Chương 23: James

After his discovery of the rock hounds, James had yet to leave the first room of the new biome. He got too caught up in his work, skinning and stitching together the slaughtered dog. His skills let him bypass a lot of the tedium that came with leatherworking. It took only a few hours before he acquired a pair of pants and boots for himself. Rough and stiff at the joints. Not the finest material he'd worked with, but far from the worst.

He sat on the concrete floor and used the fallen metal door as a table to work on while he stitched. The door was covered in disassembled pieces of the dog. The room itself was extremely barren. There were a few gnawed on bones in the corner and two bowls for food and water. A tube above the dishes trickled dried dog food and water down every few hours. James tried the dog food but decided after munching on a few handfuls that he preferred the raw rock hound meat. The water was a welcome surprise though.

It was plain and sterilized. It lacked the slight bloody tang that accompanied the water he was used to. Combined with the stringy meat though, it tasted normal. The other rock hound cowered in the corner, still alive. James had already added a few modifications to it, adding two additional legs, a third eye on its forehead, and sharpened its teeth. Enough modifications that it was officially under his influence as a minion.

"Your name is Candy," James decided. He'd discovered her gender at the start of her modifications and had been mulling over a name for a while now. Candy whimpered. Finally finished transforming the last bit of leather into gloves, James stood and stretched. He used his cleaver to pick at a bit of stringy flesh caught between his teeth.

"Well, Candy. I suppose it's time to see what else your biome has to offer." Throughout his entire time here, not a soul had disturbed him. He'd been completely exposed without a door and had hoped that his racket might attract something. But nothing. This was meant to be a bunker, according to the biome sign, so perhaps they were all deeper down hiding from shit. The next door he opened was filled with bees and LED lights shining down on a field of flowers.

The bees attacked him but their stingers couldn't pierce his outer skin. Candy, far weaker than him, had to remain back in the hallway as he stomped his way through. Insects lacked the skin required for proper flesh modifications. He'd used stingers from a breed of centipede found in his biome for a few alterations but he didn't think it would be useful on Candy. Still, he picked a few out of his skin and stored them in his flesh sac after he squashed the bugs they belonged to.

At the center of the field was a massive beehive that gushed with golden honey that gleamed in the eclectic lighting. He figured this must be some sort of honey farm. He smashed a fist and his cleaver through it and licked the honey from his blade. Sweet with the occasional crunch of squirming bees. Nice that they had sweets here. What a cushy biome. He was willing to bet that when he found the experimentees residing here they'd be soft. Nice and malleable for his skills to work with.

He licked his lips and his tongue came back saccharine. It made him wonder about that other experimentee he'd met in the Nightmare Biome. Oliver, he'd called himself. It was too bad he hadn't agreed to team up. James could have added some nice augmentations to his flesh and they could have slaughtered their way out of here. So sad he'd instead run away. James hoped they met again. Now that Oliver had declined his offer of friendship, it meant a declaration of competing objectives.

James felt it only fair that he take out his competitors and use their bodies as materials. The flesh of any experimentee who'd survived their home had to be hardy. James was certain Oliver wouldn't die if the other biomes were as pathetic as this one seemed to be. That would certainly increase their odds of bumping into one another again. The buzzing noise around him grew and he glanced over to see a bee the size of his torso rocketing toward his location from the other side of the field.

He smiled and raised a honey-soaked cleaver. A few minutes later he exited the room, a giant dead queen bee slumped over his shoulder.

"The little stingers weren't much to write home about, but how about this girl's?" he asked Candy. The hound whimpered. It clearly understood him as its eyes were locked on the insect's ass.

"Not for you, Candy!" James laughed.

"For other minions. This stinger isn't compatible with your current design. Don't be sad, though. You'll get other bonus parts, I promise." The next few rooms were bland. One held mutated rats which James deemed unusable due to their radiation, another was just shelves of canned food, and another a swimming pool with gray water and a broken diving board. The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

After a dozen more empty rooms, James found himself growing bored of this place. He was considering skipping the next hundred or so doors to see what was at the end of the hallway when Candy froze in place. Then the hound's fifth leg shuddered.

"What's wrong, girl?" The hound's snout raised ever so slightly. James' eyes flicked up and he stepped to the side just as someone fell from above, a sharpened pole in hand. Rather than lobotomize him, the spike sank into James' shoulder. James grunted and shoved his weight into his attacker. The spike twisted in his shoulder, but his Resilience kept the weapon from digging deeper into his flesh. His goal was to press his opponent against the wall and gouge him.

But he was at an awkward angle and his attacker kicked off his body, slipping out of reach. His opponent rolled and threw several balls at him. James swatted them away with the flat of his cleaver. They exploded into green gas on contact. With his free hand, James wielded his needle and thread. In less than a dozen seconds, he sewed closed all of his facial orifices save his eyes.

Resilience increased the amount of time he could go without air so he had roughly ten minutes until his body's reaction time would slow to any notable degree. The gas made his eyes water a bit. Nothing he couldn't handle. His opponent had disappeared into the green smoke. Likely some sort of skill or ability granted by equipment. James wondered if this was another experimentee.

From what he'd seen from the two he'd faced so far, they tended to have more variable skills than the standard people he met in the experiment. It was hard to guess just what one of them might pull out of their ass. Good thing James enjoyed a fun surprise. He pulled the spike out of his shoulder and examined it. A filmy coating under his blood revealed it was likely poisoned. Flexing his fingers, he judged by the reaction time that it had a paralysis effect.

James had skills that allowed him to puppeteer flesh, his own included, so slicing a few of his tendons and paralyzing an arm was hardly much of an inconvenience to him.

"Leave now and I'll let you live," a male voice called out from within the gas. The voice was muffled from James's ears being folded over and sewed closed but he still made out the words. With his mouth sewed shut, James could only respond with a raised eyebrow.

"You have five seconds to retreat," the man said. James rolled his eyes. Then he activated one of his skills. Flesh Sense. All at once, James had distinct knowledge of every bit of flesh within a hundred foot radius of himself. It was a bit annoying, because he could only activate the skill for one minute out of every hour, but it offered him a great advantage against sneaky fuckers like this guy. Weirdly, only half of a figure appeared in his senses.

There were spots missing, like an origami doll with a dozen pencil holes. Despite that, James found there was more than enough flesh for him to detect. He spun on a heel and charged at the spot. The figure stumbled back in surprise. Then he pushed off the ground and leaped into the air higher than any natural person should be capable of. James still managed to catch his foot with his cleaver. The ankle caught in his blade, James jerked the weapon down and severed the limb.

His cleaver glowed, the enchantments allowing him to slice through flesh easier than should ever be possible. A familiar holler of pain bounced around the concrete hallway as the foot fell to the floor. The noise made James smile so wide that his stitches threatened to pop apart. His opponent attempted to run from there, carried down the hallway by the gas; however, James wasn't about to let his prey escape. Not when he was finally having fun. He gleefully dashed after his foe.

He held his cleaver in one hand and the needle and thread in the other. Both itched to get to work. Once they exited the cloud of gas, his opponent collapsed to the ground. His curly blond hair was now visible. He turned over onto his back. Blood seeped from the red stump at the end of his leg. His mouth and jaw were covered by a green breathing apparatus with black tubes. Despite the dire situation, the young man's face was filled with determination.

On the concrete, completely prone, James leaped at the downed man. At that same moment, the man clapped his hands together. A blade of air sliced James' arm off. Unlucky for the man, it was the arm that held the needle and thread. Not the cleaver. James' weapon sank into the man's forehead. It penetrated deep into his skull and the man slumped. James purred with enjoyment. That had been a nice little fight.

Would have been even better if he could have subdued the man without killing, but he'd gotten carried away in the heat of the battle. He could still use the flesh for other projects so it wasn't a huge loss. Candy was back in the hallway, still alive but on the concrete floor with her mouth oozing green foam. He'd fix her up later. Maybe even add some of the new flesh to her. Only once he'd sliced his mouth open again and was reattaching his severed arm did James notice the odd kill notification. Congratulations!

You have defeated Brady Moorkins, level 62. You have been awarded 1701 Mel. That was all normal, though James found himself a bit irritated that the kill notification didn't tell him if this was an experimentee or not. It didn't even tell him his opponent's class. The next notification was the truly head-scratching one. Congratulations! You have met the experience threshold for level 60! The starting announcement after the biome merge had told him he'd gain an extra level for every experimentee killed.

So why had he just gained five levels?