The Chimera staggered.
That alone should not have been possible.
It had ruled this stretch of the fourth-tier danger zone since before the jungle learned how to scream. Nothing hunted it. Nothing challenged it. Everything else fed it—voluntarily or otherwise.
Yet now, it hesitated.
Its many eyes fixed on Aegis, and something alien flickered behind them.
Fear.
Aegis stood there, blood drying across his chest, breath slow and deliberate. The wound still burned—Living Law hadn't healed him, only stabilized him—but his body felt heavier, denser, like gravity had decided he was worth paying attention to.
Information flowed.
Not words. Not images.
Instincts.
The Catalog unfurled inside his mind, reorganizing everything he had become.
CURRENT GENETIC SHIFTS & TRAITS — HOST: AEGIS Living Law (Core / Passive / Absolute)
A non-removable foundational shift.
• Prevents host death before designated "completion conditions."
• Stabilizes fatal injuries, slows degradation, prioritizes survival over comfort.
• Enables forced acquisition under lethal threat.
• Occasionally asserts control without host consent. Void Sever (Active / Offensive)
Invisible spatial laceration generated through micro-fissures in reality.
• Ignores conventional armor and most energy shielding.
• High lethality, high strain.
• Poor against non-organic targets. Adaptive Chitin Weave (Passive / Defensive)
Biological armor grown beneath the skin.
• Reinforces bones, organs, and muscle fibers.
• Adapts thickness and density based on threat type.
• Vulnerable to extreme disintegration without reinforcement. Kinetic Damping (Passive / Defensive)
Redistributes physical force across the body.
• Reduces blunt trauma and impact damage.
• Ineffective against sustained energy-based assaults. Thermal Adaptation (Passive / Environmental)
Rapid tolerance to extreme heat and cold.
• Enables survival in near-absolute temperatures.
• Does not grant immunity—prolonged exposure still dangerous. Toxic Resistance (Passive / Environmental)
Neutralizes low-to-mid-tier poisons and airborne toxins.
• High-tier biochemical agents still lethal without further adaptation. Predator Camouflage (Active / Stealth)
Reality-blind camouflage acquired from the Veil Basilisk.
• Suppresses visual, auditory, thermal, and cognitive presence.
• Organic minds forget host when not directly observing.
• Technological systems experience data loss, distortion, or forced overwrite.
• Energy cost increases with hostile observation density. Devour (Active / Assimilation)
Absorbs biological matter, extracting genetic shifts, traits, memories, and instincts.
• Effectiveness scales with physical contact and duration.
• Non-organic matter cannot be consumed—only stripped. Decay (Active / Corrosive / Conceptual)
Accelerates entropy in contacted matter.
• Requires physical contact to initiate.
• Effect persists only while contact is maintained.
• Particularly effective against layered defenses and composite organisms. Composite Traits (Passive / Modular)
Derived from consumed entities:
• Enhanced speed
• Short-range spatial displacement
• Flight potential (requires active morphing)
• Extended wakefulness
• Reinforced cellular regeneration (non-healing)
The Chimera roared.
The sound fractured the air, trees shuddering as it lunged forward, claws tearing furrows through the earth.
Aegis didn't dodge.
He stepped into it.
Decay flowed.
Not like fire. Not like energy.
Like inevitability.
The moment the Chimera's claw struck his shoulder, the contact point blackened. Scale dulled. Crystalline plating spiderwebbed with fractures as entropy began to chew.
The creature recoiled, shrieking.
Aegis pressed his palm against its forelimb and held.
Decay intensified.
Layers sloughed away—scale, chitin, reinforced hide—revealing raw muscle beneath. The Chimera thrashed, teleporting backward in a panicked blink, severing contact.
The decay stopped.
Aegis understood.
It's not instant. It's persistence.
The Chimera charged again, faster this time, wings tearing the air apart. Aegis coated his feet in decay and stamped.
The ground collapsed.
Roots rotted mid-growth. Soil disintegrated into dust, forcing the Chimera off-balance. Aegis surged forward, Chitin Weave shifting, Void Sever flashing—
The cut didn't kill it.
But it hurt.
Badly.
The Chimera's instincts screamed retreat.
It tried to flee.
Aegis wouldn't allow it.
He coated his entire body in decay—not enough to destroy himself, but enough to make contact unbearable. Every strike the Chimera landed ate away at its own mass. Every grapple cost it flesh.
Finally, exhausted, weakened, bleeding entropy—
Aegis raised both hands.
Devour activated.
Black smoke erupted outward, not drifting but pulling. The Chimera screamed as its body unraveled, torn apart at the molecular level, reduced to fragments of data and meat and memory.
All of it rushed into Aegis.
The jungle went silent.
Something inside him clicked.
A new law formed.
NEW LAW UNLOCKED
Genetic Modification (Passive / Active Hybrid)
Allows host to consciously alter physical form using acquired genetic data.
• Enables rapid environmental adaptation without detection.
• Morphological changes do not grant abilities unless corresponding shifts exist.
• Requires biomass or genetic input to expand options.
Aegis staggered.
Then he turned.
The Axiom Vale operatives were still there.
Frozen.
Horrified.
This was no longer a capture mission.
This was containment.
Aegis vanished.
Decay bloomed in the dark.
One by one, operatives fell—organic components reduced to nothing, their knowledge stripped, memories devoured. Only metal remained, scattered like discarded shells.
He didn't know they were recording.
He didn't know about the black-box cores.
As he left the danger zone, carrying scavenged materials to sell as cover, data transmitted.
Far away, Axiom Vale watched the playback in silence.
Fear crept into rooms that had never known it.
Deep within Danger Zone Four…
An ancient temple shuddered.
A colossal, pitch-black form shifted in the dark.
And behind it—
A glowing relic pulsed.
Calling.
To be continued.