Healing my hand after doing the leg is childsplay.
Dilating time on such small things like a hand and leg is surprisingly cheap, I barely used half the manalite I had available today for the whole healing session… I’m getting tired of this whole crystal and manalite thing. Too long. Imma just say mana when I can now, just act as if my manalite is mana already, full crystal is full mana and 90% crystal is no mana left. Way easier to think about it like that, every video game is getting that right, how is real life not?
So anyway, I have about 50% mana left. I don’t know how much exactly. I’m getting better at sensing mana in general and it tends to really gather around manalite so if I just keep training my mana sense I’ll be able to know how much I have left with more precision. Maybe then I should count it by the available gram? I no longer have any small crystal to research how much mana a gram of manalite is attracting. I’ll see when I get there.
Could I kill the big boy for his crystal? Some sort of hit and run tactic might work. What if he doesn’t have one though since he didn’t use any magic that I could see? No need to take more risks, the lemon is a big enough haul, must be worth a lot of money as well, not that I would sell it.
I stand up and dust myself. My clothes have some pretty nasty violet-black dried blood stains on them can’t do much about that. And I only have one shoe now… Might as well take it off for symmetry.
Only losing a leg was pretty lucky, my tail can’t have been too far from getting bit off too.
Corrosive lemon in hand, I explore deeper into this gigantic underground network. Might even find an exit soon. But the fruit can sustain me for a while now, so getting out isn’t as pressing an issue as before.
It feels like I have been walking in narrow passageways for hours. I'm liking the new magic I've come up with in the meantime, using time dilation directly on the muscles works really well at giving short bursts of power. It's cheap and easy to use, and it would be best to master the spell fast. I fail every other time at the moment. Can't have that happen to me in a dangerous situation.
This place isn't nearly as exciting as dungeons in games… I'm almost hoping to see traps and treasure chests. Well all things considered if it was a dungeon then I already skipped the boss and skedaddled with his loot. Is that worth a lot of karma I wonder. Maybe some karma is what tributing th- Uh? My foot hit something weird and round.
A hatchet! A primitive stone hatchet with a small wooden handle that I'm currently stepping on. Is someone living nearby?!
"Hello? Anyone? I found your hatchet!"
An answer? I have no idea what I'm hearing but it's something. A few dozen meters further ahead, glowing green lines slowly appear from a corner. The sounds are clearer now, it's from hundreds of chitinous legs clicking against the stone.
As long as there's only- Something just dropped from a hole in the ceiling I passed under just some seconds ago. I'm surrounded.
I cut the flow of mana to my left hand, the nail caps fall to the floor. The bag will be a hindrance as well, I’m dropping that. It's serious fighting time.
Can't drop the lemon since it's the only light source, probably can't use it as a weapon either. The corridor is too narrow for them to both come at me from the same side, I should try to get behind one of them first.
I turn around and sprint to the one that came from above, he’s way closer. It’s exactly like the giant centipede, but the height of a big dog, the rear end of its long body is still busy coming out of the hole as it advances towards me.
Keeping the lemon was unrealistic. I lob the lemon over the beast’s head. I need both hands for this.
The thing clearly noticed the flying fruit, its head and first pairs of legs rise in the air as if to catch it but it’s a second too late. I’m right in front of the damn thing now. Since its head is still up I reach to grab one of the modified legs it uses to bite, can’t bite me now. I’m fully grappling the arthropod using both arms and legs.
The multiple legs grab me as it rolls around me in a tight and deadly embrace, they hurt although they fail to puncture my skin. It can’t fully wrap around me, the end of its body still coming out the hole.
I attack with my left hand, the nails puncture the chitin, they don’t go any deeper. A foul scent of rotting flesh spreads around. The creature is shaking us both around on the ground like a washing machine. I send mana to the muscles in my left arm. It fails before activating. I need to keep focus. Try again. Fail. Try again. Here it comes!
I send a good boosted punch in the underside of its head.
Crack
The chitin is breached and a neon green liquid sprays me in the face. It burns a bit, none got in my eyes. Blood is dangerous.
It didn’t like that. It’s not rolling around anymore, it’s bashing me in the ground. Each time it comes up I have time to try landing another punch. It’s trying really hard to have my hand release its jaw. I fumble the spell three more times.
I charge up. The spell fails again.
Boom
My head collides with the ground.
I charge up again, finally the damn spell goes through! My fist hits the same spot I cracked before, it completely breaks through the exoskeleton, penetrating deep inside the centipede’s head. Thirty percent mana left. The arthropod wildly twitches around as it dies. The grip of his legs is getting weaker on me, I struggle to quickly get out of the many appendages still holding me. My face and arms are covered in putrid smelling green blood, the burn is constant. My right hand is still mostly clean, protected by what it was holding, I use it to wipe my eyes. The rotting stench is overwhelming.
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I’m not fully back up yet, the other centipede is on me.
Bring it on!
The centipede is quick to throw itself on me. He’s going for a grapple too. The one I killed barely made it out of the ceiling hole fully when it died. Backsteps, one, two. I boost both my arms and grab the half dead body by a pair of legs, hastily holding it up as a shield. The carcass gets bitten by the hook like front pincers of the live centipede’s head, they release it after a second, the tips are flowing with thick venom, it’s hard to move under all this weight. I doubt that the bite would have reached me even if I didn’t block. Is this one’s depth perception lacking?
The centipede climbs over my makeshift, twitching shield, can’t let it get to my back!
I boost my legs. Only the left one’s mana makes it. Good enough, the ceiling is barely fifty centimeters higher than the thing’s head right now. I jump up with all I’ve got. Both the centipedes over me are lifted up.
Boom
It collided. I did my best to slam it in the ceiling as hard as I could but that probably didn’t do much. My jump was skewed by the uneven boost and I flip mid air, losing my grip on the dead beast’s smooth legs, I harshly land on my right side.
Everything falls back on me. My left side is bitten through, I didn't expect him to recover that fast! The hot venom spreads in my abdomen.
It tries to wrap around me like the other one did but it strangely only manages to clumsily hold my legs.
My left hand grips the pincer that’s in my left side lower back, can’t reach the other one, I grab an antenna instead, a quick boost and it’s off his head, pulled out like a cooked crab’s leg!
It released the bite, it’s fleeing towards the lemon. No way! I grab the thing from under with both arms as it walks over me. Twenty percent mana left. Let’s see how you like this!
Mana ebbs in my arms and chest without restraint, die to this human clamp!
The chitin cracks! Then again! I cut it in half! The centipede instantly stops, lifeless.
The other one is still twitching beside me. Weird. I’m on the ground covered in neon green corrosive blood. The jacket doesn’t seem affected, but my hands and face are being slowly burned through. My abdomen is painful, cramping, the venom is still spreading.
Using the shredded remains of my wool cape, I expeditiously clean myself of most of the thick and cold burning blood. The jacket isn’t stained by it, is it liquid repellent? It clearly absorbed my own blood yesterday… It now has two large coin-sized holes in it where I was bitten.
I don’t have much mana left. No way get the venom out, if I were to dilate time in the affected parts it would only make it spread faster. The holes aren’t bleeding at least.
Unsteadily walking to the lemon on the ground, I use my last bits of mana to strike it and get some much needed nourishment. I have to be careful not to let it suck out more of my crystal. With this and some time I can recover. I sit down and enjoy the ‘meal’ in hard earned peace.
…
A new sound. Something is oozing. Another one?
I look around, panicked, I can’t fight anymore. Can’t see anything besides the two wriggling corpses.
Wait, they're both moving?
I don’t even know what to do. A thick black sludge flows out of both sides of the centipede I cut in half. It feels very alive. A parasite!
It’s liquid, can I even kill this thing? Is it hostile since I killed his host? No. The host must have been dead from the beginning, that’s why it was so clumsy in the first place! That’s why it dropped dead so quick!
Fuck, the black goo is still agglomerating, it’s the size of a child already, if this is this world’s idea of a slime I want nothing to do with it!
I struggle to get up. If I can’t kill it I can at least try to escape.
I slowly get away but the venom makes it hard to walk. Every two steps most of my muscles cramp up for an instant. I look behind me.
The black thing is fully formed. It’s about two meters tall, large like a small tree trunk, slick and oily, twisting around like a giant snake made of flowing petroleum. Three similarly black and featureless round tipped tentacles wriggle at the top. The only thing that’s not pitch black is a glowing white cross shaped eye right under the base of the tentacles.
It is gliding on the ground toward me, leaving behind a black oil trail. It’s not even that fast but I’m no in any shape to outrun it.
I still try to speed up. No dice. There’s no way punching it will do anything. I don’t even have any mana left.
Mana… There’s no way this thing can exist without mana! If I can find the core… I need it to be closer. I stop.
I close my eyes and concentrate. Mana sense. Don’t let me down now. If this thing has a core the mana around it will be much denser there.
Found it! It’s right behind his eye. Could you be any more obvious ?!
Alright, I only have one shot at this, don’t want to find out what happens if I let this black sludge touch me. I send the fruit my last shreds of available manalite, scraping the bottom of what my crystal can afford to lose today. I feel even weaker now. This was enough to awaken the lemon’s hunger, it’s tugging at my crystal like it wants to eat it whole. Here’s some food for you!
The black oil monster is just a meter away from me, it’s tentacles and upper body bending towards my face as if to absorb me whole, I throw the lemon.
It barely flies at all before it hits the weird cross shaped eye, the lemon goes right through the eye and tar with a sizzling noise and collides with the thing’s mana crystal. It’s green and easily as big as a tennis ball, the largest I’ve seen yet. Even then, it does not survive long in contact with the lemon, in fact, the fruit doesn’t even stop in its trajectory, leaving an oval, half lemon shaped hole in the crystal, a line of powder still flows from the crystal to the flying lemon, like a trail of dust sucked in by a vacuum cleaner.
That did it, I think, the moment the lemon hit the crystal, the whole black thing started literally disintegrating into thin air, no sound, no struggling, no remains, even the black trail is disappearing. It’s as if that monster never existed.
Meanwhile the lemon is emitting mana energy like crazy, I can’t get away, I can barely move anymore. If I felt too full the last time, I’m feeling like every fiber of my being is full to the brim, am I going to implode? The lemon isn’t stopping either.
My body is cracking, organs rupturing, deep fissures open in my skin. I’m definitely going to implode.
I felt pain for the first twenty seconds but now I don’t think the nerves in my body still have the ability to transmit that much information. All I can do is watch as my body is pumped so full of mana by a damn fruit, that it breaks from being too full. I’m literally bursting like a balloon. The cracks in my skin are glowing in a blinding purple hue emanating from my chest. I wait for it all to end, for my body to pop, yet again. This life wasn’t as long as I intended but it sure was fruit full. Eheh. I’ve been happier in these three days than I’ve been in my twenty last years on Earth. Come, I’m ready. Death is not the end!
I can picture the old me, floating in space, boiling alive, scared to shit about his destined fate. What would I tell him now? Only one dumb line comes to my mind.
First time?