V – 00002.4 – Too Much Blood Behind Not Enough Forward.

I pushed my body into a brutal sprint, ignoring every pain and ache as I leveraged every point of my dexterity, agility, and strength; even my control over death mana came into play as I pulled on my core and felt the numbness silence much of my pain as it spread through my body.

I leapt forward the last few feet like a wild animal lunging for a kill, and Clark met my charge with a punch, preparing to meet my dying body head-on with brute force, which would have probably worked if I had planned on the same.

I twisted with his blow, making no attempt to dodge or swerve in the air as his fist pounded into my gut, hammering my sliced-open stomach. Instead, I reached out with my working arm and dug my claws into his shoulder, using them to attach myself to his frame. I flexed my fingers and lifted my legs up, tensing my core and straining my battered body to get my legs up and around his neck.

As he fell backwards with me on top of him, he punched me hard in the jaw, making my head whip to the left before I lunged my mouth towards his hand and bit down, tearing my fangs into his wrist.

I sucked on his delicious, life-giving juices as he hit me again and again, frantically punching me, trying to get me to release his wrist as my teeth chewed and bit deeper into him and my fangs began pressing into his bones.

He bucked wildly trying to throw me off, but my weight, the claws hooked into his shoulder, and my teeth attached to his wrist made it impossible. I was rooted to him, not to mention my ankles wrapped around the back of his neck.

I straightened my body, pulling on Clark’s arm with my teeth as I tightened my grip on his neck, and with a violent heave, I felt a crack reverberate through his arm and into my jaw as his shoulder popped out of place. And a massive chunk ripped out of his arm with bone included, leaving his hand hanging on by skin and tendon.

I could already feel my body pulling itself back together as I swallowed and chewed on his flesh; cuts were closing, blood was replenishing, tendons were rewiring, and I was reviving in the ashes of Clark’s life.

With newfound strength, I began clawing him, slashing at his arm that was still daring to attack me before going for his eyes and then slamming my forehead into his nose before biting and ripping it off.

By the time my frenzy of attacks was done, I’d ripped him to pieces; his eyeballs were sliced in half in his head, his skin and muscle had been stripped from his bones, and in some places he had no nose and barely had hands.

I grabbed his jaw and started squeezing it, putting as much strength into my grip as I could until I felt his jawbone pop out of place, and I leaned down to whisper in his ear.

“I’m not a monster; it’s you people that are the real monsters. Now you're going to learn why I got all those nicknames… Because Clark, I don’t get mad; I get even; violence is something I believe in.

Were the last words Clark was entitled to hear before I dug my teeth into his throat and bit down hard, swallowing his flesh greedily until I’d bitten through his spine, ending his miserable existence?

I kept eating and ripping at his body with my teeth until I’d fully rejuvenated, and it took a hell of a lot more flesh than it ever had. By the time I was done, all he had left was half a torso and a head barely hanging on.

Now it’s time to send a message.

I lifted Clark's ripped-apart shirt and tore it off before carving a message into his skin, one that would ensure anyone who knew me knew it was me.

“I’m a violent sort with a malevolent thought,” the lyrics to an old song I would hum and sing often while doing my black work.

I stood and wiped the pieces of people that coated me off as I stalked back towards my home, disappearing into the wilds like a woodland demon.

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The journey took me longer than I had expected; clearly, as much as the parasite healed and refilled my stamina reserves, it did nothing for the extreme mental strain and fatigue I was feeling after today… but I felt better, the weight that haunted me that constantly made me slouch my shoulders and weighted each breath that filled my lungs; it was almost gone, standing tall and proud felt easy again, natural. I looked up as I walked, watching the stars slowly fade in, and a soft smile broke on my face.

“I promise I’ll keep going, my love; I will endure in your name.”

As I continued the rest of the journey in silence, I took a strange, jovial joy from background conversations in my head. Some of them were recounting their favorite parts of the fight that came with a flurry of mental images, and others were trying to compare and find the best song to how I was feeling and what I’d done. The current songs winning by vote were two from OneRepublic, Counting Stars and Everybody Loves Me. I wasn’t entirely sure how that second one applied even slightly, but whatever, I was in a good mood for the first time in a long time.

Walking to my lake, I stripped off without hesitation, eager to get the red, black, and... green? Off my skin, I dived into the water and swam a few yards out before I started furiously scrubbing at my skin.

Once I had finished enjoying and relaxing in my lake, I decided to review my notifications. I accepted the metric shit ton of kill notices that a few weeks prior would have earned me a sassy nickname and the title of spree killer, and then I accepted the level up.

“Well fucking earned.”

You know, if I ever get the chance, I’m going to have to thank this system, or its creator.

You’ve given me a new lease on life and purpose to boot.

“I’m going to fucking erase those despicable animals; the days of being given the benefit of the doubt are gone, and you people are going to have to earn my grace from now on.”

Now where are we going to put these points?

A small chorus of voices leapt into motion at my internal question, each with their own suggestions and rationale.

We could shove the five points into our physical stats double down on our advantage.

Yeah, but then we’re totally neglecting our archetype stats, with our archetype naturally high int and wis. And our legacy stats are pretty much primed for a mage build.

Valid point if we had any reasonable fucking idea how magic works.

Hmm, all good points, but I do feel like I really want to get a better grasp of this magic shit.

“Alright, let’s do one in intelligence and wisdom, two in death, and one in infernal.”

I felt the attribute points sink in, but no pain came with them; my head was full of a soft haptic buzzing, and I could feel my thoughts slowly accelerating, my perception of reality slowed down slightly before adjusting and flowing at the normal speed, and my blood-red aura writhed as it expanded and tightened, and black lines with shifting infernal runes within them flashed in and out of existence.

By the time the extremely quick process was complete, I felt much the same, except for the fact that my core felt denser, and flexing my will allowed me to feel the greater amounts of energy I could draw on and how much more willing it was to serve me.

I shuddered softly as I started wading back towards land. “It’s not the same as getting physical attributes; it’s... A lot harder to quantify my changes with these stats, but they make me feel good and powerful.”

I stepped up from the water and used my tongue to pry a fragment of bone from between my teeth that was stuck in there against my gums; once I got it loose, I spat it out on the ground.

Staring off into the woods from the direction I came from, I felt better, but there was still a deep-rooted anger within me, one that was sated but only for now, and even as calm as I was, I could still feel its tugging; the voracity for blood I held hadn’t diminished since I was a young man. In fact, all these years of denial, of refusing my true nature, had only done one thing: time had made me grow ravenous.

I sat down on my log floor and felt a subtle chill run through my extremities as the wind hit me; I could feel it getting colder, and I knew I would need to get some gear for the cold, stocks for the winter, and of course a real structure with walls, but some things came first.

Closing my eyes, I began to meditate, searching inwards for my core, and in mere moments I was staring at the celestial body of energy that seemed to make up the center of my being.

Thick, flowing black smoke covered the planet within like an atmosphere, constantly shifting and undulating; occasionally I could see shapes forming within the dark: massive wolves of condensed mist sprinted around the planet before dissolving into smoke; a few times I could swear I even saw myself within the mists before my smoky visage dissolved into my black core.

I pulled on the energy with my phantom limbs, and massive tornadoes of black smog tore away from my core and flowed towards me at terrifying speed as if intent on crushing me on their way to their destination.

Suddenly the swirling tornadoes stopped as I felt a numb chill fill my arms; the black energy I saw inside me was suspended in the air, holding the rough shape of my arms. I pulled with my will, flexing harder, trying to force the energy outside of my body.

Thousands of tiny needle-like tendrils of black separated on the columns of smoke, and I felt something pressing and needling the skin in my arms, uncomfortable as if it was stretching my skin from the inside looking for a weakness in my body to escape through.

Opening one of my eyes, I kept the vision of my core in my closed eye and reality in my open eye. I flexed my mind harder; trying to maintain so many different thoughts at once was beginning to tax me, but not nearly as terribly as it had previously.

As I willed it, the black tattoos faded into existence over my skin, and without a moment of hesitation, the smoke within me retracted its probing needles and began rushing out of my tattoo. Softly billowing smoke poured through the lines around my rippling forearms and wafted out of my fingers; faint lines of mist even emanated through triangular tattoos on my claws.

Holy shit I fucking did it.

As I observed the mist, I felt deeply connected to it; as it flowed out of me, I had full control over it. It was fully connected to me, a part of me, but slowly I could feel it diminishing as if the atmosphere outside of my body was somehow hostile to the energy and eroding it. To maintain the black smoke over my arms and flowing softly around me, there was a constant draw from my core, and I could see the smog thinning over my core, revealing more and more of what lay beneath.