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Pain.
That was the first thing I felt, a raw, searing agony that coursed through every inch of my body, dragging me back into consciousness like claws tearing through my mind. My chest heaved, the act of breathing itself a battle as I sucked in a ragged gasp, the taste of blood and grit thick on my tongue.
I blinked slowly, my vision swimming, blurring between patches of light and shadow. The world around me was muted, as though the cacophony of the explosion had stolen not just my strength, but the very sound of existence itself. A distant roaring filled my ears, the sound of rushing water mingling with faint, broken thoughts clawing their way to the surface.
What happened? Where… am I?
A ringing pain….
A surge of awareness shot through me, and with it, a deeper, more visceral understanding of my condition.
My left arm was… gone. Completely.
The absence was immediate and overwhelming, a phantom ache radiating from a shoulder that no longer had anything to attach to.
I turned my head weakly, my gaze dropping to where my arm should have been, and saw nothing but torn fabric soaked in crimson, the blood barely clotting over jagged, exposed bone.
The nausea hit me like a wave, but I couldn’t give in. Not now.
“Fuck…” The word slipped out in a whisper, hoarse and broken as my throat scraped like sandpaper. My legs were bent at unnatural angles, twisted grotesquely beneath me, the sharp edges of fractured bone barely hidden beneath my armor.
With every breath, a stabbing pain lanced through my stomach, the source of which became horrifyingly clear as I turned my head just enough to see the massive shard of rock jutting out of my abdomen, slick with blood.
My body felt like a shattered ruin, my thoughts barely clinging to coherence as I lay half-buried in the rocky shore, the cold water lapping weakly at my legs.
But amidst the haze of pain and the wreckage of my mind, something broke through—a light.
A faint, glowing warmth drew my attention, cutting through the fog like a beacon. It pulsed softly, emanating from somewhere near the mutilated corpse of the Overlord, its massive, broken frame sprawled just a few feet away from where I lay.
Even in death, it was monstrous, its flesh a grotesque tapestry of bones, blood, and sinew.
But it wasn’t the body that called to me. It was the light, glowing faintly from its chest, like a heart still beating with power.
The Essence…
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El’s words came back to me in fractured pieces, snippets of a conversation that now felt like a lifetime ago. He’d said something about essences, about the cores of monsters, about how killing a Lord-tier creature—or anything above—would yield a prize. And now, there it was, right in front of me.
My breath hitched as I tried to move, the pain exploding through my body like shards of glass cutting through my nerves. My first attempt to crawl was laughable; my body refused to cooperate, my legs dead weight, my one remaining arm trembling violently as I tried to drag myself forward.
“Move,” I whispered to myself, the word barely audible over the pounding in my skull.
The light pulsed again, brighter this time, almost insistent. The closer I got, the more I felt the pull, an unexplainable beckoning that seemed to bypass my broken body and speak directly to whatever willpower I had left.
“It’s right there,” I muttered through gritted teeth, biting down against a scream as I dragged myself another inch closer. My stomach burned, the shard of rock tearing deeper with every movement, and I could feel my vision narrowing, the edges darkening with each agonizing second.
Just a little more.
The glowing light was within reach now, barely a hand’s width away, pulsing steadily, its warmth washing over me like the faint embers of a dying fire. With what little strength I had left, I reached out, my fingers brushing against the searing heat of the Essence as I pulled it free from the monstrous remains.
As soon as I touched it, the world around me seemed to shift. A surge of power slammed into me, raw and unfiltered, coursing through my broken frame like a tidal wave.
It wasn’t gentle, wasn’t soothing—it was violent, a force that ripped through my body and mind, tearing apart everything in its path as it remade me from the inside out.
I screamed—loud, raw, and guttural—as the pain overwhelmed me, my body seizing as the Essence fused itself into me. The world spun, the light consuming everything in my vision until there was nothing but a blinding white void.
And then, nothing.
When I woke again, the pain was duller, but still present, a constant thrum in the back of my mind. My eyelids felt heavy as I slowly opened them, the world around me blurring into focus. I could still hear the water, still feel the cold wetness against my skin, but something was… different.
I shifted weakly, my body responding with a stiffness that was almost foreign. My legs no longer throbbed with the unbearable agony of shattered bones. My stomach, which I was certain had been ripped apart, felt intact, the sharp stabbing pain replaced by an odd, faint soreness.
It wasn’t until I moved my left hand to my forehead, wiping away the sweat, that I froze entirely.
Left hand.
My breath caught as I sat up abruptly, ignoring the wave of dizziness that nearly toppled me back over. I raised my arm, turning it over in the fading light of the setting sun, my heart pounding in disbelief.
It was there—my left arm, whole and intact, though it didn’t look like it used to. The skin was pale, almost unnaturally pink, and when I touched it with my right hand, it felt strange, overly sensitive, as though it didn’t entirely belong to me.
“This… can’t be real,” I murmured, my voice shaking. I flexed my fingers experimentally, watching as they moved with a stiffness that felt more mechanical than natural.
My legs, too, were mended. The sharp angles and grotesque breaks were gone, replaced by a dull ache and the faint feeling of something… foreign beneath the surface. My stomach was untouched, the wound where the shard of rock had impaled me completely healed, the skin smooth and unscarred.
The realization hit me like a hammer: The Essence.
I ran a hand through my hair, my mind racing as I tried to piece it all together. El had been right—these “Essences” were more than just sources of energy. They were life itself, capable of mending even the most fatal wounds, of reshaping a broken body into something new.
“Maybe… absorbing these things heals you,” still I barely had the strength to even move... as darkness claimed me once again
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