Chapter 129: Packing for a Trip

Kaius lurched towards his brother, laying his hands on the dense and gore drenched fur that coated the meles’ thick muscle-bound form. He felt his brother’s physique straining, fibres snapping as they pulled away from bones that shattered of their own violation.

Panic surged through him, his heart racing as he watched Porkchop undergo some sort of metamorphic change, more akin to something he would have expected to see in the Fleshwarper’s Laboratory than a natural process.

Porkchop’s head snapped back as his thick neck contracted uncontrollably, feature’s warping as the bone and cartilage of his face snapped in a dozen splintering crunches. His features shifted, expanding as muscle and skin tore, and new flesh arose to take its place.

Before Kaius’s very eyes, his coat began to shift. It stayed the same tinted black, but the red morphed, shifting to a green so deep it was almost the colour of scorched slate, only showing its inner hue under the shine of the false sun above. A ring of milky white sprouted from his neck, dripping down to the top of his chest and running along a section of his spine as the ruff of his neck lengthened- turning into a half-mane.

He realised what was happening and took a step back, crossing his arms in annoyance.

“Porkchop, you fucking asshole. You could’ve mentioned that awakening your bloodline came with a side dose of body horror.” Kaius muttered.

His bond-brother did not respond, insensate as his jaw dislocated with a stomach churning crackle-pop and the bone shattered and grew. At least it was obvious now why he’d wanted his barding removed. Depths-wrought enchantments were generally more flexible than artisan made ones, but everything had its limit. Who knew if its resizing enchantment would have stood up to the growth. Then Porkchop’s claws fell off.

Kaius shuddered, watching the strings of tissue that tied the daggers that once capped his brother’s digits snap as new talons grew in their place. They were…stone-like. A slightly translucent forest green, it looked to be some sort of crystal that had been honed to an edge so sharp it seemed like it would cut him with a bare look.

Cocking an eyebrow, he looked on in interest. Now that he knew Porkchop’s life was not at risk, there was a certain morbid fascination in watching his bond-brother’s body dismantle and then rebuild itself, and by holy fuck was he getting big.

He’d already been a living weapon before, roughly bear sized and tall enough to come up to the bottom of Kaius’s chest. It looked like he would be taller than him at the shoulder now, at the very least. Though, it was hard to tell with how oddly proportioned he was, what being mid-evolution and all.

That wasn’t all, if his brother had been built like a strongman raised on a diet of whole cattle before, now it looked as though his muscles had muscles.

That was…moderately terrifying. There was a reason greater beasts were so feared. Considering how strong his brother would be due to his sheer physicality, the improvement from his stats would be all the more impressive.

Shaking his head in amazement, Kaius stepped back and waited for his brother to return to him.

…

Kaius watched Porkchop stretch, his face still a little pale from watching his brother’s body crack and morph as he settled into a new, empowered, form.

Rolling his shoulders, Porkchop ambled up to his feet, though he stumbled a little on legs that looked to be much longer and more powerful than he was used to. Kaius whistled as he took in his brother’s new height.

“Fuck me, you’re huge.” he said, mouth agape as he looked up at Porkchop’s green shrouded face.

Porkchop’s ears twitched, and his head snapped towards him. He moved, bounding over to Kaius and smothering him in a wall of blood streaked fur.

Kaius laughed, wrapping his arms around his brother and heaving in an attempt to leverage his newly enhanced Strength to muscle Porkchop to the ground. He was about as successful as he would have been trying to uproot a fully grown oak.

Porkchop batted him back with casual ease, sending him stumbling to the side before he started to rear up in excitement.

“Kaius! I did it too! Got a Heroic!” Porkchop said, exhilaration and pride streaming across their bond.

“Really! That’s great! What did you get?” Kaius asked excitedly, slipping under and away from Porkchop’s descending paws. “And be careful of those claws, they look sharp.” he chastised, staring at the spots where they had dug into the solid stone floor.

“Whoops, sorry.” Porkchop replied bashfully, settling down onto his haunches.

It still left the meles clearing his height easily, which felt… odd. Porkchop had never exactly been small, even at his old height he was taller on his hind legs, but being trounced when his brother was sitting was something else entirely.

Not that it made him uncomfortable. With how often Porkchop ended up getting walloped due to his rather…direct fighting style, he needed all the physical advantages he could get. Kaius sincerely hoped that whatever his brother had gained from his bloodline would be enough to avoid a repeat of what had happened with the Guardian. Seeing him shattered and broken as he tried to crawl away from the siege ogre had been one of the most terrifying things he had ever experienced.

Evidently his old worry seeped through their link, as he was treated to a cold nose the size of his palm smushing into his forehead.

“No worrying! The ancestral blood didn’t just make me bigger, the magic of the transformation will have increased my baseline even more than what simple size would do. Besides, one of us needs to draw our enemies ire, and you are much more suited to dealing out damage quickly. I picked the Warden of Sacred Jade with that in mind.” Porkchop explained.

“Oh?” Kaius said, reaching up to scratch Porkchop behind his ear. His brother reacted as he always had, leaning into his touch. It gladdened him, physical change or no, he was still the same old Porkchop. “Going for the path of the bastion, then?”

It did make sense. Porkchop’s legacy skills were well bent towards drawing attention and persisting through the fire of battle. Yet he would have had to get something good. While all bastions relied on appropriate skills and tough bodies, without fail they lended themselves towards heavy armour and impenetrable defences. Things that would prevent wounds. Even if all you took was light cuts, standing as the anchor of a battle would mean that eventually enough of them would accumulate to do you in.

“If you’re doing that we’re going to have to invest in some heavier barding. Full plate at least, if not heavy-plate. I’m sure we’ll find someone in Deadacre who could do it, but we’ll probably need to commission it, and it won’t be cheap. Thank the gods we’ve got a few artefacts we can part with, I think we should be able to cover it with the blink daggers.” Kaius said, already planning how he could support Porkchop to the best of his ability. They were a team, and with how little equipment Porkchop generally needed he would have to be a complete miser not to splash out on something good for something so central.

“Self Repair and Durability at the very least, though I might need to sell off the helm to make that happen, I could do with some simple steel for a while.” he muttered, scratching at his chin.

“No, we don’t! I got a good pick for my first bloodline skill, see?” Porkchop interrupted him, before he backed up a few paces.

Kaius cocked his head in interest. “Oh?”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“Watch!” Porkchop said with a grin.

Mana flared within his brother’s chest, building to a crescendo over a handful of seconds as Porkchop focused with intensity. Whatever skill he had gained, it was taking a lot of mana for a skill in the first tier.

The accumulated power peaked, glowing with the shimmering colour of crystal affinity, though strangely tainted by a shining green. It rushed forth, exploding from his brother’s body in a forceful wave to settle heavily against his fur.

Kaius’s jaw dropped.

Wherever the mana touched, thick slabs of heavy jade were left in their place. Bound to each other by oddly delicate chains of the same material, they formed an impressive suit of barding. Heavy-plate barding, though it looked oddly incomplete.

Almost rough cut, the angled plates of jade conformed to Porkchop’s body. A gorget and chestplate covered his front and neck, while more overlapping plates stretched up his neck and down the top of his spine. A skullcap of barely transparent greenstone was affixed to his head, while a stout nose-guard stretched down his snout.

More sections hung from the spine armour, draping over his ribs and forming into short half-pauldrons that left his legs free and mobile.

As the armour popped into existence, Porkchop let out a soft grunt as he adjusted to the added weight and bulk of his summoned armour.

“I…What?” Kaius said, shocked. When Porkchop had said that bloodlines were similar to classes, he had expected the skills to be a little more aligned to primal and beastly flavours. Something that summoned armour was nowhere near the top of his list of what he had been expecting. “Is this…normal?”