I, somehow or the other, thought it appropriate to focus my mana on a skill for enhancing my teeth and jaw muscles. That knife never stood a chance, I bit down on it and crushed it like a rabid dog, but my cheeks were flapping in the wind because they got horribly slashed in the process.

With one dagger destroyed, he flung a knee towards my face so I blocked, but the force of his attack sent me back against the wall where he grabbed his stuck dagger and dodged my sword stab just enough for it to only pierce the side of his torso, a mere flesh wound. He swung down with his dagger at me and I released my hold on my sword and stopped his attack, but he dropped his dagger as well and caught it in his next hand, then stabbed my shoulder with the blade. I grunted in pain and then got an almost concussive punch to the face. He muffled cry vibrated through his mask; he pulled the sword sticking out of his side. It dropped on the ground and clanked a bit.

I hadn’t the mana to use some life-saving novice spell like I did in the cave, no Earth Wall could save me here. He returned and wrung the dagger in my shoulder; the pain forced my eyes and brain to come back to the land of the living. I grabbed ahold of his face, then cast Conflagrate. His mask began burning up, so he screamed a little and backed away. Thanks to that little distraction, I could grab my sword, but he wasn’t having any of that. His legs lit up, and he ran in like a madman, tackling me so hard that I busted through the wooden wall.

We both tumbled down into the streets and nearly landed on a couple oxen pulling a carriage. Since he used me to break his fall, I wasn’t in the best of shape. “Fucking die!” He raised his dagger up and was about to split my skull. I blocked as best I could with my good arm and destroyed his crown jewels with my leg. And, as I was basically a headbutting specialist at this point, I enhanced my neck muscles and forehead then ensured he could never breath throw his nose again.

He rolled off of me and squirmed, unable to choose whether to cradle his balls or his bloody face. He flung the burnt, damaged mask off, but it wasn’t like I could identify him with how injured his face was. My body began feeling a bit light, I was getting dizzy. Something encroached on my peripheral vision so I flinched and raised my sword, but thankfully, it was Mikaela. She cast Clean to disinfect the wound then took me back to the room to treat it properly. After a while, I passed out from the blood loss.

When I awoke, my arm was bandaged up. As for my cut cheeks, well, I looked like a mummy wrapped in cloth. I was in a different room this time, but still by myself. I had severe pain anytime I tried to move the arm with the injured shoulder. However, my real concern were my cheeks. How in blazes was I going to eat?

I had a look at my MP. Sleep does wonders, huh? It was already fully restored. I concentrated heavily, and tried to remember the feeling of my heal spells. If I could cast Earth Wall, a novice spell, then hopefully I could do the same with Lesser Heal. I kept focus and tried to weave mana into the spell, but all I got was a pounding headache. I laid on the bed for about an hour trying to cast the spell, but only succeeded at failure. I roared silently, it frustrated me immensely.

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My magic was second-to-none, master spells were nothing to me, running out of mana was of no concern, dying was of no concern. Now, anyone with a kitchen knife could kill me if I wasn’t careful, novice spells became my greatest hurdle, and mana was a precious resource that had to be carefully managed. This is fucking ridiculous!

I opened up my grimoire again for some pointers on hopefully learning how to advance my magic without access to magic powder. There were great long explanations, but in the end, they really boiled down to two fundamental things: repetition and meditation. It felt like mana was just another muscle I had to work out and destroy, then get sleep and rest to bring it better than it was before. Fuck it! Fine then!

I walked around the room and cast Clean on just about everything, until I was out of mana, then I meditated to help restore my mana. Working out was out of the picture for now, besides squats, so most of my training went to magic. I couldn’t exactly join ADAS and earn coin, not with my shoulder the way it was.

Later that night, Mikaela brought me porridge, which I would live on for weeks. Pouring the hot liquid down my throat to avoid touching the walls of my cheeks was the worst. In that time, I’d offer to do cleaning, as it was still possible with one arm. I felt like I was reduced to nothing. The meager payments, shitty treatment, and even the threats because I apparently injured a C-rank adventurer, the same nutjob who attacked me, was an embarrassingly humbling reality. What could I do against them if they attacked me? Mikaela and her party wouldn’t be here to protect me forever.

Those weeks repeatedly watching over my back, worrying about how I’d live and support myself, and grieving over who I used to be was humiliating and hurtful. I’d just sit on my bed and cry in-between meditating. I missed my old party, I missed Isaac, and I really missed Tina. What the fuck did I do to deserve this? What do I even do now? As the months went by, it felt like more and more chains were tying me down to a life of mediocrity, like my real identity as a lich mocked me and laughed at my dwindling sanity.

The moonlight bounced off the wooden floor of my room. I said my goodbye to Mikaela who seemed to care for me about a week ago. She and her party eventually left Pinetop; I felt so alone there. I learned painfully when I asked Mikaela if she knew any healers from ADAS. Skaljorn had extreme prejudice and hatred towards healers, so there was no way there’d be one operating normally in any party. My arm was healing, but it was never the same.

Tears fumbled down my cheeks again and I grew to hate myself. I didn’t even know who I was anymore. I was trapped in a male vessel, couldn’t use my lich form because I might be hunted down like a dog, and no longer had my female vessel. I barely managed to scrape by, and some days I wouldn’t have enough coin to pay for both the inn and food.

I kept meditating that night, but instead of trying to improve myself, all I could do was focus on negative things impaling any hopes I had of seeing Tina again. I couldn’t even know if she was alive. I kept casting dim Dawnlights until I couldn’t anymore, but even then, I kept trying to force it. My mind was falling apart, and my need for survival felt like it was vanishing right before my eyes. Despite my MP being 0/200, I kept trying to cast Dawnlight. The more I tried, the more it felt like my very soul was being twisted into a pretzel; my mind warped, my body was getting aches I didn’t know it could get.

But I didn’t care. What’s the point of living if all I could do was clean someone’s house for a laughable number of coins that wouldn’t even be enough to sleep under a roof without starving? A coldness erupted from my brain and spread through my body.

The burn of ice swept me under a thick blanket of waning existence. Death’s cold embrace nestled me gently.