What was the killer instinct Vergil wanted? Was it the will to move forward or the ambition to see his will done? Or was it an excuse he gave for his lack of progress toward his dreams? Fighting had begun to help him understand that someone was holding him back in life, but it wasn't Dante.
Returning home might be a distant dream, but it was all he had to grasp, so he would hold it with both hands.
Before he could dive into that, he had to get Gwen back. To that end, he left the safety of their hideout and walked toward the leviathan vein he had sensed before. Many were in the dimension from what he could sense with Ostrich Oscillation. However, he only knew their general direction by how much diamond-rank psi they radiated.
Finding Gwen wasn't hard; she left traces of her psi everywhere she passed. Like chemtrails from a jet, he could clearly follow her trail. Vergil followed her into a valley between cave systems. Lightning crackled all around the area, blasting rocks apart. Heavy, angry stars lit magenta overhead, filling a dark world with enough light to see. Shadows danced over barren rocks; there was no vegetation outside the local saltwater lakes.
Behind the thunder, Vergil listened to the steady rhythm of drum beats. They were the kind used to keep a marching army in line, and suddenly he felt alert and awake.
Rain fell, and he opened his mouth up at the sky and tried to get a drink before spitting on the ground. Saltwater, it seemed he needed to find alternate ways to slake his thirst. It had been a while since he had a drop of fresh water. If not for his cultivation, he would be in a much worse state.
Vergil followed Gwen's trail across a valley to a distant cave. It was the path he needed to take to get to her. If he was right leviathan veins were at the end of the cave system.
Before he could make much headway, three of the largest troops of apes he had ever seen rushed down into the valley wielding clubs and dressed in makeshift armor. There were hundreds of them, perhaps thousands.
Vergil stood tall with his hands at his side, ready for anything. The storage ring Gwen gave him itched to be filled on his finger.
After reaching the initial stage of body cultivation, he was taller than the 6ft tall apes. So body cultivation increased height, which was the best thing ever; if it also increased dick size, he could go into business.
The fake penis enlargement pill business was a multi-million dollar industry he could control with a little fight club and body cultivation. He could sell the liquid produced from Black Goat's Embryo as a wonder drug and make a fortune.
Vergil let the business idea slip by him as he cleared his mind for the fight ahead. His strategy was to reach the cave on the other side of the valley. It was something to look forward to when he made it out.
He held his smashing rock in his right hand and shot toward the closest group. After reaching the initial stage of the prenatal realm in body refinement, he had become much tougher. He hit the first ape-like a wrecking ball, plowing through their numbers for once stronger than them individually.
Burst was held in his back pocket; he would get hurt enough in the fight to further his body refinement. Moreover, the technique would sap his limited psi, and he would need it all for healing.
Once the moment of his charge stalled, Vergil crushed the skull of the nearest ape with his rock before taking the club out of its hand. Vergil threw himself back from the rushing troops and gripped the club with both hands. With mind and ki cultivation in the intermediate, his body cultivation was lagging behind, and he needed to kill them all quickly.
Gwen needed him, so he moved quickly, smashing apes even as he got as much as he gave. Clubs broke his ribs, bruised his muscles, and slowed him down. Black Goat's Embryo worked overtime even as he fought, keeping him in the action as he waged war on an army.
He swung his club, tore the head off one ape, punched a hole through another's throat, and caved in another skull with a return stroke. Vergil fought, never staying in one place for more than a heartbeat before moving to dismantle more of the apes.
Bodies of the apes piled up 20 high before he lost movement in one of his arms. The muscles in his arm had become so warn they he couldn't lift it anymore. His other arm wasn't much better, and he could barely lift a club anymore. Popped blisters covered his feet while he struggled to move against an army of hundreds of apes.
The psi he relied on to power the Black Goat's Embryo was running out, giving him a chronic headache. Even his ki was running low after he figured out channeling would increase damage from his blows. All his resources were tapped, and he was on the decline.
Blood covered his body from head to toe from numerous injuries. Hundreds of scars from lucky hits, scratches, and bites pulled at his skin painfully. Vergil, weakened, wounded, and surrounded, came to a realization.
He felt alive.
A horde of apes taller and stronger than the others charged over the pile of corpses rushing him.
Vergil tried to smile, but it hurt too much, even through the adrenaline shooting through his system. He shot forward, leaped in the air, and stepped on the ape's head. He jumped high in the air and used levitation to float like how Gwen taught him.
The apes quickly threw their clubs at him, but he had already reached a height they couldn't hit. Levitation was an important technique to have. It allowed Vergil to make a strategic retreat. He looked in the storage ring Gwen gave him and found around 500 Void Pearls. It wasn't a bad hall.
Using his Ostrich Oscillation, he picked out a cave nearby and rested there. His body and ki cultivation each had empty slots for techniques. So far, he had techniques for detection, recovery, and increased damage.
Gwen was still in danger, so it would be best to take measures to get close enough to help her.
He looked through body refinement techniques and chose one that went with his eldritch horror theme he had going on with Black Goat's Embryo. Nyarlathotep's Flesh boasted the greatest shapeshifting ability for himself and others at higher cultivation realms. It was ideal for infiltration and a little bit of fun.
Vergil chose the technique over the ki technique transformation, face of clay, or mask of many faces. The best part was that he had already summoned a part of what he needed. After he drew the needed symbols with a rock and dumped 100 void pearls in its center, the rest was easy. They vanished before his eyes, and a tiny dark speck of flesh appeared in its place.
While healing and infiltration didn't have much to do with each other besides the eldritch theme, at later levels, he could become something like a shapeshifting healing tank. Of course, cultivation didn't really care about builds, except it did unless the mc was concerned.
It was meta to think about, but there were hundreds of trillions of different builds from his technique lists alone, with 12 techniques available in every realm. While that sounded like a lot to keep up with, there were bound to be techniques he wouldn't use very often. Those he didn't use wouldn't be as powerful as those he did. But an MC always ended up as a sword-wielding Daoist. Clearly, he wasn't an MC.
Vergil touched the speck of flesh and felt it melt into his skin. The bonding process was seamless when he thought it would be extremely painful.
A moment after the black flesh entered his body, he started screaming. The pain wasn't in the flesh; that would be too easy; he could feel the eyes of a great beast looking at him. It was like before he wasn't a speck of dust to the great being until suddenly he had its full attention. Vergil tried to scream, and his mouth vanished.
His bones vanished following his mouth, and he slumped into a pile of organs and skin. A tall being seemed to stand over him, at first simply a man and then a mass of tentacles and hunger. Eyes and teeth were mixed in with them as far as his limited human eyes could see.
"Why so limited?"
Suddenly, he thought of needing more eyes, and he could see everything. The entire world entered his field of view while his flesh rose in a column while every nerve screamed. Maggots erupted from his flesh and scurried off of him into the dirt. They were him, and suddenly he was everywhere. If he could do that, he could spread himself and become more. Vergil could spread until the world was only an entire ecosystem of himself.
"No," Vergil transmitted to the being.
The being looked intrigued, and suddenly his flesh changed, growing brains until he resembled a psion. A terrible beak opened below his tentacles, hungry to crack open skulls and feast on the brains of his prey. Powerful waves of psychic energy erupted from his body. In contrast, his flesh erupted into long thick tentacles lined with hooked suckers. With this form, he could leave his humanity behind and become one of the psions free.
"No," Vergil transmitted to the being.
His body changed, growing larger, stronger, and filled with vitality. Vergil felt his body tower into the heavens as a monster unlike any other crafted by Nyarlathotep. Soon he would devour the world's core and grow ever stronger, and then he would journey among the star existing forever. Vergil would leave everything behind and become a great old one.
"No," Vergil transmitted.
The being became fed up with him and glared with its uncountable eyes. After learning from the being, Vergil reformed his body in the shape of his former self, if a bit idealized. His teeth were a little whiter than before, maybe his nose was a little hawkish, and his eyes were bluer, but what else was shapeshifting for.
He stood on his own two feet and took pride in his humanity. However, the being argued that his form was limited; it had few eyes, no tentacles, and only a single brain.
Vergil wouldn't have it any other way.
Sanity returned to him in the cave. While he hadn't broken into the intermediate stage of the prenatal realm in body refinement, he was close. Thanks to the technique, he had what he needed to infiltrate the cave where Gwen was kept.
After recovering from the battle, he followed Gwen's psi trail through a cave system.