Saturday, April 6th, 2069

I felt my Mana in my Pool start to course through my body just as I heard Smegma say, “Ankle.” Peeling back the top of my boot I squished the strange, segmented leech-like insect. This was the fourth one I’d killed, but the only one so far to succeed in biting me. So, when it died it mildly exploded with red blood. My blood. I swallowed my nausea and pulled the things teeth out of my skin with a harder yank than I thought it should require.

[Can you—] I began to chastise Smegma on the late warning, when suddenly the world became purple, gray, black, red, green and shades of orange. Considering that a moment before I could only see a sphere of perhaps thirty feet around me, thanks to the Light Stone on a pole, and that everything had been a dusky brown, Mana-Crystal-blue, or the shimmering colors of metallic ores—this change shocked me. It took a disorienting moment of looking around to realize that the new vision was in many ways superior to my limited one from before.

As long as I was actually seeing well outside of the sphere of light…and not just hallucinating.

Thus, my instinctive closing of my eyes and shaking my head to clear it, was nearly instantaneous. When I opened my eyes again, everything was back to normal. Smegma answered my unspoken chastisement, anyway, likely sensing my intent even though I cut off.

“I’ll try to pay more attention but that one was flung off of Willa’s Crystal as she sharded it.”

“What the husk was that?” I asked, my brain realizing that Smegma wasn’t going to know, but my confusion needed an outlet.

“I basically just told you it was my bad,” Smegma responded, and I winced realizing that not only had I exclaimed that out loud, but I’d also made the imp think I was angry with him. Both Willa and my dad rushed to my side, as if I had just suffered some grievous wound.

“Are you okay?” they asked in near unison, sounding like a harmonizing band that was nearly ready for a performance.

My dad started to look me over and of course found the blood on my hands. Willa in the meantime had found the blood on my boot and then leg beneath. My dad continued, “Where did it get you? How long was it attached?”

Willa on the other hand began pulling out antiseptic spray, and gauze bandages. I began kicking my foot and waving my hands back and forth across my chest. “I’m fine. I’m fine. Stop it! It’s just a bug bite…”

They of course didn’t stop. My father grabbed both my shoulders and manhandled me to a sitting position on the somewhat clear floor. The level of his superior strength was on display as he ‘guided’ me down. There were still a ton of F-rank shards under me but thankfully my gloves and leather pants prevented me from being stabbed by any sharp ends. Willa sprayed on the antiseptic, and I flinched. “I knew we shouldn’t have brought you. God what is your mother going to say when I tell her!”

“Would you two calm down,” I shouted, managing to startle them with the volume. Now that I had their attention I pointed to the ankle and then my face. In a much more reasonable tone, I explained, “It was just a single bite and I got it before it even managed to get more than a single drop of Mana. It was nothing more than a big mosquito!”

Willa wrapped the bandage around my ankle with a practiced hand, before cutting it and tucking it in on itself. “That’s good then,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to lose my newfound Pickaxe repair guy! They’re hard to find.”

I saw her attempt at lightening the mood and jumped on it with a good-natured chuckle. My dad, whose face had gone deathly pale, didn’t manage to laugh but did manage a smile before he, too, tried to improve the atmosphere. “So, you won’t be telling your mother?”

“Last time you said something similar, you were the one that went and tattled. All I wanted was the time for a shower, but noooo, as soon as we get in the house, you spilled all the details, not five minutes later!”

“Not everything!” my dad countered.

“I bet he did tell her everything. He’s still the worst secret-keeper in the world then?” Willa asked.

“Have you been burned too?” I asked.

Willa scoffed. “Let me tell you one of many stories—”

“Come on, guys! I’m not that bad,” my dad complained, cutting Willa off. His face looked worried about what story Willa might share.

“So, you aren’t going to immediately crumble and tell mom when you get home?” I asked.

“Well, I mean, that’s your mother and my wife we’re talking about here, son…” he said after a few gaping-fish-mouthed nonsensical noises. Willa and I threw up our hands and started laughing. Smegma eyed the exchange without saying a word. Giving us a look like we were all idiots. “Whatever!” my dad added into our laughter, chuckling himself. “We better get back to work!”

“Don’t worry, I’ll tell you the story later,” Willa whispered loud enough to be heard and my father began shoving her back to her abandoned pickaxe. She began roaring with laughter and I had a few chuckles at my father’s antics. It felt good to see him in his natural environment with a friend. Not that he wasn’t the same man as a father, and husband but this good-natured ribbing wasn’t something I was used to seeing him fall victim to.

I stood up and looked at Smegma. [Sorry, I didn’t mean what I said as a hit against you—]

“Two more in the shard pile you're sitting on,” Smegma interrupted, tone serious and suddenly my standing motion became a lot more hurried. I found the two segmented bugs on top of the sharded Crystals, seeming to be in the very spot I just vacated. I used my boot to squish both, in two aggressive stomps.

My dad and Willa looked back over their shoulders, but I ignored them. This wasn’t a sign of overreaction. There had been two Parasites.

[As I was saying, my exclamation was because my vision suddenly changed.] I happened to blink again as I mentally sent that thought to Smegma. Suddenly the world went back to the odd purple overtones. [Holy shit, it happened again. It looks almost like the movie camera version of infrared or night vision or something.]

I purposefully didn’t blink and began studying my surroundings. My father and Willa were lit up in red, orange, and green. I quickly looked away when I realized I could see the shape of Willa a bit, too—well. Looking at my own hand, I saw the same pattern.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Smegma asked incredulously. “Did the bite from the insect really make you insane like they think?” he motioned to my father and Willa.

[I’m not making this up. I can see all the heat signatures in this entire cavern.] I pointed out the two nearest Parasites and then squashed them with my boot. Then I turned my head to stare at Smegma. Only to find him not in the spot I thought he had been. I kept looking around. Mentally, I tried to send Smegma a mental image of what I was seeing similar to how he could read my surface thoughts, I tried to push the image outward, however, I wasn’t sure whether I’d succeeded or not.

“You really aren’t making this up!” Smegma exclaimed from a place nearly atop me. I spun in the direction of the voice but again found no Smegma. “You really can’t see me?” he asked, and it sounded like it came from the spot I was intently staring at. “Did you just get a new Skill down here in a Portal?”

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I shrugged in response and then attempted to turn it off. A single blink and it was gone. Smegma popped into the space directly in front of my eyes between one blink and the next. I jerked back but managed to hide the action slightly at the last moment. Thankfully both Willa and my father weren’t looking at me.

I blinked again expecting for the infrared to return. It didn’t. [How do I turn it on and off?]

“Skills like that usually need an action paired with an intention,” Smegma responded while stroking his pointy chin in thought. The next few blinks after his instruction I managed to toggle the Skill on and off at will. Smegma floated down to the latest two newly dead parasites, still stroking his non-existent beard. “I wonder?”

[You wonder what?] I asked as I picked back up my Miner’s Pick and began sharding again. Smegma didn’t answer right away, and I kept toggling on and off the infrared, to ensure no other parasites were nearby.

I ended up killing one more that was approaching me, when Smegma finally spoke again. “These things don’t have eyes,” he commented, sounding offhanded but floating to the newly squished corpse I’d just created. “What if they see using heat?”

Those two hints made my eyes shoot open wide. [I killed them. Just like Morgan Hallsbrad! Are you thinking I somehow inherited their Skill?]

“I’m still not sure if any of this is a product of Demonic Vault—or not. So, maybe? But these things don’t have ‘vision’,” Smegma began tapping his teeth with a talon. “So, you couldn’t get a ‘vision’ related Skill from them. Unless—”

[Unless what?]

“Unless it isn’t infrared vision, but something like Heat Sense. Try turning on the Skill but not focusing the intent to your eyes.”

It didn’t work, despite me trying numerous different times. I kept working as I went, not wanting to alert Willa or my father.

Smegma, in time, shook his head. “Then I guess you must have Awakened a new Skill due to stress…”

There was a part of me that was relieved at his pronouncement, and another part that was disappointed. While I didn’t want to be a Cannibal, I felt that having the ability to consume Skills from Monsters that attacked me wasn’t a bad thing. I shrugged between swings trying to hide that piece of disappointment. It would have been nice to be special and use my will to resist the path of Morgan Hallsbrad.

Still, I was working toward getting Skills plural, right? I guess I was pretty special in some sense after all. I decided to not shard my next Crystal. I could really use another spent Mana Crystal to identify what this new Skill was.

Smegma surprised me with a question, “Would you be up for an experiment?”

[What kind of experiment?] I mentally asked dubiously.

“Let another one bite you before you kill it,” Smegma stated excitedly. “I want to see if you get another Skill.”

I wasn’t keen on that idea, but the lingering excitement from the idea of being a Cannibal forced me to make a slow, reluctant nod. I kept working and watched in infrared as a single Parasite approached. My body trembled as I let it crawl up my boot and then under the cuff. I felt the moment it bit me, thanks to being hyper aware of its location. I shocked myself by not flinching immediately. I further surprised myself when I let it have a single drop of Mana before I killed it.

Breathing heavier than I probably should be in the situation, I waited. I tried holding my breath despite my lungs screaming. Nothing happened.

Smegma watched me closely and then sighed audibly when I didn’t react. “Well, that was anticlimactic,” he said sadly. “It was worth a try though.”

I continued working, managing to get a Mana Crystal out in one full piece, before selling the Mana inside to Smegma. Over my shoulder to Willa and my father I shouted, “Going to take a quick snack break.”

They both grunted in affirmation, which allowed me to move back to the cooler with my Low Rank Spent Mana Crystal and grab a granola from the exterior side pocket. I chewed mechanically while holding my hand atop the Spent Crystal and feeding it Mana. I had my back to my father and Willa with the Crystal in my lap. I was also on the edge of the Lightstone, so I didn’t worry about Willa or my father seeing.

A short five minutes later, I held three Cards in my hands. Two were instantly recognizable, since the pattern on the back was the same as the ones I’d seen in my room. Demonic Vault. The other though, looked drastically different. It was a shiny green that reminded me of grass after a rain, and the five swirls of orange that decorated the rest in evenly spaced sections reminded me of caricatures of the sun.

Smegma landed on my shoulder even as I turned it over and blinked at the card title.

Heat Sensitivity(11)

Skill Type: Passive

Skill Rank: Low E-rank (Evolvable)

Skill Description

Users can make a body part sensitive to the energy fluctuations given off by heat. This Skill is primarily used on the eyes but can be applied to any body part. Toggle on and off the Skill with a physical action and intention.

Natural Skill

“So, it isn’t a vision Skill!” Smegma exclaimed. However, as soon as I read the description, I had tried to activate the Skill on my body, just like I had earlier. This time it worked without a single hitch. I could now feel the heat my body gave off, as well as the nearest heat sources within about thirty feet.

[Yeah,] I answered while scratching my head. [Although, I tried the same thing I had earlier but this time it worked.]

Smegma gave me an intense look then began scratching his chin again. “In theory that change could be because now you’re certain of what the Skill can do. But try applying it to your eyes again.”

I did so and the change this time was more evident. The tones my eyes were seeing were the same, but different. Now if I was looking at something that gave off a red hue, it had several different shades to it. The purple that the heat faded off to also had different tones. I could tell that each tone was trying to depict a different temperature, but without a legend or lookup table, I’d be guessing what each one was representing. Still, clearly red was the highest, and black was the absence of heat.

[It’s different,] I said offhandedly as I looked around. This time something did appear where Smegma perched on my shoulder. It was very faint, but there was the smallest outline of purple so dark, it might have just been my imagination.

“Time for a few more experiments,” Smegma said with perverted excitement. I shivered but nodded even as my heart sped up.

“Wait. You don’t think that the little eleven next to the Skill tag was because…” But I knew that’s exactly what he thought. Was I really willing to let these insects suck my Mana? My mental fortress seemed to claim I was not only willing but prepared…

Five bites later, it was lunchtime, and I had a new Spent Mana Crystal to use. Thankfully Willa and my father ate lunch while studying the different ore deposits in the room. From the overheard conversations they were trying to decide which ones they might be able to mine. I ignored them as I mechanically shoveled my mother’s famous lasagna into my mouth.

The second Spent Crystal vanished in a small display of light that made my father glance in my direction right near the end, but thankfully it was over by then, and the three cards in my hand weren’t visible in the semi-darkness.

I put the second Demonic Vault and Recovery cards in my chest pocket with the other ones and then hurriedly flipped the green card over. Sure, enough as Smegma suspected; it wasn’t the same. Throughout the rest of the morning, I had let the bugs bite me, and had kept using the Skill. That meant that I was aware that the Skill was showing me more shades of colors, and even heat sources further buried in the sandstone.

Heat Sense (50)

Skill Type: Passive

Skill Rank: High E-rank

Skill Description

Users can make a body part extremely sensitive to the energy fluctuations given off by heat. This Skill is primarily used on the eyes but can be applied to any body part. Toggle on and off the Skill with a physical action and intention.

Natural Skill

I toggled it on my body and thought I could now sense heat sources in about a ninety-to-a-hundred-foot bubble. Still, the ones far away got a bit jumbled. I reached out and dug through the nearby shard pile to grab a parasite and squish it maliciously between two fingers.

“It’s no longer Evolvable,” Smegma said, and I nodded while showing him the bug.

[I noticed that, too. Which is why I’m not letting any more of these little huskers bite me.]

“What if they have another Skill though,” Smegma countered, but ruined it with a laugh. “Yeah, the last three were probably overkill,” he admitted.