Who am I?

What have I been doing?

Who can I trust?

Introspective questions like these had one thing in common. They sucked.

They haunted you in moments of vulnerability and doubt. They tore you apart when you woke up in the middle of the night, feeling alone and utterly perplexed about the direction your life was taking. They made you look back and scrutinize yourself, and no matter how much you wanted otherwise, you always ended up looking like a failure.

They scared you.

Rendered your nights sleepless.

And that went double for when you were trapped in an alien world, with your sole aide a goddess stuck in a pendant and occupying a portion of your mindspace. Especially after you’d been convinced to participate in some kind of tantric ritual that may involve killing a powerful beast and inviting its soul to live as your spiritual roommate.

Everyone wanted to become the Hulk, but nobody cared about the crap Bruce Banner dealt with.

And in hindsight, Lukas had acted no differently.

“If you are quite done moping,” Inanna declared, “there are greater things that demand your attention as we speak.”

“What greater things?” he groused. “I’m already facing one problem. Now you’re saying I’ve got more?”

“For an individual so obsessed with the pursuit of strength, you have little respect for change.”

Lukas scoffed. He didn’t hate change, per se. He was just a creature of habit.

Since he’d come to California, he was content with staying in the same one-apartment room for years. After the death of his single cat, he’d rejected all possibilities of future pets. His relationships suffered a similar fate after Emma. Even his personality— his idea of right versus wrong, his stubborn worldview emphasizing morality over pragmatic barbarism —had been a constant thorn in his side.

Notions that Inanna had tried, repeatedly, to disabuse him of.

The schema was no different. He may have been in a different world, with different laws and monsters straight out of fantasy and fiction, but at least he’d been able to identify himself as a ‘human from Earth’. No matter the surreal experiences he faced, no matter the power surging through his veins, he had never once shifted from that anchor point.

He was Lukas Aguilar. Human from Earth.

…

Well, apparently, not anymore.

Whatever this creepy ritual had done to him, it had made substantial alterations to his schema. According to the screen, his race wasn’t even Human anymore. Now, somehow, he’d become an anomaly.

Just like the one he’d been trying to escape from for the past couple of months.

He was a living, breathing anomaly. Lost inside another anomaly.

What did that even mean anyways? His arms were still there, and so were his legs and his eyes and his nose and his fingers. And most importantly, his precious family jewels. So why was he classified as an anomaly rather than a human?

“Is such a revelation truly beyond your comprehension, mortal?”

“I know what it means,” Lukas openly scowled. “We covered anomalies when you were explaining omphaloi to me for the first time. It radiates enough energy to mutate the environment around itself to create a world for its growth and protection. An anomaly.”

He looked down at his own body, slightly afraid that tiny fanged worms would burst out of his skin any second.

Nothing so far.

“So I had an Omphalos shard fusing with me, no thanks to you.” His face twisted with distaste. “And whatever this ritual did, it somehow activated the shard and now it’s a complete omphalos. Albeit… a smaller one?”

“A reasonable conclusion.”

“And since the shard’s in me, it’s treating my body as an anomaly?”

“Also correct.”

He rubbed his chin in thought. “So what activated the shard?”

“Several things could have led to this outcome.”

Lukas nodded, staring at Inanna expectedly.

She stared back, her face serene.

“Such as?” he pressed, realizing she wasn’t going to speak further.

The edges of her lips twitched just the slightest amount. “It is possible that the fusion between you and the shard is slow, but steady. It may have reached this point regardless of the circumstances.”

He could see that. From the very first moment he’d found himself in this anomaly, he had the Scan and Analyze functions at his beck and call. That, and a soul capacity threshold of 100. The partial fusion displayed a Level 1 back then, so maybe he’d have progressed to Level 2 had it run its natural course.

But it hadn’t.

Because it didn’t.

“Perhaps in the ritual, the khorkhoi’s overbearing Presence and Soul architecture attempted to displace your own as the Host of your body. The Omphalos simply acted to prevent such an occurrence from taking place.”

Lukas frowned. He’d defeated the khorkhoi monster, first with his own skills in the real world and then in the mindscape by channeling Inanna’s presence through him. The result had been a sacrifice to the goddess, but it had still ended things in his favor. Maybe the Omphalos had fused with him when he was on the losing side of the battle, and the changes persisted?

“What else?”

“Do you remember the basic function of an anomaly after creation?”

That was easy. “Killing existing beings and assimilating their soul architecture to—” Lukas paled, “—create monsters in order to protect itself. Do you think that’s what could have happened?”

“No, I am merely wasting my time telling you this bedtime story,” she snarked, before sobering. “Had the ritual been successful, you’d have added the khorkhoi’s soul to your own. A sigil representing the khorkhoi would appear on your body post-completion.”

Lukas craned his neck to look—

“There are none. I have checked.”

He couldn’t help it. “You were checking me out?” he grinned.

“I have had more beings warm my bed than you’ve interacted with in your lifetime,” came the cold rebuttal. “Nothing you can possibly boast of would impress me in the slightest.”

Lukas didn’t really know what to say to that. Clearing his throat, he did his best to move past the awkward moment. “So the Omphalos shard in me morphed into a complete, smaller version of itself and is now gathering monster DNA to add to its collection.” He waited for the terse nod. “How long do I have before I start sprouting worms out of my ass?”

A dismissive, but amused, snort reverberated throughout his mind.

“You ask in jest, mortal, but even I do not know the answer. Monsters are created to serve an anomaly, a stationary organism devoid of defensive or offensive traits. You, on the other hand, are a wildcard. An unprecedented situation, an outcome so unlikely that even Fate and Destiny could have ignored the possibility of your existence.”

Wonderful. So not even the all-knowing goddess knew what was happening to him. Lukas glanced at the substantially minimized soulscape once more.

His levels gained as a Human were now gone, replaced by Level 1 for the race Anomaly. Whatever the hell that meant. But even more eye-catching was his soul capacity, which had been in the upper three hundreds the last time he had it checked out. It was an impressive number, representing a solid growth from the mere hundred he’d started with.

Now, it was over fourteen thousand.

14,254 to be exact.

Even with the kind of growth rate he was having, even if he managed to push himself past Level 12 or so, he still wouldn’t have been able to hit those kinds of numbers. But now, because of a freak incident, a stroke of incredible luck— he didn’t know whether it was good or bad —he now possessed a value incomparable to what he had earlier.

What was the point of all that training and killing his way through the anomaly if the omphalos itself could just pour a veritable ocean of soul capacity into him for his disposal?

He considered the information again.

There was no mention of experience points. No threshold value to move to the next level either. Just a tremendously high value of Soul Capacity.

Which reminded him.

“Skills.”

From a quick glance, he didn’t seem to have lost anything. And on top of that, he even managed to gain a new skill.

“Protection from Mental Encroachment?” Lukas carefully read out. “Quite a mouthful. I wonder what it—”

“And what is mental pollution?”

External threats? “What about internal threats?”

Lukas rolled his eyes. He’d literally walked into that one with both eyes open. But for some reason, seeing that the Screen hadn’t lost its weird sense of humor made him feel much better. Like there was still a semblance of normalcy he could latch onto.

“Show Essence.”

A second window quickly replaced the first.

273 per hour. So that was the sudden rush of power he’d felt during the fight. Not to mention how he’d been able to constantly push out lifeforce without succumbing to sheer exhaustion. The number wasn’t astronomical, but it was still several times higher than what he originally had. That made it a plus in his book.

Lukas was worried at first, but overall, the picture the schema painted was far from grim.

Enhanced capacity. Enhanced production rate. An outrageous soul capacity.

The math was pretty simple.

Fear me, Crypt of Fiendish Worms, he cackled inwardly. I’m coming to violate you.

“Show me what you’ve got on the Omphalos.”

Lukas blinked. “What’s a Legacy protocol?”

Briefly, he remembered something along those lines popping up in his head during his giant mindscape battle, but he’d been too busy with the khorkhoi at the time to follow up on it.

The screen came to his rescue.

His eyes twitched. Had this thing just called him an amateur?

“But there weren’t any protocols before this. So why now?”

An empty window greeted him.

“Specific questions, Aguilar,” he berated himself, pinching the bridge of his nose. “What was the previous protocol?”

Inanna snorted. Loudly.

Well if nothing else, Lukas noted wryly, I now have a fair idea of what happened.

He focused back onto the information, nothing how practically everything about the Omphalos had changed. The last time he’d checked his schema, it had been described as a shard, with something about fragmentation and partial fusion tossed into there.

Now though…

“Give me more information on each Skill.”

Running his hand through his locks, Lukas took a step back. “All right,” he exhaled, pausing to gather his words. “This is good. Fascinating, really, but happened with the ritual? The khorkhoi I… absorbed?”

A blank window answered his response.

“I swear this thing is just messing with me,” he muttered under his breath. He tried again. “Give me information on my…” he eyed the information in his newest skills, “monster prototypes.”

This time the results were far more useful.

Lukas blinked.

Then blinked again.

He knew that a monster as big and scary as the khorkhoi would boast of interesting skills, so that was expected. What he hadn’t estimated was the sheer soul capacity said skills would eat up. Hell, the Regeneration skill alone would’ve drained his entire available soul capacity had the ritual proceeded regularly, without interference from his Omphalos shard.

“That is incorrect,” Inanna jumped in, eager to point out flaws in his knowledge. “Your schema would have reduced them to appropriate levels in order to allow the addition of the entire skill set.”

“So I’d have gained weaker versions of each skill,” Lukas translated.

“Had things progressed the normal way.”

He glanced at his schema. “And what about now?”

The phrase ‘Monster Prototype’ seemed like it was taunting him. Like there was something important hidden from him in plain sight. Here, listed in a similar format to his own, were the khorkhoi’s skills. And yet, they were a part of the Prototype.

They belonged to the Omphalos within his body.

Not to him.

“What happens if I choose to activate these powers?”

“The monster takes over, rampages in your body, and attracts the attention of every single predator in this anomaly that intends to kill you.”

Lukas stared at Inanna in horror.

“More or less,” she smiled.

He was not a fan of that outcome, or the way his resident goddess casually attempted deadpan humor. Frankly, the whole thing came off as frightening rather than comedic, though whether that was because of who said it or what was being said was yet to be seen.

“I suppose it would be good for a change,” the goddess continued with a smile. “Pity it takes a monster to control this body for my Host to gain some nerve.”

“Don’t think I don’t realize you’re mocking me,” Lukas frowned.

“You’re meant to.”

Ignoring her peals of laughter, Lukas did his best not to sulk as he turned his eyes back to the schema. The Monster Prototype had listed four different skills under its banner, with each of them consuming incredible amounts of soul capacity to begin with. He assumed they each had incredible effects to go along with such costs.

After all the efforts he went through, it sucked that he didn’t actually want to use any of his gains.

“It is arrogant of you to assume you possess such a choice, mortal. As it stands, you will need every iota of power you can muster.”

Her words sent a chill down his spine.

And naturally, that was exactly when things went to shit.

[ [ [ WAAANNNCHHHHHHHHH! ] ] ]

A sudden blow of terrible power and disorientation hit him like a train, sending him careening across the cavern. He couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t sense which way was up or down. Static filled his vision, a constant high-pitched tone ringing in his ears. Lukas would’ve compared it with being near Ground Zero of an explosion, but it was much louder and more dangerous than that. He could feel it slam against the vaults of his mind— emotions so intense, so violent, that it would tear his sanity into pieces if he allowed it in.

The screeching stopped as soon as it began. But the damage was done.

Lukas dropped to his knees, his eyes bulging and his heart beating in a frenzy. His head throbbed and he panted like he’d just outrun an army of khorkhoi.

“What…” he gulped, “the hell was that?”

“That was the sound of a predator.” Inanna’s voice did nothing to quell his growing unease. “The hallowed protector. It has woken up, identifying a genuine threat to his home. A thief, one who has stolen a soul from its progenitor.”

He really didn’t like the sound of that. No sir, not at all.

“Wait, thief?” Lukas asked, visibly confused.

“You cannot possibly be that dim,” the goddess sighed. “You assimilated the creature’s soul into your omphalos. Where did it come from?”

“But—”

“It appears the khorkhoi you consumed was relevant enough for this anomaly to care. And now, the Crypt of Fiendish Worms wants its monster back.”

“But why now?” he pressed. “If it was really after me, wouldn’t it have come for me instantly after the ritual was complete?”

“Do not fret, mortal,” Inanna replied. If anything, her tone was even smugger now. “You shall soon receive a chance to satiate your curiosity. After all…”

She smiled, even though there was no humor in her words.

“The greatest of its monsters are now coming for you.”