Chapter 41: The First Illusion

I slipped through the backlines of the gathered bad-things. Cloaked by [Illusion Spark] as I was, I wasn’t even noticed. It was an agonizing sensation, sliding my length between the tiny gaps that existed amongst the tides of bad-things. I was forced to twist and contort my length, avoiding a leg here and a dripping mandible there. My mind rebelled, my scale-flesh feeling as if one thousand eyes examined it. Every so often, I felt phantom flashes of fire-pain, my strained imagination creating bad-dreams of those molten mandibles cutting through my scale-flesh.

They didn’t; it was only the ever-increasing fire-pain created from slithering so close by. Within the teeming mass of bad-things, I wasn’t able to release the heat that filled my scales. I was already filled to the brim, and the remaining heat turned into fire-pain that burned at my scale-flesh.

I ignored it, focusing on the wisping mana-light in front of me.

The disappearing corpses were getting closer.

My progress was slow; each time that a bad-thing twitched, beginning to turn in my direction, I was forced to freeze - to hold my breath, to pretend to be the stone itself. Even worse, as I slipped further into the crowd, the gaps through which I could slither thinned.

Whereas before they had been like the smallest of the small-tunnels, now they had become closer to wall-cracks; my scale-flesh rubbed against the hard-flesh of the bad-things, the walls closing in.

I prayed to the Great Core as I slithered along. Fortunately, the bad-things became more and more single-minded as I traveled inwards. They could scent-taste the blood of the injured Coreless, just as I could, and it drove them inwards. It pulled their attention away from the tiny stone-like snake in their midst.

It let me slither closer.

The fire-pain within my scale-flesh was growing. Little droplets of molten stone and heat kept spilling down on me as I moved; it had gathered along the floor, forming tiny puddles where the bad-things had passed.

And at this point, they had passed everywhere.

Still, I slithered closer. I was almost there.

My fangs dripped with that same fire-pain, adding to my agony. They dribbled with my anticipation. They gleamed with my fervor.

And finally, they scraped past flesh. I gulped down the first of the scavenged corpses with speed born of - I wasn’t afraid to admit this - terror. And then the next. And the next.

Every so often, I paused in the midst of my feast, freezing in place like one of the Great Core’s sacred slow-spots had formed itself around me. Praying desperately as a tide of bad-things scrambled over me, heedless of the enemy that was swallowing their fallen brethren.

I shifted my scale-flesh to match the red-black coloration of the bad-things, hiding myself in the shifting mass that they created. Spilling over one another as they were, I was unable to pretend to be the stone below - in fact, I could hardly even see it.

And so instead, I pretended to be one of them.

It wasn’t very convincing, but it was working; the far more obvious presence of the Coreless probably played a larger role than my own efforts.

Even to myself, there was a tantalizing scent-taste to their blood - one that was only growing in intensity. They were taking on more wounds by the moment. I hastened my efforts. The moment that they fell, I would be next.

Corpse after corpse was swallowed in a near-endless flurry, each shifting states and traveling to my head-scales. Soon enough, the thought-light flickered. I received my first reward.

Blooded Trait Upgrade Progress: 10/10

Blooded Trait Upgrade Received!

Blooded Trait: [Molten Bite I] Increased.

[Molten Bite II] Acquired.

Progress Towards Next Upgrade: 0/20

The heat-producing organ above my fangs shifted slightly. Fortunately, it didn’t grow any larger. Being beside my venom sacs as it was, I wasn’t sure how much larger it could actually grow.

Instead, it grew hotter.

The dribbles of molten heat that dropped through my fangs increased, lighting my tongue with growing fire-pain. I had begun to ignore the way that it seared my insides, growing accustomed to the slight fire-pain that [Molten Bite] caused; I couldn’t do that anymore.

The moment that the heat increased, so did my awareness of it.

I couldn’t help it - I released a gout of flame from my scale-flesh, emptying out most of my collected heat. The flame whooshed away from me in a great burst, its flickering tongues slipping through the tiny cracks between the mass of bad-things behind me.

That got their attention - or at least, the sudden silence behind me made me think so.

I twisted around slowly, twining my neck to look back.

Yep.

I was pretty sure that they had noticed me, now.

I gave a mournful hiss at the loss of my easy feast, throwing myself into the mass of bad-things before me, hoping that their bodies would block the bad-things that were coming from behind.

In contrast to before, I was less than stealthy.

I pushed through the mass of Flame Formicans with the same attitude as a stone-headed bad-thing that I had seen once - fast, unwavering, and unstoppable.

I wasn’t any of those things, but the bad-things that blocked me weren’t all that impressive individually either.

Buoyed by the speed of my arrival, I barged through the teeming mass, hiding myself within the similarly-colored bodies of their brethren. The harsh grating of mandibles on hard-flesh crashed around me as the two groups collided - one focused on the Coreless, the other focused on me.

Fortunately, the ones that were focused on the Coreless won out. They had been driven to a mindless frenzy by the battle, not that they had much of a mind to speak of in the first place. I could only imagine that lesser Cores created lesser minds, and the scene around me seemed to confirm it.

My continuing survival, especially - though some of that was due to my own efforts.

As I slithered through the gaps, I desperately focused on [Illusion Spark]. The air dimmed slightly around me as I sucked light in like a glutton, pulling it away from the numerous little droplets of molten fire that bubbled against the ground. For what I had planned - for what I needed to do, if I was going to survive - I would have to manage a state of constant absorption.

With so many sources around me, it might even be possible.

I flexed my mind, beckoning to the light, straining my range.

It answered, and the cavern began to dim.

Without even waiting for my reservoirs to fill, I got to work. Fortunately, I had more than enough examples to work off of.

I pressed against my limits further, pushing the illusion that I was creating away from my scale-flesh. It fought against my efforts to expand it; it was far harder than covering the trail of blood had been - and even that had been fairly difficult, despite being an admittedly poor attempt. All I had done was change its color.

This was shaping up to be far more.

I pulled at the fire-pain that nestled within [Molten Bite], putting the heat to use before it could give me away again. The heat and light collided under my will, shaping into the shades that I needed. Close enough, anyway.

My sides widened in my sight, pressing outward and becoming thicker - plated, heavy, and hard. Part of me mourned the change; the Great Core had designed me, not this disgusting thing. But it was necessary.

The image of my head-scales reshaped as my stores began to dwindle further, shifting from an elegant shape to one that was blunt and tipped with brutish mandibles. I went further, forming a close approximation of the molten stone that dripped from the bad-things.

It was far weaker, but I doubted that they’d notice.

No, if anything, they’d notice the other problems first. The way that my sides flickered occasionally and disappeared, flashing back into existence almost the same moment that it did so. The way that my colors were simply off, shifting in hue ever-so-slightly in every moment. The way that they pressed against me and through me, brushing against my scale-flesh in a way that should have been the end of me.

It was a difficult first effort, and it showed.

But when I reached another of the quickly dissipating corpses and consumed it untroubled, I realized that it might be enough for now.