Being a floating tangle of essence wasn’t so bad.
Rem pushed out a bright blue ribbon of essence then summoned his merge domain around the end of it, locking it inside the merge field. He pulled, bringing all the rest of him towards the domain.
It wasn’t fast but he found that it didn't bother him. Nothing really bothered him.
Stretch. Lock. Pull. Over and over.
He meandered the lake bed looking at everything. He swam down to the sphere that was stuck. He looked at the stones.
He knew that might help. He thought it might even reverse what was done, get his body back.
The process was simple.
He moved on.
There was entirely too much that was interesting.
He practiced sending tendrils of essence out faster and faster. Stretch his essence further and further. He could summon his merge field as far away as he could stream out his essence, which was quite far.
Hours passed with him doing little more than zipping through the lake water. The sun came up and melted the ice and still he swam. He found new games to play.
Flashes of essence zipped by in the blue essence currents. He chased them, catching them and holding them within his merge domain before releasing them.
You have taken one point of health damage. Damage taking in combat does not regenerate while in combat.
Rem spread his awareness out around him. His essence was blinding, a deep glow of white, threads and strings, and ribbons all moving, swirling, and mixed in a myriad of other colors, so many he didn’t even have names for them all.
There.
He found the culprit. A minute organism clung to one of his green streams, extracting essence.
Rem pulled up his character sheet with a thought.
Rembrandt de Vries
Race: Human (Enhanced)
License: Merit
Level: 4 Experience: 0 / 800
Class: Error. Not Available.
Challenge Passes: 0
Health: 2319 / 2320 (Stable)
Energy: 242 / 242 (Normal)
Focus: 300 / 300 (Clear)
ATTRIBUTES
Agility: 19
Vitality: 17
Intelligence: 20
Perception: 20
Essence Control: 22
Wisdom: 4
It looked normal to him. Same as before. No changes, except the missing point of health.
He stared at his race: Enhanced Human.
He had never thought much about it.
Was that what the system assigned after the Star Corps machine altered him?
The designation felt administrative.
The powers themselves were not part of the Thrive system. They did not appear on his sheet. They did not lock when he exited challenges like everyone else’s abilities did. The only information he had was what the card had stated.
He remembered it precisely.
Merge Within your merge domain, combine two items. Results uncertain. (Rank: Trash)
Identify Within your merge domain, perceive the primary qualities of any item. (Rank: Common)
Trash rank.
Why?
Because the domain had started small?
It had doubled in size every level. If that pattern continued he would fit inside it in a few levels.
Not trash.
Everything else — the telekinesis, the internal mechanics of merge — he had derived through testing. No documentation. No guidance. Only repetition and observation.
He had mapped the rule set.
Primary quality of the secondary item, merged into the primary item.
Consistent.
Predictable within variance.
It worked.
You have taken one point of health damage.
Rem focused on the microbe and locked it inside his domain.
It thrashed without coordination. Minimal structure. A simple siphoning function attached to one of his streams.
It consumed essence.
He let the organism hang suspended and returned to the question.
What do I actually know about merge?
Trash rank was incorrect. The domain doubled every level. He could duplicate gear, cores—anything with a transferable primary quality. It lacked combat utility, but that was a dumb way to rank it.
He knew it transferred primary qualities. Only.
He paused.
Did it?
Or had he constrained it to that rule because it was the first pattern that worked?
Combine two items.
What qualified as an item?
Why was a hand an item?
He held the question for a long while.
Time passed. He did not measure it.
A hand counted because he separated it. A core counted because he defined its boundary. The system named patterns and treated them as discrete.
Merge did not define the boundary.
He did.
An item was whatever he isolated and selected.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
The thought settled without resistance.
Combine two items. Results uncertain.
If anything could be defined as an item—
He shifted his focus back to the microbe.
Reaching into the domain, he drew himself inside. He retracted his tendrils and ribbons, compressing his mass around his core until there was space for nothing else.
Merge.
The microbe resisted. He pressured it within the field, directing his power. It vanished in a brief flare and integrated into him.
No system message.
One moment it was present. The next, absent.
He checked his status.
No change.
The energy cost exceeded the return. The organism’s essence had been negligible.
Still, the method was precise.
He could eliminate a target directly. Strip its essence and end it.
He released the domain.
He searched for another and found one within reach.
He extended a ribbon of essence and held it still. The organism latched on and began to siphon.
It was slow.
You have taken one point of health damage.
He drew himself into his domain and executed merge again.
This time he narrowed the target.
Not the organism.
Its ability to siphon essence.
It was distinct. A defined interaction. Transfer from one structure to another.
If it existed, it could be isolated.
Merge.
The organism collapsed and dissolved into him.
No system message.
He released the domain and searched again.
Another parasite attached to a thin strand he extended. It began to drain.
This time he fought back, reversing the direction.
Its essence flowed into him instead.
The structure destabilized and broke apart.
A faint increase registered within his reserves. Minimal. Less than the cost of the earlier merge.
But this time he had expended nothing.
Net gain.
He moved through the lake in widening arcs.
There were thousands.
Ring of PaneRank: Legendary
Traits: Unique. Paronomastic. Concealed.
Reach through a previously created pane to access the space beyond it.
Rem hovered over the glowing ring where it lay half-buried in silt. He summoned his domain around it and lifted it free. It hung in the water in front of him, steady.
He extended a tendril through the center.
Nothing.
He thickened the tendril, poured more essence into it, tried to give it cohesion, tried to give it boundary.
Still Nothing.
His essence flowed around the ring’s presence, split across it, then rejoined. The ring did not accept him as an inserted thing. It accepted the water. It accepted the silt. It accepted itself.
Not him.
Did he really need the ring?
Back in his locker he had a few important things: his satchel, his journals.
He considered letting the ring drop and returning to the lake currents. He had already consumed hundreds of parasites—just enough to recover what he’d spent earlier, not more.
The voices returned. Irritating.Needs. Priorities.
Rem did not answer them immediately.
He tested the thought instead.
No response.
He released the domain. The ring sank back into the silt.
–Aren’t you curious?
He turned that word once, then again.
He was already moving away when he stopped.
He paused.
He had a titan’s core. Greater attribute cores. Continuant cores.
He reversed course and returned to the ring.
He was curious.
He spent a long time trying variations that should have worked.
He narrowed a tendril until it was thin enough to thread through the ring’s aperture. He reinforced it with additional essence. He tried to define it as an item. He tried to define the ring as a container. He tried to define his essence as the primary and the ring as the secondary.
Nothing.
He tried Inspect on the ring again and again, forcing the trait to yield something actionable beyond the description he already had.
Nothing changed.
Minutes passed. Then more. He felt the strain and pulled open his character sheet.
His Focus was ticking down.
300 / 300
295 / 300
287 / 300
He stopped checking.
He shifted from “make a tendril go through” to a different problem.
He could not make part of himself count as physical enough to be accepted by the ring.
So he would change the whole of himself.
He began drawing his essence inward.
Not quickly. Not as a snap decision. As a procedure.
He retracted every ribbon that drifted. Folded every strand that wandered. Wrapped them tighter around the core of his awareness, then tightened again. He removed slack. Then removed the slack that remained after that.
His domain stayed summoned, holding the work area stable.
Focus dropped.
248 / 300
231 / 300
He attempted the ring again.
He nudged his newly compacted mass toward it, tried to insert a narrow projection.
Nothing.
He backed off and returned to compression.
He found patterns that resisted: a recurrent spread of filaments, a tendency for his structure to bloom outward when he stopped actively controlling it. He countered it. He forced the structure to remain defined.
A few seconds of inattention and it expanded.
He corrected. Tightened. Held.
Focus dropped again.
200 / 300
176 / 300
He stopped thinking in words.
He ran loops.
Contract. Stabilize. Define boundary. Hold boundary. Reduce remainder. Repeat.
Every time his attention drifted, the boundary softened. Every time it softened, he lost progress. He rebuilt it.
He returned to the ring.
Again: no insertion.
He marked the failure without frustration and continued.
At some point the ring stopped being the goal and became the gauge.
Either he could pass through it or he could not.
So he continued until the answer changed.
Focus:
142 / 300
121 / 300
He tested his output.
The mass was smaller now relative to the domain. He could occupy a corner of it without touching the edges. That had been impossible before.
He continued anyway.
He stripped away every unnecessary extension. He eliminated decorative motion. He made his structure sparse and deliberate.
His awareness narrowed as Focus fell.
A long span passed where he did nothing but hold definition against collapse into diffusion.
He checked the number.
88 / 300
He tried the ring again.
This time, a small part of him did not shear around the ring’s presence.
It did not pass through.
But it did not behave the same way either.
That was enough.
He resumed compression.
He pushed the last of his spread inward, cycling his essence around his core in tight iterations—outward only as far as needed to re-route, then back in, then tighter. Every loop demanded attention. Every loop consumed Focus.
62 / 300
49 / 300
37 / 300
His definition began to fail in small ways. He would lose the boundary for a moment, then reassert it. Lose it, reassert it. Each recovery cost more than the last.
He considered stopping.
Not because of risk. Because the loop was becoming inefficient.
He continued.
28 / 300
19 / 300
The ring hung in front of him, motionless.
He brought himself close.
He held the boundary.
He pushed.
For a brief interval, his structure unified.
Not a ribbon. Not a tangle.
A single unit.
The ring accepted it.
And then the acceptance completed in a way he did not predict.
His domain dropped.
He did not release it.
It dropped anyway.
He lost the last of his Focus.
0 / 300
He fell.
He struck the lakebed with a small, hard impact.
You have died. In the unlikely event you have not died please respond now.
The thought stalled.
Inspect.
Rembrandt de Vries, level 4. Living Core.
He looked at what he had become.
A polished, pearl-like core that glowed brighter than anything he’d seen.
Identify.
Curiosity.
Congratulations. You have taken your first steps on the journey to immortality.
Congratulations. You have gained access to a hidden quest.
Rejoin the LivingSearch for methods to rebuild your physical form or seek help from those who can assist you.
Rem summoned his domain around himself and lifted off the lakebed. He propelled himself forward and came to rest above the ring.
He seized the ring with his will and drew it close. Then he moved into it.
This time the ring accepted him.
Its inner edge curved along the smooth surface of his core, tightening until it nearly enclosed him. Only narrow arcs of white remained visible at either side.
