I Can Copy And Evolve Talents

Chapter 1394  A Grotesque Creativity

On the northern side of the mountain, where dark mist flowed and shrouded everything despite the radiant daystar that sat high in the sky, an obsidian tower stretched out of the blackness and pointed to the heavens. Right beside it stood another tower, one that felt out of place but at the same time looked structurally acceptable to what a tower should be. Where the obsidian one looked like something that had sprouted from hell itself, the one standing in stark contrast next to it looked like it had been crafted by the most ingenious of human hands.

It truly was an irony, that thing.

In the Trammel Tower, Northern stood with Revant, Annette, Raven, Sael, and Vida positioned behind him.

Woods crawled out of Northern’s hand like living vines and wrapped themselves around the white hairy beast that laid on the raised platform.

The beast was beaten and battered but still breathing, its belly slowly rising and falling. The brown vines crawled over Mr Fluffy’s body and wilted, and as they did, more vines crawled over and wilted too. The cycle continued and Northern had to commit more essence to keep the healing going.

Mr Fluffy’s breath continued shallowly.

It took a while. Everyone stood silently behind him and did nothing.

They had tried their best to heal Mr Fluffy before this, but it was to no avail. The nature of the wound made it nearly impossible. The beast’s organs had somehow disappeared out of existence within its body, without ever being pulled out, and the ones that remained were barely enough to keep it alive. In fact, there should have been no reason why the beast was still breathing at all. That it was could only be considered a miracle.

But there was Northern, and Northern had spent hours using Braham’s talent to regrow every single one of Mr Fluffy’s organs.

To no avail.

The beast was dying faster than it was healing. This had Northern nervous. He had resorted to this even before the war room meeting, sending a clone in his place instead. It had been over seven hours since then. After the meeting concluded, he had withdrawn all of his clones, funneling every drop of essence into this creature alone.

Braham’s talent embodied the concept of using soul essence to fuel the healing power of nature, and Northern had thought it would be the best method to regrow Mr Fluffy’s organs.

But the beast was truly running out of time.

At some point, Northern requested privacy. Everyone silently left the room, and he stood alone with Mr Fluffy.

It looked like his best buddy might die.

And it would be Rughsbourgh’s fault.

Northern clenched his fist so tightly that it trembled. Cracks exploded through the walls and ceiling, and the room looked like it was going to burst from the pressure it was having to contain.

People outside looked at the trembling walls with worry etched across their faces.

But Northern got a hold of himself and heaved a deep sigh.

‘This is not the time to get angry…’

Instead, he fixed his gaze on Mr Fluffy’s body. Revant had helped preserve him by shrouding him in ice, keeping him frozen. That alone had kept Mr Fluffy alive this long.

But all of it was going to be for naught if the organs were not recreating fast enough.

[Perhaps you’re using the wrong method]

‘No Aoi… I’m not going to kill him.’

[I’m not asking you to]

‘Then what’s your suggestion?’

[You have a blueprint of every part of that creature. You’ve analyzed him a thousand times over. Stop trying to make his body do the work — your abilities were literally designed to rebuild what’s broken. Use Infinite Iteration. And if there’s nothing left to iterate… then give him something of yours to start from.]

Northern’s eyes narrowed slightly.

‘Something of mine…’

He looked down at his own hands. Then at Mr Fluffy’s still form. The blueprint of the beast existed in his mind with perfect clarity, every bone, every muscle, every organ mapped down to how it functioned. Basic Transformation had given him that. He didn’t just know what Mr Fluffy’s heart looked like. He knew how it beat.

And Infinite Iteration could reshape cells into undamaged versions. It could regenerate any body he understood.

The problem was raw material.

Northern pulled a blade from his spatial storage and, without hesitation, drove it into his own forearm. He carved out a chunk of flesh, keeping the severed piece tethered to his soul through Soul Thread. The connection held. As long as the thread was intact, the flesh was still his, still subject to his abilities.

He pressed the piece against the cavity in Mr Fluffy’s torso where a lung should have been and activated Transformation. The cells shifted, restructured, iterated. His flesh became Mr Fluffy’s organ, reshaped according to the blueprint, fused into the beast’s body through Advanced Fusion.

Northern’s forearm regenerated within seconds. Infinite Iteration rebuilt what he’d cut away.

So he cut again.

He sent a mental message to Revant, asking him to go to the Tempest Spire and call someone named Hervath Cline. Then he continued working.

A kidney. He tore a strip from his thigh, threaded it, transformed it, fused it. His thigh regrew. A liver. He pulled from his side, feeling ribs crack as he dug deep enough. The organ took shape under his hands, wet and new. His side sealed shut, and he reached for the next piece.

The limitation was supposed to be Transformation’s five-second delay, its restriction to full-body shapeshifting. But Northern discovered that if Soul Thread maintained the connection, his separated flesh was still, in some fundamental way, him. Still subject to his will. Still transformable.

So he kept going.

By the time the door opened and Hervath Cline, the Owl doctor, stepped inside, Northern had been at it for some time.

The doctor froze.

“Holy moot! Hoot hut! Commander General…”

Blood was scattered across the ground. Several holes gaped in Northern’s body. One of his hands was torn clean off and severed in two, the pieces still connected by faintly glowing threads as they were mid-transformation into something that didn’t look like a hand anymore.

Northern didn’t stop. He was already regrowing the hand, already reaching for the next piece of himself. Infinite Iteration rebuilt him and he tore himself apart again, feeding Mr Fluffy organ by organ from his own body.

It was a creative, grotesque application that fitted within his system’s logic without breaking any rules. But it certainly wasn’t what his abilities were designed for.

[…]