Chapter 5

“What?” Both twins were dumbstruck

I smirked slightly. “What’s with the surprised faces? I tried to feed your brother a few hours ago but he couldn’t eat what I cooked, so the only way for him to not die of starvation is to level up, and I happen to have a pretty high Threat Range compared to yours.” I explained while dodging the main subject.

It was fun to keep them guessing for a while more.

Main is really too childish sometimes.

Yup Yup.

Indeed, and it’s extremely fun. I answered the manyfolds with a smug grin.

“Y-yes but we can’t kill you!” Lana exclaimed, Kael nodding at her side before he added. “Right, we would die without you!”

Such honesty!

Well, it’s not like they care about you right now.

At least not in an emotional way.

He’s just stating a fact, they need you to survive.

“It’s true that parting would mean the death of you, but I happen to be in possession of a skill that just doesn’t let me stay dead. Every time I die, I’m brought back to life one way or another.” I cut to the chase, since dragging this any more wouldn’t be fun.

However, they looked at me with rightful doubts. I couldn’t blame them.

Talk was cheap, as they said.

“I see you don’t believe me. Here, take this dagger.” I said, putting a dagger in Kael’s hands and leading them to my head.

“Now you put it against my head. Okay. Let me just…” I turned my defense skills off, which felt extremely bad, but at least this time my death would have some meaning.

“Good. Oh, heads-up, just wait for me here for a few hours, okay?” I asked them both before I focused back on Kael.

“And now you just shove it like that!” Still holding his hands that held the dagger, I violently pushed them toward my head and, just like that, I was dead.

***

“Hello!” I said, opening the door with strength, my motions full of energy as I entered the domain of Death.

“Well, aren’t you lively for a dead person.” Samsara said while looking at me with a soft gaze. She was in the bed and I quickly joined her, snuggling against each other.

“Is it about the two catfolks?” She asked after some time, prompting me to take back my head from her caresses so I could look at her.

“Yup! I’m feeling quite lucky this time. Two cute kids somehow find their way down in the dungeon and survive until I can save them? That must be your luck rubbing on me!” I explained with a large smile.

“I saw. They’re pretty young and weak, but I guess it’s better than nothing, right?”

“Yes. Levels, skills, they can gain that, but they’re also quite strong-willed and determined.” I answered.

“The boy still held back when you made him kill you, tough.” She commented.

“I can’t blame him. A simple resurrection spell is already in the realm of the divine, or at least of the legendary, so it’s not surprising they didn’t believe me when I said I could come back every time.”

“Wasn’t it painful? I saw that you turned off a lot of skills to make him able to kill you.” She said with worries in her eyes.

“Oh, well. Yes. It hurt as hell.” I nodded. “So much that I still have a headache right now, in fact.” I added.

“Turning off so many skills overstrain your soul, that’s why you’re still in pain even here. Lay down, I’ll give you a massage, you’ll feel better.”

It wasn’t the first time that Death would help me like that. I relied on her a lot in my early day of mass skills acquisitions, when I didn’t know my own limits and either turned too many skills on, or off.

Turned out that Death was quite good at handling souls, and she would give me those massages to help me heal mine.

“The kill was pretty clean, I don’t think I’ll have much time here.” I commented as she massaged me.”

“Hum.” She smiled at me as I sat back on the bed. “I wasn’t finished.”

“I know.” I said, then kissed her.

My time was indeed limited but oh boy did we use it fruitfully…

***

I opened my eyes and felt the crushing weight of the system on my soul.

“Urgh!” I grumbled, grabbing my head as I turned Tenfold Mind on.

Restore normal skill level! I barked succinctly, but I didn’t really have to for my manyfolds to start working. They were also me and disliked this feeling as much as I did.

“B-by the gods!” I heard Lana exclaim and, sitting on the ground, I looked around.

We were still in the same cave, but only Lana was awake. Kael was knocked out, lying on a sleeping bag.

“I’m back.” I said with my usual flat voice and empty eyes, although with a bit more energy now that the pain from skill under-usage had recessed.

“Y-you really…” She said, leaving her sentence open-ended as she looked at me, then at the blood on the ground, then at me again.

“Yes, I really come back from the dead. I said it, didn’t I? I can’t be killed permanently.” I smirked weakly.

“So, how is your brother?” I asked her, trying to slightly defuse Lana’s shock by changing the subject.

“I-I’m not sure. He started to feel dizzy after you make him… kill you? Not long after that he fell on his sleeping bag, unconscious, but he didn’t seem to be in pain, it looked more like he was overstrained from too much training?”

“That’s good.” I said. “That’s the common reaction to a sudden level up. His body fell asleep to let him adapt to his new stats. That’s way better than what you experienced.” I explained, and kept going.

“Since gaining a lot of levels suddenly is not that uncommon -breaking your own limit and killing something way beyond your Threat Range would do it- the System as built-in ways to make the users cope. You, on the other hand, experienced a sudden surge in Skills, which is not supported at all since it basically never happens. To my knowledge, Terrenacht is one of the very few things on this planet that would make you live through Skill Overload.”

I really liked to explain things like that, even if it wasn’t directly relevant.

Yeah, Samsara sure is a patient girl-chthonian-thingie whatever to pull through all the bullcrap you like spouting at her. One of my minds commented.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

I mentally shrugged at her. I’m done being something I don’t want to be. I answered. Even this cat-mommy-big sister persona was something I liked to be, it was a fun role to play and the body was nice.

“So basically he’s alright.” Lana summarized in a few words what I needed a few sentences to say.

“Yeah.” I answered, dejected.

This girl may be my kryptonite.

“It’s better if we let him sleep, so while he’s out cold let’s do some things.” I started rummaging through my Inventory.

“And first, here we go, a soup for you since you must be starving.” As soon as I took the fuming bowl of food out of my subspace Lana’s stomach groaned loudly, reacting to the tasty food.

Dishes made out of rarer, more mana-concentrated ingredients were tastier after all, you could already smell of much better it was than a normal soup.

“Just a word of warning: your new class and levels should let you eat this without too much strain, but it’s still better to take it slowly or you’ll react like famished kids do when stuffing themselves with tons of fat food; puking everywhere because your body isn’t used to processing that much stuff.”

“Okay!” She said with a serious nod. She then proceeded to take the bowl and spoon and, slow like I asked her to be, took one spoonful of soup after another.

After the fifth or sixth one, though, I saw her face start to turn green.

“Stop for a bit, your body’s telling you that it can’t take more of that for now.”

Six spoons. Barely six spoons.

That will be a problem.

Agreed. Another mind thought so, too, and she wasn’t the only one.

Maybe we could boost their mana-poisoning resistance, just like ours?

You want to feed them vast amounts of mana-dense food?

and keep healing them until they’re back in the safe zone?

Then repeat the process until they have leveled the skill enough?

It’s kind of cruel, you remember how painful it was?

They’re just children, they can’t endure that.

Then I’ll ask them, I’ll give them the opportunity, and I won’t push them if they don’t want to repeat the experience.

Lana, indeed, seemed desponded, in particular since she was most likely still hungry.

“I am sorry, it’s the less mana-dense thing that I have.” I said, emotionless. Lana raised her eyes and looked at me like a puppy. No, not really. She was trying to look strong and hide her hunger, but my skills just blasted through her weak acting, that’s why I thought she looked like a puppy, because that’s how she felt underneath her stubbornness and determination.

“I could have a solution, but you may not like it.” I said, bowing to my manyfold minds’ proposition.

“Why not?” She asked, curious and wary.

“It will be very painful.”

She seemed to weigh my words for a second, then nodded.”Well, I’ll hear it at least.”

Good spirit.

“The gist of it is to forcefully feed you mana-dense food to trigger Mana Poisoning, then heal you until you develop the Mana Poisoning Resistance skill. The healing spells will keep you awake, and I can’t go mess with a sleeping spell when you’re already under that much strain, so you’ll be awake for the whole thing, you’ll feel all the pain, but I think it’s worth it in the end.” I said.

“You will need Mana-Poison resist at one point if you want to truly use your mana, anyway, so better be it done faster and sooner than slower and later. I don’t remember who said it, but the sentence ‘suffer the pain of discipline or suffer the pain of regret’ is quite true, and from what I gathered from you, you don’t want to suffer from regret again, right?”

She seemed conflicted. “How painful will it be?” She asked.

“Hum.” I frowned.

Isolate and prepare to channel. I ordered the manyfolds.

“lay down on your sleeping bag and give me your hand.” I said, and she did it, with apprehension of course.

Share. I whispered in my mind as I grabbed Lana’s open hand with my own, and the girl instantly started screaming, so much so that I recast Silence in the cave just to be safe and let go of her instantly.

I healed her for good measure, but it didn’t help a lot; the pain was in her mind.

She stayed in the sleeping bag for a long time, shivering, and I waited for her to recover.

Her breathing stabilized at one point and, a handful of minutes later, she was sitting cross-legged once again.

“T-that’s the pain you talked about?” She asked weakly, her strength recovering slowly.

I sharply nodded. “At least it’s the memory I have of it, that I transferred to you. What you will feel will most likely be different, since perception is personal, but I think it’s a good introduction.

“...A-and I’ll feel that for… how long?”

“Hum.”

She’s low level, but has a mutated class.

More so, a class geared toward survival.

Her absorption rate will be bad, but less so than a commoner.

Main, let’s use Future Extrapolation.

Authorized. I said at the fold-mind.

“Give me a second please.” I said to Lana before lying down.

My eyes suddenly glowed blue and, for a second, time slowed down.

A massive amount of information went through my minds as specialized skills computed, parsed and extrapolated potential answers based on the available data.

“At best, one cycle will take you two hours to complete. At worst, six. It’ll most likely be something in the middle, though, so you’ll feel that kind of pain for around three hours each time we make you eat.” I answered analytically.

“Three hours of that?” She said softly, her eyes trailing away.

“I won’t force you, as I already said. Even battle-hardened veterans would find it hard, I’m not gonna impose that on a weak little kid like you.” I tried to reassure her.

However, seeing how she frowned and bit her cheeks, it didn’t have the targetted effect.

I think you just made her feel bad about her weakness, Main.

No shit.

Main really is an insensitive monster.

I’m the one shouldering the pain here, keep your comments for yourself. I dryly answered.

“This will be painful.” Lana suddenly said. My fold-minds had distracted me from her and I hadn’t seen that she looked back at me.

That gaze…

It’s just like the little genius of the Paladin.

That girl was a beast.

“But I’ll be in pain anyway, no?”’ She asked, but didn’t give me the time to answer.

“I can’t eat, not really. I’ll be starving all the time, even if you heal me and replenish my stamina.” She said. “Starving is horrible. We had barely enough to eat when that slaver captured us, and we wouldn’t get much food if we slacked during our training afterward.” Her gaze was intense.

“I don’t want to starve anymore. I know I’m just a weak kid, but I’m gonna suffer anyway. I want to try your method.” She finished.

We’re keeping them.

Wasn’t it obvious?

Main likes kids anyway.

Yes but until now it was just a distraction.

After that kind of speech we can’t really be half-assed in our care, right?

… I didn’t comment but the fold-minds were me, in the end, they were heavily influenced by my emotions, and just voiced my feelings.

Ah, to think I could be this sentimental after fifty years of torture and loneliness.

Thanks, Samsara.

Without her, we would really be an emotionless husk of a monster.

“Okay. We’ll try once, at least, and it’s fine if you don’t want to do it again afterward. You may be feeling like that right now but you may change your mind after three hours of torture.”

“I don’t care what future I think, right now I want to do it.” She simply answered.

Good grief.

“Let’s go then.” I said, giving her another bowl of food and cleaning her dirty spoon with a quick mixed water and wind spell.

She took them with reverence, which was fun in hindsight, but showed that she understood what she was going to go through, at least a little.

Spoon after spoon she forced herself to swallow the mana-dense soup, doing it by herself beyond my wildest expectation.

Of course at one point I still had to start spoon-feeding her by myself, since she lost the strength to even simply do that.

Mana poisoning Minor turned into Moderate, then Heavy. She started to trash and shiver, pain eating at her more and more as the negative effect progressed.

At one point I had to tie her down, and cast a silence spell to make her unable to scream, just so I could keep feeding her.

Finally her poisoning level reached Extreme and I stopped pushing the soup down her throat.

And now we wait.

What’s the healing point?

30%?

Isn’t it a bit low?

No, it’s not low enough. 10%.

Wow, are you sure?

Isn’t it a bit risky?

She’ll learn the skill faster that way. I would go lower if I could.

My fold-minds didn’t answer but they understood what I was doing.

Reducing the health threshold at which we were going to maintain her would put a lot more stress on us, but she was the one fighting here. As usual, I was only on the sideline, helping as I could.

The least I could do was diminish her burden as much as possible.