Zenith: Last Revenant - Chapter 65

The tiger’s expression greatly changed as his nemesis’s severed head was detached from its body and began its descent towards the ground. However, the surprise that initially began to set in, quickly turned to something akin to terror when halfway in its dive it’s hard surface began to wobble and in the next instant liquify.

Magically it stopped in midair and charged straight towards the strange humanoid figure to merge with him. The rest of its body also followed suit, and changed from its hard-shelled form to a viscous black liquid and flew into the man.

“Mmmmm… This is the best feeling ever…” With closed eyes and a euphoric expression, he turned towards the sky. Although the black fluid quickly submerged into his body, he remained in this state for almost a minute.

The large, purple tiger-like beast was looking at this unknown figure with trepidation in his intelligent eyes. Unlike normal beasts, it had quite a bit of intelligence, it knew that he stood no chance against it. It instinctively felt that escaping was no longer an option. The only hope for survival was to show submission, and hope that it could offer its service to its ‘hopefully’ new master. Otherwise, the same fate that has befallen the giant ant, would await itself.

As it realized its only way to overcome this hurdle, it immediately lowered its head to the ground and began to whimper in a muffled, whispering tone, completely different from the majestic roar it had shown before.

“Huh?” The figure was alerted to the sound, and lowered his head, looking at the creature with its subservient posture. A knowing smile settled on his face, as he walked closer to the beast and gently placed his right hand over the top of the beast’s head.

“You wish to serve me?” He asked in a calm tone, for which the cat promptly nodded its large head once not daring to look up from the ground.

Loud roaring laughter reverberated the area in the next moment and continued for quite a while before it died down.

“Ahahaha, oh my… Even the beasts have much higher intelligence than what I am used to…” Reaching down, he raised the tigers to head to look at it in the eye. He had a strange, almost manic glint flash through for a moment before he settled with a much calmer, friendlier look.

“You know what? Okay, let’s do that. However…” Suddenly as the strange man’s eyes flashed with a strange, eerie light the tiger felt an uncomfortable pressure in its mind. Its thoughts began to race uncontrollably as if someone was flipping through the pages of the book that contained the life it lived up to this day.

“…Sorry but I will not take any chances. Don’t worry though, it won’t hurt and you will be much more relaxed in a moment.”

Although the tiger was not an overly aggressive species, it still dominated and ruled over a large portion of the surrounding forest, and it did everything it could to defend its territory when needed. As the seconds passed, the uncomfortable pressure seized after some time, and with it, its wariness towards this stranger as well. Looking up at the man again, for some reason, it could now recall this figure’s name. He was called Spencer, and he was its Master, its owner.

When looking at him now, he only felt love and joy. It had eagerness as it looked at him, awaiting his next command that it would strive to complete without any hesitation. It gently pushed its head closer, gently cozying up to his master’s legs while releasing soft purring sounds.

Seamlessly its mind has been modified by the figure and it never even realized…

“Okay, okay, calm down…” Spencer lightly pushed its large head away. He sighed helplessly, as he looked at the oversized kitten again. “I guess there’s a universal law for your kind, huh? Anyway, I still need a sample from you, even if you managed to sway me from killing you. This will sting a bit, but don’t worry, I just need a bit of blood, nothing more.”

He reached to the back of his head, and with his still transformed clawed hand, he gently pricked at its neck. A thin flow of purple liquid began to escape through the wound that was quickly picked up by Spencer. The tiger didn’t even flinch and stood still with complete trust that was implemented into him just a moment ago.

Spencer kept gobbling up the blood while focusing on the newly formed sphere of alien DNA inside him. After a while, as he felt that the previously small grain of sand-like sphere grew into the size of a little seed, he healed the beast’s wound and pulled away. His hand returning to its default state, he patted the tiger’s head slightly then stood up.

“I don’t really know what to call you, so let’s just go with Tiger for now. It should be fine, who knows what these tribals call you anyways, right?” He lamented, not really caring about what the beast would think. He had already altered its mind for absolute loyalty, whatever he would have decided to name it, Tiger would have accepted it immediately. Not like he wanted to keep any of the dominated beings anyway…

“Okay, now with this settled… Do you have any idea where I am currently?” He looked at the surrounding trees as if trying to find something to go by. The last punch that he got from Milo carried some strange powers that threw him into some wormhole that after some time dropped him here.

As he was slightly dazed, Spencer just realized that he could scan to find his bearings. Sighing at himself, he promptly sent out several psionic-powered energy pulses. A moment later as he received several signals, he frowned.

“Eh… I do sense a tribe relatively close by, but I can’t pick up any familiar signals. Did the big guy throw me over to another tribe?”

Putting a bit more of his energy into the scan, he sent out more signals. As he waited for their return, he continued patting the purring giant cat’s head.

“I have to appreciate this is pretty nice… If you continue acting like this, it will be hard to leave yo-”

However, his words suddenly froze in him as he felt a new signal popping up a bit further away to the south. He looked at its direction with an expectant look.

“Now this is weird… This one seems much more powerful than anything I felt so far on this planet… Maybe I have finally found something worthwhile?”

Looking towards the south, a few seconds had passed when finally he picked up familiar signals far away to the north-east. Sasha’s tribe was quite a distance away. He also received the signal from Bey’on who seemed to be still tending to her little workshop at the ship.

Focusing on her presence outside of the planet’s atmosphere, he watched as she resided in her human form scurrying around the lab he made for her to manage the ever increasing variety of personal projects she had. Briefly curious about what she was doing and realizing that he hasn’t checked up on her for a rather long time, he decided to take a moment to do just that before going anywhere else. Looking down at Tiger, he patted its head, “I’ll be right back”.

Slowly rising from the soil beneath, his body began to generate an elegant purple aura before his body instantly vanished and appeared above the planet’s atmosphere, now slowly approaching the ship. Finally making contact, the side of the ship he was on expanded similarly to a bubble, surrounding him whilst maintaining the ship’s internal stability from the vacuum of space.

Gently planting his feet on the floor of the bio ship, Spencer scanned the interior for a few moments before beginning to walk throughout its internal structure leading to Bey’on’s lab, reaching the door and soon entering her lab without her even being aware that he had returned. He went closer behind as he observed her typing something into the holographic screen before her.

Hiding his presence, he walked up behind her alluring human figure, grabbing her waist, and pulled her in for a hug before speaking.

“Miss me?”

Suddenly startled by his presence, Bey’on abruptly set ablaze as she briefly lost control of her shapeshifting abilities, but she quickly regained her demeanor and took a few breaths.

“Please don’t do anything like that again!”

Still hugging her from behind he responded in a nonchalant but flirty manner.

“Maybe I will, maybe I won’t”.

Giving his response he began to question her on what she has been doing whilst he was gone. This seemed to have brought out some enthusiasm as she proceeded to show and explain to him all thirtyseven of her weapon-based models that she had created in the time he had been away.

Although he was intrigued by her creations, especially the model that very much resembled an amped version of the Plasma Blade (AN: similar in look from the one from Halo), except this model could also fire concentrated blasts of plasma for a short time. They continued to examine the models together for roughly 3 hours, exchanging ideas and upgrades to be implemented before he realized he needed to head back to the planet below.

Cutting their bonding time short, Spencer stood up and spoke.

“As much as I enjoyed discussing this with you, sadly, times up. I’m heading back to the planet, I have a few things that still need to be done before we can leave.”

Hearing his words, Bey’on began to feel slightly disappointed that he had to leave, but she also had to return to her work.

Both standing up from the couch that quickly retracted into the floor, Spencer walked to one of the walls of the bioship, watching as the wall expanded into a bubble for him to exit the ship, turning around briefly to witness Bey’ons seductive human figure walking back to her lab. He fleetingly flickered before exiting the ship and heading back down to the planet, leaving Bey’on wincing before rubbing her ȧss that now held a red handprint.

Piercing through the planet’s atmosphere, Spencer quickly landed at his previous location where had left his new companion, scanning a vast distance around him once more,for a moment. He also picked up on the rapidly approaching Ego, who for some seemed to be able to sense him. Although he was still quite far away, judging how he could sense, he would find his way to him eventually. There was no need to worry about that stupid tank-like creature, nothing can harm him beside the Fashacalli.

He turned towards Tiger who has been waiting for his return since the beginning and gave a few light pats on its head. As it looked up at its master, Spencer pointed towards the south, towards the direction of the powerful signal he sensed.

“Towards that way, there’s something I would like to check out. What would you say, if I offered you the honor of being my trusty steed along the way, huh?” He chuckled at his own words as he hopped on the back of the purple tiger, without bothering to hear its opinion.

Taking his place in his new, trusty, and fearsome steed, Spencer chuckled before pointing towards the distance.

“Go Tiger, let’s check out the source of that signal!”