Re:Mimic [MONSTER MC LITRPG]

Chapter 43: Meditations.


"Crash?"

Due to Lucas' abrupt burst of negative emotions, Crash finally disconnected from the domain core and spoke to him.

"I just failed to figure out the final Rune…"

"(╯︵╰,)"

Lucas just shook his head and tried to change the topic. It was not something to be depressed over. Life goes on.

"So what's up? Has the domain core told you anything useful?"

Crash paused for a moment as if to gauge how it should respond. Lucas could sense that whatever the domain core and Crash had been communicating, it had not been in a language he could comprehend. He didn't bother to cut in all this while since the Rune was kicking his ass.

"Crash."

Lucas frowned at that answer.

"It's better if I just see it?"

"Crash. Crash."

"I just don't like when it's messing with my mind. But if you say it can really help, I trust you."

"d(★ω★)b"

Shaking his head with a soft smile, Lucas turned his attention to the tree and said out loud.

"Crash says you can help me?"

The domain core didn't respond with words but rather actions. It extended two of its lower branches to Lucas and hovered them over him. Though the tree didn't talk, Lucas could always interpret its intent. It was quite the mystical form of communication.

"You can link with me. Just… don't do anything weird, okay?"

The tree's branches just swayed playfully as its lower branches wrapped around Lucas' form. Turning him into a packaged killing machine, ready for delivery.

'?!?!'

"Crash…"

Sensing Lucas' panic, Crash did his best to soothe him. Lucas' panic immediately became fury.

'Why didn't you tell me before?!'

"¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯"

"Damn it, Crash."

Exasperated, Lucas turned his attention back to the tree. It was gently coaxing his Mind to gain access. In a weird way, Lucas found it cute.

"Okay okay, do your thing."

Excitedly, the tree's power sank into Lucas' Psyche once more. This time it didn't show him parts of the cavern. Rather, his consciousness was beamed to a random part of the cavern. He immediately noticed something was wrong because his senses were much weaker, in fact he had only two senses; touch and hearing.

With his experience from his earlier days, this change didn't really fluster him. After observing his surroundings for a little while he tried to slink forward.

Squelch.

Lucas immediately recognized that squelching sound. His now gelatinous form rippled as he thought.

"I'm a slime now?"

Before he could think further on it, he heard a periodic clicking sound heading directly for him.

"Oh shit, it's a beetle!"

Unfortunately, even though Lucas could tell what he was facing, his senses were too poor to make out how far it was. Given his current form, escaping wasn't an option either.

"Fuck it, we fight."

Bracing himself, his Mind went into overdrive as he picked up on every minute shift in the air and the sounds of the surroundings. The air howled as the beetle charged in, mandibles spread wide.

Lucas slinked to the side with all his might while trying to mobilize his Spirit energy.

BOOM!

The beetle missed its attack but was undeterred as it swiftly positioned itself for further attacks.

'Seriously?'

Sensing the minuscule amount of Spirit energy he had in this form, he almost gave up entirely. But that despair soon turned to rage.

'You think you can bully me because I'm weak? Fuck you!'

As the beetle charged at Lucas, he galvanized his Spirit energy and lunged at the beetle as well. He form glowed pure white as he launched a suicidal attack right out of the gate.

Bang.

The collision was muted as beetle smashed straight through Lucas, splattering his gelatinous form all over the cavern floor. With a sharp gasp, Lucas woke up in his body once more, feeling a little light headed.

"What just happened?"

"Crash crash. ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ"

Lucas raised an eyebrow as he asked'

"How is that training? I just got obliterated by that beetle!"

"(✖╭╮✖) ... *・。゚☆*:。*BOOF*。:*☆゚。・* \_(ツ)_/"

"Ohhh yeah, you're right! I can use this to level up my [Adaptive Resonance]. Crash, you're a genius!"

"Crash. (¬‿¬ )✧"

Lucas laughed at that.

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"Haha. Don't get too full of yourself though. We still have a lot to do. My Physique has recovered to 4 but that's still very far from 5 Physique in combat."

"(•̀ᴗ•́)و"

"Yeah, let's get to work. But before that, what should I call the domain core…"

Recalling the figure of the domain lord, Lucas decided on a name.

"Let's go with Pike. Okay Pike, let's try that again."

The domain core obliged and beamed Lucas' consciousness away into another form, this time into a crimson rat. Even though his senses were much better this time, he was swiftly dispatched by a centipede. What greeted him when he woke up was the sweet chime of a notification.

{Congratulations, [Adaptive Resonance] has leveled up to level 2. Keep up.}

"Nice!"

Lucas was about to keep going but Crash hastily brought his attention is a very obvious problem he hadn't noticed yet.

"Crash!"

Touching his face, he felt warm blood on his paw. He chuckled as he said.

"Okay okay, I will give it a rest. I can just practice the transformations I have learned."

With a soft hum of affirmation, Crash agreed and let Lucas be. Lucas' days of training went on like this. Pike would beam him across the cavern into random life forms. He would then participate in manic battles where life and death was settled in less than five moves. When he reached his mental limits, he would stop and try to physically transform into whatever he had possessed.

With his [Adaptive Resonance] and Mind at 4 points, he could easily transform into these creatures and understand their internal frameworks.

The influence of his Mind in this set up could not be underestimated. It gave him almost perfect memory and his mental processing speeds were completely superhuman. When you factored in the subtler aspects like strengthening his Will, resolve, and many other things, Lucas was blazing through his transformations.

With each new transformation he acquired, the more refined his physical form became. Originally, he looked somewhat wolfish but after two days or so, he looked completely unrecognizable.

He had lost all his fur in favor of beautiful white scales. Clawed hands had become proper digitigrade claws. Tails were now much more muscular and sharper at their edges. His overall stature had become bigger as well as he now stood about 2 meters on all fours and almost 12 meters in length thanks to his long tails.

His head had also become much more muscular with a sharp and more prominent snout. His eyes were slightly protruding and oval in shape. Each eye had three eyes lids with varying transparency and bony ridges that protected them.

His formerly wisp like pupils had reverted back to a more natural shape being white vertical slits with a back drop of deep crimson irises. Taking a closer look, it seemed like his pupil was vibrating, almost struggling to escape its fixed shape as its edges writhed unpredictably.

Down at his mouth, it was now filled with sharp, serrated rows of canines at the front while at the back he had two rows of crushing molars.

His ears had become large, rotatable, and were covered in scales. Topping it all off with slits for nostrils that let out puffs of steam every thirty seconds or so, his appearance was quite terrifying.

He just sat beneath the domain core lazily with his tails gently swaying in the cavern's stale air. He sat as he reminisced about the recent creature he had possessed.

'So that's how those crickets jump so fast… the mechanisms are actually so simple but I never thought of them. Well, it's more like I previously couldn't understand such concepts. Simple doesn't mean easy after all.'

Having possessed a cricket for a few hours before his Mind started failing him, he had learned quite a bit about muscle and tendons in terms of storing energy.

'I should be able to apply all of these to my tendons, as for my muscles, it just needs a few tweaks. The hydrologic systems in them should be more than enough. What needs an over haul, are my joints. They're too few.'

Thinking to this point, he opened the skill description of [Adaptive Resonance]. Something about the skill had been bugging him.

{[Adaptive Resonance] – An advanced ability that lets the user attune themselves to external influences, allowing synchronization with environmental conditions, objects, and even hostile energies.}

'It seems it can be leveled up rapidly by doing extreme things. Like resonating with the air to move with almost zero friction.'

Thinking back on the fight with the domain lord, Lucas wore a ferocious yet bemused smile.

'It's not like I even understood what I was doing at the time, I just did it to survive. But now that I'm fully conscious, tapping into that state is very difficult and not to mention painful as hell. And given my crippled Physique, I would rather not risk it.'

Shaking his head, he brought his focus back to transformating his body. What he had in mind was rather simple… at least to the current him.

He planned to add two extra joints to his four legs and twelve in each of his tails. Thanks to his Mind, he could remember his human biology lessons in perfect detail and now understood what he was trying to improve and enhance.

"I guess school wasn't that useless after all. Now, Let's augment my bones first."

With a plan in mind, he began cycling his Life energy through his blood stream. This was another thing he figured out recently. Circulating his energy in such a manner supercharged his physical ability considerably faster and gave a bigger improvement than just coating himself in it.

He focused this Life energy in his appendages and willed it to extend his ultra dense bones, causing his limbs to grow an extra 30 centimeters. Between his shoulders and elbows, elbows and ankles, new joints developed. Like the two already in place, they could perform almost 360° of rotation.

After securely padding them with cartilage, he moved on to his ligaments and tendons. Since he had already built a robust framework to work with, all he had to do was add to and alter some existing connections and he would be good to go.

After about five minutes or so, he was done. He had also layered some muscles on the new joints for finer and more explosive movements. Standing to his feet, he spoke out loud. His voice was now extremely deep and low, like the sound of rolling thunder.

"I'm heading out, Pike. If anything weird happens in the cavern, inform me."

Boom!

Not waiting for a response, Lucas shot away from the village like a bullet. Leaving behind the eternally waving tree.

Thanks to his current form and [Beyond the Flesh], he blitzed through the cavern like a white flash. His eyes were protected by two eyelids while his ears were retracted.

Feeling his muscles and blood heating up due to his absurd pace, he released a deep breath. Bellows of steam were unleashed from his nose, mouth, and dozens of strategically developed orifices around his body.

Thankfully, he relied of his [Spirit Sense] to guide his movements as his velocity climbed so high he could barely keep track of things with his sight alone.

'Okay, that's enough of a warm up. Let's push harder!'

CRACK!—BOOM!

Cycling his Life energy through his blood stream, his scales shimmered as he became a ray for crimson light. His velocity picked up dramatically as he shattered the sound barrier.

Lucas' eyes burned with a sanguine light as his excitement peaked, this is what he has always been looking for—freedom!

Streaked by multiple cavern inhabitants, who couldn't even sense him. The only trace of his presence the blast of wind in his wake. In less than thirty seconds, the cloud emitted from Lucas' pores went from white to reddish-pink.

This queued Lucas to begin the deceleration process or he would risk injuring himself further. It took him almost three seconds to safely manage his momentum back to a standstill. When he finally stopped, he ignored his surroundings and fell into thought.

"Can't I decelerate faster? Biologically, I have explored every option available to me so I can bare the strain. The main issue is control. If I can't control my movements fluidly in a fight, I'm dead meat."

Lucas' eyes narrowed as he thought of a solution. A few moments later, an enticing idea came to his mind.

"What if I could reverse the effect of the Lightening Rune and make myself heavier for a brief instant? Sure, it would subject me to much higher g forces but it would also make me stop much quicker…"

Just as he was nodding to himself and was about to head back, and image flashed into his mind. It was of a humanoid wearing pristine, deep black armor.

The armor had an innumerable amount of crimson Runes, crisscrossing its elegant form in carefully orchestrated spots. The figure didn't wear any head gear, letting their crimson tainted black hair free, and exposing the world to their suffocating beauty.

Suddenly, the figure looked straight at Lucas before the image cut off.

Its indifferent gaze filled Lucas with something he hadn't felt in quite a while, bone chilling dread.

"Strong…"

That's the only word that could describe that humanoid. Lucas instinctively knew that's humanoid was much stronger than him. It wasn't even up for discussion, it was a fact. But Lucas knew their clash was inevitable as well.

"Pike, where is that creature right now?"

Pike gave Lucas a sense of its precise location at Lucas' question.

"Crash! (ง'̀-'́)ง"

"Don't worry buddy, I don't plan to lose. Let's go!"

With that, Lucas became a crimson blur as he rushed forward. Though his instincts told him to run away as fast as possible, he willed himself forward. Determined to shape his own fate. Whether he was a lizard or a dragon, it would be proven right here and right now.

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