CHAPTER 12: EXPANSION AND EDUCATION
After completing his new arsenal and resting for a brief moment, Subject 198 knew it was time to test his newly crafted weapons.Bringing along the Atlatl launcher, he took one of his spears, grasping it with the hand on his belly and wrapping it in a secure circle around his bloated waist. This was a mobility trick he had picked up during his previous timber-foraging climb; wrapping the shaft this way not only kept it from snagging while he moved, but it also stabilized his spine. Simultaneously, the wrapped spear applied a firm, binding pressure against his abdomen, supporting his core as it groaned under the collective strain of four upper limbs and the newly grafted belly appendage.Holding the weapon launcher in one hand, he used another hand to lift a separate spear, slotting its blunt end into the Atlatl peg. Gripping the hide-bound handle, he pulled the launching arm back as far as his memory dictated, stretching it to its absolute physical limit until his shoulder joints felt on the verge of dislocating. Reflexively twisting his hips, he locked his aim onto a nearby stone tree roughly twenty meters away. Subject 198 initiated a forward sprint, and in the same fluid motion, violently hurled the launcher forward.Whish!The spear rocketed forward at a monstrous velocity compared to a normal throw, flying so fast that it was practically a blur to the naked eye. The wooden shaft spun violently along its axis, driving precisely into a stone trunk, piercing a deep crater, and anchoring itself heavily within the petrified wood.Well, this was undeniably an excellent test. And it would have been even better if it had actually struck the tree he intended to hit, rather than the tree standing right next to it.Utterly dissatisfied with missing his target, Subject 198 walked over to retrieve his spears, attempting to repeat the process to familiarize his muscle memory with the weapon. Yet, the subsequent attempts remained deeply frustrating; even managing to strike the broad surface of a tree proved to be a grueling chore. Realizing that blindly forcing the same routine would not improve his accuracy, he stopped to analyze and optimize the process.The immediate problem lay with his eyes. Possessing eight eyes simultaneously granted him a massive, sweeping field of vision with zero blind spots, but the sheer volume of data constantly fractured his brain's attention span. It mirrored the exact visual matrix of an herbivore possessing horizontal pupils—panoramic, yet incapable of locking sharply onto a single coordinate.Subject 198 closed five of his eyes, leaving only the three front eyes open to observe. His vision improved instantly, but a subtle visual overlap still occurred between the three asymmetrical eyes, making it difficult to aim with precision. It felt akin to the vision of an ordinary human, but such a sensory limit was far from acceptable for an apex predator.He proceeded to shut two more eyes, leaving only a single, solitary eye open to focus. Indeed, though his field of vision was compressed to its absolute minimum, the trade-off was a massive spike in his kinetic perception and targeting matrix—exactly like the vertical slit pupils of a specialized nocturnal hunter. His pupil remained circular, but through sheer force of will, his bio-CPU brain systematically purged all peripheral distractions, isolating only the exact focal point he intended to strike.Feeling the bullseye locked into his perception, he unleashed his fourth spear—the final projectile before he would have to forage for his spent ammo again. The spear erupted forward with terrifying speed, forcing his single open eye to strain just to track its trajectory. The wooden shaft spiraled sharply through the air, violently impacting the tree; though it missed the exact center of his designated mark, it struck firmly on the left flank.This was still inadequate. If he was still missing a massive, stationary target like a stone tree, how could he hope to hit a monster shifting with erratic agility in the heat of battle?Subject 198 stood motionless, systematically simulating the throwing physics within his mind to dissect his mechanical failure. When thought alone failed to yield a solution, he decided to physically reenact the casting motion with his own body. Only then did he catch his mistake: he was twisting his hips with too much raw violence. The explosive hip rotation propelled the spear with massive force, but his unrefined muscle control caused the trajectory to swerve off-target.He tried again, this time closing his eyes to rigidly regulate the kinetic output of his hips. He launched the projectile; the spear flew perfectly straight, gămming into the wood directly adjacent to the bullseye. With this success, he established a concrete kinetic framework regarding the full-body transfer of force.Locking the visualization in his mind, he repeatedly simulated the optimized throwing posture within his neural network. Once the calculations stabilized, he initiated a live test. This time, instead of relying solely on the torque of his arm or lower back, Subject 198 engaged his entire anatomy: he executed a measured hip rotation, locked his lats, and subtly twisted his ankle to channel the ground force upward, funneling the entire kinetic chain directly into his throwing arm before whipping it forward.Thud!The velocity of this launch was significantly faster than his previous attempts, the fanged head biting deeply into the wood mere centimeters from the dead center. Yet, he immediately registered an algorithmic flaw with unnatural speed: the spear was flying perfectly flat without any gyroscopic stabilization. The lack of axial rotation caused the shaft to wobble slightly mid-air, making its path unstable and bleeding away its forward momentum.This time, Subject 198 channeled his absolute focus into his final spear. He initiated the kinetic chain: light hip rotation, locked back, ankle twist. The split second before releasing the shaft, he calculated the release angle instinctively, tightly squeezing his fingertips and executing a sharp, downward flick of his wrist at the precise moment of detachment. This sudden flick instantly generated a monstrous torque, causing the spear to spiral flawlessly along its axis as it shot forward.Thwack!The spear drove perfectly into the dead center of his target. Subject 198 opened all eight of his eyes, a profound rush of gratification surging through his mind. He walked over to the stone tree to reclaim his weapon. Upon closer inspection, the results were clear: though the trunk was as rigid as solid stone, the spiraling velocity of the fanged spear had bored a deep, hollow crater into the bark. The final projectile was anchored so deeply that he had to exert severe muscular force just to wrench it free from the petrified wood. The fanged head, constructed from the monster's reinforced teeth, had suffered zero damage from the impact.Subject 198 repeated this spiraling throw routine until his anatomy adapted to the motion. With each subsequent launch, his projectiles struck with machine-like consistency, his accuracy rating hovering closer to the absolute center with every single throw.Satisfied with his ranged tests, Subject 198 lifted his hybrid weapon—that bizarre, dual-purpose mallet-axe—to initiate close-quarters testing. Approaching a stone trunk, he drew upon his throwing physics, winding his torso before violently swinging the heavy weapon.Clang!The axe head instantly bit into the stone bark, jamming tightly into the wood. Subject 198 struggled to pull the blade free; the impact left behind a clean, linear row of deep punctures gouged into the trunk. Although the fused fangs were arranged in a curved arc around the mallet head, the weapon's impact physics weren't flawlessly unified, leaving tiny, jagged fractures along the cut. But for his purposes, it was more than sufficient.He decided to employ all three of his upper hands alongside his tentacle-limb Silas to scale the stone trees for lumber. Reaching a prominent upper branch, he began hacking relentlessly. Chop, chop, chop! He targeted the linear row of microscopic punctures he had scored earlier, carving a deep cleft into the hard wood. Patiently and systematically, after nearly an hour of exhausting manual labor, the petrified branch finally ruptured and crashed to the ground. It was a massive piece of timber, measuring nearly two meters in length.What was his objective in harvesting this timber? It was to secure raw materials in the immediate vicinity of his camp to rapidly expand his moss garden. You see, flexible wood was an exceedingly scarce resource in this environment. Although he had secured a substantial amount of flexible timber from the plains earlier, the young trees nearby would eventually be stripped clean; this was a finite asset that required strict conservation. This realization was exactly why he had engineered the linear row of fangs along the side of his mallet—turning it into an effective wood-cutting tool rather than a primitive weapon of war. This hybrid configuration was vastly more practical for his survival logic.The severed stone timber was monstrously heavy, easily exceeding a hundred pounds. Subject 198 had to employ all four of his arms just to hoist the massive payload back to his garden. Currently, his camp only housed a single, modest plot of cultivated moss. Tracking his internal timeline, it had been roughly ten days since he first seeded the garden. The growth rate of the artificial plot was astonishing; sustained by the wood mulch and blood grass nutrients, the glass-moss had expanded rapidly, completely carpet-bombing the small glass stones below. Noting that his initial harvest was ripe, he resolved to scale up the garden's parameters exponentially.Using his hybrid axe, he cleaved the two-meter timber into two equal segments, spending a substantial amount of time further splitting them into flat, uniform boards. He yielded eight coarse, jagged planks; they were unrefined and aesthetically crude, but fully functional. Following his previous construction protocol, he engineered three additional garden plots. The only variation this time was the material used for the overhead sunshields, which were constructed entirely from his newly harvested planks, and their mounting method. He used his axe to gouge deep mounting slots directly into the stone tree trunk near his camp, wedging the planks inside. He then commanded Silas, the tentacle-hand on his belly, to regurgitate his stomach acid into the joints to act as a chemical weld. The pH 0.5 acid had been pre-mixed within his belly with chewed blood grass; while the grass provided negligible caloric value, its fibrous pulp acted as a fast-setting binding agent for the melting timber. Working with feverish speed to secure the joints before the acid dissolved the wood into slag, he successfully expanded his territory by three full plots, stopping only when his supply of split moss was entirely exhausted.Right at this moment, a major breakthrough manifested within his anatomy. During the process of masticating the blood grass to prime the welds, he had reflexively swallowed a handful of the vegetation down into the newly grafted maw on his belly. He was astounded to perceive a faint, subtle trace of raw vitality radiating straight into his stomach. Ingesting the grass through the mouth located near his digestive core yielded only a minuscule amount of energy, but it was infinitely better than nothing. This anatomical discovery proved he could graze on the endless blood grass across the plains to sustain his baseline vitals if necessary. As for the defensive capabilities of his arm gauntlets and the overlapping bone plate shield protecting his twin hearts—resembling the medieval Lamellar armor of ancient warlords—he knew he would have to wait for actual combat to stress-test their structural integrity.By the fortieth day of his confinement, Subject 198 prepared a swift meal from his remaining reserves of raw monster flesh, refining his feeding algorithm through Silas. This was his third time ingesting raw tissue through this pathway, yet he felt absolutely no revulsion; instead, a soothing, mildly euphoric high drifted back to his brain.However, his tactical logic dictated that he could not afford to wait until his resources hit absolute zero before securing more food. His cultivated glass-moss reserves were entirely depleted from his heavy feeding cycles, his newly expanded plots required time to mature, and his remaining meat stash was reduced to a meager scrap—barely enough to carry him through a few hours. Subject 198 resolved to initiate a hunt immediately.He equipped his tactical loadout: three spears, with two shafts tightly clamped by Silas against his abdomen to lock his spine in place. Of his three upper limbs, one hand gripped his hybrid axe, another held the third spear to act as a balance strut to accelerate his forward movement, and his primary mạn sườn hand firmly held his Atlatl launcher.He scouted his previous hunting grounds but found the territory vacant. Subject 198 continued his tracking routine along the outer perimeter of the forest, utilizing all eight of his open eyes to scan the terrain for anomalies. He hunted systematically for nearly a full day, tracking from early morning until the noon sun cast its harsh, brownish glare across the landscape. Suddenly, his three front eyes locked onto a familiar handprint stamped into a stone tree trunk.Following the physical trail deeper into the boundary zone, Subject 198 finally caught sight of his target—a mid-day variant of the hand-cluster monster lổm ngổm crawling ahead, its body compact but moving with terrifying velocity.The second confrontation was about to begin. But this time, Subject 198 possessed an entirely different combat algorithm. He would engage and secure an absolute victory—completely devoid of the crippling trauma or manic self-mutilation of the past.
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