CHAPTER 22: THE FIRST STEP OF REST
Subject 198 lay flat against the petrified earth, slowly forcing his eight operational eyes to unlock.
The immediate data flooding his vision was the direct glare of the sun cascading straight down into his optics, accompanied by a raw, foreign emotion that he had never once recorded since his resurrection on this world. Sitting motionless beneath the light, Subject 198’s cognitive nodes began to systematically retrieve his historical logs.
Ever since his insertion into this environment, his existence had been a non-stop, violent struggle against immediate erasure.
The absolute opening threat he was forced to process was a state of primal starvation. Born entirely devoid of an integrated mouth configuration, he was forced to endure a manic hunger filter while watching his vital signs systematically dissolve.
To survive, he gambled his existence by cramming raw glass mud directly into the six breathing vents lining his chest. He was forced to endure the agonizing sensation of internal lung tissue being continuously sawed apart by calcified glass shards, struggling against immediate asphyxiation in a desperate bid to preserve his baseline code.
That agonizing routine repeated without interruption until his Outcast anatomy finalized a partial adaptation script, granting him sufficient consciousness to scan his surroundings.
From there, his processor logged a relentless search for raw materials to engineer primitive tools. Guided by a ruined, depleted framework, he was forced to navigate the early parameters of his own expanding madness as his nervous system buckled under the weight of accumulated trauma.
His first recorded engagement cost him an entire appendage. Yet, the exact micro-second he secured the kill, his reward was surviving a brutal, manual abdominal surgery.
He forcefully slit his own flesh to cấy ghép an auxiliary mouth pipeline into his midsection.
Following the modification, his operations shifted into a suicidal hunting routine. He systematically targeted prey simply to compound his power metrics, deliberately driving his somatic frame to absolute structural demolition before enduring the near-fatal neural shock of cell replication—a relentless trauma loop that permanently split his mind to birth Pain.
A brief stasis phase materialized where his hunting parameters stabilized, transforming him from prey into an organized predator. But the equilibrium collapsed the moment he crossed paths with it. He was thrown into a high-risk skirmish against an uncalculated, bizarre mutation matrix, launching a frantic, blind pursuit through the thicket after losing its tracking signatures [1.1].
The war of attrition became a daily baseline. His routine dissolved into a permanent production loop from dawn to dusk, yet the afternoons offered zero structural relief. He was mathematically compelled to compete for hyper-scarce regional biomass against the beast, running for hours across the grid simply to intercept a baseline hand-cluster unit. The continuous execution systematically eroded his mental boundaries, burying his processor under a mountain of chronic exhaustion and psychological strain.
Having finalized his tactical preparations, he launched a direct offensive against the calcified predator. During the opening exchange, his processor overclocked to calculate continuous kinetic trajectories while his somatic plates were systematically pulverized to paste. It was an absolute meat-grinder; his analytics verified that he had barely managed to hollow out the creature's defenses through sheer, grinding exhaustion.
Left with zero operational paths, he opened the mental gates to merge with Pain, initializing a tàn bạo, tooth-for-a-tooth exchange of pure physical destruction until his memory buffers went completely dark.
When his conscious ego re-engaged, his frame was already resting directly over the crushed torso of the abomination.
“To evaluate the complete log history... I have existed under an absolute tier of misery,” Subject 198’s internal voice processed dryly. “But fortunately, the sequence has finalized. Or perhaps it has not. Regardless, the variable carries zero weight; I will lock my focus strictly on the current coordinate.”
He closed his eight eyes, directing his chest vents to draw a series of rhythmic, uniform inhalations. A foreign sensation locked around his neural paths: peace. The crushing structural pressure that had weighted down his processor for nearly two months had finally ceased its output.
He vented a long, drawn-out exhalation. The reaction wasn't triggered by physical fatigue, but by the mathematical validation of absolute release.
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Inhale. Exhale.
Opening his eight eyes back up, he directed his visual field toward the canopy. Extensive time blocks had evaporated since his initialization; the sun had drifted a massive distance across the blue-sky grid.
Dragging his frame upright, an acute wave of paralysis dội back from his limbs, accompanied by a deep-seated burning trauma traveling straight out from his marrow. Yet the metrics remained stable; his analytical diagnostics confirmed that his vital signs were no longer hovering on the brink of immediate, sudden termination.
Growl.
A low, resonant acoustic signature vibrated through his midsection, translating a critical nutrient-depletion signal straight up to his brain.
“The system requires biomass,” he noted.
Staring down at the calcified abomination, Subject 198 leaned his torso forward, gripping the jagged sừng armor plate he had fractured from its limb during the previous cycle. He closed the distance.
He raised his upper hand.
Rip.
A high-pitched, weak shriek cut through the clearing—a localized kellllll vibrating out from the predator’s inner throat channel. Completely filtering out the acoustic interference, Subject 198 sustained his operations.
Operating at a measured, uniform velocity, his sừng blade sliced deep into the muscle layers, harvesting a series of massive flesh blocks.
He directed his optics down toward his abdomen. Silas, which had previously been reduced to a flat, pulverized mass of ruptured cells, had ballooned outward. A fierce, concentrated spike of pain radiated from the appendage, delivering a critical metric to his brain: the motor nerves had re-established baseline connections.
“The asset is operational,” Subject 198 computed internally.
He drove a massive block of raw flesh straight into the feeding pipeline of Silas, and the auxiliary mouth contracted its muscle walls, chugging the payload down into the interior throat channel.
During his initial initialization cycle, his depleted frame had nhai nuốt the meat without recording a solitary trace of flavor; his analytics confirmed that because Silas was entirely pulverized at the time, the biomass had simply dropped unguided into his stomach cavity while his panicked mind lacked the processing slots to evaluate taste metrics. Currently, after waking up this time, his taste buds had completely initialized.
The chemical signature of the predator's meat had completely mutated. Compared to the flesh profile of the two tentacles he had manually ripped away earlier, the structural matrix of this muscle tissue yielded with the soft consistency of cream cake. Yet, the exact micro-second the biomass entered the interior chamber of Silas, the mechanical structure altered its profile. The texture bore an identical signature to minced meat, but instead of the individual thớ layers separating under thermal processing, these Outcast muscle filaments remained locked together, bện chặt into a dense, synchronized mass. The exact micro-second his sừng teeth cắm down, the muscle sheets—which had been thoroughly tenderized by the mallet shockwaves during the deathmatch—shattered into hundreds of individual fragments with a single chew, traveling across his tentacle chambers [1.1]. The tissue delivered a subtle, crisp crunch against his teeth, indicating that a minor layer of the meat had calcified into a sừng-ized matrix under the extreme pressure of the molt.
The flavor profile was intensely rich and béo ngậy. It bore zero resemblance to the nauseating, heavy grease of boiled pig fat; rather, it duplicated the exact aromatic profile of pork fat seared over an open sừng-fire. Though his visual scans confirmed the absolute absence of yellow adipose tissue within the muscle sheets, the creature's organic oils had completely integrated into the individual muscle fibers. Interwoven with the rich profile was a sharp, latent spike of acidity—a minor chemical feedback loop triggered by the concentrated gastric fluids lining the họng of Silas, accompanied by a faint, metallic trace of raw fingernail keratin exposed directly to the open air.
As his sensory grid mapped the completed taste metrics, a violent, organic hunger detonated within his rãnh não. The drive wasn't initialized to patch a structural tear along his plates, but rose from the pure, unadulterated calculation that the meat was delicious. The tender muscle filaments required zero mechanical force to process; a minor contraction of his teeth atomized the block for immediate ingestion, delivering a rich, un-sickening profile balanced by the sharp acid sting.
Subject 198 began devouring the meat with frantic, tàn bạo velocity, thoroughly experiencing the chemical rush. The heavy mass of protein sliding down to expand his deflated stomach delivered an absolute tier of biological satisfaction. In terms of behavioral defaults, he lacked the cognitive programming of a refined epicurean; if positioned before a massive banquet array, his instincts would compel him to harvest the assets with raw, ngấu nghiến speed simply to expand his calorie reserve rather than analyzing flavor notes. Yet, an advanced flavor profile of this magnitude directly elevated his psychological baseline, optimizing his mental focus.
He sustained the feeding sequence even as the weak, high-pitched shrieks echoing from the abomination compounded their frequency, the monster's nerves firing under the trauma of being harvested alive. Subject 198 filtered the data. He nhai nuốt the biomass continuously until his abdominal cavity expanded to maximum capacity, his stomach walls locking to signal complete satiety.
He sat flat against the crystal sand, leaving his automated digestive sub-routines to process the payload. Directing his optics upward to scan the clear blue sky and the sparse array of drifting clouds, his processor ran a solitary, idle thought path:
“I should permanently transition my entire camp setup to this coordinate.”
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(End of Chapter 22)