Day 67

My eyes struggle to open as another aggressive expression of force jostles me awake. My eyes scan the bright blue sky, liberally dotted with wisps of white clouds, like ripped cotton balls. I attempt to turn my neck, and am met with another burst of sharp pain. I sigh, the air exiting my lungs making no sound as my vocal cords refuse to move.

It's been three days since my fight with Cinder. No progress has been made on my recovery. I've been steadily eating my body, and converting the biomass into nutrients in which to heal my stomach. My intestines had been healed enough to work again as of yesterday, with my stomach about halfway to functioning again.

And when I say functioning, I don't mean fully healed, not at all. My entire body is in disrepair. With no food or water for three days, my internals are completely in turmoil. And with no way to process such things, I've been suffering.

And I can't even die. Thanks to [Desperate Endurance], I can survive starvation and dehydration for multiple weeks. I've gotten past the point where I want to survive for others sake. I've gotten past 'but Lily would be sad'. I just want this pain to be over with.

The gnawing, unending emptiness. It wasn't even the lingering pain from my injuries, the burns and breaks. But the hunger, the thirst. The warm, blunted emptiness like a blanket of hunger eating me from the inside out.

I was mentally drained. Three days of torture. I did what I could to entertain myself, to detract from the pain. I dived deep within myself and experimented. I tried to stay in that state for as long as I could but, I suppose everything must end right?

I reached out with [Rumination]. I compressed the sphere of sense into a ball ten feet wide. The details within the dome grew more and more exact, until I could feel the scenery around me as if I were touching it with my hands. The sixth sense.

I wasn't quite there yet, as evidenced from my lack of status acknowledgement, but it was good enough for a lay of the land. I sat on a golden cart. Its walls were short, only an inch high, and contained atop sat me, my head resting on Lily's backpack stuffed with leaves and feathers.

I moved my eyes upwards as if to look at Lily. She was there, golden chains twisted onto each arm, pulling the cart along the bumpy terrain. Every now and then she lurched to a stop for a break. I was in no position to complain. In fact, the guilt gnawed at me almost as much as the hunger did.

For the last three days, Lily has been hauling me and Oldren through the wilderness. On her own, this nearly thirteen year old girl has been surviving, hunting, and protecting the two of us all on her own.

In the meantime, I had been doing everything I could to research a different solution. The few I could find either placed another burden on Lily, or was simply too complicated to matter. For one, I found that the stomach isn't completely necessary for eating. It breaks food down, and prepares it for digestion, which is done almost entirely by the intestines.

The important part is that the stomach bridges the gap between my esophagus and intestines. I can't manipulate my body enough to force it to heal in specific ways, though even if I could the consequences would be catastrophic at most, and painful at least.

Even without a stomach, I can eat medicinal soups made by Lily. The forests of this world are absolutely teaming with medicinal flora. I mean, a huge majority of it is poisonous, but Lily's appraisal abilities are much better than my own, so I don't need to worry about that. Besides, isn't the line between medicine and poison supposed to be pretty narrow? Or a matter of dosage? I forget the saying.

Thanks to [Clan Concord], borrowing skills is as easy as breathing, among other things. Besides the chat function, it has the ability to 'research' individuals, and grow itself from their abilities. According to Lily, It can basically scan a member of the clan, and compile new abilities based off of theirs. It's pretty cool.

However, nothing is ever easy, or free. The scanning process takes fucking forever, even with the 'first use time reduction'. Lily used it on herself first, and it should finish in a few days. Safe to say, I'm pretty excited for when the time comes.

A wave of pain shoots up my entire body. I grit my teeth and shut my eyes as I brace for the pain. Minuets pass as the roiling body wide cramp diffuses through my whole body like a tidal wave. I let out another wheezing breath as the pain slowly fades.

Safe to say, I am not having a good time. I've been looking into modifications and annexations that could help, but I'm afraid of what will happen if I try. Do the souls function as a secondary source of nutrients? Or are they just the currency for the modifications? What if I purchase them and nuke my regeneration from trying to make those instead of healing. What if I can't choose which things to heal? What if the pain makes me unable to think?

Sensory overload is a real issue. I believe that's what happened when I was under that spatial annihilation spell. I felt my danger sense continuously rising, until it completely cut out. I wrongly interpreted it as the source no longer aiming at me, or suddenly shutting off or failing.

I'm pretty sure it was so dangerous that I couldn't even sense it anymore. Normally, when your senses are overwhelmed, you feel pain and in the case of sight and sound, get forced to look away or cover your ears. But I think since the danger sense isn't a biological sense, my brain isn't coded to try and resist it?

Like my brain didn't know what to do, so it just shut off. It seems kind of dumb in retrospect, but what else could it be? Besides, intuition seems to agree, I think..

.

..

…

God, I'm bored.

I mentally tap on the cart as I stare at the clear sky in supreme boredom. I sigh and pull up the Sub-System. There's something I've been putting off for the last few days, and maybe, the weeks before that.

Now, I frequently like to peruse this thing. All the data and information is genuinely interesting. Makes me want to go to college as a biology major. Something to think about… Regardless, there are some things I haven't looked into for my own sanity, namely, DNA.

The building blocks of life, and though I hate to admit it, I don't know much about it. Any knowledge I have is pretty half formed and undefined. I know it's mega important, and that it contains the blueprints for literally everything. The problem is that it's just a lot.

And I actually vastly underestimated just how much there was to see. According to this information, there are around six billion 'Base Pairs' of DNA in a single cell. One. Cell. Do you have any idea how many cells we're made of? Cause I sure don't, but it's definitely a lot.

Oh wait nevermind, here it is… 132.

Trillion.

I am smarter than the average human. About four times, in fact. I can think two thoughts at the same time, my thoughts are bigger and faster. I'm more perceptive, and have the ability to process my new extremely powerful senses. My cognitive abilities are extremely powerful, allowing me to imagine and predict far beyond regular human abilities.

I can imagine one million of something. It's a massive number. I can almost perceive one billion. It's an almost unbelievable amount. But trillion? In the same way you can't wrap your head around a billion, my brain just crashes when I try to think of that number. That amount of things, objects, the process of imagining such a huge number of things, it just baffles me.

So yeah, you could say I've been a bit reluctant to dive into DNA and chromosomes and stuff. Just browsing the surface level stuff is interesting, but even without putting my foot through the gate the amount of things on the other side puts my procrastination into overdrive.

I zone back into the monotonous steps as Lily pulls the cart, and the slight, almost unhearable whine of the wheels as they rub against their axel. I dive into my status. I have a few skills to upgrade. Honestly, it's not like me to put off skill upgrades like this. I must have been really out of it…

Overload / Special / Class Skills

Spirit Drive |||| lv4/40 - Death Resistance \ lv8/99 - Corruption Resistance ||| lv2/20 — Desperate endurance || lv4 - Schematica (4/11) || lv5 - Hades Hound || lv5 - Defense Vocation || lv4 - Imitation || lv2 - Petrify || lv1 — (Sen) Nascent - (Dex) Recreation - (Spd) Hyperspace 1/1 - (Str) Concussive Blast

Offense Skills -

Power Boost || lv10/10 - Penetrate || lv6/10 - Wrecking Smash || lv5/10 - Cleave ||| lv6/20 - Sharp Shot ||| lv6/20 - Spectral Arrow ||| lv5/20 - Skirmish ||| lv11/20 - Dismembering |||| lv6/40

Defense Skills -

Health Pulse ||| lv15/20 - Narrow Evasion ||| lv18/20 - Break Fall || lv5/10 - Nocturnal || lv3/10 - Conceal || lv7/10 - Rumination ||| lv7/20 - Nimble Hands ||| lv10/20 - Convergence |||| lv12/40 - Block | lv4/5 Grand Pain Res ||| lv19/20 - Darkness Res || lv2/10 - Greater Force Res || lv10/10 - Paralysis Res | lv5/5 - Greater Cutting Res || lv1/10 - Baleful Heat Res || lv4/10 - Sleep Res | lv3/5

Mobility skills -

Strafe Lith || lv10/10 - Brash Dash ||| lv18/20 - Launch 12/12 ||| lv 3/20 - Journeyman |||| lv3/40 - Stamina Swell | lv1/5

Knowledge Skills -

Complex Crafting ||| lv18/20 - Chisling ||| lv13/20 - Lethal Toxicology ||| lv1/20 - Bark Runner || lv3/10 - Terrain Memorization || lv7/10 - Knitting || lv3/10 - OLL ||| lv7/20 - Way of the Wind || lv5/10 - Seeking ||| lv10/20 - Take Down | lv5/5 - Vice Grip || lv3/10 - Internal Clock | lv1/5 -

Magic Skills -

Stone Mind || lv6/10 - Mana Grasp || lv2/10 - Mana Shifting || lv2/10

< [2nd] Tier [Power Boost] Has ranked up into [3rd] tier: [Overpower]- Greatly increases the overall power and size of the skill itself, and on other skills. Grants increased control over the skill's effect.>

< [2nd] Tier [Greater Force Resistance] Has ranked up into [3rd] tier: [Impact Aversion]- Reduces the damage taken from impacts, reduces the effect of knockback, blunt force attacks have a chance to do no damage, chance scales with level.>

< [1st] Tier [Paralysis Resistance] Has ranked up into [2nd] tier: [Nervous Paralysis Resistance]- Decreases the effect of medicinal paralysis. Creates very small channels between severed nerves, allowing for biological paralysis from either injury or birth defects to be resisted to a small degree, scales with level. Decreases the likelihood of obtaining a {Paralyzed} condition.>

< [2nd] Tier [Strafe Lith] Has ranked up into [3rd] tier: [3D Maneuvering]- Obtain an immediate understanding of the space around you. Become adept at navigating all three dimensional space. You are no longer constrained to just the ground, as long as there is a surface, it's traversal resides in your dominion.>

< [1st] Tier [Take Down] Has ranked up into [2nd] tier: [Knock Out]- Enhances knowledge of non-lethal attacks and grants knowledge on how to defend from such techniques. >

Alright alright, solid upgrades all around. Looks like power boost has stopped pretending it's not for boosting skills with [Overpower]. Interesting that is changed from resistance to aversion, but it doesn't seem to mean anything different. Though, that chance to not take blunt damage is definitely pretty good, though the chance is less than 1%.

[3D Maneuvering] is very interesting, the description itself is very impressive. It sounds more like a tier 4 skill then tier 3. Already I can feel my sense of touch expanding past the confines of my body. Oh yeah. The sixth sense is almost within my grasp. As for [Knock Out], its effect is perfectly within my expectations, though I don't really see myself using it all that much in the future. I try to avoid PvP, after all.

As the skill upgrades start to take effect, I feel my body suddenly revitalize, parts of it coming back online as connections are magically forged between the severed nerves. The feeling becomes stronger in the connected areas, though many remain cold, like my legs.

I move my jaw, cracks and pops reverberating through my skull as I move the bone structure for the first time in days. I go slowly, up and down before switching to more erratic movements, moving it in a circle. Once I feel used to moving it again, I attempt to speak.

".....h…HHhhhh.." ..I guess that's something? My breathing has stabilized, and now I can at least somewhat vocalize, though I'm not sure if I'm limited because my vocal cords are still messed up, or if I just haven't warmed up enough yet.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

I felt Lily perk up within my awareness at the sound, despite its relative inaudibility.

Lily: Max? Was that you??

Max: Well, it was an attempt.

Max: How's it goin?

Max: Actually, where are we going?

Lily: Fine, and, uh, I don't know. I've just sort of been walking.

Max: Are you serious???

Max: Wait. Then what have you been using my tracking skill for?

Lily: Well, I've been looking for somewhere to go. I just haven't succeeded yet.

Lily: Well, Actually…

Max: ?

Lily: I've kinda had this weird feeling. Like I'm going in the right direction. It sort of feels like when I was traveling towards you.

Max: wydm?

Lily: Ah, right.

Lily: A few days after I got.. 'Dislocated' I was just sort of wandering around aimlessly.

Lily: Eventually, when I got my next lore tidbit, the sub-system sort of broke character and just told me to head towards the sun.

Max: .. And you just did as you were told??

Lily: What else was I supposed to do!!

Lily: I was just a little kid back then!

Max: It's been like… six weeks.

Lily: A lot can happen in a month.

Lily: Besides, It feels like it's been way longer. Like, half a year or something.

Max: Amen sister.

Max: Wait a second. How does that relate to now?

Lily: wdym?

Max: You said the system tipped you off before right? Then how does that relate to the feeling you have?

Lily: idk, intuition?

Max: Amazing.

Lily: It's not like we really need to be going anywhere though, right? We're just biding our time and waiting for y'all to recover.

Lily: How's that going btw?

Max: Decent. I've regenerated enough of my stomach lining and the structure holding it in place, I just need to generate the acid glands.

Lily: Ah.

Lily: Wait, if your stomach is physically formed enough to close the gap between the throat and your intestines, can you at least eat simple stuff now?

Max: …. Maybe?

Max: Depends on your definition of simple.

The cart came to stop as Lily pushed against it to halt its momentum. She took a few ragged breaths and wiped the sweat off her brow, and then dropped the chains. She pulled on my [Lethal Toxicology] for medicinal knowledge as she sprinted into the dense forest.

—

Three hours have passed. Lily's first few foraging trips had been failures, not that that had dampened her spirit much. She seemed just as excited to have me back in the fight as I was, though I was mostly just getting tired of the constant pain and disconnect.

I layed on the ground, sprawled on a loose collection of wide leaves. Three feet away from me sat a roiling fire with a stone pot suspended above it, hanging on a simple wooden teepee of sturdy branches.

Despite being a complete novice at stone working, Lily had made light work of the stone pot, (after four tries), and was now stirring it with a sanitized tree branch she had ripped from a sapling.

The amount of soup in the pot wasn't even a third of its size, the water having been acquired from our canteens and not her magic. Fantasy stories are very 50/50 on whether magic is safe for ingestion or not, so I decided not to test it. Then again, the water in there was made from the water source fragments sooo... still technically magic? Meh, not like we have a choice. If I could here any running water nearby I would have told her.

Even her [Super Appraisal] seemed to make light of the query, much to my dismay. Once Lily finished chipping out the inside of a decently sized boulder, she pulled on my [Baleful Heat resistance] and grabbed the pot with her bare hands.

She tipped the probably forty pound pot backwards, spilling the comparatively meager contents into the also heavy stone bowel. Damn, [Convergence] is really no joke. She hefted the bowl and started walking towards me. She got down on her knees in front of my head and placed down the bowel.

"You want uppies?" She said, in a completely serious tone. I groaned internally. This is so embarrassing. Yet another reason to never do this again. I blinked once. She smiled and gripped onto my shoulders.

She pulled me up, I winced in pain as various injuries stretched and my broken spine rattled. Whatever injury prevented me from moving all this time hated me moving even more right now. The pain went from 'constant buzzsaw in my everything' to 'actual hell fire'.

If I had any water left, my face would definitely be covered in tears right now. But like a true man, I bottled up all those feelings and threw them deep down within myself, waiting for them to fester and explode, until I snap and, I don't know, kill someone?

Whatever.

I hacked and coughed, dust escaping from my lips, much to my dismay and Lily's horror. She rushed over to her backpack and brought it over. She kneeled down again and placed it behind me. She hoisted out my canteen and lifted it to my lips.

I drank only a tablespoon. I waited for the refreshing liquid to wash down my throat. Only once I felt it disappear past my stomach did I dare to drink more. The canteen was only a third full, still recovering from the medicinal soup expenditure.

Once it was all gone, She lifted the bowl of steaming soup to my mouth. She connected the warm bowl to my lower lip and tipped it upwards ever so slightly. I parted my mouth and let the emerald green concoction slither into my mouth.

UGH! A shiver ran through my body as I cringed from the taste. Holy, BITTER! I chewed the pulp before I tentatively swallowed, though I made sure to poison check with [Lethal Toxicology], before any went within me. Unfortunately, it was clean.

I felt the pulp slide down my esophagus with growing disgust, my features twitched as I tried to hold back from gagging, both to save Lily's pride and to keep from pulling on my injuries even more.

Only once I felt it drop from the pipe did I let out a breath of relief. I ate the rest of the soup. It was gross beyond compare, but when an unfamiliar yet welcome revitalizing energy swept throughout my body, I redoubled my efforts until the bowl was licked clean.

< Skill: [Health Pulse] Online >

I knew that I should probably start focusing the energy to my stomach, but I just sat there for a few moments, relishing in the feeling of being mended. That sure ended quickly. My body exploded with pain as old injuries began to fester.

The numerous burns and cuts and bruises that I received in my fight that had scabbed over reawakened, a necessary but agonizing step in the recovery process. It made me want to shut it off, but I knew that would be very counter intuitive.

The worst part is that now, even if I do start focusing on one place, everything else will still hurt! I hate this world so much. The pain only grew as my muscle and skin stretched, ligaments tore and bones moved.

The more I healed, the more pain I felt. I actually started crying when the nerves in my legs returned. I tried to fight through the pain, and succeeded thanks to [Grand Pain Resistance]. I hastily pulled on the driver and fired a spear of energy into the skill, alleviating my pain enough for me to scrape together enough dignity to not writhe in place.

Despite this, Lily was still worried sick. Restraining my movements now couldn't erase the tears that already stained my cheeks. Lily, unprompted, lassoed herself around me into a gentle hug, one so light I could barely feel her at all, her warmth serving as my means of comfort.

Of course I basked in the kindness of the gesture as well, a small smile permeating my lips as the energy wreaked havoc throughout my internals. My face quickly twisted back into agony as hundreds of different wounds screamed in outrage.

My stomach screamed audibly, the healing energy started to ebb and wither, the pain no longer fluctuating as it was. I was still healing, but much slower.

"L..ly.." I shifted eyes from the ground to meet hers, her sympathetic demeanor shifting to one of terror. The healing process had twisted my body into a disgusting caricature of what it once was, the between phase of the healing process that should neither be seen nor interrupted.

My skin cracked and chipped, revealing the dull muscle beneath. My skin formed wrinkles that created a deep lake of murky exhaustion under my eyes, which turned grey and dulled lifelessly. My body began breaking down in a way I had never experienced before, and I was powerless to stop it.

Lily hopped up and grabbed my bow and arrows. I felt her pull on my skills as I lost consciousness, darkness swallowed my vision as terror gripped my soul. Tendrils of shadow grasped in my head as jaws clamped down on my mind.

*** Secondary ***

As soon as I cleared the tree line I activated the dash and raced off into the wilderness. I pulled on every skill available, mobility and knowledge fueled my pursuit. I dove deep into the teachings of Max's [Seeking].

I detected a sign of life and skidded to a halt. I pumped my legs into the ground leaving trails of dirt in the otherwise long grasses. I whipped around into a wide turn, readying Max's bow as I stomped out of the foliage.

A rabbit lazed in front of me, it's form reminiscent of a boulder. Its fur was both long and fuzzy, covered in vines lashing out with noxious thorns, tipped with purple a burbling with poison. I paid it no mind and immediately cast [Pierce] on the arrow, tipped with a triangular tooth.

As soon as the skills energy appeared I fired the arrow. As it sailed through the air the red energy of the skill followed at several times its speed. It formed a four pointed star a few feet in front of the arrow, which pierced through it and suddenly gained more momentum.

It rushed forward and bored a clear hole through the massive rabbit. I took no time to recover the arrow and lugged the huge mammal onto my back. Its weight wasn't a huge problem, thanks to the long term body enhancement from [Convergence]. Instead, its sheer mass made it impossible to move, half of its body dragging across the ground behind me.

It's hard. I walked slowly. Step after step the weight on my shoulders pressed into the ground like a jackhammer.

I hate it. Sweat dripped from my brow and onto the earth. My eyes stretched wide and my mouth agape.

I want to stop. I kept moving.

I don't want to do this. The plants groaned as they were flattened by the large corpse dragging behind me.

I want to go home. My steps grew even heavier. Every cell in my body strained as I ripped past the hundreds of trees. I tore past every branch, and ignored the monumental strain threatening to break my shoulders.

I stopped thinking. I put my mind into autopilot, only focusing on every step. I ignored the screams of my body, the rising heat and the strange energy cobbling together in my chest. I ignored my doubts and my worries, my complaints and my bargaining.

I lifted my head upwards and grit my teeth. I stared forwards, my gaze piercing through the trees and settling on Max, sweat covering his entire body, clutching his heart and flakes of his own disheveled skin forming piles on the ground around him.

Max needs me. And I need him. We need each other. Ill pull my weight. Il make sure… that you'll never have to suffer again!!!

Energy erupted from within me, at first tracing upwards before exploding and tracing lines throughout my body. It suffused my flesh and bones, granting me even greater strength. Although this time, it was all my own.

< Unknown stimuli have led to the development of your Equivalents. Your Soul has begun feeding excessive amounts of mana to your Body. >

< Your Channels are expanding! >

< Achievement Attained! >

<Achievement #1:

< Solo Internalist

< Awaken the art of Internal Magic without assistance. >

< Special Skill: [Mana Regeneration]. Magic skill upgrades and fusions are permanently free.>

< Achievement Attained! >

<Achievement #2:

<The Special:

<Acquire a skill at or above {Special} rank.>

<+5 Stp's>

< Acquired skill: Will >

< Mana Regeneration - Enhances the Soul's natural ability to passively absorb mana. >

My mana sense suddenly roared to life, a potent source of mana suddenly blinking into existence. My eyes lost their steel as I realized that the new source of magic was me. My entire body glowed with a faint blue light suffused across my entire body.

The energy became solid like visible energy in thick glowing teal lines like roots flowing in my body. I could feel mana being drawn into me, something in the center of my chest, right next to my heart, seemed to breathe in mana like lungs that only contracted.

The power didn't ebb, only flow. As long as there was energy, the power would cease. Though if my body would become strained by the power remained to be seen. Regardless, I pressed forward.

Once I broke through the foliage and onto the unsteady trail were I had made camp I pulled the well torn rabbit next to the fire. I stole at glance towards Oldren, still motionless and asleep, as well as Max.

His condition had worsened significantly. The cracks had deepened, even his muscle now rotting away. Multiple layers of huge wrinkles pooled beneath his eyes, which were squeezed shut. Sweat covered his entire body, and huge tufts of his hair frayed in the wind, falling to the ground like ash.

I grabbed one of his dark blades from atop Oldren's body and cut off the massive rabbit's front leg. I sloppily cut into pieces, my own panic making my hands shaky and my work even sloppier. Once I had cut it into bite sized chunks, skin and bones and fur and all, I attempted to stuff a piece down his throat.

I pried open his jaw, where his thick dark teeth that resembled rocks bore out from his flesh. His tongue that split at the end like a snake lolled out like a dog as I stuffed the meat into his mouth. His face twitched, mouth clamping down on the food like a bear trap. I just barely managed to pull my hand away before it was taken with it.

I got over the shock quickly and began ferrying more and more rabbit into his mouth. The more I fed him the better he looked. His skin faded back to a living color, his complexion cleared and his skin tightened.

The cracks began to close and his form began to fill itself out. Within a matter of minutes he had returned to a semi-normal appearance, the only thing he now lacked was his mind. Rather than going in some kind of eating trance, it seemed instinct or reflexes merely took over, Max himself was lost somewhere else.

His eyes, despite being back to normal, had lost their depth. His heart returned to its study beats, and then lowered to much more than it had been. He stilled and drooped, his body repairing but his mind remaining shattered, his spirit gone.

I sat next to him. Right next to him, my legs squeezing against his. I hugged his left arm and let his weight fall onto my own. His hand drifted on top of me, which caused me to jump. Knowing the action was out of his control and against his creed, I wedged it between my fingers instead and curled my head onto his shoulder.

I found myself unable to choke back my tears as I sniffled pathetically.

"Please.."

Please wake up!

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