The air in Bunker B4 had become a culture medium in its own right. The marsh’s scent—that heavy sugar and ozone mix—had blended with the more familiar stench of 90% alcohol and pine resin. Adrian hadn’t allowed himself a single sleep cycle since returning. His bloodshot eyes were locked onto the glass tray where the seven Mana Leeches writhed lazily.

  In this confined space, their blue light was so intense it cast shifting shadows on the raw stone walls. They were no longer wild creatures; they had become reactants.

  — IRIS, verify the purity gradient of the stabilization bath.

  [ANALYSIS: 0.9% SALINE SOLUTION. RESIDUAL ETHER CONCENTRATION: 0.004 IDE.]

  [SPECIMEN STATUS: STABLE. NOTE: THEIR METABOLISM IS SLOWING. THEY ARE CONSUMING THEIR OWN MANA RESERVES TO SURVIVE THE LACK OF AMBIENT FLOW.]

  [COMMENT: IF YOU WAIT ANOTHER TWO HOURS TO BEGIN EXTRACTION, YOU WILL BE DISTILLING DRIED WATER. ANALYSIS: YOUR TENDENCY TOWARD CONTEMPLATIVE OBSERVATION IS BECOMING COUNTERPRODUCTIVE.]

  Adrian smirked faintly. He wasn’t contemplating—he was calibrating his mind. The process he was about to initiate was irreversible. For the first time, he wasn’t just manipulating the external world—he was rewriting his own biological structure.

  He began by preparing the solvent.

  Unlike traditional alchemy, which relied on aqueous bases, Adrian had opted for lipid extraction. He needed a vector capable of crossing the blood-brain barrier without being degraded by his still-"profane" immune system.

  He placed the leeches in a double-walled container. Between the two glass layers, he poured a mixture of rock salt and crushed ice.

  The mixture hissed. This wasn’t magic—it was raw thermodynamics: a forced endothermic reaction to reach -20°C in seconds. Inside the glass flask, the leeches froze, seized by the cold before they could dissipate their energy. Their cores still glowed, trapped in ice.

  — Don’t die, Adrian murmured. I need you alive.

  — IRIS, monitor the heating plate’s temperature. We’re aiming for selective protein denaturation. 72.5°C—no more, no less.

  [ACTIVE CONTROL. TEMPERATURE: 72.5°C (162.5°F). STABILITY: 100%.]

  [WARNING: EXTRACTING THE ANCHOR ENZYME REQUIRES CONSTANT ATMOSPHERIC PRESSURE.]

  [NOTE: IF THE FLASK EXPLODES, THE BUNKER WILL BECOME A GRADE 4 ETHER CONTAMINATION ZONE. SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: 0.0001%.]

  The process took hours.

  Electric-blue vapor snaked through the borosilicate glass condenser, its swirling tendrils condensing into a golden, iridescent fluid. Each droplet fell into the amber vial with an incongruous metallic ting, as if the liquid had an abnormal density. This was no longer mere ether vapor—it was the distilled essence of the leeches’ parasitic symphony, the purified Anchor Enzyme. The substance seemed almost alive, contracting slightly in its container, as if resisting its isolation from the creatures that had produced it.

  Adrian stared at the 15.7 milliliters of golden liquid with near-religious intensity. The flickering light of the ethanol burners played across its oily surface, creating ephemeral fractal patterns. His hands trembled slightly—not from fear, but from 48 hours of accumulated fatigue. The violet shadows under his eyes bore witness to the cost of these few milliliters of potential transcendence.

  He slumped into the cracked leather armchair, his chitin armor creaking under his weight. With methodical gestures, he prepared a series of five graduated vials containing increasing dilution solutions. His Grade Zero body couldn’t absorb the pure elixir without risking immediate anaphylactic shock—he’d need to trick his immune system with gradual administration.

  — IRIS, full cardiac monitoring, he rasped. If my heart rate exceeds 180 BPM or my systolic pressure drops, trigger the audio alarm.

  On the rusted table within reach lay a handcrafted syringe of glass and ivory, its polished plunger filled with a murky mix of somniferous poppy and neurotoxic aconite. In a world without automated IV drips or heart monitors, Adrian had to rely on his own reflexes and the surgical precision of his hands to survive the experiment.

  The syringe glinted faintly in the flame-light, its deadly contents a reminder that the line between remedy and poison was merely a matter of dosage.

  [PROTOCOL INITIATED. PREPARING COUNTERMEASURES.]

  [NOTE: YOU ARE ABOUT TO FORCE AN EVOLUTION THAT NATURE TAKES MILLENNIA TO ACCOMPLISH.]

  [ANALYSIS: YOUR SCIENTIFIC LOGIC BORDERS ON CLINICAL MASOCHISM. GOOD LUCK, ADRIAN…]

  He swallowed the first dose.

  The liquid slid down his throat with unnatural viscosity, as if each molecule resisted ingestion. The taste wasn’t just metallic—it was an amalgam of oxidized copper and ionized ozone, a flavor that seemed to scrape the enamel from his teeth before seeping deeper. Esophagus, then stomach. One second passed. Two. Nothing.

  Then—the fire.

  This wasn’t localized pain, not a surface burn or a muscle cramp that could be massaged away. No. This was cellular rebellion, as if every mitochondrion in his body was screaming under the assault of a force it had never been designed to withstand. His nerve endings, usually so disciplined, were firing in erratic bursts, stray electrical impulses that made his fingers twitch as if wired to a faulty power outlet.

  On his retina, IRIS’s data flashed blood-red, curves spiking, numbers climbing like a crashing stock market.

  Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

  [ALERT: HYDROGEN BOND DESTABILIZATION. BEGINNING OF CRYSTALLINE REORGANIZATION.]

  [IDE: 0.005 → 0.012 → 0.028… NON-LINEAR ASCENSION DETECTED. PREDICTION: CELLULAR RUPTURE THRESHOLD IN 120 SECONDS IF THE RATE HOLDS.]

  [OBSERVATION: YOUR BODY IS ACTING LIKE A FAILING CAPACITOR. THE ETHER ISN’T FLOWING—IT’S ACCUMULATING. COMPARISON: FORCING A RIVER THROUGH A STRAW.]

  The pain exploded without crescendo. No gradual buildup, no warning. Just instantaneous saturation of every receptor, as if his nervous system had been wired directly into a high-voltage line.

  Adrian arched backward, his vertebrae cracking under the strain, his tendons bulging beneath his skin like cables about to snap. He wanted to scream, but his vocal cords were locked, his lungs compressed by an internal pressure that was anything but physical. This wasn’t drowning. This was being crushed from the inside by an invisible hand, a force that warped the space between his atoms.

  [CORE TEMPERATURE: 40.2°C… 41.5°C (106.7°F).]

  [WARNING: THERMAL DENATURATION OF NEUROLOGICAL PROTEINS. RISK OF IRREVERSIBLE PREFRONTAL CORTEX DAMAGE.]

  His vision tunneled, the edges blackening like burning paper. In IRIS’s spectrum, his skeleton pulsed with a bluish glow, his bones absorbing ether like a sponge, but too fast, too brutally. He felt the resistance—his ribs bending under an invisible load, his bone marrow micro-fracturing to make room for the invading energy. This wasn’t metaphor. This was physical reality. His body wasn’t built for this. He was a flesh vessel, and someone was pouring stellar plasma into it.

  Stop…

  The thought was weak, smothered, like a whisper under an avalanche. Part of him begged, clung to the survival instinct screaming that this was a mistake, that his body wasn’t a machine, that it couldn’t handle this.

  Continue.

  The other voice was cold. Logical. Unshakable.

  This was the voice that had survived his Fall into this world. The one that had dismantled monster corpses bare-handed to extract still-pulsing glands. The one that knew pain was just a signal, and signals could be overridden.

  He clenched his teeth until his molars ground. His fingers dug into the armrests until the wood cracked. He wasn’t going to break. Not now.

  Not after all this.

  [SUGGESTION: FOCUS ON CYCLIC BREATHING. IF YOU LOSE CONSCIOUSNESS, THE PROCESS WILL BECOME CHAOTIC.]

  For an eternity that lasted forty minutes, Adrian endured methodical agony. He could see his own skeleton glowing through his skin in IRIS’s spectrum. He watched his nerves sheathe themselves in a thin layer of etheric residue, increasing their conductivity by 400%.

  Then—suddenly—calm.

  The pain receded like a tide, leaving behind a strange, almost vertiginous emptiness. Adrian blinked, and the bunker appeared in a new light. Shadows were no longer just absences of light—they were zones of variable density, as if the air itself had acquired a palpable texture.

  He breathed deeply, and the simple act revealed the extent of the change: he no longer just smelled the acrid tang of solvents and the dampness of stone, but something more subtle—a dull vibration, like the distant hum of an electric generator.

  His fingers, resting on the chair’s cracked armrests, transmitted information he’d never perceived before. The wood wasn’t just rough under his palms—it vibrated faintly, as if it contained a residual memory of the trees it had once been.

  He straightened with calculated caution, testing each movement. His joints no longer creaked as before; instead, they responded with a mechanical precision foreign to him. It wasn’t yet the fluidity of a Grade 1—he was aware of that—but the heaviness that had weighed him down since arriving in this world had dissipated, replaced by a controlled lightness, as if his body had finally found its balance in this alien gravity.

  The bunker itself hadn’t changed. The weeping stone walls, the shelves laden with vials and instruments, the bluish glow of the Hearthstone beneath the alembic—everything was in its place. Yet the air itself felt charged, like the moment before a storm. A static tension hummed through the space, nearly imperceptible but enough to raise the fine hairs on his forearms. He closed his eyes for a second, focused.

  Yes. He could feel it now.

  Ether.

  Not as a mystical force, but as atmospheric pressure, an additional layer of reality that had always been there, invisible, and his senses had finally learned to detect.

  — Status, IRIS.

  The response was instantaneous, flashing in electric-orange letters across his retina, like a luminous signature etched into his vision.

  [MUTATION COMPLETE. SYSTEM STABILIZATION AT 92%.]

  [ETHER DENSITY INDEX: 0.051. (CRITICAL THRESHOLD CROSSED: PASSIVE DETECTION POSSIBLE BY LOCAL MAGICAL SENSORS.)]

  [ABSORPTION CAPACITY: 1.2% (6000% INCREASE OVER STANDARD HUMAN BASELINE.)]

  [PHYSIOLOGICAL NOTE: LOSS OF 2 KG OF FAT MASS (ACCELERATED METABOLISM). BONE DENSIFICATION BY 5% (+18% FRACTURE RESISTANCE).]

  [WARNING: YOUR NEW METABOLISM REQUIRES A MINIMUM OF 2800 KCAL/DAY. FAILURE = RISK OF ACCELERATED CELLULAR DEGRADATION.]

  Adrian looked down at his hands. They trembled slightly—not from weakness, but from contained energy, like an engine idling. The veins beneath his skin seemed more visible, not because they were larger, but because something circulated within them—a faint bluish glow, like liquid mercury beneath translucent skin. He clenched his fist. No pain. Just an immediate response, as if his nerves had been sheathed in copper.

  — Grade 0.05, he murmured, lips slightly parted. Still far from Grade 1.

  He exhaled slowly, a bitter smile stretching his lips.

  — But the door is open.

  [CONCLUSION: YOU ARE NO LONGER A PASSIVE ANOMALY, ADRIAN. YOUR ETHERIC SIGNATURE IS NOW DETECTABLE BY GRADE 2+ INSTRUMENTS. COMPARE TO A BASIC MAGICAL PLANT (EX: LIGHT-HERB, IDE 0.048).]

  [FINAL NOTE: YOUR BODY NOW REQUIRES A CONSTANT SOURCE OF ETHER FOR CELLULAR MAINTENANCE. PROLONGED ABSENCE = PHYSICAL DEGRADATION (SYMPTOMS: CHRONIC FATIGUE, JOINT PAIN, MUSCLE MASS LOSS).]

  [SUGGESTION: IMMEDIATE CONSUMPTION OF LIPID- AND PROTEIN-RICH FOOD. IDEALLY: GRADE 1+ MONSTER MEAT (OPTIMAL ETHER ABSORPTION RATE).]

  Adrian smiled—a real smile this time, almost feral. The sensation of ether filtering through his veins was intoxicating, like a synthetic drug he’d designed himself. He could feel it now—that invisible flow irrigating everything, from the stone walls to the glass vials on the shelf. It was a resource. A raw material. And he had just learned to harness it.

  He turned to his notes, scattered across the worktable, stained with ink and distillation residue. The equations he’d scribbled hours earlier now seemed outdated, as if they belonged to a previous version of himself. He traced the schematic of a reflux condenser, then the fractional distillation plan he’d devised to stabilize the Anchor Enzyme.

  — The anchor is set, IRIS, he said softly, as if speaking to a conspirator rather than a machine. Now it’s time to build the ship.

  He began packing up the equipment with surgical precision, each movement calculated, each object replaced with an economy of motion that, he had to admit, surprised even himself. He was no longer the same man he’d been hours ago. He was no longer just a survivor, a desperate lab rat clinging to life. He had become something else. A hybrid. A bridge between the cold science of his old world and the raw, primal force now coursing through his veins.

  It was time to recover.

  Time to prepare.

  Time to hunt.