Pain.

Every nanometre of his nervous system was on fire. Every individual cell of his skin was bruised. Every bone in his body had surely been shattered like brittle glass, rendering him a floppy sack of flesh and cartilage and collagen, or so it felt.

He felt dizzy and faint and hyperaware all at once. His brain was simultaneously burning and freezing, jostling about in the empty space where his skull used to be. The world was an incomprehensible blur, all his senses going haywire. The smell of fear stung his nose, the sound of deathly silence echoed in his ears like giant seashells had been strapped to either side of his head, and the bitter taste of defeat lingered on his tongue.

Vision was the strangest anomaly, though. Knowing that he was hallucinating didn't seem to detract from the oddity looking down on him.

Seeing Luke Farnell loom over him, John really, really hoped it was a hallucination, at least. He wasn't sure he could bear the embarrassment of his school bully witnessing him in this state.

"Hey, Woody the Woodpecker," Luke said with a smirk. His blond hair hadn't changed a bit, still in that stupid broccoli style, and his eyes were as full as malice as ever. He was even still wearing his school uniform, even though it had been years since graduating from that shithole. John had hoped never to see that blue jumper with the gold shield emblem again.

And that ridiculous, lame nickname. Why did such a childish insult make his throat close up and his eyes feel hot even now? John's laugh didn't even sound anything like the cartoon character, as people had claimed back in primary school. Why the name had stuck, he'd never understand. No matter how he'd shouted at them for it, though, they'd never once stopped. Eventually, he'd given up trying, just glaring whenever it as used.

"Looks like you've shown your true colours, Woody," Luke said. He was smoking, for some reason. John couldn't ever recall the guy smoking, but maybe he was just oblivious to such things. "A loser after all, no matter how much you got it in your head that things could change." His smirk widened. "Did you seriously think you could keep up the act forever? Your nature is to be lame. It was always going to come out eventually."

John frowned. Or at least tried to move his ruined lips in an approximation of the expression. "That's not fair," he tried to say. It actually came out as a rattling wheeze, but he powered on. "It's not lame to get taken off guard by a top tier monster."

Imaginary Luke understood him anyway. He snorted derisively, in the same way he had when John had stuttered during his presentation in Chemistry in Year 11. "A true badass is taken off guard by nothing, you gimp. Do you think a Shonen anime protagonist would have let some cringey metal crab thing slap him aside like that?"

"Yes," John said, frowning deeper at the idea of Luke Farnell knowing what Shonen was. John was no weeb himself, but… "That's literally the whole thing with battle anime, isn't it? The protagonist takes a beating, but always comes back stronger to defeat the bad guy."

Luke's eyes narrowed. "You don't look like you're in any state to be defeating anyone, Woody."

John couldn't deny that. "A temporary inconvenience."

"Oh yeah?"

"Uh huh. All I have to do is level up, and all this will go away."

"Well, why haven't you done that, then? Are you trying to endure the pain for some cool points?"

"Something like that, I guess." John wheezed a rattling sigh. "Thing is, I don't think I'm actually dying here, much as this really fucking hurts. So I can afford to take this pain, hold onto it, let myself really experience the full brunt of it."

"A lesson, then."

"Yeah. A reminder I can always look back on. If I ever get overconfident again, I'll remember this moment, and exercise caution so I never have to feel anything like this again."

Truthfully, he was fairly sure only his Level 6 Vitality had let him survive this at all. And without the rapid healing provided by levelling up, there was no way this situation was recoverable. Not for the first time, he felt vindicated for holding some points back to spend on levels, rather than buying all the best-looking Spells, Skills, and Stats the moment they became affordable. Being able to get out of having his entire body pulverised was a pretty nice trump card to have in the back pocket.

It was what came after that seemed problematic, in his mind.

"Hm. Maybe you have learned a thing or two after all, Woody. You're not a complete and utter fucking dork, anymore." Luke took a drag on his cigarette and then flicked it away. It vanished before it passed more than a few centimetres away from him. He crouched down, leaning close so he was barely an inch from John's face. "But don't go thinking you're a total badass, either. Remember how you got into this situation in the first place: there's nothing to blame for this little predicament of yours but your own lameness."

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Then his form blurred, before vanishing in the blink of an eye. The world rearranged itself into a blurry mess; it only made sense, since his eyes had been pretty much destroyed when the crab monster contemptuously backhanded him aside.

So what the hell was that about?

It wasn't real, that much was obvious. But it wasn't all in his imagination, either.

John had no time to ponder the issue, because the razor-sharp image of Luke Farnell had been replaced by a barely-comprehensible dark shape flailing around in his face, taking up most of his field of view. Distantly, he could hear the muffled cry of a large bird, accompanied by a few voices conversing, garbled like he was underwater and they were above the surface. At the same times, something white was sparkling in his vision.

It took him a moment to understand. His brain was a bit sluggish at the moment, in his defence, since parts of it had been liquified at some point between the crab's claw slamming into him and his body slamming into the far wall of the cavernous room. Again, he was fairly sure Vitality Level 6 was the only reason he was alive here.

But at least thoughts of that reminded him of what he was supposed to do, here.

Increased Talent Level 4 -> Level 5!

-1600 Aura

Quite to his surprise, the upgrade didn't come with the kind of targeted ecstasy he was used to. He had a brief panic, worrying that it meant he was too damaged for it to heal, only to find when he flailed around a bit that his limbs were in the right places and bones had been reset and skin knitted back together, and most of all he could think clearly.

The pain must have dulled his emotions, somehow. Or he'd been too damaged to feel much of anything beyond the physical. Now, fear could spring back to the surface. For himself, and for his comrades.

The crow gave an indignant squawk as he batted it aside on his way back to his feet, activating Eagle Eye to get a look at what was happening by the crab monster.

The red-souled beast was still standing in the same spot it had taken when it had back-handed (or back-clawed?) him aside. Three eyes hovered far above it, and their gazes were panning back and forth between it and the five humans facing it down. He couldn't help thinking there was an anticipatory air to their movements. Like a spectator at a Mexican stand-off, glancing back and forth between two gunslingers. Except, in this case, one side had a heat-seeking missile system, and the other had a flintlock pistol.

There was a small fire burning a short distance from his comrades, and he could see signs of burned clothing on all of them. Only Chester was carrying himself with obvious injuries, though. The rest must have taken whatever attack the monster had dished out, then levelled up, like John. Why the monster hadn't pressed the advantage, he didn't know. Perhaps it saw them as too far beneath it. Maybe it wanted to play.

John grit his teeth. He remembered the look in its eyes clearly. In the midst of the time-dilating effect of Accelerate, his Agility and Mind had granted him enough awareness to just see the monster coming, like he was the one moving in ultra-slow-motion and it was casually strolling along in real time, shrugging off his fireball attacks like they were soap bubbles.

The hellfire gaze in one of its eyes had slowly narrowed to a horizontal line, like it was winking at him.

Then its metal claw had snapped out too fast for him to even consider reacting, andthe next thing he knew the world was spinning, his entire body was engulfed in agony. It hadn't even had the decency to totally annihilate his nerves and leave him numb. Something told him it could have done that, if it wanted to. With the speed it had shown, there was evidently a lot of power in its frame, and plenty more tricks in its locker. He had no doubt it could have killed him in one blow, and the others only still lived at its pleasure.

Indeed, it could have easily dodged the red hand Jade sent towards it, and the glowing kissy lips Alissa blew at it weren't nearly fast enough to trouble it. Even Doug's rush attack, looking like a movie in fast-forward, was far slower than the agility the monster had displayed.

But it let them all hit without moving an inch. Jade's red hand gripped it around one of its legs, and he saw wisps of steam rising up where it touched, slowly eating into the metal. Alissa's attack hit it right below the eyes, scouring away a few chunks of glass. Doug threw a punch at its nearest leg, to seemingly no effect, before retreating once more.

Lily and Chester didn't even try anything. The latter he could understand, but Lily's inaction confused him. Unfortunately, he didn't think he'd get the chance to ask.

As he watched the scene in the middle of the room unfold, he was sure, somehow, that one of its red eyes was watching him, even now. The others barely merited its attention. The arm it had used to bat him aside was still outstretched, pointing in his direction.

It started to rotate, so the pincer was horizontal, then it curved upwards at the 'wrist' in a come-hither gesture.

John narrowed his eyes. "You motherfucker."

The crow came to land on his left shoulder, digging its claws into the leather of his jacket so tightly that it creaked. It gave a single, sharp caw. Meanwhile, Polly and Zazu came to land on his other shoulder, chattering away to themselves with a litany of vulgar insults in a variety of voices. The dove settled atop his head with a soft coo.

Guess I'm the Birdman, now, he thought sardonically before he activated Accelerate and dashed forward. This time, he wasn't going to rush in recklessly. But neither could he stand by and let the monster do whatever it wanted with his comrades. He might not have grown particularly close to them or anything, but at this point all human lives were precious. He wasn't going to let them die because he was a little salty that they were somewhat leaving him out of their burgeoning team.

From what he was seeing, the corrosive attacks were doing damage to some degree, so the disparity in level between them wasn't completely insurmountable. When he'd seen his Fireballs have zero effect, he'd worried the crab would be immune to anything he could do to it.

If they could hurt it, they could kill it. John just had to put together a Spell that even a red monster couldn't shrug off. Right now, he was sitting at 18,000 Aura, having lost a painful 5k for getting slapped aside. That would potentially let him Combine three more Spells he already had. He wasn't sure that would be enough. He needed more Spells. Stronger ones. Higher levels.

For that, he'd need more Aura.

"Looks like I'm gonna have to go all out, just this once," John said as he rushed towards the battle, nocking a Death Arrow.

+1000 Aura

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