You’d be surprised how hard it is to work on getting past the innate way my voice worked with this new body. Throughout my lives I’d always been human, meaning that even if my voice was different on occasions, it was still the same underlying concepts each time.

Now however, that was very much not the case.

It did end up taking a while to at least be able to make the same sound eight times out of ten, which was the best it was going to be for now that didn’t involve consistent and day to day use case practice.

Moving on from that, we went over a few basic things, such as greetings as well as yes and no. The bare bones basics that end up leading most conversations, and an absolute necessity before continuing.

Not being able to properly communicate without re-casting the translation spell, which would cancel the whole point of these lessons in the first place, things weren't the smoothest for the first bit, nor would they be for a while. Of course, having experience with several languages by this point was a big help in my learning speed, and allowed me to somewhat guess what Rayner was saying via context clues, but it was still a struggle.

Spending about an hour or two on speaking lessons, we brought things to a close with Rayner casting the spell again before going to bed because of the time. “You’re doing surprisingly well! I thought things would be a lot slower for a while but you’re picking things up quite quickly.” he said.

“I thought so as well. I imagine that part of the reason is that I’m simply relearning it and pulling latent knowledge from before to help out.” I lied. Again, I couldn’t really say this was my fourth life and that I had collectively known or at least spoke six languages by this point.

Granted two of them were a bit cheated with the help of some higher magic fuckery, but I’ll take what I can get. Besides, it’s not technically incorrect. I was pulling knowledge from my past…

Not much of an excuse for lying is it? Oh well, I didn’t really have any reservations with twisting words and interpretations even in my first life, so I’m not going to start doing so now when it’s actually warranted.

Conversing a bit more with the other two, we had to eventually call it a night, with me offering to take night watch given the fact I wasn’t tired yet. At the harrasi-, I mean convincing from Rayner, I agreed that if I felt tired at any point to wake one of them up to switch places.

I had a strange hunch that that wouldn’t happen, but it was nice of him to try anyway. There was something I wanted to mess around with a bit anyway. Moving to the entrance to our little nook so I wouldn’t disturb them, I watched my vision switch to greyscale as they extinguished their little light rock things.

Which is something I forgot to mention, they had these little rough rock like things that emitted a soft blue-ish light when imbued with magic. Neat little tidbit to let them see things.

Distractions aside, I waited for about half an hour while paying attention to their breathing for them to fall asleep. Waiting a bit longer just for good measure, my impatience won over and I started what I wanted to experiment with for the night. That being? My blood.

Well, not literally my blood, but the blood that I owned. Of course referring to the blood on my arm in the form of tattoos that didn't at all look menacing or foreboding. I didn’t really acknowledge that part about them, especially considering that it went so far as to literally comfort me, so seeing it as some evil thing with worrying schemes wasn’t on the top of my description for it.

Though to say I gave it my full trust? Eh, I’d be hard pressed to use that wording. Though that’s more of a broad thing at the moment and not specifically directed at it.

Rambling aside, what I wanted to try was to manipulate it in a similar fashion to when I first got it. That and to just explore it more and get used to what it might be able to do, as currently all it did was emotional support and make me look like some sort of tribal warrior with runic markings signifying the victories and tales of his life. Which wasn’t really a bad thing in my eyes, could be used to play into the backstory I made to explain myself.

Bringing my left arm to rest on my lap, I gaze down at the blood and let my eyes trace the shapes that made up the markings for a bit before truly trying to control it.

Closing my eyes, I take a deep breath and raise my arm slightly. Slowly closing off the majority of my senses, I retreat into the confines of my mind and try to send out some sort of intention to the little bundle I felt sitting in what I could refer to as a metaphysical part of my brain.

First simply setting up a connection, I slowly feel the bundle reach back and unfurl like a ball of yarn, just instead made up of infinitely small strands of nerves. Almost reaching out with similarly made strands, I painstakingly move the little strands of mental energy towards the bundle, with its own strands responding in kind if not with a slight delay.

Incredibly slowly, I strain my body and block out all other sensations and thoughts as I force myself to communicate with the blood, inching my way closer to some connection I could feel teasing the edges of my mental with the promise of completion.

Just as if a single spark of electricity sparked into existence and just as quickly disappeared, the time and strain of my attempt passed by and made contact with the blood. In an explosion of understanding, I felt a flood of information wash over my mind and correct the issues and kinks in how I was doing things.

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Quickly dropping my way of force, I relax my mind and simply wait for it to carry out what I intend and watch it pretty much instantly rush forward and entangle itself with the blood and form a bridge between us.

Just as the connection was being more closely established, it slowed to a halt in the blink of an eye with no sign of continuing. Confused, I try to use the new connection to gleam some inkling of information on the blood and why it stopped, only for what I knew to be reflected back at me as if looking into a mirror.

It almost seemed as if the blood only truly knew what I already understood and knew myself past a few simple instincts and loose sapience. This cemented that it wasn’t truly some other discontent being with its own life and knowledge, but more of an extension of myself that I seemingly created and was tasked with nurturing it.

Because that's what it felt like. It was almost as if it was some newborn with no real understanding of anything that wanted a connection and link to something that it could cling to and follow as a parent or mentor.

All of a sudden feeling like I had birthed a new profound sense of responsibility, a worrying thought crossed my mind. ‘Did I quite literally create some new lifeform?’

Questions start to spring up one after another at a concerning pace. If I was able to create new lifeforms at will, did that mean I had to be extremely careful with what I did? Do I have to take care of every single thing that I may accidentally create? Is there a limit? If there is, how high is it?

All questions I couldn’t answer, and all questions that I knew would gnaw at me until I broke down an-

A feeling of reassurance washed over me, trying to calm me down and keep me rational.

‘Right, I shouldn’t panic. Overthinking things won’t do me any good right now.’ Yet again the blood proved itself to be the superior therapist and emotional support… thing… creature? I’ll have to work on what to call it later.

Taking a deep breath, I center myself back to the initial topic and try to keep my mind under control. Calling on the bridge between me and the blood again, I probe it in search of what it could and couldn’t do. A few mixed signals later and a handful of working out communication and what some of the intentions the blood sent me even ment, and I had a decent base to work up from.

While at the moment it was more of a novelty than anything, it was far from useless or inept. While as of right now all I could really do is change the general shape of the blood and give myself interesting looking arm tattoos and slightly change the shade of red it was, its most prominent feature was its ability to not only grow but also sustain me.

While the first part was fairly simple to put together with constant signals of ‘wanting to grow’ and ‘being hungry’, the second part wasn’t. It came as thought with some of the intentions it gave when bringing up its hunger, which stemmed from but a more metaphorical hunger to grow and become stronger, it was also fairly literal with it expending some form of energy to keep my physical body going.

With the mystery of not needing to eat or sleep solved, I moved on to more practical questions and thoughts. While, again, the blood only really knew what I was also aware of, yet again proving the metaphor of it being a newborn accurate, it did have its own ‘thoughts’ for lack of a better term. Allowing me to think of and use a different point of view from my own, helping me with some of my assumptions.

With the blood supporting my physical body and its functions at the cost of its own energy, it removed the ability to need to eat or sleep. It was still very much an option, and also a way for me to let the blood take a break if need be, I could just continue doing things indefinitely as long as I had access to more blood, which meant combat and killing.

I’d been in a few fights by this point, enough so to not be incredibly hesitant with trading lethal blows, but it was still a pain point in my abilities. I could hold my own, sure. But not nearly enough to say I could go into a fight and leave completely fine.

Another question that came to mind was just that, my mind. With the blood doing its thing, it didn’t have an effect over my brain and mind, meaning mental exhaustion was probably still very much on the table. Which is honestly fair, if I was able to completely ignore anything to do with keeping myself alive and well aside from not being killed I’d be far too strong.

It’d be cool for sure, but by this point if reality had any consistency between these worlds, some form of balance had to exist.

Though saying that at this point in time would just be a blind guess. One with good merits mind you, but a guess none the less.

Absentmindedly going back and forth with the blood while adding to and sorting my mental to do list, a shifting sound just slipped past my ears, ripping my from my mind and back into reality while sending me onto full alert, I strained my ears to hope I’d pick something up incase there was something out there.

For better or for worse the following moments were filled with complete silence aside from the faint ambient sounds of the caves. Slowly backing down and choking the sound up to me being paranoid, I hear it again.

A strange shifting thumping sound as if something was leaning up against a wall while still walking. Now fully confident that there was actually something, I start to quietly back into the nook to wake the others up.

Shaking Rayner awake first, I quickly put one hand over his mouth as he tried to mumble something as he woke. Slowly gesturing to my ear, or where it should be, and then holding a finger up to my mouth trying to get the point across that he should be quiet.

Giving me a slight nod because of the awkward position, I remove my hand and go back to the entrance to the crevice while Rayner woke the other two up. Unsure what to expect, I held my position in a low tense stance while straining my hearing to try and pick something else up that would give me a clue as to what we were dealing with.

Moments later, the others creep up the cave's mouth with me. Exchanging confused glances with me, I give a small shrug while keeping my movements to a minimum in hopes of making as little sound as possible.

Holding the tense moment a bit longer, I pick up a bit more of the shuffling followed by the faint sound of… dripping? It almost sounded as if there was a flow of water slowly falling from somewhere and accumulating in a puddle. The most concerning part followed shortly after, that being something you never want to smell in situations like these.

Blood.