Whispers of Metal: The Forge of the One Mage

Well I have a new chapter, comment and give power stones, the next chapter will be the one getting more into the SU canon.

After that conversation with Nora, I returned home, or rather, to my lab. I had spent days researching human DNA and how to achieve eternal youth. The latter, though complicated, was within reach. However, that wasn't important at the moment.

Humans, as we are, have numerous small defects in our biological design. Why? Many reasons, but I won't go into them now—let's just say some are the cause of many human afflictions.

Why am I talking about this? Simple. I intend to eliminate all these flaws from myself, keeping only what's good and improving it as far as my understanding allows.

"It's time to begin," I told myself, without much urgency, as I glanced at the data on the computer screen.

His body floated naked in the air, in the same position as the Vitruvian Man. A platinum light, as supernatural as his powers could be, so alien, so discordant that reality around him buzzed, bathed him from inside out and vice versa. This energy awaited his command, ready to transform him into something far better than what he currently was.

The vision was disturbingly complex: tissues, organs, systems, cells, organelles, DNA strands, proteins, and countless microorganisms. He saw all of this from so many different perspectives that it was a headache to even comprehend. Everything seemed unnecessarily complex, inefficient, riddled with errors. It was no wonder humans suffered from so many diseases throughout their lives.

Pushing the thought aside, he focused on his goal:

The light first concentrated on the spine. The human spine is an evolutionary disaster. Over millennia of bipedalism, it never fully perfected itself; it was unfinished, if he could put it that way. Prone to injuries, strains, and degeneration. With precision, he began to remodel it. The vertebrae were divided into additional segments to better support the body's weight. They were reinforced with a biomimetic internal structure: a combination of hexagonal patterns that more efficiently distributed pressure.

The process was excruciatingly painful. Each cell was dismantled into its primary components and converted into mere nutrients to shape what he desired, breaking the old to make something new. He wanted to scream, but his powers wouldn't allow it—he wouldn't allow it.

When the new spine was complete, the pain didn't subside. If that wasn't enough, the skin in that area itched so intensely he wanted to tear it off just to stop feeling it.

But he couldn't stop now, so gritting his teeth, he continued.

Next came the bones. Human bones are strong and resilient in their own right, but they aren't optimized for long-term stress and are prone to wear. The pain was unbearable, like each bone was being crushed and rebuilt at the same time. It felt like needles stabbing into his flesh, tearing the muscles, which were quickly repaired to prevent bleeding out.

The bone structure was reformed, its external shape nearly identical, save for minor differences, but its internal form was unmistakably different, with hexagonal patterns almost the size of cells.

Now, his bones would distribute forces and stresses evenly, making them lighter, more flexible, and more resilient.

This was good, but the flesh around the bones was destroyed, so he repaired and reattached it.

Next were the ligaments in his feet. The human foot design is inefficient—a remnant from our simian ancestors. He had to divide the bones in his feet into additional sections to improve their support and movement. The ligaments were reorganized into more complex structures, fusing with the bones as if they were a semi-solid biological glue. His toes lengthened, taking on a design closer to that of primates, improving balance and traction. Every alteration felt like his bones were broken into smaller parts and reassembled while still hot, each ligament twisted to the limits his understanding could enhance.

The blood vessels were too fragile in certain parts of the body. The capillaries near the skin, for example, were exposed to too many risks. The tissues of the arteries and veins became more like rubber tubes, more durable and flexible. The critical arteries were repositioned, moved away from vulnerable areas. This was painful, as the biomatter was compressed and stretched to achieve this. It felt like his entire body was being pulled beyond what it could bear.

His muscle tissue followed the same stretching process, along with the same unbearable pain.

He wanted it all to stop, but the pain wouldn't let him. He was gritting his teeth so hard that he hadn't realized a couple of them had cracked and were rejoined in the process.

Next came the heart and lungs. His heart was modified to beat with superior efficiency. He could feel each beat, deeper, stronger, though at first uncoordinated with the surrounding organs. His lungs were reconfigured to process oxygen more efficiently. For a few minutes, he felt like he was suffocating, unable to breathe properly until everything stabilized.

His trachea became flexible, with a texture similar to aerospace plastic, with tiny filters that dissolved harmful substances in the air he inhaled, converting them into nutrients for the body. And once again, that agonizing stretching sensation returned.

The appendix was completely dissolved, converted into nutrients to create a secondary liver that connected to his existing one. The sensation of dissolution was so strange that he felt the urge to vomit.

And he did, but he couldn't afford to lose more nutrients, so with disgust, he reabsorbed the vomit along with the dissolved appendix.

The old liver was compacted and improved with layer upon layer of filters, while next to it, a much smaller liver formed and connected.

The intestines were upgraded to dissolve all organic matter and convert it into nutrients that the body could use, expelling only what was harmful. The sensation of hunger was beginning to gnaw at him—so many nutrients had been dissolved just for this, and he was far from finished.

The sweat glands were redesigned to be more compact, and the internal structure of his nose incorporated a kind of mucous filter that cleansed the air he breathed.

The structure of his skull was left mostly untouched, except for a slight reinforcement on its outer layer. Next came the eyes. First, he corrected his poor vision, then improved the design of his eyes to be able to focus and defocus at will, granting him both microscopic and macroscopic vision.

What came next would be the hardest part: the nervous system and brain.

When he tried to extend his nervous system and install small control nodes made of bundles of nerves, an indescribable pain emerged because his brain was receiving more information than it could process. His nose bled, but as soon as the blood fell, his body reabsorbed it. He couldn't afford to lose any nutrients in this state. The pain was so overwhelming that he wanted to end it all. He didn't care about continuing anymore; he just wanted the pain to stop.

Then he glanced at one of the screens in the lab. He saw himself there, so helpless, so in pain, so pathetic. He didn't like what he saw. Still in pain, he gritted his teeth and muttered, more to himself than to anyone else, "How pathetic we are." Those words, spoken to himself, pushed him to continue, muttering as if several voices spoke, "Crying and begging for death over a little pain." At this point, he was hallucinating, but he kept speaking to his reflection: "Be a man and grit your teeth," he said to himself, continuing through the same pain but no longer with that pitiful gaze.

What followed was the most dangerous part: his brain. As you know, the brain is divided into two parts, or three if you count the brainstem and the brain itself. What he would do was further divide this already incredibly efficient and complex organ.

Part of his brain turned to nothing more than mush, leaving him with an extreme sensation of slowness and emptiness. He also felt a cold, inexorable logic descend upon his thoughts—no stray thoughts, but so slow that he felt sick being in such a state.

Hours passed, and that mush was slowly reformed and divided into four parts, each with the same processing power as his old brain. When he connected them, the discordance with his left side, which had not yet been reformed, was clear. He felt overly emotional in that state, as if drugged.

The left side followed the same process, but it was different. The same slowness and emptiness overwhelmed him, but now it wasn't cold logic and calculations filling his thoughts—it was an explosion of emotions, feelings, and colors flooding his mind. He was struggling to form coherent thoughts at this point; everything was so vivid and bright that he couldn't bear it.

He felt like he would fall asleep at any moment, but that couldn't happen—if it did, he would die. And he wouldn't die, not now, not when he had this power.

The left side of his brain slowly reformed over hours that seemed like days due to his improved brain. "How could it be his?" I thought—or we thought, like a collective or an individual—until the left side also divided into four new parts, bringing the total to eight brain hemispheres. The brainstem became more flexible and connected these new parts like a fast-acting adhesive, and all his thoughts returned to normal. Only a single "I" was now present.

The sensory overload was so intense that his thoughts stopped for entire minutes. All he felt was the intense void, followed by infinite hunger and fatigue.

I crawled up the stairs to my kitchen. I didn't even think about using telekinesis to move or bring the food to me, nor even about walking. Logical decisions could wait—I only wanted food.

When I reached the kitchen, I could no longer think logically. Hunger and exhaustion dominated me. I ripped the door off the fridge without thinking. The leftovers from yesterday went directly into my stomach without even chewing, the raw meat too. Frozen food disappeared in a single bite. Everything—salt, pepper, condiments—I devoured it all, even the iron utensils. Part of the fridge was eaten and absorbed as well, leaving only plastic behind. Almost the entire table and chairs became another snack.

Unconsciously, all those nutrients were used to complete the transformation.

When the being was full, it collapsed from exhaustion and cellular stress. It was still breathing, and its heart was still beating, but the platinum light had disappeared with the last vestiges of reasoning.