Chapter 170: Absorbing Matter!

『"Rock beats wendigo."』

Outside the cave, Hiro paced anxiously near the entrance, his eyes fixed on the darkness beyond.

"We have to go in there."

Sophia glanced toward him. "We have our orders. We’re supposed to guard the entrance in case they need backup."

Hiro turned toward her. "Since when do you give a damn about orders?"

Sophia opened her mouth, but Hiro was already looking back toward the cave. "Raj’s in trouble," he said. "I’m going in."

Sophia stared at the entrance. He was right. They should go in. So why couldn’t she move? Her leg refused to take the first step.

Hiro didn’t notice at first. He took a step toward the cave, then another, ready to rush inside.

"Hiro."

He stopped. Sophia’s fingers were wrapped around his sleeve.

Hiro looked back at her, and for a moment, neither of them said anything.

Then Hiro’s expression softened. "How about we find the transport? Someone’s gotta lead them back here if something’s messing with tracking and communication."

Sophia nodded, slowly releasing his sleeve. "Yeah," she said quietly. "That sounds great."

***

"What I do best..." Raj whispered weakly, his eyes beginning to close.

Suddenly, his eyes sharpened as he resisted its consumption long enough for pure instinct to drive his response.

His uninjured arm came up, fist the size of a sledgehammer driving into the wendigo’s ribs with a force that should have shattered its bones completely.

The creature wheezed, released its grip, and stumbled back three steps. Then it lunged again, impossibly fast, as its jaws opened wide, reaching all the way to its eyes.

Raj’s hand pressed against the cave floor, bracing himself and catching his breath.

"...is fuck shit up!" Juggernaut Shell responded to his defiance, and evolved. The stone beneath his palm flowed into him.

It didn’t merely coat his skin like armor but integrated into him, flesh and limestone becoming something hybrid, coupled with his hardening.

The transformation spread from his hand up his arm across his torso in seconds, his entire body taking on the texture and properties of hardened limestone.

The wendigo flashed forward once more and its teeth closed on Raj’s now-petrified arm. This time, they met resistance that made them crack audibly.

The creature recoiled, shrieking with rage, pain, and confusion as blood leaked from its ruined mouth.

It tried to bite again, instinct overriding the lesson it had just learned, but Raj’s stone-reinforced fist caught it square in its face.

The impact echoed through the cave like a gunshot, and the wendigo flew backward, crashing into the opposite wall, giving Raj a moment to process what had just happened.

He stared at his hands. They were stone, grey and solid, but still somehow his hands. He could feel through them, move them, flex fingers that were now limestone instead of flesh.

The extra weight should have slowed him down. Instead his muscles adjusted, strength rising to match the mass, like his body already knew the trick.

"I’m guessing rocks aren’t in your diet?" Raj said, and even through the terror still pumping through his veins, he grinned.

The wendigo recovered fast, shattered jaw already fixing itself with a sickening snap.

The wendigo clearly didn’t know when to stop, but Raj was done being prey. Rather than wait for the creature to come to him, he bolted forward, meeting it halfway.

The wendigo met him head-on, one frost-blue claw carving through the air. Raj, however, was no longer interested in taking attacks he could simply avoid.

He ducked beneath the swipe, feeling the icy claws whistle over his head instead of trying to tank the blow like he would’ve minutes earlier.

"Yeah..." he muttered as he drove forward. "Point taken."

He slammed into the wendigo shoulder-first, the impact lifting the creature completely off its feet.

But Raj didn’t stop. He barreled through the cave as he drove the shrieking wendigo backward, carrying it clear across the chamber.

"Get...!" Raj yelled.

The creature clawed desperately at him, but Raj simply lowered his head and kept pushing until...

BOOM!

The wendigo hit the cave wall with enough force to shatter it. Rock exploded outward, and the entire section of limestone collapsed inward with a deafening roar, burying the creature beneath tons of rubble.

"Fucked!" Raj barked, stumbling back as dust rolled off the rubble.

Dust filled the chamber now, accompanied by silence.

He took a step back, breathing heavily. "...Did that do it?"

Nothing. There was no movement. Maybe that did it.

A second passed. Then another.

Raj was about to relax when the pile of rubble trembled, and his eyes widened. "...You’ve got to be kidding me."

The rubble blasted apart as the wendigo burst free in a shower of shattered limestone, bloodied, half-crushed, and missing chunks of flesh that were already regenerating.

To Raj’s surprise, instead of attacking, it ran, disappearing into a narrow side passage leading deeper into the cave, moving with terrifying speed for something that should have been crippled.

Raj blinked, tilting his head. Then his eyes widened. "...Oh no you don’t!" He lunged after it. "Where do you think you’re going?!"

Without another thought, Raj charged into the darkness after the fleeing wendigo—

And found himself face-to-face with Amara emerging from an intersecting passage, Angel’s Bane already raised and coated in white flames.

"Get down!" she shouted.

Raj dropped to the cave floor on instinct as the wendigo, cornered and doubling back, charged straight into Amara’s killing arc.

The sword severed the creature’s head from its shoulders with a single clean cut, splitting the walls of the cave that stood several meters behind it.

The head hit the ground and rolled, coming to rest against her feet with eyes still open, still reflecting light, and somehow aware for a long second before whatever animated it finally died.

The body collapsed in a heap, blue blood spreading across the cave floor in a pool.

Raj pushed himself upright, his limestone form already starting to revert as Juggernaut Shell recognized the threat had passed.

Flesh replaced limestone in reverse of how it had integrated, the transformation almost as strange as the original change.

He looked at the head and the burning split cave behind him. Then he touched his own neck for a moment and swallowed.

"That... was..." Raj said, breathing hard, "... awesome!"

"You gave us quite the scare," Amara said, dismissing her blade now that the threat was eliminated. "Matter absorption?" she observed. "...That’s new."

"Yeah." Raj flexed his hands, now fully flesh again. "Just more evidence of how awesome I am."

Footsteps echoed through the cave as Meredith made her way over.

"Everyone okay?" she asked as soon as she arrived.

"Raj kicked its ass with his new absorption ability," Amara said with a light grin, one hand on her hip, the other thumbing toward Raj.

Raj shrugged. "Yeah." Then he nodded. "Yeah, I did."

He was about to make a joke, something to lighten the mood, when Meredith crouched beside the severed head. Her expression shifted from relief to worry, and beside him, Amara’s grin faded.

"Hmm," she murmured. Earth energy coated her hands as she reached for the wendigo’s mouth, shielding her skin from any supernatural contamination.

She pried the jaws open, and even in death they resisted, locked in a rictus that spoke to how powerfully the creature’s muscles had contracted.

When she finally got them apart, something fell out onto the cave floor.

Flesh. Fresh flesh, still warm. A piece roughly the size of a quarter, torn from Raj’s shoulder during that first terrible bite.

"Raj." Meredith’s voice had dropped, gone careful in a way that made him uneasy. "Did the wendigo bite you?"

Silence. ℯℯ𝑙.

"No."

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RAJ PATEL | The Breastplate

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Spirit Weapon: Juggernaut Shell (Breastplate of Conviction)

Rank: Shaper (▮▮)

Ascendant Sigil:▮▮ (2 Bars - Right Chest)

Abilities Unlocked:

┣ Strength Amplification

┣ Regeneration

┣ Hardening

┣ Size Alteration

┣ Matter Absorption

┣ ??? [LOCKED]

Status: In really deep denial.

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