Parasite King

[Jonah]: "Come ooooon, move you ******!"

Jonah grunted and moaned as he strained against the carapace. He stood in the middle of one of the Worm's armored sections, foot planted firmly at the bottom of the concave surface while slowly bending the edges upwards. After the Worm's death, most of the fleshy bits had rapidly digested, leaving behind a mountain of harder than steel, acid-resistant carapace plates, and dozens of spear-like legs.

At first, he wasn't sure what to do with it all. He wasn't totally sure what to do period. The past few days had felt like he was walking through a thick fog. Sometimes he would find himself motionless for hours, staring out into nothingness. His "Assistant AI" had had said this was a common side-effect of soul-strain. Apparently, it would get better with time, but it would be a slow process. Some medications and skills could help him recover faster, but nothing he had access to at the moment.

The first day had been the worst. The AI had to continually remind him of simple tasks, such as when to eat or not stand in neck-high acid staring at a particularly pretty mote of mana for 3 hours. It as also been the one to recommend he spend his token on his new skill.

The AI had called this skill "Improvised Crafting," and mentioned that it was one of the more basic "Survivor" skills common throughout the 100,000 Galaxies. That was interesting, given the name, but then again, everything in the system had been in English so far, and several skills referenced obvious Earth influences. Maybe they had been watching Earth for longer than he'd thought? Or maybe it had just scanned his brain and made adjustments accordingly—more questions to ask.

Bah! He was going off on a tangent again, however. The soul-strain made it hard to focus his thoughts for very long though he was catching himself more with each passing day.

Where was he? Or right. The skill. The AI had mentioned it wasn't a "proper" crafting skill like some others. It wouldn't grant some supernatural flash of insight or knowledge. Nor would the system appraise or rate his creations like other crafting skills (at least until he hit Journeyman). This was partly what made it one of the cheapest and easiest skills to pick up.

Instead, the skill would significantly increase his "imaginative" thought processes, allowing him to make the best of the resources and tools he had in a specific situation. For this reason, many professional crafters took the skill on the side, along with their focus. It also granted a very weak form of material manipulation, letting him more easily shape and manipulate the things he was trying to work with.

As a bonus, the skill would help him in his recovery to a limited extent. It wasn't anything intentional, but more like "physical therapy for his mind," if he correctly understood the AI. Like how small, repetitive exercise could help a patient recover from an injury, the skill would stimulate his mind and improve his recovery.

All he was feeling at the moment, however, was frustration. Sweat poured down his back as he gasped for breath. It was harder than he thought it would be. The skill didn't let him tear, or fuse materials together, but it did give him the option to bend, or twist them in small ways. It didn't really affect the material itself; instead, when he touched the carapace, he seemed to instinctively know where it's "weak points" were. The points where he could more easily bend and manipulate it in the way he wanted. But it was still a slow process; the carapace was like a thick sheet of aluminum, hard and metallic at first glance, but flexible in a way his brain told him metal shouldn't be.

Centimeter by centimeter He bent the side of the carapace section upward, until 3 days later, it was roughly the shape of a J. He had an idea of what he wanted to do, but it wasn't sure it would work yet. [Macgyver] let him almost form a "blueprint" in his mind and categorize each step, but he soon found that there was still a trial and error aspect to it. It made sense; the skill didn't actually give him any knowledge, only let him more easily picture what he wanted to do.

One down, a dozen more to go...

Two weeks, and eight more levels of [Macgyver], Jonah stood on a rudimentary platform rising out of the acid below. He had used a simply locking joint his Uncle Bo had taught him, to lock several of the carapace sections into serviceable, if uneven, floor. Uncle Bo always had liked craft projects like this; he could still remember all of the crazy and insane things they'd built together when he was younger.

The man was a genius when it came to working with his hand; it was why he'd risen to be one of the most respected Field Engineers in the US military. He didn't even question how his uncles were doing in this whole mess. There was no way those three crazy men would lose to something as insignificant as the end of the World. Heck, they were probably having the time of their lives—just one more reason he needed to get out of this place.

Wait... focus, Jonah!

The platform, right. The locking joints took the longest time to finish. Thankfully, it seemed working with such difficult material increased his skill at a faster rate. This, in turn, slowly increased what he could effectively do. The Worm turned out to be a treasure trove of materials. The death tentacles were rubbery and elastic, and thankfully acid-resistant. They hadn't so much as "rotted" as "shriveled," leaving behind thick, fibrous strands. He managed to repurpose them into a makeshift rope and used them to reinforce the platform further.

The Worm's head was another boon. After a week soaking in in acid, all of the fleshy insides had dissolved, leaving a leathery outer skin. With a little work and the leftover blades of the death tentacles, he managed to shape it into something workable. Next, he used the large, pointy legs to drill into the carapaces of his platform. This had taken another two days; both were extremely durable, and his low strength made a slow process. Eventually, he managed to drill out holes wide and deep enough for him to socket several of the more massive legs into.

Then, using the legs as support beams, he stretched the worm leather out, creating a simple tent-like structure, using tentacle rope to reinforce the whole thing. It wasn't pretty, and it stank to high heaven, but he felt a sense of pride as he looked up at his new home. Maybe it was the fact he'd not have to sleep in pools of acid, or moist, squishy flesh anymore, but for the first time in months, he felt... satisfied. Or maybe it was just human nature not to want to feel so exposed.

Using a tentacle scythe, he carved a large grove under his old alcove and jammed the platform about 1/4 of the way in. The Snake's flesh wiggled and squirmed around it as it regenerated, anchoring the platform into the wall. Hope was that the flexible nature of the carapace, coupled with the loose, locking joints, would allow the platform to move and bend with the Snake. Not that the Snake moved very often, it seemed.

Afterward, he took the scythe to his old alcove, expanding it and digging deeper into the increasingly hard flesh. The scythe was much more durable and sharp than the claw sickle, and soon he dug out space the size of a small bedroom. He then used acid to cauterize the wounds and prevent regeneration. He used this new space as a storeroom, moving the rest of the worm leather, tentacle rope, carapace, dozens of legs, and tentacle scythes over the next few hours. There were a few other bits and pieces that had survived the digestion process as well, but he wasn't sure how to make use of them just yet. Soon the room was jam-packed full of Worm materials to last him awhile.

His project had taken nearly three weeks and netted him 13 more levels of [Macgyver]. He could feel his mind starting to clear up too. With each passing day, he could focus a little longer, think a little clearer. With a wave over his hand, he brought up his status screen. 

Absorbing the Worm's Soulstone had netted quite a bit of profit. He had to admit, he was slightly disappointed he didn't get to make a choice himself. He could see how either Titan or Bioweapon could be handy in his situation right now, even if all he knew were the names. As for the race changes, while the A-ranked "Worldeater" seemed to be a powerful and obvious choice, the name was ominous and dangerous sounding. And there was nothing to say about "Worm-kin" (*shiver*).

Besides, Jonah wasn't too sure he was ready to give up his humanity, just yet. Even if it meant it would be easier to escape.

Out of all of them, Symbiote seemed to sit right in the middle of what he would have chosen. He didn't know what the standards for Laniakea were, but the bonuses seemed strong. He'd nearly doubled his Health in six levels, and his mana pool increased by a massive margin. And it seemed they would only snowball from here.

Unfortunately, the class seemed to be geared more towards a support role, or maybe Summoner/Tamer type. And the skills reflected his guess, as well.

[Siphon] seemed simple enough; it reminded him of similar "Leech life" abilities in the games he played. It would take some getting used to, but he understood the general gist of it. [Duplicate] and [Graft] were a whole other beast, however. It felt like there was some Blue Mage style skill stealing going on at first. But the time limit and requirements make him feel like his tamer/summoner hypothesis was more likely.

Depending on what the requirements for "Attuning" were, another possibility was as some kind of Buffer and support class. If [Duplicate] didn't affect his target, he could envision a future were he swapped and traded powerful skills and traits between his allies, or maybe "copied" a powerful person's abilities to act as their support. Since [Graft] didn't require the target to be attuned, could he do something stupid and graft a bunch of powerful skills onto foot soldiers and create a super army? Or was there some limits he wasn't aware of yet?

His mind raced with ideas and possibilities. Thousands of branching paths his future could take. Though he didn't know if it was the excitement of finally having the space to breathe and think about his situation, or just the influence of [Macgyver], either way, Jonah could feel his blood start to burn. After months of either struggling to survive the next moment or feeling lost and helpless, he finally saw the way forward. 

It was too bad the only other thing he could test the skills on, was the Snake. Unfortunately, he still didn't know what the requirements for "attunement" where, and even if he did, he highly suspected the Snake was far out of his league. His only other choice to wait for the Snake to swallow something and pray it survived the trip down, and God knows how long that would take.

What he needed now, though, was information.

And luckily, he knew just where to get it.

[Jonah]: Hey, AI... I have some questions...