The biggest obstacle for Endyr now was none other than her own body. Battered to the point where she was more mince than flesh, she slowly hobbled down the sterile corridors of the laboratory, leaving a gory trail of blood behind with every step she took. Despite the System's assurance her vessel could handle the treatment, Endyr could feel new tendrils snap with every step she took. Her body was absorbing all the Mana it could to replace cells as fast as she was losing them, but the process was gradually slowing down. Despite its name, even the energy of Infinity could not operate forever. She had a while left in her still, but she would eventually collapse if she didn't get a proper recovery.
Stifling a whimper of suffering, Endyr went over the plan again to distract herself. She had successfully dealt with Bartholomeus, and Jester had luckily left to distract the others. Such a coincidence was like a gift from the Heavens, but also made her hair bristle. 'Did the System do it? No, it can only manipulate me via my thought process. Directly steering the fate of someone else should be beyond it's capabilities in the Infinite Universe...someone else then? But the only ones strong enough to affect a Sacred like Jester would be Serapis, Tamar, Fallacy or the Almighty.'
'The chance Jester made the decision entirely of his own free will in non-zero, but its still to convenient...Then again, all records point to "Him" being a coward who flees from trouble and responsibility. That's one of the reasons why "He" is called the God of Mischief after all.'
[A/N: Endyr is referring to the future Jester, a God, with "Him"]
Juggling between answers, Endyr entertained the idea to help distract from the pain. It worked, somewhat, as only every third step hurt rather than all of them. Quite a good improvement in Endyr's eyes! 'Am I going crazy from the pain?' she grumbled as she found her thoughts turning more and more ditzy the longer she worked. Focusing internally, she managed to speed up the Mana Absorption and bring up her regeneration with it. Immediate relief flooded her aching body, and she let out a long sigh. The arm she lost fighting Bartholomeus was still hanging in there (heh, get it?) but she couldn't feel anything below the shoulder. Glancing at it, she saw that the scapula had melted and fused with her clavicle. A few strands of muscle were stubbornly connecting with her chest flesh, but her nerves had completely necrotized.
Her Mana Absorption was unable to fix it naturally, because her body couldn't heal something that was completely dead on a cellular level. Her arm had "died" surprisingly fast, but that was actually a feature of her vessel: it would compartmentalise her limbs, sealing off severed veins or arteries to preserve blood and slow poisons. It preformed those functions admirably, but made reattaching limbs a pain in the ass. 'I suppose an Abomination would just regrow new limbs and ignore the lost ones.'
For that to happen though, the Abominations would have to keep a genetic copy of specific body parts stored somewhere in their body...Doing a curious sweep of her cells, she was surprised to find several caches of genomes in a deep hibernation. Located in her heart, left lung, small intestine and right kidney, each one held enough DNA to create an entirely new Abomination. "Abominations are capable of asexual reproduction, huh?" she muttered. She had assumed every Abomination was just spat out from the Plane of Infinity, but it seemed they could also reproduce. She came to this conclusion because they was way too much genetic material stored in her body to just be fore regeneration. It was simply too excessive for a single organism, no matter how impressive it may be.
Now that she looked closer, an Abomination really was a splendid creature, an apex predator. Teeth and claws that could tear through most materials she knew off the top of her head, an extendable tail that served as a spear, retractable wings that allowed flight, hypnotic eyes that also see through illusions, scales that could nullify most Mana-based attacks...an army of these things would overrun Orvonia in a matter of months if they appeared. Her current vessel was somewhere in the Grandmaster Tier, and she didn't know if they could grow like an Ascender, but a Sacred Abomination would likely destroy the planet singlehandedly. Taking on an actual God, a real Divine being, might even be possible for such an Abomination.
'These things really are a cheat huh. No wonder the world rejects them so much: they are literal bugs in Orvonia's ecosystem. Being able to jump Tiers by relying on your biology alone would earn close attention even in the Main Universe, so how does it work in this Universe? Is it just Orvonia, or does the rest of the Universe hate Abominations too?'
Considering the System vaguely referenced some sort of war being waged out there in the cosmos, Endyr assumed they were. On the other hand, Orvonia was probably unique in more ways than one. If the planet was truly formed over a fragment of her corpse, then it would have a special attraction to the Abominations, which were comparable to her cells that split off and became independent. What if an Abomination managed to get its hands on a fragment of her body..?
Shaking away the sudden chills of disgust, she combed over the rest of her body. An extremely fast metabolism, in-built hibernation mode, various versions of sight-night, thermal and zoom-and camouflage scales. Any and all advantages a predator could want, all packed into one body. Furthermore, the Abominations had one absolute advantage over everything else on Orvonia: they did not need Mana to survive. Yes, they could absorb it to speed up their natural regeneration, but that was simply converting it to Infinity energy. Whereas everything else, even Gods, would slowly suffocate in a Mana-less environment, an Abomination would be just dandy. This sole fact put them on a simply different level than all other life on the planet.
Snapping out of her reverie, Endyr looked up to see she had reached the door. Pushing against it, the chunk of metal swung back to reveal the laboratory she she had been tortured earlier. Silently taking in the calm and sterile white room, she paused for a second and lay against some apparatus. Closing her eyes, she took measured breaths and tried to regain her energy. While she would love to look around for bandages or anything that could fix her up, no matter how slight, she was on a time limit. So after collecting her breath for a minute or two, she got up and carried on to new, unfamiliar territory.
From here on out, she would have to make a beeline for the city. While she found it hard to believe, the System claimed what she was looking for was not present in the citadel and had to be located at the bottom of the valley. Whether it knew the exact location, it didn't say though. "Fucking cryptic System bullshit" she grit her teeth as she turned a corner, stepping into a new area. What the System had told her was that Bartholomeus worked on the edge of the facility, and she could make a straight burst for the exit if she followed a certain trail. How effective the System, which was once seen as omnipotent and omniscient, was in this pocket of time, she did not knew but had little choice but to trust in it.
It was either that, or she just killed herself and tried her luck at another regression.
'Positive thoughts, huh?' she laughed.