [Magical Prowess: 55, 500, 000] [Stamina: 2, 475, 000] [Mastery Dynamics: 100, 000] [Unallocated Boon Points: 64, 000] Incredible. His basic stat lines had increased threefold!

He opened next his artifact sub-menu: [Mutations Acquired: Mana Gland; Oxygenated Blood Recycling; Cosmic Sense; Divine Dragonfly Wings; Armor Skin System; Super-Size; Hide Hive; and Eldritch Irradiation] Then, his all-important meter: [Human: 5%]. Huh! He remained human still. To a small degree, anyway.

The notification which took his breath away, though, was to the side of his vision: [Artifact: Soul Sticher Ornament: Living Flesh Forge Has Reached its Evolutionary Peak: Acquire Additional Sister Fragments to Continue Apotheosis] Wait... apotheosis, as in, the process of becoming a God? Was that what he was doing all this time? Foregoing Humanity to become divine? And then this 'sister fragments.'

Until now, he hadn't pieced two-and-two together, but the artifact he had given up to Signet was not a similar artifact, but rather a piece of a larger artifact? That meant... if he reacquired the artifact piece he had given to Signet, he could... what, fill it with monstrous energy, maybe pick another of those Triple-SSS mutations? A delightful grin spread over him. He knew what he had to do. He shot up from the floor.

He narrowly avoided jettisoning through the ceiling and rock above him, so powerful his basic movements now were, he was surprised he didn't pull a muscle in how sudden he had to jerk his body against moving through the earth and into the sky, which would've been all too easy to do.

"Heh," he smirked as he opened and stepped through a portal to the Neon's Observation Station. With hardly a thought, he incanted [Search: Artifact: Soul Stitcher Ornament: Living Flesh Forge]. Its location was a bonfire in his vision. Then, the floor beneath his feet melted.

He was only vaguely aware of himself incanting [Eldritch Flames] which he then directed and formed using gusts of [Eldritch Wind]; whipping his flames into an intensely burning frenzy, not even the supposedly 'magic resistant' material of the Neons' hyper-advanced space stations prevented his magics from burning holes through each level. Alarms and sirens blared at his intrusive destruction. He didn't care for any of them, or for that matter, the screams.

Aliens might have demanded he cease his 'assault' but he ignored them, or didn't hear them. It didn't matter. A flurry of high-powered automatic fire was shot at him; he held his hand out and stopped every bullet that had been fired at him and sent them back to their shooters with interest. An instance later, dozens of security guards lay dead. Once the guards were killed, new machine guns hidden inside the walls opened fire. Warhol didn't bother stopping these bullets.

Though they had the capacity to blow apart an average tree planet-side, against his Armored Skin System, the bullets bounced off harmlessly. Warhol punched the air; the entire wall crumpled and was shoved forward into the wall opposite it, splattering to goo the unfortunate souls caught between. Smoke, fire, and blood filled the ruined chamber as Warhol floated inexorably toward his destination. Stolen novel; please report.

A few more melted floors and a few more pancaked walls later — along with dozens of slaughtered security guards, if that was a metric anyone cared about — and he was before the artifact he had so thoughtfully given to Signet. It was contained within a forcefield keeping its potent energies contained; Warhol was sure that to anyone else, such a forcefield would prevent even the most storied of mages from breaking it down. He? All he had to do with push his against the barrier ever so gently to shatter it.

He picked the artifact up, victory secured, and was about to leave through his exit portal, when he heard a voice — "WARHOL!"

"Yes?" he spoke without turning toward the speaker. He already knew it was Signet. The air around Signet changed. Warhol could tell Signet's antennae wavered frantically, an emotional response, perhaps.

"Friend?! WHY?!"

"Because I am destined for greatness, friend. And your insistence on keeping what belongs to me is an impediment to my greatness which I can no longer abide. Sorry about your men. I would've spared them if they only refused the insanity of attacking me."

"Look at me!" Signet screamed. Against his better judgement, he did look at his one-time acquaintance.

"Surrender peacefully. I will go and stand for you, and you should avoid the death penalty. Please, let this be a lapse in sanity from the dual challenges our societies face!"

"A lapse?" Warhol growled.

"I already apologized for your men, and you want more? A pathetic creature you have become, Signet. Goodbye." An instance later, Warhol was floating within the Horror's blacker-than-space Haze. He had an artifact to fill up. He spotted a Large Tentacle without muss fuss. When he had last probed the Horror's depths, he found a cluster of Large Tentacles, and even a Super-Large Tentacle surrounding a spherical mass which he figured to be a colonized moon. Not that it mattered.

Warhol encased himself in [Omni-Eldritch Fury], a fusion spell he made on-the-fly; he dumped over a billion of his mana into the incantation, a drop in the bucket compared to his reserve, and used himself as a missile. In mere eye blinks, he had shot through the tentacle mass, destroying thousands of tertiary tentacles, hundreds of medium tentacles, a dozen large ones, and at least one, never-before-killed, Super-Large tentacle.

For clean up, he shot at the gargantuan mass of limbs, an [Eldritch Holy Blast] which eviscerated the remains of the tentacles within a certain parameter of a Light Second. [You Have Killed Horror: Super-Large Tentacle: You Have Gained XP] Ding! [Artifact: Living Flesh Forge is Full] And just like that, his little leg stretch was over. He blinked himself back to The Grotto, not feeling the need to use his long-distance teleport incantation.

He had such magic at this point, the shorter-range sub-routine, [Blink], appropriate for covering 'micro distances,' held for him just as well. Back in the relative peace of his home, despite its coating in black goo which, now that he had a better look, was actually a lot more colorful than he gave it credit for, rainbow-Esque, even, he brought up the artifact sub-menu: his heart thumped: he saw a list of Triple-SSS mutations available. It was like he and the artifact had never left one another. Beautiful!

[Meta-Resonance: Generates within you a connection to the universe allowing for insights unseen by mortal eyes] [Void Armor: Creates a magic and mana-nullifying shield around your body while also creating ideal conditions for Reality Warping] [Demon Core: Overflows your body and spirit with unholy energy from the Unseen Realms. Dramatically increases stats but removes Deity System] [Angel Core: Overflows your body with holy energy from the Celestial Realms. Decreases stats but adds an advanced layer to the Deity System] Warhol noticed that the list was absent his already selected 'Eldritch Irridiation.' Noteworthy only in the sense that he could not 'double up' on a Triple-SSS mutation. His System gave him the same warning as last time. Namely, that he could only select a single of the Triple-SSS upgrades. He smiled at the implication: a single mutation per artifact fragment! Now that he had access to another of these advanced mutations, what one should he pick?

Like last time, he didn't consider the [Demon Core] or the [Angel Core]. He wasn't ready to give up his System, yet, though he didn't know the use for it. Likewise, he didn't want his stats to take a hit. His only options, then, were the first two, [Meta-Resonance] and [Void Armor].

"I don't think I have much of a choice here," he mumbled.

"I'm still searching for power, so [Meta Resonance] wouldn't be doing me any favors... would it? Then again, it was a mutation, which would increase my core stats, assuming it behaves like every other mutation I've selected, and I don't see why it wouldn't..." He read the description of [Meta Resonance] again: "Generates within you a connection to the unvierse allowing for insights unseen by mortal eyes.""'Unseen by mortal eyes,'" he repeated.

"Screw it. Void Armor isn't going to be doing much for me, I ought to invest in uncovering the secrets of the universe. Maybe this 'resonance' will lead me to more Soul Stitcher Ornaments?"

"System," he said, preparing for the pain.

"Confirm: Meta-Resonance!"