Hey, I woke up in a cave again! I half expected to wake up in a certain someone’s belly so this is a clear win. I don’t hear the thing anymore, hopefully it just gave up and went back to sleep.

I didn’t eat a single thing yesterday, I’m quite hungry. A bit thirsty too but I have some water left. I jiggle the canteen around.

Okay, I don’t have any water left now. That felt good.

My left hand is mostly back in shape, there are a few phalanxes still missing. So I really can regrow limbs. I get it, the perfect lifeform thing really wasn’t a scam. I wonder how far I can push it, what if I lose my head? Let’s maybe not test that out.

My cape got absolutely destroyed in the flight yesterday. I'll still keep the last shreds that were attached to my neck, might be useful later. The luck ring was lost, the nail caps of my left hand as well, I’ll use the other ones for my left hand instead, I still need my dominant right hand as a weapon right now. Wait am I even still right handed? I wave a half deformed shield piece around. Nope, feels the same in both hands, if you forget the missing parts of the left one. Guess being ambidextrous was included in the perfect package.

The shield… the lemons rolled over it when I let them go, no more shield, only half molten scrap metal. Not keeping these. I’m lucky it didn’t touch the bag.

The tough rocks of this passage are even strong enough to resist the lemon. A bit. The remaining lemon still nested itself in a self made 20cm deep pit by now, but that’s a lot slower than destroying a 1cm thick shield by rolling over it once.

What the hell are these fruits even? I keep having the weird urge to try and eat it. Could I grow more of them? That’s a subject for later. Looking at the thing from closer now it’s not quite a lemon, the peel is a bit smoother than a lemon, almost like a mango. It doesn’t really have a smell. It’s hard like an unripe avocado, not squishy at all. My hand isn’t melting thanks to the blessing but everything else I put in contact is eaten through at different speeds. How will I even carry the damn thing?

The fruit is my only source of light right now so it’s not like I would put it in my bag anyway but walking with that in my hand… Oh maybe the centipede is immune to the melting? Centipedes molt I’m pretty sure. It’d be nice to find some shed skin. Didn’t see any yesterday, maybe in the side tunnels. I have to be wary of entering any place large enough to fit that thing now, who knows how the caves are connected.

First priority now is water. Shouldn’t be hard to find some cave water when I can move around. Gotta wait for my leg before that. About two centimeters have grown back during my sleep. At this rate I’m still here in a week. Should I just sleep more to speed up the growth?

…

Am I becoming dull or what? speed? GROWTH? If I don’t use my magic to recover faster I’m the biggest clown to have ever set foot on the moon.

But let’s think about this for a second. First off, what about what I did yesterday. I ran, cast the spell, didn’t feel any change. But it did something for sure, the mana was coursing through me like never before… Shit I really AM dull!

What was it? The centipede sped up in banging his head against the wall after a few seconds? More like I sped down! Ok then. I really was going faster, just that I felt normal and everything else around was slower. Dilated my own time. I’d be ashamed that I hadn't noticed earlier if I wasn’t in mortal danger when it happened. At least I get it now.

But I spent so much manalite on that. And judging from the speed up the centipede got I was like, what, ten percent faster? The plant grew much faster with way less mana… Maybe it's caused by the complexity of the affected object, or just the mass or size. More things to try later. I’ll just try to dilate the time of my still oozing stump of a leg and see what happens.

I send a small wave of manalite directly through my veins towards my leg. It works!

The flesh is regrowing at a speed visible to the naked eye, I grew a full centimeter of leg in just a second! Annnd it stopped. I feel hungrier than before. Go figure, my body still can’t regrow out of nothing. I could keep going, I have enough manalite for the whole leg, I just will be starving by the end of it.

If mana, a.k.a. dark matter, can morph into pretty much anything under the influence of manalite, can’t I use it for food? Or at least as a replacement material to build my leg?

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

If my affinity allows it somehow it should be possible. I’m very certain the cook in Krel used his magic to make the water we drank. Can I ‘grow’ some food? All I have is rocks and an inedible lemon. Loopholes, gotta find a loophole. I can make some soil by having my notebook’s paper rot in dilated time… No seeds, no water, pointless…

The most basic way of using mana is energy. No precise kind of energy, just energy. Calories are energy. I should be able to use straight up mana instead… But I’m lacking the nutrients that way. Hmm.

Come on if I’m a perfect biological lifeform or whatever I should at least not need to eat no? Yeah I think the law of conservation of mass would like to have a talk with this idea.

E=mc². Energy is mass. Dark matter is matter but we use it as energy. Manalite can turn this energy back to mass whenever a spell creates matter…

Wouldn’t a ‘perfect biological lifeform’ be naturally able to turn energy into mass for survival? And taking advantage of the properties of mana, have it turn into all the nutrients it needs to sustain itself? It’s worth a shot.

But using my own manalite for that is a bit counterproductive since my body needs the energy and nutrients to produce it in the first place. I still need an external source of energy unless the production cost of manalite is less than the energy it can produce from mana.

Seeing the bullshit high level mages can do I think mana is worth a lot more energy than manalite…

Alright then. Can my so-called perfect body feed off mana? I’m about to find out.

I use my manalite to channel mana energy. Directly into my body. No specific target. And wait a bit.

The energy is gone for sure now. Am I less hungry? Can’t tell. I can use more to see if that makes a difference. But I won’t have enough left to speed up the recovery of my leg if I do…

I eye the lemon that’s slowly burning its way into the ground.

“If only I had a nondescript fruit that’s brimming with mana just available to be used.”

Sending manalite into a crystal will make the crystal’s own manalite turn the surrounding mana into energy. It’s worth doing because by just sending a gram worth of manalite into another crystal you can get ten times that amount of manalite from the crystal to react, effectively getting ten times the amount of mana for the same amount of manalite spent. Just that it can’t be used to cast spells. Unless you pump it into copper runes, activating the imbued spell, which is exactly what most people use it for and why it’s worth money.

Will sending manalite in the lemon do the same? I’d wager yes seeing how wild the mana is acting nearby just like it is with crystals.

Let’s waste a bit more manalite then.

As expected it works just the same. The lemon energy is filling me. It’s way more efficient than directly converting my manalite to mana. Crazily more efficient. At least a thousand times! The lemon isn’t just reacting off my manalite, it’s actively sapping it like some sort of hungry beast, drinking my crystal with a straw and spewing out mana like a broken dam. I struggle to cut the flow.

Afterwards I wait for the energy in my body to settle. It takes a while. The lemon hasn’t shown any changes. Some part of it could have been consumed in the process but it doesn’t feel any different.

Man. The perfect lifeform was a steal. How many surprises does it still hold? I don’t feel full right now. I feel bloated. Ready to burst. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that full my whole life.

Except maybe for that one time at the New Mandarin Empire’s Mars colony inauguration buffet, I really ate like a pig, the dumplings were just THAT good.

The universal tongue perk isn’t quite as good for the same price for now. I know it will shine. In due time.

The lemon is even more dangerous now. If you put it near a crystal it will probably suck it dry in seconds!

Back to where I started before nerding out on thermodynamics. I have a leg to heal.

I manage to regrow my leg using localized time dilation. I’m gradually less and less bloated as my body uses all the energy and nutrients to rebuild the missing parts. My focus slips a few times during the sustained cast which interrupts the magic. Not quite a mastered spell yet, as simple as it is. I’m lucky that didn’t happen when I was fleeing before. I was this close to getting chomped, even ten percent speed is probably what saved my ass.

It’s been what, thirty seconds since I started casting? Growing half a leg in thirty seconds…

THAT’S SO BUSTED!

Who else can do that, UH ?!

Healing mages? Thruls and their regeneration magic? Come fight me!

Ok maybe it’s not that busted, can’t really stop a battle for thirty seconds. Still insane. I wish I could see Ian react to this! Who needs your overpriced prostheses now? Ptui!

…

Is Ian ok? It’s been six years… His daughter probably graduated college by now…

Damn, way to ruin the fun. Thanks Ian…