Mathew
Apparently, making the wraith pay would take Mathew some time. Left alone in the cold fog for hours, he found he could acquire 100 to 200 reserves an hour. He’d also burn through 25 or so countering the oppressive cold. Well, that and whatever he burned endlessly walking in a straight line. All in all, he had a slow and steady profit.
[New skill awarded: Digestion 6. Digestion 6 overrides Digestion 5.]
“Heigh-ho,” Mathew fought the urge to vomit.
Wiping his mouth with a flapping shirt sleeve, its cuff button long since lost, he willed his status fixture to appear. A familiar numb feeling gripped his heart, taking its payment to create knowledge in his mind. Reserves up to 424. Mathew dropped the fixture to conserve motivation. Blaming the wraith again, he tried to kindle some anger, but it didn’t work. Too cold, too tired, and too emotionally exhausted.
It’s not even the wraith’s fault. Someone or something threw me in here, abducted me! This whole thing was its fault!
There it was, the start of anger- then fear. The image of whatever abducted him sending him from one hellscape to another, playing with him.
What use was anger when he was basically a toy in its hands?
His wraith’s haunting scream came from behind him. Mathew spun around and froze. It was faster, he was sure of it. Fading into being quickly, its hammer hands gained a white glow.
His brain kicked in, and he charged it. That was the plan he’d come up with. Gaining distance led to hammer jousting, and that was unacceptable. So he’d get in close and not give it any openings.
Despite the hesitation, he reached it before it raised both arms. Grappling the wraith, he overpowered its arm strength and got ahold of both wrists. Where the white light overlapped his hands, he felt them burning. The pain and heat were a harsh contrast to the numbing cold.
[New skill awarded: Bone Regeneration 2. Bone Regeneration 2 overrides Bone Regeneration 1.]
A fricking bone-breaking aura. Using the wraith's own arm against it he hammered at her other arm.
First strike and he heard a crack.
Second strike was fouled by its fighting.
Mathew raised her arm as his weapon to bring down on the weakened arm again. After reaching a certain height, her arm swung down on him with impossible power. Before he’d been overpowering it and literally breaking his wraith with itself, then it was like a loaded gun firing down on him.
With a sickening crack, his radius and ulna broke near the wrist. His hand flopped against the underside of his arm as pain spiked through the adrenaline pounding in his veins.
Using what remained of his arm, he punched, jagged bones stabbed. First through his own flesh, then into the wraith’s soft throat. The world blinked for a moment as pain threatened to knock him unconscious. His response to this threat was to draw his arm back and do it again. Her gurgling scream joined his battle cry as he drove his arm bones so hard they jammed into the wraith’s spine. Pain knocked him down to the cold stone as he lost control of his body. The wraith tried covering its wounded throat with its hammers as it faded out, face contorted in a rictus of agony.
Then he was alone. The motion of sitting up caused unfiltered pain to radiate into his mind. His arm was still folded back under itself, leaving broken bones sticking out. There wasn’t much blood. He could feel his Health reserved to prevent the consequences of injury. In this case bleeding.
Gently lifting his hand back into a straight line he wished he knew more about life and medicine. All that information on how to handle injuries like this was once at his fingertips and now he just jammed his body into the right shape and hoped. Pain drew him back into the moment as the familiar burn of bone healing set it. Just like that, his arm was whole again.
Sitting down on the cold damp stone he cradled his arm. The memory of pain fading away. The tears ended, he’d just had enough. Hours of walking and eating swamp mush in this numbing cold only ending where pain and burning started. No more.
He curled in a ball and fell into dreams of mozzarella sticks and lobster.
Waking with a lingering memory of lemon and butter, he was greeted by the same cool damp stone and endless fog. Sore and stiff but less exhausted from having slept, he sat up and checked the rest of his condition. He’d lost more weight, but exposure to the cold stone hadn’t killed him even in his summer outfit. He was pretty sure there was something wrong about that but he'd take near any boon at this point.
Should have finished my meal. He thought, remembering his last moments of Earth. Trent asking him to come back to the family business. Getting so mad because it felt like a betrayal. The invitation was supposed to be clean of work and strings. Family not business… but that is how it always was with his family.
Blinking, he brought his mind back to the present. Working his fingers, he found they all worked. The exposed forearm had scabbed over puncture wounds. Otherwise, all was well. Putting one and two together, he figured that he had healed a lot of the other abuses his body had suffered recently. So all his healing was faster overall, just not as fast as his bone regeneration skill was.
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A blinking yellow light drew his attention. Focusing on the light caused it to expand and cover his vision.
[New Skill awarded: Bone Regeneration 3. Bone Regeneration 3 overrides Bone Regeneration 2
New Skill awarded: Skeleton Weapon 1...
Secret condition detected. World transfer energy applied. Skill synergy Bone Regeneration 3 detected...
New Skill awarded: Living Skeleton Weapon 3
Grow your skeleton into a weapon. Skeletal strength and durability improved 10% per level]
With a clearer rested mind he thought there had to be more options to leverage somewhere in his interfaces. His monster had developed a bone-breaking aura around its hammer fists. Combined with the new way it launched its attack down to break his arm, there had to be mechanics at work that he could also take advantage of. If not he worried he wouldn’t make it out of this world transfer process alive.
Bracing himself, he drew up his status fixture. The familiar burden against his motivation was easier to handle when he prepared for it. Focusing his mind he realized his Health was almost full, and he was rested at the cost of bringing his reserves down to 178. Immediate concerns satisfied, he tried digging into the places of his status fixture that hadn’t first drawn his attention.
[Magic (unassigned)]
Pressing his mind deeper, he started to absorb knowledge of what the two words meant. Any variation of human, otherworld or native, would have access to one type of magic based on their skills when they assigned magic. Almost always based on whatever the highest skill the individual had obtained.
It was a permanent decision opening access to one type of magic and maybe adjacent magic but left vast swaths of magic unavailable. The decision was severe enough that the status fixture had protections preventing the option from being activated by a person under the influence of mental modification effects or below a standard of cognitive development. Thankfully he passed both requirements.
Mathew hesitated, if he made this choice it would lock his potential into a groove that he’d be stuck in. Plus right now Digestion was his highest skill developed. What magic would digestion skill unlock? Did he even want that?
What he wanted was Living Skeleton Weapon to direct his magic ability. He didn’t fancy breaking his bones to stab with, but the thought of magic that let him bypass that part and still have a weapon to fight back with made his heart burn with need.
Skipping over the decision, he set effort to understand how his new skill worked.
His metaphysical mind hands gripped the skill and began to comprehend it. Beyond the sparse text description he understood he could use reserves to grow and modify his skeleton. The additional bone had to remain alive, so while it could have an outside shell of primarily mineral deposits, he had to include an inside space for organic tissues. He could anchor the bone off another bone or just his flesh. Some more nuance came to him but soon he reached the end of what knowledge was found in the status fixture. While he could use the skill with the information he had now, the fixture gave him little to gain mastery of the new ability. What weapon grown out of and attached to himself would he want?
Not being too creative had its advantages. Mathew decisively began to grow a bone from the top of his right forearm. Starting deep in the muscle tissue near his elbow it was angled flat. Pushing muscle aside and piercing skin the process was blessedly painless. Before he ran out of Reserves, he’d created a spike that jutted out his wrist and past his hand about six inches. It was sharp across the back after it left his skin mid-forearm and prevented his hand from flexing its full range of motion but that was a small price to pay for finally having a weapon.
Mathew grinned through the shivering. He had a weapon! Opening a new message, he read.
[New skill awarded: Living Skeleton Weapon 4. Living Skeleton Weapon 4 overrides Living Skeleton Weapon 3]
This was a decision point. He was basically out of reserves and would have to find something to eat. This would likely raise his digestion skill even higher and lock it further into being the magic that would be unlocked… Or hope he could escape this transition and pick magic later. Even with a weapon he wasn’t confident of vanquishing the wraith, given it seemed to come back from lethal injuries. If he was going to get Living Skeleton Weapon as his magic triggered skill it would probably have to be now when the levels were closer.
Gritting his teeth, he made another decision and read the notification. A hunger grew in his stomach, and his heart fell.
[Magic assigned. Process start…
Digestion 6 selected as base
Magic assigned: Digestion magic
Note: Digestion magic is known by its alias of “Corruption magic”
Adjacent magics are Decomposition and Pooling]
Using the fixture to learn more, he found some details. His Digestion magic was the hunger he felt inside himself. Using it in its simplest form would be channeling the hunger from his stomach through his mouth to a target. When his magic was exhausted, he wouldn’t feel the pit of need until its power regenerated. Magic also used Reserves to recharge, just like his Health.
Trying to shake off the sense of loss he felt at losing the gamble, Mathew shivered his way to some new food. What was done was done. Time to make the best of it.
Five minutes later, he found a patch of brown slime through the obscuration of the fog. Dropping down, he reached out with his right hand and clinked the bone spike against the stone. In his desperation to have a weapon to fight with, he decided on this change to his very body. The full ramifications outside of combat weren’t even really considered. Weight of the hasty decision began to press on him.
Yeah, that will take some getting used to.
Regardless this is the decision he agreed with. He still needed a weapon. Though all future adjustments would have to be more well thought out.
Speaking of being more thoughtful, Mathew decided to try his magic. Learning now was better than later. Pushing the hunger up his throat with an effort of will reminded him of the weight of holding his status fixture up. Dropping said fixture made the burden more manageable. A purple smoke rolled from Mathew’s mouth as he seemed to breathe the smoke onto the slick stone around the brown scum.
First, he noticed that he wasn’t breathing. The opening from his stomach to the outside didn’t mix with his lungs. His instincts pressed him with that clear compulsion. Second, he could feel the hunger as an extension of himself. What the cloud of hunger magic came into contact with he felt, what it tasted he tasted. The experience was through a filter though. The flavor for example, was a knowledge of the flavor, not the overbearing in-your-face swamp taste. The sense of touch was again filtered to the level of information, physical sensation removed with only a mental image carrying over the magical process.
Hunger smoke poured out over the stone and drew in moisture, rock scum, and even the fog. Lasting for half a minute it left an empty sense of satisfaction where his full hunger had been.
Again the novel experiences reminded him of how absurd this situation was and he felt some mental walls placed to get him through the situation begin to falter. Reinforcing them he chose to suppress internalizing his last day of life. It would have to wait until he survived… if he survived.