The man, now a bit over three hours after waking up, looks like a barely breathing corpse, but he does seem to have miraculously survived yet another ridiculous ordeal regardless of the state he is in.
Over the course of seven hours, the first four of which the man had slept through during the night or more like was forced to sleep through due to the tranquilizing effects of the venom he was injected with, and the three hours he's been awake, the man lost about 17 kg, both in fat and muscle. His skin has turned pale and blueish hues have appeared around his fingertips, toe tips, mouth, lips and even a bit could be seen in his earlobes. Some of his previously visible veins have turned a brighter and more visible blue while some entirely new veins that were previously hidden well below the skin had also become visible under the slowly dissipating green hued patches of concentrated toxin. Dried up blood was all around his chin, neck and newly acquired clothes from the couple of times he coughed and threw up blood, there was also some dried up blood traveling up his nostrils. That's not all, for the infection in his ankle also flared up again for a bit when his body was busy fighting all the other poisons, toxins, venoms and whatnot. And to top it all off...the man was lying over the bedding leaves in a disgusting messy pool of his own shit, piss, sweat and tears.
However, Regardless of such a fucking shit-show of a morning, some actual good news reached the man, for this notification, "Bing!" was the final one caused by this incident. Immediately after hearing it and feeling the constant throbbing all around his body slightly calm down, the man passed out.
Some ten hours later, the man regains consciousness and right as he does so, almost out of instinct, he lifts a trembling hand to see all that the system has to say. Unbothered by the state he is in, or by anything actually, his expression and eyes are void of emotion as he reads the entire notification and status windows.
(Gained knack: Improved Heart I,
Gained knack: Improved Liver I,
Gained knack: Improved Digestive System I,
Gained knack: Improved Veins I,
Gained knack: Poison Immunity I,
Gained knack: Toxin Immunity I,
Gained knack: Venom Immunity I,
Gained knack: Stamina Regeneration I,
Gained knack: Pain damage reduction I,
Gained knack: Stress damage reduction I,
Gained knack: Shock resistance I,
Gained knack: Shock tolerance I,
Gained knack: Improved Scotopic Vision I,
Digestive system tolerance up IV < VI,
Pain tolerance up IV < VI,
Stress tolerance up III < IV,
Fear tolerance up II < IV,
Improved Liver up II < IV,
Digestive system damage reduction up I < III,
Digestive system damage resistance up I < III,
Pain resistance up I < III,
Fear resistance up I < III,
Stress resistance up I < III,
Poison damage reduction up I < III,
Poison tolerance up I < III,
Poison resistance up II< III,
Venom damage reduction up I < III,
Venom tolerance up I < III,
Venom resistance up I < III,
Improved Health Regeneration up I < III
Improved Heart up I < III
Improved Digestive System up I < III
Improved Veins up I < II
Poison Immunity up I < IV
Toxin Immunity up I < II
Venom Immunity up I < III
Pain damage reduction up I < II,
Stress damage reduction up I < II,
Shock resistance up I < II,
Shock tolerance up I < II,
Mental strength increase 28 < 73,
Mental defense increase 25 < 55,
Physical defense increase 60 < 75,
Spirit power increase 24 < 39
Endurance increase 68 < 98,
Luck increase 45 < 170
Title Received: Survivor of Certain Death (Survived Certain Death)
Title Received: A Promising Rookie (A stat reaches 100 before achieving level 20)
Title Received: Accustomed to Unfairness (At least 10 Debuffs active at once)
–Max Health Points: 980– –Health Regen: 0,000113+0,000833/sec–
—Health Bar— 21/980
–Max Stamina: 970– –Stamina Regen: 0,2042+0,1666/sec–
—Stamina Bar— 970/970
–Max Mana Points: 235– –Mana Regen: 0,0059/sec–
—Mana Bar— 235/235
Debuffs:
[Poisoned: Venom; Negated & Neutralizing]
[Poisoned: Toxin; Negated & Neutralizing]
[Poisoned: Sulfur; Negated, Neutralized & Cleansing]
[Infected: Bacterial; Negated & Neutralizing]
[Severely Exhausted: 10 000% Stamina usage]
[Severely Over-worked: -65% Health Regeneration]
[Starved: -30% Strength & -35% Intelligence, Speed & Dexterity]
[Severely Dehydrated: -35% Strength & -65% Perception, Wisdom & Agility]
[Traumatized: -75% Mental Defense, -70% Mental Strength, -65% Spirit Defense & -50% Spirit Power]
[Partially Paralyzed: -75% to All Motor Skills]
[Dizzy: -25% to All Motor Functions]
[Internally Injured: -40% Physical Defense)
After confirming that he was, though barely, indeed still alive, all his emotions started to flow back into him bit by bit, and regardless of his terrible state and stinking surroundings, he takes a deep breath in and just laughs until he gets out of breath, which in his current state, does not take long.
"Wellhh, haah, that's, one hhHell of a way to, haaahh, to start the day...
Haah...Haaah...Fhuuc, Haaaah...Fhuck This Cave"
The man then rests for another hour, gathering his thoughts and eating the last of his lizard meat, until all the pain is mostly gone with only a sore throat and severe muscle soreness remaining throughout his body... "Haah so thirsty, I would go up to the stream but I'm so messed up that I can't even get up. Current main mission: Get drinking water...by any means necess...serryyy?"
Then suddenly, a light bulb turned on in the mind of the man. "Ohh? OOH! Can't I just drink magically made water? Is it even possible to make drinkable water from magic? I did increase my magic stat"
With this new idea in mind and nothing else he could do, the man just starts fucking around with hand symbols, all kinds of imaginary magic spells, different pronunciations and whatnot. The man keeps trying, fruitlessly, hours on end, and every time he gets too tired to continue, he just waits for his stamina to recover and repeats until he gets a little too frustrated and goes a bit too far with his experiments resulting in him passing out from the exertion.
On the fourth morning since the man found himself in this other world, and for the third morning in a row, the man is awakened by that dreaded sound of "bing!" to which the man reacts with great urgency, hastily opening his notifications to read them in a hurry.
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"Gained knack: Improved bodily moisture efficiency, I, OH my GOD, oh fuuhckh...ohhhh hohohooo, damn you, you just scared the sshit outta me!" After saying that, the man covers his face with his shaky hands in relief and breaths in deep trembling breaths in an attempt to calm his racing heart, only now really noticing the full nauseating mess he's laying in, too bad he still can't do all that much about it other than roll to the other side of the cold, stony room and out of the worst of it.
Still with nothing much else complying other than the mostly functioning mind, at least at the moment, and thoughts of death by dehydration spurring him on, he just continues trying to make water out of thin air even though it does seem like it succeeds only in frustrating the man.
And frustrate him it did, since nine hours is plenty of time to get frustrated when nothing seems to work. "Soo thiirstyyy... ooh water where is water that sweet colorless nectar of all life... I Need water so fuckingg baaad... whhyyy there is so much water just floating around doing nothing in the fucking airr, you piece of shit hoax of a magic stat mother-fucking piece of shitt, aaaaaarhhhhhhhhh!!! haah haah haah, aaahhh fuck fuck fuck FUCK that hurts, why'd I have to go and punch the flooor, what the fuck is wrong with me, why can't anything just work for me for once I'm so-?"
The man stops his complaining for a bit when a tiny drop of something gently taps the still opened palm on his left hand, the hand which wasn't currently hurting from punching solid stone-like an idiot. Upon inspecting the palm of his hand, the man could confirm that the drop was indeed a drop of water, but when he looked to the ceiling in hopes of there being at least something to drink, all he could feel was disappointment when he saw that there was absolutely no moisture in sight.
"bing!" "(Hm?)
"Gained Knack: Mana Control I." the man just stares at the notification window for a few seconds then turns to stare at the palm of his hand, slowly connecting the dots. "Ohh shit! Oohhh Fuck that's right, how the fuck could I make anything with magic if I can't even magic, ohh I'm such a stupid moron"
Getting ready to retry what he's been trying for a long while now, the man clears his throat and points his palms upward while closing his eyes and clearing his thoughts, thinking only of water to the best of his ability, how it flows, what it sounds like, what atoms its made of, how it cycles through the earth and the sky, how it forms on cold glass surfaces, how it melts from ice and finally how it comes to rains down when condensing in the clouds. During those last thoughts he could feel how his skin and the air around him slowly got all clammy, getting the hint, he Imagines some invisible force pushing together all of the moisture that is in the air, forcing it to condense in different ways. After a short while, he began to feel and hear tiny taps on his chin, cheeks and forehead every now and then.
The man opens his eyes a bit, still keeping the thoughts strong, to see the small drop of water slowly forming in mid-air as it would on the head of a leaking faucet, seeing this happen right in front of his eyes made the man smile so wide it hurt his cheeks.
The man closes his eyes again and keeps going until he could muster a bit more constant drip, then he pays a bit more attention on the details like where the droplets form and how big they should be before falling. After feeling a bit of a heavier tap on his lips he just opens his mouth and waits, doing his best to increase the intensity of his thoughts all the while learning how to adjust how the water drips. (I don't mean to brag or anything but I'm a fucking genius!)
About an hour or so later, after drinking somewhere between 5 and 6 deciliters of water while disregarding the ever-worsening headache, the man passed out for a total of thirty minutes because he ran out of mana. "Mmm fuuuck, my head is killing mee, When did I even pass out? Oh, Whaait a minute...is this the famous magic depletion sickness thingy? Well, am I glad to find out this way and not in the middle of some fight or something."
The man, now properly opening his eyes, sees a large bug silently crawling around on the corner and ceiling, close to directly above where his legs are. "OOorgh! What the, What the fuck is that" What the man is looking at is a creepy, crawly, 12-legged, scorpion-tailed, beetle thingy with a head and face that look almost like those of a crab.
Then it clicks "Are you the thing that stung me!? Come here you ugly fuck, I'll share some of the excruciating pain you forced me through-" "bing!" "Shut up...Youhh...hI'm going to rip you limb from limb you little shit, uuhhh and I'm going to enjoy it"
And so he did, he forced himself up with all his might, causing veins to puff up in his forehead and neck, struggled to his feet then waited for what felt like forever to him and punched the lower half of the 20cm bug against the hard cave wall with his bare hands once it got low enough, the punch was so hard that he could hear his knuckles pop while the cave lightly vibrated with the hard thunk of solid against solid. The punch squashed the stinger of the bug as well as its lower half despite its somewhat solid shell, completely taking them out of the fight and seeing that, the man swiftly picked it off the wall with his other hand, ruined lower half and all, then placed it on the slightly colder than usual cave floor. "Ooohhohooo, youu are so dead!"
5 minutes of torturing the demon of a bug later. "Noooo, you got off so easyy, you made me endure your bullshit for three hours. The least ("Bing!") you could have given me was at least 15 minutes..." (Fucking weakling, giving out on me like that...whatever, this world has magic, so one day I will learn necromancy or something, just to get that 15 minutes out of you, actually no, let's make that a 150 minutes just for giving up so fast.) "I will find a way to get two and a half hours of this out of you, THIS I promise you"
(I'm so tired of reading this shit, maybe I'll just ignore it all and only check in at the end of each month or when I think it might be something interesting...anyway, what did I get this time...
"Gained knack: Paralysis Resistance I,
Gained knack: Paralysis Tolerance I,
Gained knack: Paralysis Immunity I,
Gained knack: Drug Resistance I,
Gained knack: Drug Tolerance I,
Gained knack: Drug Immunity I,
Gained knack: Blood lust I,
Gained knack: Berserk I,
Gained knack: Torture I,
Gained knack: Focus I,
Gained title: Cruel Revenger) "uUUuh, Me Likey!"
(Cruel Revenger gives a 400% increase to the amount of pain I can inflict on a target of hate-fueled revenge, out of combat damage inflicted on such a target is also halved & pain won't damage the target...) "Ehehehee... just you wait Steve the stinging shit beetle, I won't make you wait for long~."
"All jokes aside, I'm still thirsty as all hell, let's see if the focu-" "pok...tk, tak tik poktok" "Bing!"
The man swiftly takes out his short sword and presses himself against the wall to the left side of the only exit... (Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuckety FUCK, I KNEW strewing those pebbles around the tunnel was a good idea for this empty echoey cave...just...pleeease don't be a bear or some stupid shit like that)
Quiet, light and cautious taps caused by footsteps creep closer and closer towards the room opening and right when the man is about to take a swing, he sees a woman who he assumes to be 160-170cm tall when taking into consideration his recent increase in height. The light brown-haired woman squinting her eyes in the dark has a somewhat fit build, basic leather armor & a short sword similar to the one the man is holding, but hers is in a way better shape.
So like the idiot that the man is, he does exactly the only possible thing that any moron like him with ten charisma would do and just goes "Psst!"
And so, as one would expect, the man scared the fucking, ever-loving, SHIT out of her, also as one could expect, she immediately takes an adrenaline reinforced fully powered swing towards the source of the sound up to her right.
Luckily for the man, he ducks down faster than the woman swings her sword, causing her to strike the corner of the rock walls, this, in turn, causes the impact to travel through the hilt of her sword to her hand, then to the entire length of her forearm down to her elbow, aching all the way and forcing her to drop the sword. The man gives a truly ingenious response to this, you see, instead of grabbing the sword from the ground...he lurches forward to grab her by the wrists, only this ends up pushing down the both of them.
Luckily the man has enough reaction speed to at least recognize his mistake of not accounting for the massive difference in weight by tilting his body before hitting the ground so that he takes most of the pain when they fall sideways onto the cold stone, also she has the armor on so this situation could still be salvageab- never mind, the tilt turned into a bit of a roll after which the man is back on top...
"GET OFF OF ME YOU STINKING, SAVAGE, MONSTER!" she shouts at the top of her lungs while squirming around fiercely.
"Heeyy, yo, calm the fuck down you lunatic!" the man says while tanking all the kicks and knees he is receiving.
"YOU GET THE FUCK OFF ME FIRST, BEFORE I-!" the man jumps back up before she could finish whatever threat she was about to make to which she responds by giving him a surprised then a stern look.
"There, now will you please calm down and explain to me what the fuck is going on!" the man says while holding his open hands in front of his shoulders, backing off a bit more as the woman, still lying on her back begins scurrying to her feet, eyes locked on the giant for any suspicious movement.
She looks around while glancing at her dropped sword as if thinking of some plan, once the man noticed what the woman was doing and undeniably understanding why, he slowly picks up the sword by the blade-end and holds it hilt first toward her like a gentleman.
"I'll die for real if you even scratch me, so please don't." the man says, really feeling the kicks from earlier, as the woman takes her sword back.