Clay’s eyes abruptly shot open as a sharp pain erupted from his stomach. His whole body convulsed, as he vomited blood all over the floor, suddenly being wide awake, not a trace of drowsiness in his mind.

Gasping for air, he laid back onto the couch. Resting his right arm on his temple, he took a deep breath, tears trailing down his, cheeks. He did it; he survived. His tears soon turned into an excessive laugh. Oh, it felt so good to be alive! He took a moment, but he eventually calmed down, resting his eyes while a huge smile stretched over his face.

Glancing over to the puddle of blood, he just threw up moments ago, he wondered how much liter that were? Enough to kill a man, that was for sure. With a grunt, he sat up, looking down, only to be immediately annoyed.

The couch was covered in dried blood, with a tone of purple mixed in, while his clothes were completely drenched in the same color. For fuck's sake, not again! Springing up from the couch, he just barely avoided the puddle of blood, before throwing his clothes away. It couldn’t become a habit for him to awake in completely, drenched and tattered clothes!

Not to mention the several near-death experiences he had without even fully understanding the situation. He promised himself that once he found Mia, that he would take things more slowly. Taking his time to fully understand the situation and try to recover his complete memory before fighting some insane beasts or poison again.

Thinking of the poison, Clay grumbled. That was a real problem he had to consider. Jim said that a gas mask helped, but he wasn’t too hopeful in finding one. Not to mention that he seriously doubted that it would have a significant effect on the poison. No matter, he first had to get some new clothes again.

This time they didn’t fit quite as nicely as the last and were a little too tight, but it was better than nothing. He just threw a shirt on when he passed a mirror in the corridor, which connected bedroom and living room, when he suddenly halted in his tracks.

Taking a few steps back, he observed himself in the river, shocked at what he found. The boy in front of him looked like himself, but something was off. His shoulder long hair was a little too bright for his liking, it even looked like it had strokes of silver in them?

Rubbing a few strands between his fingers, it felt normal, but Clay was certain that he had purely blond hair, they were definitely not that bright. His memory was fuzzy, not gone. Seeing the reflection of his arm, it also appeared different. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but he somehow looked much… younger.

Squirting into the mirror it finally dawned on him, as he pulled his shirt up, only to find his usual well-defined body to have absolutely flawless skin, that was without any form of impurity or scar. Even the huge claw mark of the bear (where Clay still wondered how he was able to survive that) all but vanished.

Slowing gliding over his skin, Clay was more than confused. The skin was soft to the touch and yet rough. His left arm was still missing, but there wasn’t a single scar that remained on his body. He almost looked like a different person, as if he was reborn.

Thinking, he roughly remembered that his essence and the poison somehow began to fuse before he lost consciousness. Poison and medicine are closely intertwined, too much medicine can be poisonous and the right amount of poison can be medicine. The effect didn’t seem to be that simple, though.

That was no normal poison after all and Clay wasn’t quite sure what it did to his body, but it seemed to have him benefited in a stroke of luck. If he continued risking his life like this, then he was doomed to die young, just one reason more to act more carefully, once he found Mia.

Besides his body feeling healthy, Jim felt quite tired, he had a theory at why that was. Sitting on a chair, he felt inside of him, observing his lake of essence. He paled once he saw the state of it. He was pretty sure that the amount of essence he had left was by no means healthy.

The river surrounding his heart had completely dried up, while the essence stored in his heart amounted to not even a tenth of what it could hold. Clay realized, while burning his essence, that he is dependent on it. He didn’t seem to need much, but going below a tenth was definitely dangerous.

He didn’t know what happened once he completely ran out, but he guessed that it would end in his death. There had to be a way to regenerate the essence, he lost. He knew that killing other beasts, allowed one to absorb some of their essence, but he wasn’t sure if he wanted to fight in his current state.

Going to the living room he wanted to grab his bag, before realizing that it was still in the inner city, he lost it when he fell down. Cursing, he scavenged through the house for some food, he was quite hungry, and it stopped him from thinking further into the situation.

After eating his fill, he eventually calmed down. There seemed no way around killing some beast to replenish his essence, and he couldn’t wait with that. Without essence, he would have died two times over by now.

Exiting the house, he didn’t need to walk for long before reaching the outskirts of the forest. He wanted to set his essence ablaze before suddenly stopping himself. He didn’t have much left, if he now burned the little essence he had left, then he wouldn’t be sure if he could bear the consequences.

It was at this moment that it became very apparent to Clay how depended he was on essence. Without the river surrounding his heart, he had no a way of replenishing it. He suddenly felt powerless, his body weak and frail.

Without the comforting blanket of aura shrouding him, felt he much more declined to enter a shady forest, where visibility was bad and the ground hard to traverse through. How was he even supposed to sense the beasts, without his aura?

He knew that his human senses were far inferior to that of most beast, so how he should react to them in time? Not to mention that without enhancement, he was much slower and weaker than them.

Clay’s breath suddenly quickened, before he took a step back, seeing some of the shadows move. There was a rustle from the forest, and that was all that it took for him to turn around and escape to the house where he had come from.

Slamming the door behind him, he frantically shoved a small cupboard before the door, watching it warily as if a beast could break through it at any moment… He waited for what felt like an eternity, but nothing happened.

His mind was playing tricks on him. Sitting down on a stool in the kitchen, Clay began to laugh before slamming on the kitchen counter. “Fuck.”

How could he have been so reckless? He was so engrossed in his power that he didn’t even think about what could happen once he lost it, not to mention how careless he wandered around.

This whole situation, was only a result of his arrogance and incompetence. He should have been more suspicious when he didn’t encounter a single beast, or at the latest once he saw the corpses.

Taking a deep breath, he calmed down. In the beginning he was able to survive without any supernatural powers, and he could do it again, he just had to be more careful. Killing one beast was enough to stabilize his situation.

Once he regenerated a bit of his essence, advancing above the threshold of a tenth, he should be safe to burn a little. But he couldn’t possibly enter the forest, that would be too dangerous in his current state, he just had to hope that there were some weak ones roaming the city.

He had to get his aura back, he didn’t realize before, but without it, he felt naked – exposed. The longer it stayed that way, the larger would grow his worries and paranoia.

Equipped with the sword from the royal guard – which was more like a short sword, with the blade having a length of about seventy centimeters – and the obsidian dagger, he cautiously made his way through the city. It really seemed completely abandoned at first, but he quickly noticed that it wasn’t quite as deserted as it seemed.

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Without his aura, he was much more vulnerable, but he also observed his surroundings a lot more carefully, relying more on his other senses. He saw birds, soaring through the sky unburdened by the happenings below, while the ruins were littered with various insects.

Strangely, it almost felt like he was being avoided before. It took him not long to find a rat roaming trough one of the ruins, big like a cat. Desperate, he carefully crouched behind the rat, his hand firmly gripping his sword.

Immersed in scavenging through the trash of the ruins, the rat didn’t even seem to notice him, before he was already a meter behind it, at which point it finally sensed something amiss. It raised its head from the trash pile it was searching through, but it was far too late, as Clay pushed his short sword into its back.

It still lived for a few seconds as it tried to escape, while impaled, but it soon lost strength, falling limp to the ground. As he hoped, Clay could feel essence entering his body, forming a small stream of light green circulating around his heart.

It didn’t take long for the river to accelerate and refine the foreign essence, but Clay could tell that it would take hours for even one drop to form. The essence he just absorbed seemed to be of not only little quantity but also quality.

That wouldn’t be nearly enough to replenish his reserves, so he continued his hunt, luckily only stumbling about a few small beasts, like rats, cats and some squirrels. They all gave him very little essence, but at least the stream around his heart thickened considerably, still laughable compared to the size he had after killing the ants, but far better than nothing.

Nonetheless, he was able to get some essence, he only had to wait for it to be refined. Not wanting to risk anything more for the day he returned to the house where he fought the poison, he knew that it was relatively safe there.

He also seemed to have awoken late at noon, limiting the daylight he could use. He didn’t even know for how long he cleansed that poison, at least for a day, but it was entirely possible that it could have been two or even longer.

Fortifying the bedroom on the ground floor to the best of his abilities, Clay settled in for the night. Hours must have passed since he first absorbed new essence, but there still wasn’t a single drop refined.

Thankfully, this refinement happened without Clay having to supervise or control it, meaning that he could sleep soundly, while the essence was refined into a liquid. Having this in mind, he tucked himself under a blanket and soon slept deeply.

The next day, he awoke for once without any surprises (or torn clothes), which was a nice change for once. Seemed like he finally broke his streak. Stretching his muscles, he felt good. Feeling inside of him, he saw that his essence replenished above the dangerous threshold, which was most likely the reason why he felt so good.

Sadly, that was still way too little to risk burning it. His river still had plenty left, but it needed more time for refinement. He only had to wait a little longer, so it wouldn’t be too much of a problem, with the poison still being in the area, it was very likely that Mia was actually still alive and surviving somehow.

He just went about his day as usual, when he encountered a new problem – he was bored. Suddenly forced to wait, it didn’t take long for Clay to be consumed by boredom. He almost forgot what that felt like between the whole memory loss and life threats, but as soon as the feeling set in, despised Clay it with passion.

From his observations yesterday, it seemed like most of the strong beasts left the city, which was quite strange. He could remember fighting countless beasts that were far stronger than him, in both physic and essence. The bear he barely survived was a good example of that.

But the more he thought about it, the more sense it made. From the small encounter he had with the ants he knew that they provided quite a large chunk of essence and from what he remembered there were hundreds if not thousands of those things. They had to have gotten this essence somewhere.

This somewhere was most likely the other inhabitants of the forest, it would be easy for the ants to overwhelm much stronger beast with their numbers and especially with a commander ant that allowed them to utilize advanced tactics.

It was normal for them to aim for big prey when they had so many numbers, which now benefited Clay greatly. In his current situation, he didn’t want to face any of the stronger beasts.

Besides coming to that conclusion, stayed Clay vigilant, not daring to be carless again. It would be embarrassing to be sneak attacked by some strong beast, just because he expected to face weaker.

Even though he had the fear, he didn’t have to, as once the day began to set he didn’t encounter any noteworthy foe. The only thing worth mentioning would be the raccoon he found in one of the houses, he scavenged.

It was pretty big, way bigger then a normal raccoon and pretty fat at that. It almost looked comical and was more than sluggish when it moved, so it was rather helpless when put against the end of Clay’s blade.

But to its credit, he did absorb a pretty large chunk of essence from it. He also gathered quite the large amount of food and other supplies from the surrounding houses. Many were still mostly untouched, and the biggest problem was that it proved rather difficult to haul so much stuff, with only one arm.

Well, at least he had something to do this way and the hours just flew by, before he was forced to settle back into his temporary home, once the sun began to set. The most noteworthy thing he found would be a functional digital alarm clock, with date and all. The batteries were dead, but it was easy enough finding some that functioned.

Once the clock worked again, he finally knew which date it was. He was right, in it being autumn. October the eleventh to be exact. It wasn’t really necessary to know the exact date, but it was useful in the sense that he now knew he still had some time until winter dawned upon him.

He really didn’t look forward to that, but it was a future problem anyway. Besides, the alarm clock he also looked for (and found) a mechanical watch because, in comparison to the date, was the time something Clay needed to know.

He could measure the passing of time with the sun, but he wasn’t good at that, and having an exact time made it a lot easier to plan things. Being out at night was one of the things he wanted to avoid at all costs.

When he finally sorted all the stuff, he returned to his bedroom, the windows barricaded by planks. It wouldn’t stop a dedicated beast from barging in, but it would at least give him enough time to flee.

Settling down on the bed, he entered with his mind deep into his body. He gained another drop of essence, but it was quite laughable. At first Clay just planned to wait, eat enough and let his essence slowly replenish, but that was too slow.

He didn’t plan to stay for days or possibly weeks in that house just so that he could gain a few more drops of essence. There had to be a way to quicken this refinement.

When he burned essence this refinement also accelerated, but Clay would burn more essence, then regenerate, that was counterproductive, unless he could somehow control–

As if thrown back to the past, he saw himself speaking, You can’t control the amount? Before being ripped back to the present. Curse that memory loss! Clay sighed in frustration, if he had known that sooner, then he would have had way fewer problems.

He knew there was something out of place when he burned his essence at full force just to form his aura. It felt wrong because it was. You didn’t form an aura by burning your essence at full force.

Instead of overthinking it, he just tried it out. Feeling inside off him, he ignited his essence without fear, causing a bright flame to instantly spring to life. The moment the flame awakened, so did the river surrounding his heart, turning into a torrent, that quickened his refinement of essence to an incomparable level from before.

Immediately, he enveloped the flame with his mind, suppressing it directly to half its size before shrinking it further down to a tenth of its initial size.

Instead of a huge smoldering flame remained something similar to a candle, releasing a cloud of essence that was far too little to have any noteworthy effect on his body, but was perfect for forming an aura. It also moved much quicker outwards, escaping his body in mere moments.

Feeling the essence escaping his body, Clay smiled. Feeling the mist of essence with his mind, he ‘grasped’ it, clutching it close to him, forming his aura that enveloped him and instantly calmed his stressed mind. Once he burned a drop, he stopped himself. He still had too little essence to recklessly burn it, but he was exhilarated.

The good thing about aura was that it didn’t dissipate, as long as he was able to hold onto it with his mind, and Clay knew for a fact that he was very proficient in that. He felt confident to hold an aura of about twenty meters without breaking too much of a sweat, which wasn’t comparable to the meager one meter he just produced, but the feeling of aura around him was more than enough to lift any of his worries. Is that what they called an addiction?

Unfortunately for him, he would lose control over the aura once he slept, so he had to waste another drop the next morning, but he didn’t care. The amount of confidence he drew from his aura was too much to pass up on, if he could, he would never stop maintaining it.

More importantly than his raised mental state was the fact that his assumption was right. The flame even if small accelerated the flow of the refinement of essence exceptionally. If he could reduce the flame enough until he gained more essence than he lost, then he would be able to keep his aura up indefinitely.

Thinking this, Clay couldn’t keep himself from grinning. He knew what he would be doing the next days.