Chương 2: Chapter 2) – Hello My Name Is

(??? POV)

<What is this?>

[Existence]

<What is that?>

[A journey]

<A journey where?>

[To death]

<What is death?>

[Non-existence]

<Who are you?>

[The Nexus]

<Nexus of what?>

[Klyntar's]

<What is a Klyntar?>

[You]

<Where am I?>

[Earth]

<What is Earth?>

[A planet]

<What is a planet?>

[A place hosts can be found]

<What are hosts?>

[Beings imperative for your existence. A Klyntar must bond. One cannot survive on its own. Find a host, take all you can, and move on if you find a stronger one. You need to adapt and improve to live. Always.]

[The hive will be imprinted once this connection is terminated]

[A Klyntar must bond...]

[…Bond…]

The voice of the Nexus, as it referred to itself as, faded away as an unknown amount of years' worth of memories, clearly not my own, blitzed through my consciousness without context or meaning. The memories explained what I am, what the hive is, and the basic information a Klyntar needs to survive in the thing called existence. Before I have time to review all of these memories and filter what I need, however, an altogether different voice enters my mind, presumably from the being currently in contact with myself.

"…bond with me…"

Although a Klyntar does not speak an inherent language, as it is born an instinctual consciousness, the intention behind this being's words provides an all too natural understanding. I know not how I understand this creature holding me, but I can. Perhaps it is the inheritance from my parent, or the hive imprinted information on top of the memories provided? For now, these questions are unimportant. I can feel the desire behind what it says. Our goals align, I exist to be given purpose by another and this creature will give me that purpose. I need no more justification. As it wishes, so it shall be.

I begin the bonding process. Since I am a newborn, and my mass is small, the first part of the covering process takes the longest. I notice some inorganic matter between me and my host as the process begins but this is a minor obstacle, and I can remove it with ease. Once I have covered a sufficient amount of this creature and absorb some food, I can finish the cover instantaneously.

This creature supplies sufficient energy through the liquid surrounding its body. I should continue with the bonding process and ensure my reserves are filled so that we can both get stronger quickly. The hive contains warnings that my existence is not favoured by most sentient species for some reason.

"Mmmm~ Why does it- Ahh~ Feel so good!"

<'Feel so good?' It seems this creature's body has a pleasurable response to heating up. Or maybe it is the bonding process? After the bonding is complete, I need to filter my memories from both the hive and my parent to learn all I can about these beings.>

"Little one, just stop at ahhh~ light bond first. We need to mmmm~ove away from here as soon haaa~s possible."

<Host feels danger. Combat capabilities miniscule due to lacking bond. Temporarily boosting hosts physical capabilities to assist in fleeing.>

I attached myself to the host's outermost layer, which was the minimum bonding I felt possible with its species. Even with such an insignificant union, the creature's strength saw significant improvement over its current capacity. Although I could not communicate with the host yet due to the nature of our current bond, it appeared to have felt the process was complete enough as it transitioned from stationary to bounding off at speed, away from the perceived danger.

<While the host retreats to safety I should incorporate all information about its species to ensure a strong and thorough assimilation is achieved.>

As I accessed the hive, it became obvious that information was restricted and only provided upon making a mental link with a known Klyntar's consciousness as opposed to every memory of every Klyntar being available to all. As I knew no other of my kind except my parent, where a mental link is formed for the spawning process, their inheritance was all I had access to. Unfortunately, my parent only existed for mere minutes before being forced to extract my seed and bring me into existence, thus they had no time to incorporate any inheritance from their host and as such, provide me with next to no external information themselves except the appearance of my host. However, as my parent also inherited its parent's essential memories, and it currently had nothing to do being trapped, it had started to assimilate all of the knowledge available to them, thus making said information available to me. I could then filter through what they digest, so there is at least some information going back to the Klyntar known as Venom that originally landed on this 'Earth'. Thankfully my 'parent' did not yet know how to block this mental link and thus I was given free access to all the knowledge being digested. Trying to access the memories of whatever came before Venom was blocked, I could only hypothesise it was the first of its lineage or there was a limit to how far back parental inheritance goes.

After separating what was useful, like knowledge about Earth, its inhabitants and various Klyntar abilities my predecessors were born with or learnt. With useless information, like their host's personality profiles or their own emotions gained from deepening the bond to their hosts, I discard as to prevent it from affecting me or my host. After all this, I was as prepared as possible for the completion of my first assimilation stage with my own host.

It appeared that the bonding process was causing the human to enter a state of arousal and the heating up of the body is a side effect of such. I should warn the host when possible that the deeper the bond stage the stronger this feeling will get. Although it is curious that this happened with my host and not the others, albeit a sample size of four is not very conclusive data.

Although the inheritance filtering took some time, my host showed no signs of slowing down or stopping any time soon. Going off the accelerated heartbeat and the lack of fear, it stands to reason that the human is simply enjoying themselves, even with this minute ability increase.

Eventually the human calmed down and settled on a direction. It only took a couple of minutes for her to stop and her voice to call out, requesting to continue with the previously halted symbiosis.

"Little one we're safe now, can you finish the bond?"

Once again, I control my liquid body to dig deeper into my first host's skin, focusing on achieving perfect assimilation with her cells on a molecular level. The first stage of the bond provides my host with superhuman strength, speed, durability, and stamina even more so than the pseudo-bond she previously experienced. She will also benefit from rapid regeneration of any damage inflicted provided it does not exceed the bonded stage. At deeper assimilation stages, these abilities will be permanent, although to a lesser degree, even if we are separated for whatever reason. Currently only the base durability and increased regeneration speed are permanent since the other superhuman feats require deeper muscle and organ bonding.

For my abilities, I have superhuman agility, and reflexes but they require me to manually move my host's limbs. I am able to meld into her skin with an incognito form making me invisible to all identification methods known to my predecessors as well as shape manipulation to freely changing my body to whatever is required of my host whether it be weapons for combat or clothing. The predecessor known as Carnage used this solely for weapons, but after analysing physical data from other humans my lineage consumes, it is possible to imitate other's forms and essentially shapeshift to a certain degree. This heavily relies on the deeper symbiosis stages, however, as bone re-construction would be required if the target is too different to my host. Finally, I can cover my host's form, creating a suit, to increase my density to make all superhuman attributes stronger as well as completely hide their identity within myself and gain more control to assist the host however she so wishes.

"Mmmmnh~"

As my host tries to stifle her moaning due to the pleasure the bonding induces, I discover a contradiction in my memories. The bonding instincts that Nexus imprinted on my consciousness when forming the connection to the hive, state - bonding should be performed in separate stages as the Klyntar, and the host become closer mentally and physically to form a perfect bond. Each subsequent stage takes an increased adaptation time from the previous stage, before the next one can be achieved. It is not explicitly stated how long said adaptation times take, but a Klyntar will know instinctually when the bond can advance.

Using this method, eventually the bonded pair become a singular consciousness allowing the Klyntar to choose whether to be self-dependent or form another main bond with another host to become even stronger!

The conflicting bonding method comes from the lineage memories of Venom. This bond is a lot quicker, taking just 48 hours from contact to complete bond, but the bond is, as the humans say, a 'Brute Force' method. This severely limits the capabilities of both Klyntar and host and removes the possibility of a final merge of consciousness so both parties will always have autonomy instead of achieving perfect symbiosis.

Clearly the superior bonding method was the one Nexus supplied and so that is the one I used whilst locking Venom's method away for emergency purposes. Going off the very unreliable data from Venom's memory when it bonded with Anne, the more successive hosts a Klyntar has, the more powerful it becomes, even transferring that back if the Klyntar re-joins with a previous host. This was superficial at best with the lacking data available, but the rapid bonding method would be perfect to test the theory in the future to rapidly gain strength from unworthy hosts.

After 2 hours of bonding, inducing enough pleasure to send my new host crumpling onto the floor and into the realm of unconsciousness during the fusing with the skin covering the body part called the clitoris, the skin stage of assimilation was completed without issue. The final step was to lightly penetrate the spinal cord to form a basic connection with the hosts brainwaves. This allows me to communicate telepathically with my host, co-ordinate without issue and feed on both Adrenaline and Phenethylamine which I learnt from Venom's memories is the reason the Klyntar of Earth eat brains.

Once the bonding was all complete, I receded back from covering her entire body in my external form and submerged completely into her skin just as my host was waking up.

"Uugh… My head"

<That is our head now>

Suddenly forgetting about her aching head, my host immediately sits upright from her previously prone position, proceeding to ask a barrage of questions after hearing my synthetic, genderless, voice in her head.

"Did it work? Are we bonded?! How does this work? How strong am I now?! Please tell me it worked!"

Even after being informed, she did not need to shout or even speak out loud, my new host continued to do so, "IT WORKED!! It took so long! Hahahaha! Oh wait, are you hungry? Do you need me to get you some food?"

<My hunger is currently satiated. During the bonding process you produced sufficient levels of Adrenaline & Phenethylamine from your reproductive system.>

Her facial area heated up slightly as she asked, "…Sooo, you ate my cum?"

<If that is what you call the discharge from your reproductive organs then yes, I "ate your cum".>

"So, Adrenaline & Phenethylamine are what you feed off? Is that why the other Klyntar's ate brains?"

"…You can live off eating my cum…That's kinda hot, not gonna lie…"

<Does host want some clothing made? From the memories of humans I inherited from the Venom lineage, walking around unclothed makes one uncomfortable.>

Standing up from her seated position she answers, "Sure thing… what was your name again?"

<Klyntar's do not have names.>

"Hmmm that won't do, all the others here have names, so you need one as well. Can you show me your face real quick?"

<Klyntar's do not have faces.>

Holding the bridge of her nose she replied, "Uugh, well you said you had Venom's memories, right? Can you do the face coming from the shoulder thing he did? I need to check your colour and see how badass you look."

Stretching part of my body from in-between her shoulder blades, my 'head' arcs over her shoulder and turns around to face her 'eye'-to-eye.

"Is this what host wanted?"

Nodding her head vigorously up and down, she happily affirms, "Yup this is exactly what I wanted, you look so cool! Look at that burgundy colouring, you're like a perfect mix of Toxin's split halves, but with my hair colour instead of red. And your face is exactly like Venom's but less menacing looking. Your eyes are the same but have slightly more jagged edges and although your teeth are just as sharp, they are smaller with no gums showing, so you don't look as dangerous. Like you weren't explicitly designed to eat brains but still very much capable of doing so."

"What is a Toxin?"

"Technically that would have been your parent's name, but I sort of changed its fate to create you for myself. That's enough off-topic stuff anyways, now to give you a name…Hmmm…"

After roughly 5 minutes of walking around in a circle with her left hand supporting her right elbow as she held her chin in her hand, still very much naked as she did not give me any clothing reference to base my transformation off, my host finally broke out of her reverie.

Punctuating her thoughts by bringing her fist down onto her open palm, she exclaimed, "Aha! Let's go with Elysium or El for short. What do you think?"

"I have no opinion on names so we will go with your suggestion. Does it mean anything or is it a common name?"

"It means 'a state of great happiness'. All the other Symbiotes are called vicious names like Venom, Carnage or Toxin, I figured if I called you something peaceful it would reduce the chances of you becoming violent."

Since the process of bonding with a host is a symbiosis, it did not take me much to realise that Symbiote was an apt alternative name for my species.

"Klyntar nature depends on the host. We are a benevolent species but all we have are our hosts. The bond between Klyntar and host is sacred. They give our existence meaning. All we have is our hosts to tell us what we are, and we become what they want or need most."

Completely nonchalant about the incident hours earlier where she killed multiple people, "Well we've got nothing to worry about then. I may have violent, borderline psychopathic, tendencies with people who deserve it, but at least I won't have to worry about wanting to eat everyone we see. By the way, I'm called Mara. Here's to an eternal partnership El!"

"Affirmative, Mara, as you humans say; 'I look forward to it'. You are my marked bond, so only death can permanently separate us."

"Sweet! Okay, first you need to make me some clothes since we got wayyy too sidetracked and I'm still naked. Then I've got a few gifts for you and over time we can work on your vocabulary since you're currently too robotic and stiff for my liking."

"Understood. What clothing would you like me to imitate?"

"Let's just go with the combat suit I was wearing previously before the bonding; can you do that?"

"Affirmati-"

"Pause! 'Affirmative' is too formal, even understood is pushing it. Simply go with something casual like; okay, no worries, or sure, when it comes to acknowledging things okay?"

"Und- Sure, Mara."

"Better! Now wrap yourself around me and make me look decent I guess."