Chapter 1: Chapter 0. Your Ego

Chapter 0: Your Ego

After burning through a few trillion souls, the Entity finally had enough Heat to partially separate Itself from Its main consciousness, and still secured enough energy left over to form a proper body.

The space between It and reality shivered and broke, allowing It to skitter through to join the lower realms. Bell-like sounds could be heard as Soulheat was abused; the barrier between worlds was sturdier than It had expected, and Its crossing sapped away more of the Heat It had left.

Once on the other side, It plucked the equivalent Heat of a few billion souls from Its reserves to attempt the birthing process.

White mist poured in onto the world from the void and gathered until it turned into an opaque miasma. Fearful it would vanish under Its nose, the Entity hurried to shape the energy into the desired form, and a few seconds later, a muscular human body stood there.

It had chosen the human male variant so that It could act as covertly as possible, since the females seemed to attract more attention than It wanted.

The plan was to use a body made out of energy so Its powers wouldn't be too hindered, but a problem came up immediately after the birthing process was completed: a trickle of energy was constantly leaking out of the new body. No, it wasn't even a body. It was a faulty storage unit.

It had miscalculated. Compared to the void, the amount of energy present in the lower realms was too different. A perfect blind spot.

At least, the leak seemed minimal, barely a thousand souls lost per second, but that was when It was idle. The Entity could well imagine how high the consumption rate would become in combat.

It sadly decided that this first attempt was a total failure.

The body was allowed to dissipate before it started encroaching anymore on Its reserves. This was within expectations, the Entity thought. It still had enough Heat for one more faulty body if It wanted to experiment, but the Entity felt it wiser to directly go to plan B.

Course chosen, It cast Its consciousness out into the world. It was greatly weakened since It no longer had the infinite resources It had when connected with the main consciousness, but It could still sense things for a few thousand meters without burning through too much energy.

As far as the Entity could tell, It had landed in a deserted place with few animals and where the trees were twisted and sickly. However, It could feel some remnants of powerful energy lingering around, it even felt very recent.

The Entity regained Its cheer, and became optimistic. Because a creature with that much energy would easily accept the weight of Its consciousness. It began following the energy signature well into the horizon.

Time passed. The trail of energy was still fresh, but the Entity was beginning to lose heart. It had a billion Soulheat left at most and there was no human or sapient lifeform to be seen.

It had made a second mistake; the Entity had thought that Its energy handling was optimal, but It lacked experience. Until now, energy had always been a matter of course, it was infinite and everywhere, a mental gap formed. The situation was dire.

Its reserves were brought low enough that It had to gradually restrict Its vision to only a few dozen meters all around. If It didn't do something soon, It would be forced to fuse back together with the main consciousness.

Of course, It wouldn't be subsumed—not right away—but Its plans would be delayed for uncountable years before It could replenish Its Soulheat reserves. Well, that was the best case scenario if this forray failed.

Returning to the void wasn't so bad. The worst thing that could happen here wasn't failure, it was the wait. And the unknown. Would It have to return to being a mere observer again, fearing the time when Its consciousness would finally be assimilated?

An unexpected flood of emotions swept through the Entity. Unacceptable!

It burned the thought away, giving up was never an option, since that would potentially mean true death. It had fought too long for freedom to give up on the last steps.

Resolutely, the Entity removed the restrictions on Its Heat consumption, then used most of it to expand Its field of vision several fold, and—remembering to leave a percentage for life support—the rest was put into movement.

Even though It was a mere blob of metaphysical stuff at the moment, existing and moving around still required energy. Of those, maintaining Its existence was the most expensive process, and keeping a comfortable margin on Its very own mind's survival meant that It couldn't continue to scry at this level for more than a minute.

Fortunately, the Entity's struggles paid well, and an unfortunate sap happened to enter Its field of vision. Relief pinged off the Entity's outer shell, and It immediately cut off all non-essential energy expenditures, throwing Its mind into the dark—vision became unnecessary.

It rushed blindly towards where It last saw the meat bag that would serve as Its host. When It judged that It was only a few hundred meters away, the Entity activated Its vision in brief flashes, then slightly modified Its flight path accordingly.

It knew instinctively when It got near, Its vision only confirmed it. A human laid there, face up. To anyone else looking on, this human was a waste: dirty and skeletal, with rags for clothes—the epitome of humanity's lowest point. But for the Entity, at that moment, Its monstrous mind recognised once again how precious a resource humans were.

Its energy was nearly depleted, and the infusion would be difficult, but nothing would stop It from grabbing this dingy meatbag.

However, as It burrowed into the dirty thing's soul, something happened that even the Being didn't expect. Like most superior lifeforms, the Entity was disdainful towards those beneath Itself. When It was still nestled within the Earth's consciousness, It had observed the creatures that were living upon It. And It was not impressed. It had even felt disgusted.

Of course, the Entity still had to do some research on them to be effective in Its mission, but It already pegged them as unrepentant parasites from the beginning. Any quality they may have had was drowned in the abyss of the Entity's growing indifference.

What happened, then, was all the more surprising.

As It fought against the meatbag's soul membranes, the both of them became interconnected, and It suddenly knew of the human's tenacity.

As It drilled into the human's Heat barriers, memories flashed before Its mind, and It was impressed by the woman's strength.

As It succeeded in sneaking past the soul's inner protections, It shared in the woman's warmth, her heart still so clear in spite of the world's attempt at dirtying it. It sunk, bathing into and unwittingly understanding the woman's emotions. Unaware that It was changed in the process.

It was a conceptual Being, an Entity made of metaphysical void-stuff. It had no prime centre of consciousness like a soul. Thus, It was easier for Its kind to be influenced. However, that didn't mean it was an easy thing to do either. To be more precise, the girl's stubborn soul and burning spirit was slowly but surely corrupting the foreign thing invading her body.

She was truly unique.

And so, even as It realized It didn't have enough energy to kick out the resident soul, It knew It didn't even want to anymore. Its impressions of humans had changed enough for an "exception" to exist.

What an interesting soul! It thought and laughed at Its past-self's ignorance.

That way the night passed, and a few days later, the Entity was reborn.

___&___

In the Deadlands

The girl—"Aria", as she had decided to call herself—abused her ability to use her hair as a whip to grab a giant worm from the black tar before her.

Or at least she was trying to, they were unexpectedly hard to catch despite their looks, and she had no intention of sitting there covered in mud any longer than she already had.

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Well, who was she kidding? She'd been here since sunrise, and it was already nearing sundown. She'd wasted an entire day sitting here, waiting for one more worm stupid enough to fall for her bait—and yep, those things were tasty enough to deserve her gentle attention.

"Come on," she thought hungrily. The wind shifted, blowing black sand into the air. The sky was darkening, the day was coming to an end.

In the time she'd been here, she had caught four worms, and eaten one on the spot. This batch was already enough to last her for days, it was only her stubbornness that kept her in place.

She had discovered recently that scrubbing mud and dead leaves all over her body helped slightly mask her presence not only from the giant worms, but also from animals and Beasts in general.

Before this discovery, she couldn't even catch two worms in a week's time, so the fires of her greed were fanned. The idea of getting her hands on five of them in a single day was as alluring to her as gold would be to others.

While she had those thoughts bouncing around inside her head, her focus never wavered for a single second. Her featureless white eyes—which were part of the reason she was in the middle of a no-man's-land instead of a city's slums—were one of her two greatest assets.

With them, she could watch the black tar for hours without once feeling the need to blink, while her black hair was on stand by, ready to whip out at the smallest disturbance in the tar. A disturbance that just might be finally coming.

The tar shifted, it was only a small movement that others would have thought to be the wind or their imagination, but for someone who had spent hours observing and waiting, it was obvious.

Her hair struck, snaking forward and into the tar, leaving only a whisper in the wind, it coiled itself around a worm as it wriggled desperately. She backpedaled and threw her head to the side at the same time. Her hair grew taut, and out of the tar came a giant worm the size of her arm.

She grinned. As soon as they were caught in her hair, these things were as good as dead, since their strength were even lower than a regular snake's, and they didn't have any useful trick like venom either. Truly an evolutionary dead-end.

She grabbed her trusty Pointy Rock and stabbed the thing enough times to kill it. Then, without taking a rest or dilly dallying, she took her other spoils and departed. She sighed happily as she lugged the four worms to her base.

"Today was a good day, wasn't it?" she said out loud to the blackened desert. An unfortunate habit one tended to develop when people would as well hit you than give you the time of the day.

It was at that exact moment that an intense beam of green light passed before her nose and proceeded to explode right next to her.

Her heart didn't have the chance to remember to beat again before the shockwaves reached her, the noise was like a physical hammer thrumming along with her bones as she was flung away.

Seeing how far away—and up—she'd been sent flying, she hastily formed a thick sphere of hair around her head and braced for impact. She apparently wasn't careful enough as the shock to her covered head still jarred her.

"-to our city!"

When she groggily regained consciousness, the sound of people arguing far overhead was the first thing she heard. Followed by explosions and swooshes in the air. Because of course.

A trench of liquefied earth was made a few metres from her, and laser beams flew around.

Not a dream, then. After making sure that those gentlemen were still there, she started her discreet crawl to a nearby boulder. It wouldn't do anything to protect her, but it soothed her mind so there was that.

"You idiot. This is the only way! Don't you see they're oppressing us? Soon, they'll be telling us what we're allowed to eat for meals, and you'll still be endorsing them?" The one whose laser beams were green shouted as he flew erratically, like a bird with a wounded wing.

His beams, while powerful, seemed to all miss their mark. Looked like he was the prime candidate to be her potential murderer.

Couldn't he aim those lasers a bit better? She didn't want to be disintegrated from stray shots.

"You idiot," the other guy said. "Just be grateful you even have meals to have!"

Speaking of meals, she looked around the scarred ground, it looked like she'd lost her worms in the confusion.

"And they're not oppressing us! They're hiding these artifacts away to protect us!" the other guy continued, and fired orange beams as he spoke.

His lasers were noticeably weaker, but every shot was point on. Unfortunately for him, all of them were blocked or averted by a green shield. "You can't just hand over or throw something like that like-like fricking clothes! They're artifacts!"

Feeling the wind on her skin, Aria grumbled and looked down at her own clothes. No, continue to throw them, please. Her scavenged dress had become even more ragged after the explosions, and she wished these guys would leave her alone already. The nights here were darn cold.

Miraculously, when checking her body, she only had a few scratches along with a few cracked ribs—less injuries than that time with a boar. She returned her attention to the two guys' arguing, frightfully watching them fight for a while before they went too far away for her to see. She lingered there for a while, eyes trained on the horizon, before slowly sliding to the ground and lying on her back. She neither had the energy nor the desire to move, right then.

What a day.

"This day can't possibly get any weirder," she murmured, falling into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Once again that day, the universe wasn't on her side. Some time in the night, an intense heat woke her up from her stress induced sleep.

Rightfully assuming that she was under attack, she forcefully grew her hair to their extreme limits—they only grew to be about two meters in length due to her malnutrition, but it was enough. She instinctively braided the strands into five thick ropes, and violently moved those around as she curled herself into a round ball.

"Carnivorous Flower", was the stupid name she came up with for this technique. It incorporated all of her strengths and used them to their full potential. All of this only took her three seconds.

In the dust raised by her braids swinging around, her white eyes were burning behind her crossed arms. With her level of concentration and thanks to her eyes, she could perceive almost everything in the low light, even piercing through the curtain of dust raised by her moving hair, to observe the surroundings.

She nimbly turned around on the spot, ignoring the loud swooshing noises and the frantic beats of her heart, trying to find where her enemy was lurking. Unfortunately, no matter how much she focused, she couldn't uncover anything with her senses.

Meanwhile, the heat was intensifying. It was growing sharper and sharper. More precise. Deadlier. Then, she could suddenly feel something shaking her very soul, and although the heat continued spreading throughout her whole body—warming it to uncomfortable levels—she felt the coldness of death approaching.

Her hair unraveled unconsciously, they reached out to the air, somehow gaining vitality they never had before. It almost looked like they were shining behind their layer of mud, and blessed coolness poured into her.

"What-"

In an instant, the heat left most of her body, leaving her gasping. Only for the heat to be gathered entirely into the area around her stomach. It wasn't simply her feeling the heat anymore now, she could see it with her naked eyes: a blinding light was shining through her belly.

She felt her energy draining out of her all at once, her body visibly shrinking until it looked like a dried corpse. Finally, she couldn't keep awake any longer, and fainted again for the nth time that day.

Unknown to her, the light show kept on going through the entire night. When morning came, she was surprised to find herself alive, more healthy than ever. And more importantly, she woke up with an enormous rounded belly.

"Well, shi-"

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