1% Lifesteal

The primary issue with what Sophia was doing was that it was localized. It was painful, but not enough to completely overwhelm him. It was a type of suffering that evaded the ability to acquire tolerance for it.

Still, the tiny jolts and occasional winces were barely even a reaction to what he was living through.

And Sophia clearly knew it. "I\'m… I\'m sorry," she said at one point.

"For what?" he asked, sucking air as he winced.

"When you told me about your past… I thought you were exaggerating," she confessed. "I\'ve… I\'ve witnessed this procedure being done to someone, and… yeah… you\'re tolerating it quite well."

"I\'m surprised. Just how much crap do they show the—ow!" he yelped. "—the people in the cult? Was this where you got the idea to do this?"

"Yeah," she confirmed, squeezing his calf with her thumb and finger to pull it down slightly. "Children are taught about everything, pretty much," she stated. "The cult prizes information and knowledge above all else."

"If anything, they got that right."

She nodded. "Anyway, the last time I saw this procedure, it was done to one of the toughest people I knew." She chuckled. "And he was screaming so bad they had to gag him."

"I don\'t get it," he said. "Why didn\'t they knock him out?"

She glanced at him momentarily, as if waiting for him to figure it out.

"Oh, yeah." He suddenly remembered what she was hinting at. That wouldn\'t be possible since the only reason she could even do this to him was because he was giving his consent.

The soul passively interfered with any essence that tried flowing into the body; thus, trying to forcefully inject it was a challenge. If that weren\'t the case, the mere touch of someone with the life affinity would be lethal.

For the next several hours, Sophia worked tirelessly on fixing the parts of his body that she found suboptimal. Every time she ran out of essence, she dove into the Netherecho, where Bloodshed usually awaited with a few vestiges it had hunted down. She would then kill those vestiges to replenish part of her essence and then continue the procedure.

Every time she did this, Freddy would spend his time stabbing his spark of undeath to continue healing.

Never in his life, up until that point, had he witnessed his talent be so ineffective. But that made sense. It would take quite the monstrous essence control and knowledge of human anatomy to scramble someone\'s cells like this without causing total carnage.

Sophia could relatively easily create the desired form, but as a consequence, she left behind a total mess of mangled tissue.

Thankfully, his talent successfully healed him into perfect shape, but only if she worked her magic symmetrically. She had tried altering only one side of his body, but that resulted in his healing reverting the changes to mirror his healthy side. It was a fascinating process, and surprisingly, despite the copious reading he\'d done on the subject, it was a phenomenon he\'d never seen mentioned anywhere.

Once they got into the swing of things, the procedure went smoothly.

Emboldened, Sophia worked on implementing more drastic changes: fatter, denser bones, thicker skin, tougher tendons, sturdier, more spread-out veins. She was even confident that, once she became more capable, she could reform his nervous system to enhance his mind-body connection, but alas, as she was, she could do no such thing.

She modified every single tendon insertion she could, drastically increasing the leverage his muscles had on his bones.

Both his hips and shoulders were widened, and his overall bone structure was altered.

If some muscles were too big, she cut them down, and if some were too small, either limited by his genetics or lack of focus during exercise, she made them more prominent.

According to her, there was no such thing as the perfect height for martial arts, so she kept it as it was.

By the end, their work had resulted in more changes than anticipated.

Freddy pulled out the machete and observed his body reflected in the metallic blade. He had to admit, the difference was immense.

His whole form looked more full and intimidating, with rippling, clean muscles and veins as thick as roots and plentiful as cobwebs covering his skin. The once uneven six-pack was now a polished ten-pack. He didn\'t even know that a ten-pack was possible. Where there used to be a wide gap in the middle of his chest was now a tight line drawing the separation between his nearly square pecs.

His neck was slightly shorter and as thick as a tree trunk; his feet, hands, ankles, and wrists were more prominent, and just from how he stood, he could tell that his entire form was far more stable. He looked firm yet agile. Strong yet dextrous. Deadly.

"Well," he said, unable to restrain himself from chuckling. "Fuck genetics, I guess." He marveled at his form. "Do we even need the steroids with a change like this?"

Sophia wiped the waterfall of sweat pouring down her brow. Her exhaustion was evident, and she struggled to speak through her tightening throat. "Check the…" she whispered between heavy breaths. "Just… try running around a bit, and let me know how you feel."

He nodded and did exactly that.

Instantly, he noticed that something was off. Very, very off.

It was as if all his acquired muscle memory had become thoroughly useless. He moved less like a person and more like a puppet on strings. It was impossible to even walk straight. "What the fuck!?" he shouted as he toppled to the ground. "What the hell is happening to me?"

She smirked. "Did you expect a new body… to be easy to use?" she asked rhetorically. "You\'ve spent your whole life in the old shape… it\'s only natural that you won\'t be used to it. Never mind that." She took a deep breath, coughing a bit. "You\'ll get used to it soon. I need you to tell me how you feel after that."

He swallowed a lump and nodded. For the next half hour, Sophia just focused on meditating. Her whole body was filled to the brim with rampant life essence from overusing her manipulation, and she had to settle herself and let it gradually evaporate.

In that short time, Freddy nearly suffered a panic attack thrice. Feeling like a stranger in his own body was profoundly uncomfortable, and it was almost as if a phantom image of his old form kept overlapping with the new physique he had to master.

But, as he kept fumbling, falling over, and getting up, that old image updated, and his body began listening to him. Slowly, he went from wildly swinging his limbs around to moving like a drunkard trying to swat a fly out of the air, and minutes later, although still quite slow, he could move relatively normally.

Reaching that point was a relief, but it was a short-lived one. It didn\'t take long to realize what Sophia was aiming at. "I get it," he said, sighing. "The muscles that were reduced in size are mostly working fine, but I can tell that the ones that were made bigger are much weaker now." He shared what he felt. "On top of that, every muscle that was altered in shape feels kind of loose, as if parts of it are softer than others."

"Figures," Sophia said as she opened her eyes and breathed out. "Also, although you probably can\'t tell, the altered parts of your bones are more brittle now. But both issues can be fixed with some training and steroids."

He looked at her with a conflicted expression. "Won\'t they ruin the balance again?" he asked. "You know, if my muscles grow and all that?"

"The balance is fine," she said, finally blinking the dazed look in her eyes away. "Your muscles will grow evenly, and I\'ve made you a bit smaller overall, so there is space for more tissue that won\'t cause any trouble." She walked over to him, inspecting his form. "Although now I\'m starting to think that even if the steroids cause a problem, your talent will probably make it go away."

"You think?" he asked.

"For sure," she answered confidently. "While it doesn\'t passively improve your body, it does remove any imperfections that are introduced."

That was, in theory, exactly how supreme-quality healing worked. But… neither of them had ever heard of anyone having access to this much supreme-quality healing, so it was no surprise that the theory had never been confirmed.

"Damn," he said, spitting on the ground nearby. "And all this time I\'ve been afraid of using steroids from fear of it making me too big."

"That can still happen if you overdo it," she interjected. "The healing quality doesn\'t know what\'s good for fighting. It only tackles the changes that directly hinder natural function. Basically, if you keep it reasonable, you\'ll be fine."

"Duly noted," he said, trying to salute her but hitting himself square in the eye instead. "Ow, fuck!"

Sophia giggled, finally straightening her posture. "All right." She clapped her hands. "Now we go to the next step," she said as she kicked him in the stomach, pushing him over to the ground.

"You fucking—" He groaned as he got back up. "You really are crazy, aren\'t you?"

"Feel free to hit me back. I won\'t get mad, I promise," she teased with a sneer. "If you can, that is."

"Challenge accepted," he said as he lunged at her—

And immediately tripped, falling face-first to the ground.

***

Jacob stepped forth, walking back to the central passage with his party following behind him.

They had all suffered quite drastic injuries and, after half a day of recovery, were doing well enough to return. Their condition was far from perfect, but they were ready to fight again.

Theodore ignored a throbbing headache as he continuously used his ocular ability to scout the area around them.

His vision zoomed in on details, and the contrast between different colors in his vision was as stark as the difference between night and day. If there was a camouflaged figure, his talent would spot their aura, but if traps were placed anywhere on the path, he had to spot them manually.

When they set off on their trip back to the lobby, they had hoped that the attack against their party was a one-off deal, a kill-squad sent to kneecap their team or to slaughter them altogether. But as they approached their target, those hopes became fainter by the second.

Nobody was there. They had made their way through several quite popular zones, and not seeing anyone walking down these paths was highly unusual.

The sickening notion that more of those assassins were running around and assaulting everyone settled in their gut, and Jacob\'s entire body was swimming in sweat.

It would be horrible news for his family if that were the case.

Most of his family members still living in this district were non-combat archhumans, with talented warriors mostly being sent off to work elsewhere or going off on their own.

As much as he hated his father sometimes, Jacob knew that the old man had the best interest of his children at heart and always gave them the right to choose what they wanted to do with their lives.

Jacob was one of the rare few who actually cared enough about his family to voluntarily stick around and establish himself locally. Few saw merit in doing that since Leonard would probably live forever, so it wasn\'t like someone would take the family business over any time soon.

In any case, a terrorist attack on this scale would suck for everyone. Starting from legal issues to financial trouble to reputation, they would take a massive hit depending on the scale.

Thankfully, he had seen no corpses anywhere yet, so he held onto the hope that everyone had already been evacuated—a hope that was… challenged once he spotted the massive crowd waiting outside the passage.

"What the hell…?" Theodore muttered. "Is the passage blocked?" he asked, and everyone looked over, spotting the shimmering, undulating barrier.

"Let\'s find out," Jacob said as he stepped forward. "Everyone, listen!" he shouted, drawing the attention of only a few people in front of him. The sound of the crowd arguing was too loud for his words to reach far. He scowled.

Jacob took a deep breath. Once he sucked in as much air as he could into his massive lungs, he roared with a deafening shout. "May I have your attention, please!?" he screamed as politely as he could manage.

His voice startled many, and some people even drew their weapons. But within a few seconds, the whole crowd was silenced.

"My name is Jacob Santorio!" he said. "I am the son of Leonard Santorio and the highest authority currently present on the matters of this realm," he asserted. "I need you to step aside so I can examine what\'s happening with the passage."

People shifted out of the way.

As soon as their party got a clear view, they walked forth.

Theodore glanced at the crowd around them, his heart beating in his chest. He feared what he would see there, but he couldn\'t force himself to not look. And, moments later, he spotted her.

Beatrice stood, her expression echoing with heartbreak, regret, and resentment as she stared back at him. Petra placed a hand on Beatrice\'s shoulder, comforting her, while Robert and Kyle, who stood behind her, shook their heads at him in disapproval.

His heart clenched, and he tore his gaze away, unable to stop his lips from twisting into a deep frown. "Who do you fuckers think you are?" he whispered into his chin.

They kept moving forward and soon made it to the shimmering barrier.

Jacob scowled. He pulled his fist back and threw a punch, empowering it with a Tectonic Strike. In one of the most explicit visual displays of how his talent functioned, a cobweb of cracks spread out from where his punch landed, but the same as it would be if he hit water, the damage disappeared immediately afterward. He prepared himself to throw another strike, this time with both stars activated, but someone stepped in.

"It\'s useless," a blond man with two nasty scars on his cheeks said. On his left, a woman with similar hair and a strong overall resemblance to the man stood, a large scar crossing through her left eye, the blue iris of which was paler than its counterpart. To their right, a man with a massive red mark on his head got off a small boulder and straightened his broad back, his brown hair trimmed short and his wide nose flaring.

All three were inordinately tall and muscular, with miscellaneous scars scattered throughout their bodies. The central figure—the blond man—stood at almost the same height as Jacob himself.

Jacob recognized them immediately. "Jack," he addressed the man in the middle. "Haven\'t seen you in a while. What\'s happening here?"

Jack scowled. "I don\'t know. We returned here only half an hour ago, and this is what we found," he shared, broadly gesturing at the scene around them.

Jacob breathed deeply. "Shit. I guess everyone tried themselves against this thing, then?"

"Yes," he said. "Some people still haven\'t given up on cracking it, but I can tell it won\'t be going down easily."

"Mmmh," Jacob hummed displeasurably, gritting his teeth. "What do you see? Any hope?"

"I\'m afraid we\'re powerless," Jack said, scowling at the barrier. "The energy that holds the barrier active is turbulent by default, and anything short of a single attack powerful enough to break through won\'t do the job."

"What if I gave it everything I had?"

Jack\'s eyes narrowed. "Even if you went double-star at it, stacked every boost and blessing we have available, the most you\'d achieve is blowing your arm up."

"Fuck!" Jacob shouted, punching the barrier in frustration. He sighed deeply and turned to Jack. "Did you spot anyone suspicious around—" His words were interrupted by the sound of someone shouting.

The shouting got worse as the two groups turned to face the commotion.

Over every boulder and from behind every tree around them, figures in black cloaks emerged.