The snake girl lies on a mat of patch worked furs. Her rough breathing uneven and rushed, puffs and hisses.

“While our village was strong, I could make the herbs and the curatives for her, as she grew, her mouth also became wounded and I treated it as well, with a poultice. But now we don’t have any ”

‘How do we steal the potions on the dragons nest?’

There are none. Only trinkets.

‘Let’s make a healing magic ring.’

If the gods find out, they will kill her too just to be sure. And how would that work? What would it heal, you know how to make a reverse mutation ring? There’s no such thing on the system.

“herbs to spare,”

‘Herbs what herbs?’

They are not as useful as the villagers think. I’m trying to figure out how to sterilize her wounds.

“and it’s not safe to send anyone to harvest them. I can only hope they will heal natural with what we gave them, fed with the meat that caused us so much trouble. The poor girl…”

“What are the herbs?”

Already considered that. The poultices on her are barely enough to prevent them from festering, it is her vitality status that is too low, I think. If we power level her she might get better with raw stamina and vitality. I just can’t figure out how to get a full recovery though.

“There are three main salves, Hura-”

I have the list if you wanna waste our time.

‘I’m panicking.’

Thank big head it is physically impossible for us to panic. Listen, let’s smash down the tigers come back real quick, bring her over and have her give the final blow.

‘Look at her! How do we get her to give a final blow? Besides, I’m not leaving a beast agonizing on the floor to help someone else.’

There are knockout herbs on the way, just force-feed it to them. Or we can shock them into unconsciousness.

“Actually I can tell by looking at the herbs. Thank you. I will be back soon.”

‘Aren’t there monsters closer by?’

Yeah, but much weaker and with less exp gain.

‘Let’s beat up the dragon.’

Too much collateral damage. The guys here are either too conscious and constitute murder, too strong or too fast so we can’t beat them, or too weak and not worth the time. The tigers average level is 30, there is a level 20 giant mantis here we could bring to her right now. Everything else, including other mantis, that can’t flee from us give 1% of the experience from the tigers, all of them combined. She won’t suffer if we run with her on our arms if we can get her vitality to 40, her penalized vitality will then be 10 and, though she won’t wake up, she will no longer have trouble breathing and moving her around won’t hurt her like it does now.

‘Yeah, we are really slow compared to those who can call up magic by instinct, we could catch up eventually but it would take too long. Such a shame, maxed up tech, high capacity and creative interfacing with electronics, self repairing skin I could lend to another android but not a single function for helping an organic.’

Me is mumbling and I’m trying to figure out what a full recovery is. I leave the village and run towards the mantis, thankfully my lack of courtesy is seen as devotion but this is an isolated village so yeah I’m overthinking. It would be bad if they doubted our intentions, but I guess this is fine, the clothing was not that good of an idea.

Uncomfortable with my new coat, I avoid the trees on the way, doing little acrobatics and sidesteps. I could rush right through them but it would ruin the gifted fur cloak, the floor is too soft and the trees full of life.

The heaven mantis was perched on a high vine, it’s lower half and pincers camouflaged against the sky and foliage. Thinking itself invisible I can take it down from the vines easily.

I jump and in a single motion grab it with both hands by the torso. It is slightly bigger than I am and i almost snapped its head accidentally because of its weight, sent a last second heads up to correct the grab. Its claws turn backwards and break hitting my skin, it hurts like a scratch that didn’t cause any damage. Its struggle doesn’t stop until I bring it over to the few mushrooms that act as bait.

‘This is your last trip, buddy.’

With a single cap the size of my palm forced against its mouth, the mantis went ahead to the next world at least in mind. Its limbs weakened into spasmic submission.

Great, now we just need to bring this to the village. With experience, I throw it over my shoulders and running is a lot more tricky, but I can foresee all collisions so this is cakewalk. A few steps on the way back I decide on the final tool. There are old dragon scales here. Long, harder than steel, fits on her hand, and we can sharpen it against ourselves. Perfect finishing blow knife, marked the one in the best condition for you.

One arm keeping the high in heaven mantis over me, I crouch brushing away bone and vegetation to grab the scale in best shape among the ones here. Back to my feet i leisurely wave the scale against my abs exposed by the cloak.

“Dayum!”

‘By the way this is so weird, it’s good our sense of urgency is mechanical now. It feels like years since we’ve been there. What do you want me to bet for the sense of urgency? ’

Full control of an eye.

‘I guess it’s that important…’

The way back is uneventful but I realize the vine the mantis was on together with the mushrooms make for a powerful knockout if used as a whip. The smashed mushrooms spread over the vine to react and liberate decaying spores into the air, anything below hmm. 80 vitality I think, is out cold if they breathe it.

‘How much vitality would an adult human being from. Earth have?’

Enhanced? About 10 is a healthy adult, 20 should be the cybs and 40 the gens.

‘What’s her vitality?’

6 penalized to 1 from genetic dimorphism.

I was already going at full speed so there wasn’t much else to do. We fought our anxieties away but it wasn’t as fun. We arrived in the village taking care to show the mantis was alive but unmoving.

“Y-you will perform the initiation? B-but-”

I don’t pay attention to the shaman who seems confused and afraid. I drop the mantis on the ground and the startled warriors point their spears at it, hissing. It seems it is quite the hated foe.

I ask a nurse to carry the girl outside. He gently takes her into his arms very precisely, his forearm carefully holding her upper body while all the lifting strength is on the arm under her lower half.

With the girl still on his arms, I take her hand and have her grab the sharpened dragon scale. Her lithe hand doesn’t object or resist, her scales smooth and cold like a porcelain doll. I hold it firmly in her hands, but it is clear this frail hand will break if I try to have it penetrate the chitin.

I measure for a while until I'm sure I won't be killing it, and with 5 chops I could crack open the mantis. But that would make most of the XP go to me, so instead I mark a path to its brain and, taking the scale from her hand, force it in between its flamboyant eyes. I can see every atom, so I stop before there's critical damage and leave it there.

I take her palm into mine, place it over the base of the scale and with a push it's over.

“Wh-what about the ceremony and the rituals?”

‘?’

Just ignore him.

What is instantaneous to them, to me are months of anxious expectation.

‘The ground is irrelevant,

Of the trees I'm indignant!

Their foliage nothing but

Dry scraped green limbo

Strewn across the earth

With its endless irrelevant

Blown losses unearthed, yet!

Cowardly won't take a stand.

Did the strike hit, does the blow achieve its goals?

Tell me, tell me damn it! What is patience if not a bloody tool?

I don't know, and I don't want to feel calm or better, I just want her to.’

And it should be here now. Any moment. Now. Any second. No-

‘YEAH! Level 12 and her vitality is 8 under penalty… what does this even mean?’

We got around a third of the experience, but the rest all went to her.

It means she will live longer but suffer all the same. Let’s go get those tigers, but first tell them to barbecue the mantis meat real fast and feed it to her. Her body won’t really match her status until she is fed with mana rich food and sleeps.

‘Sleep she has plenty, thankfully.’

“I need you to cook the meat of this mantis over the fire and feed it to her, can you?”

The nurse is bewildered, but accepts with a silent bow. It seems the scout who ran away had arrived and went along with the welcoming spirit, but the shaman is only getting more suspicious. What I’m doing to help required some complicated coming of age celebration, it’s all just for show, and he didn’t know that. The chief is submissive after I arrive unarmed and uninjured from bringing a live mantis with my bare hands.

Open up the carapace first, they will have trouble getting through it, also do take out the legs to be cooked like crab legs. This mantis is very meaty, she will only eat it’s cooked brains and chest muscles to be full health.

‘She will be at full health, so I assume her maximum health is under penalty too?’

Yeah, that is part of the vitality penalty.

Grabbing two vines, I run towards a bunch of mushrooms where i just mash them together and spread them over the parts of the vines I will hit the tigers nose with. This time things felt like they were going faster, full control of an eye is so nostalgic... and alien.

“Here I am! Fight me!”

I can send you the sound archive of the growl equivalent of that to them?

‘We can speak to animals?’

Yeah.

‘Can we tell them to sacrifice the older ones, so we can save a little girl?’

They don’t have a language, they can understand challenges, cries for help, danger and stuff like that. If they had sentience closer to human level I wouldn’t kill them for food and experience.

“RAUrghhhA”

‘That resounded nicely.’

Yeah, we challenged all of them to a territorial dispute over the whole plains.

‘By the way, I don’t know how to aim with a whip. Server request(“Whip arts 101”)’

There’s no martial arts here bro. Just whip it and follow the statistics that show up, they will hit most of the time.

‘What do you mean by “follow the statistics”? There're no arrows or anything.’

…

‘Can you add the vines to the simulation?’

Yeah, wh-!?!? WE CAN DO LITERALLY ANYTHING HERE. I mean, Including learning, I knew we could do anything I just didn’t realize it included learning.

‘As slow as ever, huh.’

Learning to whip a vine by whipping myself with it. Not myself as I am me and he is another i. That’s weird and sounds even more depraved since I have an imaginary friend to play S&M with. I don’t really want to do this anymore.

Here are models of the tiger bears, they have almost the same movement patterns. Only nose hits will bring them down painlessly. Good luck.

Throw me a bone here, how do I do all these movements and techniques, can’t you render them in real time to me?

In real time yeah, in simulated time no. Relax, you have years to figure it out.

‘Is this how a circus tamer feels? hmm, can you decrease the definition of the tigers?’

You mean make them low poly animations? Or straight gray block whose legs don’t move?

‘Gray block please. Did you even think about what it would mean to hit the fat cats for years? Weren’t you always annoying me with this kind of thing?’

What, but they aren’t even alive. The live ones we will hit and down in a humane way, these are just models with a movement pattern.

‘But they look exactly like the real thing.’

Get on with it. They are charging at us right now if you somehow forgot their lumbering ire.

It doesn’t take long before every swing scores a nose hit on the gray blocks. I say nose but it looks more like a giant drill head.

The ground they cover in bear steps draw them closer, but slowly and heavily so. They aren't good at dodging and we make good use of that. With a swing for every snout, the fat tigers are all downed and sleeping after surprised roars of loss.

MagicKing

Rewriting and rethinking slowed this down buuut i think this is solid and i won't have to edit it any further. (right, right e.e'?)