Raika can't help but feel a bit cheated.

Sure, she can still play around a bit, but unlike every other part of her, she's stuck in one shape! And it's a boring shape to boot! Humanoid!

Sure, she classifies her current body as more-or-less how her "true self" looks, an idealized version of her formerly-human form, but it's still limited! Two legs, two arms, four if she asks herself really nicely… ugh. Boring.

But then again, there's a version of her literally sitting in a grove, completely unmoving, staring at a bunch of pretty plants. That would probably be worse. It's not like she hates Dao comprehension or anything, but her little war-form is probably having a great time understanding Dao without needing to be completely static.

Alright, none of that's very fair, but still. She can literally feel how relatively free the rest of her is, and it's annoying.

Supreme Body Art: Multiplicity is a pretty versatile tool overall, as evidenced by the fact that she currently has several hundreds of brains and dozens of bodies to match them with. She can think as fast as higher-realm cultivators, even with relatively mortal brains. She can think different thoughts at the same time, run comprehensive analysis on herself and those self-same different thoughts simultaneously, process larger amounts of data and a much wider view of what that data means. With Supreme Body Art: Overclocking, she can boost those properties further, enhancing her processing speed, honing her instincts, boosting the velocity at which signals are sent to and from her nerves, and while it does cause damage, she can just make more brains. Usually.

All of this, Raika reminds herself, is why she has the unique power and opportunity to learn so many things at once. To experience all new perspectives. To force herself to learn in ways she normally might not.

Imposing lobotomy-based limitations through theoretical acupuncture isn't technically part of the technique, and it feels fairer for it to be Li Shu's trick to name than hers, but it's important here. There's a difference between purposefully holding back, and actively having limits. That's why she's doing this.

Even though it's so itchyyyyyy.

Not literally, but… gah!

One of her is currently a centipede that's becoming an artillery platform, equipped with a dozen sub-brains and indefinite ammunition and fighting in a cultivator war! One of her has a face that's just all sensory organs and is currently drinking fire or some shit!

Ok, yes, like, three of her are just sort of studying right now, and she's pretty sure that's definitely worse than what she's doing, but still!

Martial arts?

Uuuuuugh. So boring.

Two legs, two arms (unless it's an emergency), a tail, and horns. The fact that she's got a bunch of glowing neural tissue in place of hair, that she's got optimized nano-plating under her skin, that said skin is both hypersensitive and harder than toughened leather, that all her muscles are pressurized and optimized and… ugh, it makes it bearable. Otherwise, this whole mess, long term, it just…

Uuuuuuugh.

She pulls off another leg from the body she's sitting on, taking a bite out of it and chewing angrily.

Damn it's good. The protein mix, the way that the bone tubes inside the muscles make them a little crunchy, the way the skin has a certain sweetness from the acids the beast used… mmh. Delightful, through and through. If she had the time, she's pretty sure it would go great with some added spices, maybe fried in a light batter to add to the crunchiness while she makes a glaze from the acid, pair it with some pickled cabbage and soft noodles…

Her free hand shoots out and grabs the incoming projectile before it can hit her. She turns her head, slowly, to face the avian creature in the branches above her, and makes direct eye contact with it as she brings the massive thorn it fired at her and bites it.

Tastes like claw and bark, with a hint of something herbal in the aftertaste.

The bird, in turn, flaps all three of its wings and flies away, wisely deciding that it might be better off not pissing off the lady eating what's left of a five-ton mammalian… whatever this thing was.

She sighs, spitting out the hard outer shell of the talon-thorn-thing (tougher to chew than the inside). She ran into a flock of the avians a few hours back, the leaves they have in place of feathers allowing them to blend in with the Overgrowth of this area, and some of them decided to follow her. She's pretty sure that's the last of them, but if not, they're probably pretty appetizing, and the beast she's sitting on is about half gone by now.

Uuuuuuugh.

This is what happens when she's bored and itchy. She starts fixating on food.

Which, you know, is fine. Food is great. Delicious, delightful, an excellent creative outlet.

But also a distraction.

Sighing, she tears off the last real chunk of meat from the bone she's holding, swallowing it (and the bone) in a few gulps.

Time to get back to walking.

In truth, she's not actually doing "martial arts", per se. She isn't following a manual, or learning a technique or movement style. That's not the point of this. She is, in theory, going to the core of martial arts- a refined way of moving and striking, utilizing the body's inherent properties. Most official martial arts tend, by default, to be written by humans, and cultivators more specifically. The human body simply isn't built for fighting, so finding ways to maximize efficiency and copy movements or inherent traits from others that are is a useful way to learn how to use what you have efficiently. It makes a human strength, that being active decision making and conscious self-awareness, a tool to counter a human weakness, that being that they're just not made to be scary in a direct-conflict sort of way.

In a way, bestial cultivators are also pursuing martial arts. Kind of. They're embracing evolutionary traits, or searching for specific features, to gain new capacities and powers. Rather than emulating, they're directly integrating. Not really the same mentality, of course, but the through-line is there. Mostly.

And so, here she is. The Raika that drew the short straw.

Not the shortest straw, but… not a long one.

Taran taught her a lesson that's still valuable- having strengths in some areas doesn't mean that it's alright to be weak in others. Her biogeneration ability doesn't mean that she should tank every hit that she faces, just as her affinity for Flame doesn't mean that she shouldn't learn how to move against Water. Ergo, the cohesive whole of Raika elected a part of herself to be limited in such a way that she is forced to learn aaaaall about how to optimize and better use the tools she's got.

Which means that she can't shapeshift up swords, or claws, or tendrils, or armors, or anything interesting.

She is stuck in the shape she's got.

Unless it's an emergency. Then she can make two more arms.

She can change her internals at least. Different muscle formations, the architecture of her skeletal structure, her veins, all that basic stuff that's really not basic at all. It's slow though, something that takes minutes or hours, not something she can just do, because then she could just freely adapt to things. Like a cool superbeing that's transcended humanity.

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It feels… itchy.

She's not dysmorphic, at least. Seven feet, fit as fuck, the horns, the tail, the tits- all top notch. The body itself is comfortable, the fact that it can't change as freely as before is the issue. Ontological dysphoria, not physical dysmorphia.

She briefly sends thanks to Li Shu for teaching her those words. Feels nice to put a word to one's feelings, sometimes.

A brief pulse of acknowledgement and mutual warmth at the message comes back through her ur-self, and a few seconds later, Li Shu sends back her own.

Some people train for years to get access to texts with that vocabulary. You get to just hang out with the coolest healer in the fourth ring. Truly the heavens are unjust.

Heh. Li Shu's great.

A tree topples over, one of the "normal"-sized ones, and Raika lunges out of the way.

Before she's done moving, the tree has arrested its fall and returned to its original pose, thorny branches covered in needle-like proboscis waving annoyedly.

The lunge, as it turns out, forces her to step on the petal of a flower large enough to be its own clearing- which immediately tries to roll itself up and trap her in it, millions of hair-thin knives rising from it to impale her.

She dodges that, in turn, by letting them cut through her feet to get a solid footing and leaping into the air to avoid the wider petal's curling. She has to regenerate the feet from almost mush, but it gives her the space she needs to grab a branch and swing forward off of it.

The Overgrowth is always active, and almost universally dangerous. She sighs as she sidesteps a creature that disguised itself as a vine as it turns into water and tries to encircle her, giving it a polite punch to the body as it shifts back. When it's not concept-infused wildlife, it's hyperactive, hyper-evolved flora, every plant almost entirely distinct from its neighbor. Two trees that are literally identical might have entirely different defence mechanisms or hunting patterns, and without her more advanced senses, the best way to find out the difference is to poke them and run.

If she were allowed more of her abilities, she could have a much more intimidating form, or exude Qi from vents, or wrap herself in Dao, but noooo, she has to be the training dummy and have limitations.

Bleh. So annoying. And so itchy!

She sighs dejectedly as she dodges a boulder (literally just a rock as far as she can tell) which launches itself at her. It completely cancels its own inertia, freezing in midair before firing at her from another direction, and she has to dodge that, too. When it comes around a third time, she snaps.

With a heel-turn, she aligns her body into a certain architecture, makes a clear line from foot to head, and uses every ounce of torque and force she can make with her body to punch the annoying fucking rock.

Two of her fingers break- but so does the rock.

The surrounding area is peppered by shards of rock-dust and pebbles as she punches into and through the stone, blasting it apart from the force of the impact.

She resets the fingers, heals the breaks, and growls at the pebbles.

"Anybody else?" she asks, her voice carrying through the forest around her.

Almost immediately, a dozen shrieks and hunting calls answer, the landscape coming alive- and the pebbles jump into the air, freeze, and fire themselves with that potential energy at her.

Alright.

That's it. She's fucking had it.

She did not come walking all this fucking way to get harassed by literal pebbles.

Supreme Body Art: Overclocking

Supreme Body Art: Pressurized Indigo

Supreme Body Art: Specialized Enhancement

Supreme Body Art: Camouflage

Ok, so technically she's using more than just direct martial arts- but whatever! If the whole point is using what she has at peak efficiency, finding a style and techniques / patterns that help her use herself better, then she's doing perfectly at it, thank you much.

Her skin ripples as Specialized Enhancement kicks it into overdrive, while Overclocking her brain lets her keep up with the changes as she forces skin cells to gain chromatophores. She blends into the environment completely, her skin reacting to light and shifting colors to match, even as she feels a headache begin from the stress of the techniques. Her blood turns from darker, richer crimson to its heightened indigo form, thick enough to be barely liquid, and pushes her body into overdrive from the density of resources it holds.

And then she punches all the rocks.

Strike, turn, strike, strike, retract, reposition, strike, strike, repair joint, strike again.

She flows from one moment to the next, four-hundred pounds of biology in a seven-foot package moving as little as possible to get into range of, and then destroy, each individual pebble from the strange stone. The air fills with powdered stone as she hits, again and again, noting inefficiencies and points of failure, repairing them, and altering her movements to better fit.

And, as dozens more enemies converge on the scent of prey, she moves, and is gone again.

She has to stab the moss she lands on to stop it trying to digest her, and then disguise the scent that it's acids give off with her own pheromone emissions, neutralizing the smells to zero- but she does escape.

Cancelling the techniques, she briefly snorts, forcing out a wad of blood from her nostrils. Her head hurts. Her whole face feels like it's bleeding, and that was barely five full seconds of Overclocking. Already she can feel that she won't be able to use it again for a few more minutes, and should probably keep its use sparing.

Which she wouldn't have to if she had more brains like she's supposed to- but someone got the short straw.

Ugh. So annoying.

She scoops some of the moss to chew on as she gets back to the trek. It tastes bitter and kind of sour, but in an interesting way, and focusing on the taste is better than focusing on how restrictive having such a limited body feels.

Even if it is kind of fascinating, how much minor changes can affect her movements, flexibility, striking power. And even if it's an essential mindset to cultivate so she can keep improving. And even if it's actually kind of cathartic to just fucking hit things for once, and finding ways to make it more interesting is sort of engaging.

Damnit, it would be less annoying if it wasn't so fucking interesting. Ugh.

One of her pursuers, a more dedicated one, leaps from out of what looks like some sort of portal it tears open in the air, and she does something she hasn't done in a while.

She blocks it.

She can't block the claws, not without taking damage, so she adjust just a teensy bit, shifts just a little, and blocks its paw rather than the claws themselves. More or less the same movement, but the slight adjustment means her arm is sore rather than severed.

She grins.

"Alright, that's pretty-"

The creature contorts and sort of folds itself, so it turns inside out, and a fresh set of limbs emerges with all the momentum of the transformation and cuts her face off.

Damnit, she was doing so well.

She sighs, regrows her eyes, and grabs hold of the teleporter with both hands.

It tries to unfold itself again, insectile eyes and bristling fur inverting to wetter, more mucousy skin- but not before she drags it close and bites through its head.

It doesn't kill it (maybe its brain is in the middle? Or distributed?), but it does discourage it enough that it runs away fast.

Would it really be so bad if she was allowed just a little bit of raw Qi? Just enough to swing around and scare the wildlife with? They can't smell how strong she is when she's like this!

The response comes back from herself pretty quickly, and amounts more or less to nah, sorry, kind of against the point. Get good.

…

She can be a real asshole sometimes. Even if that was sort of funny.

Sighing through reformed lips, she focuses in. Maybe if she uses Overclocking in shorter bursts, but with a faster activation, she can do more with less? And if she'd just followed up after the adjusted block, she could probably have dodged or even parried the next attack. So, progress.

Taking a breath, she leaps from the floor of the forest and through part of the canopy, ignoring the cuts that some of the trees inflict as she moves. This section of the Overgrowth is very sharpness-coded, she notes, with undercurrents of water and spatial concepts. Delightful to an inquisitive mind, infuriating to someone trying to get somewhere.

She clears the canopy, glimpsing over the top of the jungle she's trecking through, and catches sight of "somewhere".

It looks like a ring of mountains, shaped almost like a hand- if that hand had smaller, fractal versions of itself spreading out from it. The Overgrowth stops near its edges, turning to dense gardens, barely-civilized farmland and constantly encroaching plant-life, held back by fencing, arrays, and the occasional burst of Qi she catches glimpses of. There are clouds and mist along the base of the mountain-hands, and the glint of clear blue waters behind them- and at the top of each peak, miles and miles apart from each other, there are what look like a mix between fortresses and miniature cities.

Sects.

She lands, quickly stepping off the colony of bushes that start vibrating in place with razor-sharp nettles as she does. She's close.

The Republic of Morae is in sight, as is the second part of her chosen / assigned mission.

Time to find out what they're doing. If they're a threat, if they're an ally she can use, and if they're connected to the Empire.

It's time to find out if the largest cultivation civilization of the fourth ring (that she's aware of) is something she's going to be able to work with, or something she's going to need to manage.

Ugh. First she can't even really shapeshift, and then she gets stuck with politics.

Some Raikas get all the luck.

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