Into The Portal: Monster Invasion

Miles sat on the edge of his bed and looked at the vial with orange medicine. This was the second serum that would open doors for his advancement. He was stuck at the Grace-Rank low-tier bottleneck for a long time, and now, he could finally break through thanks to this small medicine.

“Are we ready, buddy?” He looked at the floating wristwatch at his side and asked.

“Ready to go.” Coin said and winked at him with the hologram face floating above it.

“Here goes nothing.” Miles said, and established vascular access and attached the medicine in his veins.

The scorching hot liquid entered the body through his arm, traveled and absorbed into the bloodstream. From there, it circulated throughout the body until it reached every piece of muscle he had in his body.

It only took a short few minutes to circulate every single muscle cell he had as the scorching hot liquid moved about in every pathway it could take while scorching his veins. Miles could handle such pain, the real show hasn’t started yet.

The medicine kicked in after a small while. It started to tear apart the muscle cells simultaneously. All the muscles in Miles's body were destroyed and formed again. Not once, but over and over again. It was much more intense than the first time.

Miles felt like dying. He was in unexplainable pain. He screamed until his throat bled, but his apartment was soundproof, so no one heard him. He was tied with letter straps, but he was convulsing madly. The bed was shaking like a rodeo bull.

Coin floated over his head with a water bag filled with ice. It pressed the water bag to his armpits to reduce his body heat. Miles lost his consciousness from the pain, but it didn’t take long for him to wake up with another scream coming from the top of his lungs. Despite the medicine considered to be a miracle, it still hurt like a son-of-a-bitch. The pain of constant muscle tear wasn’t something a normal human could withstand. That was why the ethical committee was running a “willpower test'' in the first place.

It took almost 24 hours of torture. At this time, Miles was bleeding from all over his body, but Coin was there for him.

Coin was carrying towels to dry him, water bags to cool him off, and supporting medicines to recover his lost blood. It could be said that Coin was working as hard as Miles.

After 24 hours, the pain went away. New and stronger denser muscles appeared on Miles’s body.

Miles was nowhere near to think about his new muscles. Without a single word, he passed out. He lay unconscious with his blue eyes bloodshot as he was dead tired.

Coin brought out an IV, injecting it into Miles’s bloodstream. Its human companion needed protein for his new muscles and nutrition for his tired body.

After everything had set, Coin floated back to the table and started to search Uninet.

It searched for useful articles but couldn’t use any keywords that could alert Mother AI. Any activity that seemed suspicious would alert the Mother AI. Although it wouldn’t cause too much trouble, as child AIs like Coin were not connected to Mother AI all the time to protect privacy of the citizens, the tracking would still lead to the apartment and would indicate Miles’s identity. Rent was under his name after all. Due to this, Coin could only look for news and articles one by one. It searched for special orbs, hoping to find one with two elements. After which, it searched for orbs that could not be a charge, to find any related article about orbs they looted from the vampire. Because he couldn’t search directly, he couldn’t find anything.

As it was looking at old articles, Coin came upon one that aroused its interest.

“Elements and Nature of the Obs”

“Evelyn Aurora”

“Mother before she married.” Coin looked at the title and started to read.

'Where do monsters come from? What are the orbs inside their bodies? What is the deciding factor of their second form, and where do they get their elements?

Since a couple of decades ago, we found orbs and studied them. We discovered that the orbs have two forms. The first form is a round object with attributes of the monster’s element and some clues about the item. A dagger orb dropped from a fire wolf is red in its orb form. There are traces of fire elements in it and something to remind a dagger. But what decides its element and shape? Do orbs take the shape of an object closest to them?

It is an interesting subject to study because most of the wolf type monsters drop orbs that can turn into daggers that resemble their fangs. They rarely drop coats, give resistance to their elements, and more rarely other objects. However, at times, item orbs turn into something completely irrelevant.

Another subject is its elements. Monsters have multiple elements they can use to fight, but not so rarely they can use more than one element. The orbs dropped from them don't contain two elements but only one. It is usually one of many elements monsters can use, but never two of them. There is a conjecture of an orb containing two elements or more. However, the probability of finding one is extremely low or almost zero since we haven't found one yet.

To sum it up, elements of the monsters and their final shape may not be arbitrary. The logic behind them is not yet clear, but there may be a system forming these orbs based on laws we humans haven’t comprehended yet.'

“It is not directly related to what I am looking for, but it is quite a start. Mother is the smartest person after all. It is not strange to see her questioning these things.” Coin thought and created a new search.

“Evelyn Cross, articles on orbs.” Coin looked at the hundreds of articles and started to read them one by one.