Museum Core Chapter 93: Ultimate Synergy

Mythic Spirit Bond: Lernean Hydra

The Legend of the Lernean Hydra now empowers you, granting the following benefits:

- Primordial Regeneration (constantly heal when injured, even repairing things a normal human would not be able to recover from)

- Toxic Blood (your blood will damage your enemies, and only your enemies, upon contact, blood will lose all toxicity after two minutes unless alchemically preserved, toggleable)

- Payback (upon healing from (cumulatively) lethal damage, you gain a five percent boost to all stats, for a maximum boost of 25%, will fall off over the course of 24h after conclusion of battle)

- Serpentine Flexibility (become much more flexible, capable of bending both your joints and spine in extreme ways without suffering damage to either them or any internal organs that may be squished in abnormal ways)

- Aquatic Adaptation (breathe, move, and fight as easily underwater as on land)

Jaclyn’s grin spread wider and wider. Yeah, this was something she could take on The Hunger with.

Regeneration was perfect, Toxic Blood was a lot less prone to collateral damage than she’d feared, and Aquatic Adaptation would seriously help in the Mangrove Swamp.

Serpentine Flexibility was also really cool.

And Payback … a twenty-five percent increase in all stats was overpowered as all get out, obviously, but getting there would hurt. And it was temporary to boot.

But it would still give her a quarter again her stats, which, considering her current status as a C-Rank, would be a truly monstrous boost. Enough to decide any fight against a previously equal opponent in her favor, assuming she lived long enough to activate it all. And that things worked as advertized.

As for her status screen, well … she grinned. For some reason, seeing numbers going up just hit that “be happy” button in the human brain, and she was all here for it.

Name: Jaclyn Abrams

Race: Human

Class: Anima Monk

D-Rank, Level 9/20 -> C-Rank, Level 1/20

Class Abilities

Spirit Bond: Honey Badger (F-Rank)

Spirit Projection (E-Rank)

Ancient Bond: Haast’s Eagle (D-Rank)

Mythic Bond: Lernean Hydra (C-Rank)

Statistics (0 points available) 75

Body: 235 -> 360

Magic: 15 -> 40

Mind: 154 -> 254

Spirit: 235 -> 360

Skills

Pugilism 37 -> 40

Fist of the Indomitable Badger 38 -> 40

Athletics 36 -> 40

Situational Awareness 34 -> 40

Bullshit Radar 29 -> 33

Martial Arts 38 -> 40

Alternate Skill Set (currently inactive, switch available)

Mana Control 10 -> 13

Utility Magic 12 -> 15

Ballance 15 -> 16

Breathing 11 -> 12

Inspect 15 -> 16

Movement 7 -> 10

***

Everything was getting along nicely, though her various martial arts skills had run into some kind wall at level 40.

Although at the same time, it did remind her of a discussion that had happened in the PM’s office that she most likely hadn’t been supposed to overhear.

Apparently, C-Rankers were considered national assets of the same level of importance as nuclear warheads.

But that was an issue for later. Right, she had powers to try out.

***

Her world was sound, muted yet amplified, the noise carried by the air blotted out entirely and replaced by the slopping of water against stone, vibrations of distant tube cars rattling through the underground, of trucks running over potholes, of ships plowing through the distant ocean.

Jaclyn’s eyes flashed open, staring through water that was surprisingly not an impediment to her vision, glancing at the diver’s watch on her left wrist.

Ten minutes.

That was how long she’d been down here, breathing … well … entirely normally.

So, that was one thing settled.

She kicked off the ground, ascending ten meters in an instant, her head erupting up through the surface along with most of her torso.

Whooops … a little too much power. But clearly, it worked.

Next thing to try … swimming. Tossing away the carefully optimized forms she’d learned over the course of her life turned out to be easier than expected, pushed away in favor of what suddenly came naturally to her.

One moment, Jaclyn was floating at the top of the water, the next she found herself kissing the bottom of the pool normally used by the scuba division of the fire department so quickly that she’d barely even had enough time to register how she was swimming.

But something else did get noticed.

Manifestation type “Serpent Mermaid” registered

What the … had Spirit Projection triggered to help things along?

Either way, Jaclyn decided to try this again, using a more familiar, controlled, mode of swimming to give her the greatest possible travel distance to give her the best chance to get a grip on herself.

… it still took her four more tries. She should have tried this in the ocean, shouldn’t she?

Yet in the end, Jaclyn managed to figure it out, it was some kind of bizarre version of the dolphin, with her moving from side to side rather than up and down, only the manifestation of a serpentine lower body making that actually viable. But it did work.

And with that under control, she finally began to experiment with “fighting” underwater, punching and kicking at the empty pool, attacking foes that only existed in her mind.

A grin manifested itself on Jaclyn’s face, growing wider and wider with every passing second.

This was what it had to feel like to have Pugilism maxed out at Level 50.

All these rapid movements should have destabilized her, sent her tumbling through the water, flayling and cursing, but she was rock solid, stable as though she’d glued her feet down upon an imaginary surface that always sat wherever she needed it to be.

Not to mention that she was barely losing any momentum by punching through liquid, the energy only really got transferred at the point where she pulled her attacks short.

It was only when she was starting to realize just how much of a mess her movements were making up above that she stopped. Looking up, she saw that the surface was actually almost a full meter closer, and all that water was likely outside the pool at present.

Whoops …

Jaclyn kicked off the ground and swam skywards only to suddenly find herself rocketing toward the ceiling, too fast to stop. Her wings snapped open at the last possible second, bringing her up short, reducing the impact from something that would have reduced the ceiling panel to scrap metal to one that merely left a sizeable dent, which she sheepishly fixed with a quick application of a mending spell, which came easier than ever.

Should she invest more into Magic, if the mere 25 points she’d gained by reaching C-Rank had made this much of a difference?

Nah.

As cool as spellcasting was, her entire build and fighting style revolved around her fists. Spending free Stat points anywhere else was just plain wasteful.

And now, there were just two things she could easily test.

First, flexibility. Stretching and doing basic yoga, bending and folding herself in ways that would have likely nauseated anyone who saw her. Exceedingly useful, but limited in useability since maintaining a proper stance and throwing all her physical strength behind her attacks limited how she could move.

And second, regeneration.

It should have been easy to test. Make a small injury, something that wouldn’t hinder/risk her, then watch it heal.

In practice … how the fuck was she supposed to inflict a “small injury?”

She’d tried to use her claws, but they were too blunt. Great for concentrating the force of her punches, but not sharp enough to just cut. And punching herself with her claws out just plain wasn’t happening.

Jaclyn was about to go looking for someone to help when she finally realized she did have something that should do the trick.

Gnashing her teeth into the air a couple of times summoned the giant badger’s head and allowed her to start controlling the beast’s movements, then slowly inched her hand closer, until the barest bit of skin on her pinky was clenched between two spectral canines.

Jaclyn briefly hesitated, then bit down.

There was a brief flash of pain, more like a paper cut than anything else, then an emerald drop of blood appeared, fat and practically glistening with toxic power, only to start to fall.

She immediately suppressed the toxic aspect, and it became crimson mid-fall, splattering across the sopping wet tile like … like any normal drop of blood shed in the bath.

But her focus was on the ragged cut across the side of her finger, which was rapidly closing at a visible rate, until it had vanished in its entirety after maybe fifteen seconds.

She grinned. Okay, that was cool. But was her stomach growling from the energy required for healing, or just because she’d been exercising for several hours?

***

Jaclyn let out a happy little sigh as she leaned back on the roof, empty takeaway box of fish and chips on her lap, still faintly smelling of vinegar and brown sauce,  half-full can of Guinness lightly held in her left hand.

Things truly were crazy, weren’t they?

She’d tried to find the BPA building’s roof access, but as her food had been getting cold and her beer warm, she’d decided to take the direct way. She hadn’t even had to fly up anymore, she’d been able to easily make it to the top of a four-storey building with a simple jump.

And now, she was staring into the sunset, simply taking it all in. Processing. Because somehow, her newfound aquatic powers were almost more shocking than everything else.

When she’d gained the ability to fly, it had been like a switch had been flipped. Sure, learning to stay aloft had taken some practice, several crashes, and thoroughly ruined several patches of grass she’d crash-landed in, but the ability had been gained the instant she’d selected her power.

When she’d gained her strength and durability, it had been a slow process. “Pick a superpower to get chucked into the green hell in the heart of London with” was basically what her instructions had felt like at the time. And when she’d then driven into what might have been her death, she’d still initially focused and relied upon her gun. The ability to punch through tigers and tear apart dinosaurs with her bare hands had come later, and it had come incrementally.

Swimming … swimming was different.

She hadn’t exactly been a bad swimmer before, she’d gotten most of the various “aquatic rescue” certifications that were advisable for a police officer to have. After all, while that kind of thing was usually the job of the fire department to deal with, if someone wound up in the drink, sometimes, the right people weren’t close enough.

But she hadn’t really swum in months, and the last time had been a fairly low-key affair at the pool while Eve had her own swimming lessons.

To go from that to what had happened earlier … it had certainly been a shock to the senses.

Swimming normally and then bang, able to outpace a speed boat at the drop of a hat, capable of leaping further out of the water than any other living being, and generally becoming as much a creature of the water as she was of the air. And wasn’t that a trippy realization.

Jaclyn briefly glanced down at the beer can in her hand and considered whether to go back for more, and perhaps see if she could still get buzzed by consuming normal alcohol.

… you know, for science.

But she almost immediately dismissed the idea.

For one, between her newly increased toughness and innate resistance to poison, her stomach would probably burst before she ever felt it, even if she ignored how quickly she would have to drink to outpace her newly acquired regeneration.

Although with how durable she was, rupturing something in her digestive track was highly unlikely to happen, no matter how much she ate/drank, though whatever happened instead was no doubt going to be unpleasant. If she were stupid enough to make the attempt, she’d deserve whatever she got.

But there was also the entirely separate concern of what she’d do if it worked, and she left everyone else to deal with an inebriated C-Ranker who’d just downed God only knew how many pints in a mad attempt at getting properly sloshed, doubtlessly throwing any semblance of control into the wind in the process.

And even on the off chance that that went even remotely well, it’d probably do quite the number on her reputation.

So yes … not going to happen. Jaclyn squashed the can with a simple flex of her hand, then folded the top and bottom bits together and crushed those into a tiny ball almost perfectly sized to be used to play table tennis with, though not exactly well-shaped.

It was a small display of her strength, but it still felt impactful. Like she’d suddenly been able to do something she couldn’t before, certainly not without cutting her palms on the sharp pieces of metal that began to protrude as the metal deformed.

Hopefully, the Hunger would go down as easily.