I'm not ashamed to admit that looking at my stats filled me with a quiet sense of smug satisfaction.

Adrian Flinn

Strength: 10

Reflexes: 20

Acuity: 20

Physique: 10

Recovery: 6 → 10

Stamina: 14

Soul: 32 → 91

Adaptability: 30 → 41

Tolerance: 26 → 67

Cognition: 26 → 86

Essence: 108/108 → 198/198

Mind Synchronicity: Reluctant Symphony → Ravening Unity

Body Synchronicity: Sharpening Harmony → Cutting Unity

Shadow Runner Package:

Clairvoyance 4 (36/100)

Programming 1 (99/100)

Movement 2 (46/100)

Quickhacks 1 (99/100)

Assault 3 (95/100)

Tongue of The Ravening Observer

Unseen Stalker Package:

Stealth 1 (99/100)

Tracking 2 (99/100)

Focus 3 (97/100)

Grace 3 (17/100)

Faultline 2 (20/100)

Oh, I hadn't gotten a chance to experiment with the skills. Their progress remained bottlenecked. But my 'mental' stats, as I'd gotten used to calling them? They were a whole different story.

I wasn't aware of the difference in the moment. After I was done feasting, I barely scrounged up enough strength of will to stagger to the shower with Amelia's help. When I woke up hours later, though, the world around me was utterly different.

I noticed so much more. I processed so much more. It felt like my brain had been pulled out and cleaned of all the cobwebs, pollutants, and whatever else the corpos had managed to poison me with during my short, slum-bound life, and then put back in its place.

Even just sifting through my memories was a delight, because I found them snapping into focus with minimal effort. Learning just about anything was going to be a breeze.

And that wasn't even what had me feeling the most excited.

No, that honor went to just how much more intense everything was now. It felt like limits I hadn't even known were binding me had suddenly been removed, allowing me to experience the world that much more vividly.

I spent a solid hour after I woke up just lying in bed, marveling at the feeling of Amelia and the sheets brushing over my skin. Goosebumps raced all over me in the best of ways. I found myself toying with a strand of Amelia's hair, completely lost in the act of drinking in her adorable sleeping appearance.

Well. I found it adorable. Her hair was a mess, she was snoring lightly, and I was pretty sure I could feel a bit of drool threatening to spill out of her mouth onto my shoulder.

I wouldn't trade her for the world.

Then she began to stir. Her eyes blinked open and fixed on me, and I lost myself in those instead.

"Morning," I whispered quietly. Reverently, really.

"Morning." Her lips sleepily found mine, and I was more than happy to reciprocate her affection. When she was done trying to steal more of my breath away, she draped herself over me with a sigh. "I'm glad you're okay. I'm tempted to just keep you here now so I can keep an eye on you."

"I wouldn't really say no to that." I grinned, taking a moment to boop her nose and make her scrunch it up in displeasure. "But I was hoping to test things out, so I could figure out what's changed with me. You know, since yesterday… happened."

"Mmrh," she grumbled. "You still haven't told me what went wrong, mister. Don't push it with your experimentation stuff!"

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"I just… I don't even know how to explain it, really…"

I trailed off with a shrug. But when I saw that bewitching look of indignation on her face, I decided to explain what I could.

Slowly, I told her everything. The sensation of Essence burning through me. What I experienced when my Essence pool crossed one hundred. My oh-so-brief staring match with The Observer… everything.

She wasn't particularly happy with any of it. Especially not with the fact that I could still feel that same pressure and a coiling mass of Essence right behind my navel.

"And you just wanted to jump into testing your abilities today? Really? Ugh. Stay still and let me feel you up."

"Oh no, what am I going to do? Please, someone, anyone, put a stop to this harassment!" I wailed dramatically, throwing one arm over my eyes like I couldn't look at her. She giggled, but that didn't stop her from gently (and very professionally) feeling up the abs I'd managed to earn through a ton of suffering and good eating.

Seconds later, she frowned.

"It might just be in my head, but… when you're lying on your back like this, and you relax your muscles, I can almost feel something under your skin. And I don't like that. I don't like that at all! This nonsense better not have given you eldritch cancer, Adrian!"

I felt all blood, or tar I guess, drain from my cheeks.

"I… hadn't really considered that as an option," I admitted. "Um… I suppose this is a bad time to tell you I had a bit of a revelation yesterday?"

If looks could maim, hers would have made me lose a few limbs. No matter that she could stick them back on afterwards.

"What kind of a revelation?"

"Well… You know how we were worried about our cybernetics doing weird Essence stuff? I've kind of, maybe, been chowing down on corrupted Essence this entire time. I mean, I was eating Shadows…"

Her eyes flew wide open and stayed that way as she stared at me in abject horror.

"Why… How… WHY DID I NOT THINK OF THAT SOONER?! Oh fuck, I encouraged this! All the Essence files said it would be good for you, and I —"

"Amelia, this isn't your fault! We just… missed that. I could have tried using my brain for once, any time I was scarfing down Shadow flesh. This isn't on you."

I pulled her into a hug, letting the quivering ripper bury her face into my shoulder.

It didn't take her long to pull herself together, brush the tears away, and glare at me. "That's it. You're coming with me, and we're taking a thorough look at you."

I opened my mouth to make a raunchy joke, but wisely reconsidered when faced with the steel in her eyes.

"Okay. I'll do whatever you want me to."

—

I kept my promise, in spite of the fact that Amelia wanted far, far too much.

There were scans. There were tissue samples. There was prodding and poking and even a round of attempts to analyze my 'blood', as it were.

Amelia just about had a meltdown during that part. Nothing she did make my tar react in predictable ways. What little data she managed to extract from the attempts was 'next to bloody fucking useless.' Her words, not mine.

Apparently, I was interesting in the same way that alien species were: something new to prod at and examine, yet without any applicability to normal human physiology. She had data, sure, but she also had no idea how to interpret it or what to do with it.

The best she could do was bottle my tar and preserve it in case I needed transfusions in the future, because she 'really wasn't going to fuck around with pumping regular human blood into me' anymore. One of the few things she did manage to figure out was that the tar was far more oxidized than regular human blood, which both threw her for a loop and made her suspect my body was doing weird things that required far more resources to burn. But again, nothing really applicable without a whole lot more testing.

Invasive and potentially dangerous testing, of course.

The single most relevant finding of the day came from all the scans she'd done, and it made both of us freak out more than just a little.

I had a 'core' inside my body.

There was some kind of sphere located right behind my navel, made of some odd material the scans couldn't recognize. It was cushioned in flesh and attached to pretty much all of my internal organs through strands of fleshy… stuff.

Amelia's expression cycled through about ten different kinds of utter, mind-numbing fear at the sight of it. Then, after a whole lot of shaking, freaking out, hugging, and reassurance on both sides, she started to remember a few things she'd read in the files we stole from her father.

Apparently, I wasn't unique. Which was a good thing. Also apparently, all eldritch creatures had a kind of 'core' inside of them which stored vast amounts of Essence and which typically survived the monsters' deaths. She remembered that bit particularly because the cores were marked as highly valuable.

The term did sound vaguely familiar to me. Memories from devouring my unfortunate victims slowly drifted back to me, focusing on the moments when I'd come across bits of them that were particularly crunchy, delicious, and potent. Cores, I'd imagine. Upon a closer examination of my memories, those bits were the source of most of the Essence I got out of devouring failed Shadows.

Thing was, none of our files about training or advancing in Essence mentioned cores at all. Either this was something kept hidden as a closely guarded secret, or I was a bit more 'Shadow' than we'd initially suspected.

We were also a little stuck.

"I can't really do anything to examine the core better." Amelia narrowed her eyes at my stomach. "I mean, I can cut through the flesh cushioning it, but I'm not sure if it would be a good idea to mess with the core itself."

"Why not?" I countered. "I mean, I don't think it would be fun having you cut me open, but… I admit, I'm kind of freaked out right now."

I wasn't lying. At all. Honestly, I'd experienced several moments already when I kind of wanted to cut myself open, just to get the thing out of me.

But a sense of danger, even imminent doom, stopped me every time.

Amelia just shook her head. "I know you just breezed through the files on the eldritch creatures whose bits we've got attached to us, Adrian, but I read through everything in those files. Everything. Destroying a monster's core doesn't immediately kill the monster, but it's a recommended way of putting down particularly powerful or tricky ones, especially those with a high regeneration factor. It hobbles them in various ways, makes them easier to kill, and might even be a death sentence long-term. That's the general assumption, at least. Obviously, no one was going to break a creature's core and then stand around waiting to see what happened next. But those cores do seem to contain most of the creatures' Essence."

"So…" I grimaced as I asked the question, knowing the answer already. "Even if you could cut it out of me, I'd lose a good chunk of my Essence? At best?"

"Yeah. And we don't know what suddenly losing that Essence will do to you, both to your human and eldritch bits. I think our cybernetics need at least a bit of Essence just to function. They might even produce some of it, which could be how we got those initial Essence points."

"Fair. Fair, fair, fair." I sighed. "So, no cutting me open to collect samples?"

I didn't know how to deal with the reluctant look that crossed Amelia's face.

"No," she said slowly. "No collecting samples. We're going to have to take our time and examine you as best we can without, you know, 'digging deeper.'"

My adorable ripper paused. Then, with a bit too much enthusiasm if you asked me, she went on, "Having said that, you wanted to test your skills, right? Well, you can do that here, under surveillance. It might help us figure things out a little better."

With another sigh, I resigned myself to playing research subject. I amused myself by wondering how long it would take Amelia to realize that a few hours had already passed since we woke up. She would be getting actual patients soon.

I looked forward to seeing her reaction to being interrupted.

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