The voice, the screen and the chaos

A couple of minutes after the surgery had finished Alan woke up, opening his eyes there was an immediate difference from before, not just in his vision but his entire body. Standing up he could feel his bones feel tougher, his muscles feel stronger, and his thoughts clearer. But that only lasted for a couple of seconds before a splitting headache came and a wave of weakness washed over him, from the side he saw a couple of doctors accompanied by armed guards rush towards him.

As soon they came into view a deep, gritty, and rumbling voice sounded in his head

#kill them, drink their blood, grind their bones, eat their flesh. Open the breach, make it grow, bring their world into the fold. Submit to us and follow, follow and be given power. Follow and-#

Just as the voice was about to continue Alan felt a sharp pain shoot up his spine and into his head before the voice abruptly stopped. Standing up he looked over to the scientists again to see if the voice would speak again but there was nothing.

Soon after the scientists started asking him questions such as how he was feeling and what happened, telling them about the voice and how it had stopped after the pain, they explained that it was probably a leftover of the goblin's consciousness and his harmony, now called assimilation, probably erased whatever was left of it. After that, they did some tests to see how his body had changed.

From what they could tell his body had fully assimilated the goblin transplants and used what it had learned from that to 'upgrade' his body, hence why he looked no different from before as it had just absorbed what was needed and reperposed what was left.

After being guided back to the cafeteria by the guards he just sat in a corner and looked off seemingly into blank space, in reality, he was looking at the strange red screen that had appeared in his field of view soon after he sat down. He didn't tell the guards about this as it gave off the same feel as the bloodstone he ate.

Speaking about that the reason why they haven't questioned him about it was because he had told them that the breach didn't give one, and they had no reason to think he was lying and there was no one to say otherwise as they had all 'died valiantly killing the goblins to keep them safe'. Looking at the screen it said.

[name:alan

Trait: assimilation

Blood stones: aura

Essence:32

Constitution:15.25 (bone:18, muscle:15, organ:8, mind:20)

Strength:13.5 (body:20, mind: 7)

Dexterity:12.3 (fine motor skills: 12, hand-eye coordination: 10, flexibility: 15)

Intelligence:17.6 (comprehension: 15, memory: 20, learning 18)]

Soon after he read what was on the screen he got a stream of information similar to when he touched and ate the bloodstone. As it turned out there were residual materials left from when he ate the bloodstone and the voice from after the surgery, so his traits mixed and combined to form his 'status', which was a comprehensive list of his capabilities using his knowledge and his traits understanding of his body state as the basis on which it was measured.

His 'four main stats' were the average of several other stats that themselves were made up of even more stats, in all of them 1 was the known average for a human in that area, hence why in 'constitution' his mind was 20 while in 'strength' it was only 7. It should also be mentioned that every number up was multiplicative in growth, so a 5 in bone meant they were five times better than a 1 instead of the added strength of five 1's together, in smaller scales, this didn't make much of a difference, but at stages such as 20 or 50, the difference was much bigger.

The smaller stats such as bone and muscle were repetitively easy to understand based on their names, the only complicated ones were 'mind', 'comprehension', and 'learning'.

Mind on the constitution stat was simply his mental state, in terms of how much damage his mental state could take before he would be considered 'mentally impaired', this included things such as depression, fear, and the like. Mind for the strength stat on the other hand he had no clue what that did. From what the info stream told him, it was related to his 'mental strength' which sounded the same as construction, but apparently, they were different, for now, he wouldn't bother about that.

As for 'learning' and 'comprehension', while they seemed like the same thing they weren't, for instance, a child was taught that 1+1=2 if he was asked what 1+1 was and answered 2, it would be counted as his 'memory', if he could apply that, like realizing that if he had 2 oranges, that was 1 orange plus 1 orange, then it would be considered 'learning'. If he could apply that knowledge and build off of it like realizing that 1+2=3 or even 1-1=0, that was comprehension, so while learning and comprehension seemed similar they were vastly different in reality. Other than that essence just counted how many 'strands' of essence he had.

For now, he wouldn't worry about any of that and just enjoy talking to Abigail. Standing up from the corner Alan walked over to the table that Abigail was sitting at, but just as he was about to speak, Husin interrupted him, more actually it was Husten's other half, Kile "Husten, we have a problem." turning towards the usually quiet boy, he was shivering, which was odd considering the room was warm as it was early summer, that was if you didn't take in to account the fact that Hustens trait made him 'feel' cold whenever there was in danger nearby.

Just then Alan heard a commotion outside, looking towards the guards meant to keep them in the cafeteria he realized they were gone, and shortly after he heard gunfire and yelling. Looking at the others Husten continued to mumble to himself while Jason started giving some speech about 'honor' and 'familial loyalty', to convince Husten and Alan to help him defeat whatever was attacking their 'home'.

As for Abagail, she was just holding on to her teddy while looking at the door, looking over to Alan she said "I don't really care about his place, but if those things get here it would be a hassle so I'll just go with you guys."

Looking over to Jason then the door and over back to Abagail Alan just said "While I don't care much for this place or whatever 'honor' or 'familial loyalty' is, there is one thing I agree with that pest about. Killing whatever is out there." as he said this he rushed out the door and towards the commotion before the guards stole all his fun.

Meanwhile, Abigail was surprised for for reasons, firstly, he alleged Jason's presence, Alan usually just ignored his presence whenever he tried to start a conversation. Secondly, that was the biggest sentence she had heard Alan say in one go. Thirdly his eyes went red, but she had seen weirder so that wasn't all that surprising. And lastly, when he mentioned killing whatever was outside, that was the first time she had seen any semblance of emotion on his face or from Alan in general. He had smiled, all be it a murderous smile that was full of malice but a smile nonetheless.

Truth be told she didn't care much for Jason herself, or men at all for that matter due to something from her past, but Alan seemed strangely different, his eyes went the same, and not just in the way that they changed color. She knew she was rather developed for an 18 year old, and the way men looked at her mirrored that, no matter how much they hid it or said they 'didn't care' they always had that look in their eye.

But Alan was different, while his eyes still looked at differently, they were different. Rather than a look of lust, his eyes had a look similar to hers whenever she read a good book or when she looked at her teddy, a look of obsession. But different from hers, the look of obsession in Alan's eyes was like a deep blue abyss, endless. And she loved it, she wanted him to look at her with that obsession more, she wanted him to only look at her.

While she was thinking this Alan had already reached the source of the commotion, inside what he assumed to be the reception of the building, 5 guards were trying to stop a small group of 12 to 13 goblins from getting through the doors, their only saving grace was the fact that only 1 or 2 goblins could get through at once, the problem was that they where running out of ammo.

One of the guards only saw a white and red blur rush past him as he looked down to see his knife was gone, looking back up the blur was wreaking havoc in the small hoard of goblins.

To the goblins, a blur of white and red rushed through them as one after another died while blood sprayed out of their necks as Alan cleanly cut their throats open with the new knife he stole, with each kill new strands of essence flooded into him, 32, 40, 50 and finally 60 as the last of the goblins fell to the ground, dead, the red of alans cloths renewed as the red of his eyes faded away back to a calm ocean blue.