The Elder One was shocked by this chaos, he was used to having things neat and even. But now his body was flooding with chemicals and his artificial brain was going into overdrive. He could hear Autumn screaming something to him, but he couldn’t focus on it. His attention was totally on this muscle-bound hulk of a man. His artificial brain was forcing him into a fight or flight mode; it was an impressive piece of technology.

The Elder One was confident that he could do either though. He watched the lunatic running across the room, his arms were outstretched to make himself seem larger as he screamed wordlessly. The Elder One knew this was some sort of tactic to unsettle him and get him off balance. The problem was, it was working.

The Elder One raised himself to his wobbly legs, preparing for the confrontation. He had a couple of seconds before they clashed, and he used it to analyze his opponent. A popup appeared.

Name: Ares

Title: God of War

Level: 6

He dismissed the notification with a thought, and actually analyzed him this time. It seemed that trying to analyze someone or something would trigger the interface to do that.

Ares was definitely the bodybuilder compared to his athlete. He was 6’ tall with long wavy brown hair, with a rectangular shaped head. He wasn’t sure if he had packed the atoms and molecules in his massive muscles, but he suspected they weren’t. There was only a need for the oversized muscles if he was operating at the normal level.

It looked like Ares was going for a one-hit knockout as his fist sailed through the air. With the momentum of the running behind it, The Elder One was worried it might be. He tried to twist himself back out of the way, but his legs wouldn’t obey him. The Elder One reversed his command and let his shaky legs crumble beneath him.

His plan was to drop beneath the blow and then grapple the larger man. Since he had poor motor control over his body he would have to rely on strength. Unfortunately, he miscalculated the speed of gravity versus the speed of the fist.

The pain from hitting the floor when he first spawned was a pleasant experience compared to the pain he felt now. The Elder One felt so much intense pain that he wasn’t even able to think. His ears were ringing, and his vision went black. All he could see was the HUD. After an unknown amount of time, he managed to focus on his health. He saw that it was starting to drop at regular intervals. He stared at it dumbly until it was about a quarter of the way down. He felt that being damaged this much was unacceptable.

He continued focusing on his health, it was all he really could do, and he noticed a noise when it dipped down. It was a grunt then a thud, followed by the sound of cracking stone. He kept hearing the noises, while he tried to remember who he was and why this was happening.

This seemed to be all that existed, constant pain, followed by a grunt, then a thud with cracking stone. His health was starting to flash now, and he had an ominous feeling about that, but he couldn’t tell what it meant. But he did notice the intervals were starting to slow down.

The pain was coming in waves now. During the moments between pain, he started having epiphanies. He could tell that the noise and the pain were intrinsically linked, and if he could stop one he would stop the other. He focused on the pain, he could tell where it was coming from, and he reached out for it.

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There was a gasp, and then the pain started coming in quicker intervals. Something had changed and so he reached for the pain again more determined this time. He felt a mass of some kind as it slammed down on him. More than anything he wanted to stop this from happening.

He grabbed the mass that had dared to offend him, and he squeezed it. He heard a different sound this time, it was extremely loud. Most importantly, the waves of pain stopped, so he kept squeezing.

Something grabbed at him and started pulling, but he clung greedily, he wanted more of this blissful peace. He started pulling in more of this mass, it seemed to be made of some wet spongy substance that exuded fluid. Interspersed were rough splintery beams.

He kept pulling more mass towards himself and squeezing this blissful nectar of peace onto himself. This went on for some time as he squeezed and pulled more and more of this matter in, eventually, it stopped resisting. It seemed to have a limit as he reached the last of it, it was a hollow block filled with more mush. He squeezed every drop he could from it, not wanting to waste any.

The Elder One ran his hands over himself feeling for clumps that he could squeeze more juice from. He was covered in a lumpy soup, with sharp little bits of sticks mixed in. It felt amazing and he never wanted this moment to end.

The blinking health bar stopped, and he started to feel a cloud lift. He knew that he had once wondered who he was, he thought about that while he ran his hands over himself. His face didn’t feel right, it was crushed in, and his eyes were a lumpy goo.

After a moment he tried to stand, but the ground was slippery, and he struggled for several minutes until finally, he could manage it. He could hear himself breathing in the cool air heavily. He focused again on the health bar, it was about halfway up now. Then he remembered who he was.

Naked and covered in blood and gore he raised his arms in the air. Then he bellowed through his broken mouth without any inflection, “I’m The Elder One!”

He heard someone gasp, and he turned to face them.

“Who’s there?” he asked.

He barely heard a female voice quietly say, “It’s just me.”

He recognized the voice ever so slightly, and he sat down as he felt his mind coming together. He remembered the puzzle, it’s brilliance, and his infatuation with it first. Slowly his thoughts collapsed onto him and he started to realize what had happened, but he needed to be sure.

“What happened?” he asked Autumn after a few seconds.

He heard her walking towards him, at first it was a dry barefooted patting of feet on stone. Then about halfway it turned into a wet slapping noise. He could tell she was close when she stopped in front of him.

“You don’t remember?” She asked.

“I have to be sure, just tell me what happened.”

“Okay…” she said before pausing, apparently collecting her thoughts. “He punched you in the face pretty hard and you flew backwards. Then he started stomping on your head like he did with the other man. But your head didn’t cave in, at least not right away. He was stomping on it for seven minutes. I think he got tired because he started slowing down. That’s when you started moving. You really don’t remember?”

“Finish the story!” The Elder One tried to yell but his tongue still wasn’t working.

“Well, you grabbed his foot and started crushing it with your hand. He tried to pull you off, but you were too strong. Then you kept pulling him towards you while you crushed him, all of him, little by little. What’s left of him is all over the place, especially on you.”

“By the way,” she continued. “Your face looks pretty messed up. Your eyes are half squished.”

“It’s healing,” The Elder One waved to his health bar. “It’s draining my mana but its healing slowly. I should be fine in a couple of minutes.”

“Hmm, that’s odd, I’ve never heard of a game that drains mana to heal, it’s supposed to be natural to heal over time. It’s probably using your energy to heal you.”

The Elder One nodded. He didn’t care, as long as his body did heal, he was happy.

“Unless you’re casting some sort of self-heal spell. Are you?”

The Elder One checked his HUD and didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. “I don’t know, how can you tell?”

“Just ask the interface for an active spell list. You can do it in your head if you want.”

“Oh!” The Elder One exclaimed as a window appeared before him. “No active spells.”

“That’s good it means that even unconscious you will always continue to heal. As long as you have mana anyways.”

“Yeah without that I’d probably be dead, I’m pretty sure I was unconscious,” The Elder One said.

“Even with that, how are you still alive?” Autumn asked.

The Elder One just smiled. Well, he tried to.