Descend- Bursting Out: A litrpg adventure

by David Burke

  Once down in the pit he sat down and began to focus on his PSI channels. He began circulating the energy faster and focusing. Then he instituted the second part of his plan. Jay began funneling PSI energy into his temporal manipulation skill. The tempus fugit field began to take shape around him.

  He found it to be easier than before. The last time he had done this it had been to cover a much larger area of space and for a longer period of time. Still he pushed the energy harder and harder into the field until he had almost exhausted his entire supply of PSI. It just felt so natural to keep compressing the energy of that field.

  As it took shape Jay could feel a density to it that hadn’t existed in any of his other tempus fugit fields. He got the same notification but was shocked by one part of it.

  Tempus Fugit- 1,536:1 Outside duration: 30 minutes. Radius: 15 feet.

  The field was intentionally smaller. He had made it fit the size of the pit. He had shortened the duration but ended up putting in double the PSI energy that he had last time. A little quick math told him that he was going to be in here for thirty-two days. He had packed enough food so that wasn’t an issue but solitary confinement for that long was going to be difficult.

  He began doing the math and trying to figure out why it worked out the way it did, but then the weight hit him. Suddenly he felt impossibly heavy like he had bands of weight on his arms, legs, neck and a giant standing on his shoulders.

  All concerns about how long the field was going to last were suddenly buried under the resounding thought, “Oh crap, what did I do?”

  The girls up above only had to maintain the field for thirty minutes, he had to last for thirty-two days. Screw days, he didn’t know if he was gonna last hours. He had been so sure he was ready for this. His body was nearly as strong as steel. He had strength of comic book proportions and not the weakling heroes either.

  He could move, but it was slow and challenging. Even lifting a hand was a task. He was just going to have to push through and hope that his body adapted fairly quickly.

  A thought crossed his mind and gave him a bit of hope. He wondered if his fused wives would realize something was wrong. He knew from experience that the time distortion field interfered with the connection. But then a larger problem hit him.

  He was having trouble breathing. Something was definitely wrong. His chest felt like it was in a vise, but he was still able to move enough to take breaths. It didn’t seem to matter how deeply he breathed in though, he was starting to feel faint. His extremities were feeling numb.

  While no biology expert, Jay realized that something must be wrong with his blood oxygenation. The increased mass effect must be altering the way his blood was working in his body. He didn’t really need to know the exact why or how. It was obviously beyond bad.

  If this kept up he would lose consciousness in a couple of minutes. He was still getting some oxygen, but not enough. A moment before he had been worried about how much work it was going to be to adapt to moving, now he had to worry about learning to live with less oxygen.

  It was act or die, so he dove into his body, pushing his scans to gather as much information. Once again, he tried not to let the little bit that he knew about biology get in the way of what he was sensing. The solution for this was not going to be an ordinary human solution. This was going to require an evolved human refining. At least that was what he hoped.

  Instinct was his guide again and he began altering his body to require less oxygen. Jay realized as he looked at his system that while he had focused on making his body stronger and more durable that he had never thought about increasing the efficiency of his systems.

  If he had let his mind run things he would have ended up dead on the floor of that pit, already decayed by the end of his time distortion field. His wives and the others would have never been able to say goodbye. They would only be greeted by a rotting corpse.

  Instead as he had been learning there was a level at which his mind could operate in a subconscious, automatic way to run his various skills. Here once again he relied upon that and began altering his systems as he felt led. How his muscles processed oxygen was first and then the waste production of those same muscles.

  From there he moved to organs and began to modify them as well. The largest hog of his oxygen was obviously his heart. The changes in efficiency there began to ease his distress more than anything else he had done so far. A part of him kicked himself for not starting there first, but the process was working so he pushed down that voice and kept working.

  Time passed and he remained lost inside his own body. There always seemed to be another change to make. Improvements to his heart had increased the amount of blood pumped. His lungs were now better at pulling oxygen from the air by a factor of ten. His kidneys handled waste more efficiently. It all added up to a human system that worked beyond anything that modern medicine had known on Earth.

  Yet it was still a human system and there were limits to what it could be modified to handle. This realization came after the second round of modifications to his brain. He had been so nervous before about tinkering with his brain, and that was logical. It was amazing what risks a person would be willing to take while at the brink of death.

  He hadn’t improved his intelligence, not in a traditional sense at least. The process he was following was largely happening at a level below his conscious mind so it was perhaps not surprising that the modifications he was making also affected his brain at that level. He created new neurons by the millions that were at first dedicated to improving his system. That led to billions and then tens of billions of new connections that would enable him to handle the more complex functioning of his powers at an instinctual level.

  The number was beyond his comprehension. If it were up to his conscious mind he would never have been able to complete the changes. Yet, here he was on autopilot making the changes by following instinct. His conscious mind was still occupied but the minutiae of what was actually happening was not in his direct control.

  The next logical step was to alter his body in even more extreme ways. He created organelles in his lungs that could actually create oxygen from his PSI energy. Thus as long as he had PSI, he would never lack oxygen. The same thing became logical for food and the other biological processes.

  Level by level he made the changes that took him further from humanity. By the time he was on his thirteenth round of refining his body was essentially capable of being sustained solely by PSI energy. What still eluded him though, at least at a conscious level, was where PSI came from in the first place. He still couldn’t see an organ or process that absorbed PSI or converted it from any other substance.

  This prompted him to delve into his core further. It was a circular structure inside the center of his being and represented the merging of what had been his Stamina and PSI cores. To his scans it almost appeared as two jellyfish connected together and blowing back and forth. Swelling on one side and then shrinking as the other side expanded, with its own rhythm.

  That action made it much like a heart in that it pushed the PSI around his channels. The faster the swelling and shrinking occurred the more quickly the PSI energy occurred. Jay made the observation that the lower his current level of energy the more quickly that process occurred. Perhaps it was in reaction to the need for more of the vital force that the core reacted.

  No matter how long he looked at it or what angle he tried to scan it from, he kept coming to one unescapable yet impossible conclusion. His core was creating PSI energy as opposed to getting it from any outside source. What did that mean, though? The implications seemed preposterous.

  Jay might not know very much about physics but he was pretty sure that energy could neither be created nor destroyed. So how was it that his core seemed to be producing PSI? Again, he knew that the answer to this was profound, but since it evaded him, Jay decided to get up.

  The modifications to his body seemed to make breathing possible without difficulty. He still felt pr
essed down by the weight but it was much more manageable. It then dawned on him to wonder how long he had been in this state. If his body was producing its own energy from PSI then he wouldn’t create any waste products and wouldn’t need to eat or drink. That meant he could have been still much longer than he thought.

  As he went to sit up a notification flashed across his vision. It dawned on him that if they ever wanted to be free they were going to need to find a way to deal with those implants but again for now they helped guide the process of their evolution.

  Forced modifications have been occurring for 27 days.

  Forced awakenings have occurred 19 times.

  Modifications are too great. Entity no longer registering as homo-sapiens.

  Entity no longer registering as homo-A’snkarnt.

  Should entity retain the designation M1789?

  He chose yes. He didn’t want to deal with what might happen if the system tried to give him a new designation. He was worried that it would identify him as an outsider rather than part of the experiment.

  New data being compiled. Experiment parameters exceeded. New predictive models being designed. Processing time: unknown

  Summary of changes:

  7th threshold crossed

  Additional 4 inches height and proportional size increases achieved.

  PSI generation efficiency increased from 15/stat point to 20/stat point.

  Awareness: +22, Durability: +17, Kinesis: +7, Metabolism: +37, Formation: +22

  All skills increased by 25% unless otherwise noted.

  Body Modification has evolved to Evolved Body Modification and is currently maximized.

  Evolved Assessment and Evolved Strength Forged Body increased by 50%.

  Evolved Adaptive Speed increased by 75%.

  Jay was assuming that the extra neurons and the way he was learning to handle things by instinct were responsible for the increase in the skills that hadn’t been used. As he stood he could feel the power flowing through his new and improved body. He had been huge before at 7’10” but now with the two inches from crossing the threshold and the additional four from refining he was now 8’4” with legs like tree trunks.

  The tallest of the girls, Mia, was only 7’1”, so he was definitely going to be dwarfing everyone else. He had to admit that he didn’t hate that. He had a bit of a weakness for petite girls and now every one of them were petite, at least in comparison to him.

  Despite the huge increases in skills and base stats the most thrilling thing to him was that he could now push his skills to level five. He was excited to see what this would mean for just about every single one of his skills. Taking things from level three to level four had been a big boost. It stood to reason that this would push him into another league.

  Ironically, he felt hungry. Just knowing that he had gone twenty-seven days without eating made his stomach feel like it was going to gnaw its way out of his body and his throat parched. He didn’t need to eat but that didn’t mean he couldn’t.

  So in typical Jay fashion, he put off training for another fifteen minutes while he ate some of the rations he had brought in and drank the water. His body identified the stimulant in the water immediately. He knew almost instinctively that he could neutralize its effect on his body, but he also knew that the stimulant was helping promote the changes in his body. Refining and fusion were important but so was the stimulant and implant. So he accepted them for a little while longer at least.

  That out of the way, Jay was up and at it. He pushed his body as hard as he could. More than anything he focused on durability. The five days dragged on and he felt lonely. It was strange to him that such a loner suffered so much without the company of other people.

  He realized though that it wasn’t just the company of other people that he missed. What he missed was the presence of those that he cared about. Foremost among those were his wives of course. But as he ran through the women of Team Jay he realized that he felt a connection to more than half of them.

  Given a different set of circumstances there were twenty-nine of the girls besides his wives that he would have been happy to have been in a long-term relationship with. It didn’t seem fair to them to try and fuse that many. After all there were only so many ways he could split his time, right? But for a guy who had trouble thinking any girl would like him, he was now starting to have thoughts about just how big of a harem he could build.

  Even though the days were lonely didn’t mean that they were non-productive. Jay kept the image of the Forlorn attack in the forefront of his mind. The damaged bodies of his wives, the fear on the faces of others, the crying of his children in the background. Those things allowed him to push himself at a level of an intensity that any professional athlete would have loved to achieve for an hour for a full twenty hours a day. The last four hours he set aside for sleep and eating.

  Just like he didn’t need much time to eat, he also didn’t need much time for sleep now. Why would he, when he was his own power source? Still he was just human enough to need the sleep to clear his buffers. So about three hours a day put him into a good state. He chuckled as he realized how happy that would make some of the girls.

  He didn’t achieve the same level of improvement that he had while modifying his body but he still gained two levels each day and double stat point gains due to the extra gravity. About eighty percent went to Durability and the rest to Metabolism. His Evolved Strength Forged Body shot up during the training too, so that it was nearing max level.

  Now though, he could sense that the field was about to come down. He was glad for the forethought to include several extra sizes of clothing in case he grew while training. At least he wouldn’t have to greet the girls in his birthday suit. He knew he was already going to be in for a bunch of questions about why he didn’t warn them ahead of time. Oh well, such was his cross to bear. The looks on their faces when they saw his improvements would be enough to make up for it.

  Chapter 26- The Show Must Go On

  Jay leapt up out of the pit to find an exhausted set of girls. Running their powers for thirty minutes straight had obviously been quite the strain on them, especially Madison and Daphne. Meikiyo and Mia were an exponential factor stronger than the other two and it showed. They looked tired, whereas the unfused girls looked like they needed to be carried.

  On a whim, Jay reached out his hand and grabbed Meikiyo’s. He smiled and said, “Trust me again, lover?”

  She replied, “You know I do, but that doesn’t mean that you will get off the hook for the way that you kept your plan from us.”

  He shrugged. If his training helped them to get free then he was willing to take the tongue lashing that went with it. Especially if it led to a little tongue lashing of his own. For now though he pushed some of his PSI into Meikiyo.

  It was much easier than when they had been fusing. Likely because he was just reestablishing a connection that had already been created. He did realize that this must be something like what the Bel’gi did. The distinction though was this was going to be a two-way street.

  As his power ran into Meikiyo, her hair and eyes burst into flame and her feet lifted off the ground till she was floating two feet in the air and could look him in the eye. His energy was magnified in her and rebounded back into him full of the vitality that was the fire of his lover.

  When he released her hand she drifted on the air currents for a few seconds before finally landing. The look of exhaustion that had been on her face was gone and she exuded vitality.

  “No, fair, I want that too,” Mia complained.

  “You are next, but I had already done it with Meikiyo so I thought it would be easiest to try with her again. This may feel a bit odd, but if you open yourself up to me then I think it will work. We are already fused after all,” Jay said.

  “You know how flexible my legs are. I’m always open to you,” she replied.

  Jay smiled but didn’t respond. He didn’t need to. His power did the speaking for him. The energ
y flowed from him into her. It was harder because he had to forge a connection. He pushed their channels together and Mia gushed, a low moan escaping her closed lips. Then they were one and his power was running through her.

  It resonated and was amplified. Her channels expanded to accommodate the surge of his power and together they were so much more than either of them alone. Unlike Meikiyo who manifested the power in her flames, Mia’s mind was expanded and she cried out, “I see the one behind it all. Cold. Numbers. A’snkarnt. Forlorn. And more. All dancing on strings. Tangled beyond tracing.”

  Then she collapsed to the ground. When she looked up all exhaustion had been wiped from her face. Just like her sister-wife she positively exuded life energy.