---The lull---
The moment they lost was anticlimactic.
The earthlings who had reached the final zone swelled in the weeks following those dreaded blood red announcements. They learned of some grand battle – some important event they had missed…and couldn’t understand why it had been such a big deal. The demon lord completed his ritual and then vanished. The danger he had created…was strangely missing. At least for now. No blood rain to match the red system messages. No crack in the planet ripping them away into a void. The monsters that came out at night didn’t even get worse – not yet at least.
Why had they fought so hard to stop this? A scout had even entered the strange nest and returned with great strength.
Slowly word of the sea of refinement spread.
----------------------------------------
---Day 1---
What do you call a friend of a friend? Does friendship work transitivity?
“Stop touching my barrier with weird things, you keep weakening it” Jess yelled at Richard for the umpteenth time.
“Hey, Chill. Okay? I’m just measuring some things. If the barrier is weak enough to fail to a few pokes how can it hope to block an actual attack?” Richard yelled back. “What sort of psudomatter is this even made out of? Its not in my database”
“It's made out of mana reinforced with my protection concept. Now leave it alone.”
“Yeah yeah, that’s not an answer. Don’t worry I’ll figure it out.”
“Figure out how you can pull your weight.”
“Hey fuck you too bitch. I’m trying to be nice.”
“Be nice if you helped”
“Fuck! What do you think I’m trying to do!”
“In your own words. Chill” Troy stepped in.
Richard sighed. Friendship was definitely not transitive.
----------------------------------------
---James---
Stepping into the slope caused the world to twist.
Before James was a brief wall of glittering white. As he stepped down the sandy path, his vision was removed from him in sheer psychedelic overload. James tried to block the light – but in the moments where he figured out how to bounce light away, the surroundings had darkned and the problem had solved itself on its own.
A brief disorienting few steps and then he was through.
The world on the other side of the cloud was different.
James suddenly noticed how everything seemed to expand. It was like…like the cone shaped valley was a paper towel roll bisected and peeled open for perusal on a godly dissection table.
He should be walking down a valley towards a pit – should be able to see the other side of the slope.
Instead it looked flat to him – the sand spreading out to either side as far as the eye could see. Mist at his back. A ocean a ways in front of him.
James stood there for a moment before the weirdness sort of settled.
Simple enough. Sloped valley covered in smoke. Step inside. Now it’s a beach. Best not to think of the weirdness to deeply.
A dark beach with luminous sand and luminous water and a pitch black sky far above without stars.
That sky was the mist right? The…barrier separating this space from the planet above? Something like that. It only looked like the sky because he couldn’t see how far away it was.
James stepped onto the beach and wandered towards the water.
Near the edge there was a massive sign. It looked out of place for some reason. Tacked on at the end. Like the beach was natural and had always been here, but someone had run in and dug in this wooden sign moments before.
James squinted slightly to read the letters in the dim light.
As if noticing he was attempting to read it, a blue box suddenly appeared overlaying the sign as if it were a lcd display.
The blue box flickered slightly as if damaged but it was much easier to read than the sign behind it and seemed to have the same information.
----------------------------------------
[Rules:
To refine
When you believe enough time has passed. Enter the sea and retrieve your
If you fail to retrieve your
Attempting to refine the same
There is no limit to the number of
You may refine multiple
If you have a hard time collecting your
Note if assistance is required to extract your
For the sake of complete transparency, the three main trials are as follows:
One. A balanced confidence. Once you throw your
Two. Retrieval. Only
Three. Failure. Failure does not just result in the permenant loss of your
----------------------------------------
James stared at the blue box for a solid minute considering. This was…actually pretty simple. It was straightforward and transparent – considering this was James’s custom dungeon it was pretty much exactly the type of thing he liked.
There was a tiny bit of danger. A little pinch for spice…but that danger was only really relevant towards overextending yourself. The trial should be hard but not lethal.
Before James went to start gambling with important things he wanted to do a test. Try and gauge his own limits before pushing them.
Glancing around he found a rock – the only rock on the beach suspiciously placed near the sign.
Reaching out James grabbed it, examining the stone on all angles. It looked like a regular old rock. Nothing complicated. With a squint and boost of strength, James was able to crack off a corner of it.
Plain old stone.
Throwing the stone up in the air James looked over and lightly tossed it a few meters from shore.
“One missasipi. Two missasipi. Three missasipi.”
Test timing done, James waded into the water with a gasp. It was cold and heavy feeling. Right at the shore, the ground sloped steeply for roughly two meters of steepness and then it mostly leveled out with James head just above the water. By the time James reached the position he had tossed the stone his head was completely under the water but those final two-ish meters had only dropped a bit over his head.
The first thing to note was the liquid itself. It weighed James down – to the point he had to kick and paddle as much as he could to stay at the surface.
James with his hundreds of physical stats. He tried activating his domain and pumping all his kinetic mana into his legs and arms…which did help but less than you would expect. His strength was sapped – his mana seemed to drain out of his body. His aether was ripped away by the water.
Considering how strong this suppression was it was almost surprising how much strength was left for James. He felt like a normal human again completing a slightly strenuous activity.
If anything, going all out like that just drained his energy faster. James was also “going all out” just to tread water, not achieve something amazing.
The trial seemed to want him to walk along the bottom of the sea floor – it pulled him deeper weighing him down with a heaviness he couldn’t shrug off. With a “force” he couldn’t alter with his concepts. James should have been able to syphon it – change any of this to his own power…but he couldn’t. It was like trying to lift something up that had been chained to the ground.
Suppressed.
His magic, his stats. Both barely worked just as promised.
The next thing of note was the more active trial of the water. That glowing seawater. It was bright enough the light illuminated the sea floor for several meters in all directions – although it was hard to see from the surface, the lightly churning waves distorting the light into a white smear.
As convenient as that sounded. Opening your eyes under water was painful. It burned. It burned and blinded and James could barely keep his eyes open for longer than a few seconds before forcing them shut through blurry tears. The blinding splotches remained. It was bright even through closed eyelids. The pain remained. His eyes stung and burned.
Had James actually damaged his eyesight just for a glance at the rock? A faint fear seemed to build at the thought. A weakness tugging at James’s consciousness – a weak thought remnant of the man he had once been. James had thought he’d moved past that.
Was the supresssion pushing him back to that person he had been? No it couldn’t be.
Finally the water slipped into his mouth and nose and stung every vulnerable part of James’s body faintly. A final bit of struggle as a treat.
It wasn’t…excessive. It wasn’t excruciating. It was there however and constant. Enough pain to wear away at James’s will.
The water was almost a bit easier to deal with than James was expecting. Sure, it was heavy – it felt like someone had put a weighted blanket on James’s entire body. Sure, his lungs did burn as if the stats he’d gained for holding his breath weren’t there anymore. It was blinding and stung him…but that was it?
Grabbing the stone, James deadlifted it up into a fireman carry and noted the way it felt maybe twice as heavy as it had been? It hadn’t been a very heavy rock but he also hadn’t done much to it. He hadn’t tossed it very far. He hadn’t waited very long.
With a turn, James headed back to the surface, walking along the sand with his eyes closed and using the slope to guide him.
Soon his head burst the surface and he was climbing up that final steep slope back to shore.
As soon as he was on the beach, his pain faded.
The sting on James’s eyes and vulnerable parts evaporated in seconds. His strength slowly returned to full.
James stood there holding his “enhanced rock” and the experience he had just gone through.
How much of that could he take? How far could he walk underwater? How long could he hold his breath?
If he tried swimming up to the surface to take breaths how many of those could he manage?
James looked down at his rock. It seemed…a bit nicer than before? It was hard to say with rocks but it certainly looked prettier. Trying to rip off a chunk proved it was definitely more durable now.
But it was still a rock. It hadn’t changed much – hadn’t become more.
Was there any use for this? Should James keep it?
Staring at it for a moment James suddenly had an idea – walking over to the sign he spoke softly. “Can I donate this to you?”
The sign was silent for a minute before with a splutter and flicker a dim blue box appeared. [Donations will not be refunded. No benefit will be given to you for any donations made. Are you sure you want to donate this refined testing rock?]
“Yes, I’m sure,”
Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.
As soon as James finished confirming the sign his stone disappeared.
Nothing else appeared. No thank you for your donation message. That was it.
James nodded then turned to the ocean. He had something important he wanted to refine. His domain. Of all his powers that was the one he wanted to grow the most. Simply by activating it, his ability to do anything was magnified a hundredfold…but he couldn’t maintain that state. Couldn’t hold it for long. If he refined that ability – something he intrinsically knew was possible…well that would probably increase his strength more than any other change. Could he keep it activated constantly? That would be amazing.
That was the goal.
However, if James failed…that gamble would hurt the most of anything. Could he even use any of his strength if he lost his domain? Would his skills disappear? Would losing that cripple him in a way that couldn’t be healed?
No it was best to start small.
“Hey sign. Please help me refine my left arm.”
James nodded. Refining the stats in his arm would be good of course but it felt like refining the entire limb would be better – his arm synergised with his arm stats so a boost like this should be better? At least if he were reading the sign right?
James’s arm fell off.
At his shoulder a smooth stub of skin sat. At the end of his arm a smooth line of skin kept everything together.
His arm looked like that of a manikin. An incredibly lifelike manikin.
Spooky.
Picking it up around the elbow, James bent back and infused aether into his remaining arm boosting his toss.
Before he could change his mind, James lobbed the arm with a good portion of his strength watching the floppy limb spin almost a hundred meters into the sea.
“One missasipi, Two missasipi…”
James waited almost a minute before heading out.
He jumped and tried to fly across to the point he’d dropped it – a half dozen meters from shore he found his power struggling. His feet dipped below the waves when they shouldn’t and that weight pulled his foot as if trying to drag him down. The waves had gotten choppy and drops of water flung up in a mist weighing him down and sapping his strength where they landed.
With some kicks and a half run across the surface of the sea, James made it a few more meters before being dragged down into a struggling paddle. James swam across the surface his clothes feeling like they were restricting him.
They were what was pulling him down – they were so heavy. If James tossed them would he get further? Would they be refined and turned into a weapon to terrorize the countryside? James laughed at the idea, the humor driving him further. He queued a message up for Richard before he forgot – Last few days with his friend back had been fun even if it got dicey near the end.
James paddled for a bit his arms and legs burning as he got closer to the position he remembered tossing his arm. He didn’t have time to hype himself up – taking a massive breath right after a wave James relaxed and began to drop downwards.
As soon as he stopped paddling James felt himself drop. It was like someone had tied cinderblocks to his arms and legs. It was like the sea was air and he was falling through – an atmosphere not a liquid.
His legs bent as soon as the hit the sandy bottom – James actually staggered with how hard he landed in the sand. The water was heavier than it had been by shore. It burned a bit harder.
James decisively opened his eyes – he could probably only do this once or twice. There!
His arm was further along the sea floor than he thought. Roughly a meter to his left and three to his front. Single dive away if he was on the surface and had his powers unsuppressed.
Burning eyes burning the position into his head, James closed his stinging weakness and pushed forwards, crawling along the sand until he reached his arm. Cradling it against his chest, James turned and headed backwards crawling along the sand.
If the water was what was refining everything why wasn’t it refining his whole body right now. Why wasn’t this increasing his strength?
His arm scraped along the sand below him, flopping out of his grip as he half crawled half ran back towards shore.
The water buffeted him as if high above there was a storm beating down into the water and transferring its fury onto James’s back.
Above all else his lungs burned. They were on fire – it felt like he had taken a breath of the burning surroundings.
His head felt light, his sense of balance was off. His thoughts themselves were off – tunnel visioning down into a single minded focus.
Was he heading towards shore?
Had he accidentally turned around? Was he facing the right way??! James couldn’t help it. He opened his eyes for another half second.
He was facing the right way.
A bit angled – it would have taken a bit longer to head back that way but he would have made it.
Angling himself once again James continued.
His every step was laboured. The sand was like sandpaper on his bare feet – his entire body felt raw, the painful sting permeating everything.
He wasn’t going to make it.
Push through!
…no. James felt darkness closing in. if he bullheadedly pushed forwards he wouldn’t make it.
Dropping his burden James dove upwards kicking and swiping his arms with all his might.
His domain activated. He should be a force of nature with it activated. Instead it seemed to propel him another kick or two.
With a gasp James broke the surface. He took a deep breath coughing as stinging water got in his mouth and wrecked his throat.
He was just over 10 meters away from shore.
Nearly there.
One final push.
…it would be so easy to give up. To swim back and leave his arm down there.
The weak thought stayed in his head. James really wanted that thought to be some part of the trial. Maybe the sea was whispering to him. Attacking him mentally. James didn’t have weak thoughts like that anymore.
It felt like those thoughts were his own, but framing them as something else helped James push through. They were other. An external influence. Ignore them!
Dropping back to the sea floor James felt about for his arm – moving with more and more panic as he couldn’t find it anymore.
It should have been directly below his feet! Where had it disappeared to? Did he drift to the side? Could he manage to open his eyes a third time?
James kept expecting to touch flesh as he swiped his hands through the sand. Finally his panic reached a boiling point and he opened his eyes a final time.
His vision was splotchy. A world of white. Of swirling colours. He could barely distinguish sand from sky. Sparks seemed to crawl across his vision. Rainbow static that followed his eyes no matter where they moved.
There!
A lump he was certain was his arm just out of reach.
Diving towards it, James moved along the seabed like a animal.
He grabbed his arm – it felt a bit heavier that it was before.
A bit harder to drag.
He’d wasted so much time trying to find it again. It felt like he should go up for air.
No. he hadn’t even managed to move forwards.
Digging his feet in James crawled laboriously up that final stretch. That final 2 meter slope – it couldn’t be more than 45 degrees and yet it felt like a wall. James was sliding back down it with every slip. His vision was fading into blackness – a blackness stealing the light visible through his burning eyelids.
And then he was out.
James was at the surface vomiting up still glowing water his arms and legs shaking without his input.
That had been close.
Closer than was safe.
Had It even been worth it?
His arm felt like marble beneath his hands. It didn’t feel human anymore. Before it had been strangly strong feeling – the skin like rubber. The bones like steel.
Now the entire arm was a block.
James lay on the sand for over 20 minutes just recovering. Finally it felt like his strength was most of the way to being his again and he found himself slowly walking towards the sign.
He’d done that effort. This refinement was his! The sign was going to steal all his work! Taxes are theft! Richard would like that one…James queued it up as well.
James pushed down the temptation to “default” on the payment. How would he even re-attach his arm without the signs help? Sew it on and hope it heals?
“I would like to re-attach my arm” James spoke aloud watching as with an almost magnetic flip his arm was dragged into place.
A brief burst of pins and needles washed over his entire body and James visibly saw a bit of glow seem to leave the arm.
Suddenly strength. His arm was his once again. His arm was his and noticeably the strongest limb in his body.
It was greater than the largest influx of stats James had ever received. A qualitative leap in every aspect. His arm bent and moved with barely a thought. With a flip James landed in a one handed hand stand and tried a few pumps. He could have done this beforehand but now it felt like nothing even without a rush of mana.
He should have kept the rock. He could have tested out his new enhanced strength on the enhanced rock.
It was addicting. An addicting burst of strength that seemed almost too easy. His trial to get his monster eating trait had almost been worse. Much Much worse. What was the catch? What would it have been like if he pushed just a bit harder? Should he have thrown his arm a bit further? James could probably have pushed through a bit more…next side he would give it 20 more seconds. The weight of the arm wasn’t the worst part of it.
“Hey sign, I would like to package up my right arm now” James popped off his second limb of the day and stared towards the ocean in determination.
He had tons of body parts to trial on before trying to refine his domain. With a few more plunges he was sure to push his limits even further. His ears. His eyes. James was going to refine every single part of himself bit by bit. Without limit. For free.
What an overpowered cheat this dungeon was.
…
----------------------------------------
---Maddy---
Maddy stood before the ocean considering the sign in front of her.
What was worth refining? If this was a true trial it wasn’t worth doing it on anything small. The pain and willpower mentioned couldn’t be worth small gains. Nothing she could get herself with a spell or two.
This trial was a gamble. Should she even risk something she couldn’t live without?
…
Maddy settled on her concept of sound. The innate idea of communication. Of intent through words that others could hear.
She’d be weakened greatly if she lost it but not to the point of permanently being crippled. On the other hand if she refined it…well every single spell she made would benefit. All magic could be seen as communicating her will onto the world through her domain. Increasing her ability to communicate would do wonders for her.
It was a high stakes high reward gamble. Maddy glanced at the sign for a bit then turned inward. Her eyes jumped into a circle around her – the six eyes she had nearby forming a sort of star as they looked at her body and each other.
Where…where was this concept located? Where in her soul was it bound? Where could she reach to grab it?
The web of her conciousness tunneling off to her various eyes shone in Maddy’s mind. Her domain was in her eyes. In her sight.
Her sight was what let her see what she had to do. If she could see it she could deal with it. If she could see the concept she could grab it. Once her sound was improved what could stop her?
Her domain wasn’t activated just yet, but even in its passive state it bled through clouding Maddy’s sight.
Her death-creation eye had the best shot of spying what she needed to. It saw the way her body was almost dead in its unlife. Her current body was based on an improved litch creation ritual after all.
She saw the way her reality seemed denser in parts. How everything that made up her was stuffed into a shell – how she’d clumsily stuffed it into that shell but the clumsiness had been part of the point. How parts had been lost along the way – how the new parts of her meshed with the old. Firmer in some ways weaker in others.
Maddy pushed deeper and deeper until finally she thought she saw it. A part of her that resonated deeper with her concept of sound than others.
That wasn’t enough of course. Looking around Maddy spotted a stone. With a single word the stone melted flattening into a light slate.
This would be the temporary vessel.
Puppeting her body without returning to the eye sockets Maddy flicked a well used spellform and had her ‘self’ draw her rune of sound onto the slate.
Maddy put everything she had into that rune – melting the shape into stone with void mana and pushing that ‘part of herself that resonated with that concept’ down into the stone with every line.
She worked slowly infusing every stroke and movement with intent.
As more and more of herself was infused into the slate the goal became more clear. Bits of resonating sound concept dragged into it from positions she hadn’t noticed. Sparks of this resonating communication traveled down the web from each of her eyes.
More than sound was pushed into the slate but her goal seemed to be working.
Maddy’s tongue.
Her rune for sound permanently burned into her tongue. The majority of her sound magic focused on this point. It had been used time and time again – the concept digging into this flesh more than any other.
With a quick sketch in the sand Maddy broke her safeties.
She took her tongue and melted its reality down – pre-refining it and infusing it into the slate with a sense of finality.
Life mana flowed through lines and tried to heal her tongue back. They caught on missing reality and struggled to reform her tongue – finally breaking through and healing it back without her runes.
And that was it. Her concept was nearly completely locked away now. If she still had it she couldn’t use it.
Maddy stared down at the slate with a faint amount of reverence.
This felt dangerous. It felt like she had lost a important part of her very being. This wasn’t something she should do – her path was not to infuse a external item with all her power. Her sythe was proof of that. It felt wrong to have her concept external to her. She might still be able to use it with this slate in hand but…
She’d chosen this concept as something that wouldn’t kill her to live without but now that it was here in her hands it felt more important than she’d been imagining.
Maddy stood up.
She gripped the light slate in her hands and stared at the sea in front of her.
“Come back to me” Maddy spoke – missing the way her intent no longer caressed her words. She felt the way her tongue was still raw from regrowth. The rune for sound missing like a hole in her mouth.
Maddy tossed the slate into the sea watching it skip twice before sinking down a few dozen feet away.
How long should she wait?
How long could she last?
Maddy counted down a minute in her head before giving in.
I’m coming for you. She spoke stepping into the water. There was a faint link to her slate. An incredibly faint sense of the direction she had to walk.
She felt her body begin to collapse. Her form spasmed as she moved – skin melting as if the ocean were acid. Blood and strips of flesh floated off into the surroundings as she walked along the bottom of the sea eyes locked on the position her slate had fallen.
Life mana pumped to every corner of her body. It leaked out of her as she moved – mana streaming from her other eyes as they attempted to make up for the leak in her current form.
Her whole body was a leak. She barely had skin despite her life mana’s best effort. She could barely puppet the melting suit with her burning eyes.
Maddy should have been able to ignore this pain. She should have been able to teleport through the water her eyes traveling through and returning at the speed of sound.
She…should probably give up. This is worse than she had been expecting.
Of course. It was like she had forgotten the main reason her eyes could teleport was due to sound. She couldn’t loose that. Why had she forgotten that?
Reafirming her will, Maddy continued to stumble her melting form clouding the glowing water red.
Finally after a seemingly endless stumble Maddy reached it.
She collapsed onto the slate curling up around it in protective shakes.
This was her.
How had she thought she could give this up?
She’d sooner die than loose her sound. Her communication. Without sound, how could she talk to her friends?
Without sound how could she slip through the air?
Maddy’s hands were more bone than flesh at this point.
Her life mana was at rock bottom – the only thing keeping her fingers from falling apart were faint connections at each joint.
Her pinkies and one of the fingers beside them had fallen off.
Maddy tuned robotically and began to methodically make her way back to shore.
She could see how one might fail this. How someone might give up. Decide the pain wasn’t worth it as limbs fell off. How could anyone survive this? How could anyone push through the way she was pushing through?
…if Maddy hadn’t realized how much she needed her concept in that moment she might have bailed. This was traumatic enough she wasn’t sure if she could do it again.
She was in so much pain. It felt like her soul itself was exposed to the liquid. The liquid that was full of more reality than Maddy had ever seen before in her life was grinding away at her own.
That’s what it was. An impossibly full pool of reality denser than any other. By gifting something of your own free will you relinquished authority over it briefly. You let it become a part of this dense reality. You…
Maddy continued to push through wave after wave of simple sadistic pain trying to analyse what the dungeon was doing. Anything to keep her mind off how hard this was.
Her body didn’t need to breathe. Her eyes should be strong enough to survive this.
And they did. It just hurt. The surroundings threatened to melt her. They threatened to integrate her reality into them forcefully.
If she just…gave up. Then that’s what would happen.
Finally she returned to shore crawling up onto the sand and allowing her slowly regenerating life mana to rebuild her shell.
There didn’t seem to be any lasting damage – if anything her personal reality seemed a bit higher after going through that…but she was exhausted. The life mana pools in every single one of her life eyes was gone – drained to rock bottom and scraped at as she pulled drop after drop of regeneration out of the spent pools.
Before she could fully collapse Maddy shoved the slate into her body.
She pushed it into her shell fully enclosing it in flesh before working to incorporate it.
Only then when she was whole once again did she give in.
Maddy rested.
…
----------------------------------------
---Richard---
Richard stood staring out at the sea lost in thought.
He dipped his hands and feet in the water – tossed a nearby stone in. Pulled it out to stare at it for a bit. Tossed a laser pointer in. Pulled it out and measured the increased intensity. Tried to gather a cup of sketch water. Watched as it sort of evaporated as he walked up the slope towards the surface.
The liquid barely did any real damage…but it sapped an insane amount of energy. It actively cut through his skills – sitting in the sea cranked his adaptive defense up and just kept cranking it without any real effect. It was like the liquid got more and more damaging the higher his defense grew – like it was holding itself back when he initially stepped in and started wailing on him as soon as it realized he was trying to cheat it.
Nodding to himself Richard sat up.
“Welp.” Richard slapped his knee for good luck and wandered over to the sign.
“Can you package up my ability to withstand this trial? My ability to hold my breath. My ability to withstand the refinement water, whatever defense I have specifically against the water that’s currently not strong enough…all that shit?”
The sign didn’t respond for a moment. Finally as if making up its mind a blue box appeared.
“Note, by removing your ability to deal with this trial in an attempt to decrease its future difficulty, your current difficulty will be raised accordingly. Are you sure you wish to proceed?”
“Fuck me up.” Richard nodded and sat back. The sign said it could remove all sorts of esoteric things. He planned on seeing just how far he could push that claim.
Suddenly he felt nauseous.
His breath became shorter. Every inhale and exhale a herculean effort.
Richard’s insides had long since been pureed. Only now as the sign did something to him did he start to feel like it was pureed.
His body was rubber.
He could stand but his legs were shaking and wobbleing.
This…might have been a mistake.
Not too late to ask the sign to remove half of it?
Where was the shit the sign had removed. How would he toss it?
Suddenly Richard noticed a little doll on the sand. It was him – a little voodoo doll of his body.
He picked it up and felt the weight of it. Seems like the sign had…someone taken all of his stats and shoved them in this? No some of Richard's stats remained but they were weakened?
He really should make a popup lab and study what the sign had done to his body. Even if he didn’t want to replicate it being able to know for certain what it had done and why could be illuminating.
Richard was stalling. This doll was already heavy – probably couldn’t let it cook for too long. Richard was weak and couldn’t travel too far…but at least to the bottom of the slope right? Felt like that was the bare minimum.
Richard chucked the voodoo doll forward – not very far. Ten-fifteen feet max. He set a 10s timer on his AI then breathed deeply as he watched the seconds tick down.
Okay. Let's go. Let's do this. Let's fucking go!
Richard jumped into the ocean and nearly blacked out from the pain.
The water pulled him down like someone was stacking weights on his back.
…oh no.
Richard gasped allowing burning liquid to fill his body against his best efforts.
…Richard mayyyy have just fucked up a wee bit.
Commited what we in the business like to call a "fucky wucky"
Opps?