Book 5 Chapter 13.4 - Path
However, as long as there was this notion, then it could very well truly happen. Only, if that happened, this road of evolution would only take him even further away from what was human. Su chuckled bitterly, tossing these senseless worries to the back of his mind, entering the deepest state of sleep.
As Su's own consciousness entered a dormant state, his instincts began to completely take over. The remaining energy in his body continuously broke down, supplying those several hundred experiments and over a thousand processing cores' operation. The Heart of Darkness beated slowly but powerfully, sending energy out like a tide into every part of his body. However, the amount of energy required for such a large scale evolution was extremely terrifying, so the amount of energy the Heart of Darkness supplied unexpectedly only took up a third of the consumption. Even though Su already merged the Heart of Darkness with his body, he still only had access to a small portion of its functions, the amount of energy he could acquire from it limited. The heart's beating intensity was already at the limit, which was why his body began to instinctively transfer over all of his energy reserves for the current deciphering and evolution mission.
Whenever his body's instincts did anything, there would always be a clear order, and the increase of his fighting strength had always been the highest level of priority. Large amounts of heat energy spread from the surface of his body, continuously melting the ice and snow around him. This heat energy was completely wasted, and from his body instinct's perspective, this kind of waste was intolerable. This proved that the current evolutionary experiment's scale already seemed to have reached the limit of what his instincts could control, to the extent that it couldn't even be bothered to stop this loss of energy.
If one watched from the distance, they would see cracks suddenly appear on the smooth icy surface, and these cracks became more and more numerous, as well as more and more concentrated. Then, the center of the icy surface's cracks began to rupture, unexpectedly producing a blast of steam. The steam quickly cooled in midair, floating down, but the steam below the icy surface shot out in an unending manner, continuously dissolving and expanding the opening. The cracks on the surface of the icy surface became more and more numerous, and the steam below the snow shot out endlessly.
Several minutes later, the thick frozen surface suddenly caved in; turns out a snow pit had already appeared below the icy surface. The snow pit was still becoming larger, melting, gradually displaying a humanoid outline at the very bottom of the pit, finally revealing Su's sleeping body.
Snow and water continuously flowed, moving over Su's naked body, but it would then immediately be turned into a scorching steam, rising up to melt even more ice and snow.
An hour later, Su slowly opened his eyes. The first thing he felt was a world-covering hunger.
Right now, the boiling situation within Su's body had already pretty much calmed down, the over a thousand thinking centers in his brain only having a few dozen still operating; this was the minimum amount required to still move the body. The organ that surrounded Pandora's bone fragment was still working, but its activity already declined to a tenth of its peak. His heart maintained a pulse of one beat every two minutes, which was also his everyday standard.
Su's body temperature was currently sharply declining, quickly reaching around zero degrees. This was his normal body temperature during winter, the optimal point of equilibrium between maintaining mobility and minimizing energy waste. Even though his body temperature dropped, Su could still feel the cold. As a result, he stood up, and only then did he start to observe his surroundings.
Even though he had long anticipated something like this, when he saw this enormous snow crater that stretched for ten meters, Su still couldn't help but reveal a bitter smile. No wonder he was so hungry, turns out the large amount of high energy nutrients in his body had already been wiped out. It seemed like the evolution transformation this time truly was quite the battle. A large amount of energy was used up in the analysis and unraveling process, the amount that was actually used to create his own ability not much.
The things that were ultimately modified were the bone material for the modification of his bone blades and bone armor, and then the results of the analysis enabled modifications for the composition of his muscles and joints, granting him roughly 15% increase in power. All of the modifications were made with the goal of improving his short-term combat strength, as time no longer permitted Su to slowly improve himself.
He stood up, stretching out his already rigid body, several bone blades ejecting and withdrawing along the sides of his arms. The bone blades' shape didn't change, only, they now had a dark silver tint. Following his consciousness' command, his chest, lower abdomen and other vital areas, as well as his shoulders, arms, legs, knees and offensive areas displayed a dark silver-color over the skin. The bone granules under his skin had already been largely modified. When needed, protective bone armor could be produced in under a minute.
Su walked out from the snow pit, found the place where he placed his clothes, dressed himself, and then headed for the rendezvous point.
Right now, Madeline was sitting in front of the bonfire, looking like she was bored to death as she stared into the frolicking flames, unknown what she was thinking. Cirvanas's weak and frail little body was currently upright, dismembering the fishmen corpses. After extracting their areas of fat, he roasted these parts with magic fire until they were soft, and then he tossed them into the bonfire. This bonfire was created precisely from the fishmen's fat. This type of butchering dirty work was all left for Cirvanas to do. Using Madeline's words, the young man was the same as a piece of white paper, white to the point where there was no way he could survive in this era, so he had to be dyed black. As for the matter of dyeing black, she was but an expert.