The past few hours had been a blur of chaos and confusion, even if Cain had been slowly regaining his senses. He had discovered that the hard thing underneath him was in fact the shoulder pauldron of a swordsman in studded leather garb. He had also discovered that his hands were black and crunchy-looking, and he could barely move them. There wasn’t any sensation in them, but further up his arms where the ‘crunchy’ met with ‘chewy’ there was plenty of sensation. The constant pain from his arms and the various other burns on his body made it hard to focus on any one thing for too long. There seemed to be burnt flesh on his feet, his left shoulder, a little on his ribs, and a healthy splash across his backside. And he was pretty sure his gut was bruised from being bounced on a metal plate. Following Cain’s mystery savior, there was an archer in thin leathers that only seemed to have one really fancy arrow that he recalled to his hand after every shot, a long-haired figure in red robes that didn’t do much, and an obscenely muscular lady that occasionally summoned boulders to throw at things. They were fleeing from the burning forest as quickly as they were able, slowing or sometimes stopping as necessary to break through a horde of those shadow zombies. He couldn’t really see ahead of their group, which was concerning, but the boulder lady usually sent a small mountain over his head when they came to a stop.
Speaking of shadow zombies, they were arguably more horrifying when you could see them clearly. It wasn’t just humans like all those Hollywood action films, it was anything and everything that used to be alive. Mother deer and their calves chased them, with fur that had fallen off to reveal a pale, colorless hide beneath. A bear had at one point flanked them, appearing so skeletal that Cain didn’t realize it had been a bear until after they’d left it behind. And occasionally there were humans, with fingernails that were falling out and whatever rotten clothes they had been wearing when they died. Some looked like ordinary people, and others wore leather armors like the stuff his rescuers wore. The ones who were on fire screamed louder than seemed possible, and they all seemed to have the same empty black eyes like those of sharks. Between the nightmare fuel in constant pursuit, the persistent roaring of flames around him, the burning branches falling too close for comfort, and the constant jolts of pain from his injuries, Cain was in a state of mild panic. His only comfort was that none of the monsters tailing them were getting any closer without being pierced by an arrow or flattened by a boulder.
He tried speaking several more times, but his throat was simply unusable. Every attempt ended in another fit of coughing. A momentary pang of relief hit him when moisture trickled into his mouth, but the accompanying pain from farther back made him realize it was blood. Resigning himself to helplessness, he tried his best to shut out his surroundings. It didn’t improve much, and only allowed him to further focus on his various injuries — he apparently had a killer headache as well. It got a little better when he started trying to focus on feeling his mana instead of simply blocking things out. He couldn’t make out much, but it made it easier to shut out the constant sounds and distracted him from the pain a little bit. It felt a little different than it had before, though; there was a warm feeling to it, and its movements seemed a bit different. Cain opened his eyes and looked at his arms from where he was draped over the swordsman’s shoulder. It was a little awkward, and a lot harder to focus on, but he managed. Initially, he noticed that his mana wasn’t flowing as well as it had been before. Where the artery carried blood down the arm and to the hands, and where it had been carrying mana too, only a fraction of what had been there before was now flowing through his hands. The flow seemed to constrict and trickle out the farther it went down the burned sections of his arms, with barely a thread making it to his fingertips. Secondly, he noticed that it was emitting an orange glow now. He tried pushing it out through his fingertips anyway, like he’d done earlier, but found it resistant. Only thin wisps of mana emerged, and shortly dispersed.
“Hey, what’s the pyromaniac doing?” Said lazy robe person.
“What do you mean?” Replied boulder lady.
“Look at his hands. He’s trying to do something with his mana.”
Cain only partially registered the speech, more concerned with how to use his mana if he couldn’t move it outside of himself. Putting more effort into the problem didn’t seem to change anything. His mana flew away a little faster, but it was still too little to do much with and still escaped his control almost immediately. Then he recalled what he’d done with the mana in his heart. He didn’t need to move it outside of himself at all; he could just do things with it, moving it to different places was just for convenience. If he wanted to cast magic that affected his insides, why would he need to take his mana outside at all? Following the flicker of clarity to see where it led him, Cain pushed more mana towards his burnt hands but didn’t try to expel it. All it did was swell and strain his mana channels, so he started the second step in his grand plan. Heal. Pressing a single word of intent into his mana, he tried to restore his crispy digits from the inside out. Not much happened at first. Then the orange glow slowly darkened into a flickering crimson. The lines running through his arms started growing. The spindly threads that barely reached his fingertips began to widen and return to normal, and more and more mana flowed through his forearms as the burnt tissue within was reverted to living flesh and blood. He began regaining sensation and range of motion in his hands, and soon even the black skin coating them crumbled away to reveal a pink, freshly grown layer. There were still black lines running across his hands and a short ways up his wrists, but on the whole his experiment had panned out. He flexed the new muscles; the skin felt tingly and raw, but everything worked.
“Did he just regrow his hands? I thought his mana was fire aspected, how the fuck can he do that?” Archer cried.
“Look closer,” said Robeson. “His mana changed just now. Before it was fire, yes, but now there’s blood mana mixed in.”
“Aspects are incredibly hard to just change like that unless your mana is still pure,” said Boulder Lady, “or recently so.”
Cain directed his mana to start fixing his throat before croaking, “My name is Cain, not pyromaniac.”
“Nice to meet you, Cain the Pyromaniac,” said Archer politely. “How the fuck did you do that?”
“Kept my mana mostly pure until now,” Cain rasped, “Though I admit, I rather panicked when those things started stalking me!”
“Keeping your mana pure is incredibly difficult, and usually only arcanists and researchers bother with it. You certainly don’t look the part of either, so what’s your deal?”
“Oh, me? I’m just cripplingly indecisive. What’s your deal? Why’re all of you out here?”
“We’re part of the extermination raid the guild sent to deal with the undead here before more of the forest could turn entropic,” replied Boulder. “We were supposed to leave at dawn, but set out early when scouts reported smoke rising from the area. Speaking of which, why were you out here to begin with? Only an idiot would go into an entropic biome alone.”
“Or an incredibly poor navigator,” answered Cain with a grimace. He should probably do his best to keep suspicions surrounding him as low as possible, he had no idea who these people were or how they’d react if they knew where he was from.
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“Same thing,” said Archer. “Hey, Mina, about how far from getting out of this place are we?”
“We should be in the final stretch about now,” said the apparently female swordswoman between breaths.
“Lovely. You can put me down if you need to, my legs should be mostly healed now.”
Cain threw his arms out in front of his face as he fell face-first off the armored shoulder he’d been slung over for so long. Archer let out a short crow of laughter, and Boulder Lady helped pull Cain to his feet before going back to slinging rocks at zombies. With a great amount of protest from his legs, he broke out into a jog to keep pace with the party of four he was now trailing at the back of. With a little effort, he repositioned himself to be more to the side of the group than behind it, so he wouldn’t be in the way of the ranger attackers. His newly healed soles complained loudly about the still hot cinders that he stepped in more than once. A group of four emaciated wolves with black eyes that glittered in the firelight became visible from between the trees, approaching them head-on. Two were felled by arrows on approach, and one charged directly at Mina. The fourth, however, seemed to notice Cain standing apart from the group and locked directly onto him. Shaking madly, he raised his left hand and threw his mana at the wolf with as much force as he could muster, armed once again with only a single word of intent.
Incinerate.
A blast of crimson flames shot forward and sent the bony creature crashing sideways into a tree, where red, smokeless embers quickly began dissolving the beast into ash. Cain calmed down a tiny bit, and went back to focusing on keeping his legs moving and healing his feet as needed. The air tasted a little less smoky now, and the fire seemed less intense, but he was still struggling to breathe properly, occasionally breaking out in another coughing fit. The soreness in his legs had dissipated and been replaced by a feeling of weightlessness that made them feel more like noodles than legs. Several more times new undead appeared in front of them or to their side, bringing a fresh wave of fear washing over him with each encounter, but Cain just threw red fire at anything that looked at him funny while the party dealt with everything else. The air gradually cleared and the fires lessened as Cain slowly grew used to the chaotic rhythm.
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[ Objective Complete : “Escape” ]
The entity has successfully fled the burning forest while being pursued by panicking entropic undead.
Cain breathed heavily, having sat down in the tall grass after putting the trees far behind him. The party of four were in similar condition nearby, with the swordswoman Mina seeming to have gotten the worst of it. Her armor was by far the heaviest, and she’d been engaging anything that got too close in melee combat while carrying Cain. A persistent itch told Cain that he had notifications to look at, but he really couldn’t be bothered now that he had a moment to catch his breath. He just sat there, panting, until the wild grasses poking at his bare chest prompted him to ask a question.
“Hey… do any of you have spare clothes or something? I just realized I don’t have mine with me.”
“Let me guess, the pyromaniac incinerated his,” groaned Archer.
“Yes.”
“Here,” called Robeson, tossing a rough pair of plain gray trousers and a white cotton shirt at him.
“Thank you.” Cain began pulling on the clothes while the grass poked him in uncomfortable places. The quality of the fabric made him think these people hadn’t invented magic sewing machines yet, but it was better than nothing. The shirt was slightly loose on him and the trousers were held in place by a thin rope around the waist he fumbled with for a minute, but finally being clothed brought him a level of inner peace he hadn’t had since before he’d died. That was a surreal thought… that he would save for until after he’d sorted through his notifications.
[ Body Attribute Increased : Vigor ]
(Current Value: 6 -> 9)
[ Body Attribute Manifested : Sense (Kinesthetic) ]
Sense affects the sensitivity of the entity’s bodily senses. Common examples are light-based ocular sensation and vibration-based auditory sensation. (Current Value: 2)
[ Body Attribute Increased : Endurance ]
(Current Value: 4 -> 8)
[ Skill Manifested : Boiling Lifeblood (Lesser) ]
Enhances the entity’s healing factor, scaling with vigor and the entity’s fire aspect. Enhances the strength of the entity’s fire magic, scaling with channeling and the entity’s blood aspect. Lesser increase to fire resistance.
[ Mixed Skill Refined : Mana Control (Lesser, I -> II) ]
(4) more ranks until (Middling, I).
[ Ethereal Attribute Increased : Channeling ]
(Current Value: 7 -> 8)
[ Skill Manifested : Adrenaline High (Lesser) ]
Increases all body attributes in proportion with the amount of adrenaline currently in the entity’s bloodstream. Effect scales with the severity of the entity’s injuries, if they are wounded.
[ Ethereal Attribute Increased : Mana Sense (Ocular) ]
(Current Value: 3 -> 5)
Well, that was a lot. The skills seemed useful to Cain, not that he would be a good judge, although apparently he had picked up the first rank of Mana Control somewhere along the line. He might have to go digging for that. He did recall some notifications flying over his head when he woke up. His musings were interrupted by Robeson’s approach before he could go looking, unfortunately.
“You said your name was Cain, right? I’m Roberts.” Cain was astounded by how close his guess was as the robed man sat down across from him and extended a hand.
Cain shook his hand. “Nice to meet you, Roberts. Thanks for the help, and the clothes.”
“Thank Mina, she carried you. Now, if you don’t mind me asking; how did you even manage to burn yourself so badly? Most people would run out of mana long before they could inflict burns that severe.”
“I’ve put a lot of work into refining my core’s mana generation,” Cain half-lied.
“Seriously?” Roberts leaned closer, failing to hide his ‘academic interest.’ “How many output threads do you have? It must be a ton to keep up with casting for so long.”
“Uhm…”
“Don’t go asking strangers about their attributes, Rob. It’s plain bad manners,” rumbled Boulder Lady.
“Right, ah, sorry about that,” he mumbled sheepishly.
“No harm done. I can understand your curiosity, at least.” Cain silently thanked Boulder Lady for the timely intervention.
“Hey Cain, you registered with the Adventurer’s Guild?” queried an exhausted-sounding Mina.
“It’s more likely the Mage’s Guild, I’d say,” said Roberts.
“Neither,” replied Cain. “Terribly indecisive, remember?”
“Well, you should probably accompany us back to the local Guild office,” said Mina, “and maybe register while you’re there. You got there a little early, and you weren’t part of the raid, but you saved our mages a lot of work starting that fire. Let us focus on containing the burn and mopping up stragglers. Probably saved a few lives, even if you cut into our sleep a bit.”
“I should probably accompany you either way since I have no clue where we are,” Cain said, “but sure thing, Mina.”
Mina just nodded and went back to resting, while Archer could be faintly heard scoffing. Roberts studied Cain from a more respectful distance, trying to learn his secrets, while Boulder Lady sat on a stone platform she’d raised for herself where she watched the smoke rising from deeper in the forest. Cain just laid back on the grass and looked at the sky. The wind was blowing towards the woods, keeping the smoke clear of his view. At one end, the sky was a dark navy blue speckled with stars of various colors, while the rising sun painted the other in a vibrant red gradient. The moon was nearly full and almost directly above him. Then he noticed it had nearly twice the diameter of the one he was used to.
I really am a stranger in a strange land, aren’t I?