"So close, so close to failing. My heart won't stop beating if I don't replace my oxygen distribution with 'energy assimilation'. Too close, this is crazy." The blue-haired girl took a whole marathon to get herself out from the collapsing civilization. In spite of the fact that she was the one who created the ensuing shenanigans, the jog lasted for a while, she trekked 4 kilometers from Tidal Citadel into a swamp biome where unthreatening beasts reside.
Stage fright struck; her contagious nervousness was commendable for the risk she increased back then on her first ever act despite harboring a massive inability to play a character. It took a while for her to temper her own DNA schematics to fit the right variable for the right job.
But it wasn't as easy as it was now.
This all started when 'she' was a 'he', when 'he' still didn't know how to manipulate his genes as a result of Project Valhalla's failure. Yes, she was formerly a 'he'. Her old self was a weak, feeble, disgusting, and an utter defect of a species from numerous demi-human races that travels around the post-apocalyptic world.
3000 years ago.
MFX90 was her former codename. The ninth original artificial bioengineered individual who bore the trait of an aardwolf, a shy and nocturnal monogamous hyaenidae. But something occurred within the altercation phase where he was given the worst genetic modification possible. Right after the results indicator brought the research asset on his six month of gaining a sentient mind, they decided to throw him off the ark and was preserved within a cryo chamber.
Because of a defective mutation, his brain was able to stay conscious through the whole hibernation process. Resulted in his consciousness strings being utilized faster than the norm due to the insurmountable stress he had within the cryo tube.
What people known as soul was actually their core of consciousness all along, this hidden and complex non-dimensional core had an anchor and tentacles that permeate a living being.
There are around more than hundreds fundamental part of a soul or consciousness, but science were able to utilize one amazing section of them called the 'consciousness strings'.
This consciousness string is metaphysical matter connected to a sentient life where they can use it to alter reality at an atomic level, although only with years of training they could do that. At most, one could do a small alchemical process at small size.
It was the very same method and tools for Usurpers to cultivate mana and strengthen themselves. Depositing the converted nuclear-like energy within a miniature realm within one's center, for most humanoid beings are near their belly button.
There is no such thing as superstition, the path of immortality that the elder paved wasn't really anything fantastical nor magical, it was all science.
But this scientific method to get stronger isn't available for MF09X because his pain of insanity with the cryo tube had trained his consciousness strings to be as dense and responsive to the point where he breaks the line of consciousness itself to his miniature realm.
Of course, this unsatisfactory pain did gave him a strong consciousness with the stress alone, but like an excessive training for muscle, it gave him a severe backlash. It restricted him from the path of great ascension and grandeur..
He then left the destroyed facility at the age of 1938, by that time, some of the surface had been recovered and the underground bunker was left in ruins. Still in the state of a baby with an insatiable thirst for capabilities and knowledge, he awakened in the frozen tundra at the most top location on the globe, freezing and hungry, he is lucky that the low temperature reduces the metabolism and energy usage of his whole body.
It took 9 years for his baby-walk to reach the cold ocean with leering Calamities left and right. Strange it was for the center pole of the earth to not accommodate any of those dastardly creatures, questions that he began to ask inside.
MFX90 didn't know what was a magic circuit nor mana at first, but he caught the secreted wavelength from the unknown formation by his dense consciousness strings, then decided to brute-modify his mitochondrias to create the same frequency all over his body. Although the cold made the biochemical reactions to be slower than it was supposed to, he stood still for 6 hours while naked until he replicated the same wavelength to repel the pesky Calamity.
Now what? He dived into the ocean and sank like a rock as his body got immobilized by the frozen water. He couldn't breathe, a half-calamity fish then approached him as both stared eye to eye. He fought the cold as much as he could to chomp the fish fierce enough to take a peek at the swimming creature's DNA by the touch.
He started to replicate the schematic of the fish unorthodoxly, his mind strings then tried to change the DNA's RNA, forcing the protein factory to brutally modify the lungs into feathery organs full of inaccessible blood vessels akin to the fish's gills to directly extract oxygen from the water he inhaled. After he was convinced he was done, he turned his whole body online from the temporary dead-state and filled the new vessels with blood. Funnily enough, he can now be categorized as a fish!
This process took 8 hours. It's painful but the pain had become his breakfast at this point.
By also coating his whole body cell with antifreeze protein, he felt like the ocean is a true home to him.
Slowly and surely, he learned how to swim faster than a sonic-jet underwater monster. His whole appearance now became that of Aquaman!
Two years later, he finally found land after a long voyage. He survived because he was smart enough to know what food is and what saw him as food. By reverting back to his original state, he appeared to be bigger and taller than the average human size due to the difference in gravitation.
But the sea feels like his home already, why did he leaves? Firstly, he was curious, he wanted to know more. If he was created to walk on land, then he must walk on the land.
After more years of adapting on the none-aquatic surface, he met smaller people with antlers and decided to copy their appearance and shrink himself. Despite not directly confronting them, he tinkered his body to be able to see the mouth movement unnoticed and heard more voices from afar. His brain wasn't accustomed to it but now his brain capacity has adapted to store and process more information!
Three months passed, and he learned the universal language, writing, basic poetry, and body gesture from the kind elk folks. As for food, he ate everything his stomach could digest.
He even went as far as making his own clothes and precious trinkets from nature!
Another year passed, and he ventured to the other land. He found that numerous gazes made him uneasy. Forced to join a shady caravan to another land, it turned out to be a group of malicious bandits, they beat him and even slit his neck into gaping wound, then took all of his belongings. Naked in the Sahara desert at night, he remembered his old self back on the north pole.
Alone, freezing, and in pain. Pain is always temporary but the stings are not, he can easily heal his physical wound but not his heart. He thought that everything would change if he tried to change. With bitter stomach and disappointment, he walked and walked. Until he met a village.
Despite his shyness, he wanted to give it another chance for what the world has to offer. It was almost a success that he even tried to farm with the feline villagers in his new home. But peace won't last long.
He only knew how to run and survive, a raid of Calamities had forged an ultimatum to every living being in the village. MFX90 thought that the frequency he released is enough to repels those aggressive Calamities, turns out, a mere irking wavelength wasn't enough.
It was bleak and horrifying, until he saw flying figures with weapons trying to subjugate the leader of the evil. According to the information he had, they are Usurpers, an adventurous cultivator of power to usurp the menace in this land.
He had hope, the good guy finally came! Or so he thought.
Those egoistic cultivators only care for the loot and the Calamities' body parts. They didn't even try to save the people who MFX90 deem as family.
With another sunken heart, he ran away.
Disappointment after disappointment. He had enough. The strong decided everything but he isn't strong, so he decided to learn everything he could about a sentient being. There was always a psychological factor to every decision, surely enough he might shift the tide into a new wave.
With every research he made, he found knowledge. It was heartbreaking when he knew that he can't cultivate, and so his hate against the world grew darker and darker. Either fate is against him, or he somehow provoked the tear from the lady of luck. So to ensure his future, he modified his body to renew and kill every deadcell to maintain his youth.
Place after place, he refused to meet with other people before he learned to confirm the true action in everything. He got into the sacred library protected by some kind of church at night, he made calculations and theory for everything, even the meaning of life. He was so obsessed with playing everything perfectly in the mirror, 102 years has been used to practice his characters, he stripped the -X90 behind his initial and began to look into the corroded mirror in the forest with confidence!
Everything has been great so far. Until he developed an early symptom of Scopophobia, an excessive fear of being stared at. This made an impact and nulled his years of acting training by tremendous margins. It seems like the more lonely and hopeful you're, the more you get anxious and feel scrutinized.
But that didn't stop him. He tried his best to socialize or even strike up a conversation with strangers. Even to the point of learning poetry, to the rhythm of a lullaby that can soothe people to sleep. In a desperate attempt, he genetically modified his body into a female so that he can persuade and implement many theories of trickery more effectively.
He found that being a female made his male speech adversary feel more safe and less cautious, the same with the female talking partner, especially with her developed persona, she began to step up her game to be manipulative, practicing pilfering, purloining to perfection.
And so she hustled, gambled, studied, ranched, and more. This had proven to improve her Scopophobia ailment, but she still found those gazes higher than ten to be heavily overwhelming.
Even without the path to immortality, she is able to make it up with her brain of millions of skills and capabilities. And so she called herself a Skillionaire! Instead of money and power, she had a huge amount of wisdom and knowledge within her arsenal.
Although having old body and mind, her desire was akin to that of a child. Pain might be a diet for her but the pain within her heart was left unbroken. She wrote every grudge she wanted to pay back if possible as long as she lives.
Epidemics are endemic everywhere, infection, amputation, mutation, never rare. Pushing her physical capabilities to its fullest with a gene modifier, she had developed a nearly immortal and resistance body within 200 years of errors and trials. She had saved every DNA of non-calamity mortal on the globe within her body, allowing her to disguise or change her complexion in the snap of a finger.
Despite all the effort, she would be doomed if she met a strong Usurper or even worse, an Angel. And so she finally placed her interest upon the menace of the land.
The Calamity, MF might be physically immortal but she doesn't have any DNA schematic to drastically increase her fighting prowess against deadly strength. Creating one or unorthodoxly gamble with brute tinkering won't do her any good as it was scientifically impossible to get stronger than she was now, especially while maintaining her humanoid appearance rather than becoming a brute monster.
So for the first time ever, she wanted to know the unknown, the 'void' within the Calamities was more precious than she thought.
Fighting and hunting them directly was also a huge fluke, unless she could manipulate someone to get some for her.
Upon her view was the mighty Tidal Citadel, one of the frontline fortresses to uncover more dangerous land, while also functioning as its own civilization.
Her smile grew sinister. "Enter me!" she said as if it was a parentheses. "I will definitely hatch a plot blacker than a kettle calling a pot!"
In order to go in without paying a penny, she played a humble psychological attack on one of the guards to let her in. However, one keen individual by the name of Vuvier Selasja managed to see through her trick and interrogated her. They then threw her into jail because of suspicious activities. This Guardians of the Citadel is more than strong enough to annihilate MF in an instant, this has been something to do with a dark cult and the making of deities, she wanted to know so she let herself be imprisoned until everything was clear.
Six months later, she was freed. That is one of the worst mistakes the Guardians made.
All she needed to do was to fish with a setup, but first she needed a target, and there she found one of the strong yet delicate Usurper by the name of Kashal Kalistra. She researched and planned everything, even the choreography and reaction to every response Kashal would make.
The rest had been unveiled. She got what she wanted and continued her journey after trekking without a break into one of her favorite swamp biomes. Only MF was able to get to this place, so she named the swamp 'The Longing Evermore.'
"Let's experiment on these new genes, shall we?"