The void he’d fallen into wasn’t sleep, it was awareness, simply by a different name. He could feel his unconscious body breathing, his blood pumping erratically through his body, and when he thought his situation couldn’t get any more odd he began to feel the very muscles under his skin as they moved with his body subconsciously. Most people don’t realize how often their body moves without their knowledge, subconscious twitches, muscles that move across the body as another area entirely moves even slightly, all of it. But Mark could feel it, he could feel his body as it slept, and he could feel it as it began to change.
As he sat in the void, only aware of himself to the basest of components, he began to feel pressure throughout his skin, his muscles, his very soul. He could feel as energy invaded his skin, causing it to soften and slosh off in a slurry, he could feel as his muscles twisted and grew to a far greater density than before, feel as his bones began to crumble and restructure themselves in patterns unrecognizable in a human body. He could feel as his organs shifted, changed, several merging or dissolving and being replaced. His heart, the lifeline for all humans, grew in size by almost double, before two smaller hearts grew on both sides of his chest. His lungs, remaining unchanged save for small modifications, grew in size dramatically before splitting off into four organs, each one far more efficient than they were before.
But through it all, the one thing he could feel was pain. Pain as his nervous system was shocked into overdrive at the invasion of energy, pain as they began to die off, pain as he burnt in a hell of his own making, for a moment he wondered if he’d died, and the whole ordeal was a hell of his own for accepting a deal with the devil herself.
The suffering was similar to a story he’d read once as a teenager, of a man with no mouth who had to scream, trapped in unending torment. He’d brushed it off then, ignorantly unknowing of how horrid pain could be, how horrible his own suffering could become if a higher being decided to make it as nightmarish as possible.
The pain was unceasing, even after his previous nervous system had died off completely, as new nerves began to be grown along with his new skin. Where he’d had a liver and kidneys, they’d melted away to a new organ he didn’t recognize, purple with black veins running along it he could sense it as clearly as he could the rest of his body's recreation. His intestines had changed drastically as well, merging into one large organ only a few feet long, with the organ being much thicker and tougher than it had been previously.
Several of his organs, the ones that didn’t merge or shift previously, grew in size to replace the extra space left behind by the new intestine, filling up the old space not taken up by newly grown bones or muscle tissue.
His body, seemingly satisfied with his new internal organs, began working on the rest of his prone form. His legs and remaining arm began restructuring, adding more muscle tissue and bones that more resembled a spinal cord than what was normally underneath his newly grown skin, while his face began its final touches, removing the few blemishes his face had and making him appear more like a model than a boxer.
By the end of the process his body was almost unrecognizable, having grown in height by at least two feet, and easily having more than an extra fifty pounds of altered muscle that was easily a dozen times stronger than his previous body ever was.
However for Mark now, all he could do was thank his Goddess that the pain was over. Watching over his new body he could see the differences, but he wasn’t sure if it was worth the suffering he’d been forced through to achieve it, and only time would tell if it truly was worth it.
No more, no more pain, please Vira.
The silent prayer remained unanswered, as most prayers do. Watching over his body for a few scant moments he could feel the difference more clearly than see it. His breath felt deeper, stronger, like the difference between a healthy adult and someone in their nineties with half a lung left working. Of course, this was obviously because of his body having grown two entire new lungs while also having all four of them being enhanced further by Vira’s magic.
As he felt true sleep calling he drifted down towards his body, touching it lightly before he fell completely unconscious.
Thank Vira, it’s over.
-----------------
As she looked through the small hovel that her new kin used as his home she grew rather aggrieved at the situation she’d found herself in.
After she had reported her actions, along with her new brother's actions, she’d been heavily punished. Interfering with untapped worlds without proper approval wasn’t only heavily frowned upon, but punishable by, and up to, death depending on severity. The only reason she hadn’t been stripped of her position and forced into the front lines for a few decades as punishment for the blessings she gave him was because of the fact that his life was in grave danger, and as such she saved her master years wasted effort by saving him.
Even with her meritorious deeds however, breaking the laws of the church required some form of punishment, and as such she had been assigned as the lowborn's Guardian until he was fit to act alone. The fact she had been deprived of the ability to return to her own home was bad enough, the fact she had to babysit an almost literal child was even worse. As she rummaged through his few possessions she was almost on the verge of falling asleep, no weapons, no armor, the boy only had a single passable tool in the building that he seemed to use for preparing his food.
Twisting the small kitchen knife around she examined the small runes, small enough that most would not even recognize them and think they were just decorations or forging lines and poured a small amount of her mana into it. As she did so the blade echoed back, rejecting more than even a fraction of the already tiny amount she had attempted to put into it. Fearing destroying her kin's property she ceased the injections of mana, and observed as the small blade activated, sending a small amount of heat out of the edge of the blade for cutting.
Draining the tool before putting it back she could hear as her kin’s first Ascension began, mostly by the dull echo of his screaming that had begun to perforate through the Silence spell she had placed around the room. Luckily the echo was low enough that she doubted anyone outside of the room itself could hear it, but she was still shocked by the boy's low pain tolerance.
“If you can’t even handle the simplest of Ascensions, how will you fare when you are put through the Reforged Ascensions?”
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Scoffing to herself as she walked back towards the small room she gazed at his form, lying prone on the bed where she’d left him. When the Master had sent her out she’d put the boy into a trance to begin the process, but she’d still had time to descend and prepare his body for when it properly began. Most Ascensions happened in controlled environments, purity baths or open areas where the stench of molted flesh and bone could freely dissipate, before the new body was cleaned of the old waste and dirty magic that had been stored pre-Ascension. Of course, seeing that she was stuck in a small city with only moments to spare, she knew she wouldn’t have had time to transport him somewhere more preferable, so she’d simply stripped him of his ‘clothes’ and placed him on his bed to undergo the process.
He’d need to get rid of the bed, and most of the things in the room, but it was the better outcome compared to her dragging him outside the city and him literally melting away in her hands, only to reconstruct himself in the middle of the sky with no means to land safely, or protect himself from whatever beasts he landed near.
A small sacrifice to pay for Ascension, all things considered.
She watched as his body melted away to bone, and then the bones themselves nearly melted away completely before they began to reconstruct themselves. Luckily at this stage his screaming had stopped, but she knew it would most likely return along with his vocal cords. As she watched his bones regrow she was at least satisfied with the fact that he hadn’t begun a mutated Ascension. The whole point of having a native as a Guardian is to ensure maximum acceptance among the natives, and having someone mutated into a twelve foot dire beast didn’t sit well with most populations, especially if their minds were lost in the process as well.
As she observed his transformations she was almost impressed by the way his form adhered to his template, not increasing or decreasing in size disproportionately, no added limbs or ‘decorations’ such as horns or hoofs, just his template increased to its logical limits.
“At least you’ll impress the rest of your kin, little soldier.”
Leaving the room as his flesh began reforming, and soon the screams, she entered the small room that acted as his ‘restroom’. Wrinkling her nose as how unkempt it was she rooted through the room before finding a small amount of cleaning utensils. The second his body was done reforging itself she would have to wash him down, or the froth of dirt and melted flesh would be stuck to him, requiring the same peeling one would use on paint that had dried incorrectly, and she’d rather not have to peel flesh off of someone with such a low pain tolerance, or she may be forced to kill him out of irritation.
As she spent a few moments attempting to figure out how the small bath worked his screaming began again, and she was forced to blot out the sound while she worked the small handles to get the water flowing. She figured the handles would cause water runes somewhere to activate, but she could sense as the water was pulled from another area entirely, preheated and mixed with cool water to create different temperatures. Fiddling with the small handles to get the temperature right she smiled for the first time since descending.
“At least this is interesting…”
A water rune would take even the most incompetent of mage or runecrafter less than a day to create, so the fact they had gotten around the issue of being incompetent with magic to create running water in such a way was amusing, if not impressive. It just went to show that needlessly interfering with savage tribes caused more issues than people were willing to admit to. After all, if they had all these tools now, what would they have been capable of in a millennia? Two millennia? From the little research she’d done on this world when she’d first been tasked with overseeing the boy their civilizations as a whole had mostly reached the first stages of kingdom building, that being large cities and erected militaries to defend them, all with the power of their science.
For their science to be capable of almost reaching the first stage of kingdom building in only the few short millennia they’d existed, they would have definitely been worthy of research and observation for a few more millennia to see how their world advanced further, but alas the universe moves too quickly these days to allow such things.
“If only I’d been the one to find this world, and a few centuries earlier at that. The wonders I could have helped inspire, how disappointing the chance has fallen away from us. Arrogant newborns have to ruin everything, don't they?”
Suppressing her anger towards the fools who had invaded the world, and in extension her Masters territory, she finished preparing the small bath for the unpleasant experience of bathing her kin. She could finally hear his pained screams begin to end, and could feel his breathing finally stabilize in his new body.
“Now for my least favorite part of Ascensions, the clean up.”
Breathing out a small exasperated sigh she moved towards her kin, and wondered if maybe saving his life was worth what she now had to do.
--------------------
He wasn’t sure if he was dreaming again, as he felt hot water wash over his body. The quiet humming of a woman, sounding so closely to his mother that he thought maybe he’d already died and gone to heaven.
Opening his eyes he was met with the face of the woman from the dream, who was in the process of scrubbing him down in his bathtub.
How did she get in my house, forget that, how did she get here at all?
He attempted to sit upright, before the woman sent the palm of her hand into his forehead, causing his entire body to numb and go limp. He attempted to ask her what she was doing, but the numbness across his body had stolen his voice along with his ability to move.
With the bare minimum of tracking her with his eyes she continued to scrub his body down, the dirt and grime sinking away into the drain as the shower head hit him. He could smell something foul inside the room, like something had died and been boiled in the hot sun. He could also tell that the smell was coming very strongly from him.
The process he’d gone under had left behind his old husk, and the woman was in the process of literally scraping the remains of it off his body, or at the very least she was finishing the job as even from his slumped position he could tell that most of his body had already been scrubbed red from the cleaning she’d done while he was unconscious.
She hadn’t slowed after she’d paralyzed him, merely sped up. She probably didn’t want to have to clean him any more than he wanted her to clean him… even if she was rather attractive. Having someone stronger hold him down and clean him made him feel like a child, and the ability to be so easily subdued without being able to fight back was uncomfortable, to say the least.
Uncomfortably waiting for her to finish he sat there for around half an hour while she finished scrubbing his body down, seemingly having already completed his lower torso and below by the time he’d woken up. The fact it took her half an hour to clean his upper torso and head made him wonder how long the rest of his body took, however when his thoughts started wandering towards how she had cleaned him thoroughly he closed those thoughts as well. The last thing he needed was to explain any unwanted flag raises, and he didn’t feel like finding out what a slap felt like going at mach twenty, if he even survived it.
By the time the cleaning had finished, and he was sure she had scrubbed the skin off his entire skull, he wasn’t a fan of baths anymore, nor did he like whatever she was using to clean him, especially since he was ninety percent sure it was steel wool. Thankfully he couldn’t yell because he would have said something he’d regret in the future.
After she’d finished assaulting him she slapped him on the forehead again, before leaving and closing the door behind her.
Feeling the numbness leaving his body rapidly he stretched his new body out, before letting a long pained groan from the constant stinging he could feel across his entire body.
“Really didn’t miss an inch, pretty sure I’m missing a few layers of skin by now.”
Pulling himself to his feet he turned off the shower and grabbed a towel off of a nearby rack before drying himself off.
Why the hell is she even here? Just to scrape me off? The smell is mostly gone from me but goddamn I can still smell it coming from outside the bathroom.
As he’d finished drying he left the tub and grabbed a spare pair of clothes the woman had been nice enough to bring in for him. Before he started changing he realized where the smell assaulting his nose was coming from.
“I fucking dissolved on my bed.”
He’d begun the process in his sleep, and all that melted flesh and bone he’d seen in the void had been from when he was asleep in his bed. The smell was horrid enough, and since the woman had definitely spent at least a few hours scrubbing him down he knew he wouldn’t be able to get the smell out of his bed, or his sheets.
Hell the room itself was blocked by at least a single door and the smell was nauseating, it was doubtful he’d be able to keep anything in the room at all.
Goddess damn it all to hell, that bed cost like five hundred dollars.
Angrily dressing himself he opened the door of the bathroom and went out to confront his newest ‘roommate’.