Charlemagne was happy to escape with his life and a piece of the delicious-smelling metal that the enormous hairy man-thing had pulled from the statue. Even with his enhanced strength, the chunk of metal felt oddly heavy in his beak.
He had flown off to the north-east, passing over the building that used to house the office of the President, before crossing the region that used to house Dantokpa, West Africa’s largest open air market. The churning waters of Lake Nokoue gave the rooster pause and caused him to turn eastward, heading straight for the ruined city of Porto Novo.
As the rooster flew, the piece of metal in his mouth grew more and more appetizing to his Special Ability. Finally, when he could stand it no longer, Charlemagne landed on a small patch of mostly-dry land in the swampy area on the outskirts of what used to be the capital of the Benin republic. The metal squelched deep into the soft ground as he dropped it and gave it a closer look.
The magical material was dense with mana and another energy that Charlemagne couldn’t yet identify. It was also far too big to fit into the rooster’s mouth. Leaning down, the rooster pecked the metal piece, driving it deeper into the mud. Angry at the ground for not holding the piece in place, he struck again and again, until the metal was buried so deep into the mud that he could hardly reach it. After repeating the process a few more times to identical results, the rooster finally decided that he needed a better surface. Charlemagne picked the metal back up, ignoring the strange tingling sensation in his face, and flew off to find a more suitable place to process his next meal.
It took only a few seconds for the rooster to spot an exposed concrete surface. He landed eagerly and dropped his burden onto the hard, flat surface. This time, the metal made a satisfying thwacking sound as it collided with the grey rock. Charlemagne pecked downward with all his might, activating his Strike skill. There a sound that sound like metal clanging against metal, followed by a burst of pain from the rooster’s face. Looking closely at the piece of incredibly durable metal, Charlemagne only saw a small indent where the tip of his beak had struck.
Charlemagne only had dim memories from his rampage along the coast of Benin that had culminated in him full on attacking an airplane, but he remembered enough to understand that his Mana Core could be used to strengthen his movements. Cycling his mana through his body, Charlemagne began to concentrate it as best as he could into his beak. The strange energy that was radiating from the piece of metal also seemed to respond to his intent, likewise gathering in front of his face. As he pushed his focus to its limits, tiny stars began to appear in his vision as a faint blue glow surrounded his beak. Having empowered his body to its limits, the rooster struck again, once against using Strike.
Chunks of concrete exploded high into the air, a few smaller pieces creating miniature sonic booms. The slab cracked in two as the piece of metal was driven into it like a wedge. Charlemagne was flung into the air by the recoil and barely managed to avoid falling onto his head, landing ungracefully after doing three full summersaults in the air. Part of the roostser’s face hurt like crazy, but his beak had gone entirely numb from the force of the blast.
Letting his Mana Core continue to direct power to his face, this time to heal it, the rooster walked over to the deep fissure he’d created to check the results of his latest attempt. He was puzzled to find a strangle yellow cone tipped with red sticking out of the metal piece. The rooster hopped down into the hole to get a closer look, thinking intensely. He was certain that he had seen the object before. He was right.
It was his beak.
The rooster hopped back out of the hole and rubbed his wing across his face. His beak felt like it was smaller than usually was, but it was still there. The yellow object must have been something else. Jumping back in to grab the metal, which was somewhat harder to hold than before, he flapped back out and made his way to another undamaged section of concrete. He dropped the metal piece and stared at it intensely. His craving for whatever it contained had not been diminished by the obstacle it posed. In fact, it was slowly growing. He simply had to find a way to mold the material.
Reaching out with his Mana Core, Charlemagne once again studied the piece of magical metal. While the mysterious energy radiated away from the material steadily, mana did not. In fact, the metal seemed to be absorbing the ambient mana in small quantities. The rooster wondered if all the mana the metal had absorbed was what made it so tasty. If that was the case, maybe adding more mana would make it tastier?
All thoughts of figuring out how to ingest the delicious metal went out the window as Charlemagne worked at how to make the material even tastier to his Special Ability, Food for the Stomach and the Stomach for Food. Reaching into his Mana Core, he ordered the mana stored within to begin accumulating in his throat. This time, however, he wasn’t trying to create a dense mana sphere. No, he was simply creating a mana dense environment that would nurture the small piece of metal.
A passerby would have observed a scaly chicken-thing vomiting, ever so gently, what appeared to be a glowing blue string onto an unresisting piece of metal.
Charlemagne had neither the capacity nor the inclination to care about external appearances. He was completely focused on the task at hand. The mana, coaxed into a vaguely cylindrical shape, was being slowly absorbed by the metal piece. The strange prickly feeling grew stronger as the metal grew warmer. After a few minutes of feeding mana, the piece of metal began to glow. It was only dim red at first, but the light and heat emanating from the material grew quickly. The light turned to orange, and then yellow and finally to a dingy white as the heat grew so intense that Charlemagne had to close his eyes. Using only his magical senses, the rooster saw that the structure of the metal had changed, softening it greatly. His Special Ability was going wild, demanding that he consume the material instantly. It was all he could do to hold off for a few more moments.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
Unable to stave off his hunger anymore, Charlemagne allowed his instincts to take over. A mesh of mana shot out from his Mana Core, enveloping the white-hot metal. The metal deformed easily as the mesh grabbed it and began to retract. The entire mass slammed straight into Charlemagne’s waiting mouth, hissing as it turned whatever stray moisture it encountered to steam, before being dragged down his esophagus and into his stomach.
The pain that the rooster experienced during this process cannot be understated. Although he had survived being burnt to a crisp before, that had happened in the metaphysical plane, where the limits of biology were more like a suggestions than hard rules. Charlemagne’s mouth and throat were torn and burnt at the same time as the searing hot metal forced its way past his crop and down into his stomach, where the rooster’s enhanced healing factor struggled to keep up with the damage the burning lump was doing to his internal organs. His nerves especially did not appreciate being seared and regrown over and over.
If the burning heat had been the only complication from ingesting the metal, Charlemagne would have recovered from his ordeal in a matter of minutes. After all, metal cools fairly quickly when quenched in water. No, the real issue, the one that Charlemagne only noticed once he was no longer being boiled alive, was that the magical metal was highly radioactive. And it was bombarding the rooster’s vital organs with extreme doses of magical radiation.
A weird rumbling in the rooster’s abdomen preceded a torrent of blood, viscera, and fluid that rocketed from Charlemagne’s mouth onto the concrete below. Charlemagne, acting on instinct, ate what he could before the next round of throwing up interrupted his grisly and cannibalistic meal.
The nausea continued to come in waves as Charlemagne flopped onto the ground, his body weakened by the high dose of radiation, which caused immediate devastation to his cells due to its magical nature. The growing ache in his stomach coupled with the nausea made it almost impossible for him to look inward with his mystical senses, but the rooster powered through. The power that the squiggles had brought him had never led him astray before…there must have been something in the metal that his body needed. He just needed to survive the process long enough to obtain whatever benefit that was.
Starting with the basics, Charlemagne began to manually cycle mana through his body, noting with surprise that the strange energy emanating from the lump of metal were being pulled into the mana flow. As more of the energy was captured by his mana, his weakness and nausea slowly began to subside.
After over half an hour of manually moving his mana, Charlemagne was convinced that he was still missing something. The lump of metal was still there, completely undigested. The strange energy was now clogging up the tiny pathways that his mana flowed through, making it more and more difficult to circulate his mana. The energy was also condensing in his Mana Core, which threw off its rhythm. He needed a way to get rid of the new energy and absorb the metal using his Special Ability. But he didn’t know how to do either of those things. All he knew how to do was to get rid of his mana…
It took a few iterations of this particular chain of thought for the rooster to realize that he did, in fact, have a way to get rid of the strange energy that was cramping his style. He just needed to expel it the same way that he did his mana. Rather than forming a thread and pushing the mana gently out of his mouth, the rooster opted for the more spectacular option.
Condensing a ball of radiation-laced mana in his throat, Charlemagne struggled to pull as much of the new type of energy out of his Mana Core and into his combination attack. It took more focus than he had expected to continue to cycle just his mana while gathering as much of the radiation as possible into the growing ball, which now glowed a lovely shade of aquamarine instead of bright blue. Having no target in mind, the rooster tilted his head back and let his attack fly directly into the sky, crowing as he unleashed it.
“Buck-kawk!”
The relief that Charlemagne felt was unimaginable as the highly radioactive ball of mana flew high into the air before dissipating. He flopped back to the ground with the chicken equivalent of a groan, hoping that purging himself of the radiation would allow his body to go to work on digesting the metal. Unfortunately that was not the case.
The poor rooster had to repeat the process another eight times over the next two hours.
Finally, after the ninth energy ball had been sent on its merry way, something shifted inside Charlemagne’s body. Powerful stomach acid was generated in immense quantities, slowly wearing away at the hard metal slug sitting in his digestive tract. This unleashed both stored mana and more radiation, so Charlemagne wearily started the cycle to purge himself of the damaging energy once again. It took another seventeen cycles and about four hours for the metal to finally break down entirely, allowing Charlemagne to finally unleash the last of the radiation and mana mix. This time, unlike the others, he was too tired to lift his head, and fired the ball straight ahead. Then he fell over, too exhausted to move further.
It was at that moment that the squiggles rewarded his efforts.
Charlemagne was happy to learn that the power he had been given by the squiggles had not betrayed him. His faith in the power of the System was reaffirmed as he read his new gains. Not only was his body stronger and tougher, but he had also gained additional proficiency in the Mana Core skill, which seemed to be a crucial part of him now and was the key to being able to absorb the magical metal in the first place. The skilled called “Radiation Manipulation” must have been related to the strange energy that was being stored in the metal, because it grew the most during his ordeal. Finally, he had earned another achievement, which made all his attributes work better.
The rooster was content to lie down for a while and recover from his ordeal, and thus he closed his eyes just for a moment to rest, allowing his Mana Core to draw in ambient energy to continue to heal his body. Exhausted, he quickly fell asleep.
Charlemagne had no idea how much time had elapsed, because the sun was still high in the sky when he woke with a start, sensing something approaching. Pulling himself up to his feet, he saw an army approaching. The rooster puffed himself up and crowed his defiance at the human-like shapes rapidly approaching.
Then he launched himself into battle.
