He walked over to them with charisma, beaming a smile. With his gravity manipulation powers at level five and his partial regeneration at level four, he felt like Zeus.
He walked like he was wearing a cybernetic protective shield, cocking his neck to the sides, his feet moving with the stride of Roman emperors.
But this was just rough play and he knew it. He was no Zeus, neither was he some Roman emperor. He was only a reincarnated man in an enhanced body, happy to be alive, breathing, and walking like he'd just woken up.
Frankly, it felt like it. His partial regeneration was working much faster than before, and now he could breathe normally, think normally, and almost walk normally.
He looked at the skies, the orange sky of this alien world and stood with his hands on his hips, gazing at it with piercing eyes.
You know, he was doing anything but checking if the knight brutenecks came with cores and how useful the cores were or what the cores did.
[A/N: Like writers doing anything but write]
Although it was rusty and old, Tatehan found the sight pleasing.
Beside where the head was supposed to be lay a...
Glowing rock!
As expected.
Tatehan couldn't hide the wide grin that spread across his face.
These rocks were rusty in color. A rusty brown, actually. Like the armor the knight brutenecks were wearing.
He looked at them like they were small meteorites that had fallen from the skies. He looked at them with reverence, wondering: What could they do?
He stared at it longer than he had intended, waiting for words to appear across his retina to classify what the rocks were.
[Unclassified]
Tatehan furrowed a brow.
Unclassified? What was his system doing? Wasn't it supposed to be able to classify any object? Why was he being told "unclassified"?
He stared at the rock much longer, his face wrinkled in confusion.
As if the system could read his mind, it replied:
[I do not know what rocks from the knight brutenecks can do.]
Tatehan let out a long sigh. Just when he had thought he would be satisfied by the rocks from the knight brutenecks, since the ones from the carapace brutenecks didn't exactly live up to his expectations.
He was happy he'd been able to upgrade his partial regeneration and gravity manipulation, but where he wasn't so satisfied was that the rocks differed in value, so some were... useless.
[But you can proceed with the benefits the rock would give. You just won't know beforehand]
Tatehan blinked. This was worse. What if the rocks made the people who harnessed their powers into mutants? What would become of him?
He scratched his chin. This was hard. He was basically in a dilemma.
Since the system had told him to just proceed with the benefits the rocks would give, he realized that they, for sure, didn't upgrade abilities like the ones from the lunatics did.
Or were they ability-granting rocks? Because that could be the only thing they could possibly give at this point.
Was he finally going to collect an alien ability?
Tatehan was befuddled.
After a minute of straight-up thinking, he shrugged and looked to his sides. Around him, the place stank of alien blood. He looked at the large corpses of the lunatics and scoffed.
Then he looked at the orange sky.
That gave him motivation.
He was literally on Mars! On Mars!
Why should he hesitate to do something when he was on Mars, breathing? Most of the things he had been doing since coming to this planet involved leveling up—through rocks, by slaying monsters.
He had taken daunting risks and they had paid off. So why hesitate to take one as simple as this?
Sure, he didn't know what the rock was going to give, but it didn't exactly matter. It wasn't like they were going to kill him or something.
In the end, he decided he would take the risk. He held the rock in his hands and, squinting at it, accepted to gain whatever it gave without knowing what it was.
But then, after ten seconds of nothing happening, he was worried. Why hadn't he received anything?
Words flashed across his retina:
[Need to use all five cores at once]
Tatehan scratched his head.
Use all five cores at once?
This made him very scared to use the cores now.
Using the cores of other brutenecks required him to use them individually. Why was it required he use all of the cores at once now?
Tatehan wanted to ponder about it. He even wanted to not use the cores again, as now it was daunting to do so.
But... he just seemed to turn off his sense of reasoning and take the risk. And so he gathered all of the glowing rocks and held all of them in his hands like they were expensive and rare shiny diamonds.
He thought about using them, seemingly willing his inner mind to do so.
Slowly the rocks started to lose color... then rapidly, the colors were gone. Tatehan stared at them, his face blank, anticipating...
[Congratulations host! You have absorbed five knight cores.]
Knight cores? Fancy name for a hideous (yet majestic) creature.
Tatehan waited, expecting to gain anything, and after a while of seeing no further notification from his system, he became slightly angered.
Gritting his teeth, Tatehan picked up the rock sword from beside the knight bruteneck corpse he was currently crouching beside. The moment he gripped it, something happened.
The armor on the dead knight started glowing.
"What the—"
The chest plate from the dead monster's corpse disintegrated into fragments of light and shot toward him. Tatehan tried to drop the sword, but it was too late. The fragments slammed into his chest, reassembling into sleek, dark plating that wrapped around his torso.
"Shit! Shit!"
The gauntlets came next, ripping off the corpse's arms and reforming around his hands. Then leg armor from another body. Then more pieces from the other dead knights, all of them glowing, disintegrating, flying toward him and locking into place.
He couldn't stop it.
The helmet lifted from a headless body and shot toward his face. He flinched, but it sealed around his head with a hissing sound.
Everything went sharp. Clear. His vision enhanced.
Tatehan stood there, breathing hard, looking down at himself.
He was wearing their armor. All of it. Reformed, perfected, and bound to him. Surprisingly, his backpack still on his back.