Time after time and day after day passed by in a strange haze of unpleasant tinglyness, uncomfortable exercise, and determined learning of the medical arts! Miss Nowhere was a big help helping to wrap her head around some of the more complicated words that were being spat out between the books and the lectures and the anatomical dummies dragged in with the medical disciples told to use their skills on it.
Aliki was
getting the hang of all of this!
Of course, that didn't mean everything was perfect, she still ended most days tired, sweaty, and hungry--but she had grown to expect the last bit over the course of her life so that really, wasn't it just another bit of ouch to tell her that she was doing things right?
Everyone always said cultivation was supposed to hurt after all, Aliki was positive that was just how it manifested for her. That she stalled out in the first bottleneck when it came up, with that whole 'Acupoint Awareness' thing?
Well, it made sense, since her own Acupoints were some messy pile of garbage apparently and any time she tried to push her Qi through them, she just got a sensation of crawliness and suction, but nothing after that. What was she even supposed to do about that?
Not a whole lot, Aliki would say.
It wasn't all bad though, Third Heavenstage was
just enough to be allowed to join expeditions outward--and as a proper healer (If one of low cultivation), she wouldn't be expected to be on the front lines anyway--just occasionally waving a sharp pokey stick around and posing with everyone else when things get real, and leaving the actual fighting to the people who were good at it.
You know, the basic stuff.
But Aliki was sure of one thing! There would never be a shortage of work for even average healers! The legion contribution boards were always sizzling with openings--a role that required excellent skills that were nonetheless not the most
glamorous (And often tended to draw enemy eyes on you too). Sure it was time out in the frontier with nothing but jerky to nibble on for weeks at a time--but who cared? All you needed to do was do lots of work, and then you could
nap for a while! Because you had lots of food and that was the most important thing in the world.
Of course, most of these jobs were routine internal things to do--for all that she was now a senior Aspirant, she still hadn't quite found a Legion that'd take her just yet. But it was okay, she was used to being kept at arm's length. Who needed to worry about things like that? Mostly a bunch of walking around, looking impressive in the mass of other aspirants and career Legionnaires and then occasionally providing a listening ear when someone complained about some kind of sore feet or allergy.
It was a good job to have! There were even the occasional group of greedy bandits taking pokes at the groups she was in. Then she just got in line with everyone else, fed power in, and watched the big ghost soldier wreck their faces. It was kind of fun even if her nose tended to be ticklish and her pores sore in the aftermath looking at all the juicy stuff pouring out of them.
Well, no biggie. It just seemed unhygenic to leave all those people lying around in the sun though even if they weren't going to warrant a burial. She supposed that it fed the beasts though? Didn't most of the missions involve killing the beasts though?
How confusing.
The job today was evidently some salvage job? Now that things were stabilizing after the beating the Clan took from a bunch of angry people from another realm, and all the low hanging fruit of the battlegrounds had been cleared, it was time to start salvaging the
less pleasant sites. This place was apparently suffused with a horrifying poison mist since the Trials began--which suggested some person like Miss Min blew up fighting a bunch of bad guys--and it was deterring a lot of people from going in until the poison could be disposed of.
Which was a job for the healers.
Goodness though.
"It's all tangy and sharp" Aliki mumbled behind the towels she was carrying, following the senior healer. "It's kinda neat in a way but I certainly wouldn't want to put it in my mouth."
Centurion Trisena paused, the middle-aged woman glancing back at her with a curious eye. "You speak as though the Miasma is something you can just... Pick up and put in your mouth?"
Well, of course it was. Aliki's tilted head and ogle seemed to say more than any verbal response ever could have. "How confident are you in navigating it?"
Hmm, that was a pretty good question. She sniffed once or twice, squinting off in the direction of the site. She could just
picture the flow of wind and the flight of poison. "Umm..." She said. "Mostly? It just smells kinda like the stuff we squeeze out of those big pincery bugs, but a lot stronger. But it's been here a while I guess, it's not just a cloud all over the place..." Her arms began to gesture frantically. "It's kind of a tangled not like my shoes usually look like after I put my boots on, you know?"
"Hmm." Trisena rubbed her chin briefly, and nodded. "How are you for extra credit?"
Aliki took a moment to grasp what those words meant. "Does that mean I get more points for doing something else?" There's a nod. "I guess I know what extra credit is then."
"Good, if you think you can navigate in and dispose of the source of the poison, I will negotiate a hefty bonus to your contribution when it is tallied" Centurion Trisena decreed. "It would save us a great deal of time and labor pushing in closer."
A great deal of time and labor... Labor was bad, and if she could save more time, she could spend even
more time napping. Aliki thought hard about all of this, screwing her nose up in thought as she ran the numbers. Working a
little bit harder today, in exchange for maybe getting things a bit easier later...
"I guess I can try?" She nodded sagely. "Yeah, I'll give it a try, definitely."
"Good, withdraw if it appears to be impassible. Neutralize the obstacle if you can--if you cannot, we will see about having one of the Clan's disposal rings shipped out to store it for later disposal." Centurion Trisena curtly waved Aliki off, leaving her to her own devices.
She turned to the path ahead, sniffed once or twice, and began to walk within. It was all curly and spinny and the air was tangy in a way she wasn't comfortable with--but it was easy enough to picture where the whorls of Bad Stuff were, and what little remained was easily disposed of by her... Clear Yin Constitution they called it?
Well, she supposed it was odd that she had a clear, fluid thing in her veins than the red sauce that went through everyone else's, but that was okay--everyone was a new and different person in this world and all had their own little oddities. So that was all perfectly normal.
The scent grew ever sharper, the tanginess giving way to the sharpness, which looked ever more like a sharp thing pointed at her nostrils. Her insides churned uncomfortably, but it was still okay--this wasn't a patch on how she felt when she was
really hungry. It grew sharper, and sharper, and fluid began to leak from her nostrils and eyes and the sides of her mouth as the blade began to slowly cut bit by bit.
But then she
saw it.
A gigantic, super bug monster! Oh sure, it was long dead based on that big hole in its head, but
what a prize! She wiped her face with one of her sleeves and skipped up over to it.
How big was this? It could feed her for like--a year! Just once! Oh sure it was a bit soft and tender in places but an experimenter nibble on a chunk of its flesh filled her with quivers of joy and happiness! It really
could feed her for a year!
She buried her face into the cavity, munching away at it. They just said to dispose of the body, right? She'd just need to eat it first!
Of course, minutes later, as she stepped back, her face covered in giant bug goo, she realized this may have been a more daunting task than she anticipated. Her stomach already felt a bit bloated--even if it was emptying quickly--and she had barely made a dent in it.
It was bigger than her house after all! What was she even supposed to do about that?
She crossed her arms, pacing from side to side. What to do, what to do... She needed to eat this thing, and it'd be a waste for it to just be thrown out anyway, but her mouth wasn't big enough to do this--and she didn't want to break her jaw opening it up big enough.
Even if she could.
Her pores itched, and her stomach growled, already finished with the teaser inside. Aliki sat down, legs crossed, and
stared angrily at the dead beast, all thoughts of the poison within set aside in favor of
purpose.
She was going to eat this bug.
It was a fact of life! It would be a waste just leaving it to rot further somewhere! And besides that, it was creating an obstacle for her friends trying to make money by salvaging this place! It would feed her a year even! She just needed to figure out... Some way... To...
Her pores
really hurt--and that brought her pause. A sharp, grinding sensation in the palms of her hands, slamming head first into them from the inside.
She... Wanted... To go out?
Wait a sec, was this that cultivation thing again?
She stepped up, placing her hands on the monster's carapace--and began to let her Qi flow through her. The sense of being too big for her skin settled in, and she rocked back--nearly torn off her feet.
If she wasn't already attached to the monster, and just ended up slumping to her knees, glued on from above. She blinked, and took a
good look at her hands, now covered in black and red tendrils. They emitted from her palms--and she could feel her awareness sinking into the body of the giant bug monster. Its corpse twitched, sounds of cracking felt, and plates shifted and fell off, only to reveal a growing incursion of... Stuff.
"This is new" Aliki halfheartedly mumbled as she pulled herself back up to her feet--until the first wave of
satisfaction rolled over her body. She gasped, and fell back to her knees, quivering as warmth filled her. Doors that had been shut for the longest time slammed open, and more and more
uncurled and intruded into the scorpion monster. With it flew an ever growing sense of connection to the corpse, a feeling of awareness of its final moments.
"A mere beast, nothing more"
And then
pain, and then nothing at all but a slow, rotting decay over fifteen years, slain by a demigod for simply doing what came naturally to it. Not even repurposed as was the right of the victor. How hungry was its ghost? How enraged was its spirit?
But now? It had been taken--its remnants returned to creation, its fleshly power used to fuel another. The cycle of life restored once again, after nearly two decades of stasis. A feeling of resigned gratitude filled Aliki's spirit, even as her consumption doubled, trebled, quadrupled.
The mass of scorpion had been reduced to a mass of writhing black and red tendrils, roots digging deep, cracking the bones of the exoskelton and scooping out the remaining organs for consumption. The tail alone was permitted to remain--too much cartilage, not worth the energy to break it down.
By the time the phenomena had ended, a Tri-Tailed Scorpion had been reduced to dust, hollow ashes left to break up in the wind. The last of the tendrils returned to Aliki's palms, leaving her panting in exertion, all sweaty and gooey and...
Oh goodness! She didn't feel hungry anymore!
She pulled herself up to her feet, wobbling in place. She felt
great! It was even better than her first lunch as an Aspirant! She took a steady hop in place, and twirled about, the tattered rags of her clothes whirling with her. It was amazing!
Did this mean she needed to eat giant bug monsters? Would she be like this
every time?
It bore further study!
She reached out and collected the tail, looking up at the big stinger with interest, then shrugged and slung it over a shoulder. It was a little big, but not that heavy, right?
Aliki Floros simply skipped all the way back home, the scent in the air having cowered before the conquering queen. She felt the stares on her as she pulled into view, waving off in the distance. "Hi!" She shouted. "I got rid of the dead bug monster!" She waved the tail in the air.
There was chatter, and the cohort split aside to reveal Centurion Trisena staring back at her. Aliki skipped up to her, and set the tail down. "I got rid of it Ma'am!" She offered a quick--maybe a little sloppy--salute. "It was a big dead bug monster, but once I managed to figure out how to eat it, getting rid of it was easy."
The Centurion looked on, unamused. Her arms crossed, and she looked at the tail. "You're out of uniform Aspirant."
Aliki blinked quizzically, looking down at herself--yeah, her outfit had kind of gotten scored by the air a bit and then torn up a bit when she figured out how to eat the monster, but...
Her eyes widened at the new adornment in front of her. She looked up, shocked.
"I have a
figure now!" She gasped. "Does this mean I grew up?"
The cohort broke down in laughter--but she didn't understand what was so funny? Apparently girls were supposed to be a bit curvy all the while, but all she had to do was eat a big monster. Does that make her sexy? What does that even mean anyway, it's a biological thing to produce offspring. How can it qualify as an adjective anyway? Just that apparently it was desirable for girls to have those traits when they grew up.
Her cheeks paled a little at the attention. Were they all bullying her? They had to be bullying her, didn't they...
That just seemed to make them laugh even harder.
Maybe this salvage thing wouldn't work out for her after all..
