Chapter 83: Thor

The placid voice was coming from the newest of the spaces in his mind, which was currently occupied by the Cerro, who was happily munching away on the plants as his body grew from its hatchling state. Karl agreed. That was enough to reassure the creature, and with it, the pressure on Karl's mind. At least some of the pressure was on his mind. The bond with the Bloodbath Spider was still not strong enough, and while the creature seemed happy with the situation that it was in, the bond between them still needed work until Karl could speak to it mentally and ensure that it wasn't going to escape and run rampant through the town. Hawk had a habit of wandering out of the space anytime that he wanted, but Karl was fairly certain that he could keep the beasts in the space if he wanted to. Once the bond was formed, they would obey his orders without too many questions, and asking that they stay inside was a simple enough request. With the singular goal of stopping the pain in his head, Karl kept adding energy to the spaces, working to strengthen them while he rebuilt the damage that was done to his body as well as he could with the excess energy that he could spare from the process. A few minutes later, a man in a white coat came into the room, carrying a large box full of various potions and assorted tools that Karl vaguely recognized as medical devices in his distracted state. "He's stable, according to my skill, but he's got a long way to go. I will give him a regrowth potion, and I hope that your overseer will cover the cost. These things aren't cheap." The doctor informed the other Elites in the room. Daniel laughed. "We were sent here directly by the Bureau of Elite Development. We can put it on the expense account; no need for a reimbursement filing." That was the best news that the doctor had heard all day, and with that magic promise of a direct billing to the expense account, he was eager to break out all the best treatments to get the young student fully recovered from whatever mishap he had sustained. "Might I ask what caused this? If I know, I might be able to treat it more effectively." The doctor asked. "That's a fine question, and we don't know the answer. He is a strange class marking, and he bonded a Windspeed Hawk-type magical beast to himself to gain power. On this outing, we wanted to see if he could add more monsters and expand his powers. Well, it worked, and he added two, but there was some sort of backlash. It was too much mental strain, but then it started siphoning off his body as well." Alice explained. "What two monsters?" The doctor asked. "A Cerro, probably one of the smaller lightning adept varieties, and a Bloodbath Spider, both hatchlings." She explained. "It is possible that the Bloodbath Spider was not getting what it needed, and it fed from the Elite's body instead. Did you find some food for it? Hatchlings are born hungry." He asked. "We did. There is a lot of Awakened Quality blood for it and a smaller amount of Ascended because we weren't sure what it would be able to digest." Alice explained. The doctor pulled another set of potions out and began to set up an IV drip for Karl to make it easier to keep feeding him potions until he recovered. "I suspect that a lot of the issue will be blood loss and extreme dehydration. Did you say that the Cerro has lightning or Regeneration as its primary racial skill?" The doctor requested, with a notepad in his hands. "We would assume Lightning, as they were the smaller variety at the nest, but it's freshly hatched, and we haven't seen the bonded animal's ability yet." That was good enough for the Doctor, and he added more rapid healing medication to the bag and an electrical insulator on the stand. One thing that he didn't want was for his expensive treatment to get shocked into uselessness if the monster broke free during treatment. He needn't have worried so much about that particular pet. I was perfectly happy eating in the Beast Space, with little to no motivation to do anything else right now. The Bloodbath Spider, on the other hand, was glutted on monster blood and bored, looking for something to do while it was stuck in a featureless space with barely enough energy to be comfortable. Karl placated the spider. [At least a tree to build my web in, something.] The spider complained, not understanding the intricacies of building the contents of the space. Karl took a branch from the pile of food that they had brought into the room for him to feed his pets and moved it into the fist-sized spider's area, near the bucket of blood. "That's a start." It sighed with relief, then set about making a nest in the branch, with stringers that ran to the bucket, so it didn't have to walk across the unnerving nothingness to get there. An hour later, the doctor switched the medicines in the IV bag, and Karl's body began filling back out to something closer to his natural state. It wasn't a full recovery, but the Elites in the room were feeling a lot better about his chances of not only surviving this mishap but coming out better for it. The two monsters that Karl had bonded with would both grow up to be extremely powerful without any additional help, but the evidence showed that simply being bonded to Karl would help them grow to be smarter and stronger than usual in a much shorter time. Between the Hawk, the armored body of the Cerro, and the Bloodbath Spider, they would form a combination that very few Elites would be able to take down once they were fully grown.