Exhausted and pushed to the limits, Tom finally killed the third octoleg.

He stood there for a moment, swaying, trying to recover. He had been driven to the breaking point during that fight, and he could feel the edge of skill exhaustion creeping up on him.

“What spells did I get?” he asked April, who had watched the entire thing, but had thankfully done it without a running commentary.

She half flew over to him, which took two long steps and four beats of her wings - a combination that let her cover the thirty metres that had separated them with impressive speed. She was also infinitely graceful while doing it.

“There weren’t any surprises, if that’s what you’re worried about. You just got given the two spells you were casting manually.”

With a wave of her hand, the wounds covering him vanished. She frowned:

“Unfortunately, there’s not much I can do about the skill exhaustion.”

“It’ll go away by itself. I didn’t push it that hard.”

She didn’t look like she believed him at all.

“I needed the mana to survive.”

“I know. I’m just reconsidering my decisions. Sending three against you was more than a little mean.”

“I won. I’ve gained two spells, and it wasn’t like I was merging anything, so there isn’t even lost opportunity cost to worry about. If anything, the ridiculous level of challenge helped. Can you show me what I got?”

He blinked, and when he opened his eyes, he saw that a white board filled with text had appeared in front of him.

Spell: Create Plasma – Tier 0

This spell creates emergency plasma to increase blood pressure and offset blood loss during battle.

Spell: Marrow Overdrive – Tier 0

This spell increases the regeneration of red blood cells. At current levels, a little over three days’ worth of natural red blood cell regeneration is created in a quarter of an hour.

“Exactly what I expected.” He said. The result was nothing special. Both spells had been on the cusp of being cast perfectly for weeks.

She smiled and shrugged:

“Them coming through so early in the contest was timely. They kept you up during your fight, and if you had to rely on manual casts, I’m not sure you would have survived. I think I’ve overestimated your capability.”

“So you’ll go easy from now on?”

She laughed:

“No. Where’s the fun in that for me?”

Tom knew she didn’t mean it. All these near-battles, both the ones he lost and those he won, were tailored to drive him forward as much as possible, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Rest time,” she declared.

He blinked involuntarily, and then was seated in the café.

“Sit back and relax, Tom. You’ve got all the time you need. If you drink that slowly, by the time we finish, your skill exhaustion should have passed.”

Without argument, he accepted her at her word, and had a leisurely coffee while chatting about not much. The moment he had his last sip he was thankfully sent back to training.

The spear work went as expected, and in the wood-shaping session Tom managed to bend some branches away from him. It was still a slog, and it barely extended his time, but he was finally making some progress. The standard trial pattern continued. Four wood escapes, then combat with every third fight, finishing with a café session, and every sixth having the spectral figure run through the spear katas to remind him of what he was supposed to be doing.

Before he knew it, he was back in the shed that housed the trial, being guided away to make room for the next child.

At dinner, there was a hum of excitement in the air, just like for the last few days. The whole place had an almost festive atmosphere to it. The older children in particular were excited about the environmental engineering. All the snatches of conversation that he overheard were about this topic. Over seventy percent said that it was going to be successful beyond anyone’s wildest imaginations. The rest were more pessimistic, with some openly wondering if it would even pay for the time and effort people had invested into it.

None suggested that it might be a flop, and Tom considered that to be a symptom of their youth. The chance of such an ambitious plan working was low. It was unlikely that an invasive species that had been as successful as the crystal slimes would have a single point of failure, no matter what human scientists thought.

Another trial cycle passed.

He had mastered inhibiting the growth in up to a fist sized section of the wood, but had made little progress when it came to using that control to beat the challenge. Controlling the direction of expansion through negative inputs for more than one branch at a time remained beyond his grasp. Given the number of growths that he had to contend with, that was not enough. By the two-minute point, there were over two dozen independent branches seeking to corral him. Unsurprisingly, he had barely managed to extend the time he survived for.

It was frustrating to remember, but, as he sat in his isolation room, Tom forced the negative emotions aside.

Today was a milestone day.

He was as prepared as he could be.

Three different syringes were laid out in front of him to provide fuel for his spell and the potential for real-life consequences. If he failed, he was going to suffer serious problems. It wasn’t written anywhere, but he was pretty confident that having tangible stakes boosted the chance of success when pursuing perfection.

For this attempt, he had measured his body weight and checked his vitality and the interactions between the three poisons. An exact amount of each substance was in the syringes. The selected doses wouldn’t kill him, but even with the use of the healing crystal they were more than problematic. More troubling, at least on a theoretical level, was that he had deliberately not tested whether Purge Foreign Substances even worked on them. Logically it would, but he didn’t know and if his spell failed, he would end up with bodily fluids forcing their way out of both ends while experiencing the torture of having the periosteum, the outer layer of every bone, being slowly dissolved all the while suffering from a migraine that would stop him from concentrating for days.

Of course, that was if he failed out right. If he had a partial success, he might only end up suffering one or two of those effects. He wondered if he had the choice which one he would choose. Probably the bone, because it would let him pretend everything was okay even when it wasn’t. No, he forced his attention back to the present.

He didn’t want to go down that path.

There was no room for failure.

For about the fiftieth time, he reviewed the wire frame diagram of Purge Foreign Substances. He knew it intimately and like the twenty checks beforehand he learned nothing new from it.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

Tom understood he was procrastinating.

It was not something he usually did. He had been reincarnated for over five months, and this was the culmination of a significant chunk of that time. The pressure on him felt real. This merge brought together fourteen base spells and seven prior merges, and this final one was the hardest he had done yet. Six different sub-spells had to combine perfectly for it to work.

He glanced askance at the syringes.

“You’ve got this Tom,” he reminded himself, but the words felt hollow.

The consequences of the purge failing would not be pleasant. But there was no good way to get around it. There had to be a real danger for him to maximise his chances of success. The combination of the three injections from the descriptions of how they worked would push all the components of the spell he was trying to form. Everything would be critical in the healing process. First, the identification and containment steps, followed by using that knowledge to choose whether to push the substances from the body or destroy them directly. Theoretically, it was one of each type with the third, the one that would dissolve bones, needing parts pushed out and other bits destroyed.

Perfection was expected.

Tom stopped flipping through the pages, annoyed at himself. He wasn’t sure why he was so nervous. He had constructed the spell almost perfectly multiple times already, and this was just the final push. An attempt to add another sideways evolution to the two that he had already gained in this section of the Touch Heal development pathway.

Mentally, he went through the checklist. His precognition mana storage and creation skill had been running for the last thirty minutes. He was topped up with the maximum available mana of thirty-two, and his own paltry pool of eight was also full.

It would be more than enough.

The syringes were ready.

There was over an hour to go until the isolation room opened so he could safely use the ritual afterward.

Fate? He wanted this attempt to be perfect and drive a sideways evolution that would improve either the efficiency or effectiveness of his final spell. Without hesitation, he spent his entire fate pool on the image.

He was as ready as he would ever get.

Mentally, he constructed the spell. Overlaying all six of the inputs on top of each other. He could see almost a quarter of Touch Heal in the structure that it produced. Then, with quick deliberate movement like he would use in a fight he injected himself with all three waiting syringes.

Tom quickly flicked through the locations where the spells overlapped each other and ensured that where required they bonded and in the other spots the original lines remained as discreet entities. The spell form, as best he could tell was perfect, and he was on the clock. He could already feel his gut clenching as tiny amounts of the substance that would cause terrible gastrointestinal flux entered the bloodstream.

He was out of time.

He had to go faster.

Despite the pressure of his thoughts, he remained methodical in his approach. The spell, after all, had to be done perfectly. First, his own mana filled the spell form, then precognition mana was pushed in until his body ran dry. Infused with mana the spell form transitioned from a theoretical outline to reality.

Then he directed it down into the injection site.

The identification component changed the feel of the spell significantly. It was no longer a dumb process. The spell communicated information to him and based on that he could direct how the infused energy was used. The directions he could drive the enchantment were nowhere near as varied or as precise as Healing Tranquillity had enabled in his past life. This spell also lacked that incredibly valuable time dilation that he had grown used to but despite the flaws Tom was impressed by the amount of control the spell gave.

It also returned the results of its identification efforts instantly. It was like acquiring a spell or skill from the system. Between one instant and the next, he was aware of the nature of the three substances on an intimate level. He knew where they were, what they would do to him, how could they spread, and which ones he could destroy directly versus which more troublesome setups would need to be physically expelled. He knew all of it.

Two of the three venoms remained localised at the injection site, but the nausea one was spreading aggressively, and Tom knew he had been too slow in casting the cleaning spell.

He could still purge it, but it would be a case of a whack-a-mole effort, as it spread through his body and could only be tracked down once it started impacting his systems.

His mind, aided by the spell, concentrated on the two separate activities. As physical skin and muscle barriers grew, they were only the size of a grape, but they quarantined the area successfully. At the identification’s continued prompting, he began triage and healing. First, he reinforced them to stop the specific frequency of the bone energy, and then began the process of squeezing the contained area and pushing the foreign substances back toward the surface. His arm warmed slightly, there was a hiss, and some purple liquid leaked out of it. Simultaneously, he was using the spell to track down the nausea venom to tear its energy structure to pieces.

Tom imprinted the instructions and relinquished control, knowing that his slow brain could only get in the way now. His immediate future was at the mercy of his manually constructed spell form. His gut clenched in pain, and he wanted to vomit. The purple sludge was now running down his arm as though he was bleeding purple instead of red.

Another cramp doubled him over.

Long seconds passed as he wondered whether his attempt was going to be successful. The purple stopped flowing, and the need to violently expel everything he had eaten last night was reduced.

There was a ding.

The urge to hurl faded to nothing.

Tom sagged in relief. The nausea was gone, his head was clear, and his body pain-free. He wiped the sweat off his brow. That had been intense.

Because it was the prudent thing to do, he recreated the spell form of Purge Foreign Substance. It snapped straight into place as a system spell.

“Yes!” He exclaimed, then stopped himself. It was too early to celebrate. He had achieved perfection, but that was always going to happen. The question was, had he been awarded a bonus? All that mattered was whether he had, or had not, received one of the precious sideway evolutions. He glanced longingly at the status check ritual, then used the one point of precognition mana that his skill had generated, and pushed the resultant spell into his arm, focusing on the identification component of it.

A pulse of energy went through him, and he felt the connection to the spell. It reported that it could identify nothing out of place in his body.

He had been cleansed.

There was one last thing to confirm. He went over to the ritual status screen, and the details of the new spell appeared.

Spell: Purge Foreign Substances – Tier 0

This spell can identify, isolate, destroy or push from the body most foreign substances.

Sideways Evolution 1: Constructed internal barriers can block foreign substances a full tier higher than what proficiency and energy invested in the spell, would usually allow.

Sideways Evolution 2: The mana cost to destroy foreign substances in the body is reduced by 25%

Sideways Evolution 3. For 16 mana this spell can be applied to increase resistance to all purgeable foreign substances and energies by 32% for half an hour.

“Hell yeah!” he yelled with a fist pump. “I did it! Yes, it worked!”

His eyes were focused on that third evolution. The others he had known about, but getting a buff out of the sideways evolution was a massive win. He understood very well that it was not very useful for the time being, given his limited mana. But when he reached rank fifty and had effectively unlimited mana, then boosting his resistance against things his tier or one above by a third, which was what the bonus actually offered, was useful.

No, better than useful. It was a massive win.

His throat caught.

Between the titles he was going to get and the stacking of sideways evolutions, he trembled in excitement when he thought about the power that would bring.

The dragon had been terrifyingly strong. Tom had imagined fighting it in his mind, but that was all it had ever been, a figment of his imagination, an unachievable juvenile fantasy. But if he upgraded those titles enough, what then? If he kept gaining skills and sideway evolutions, and if the help that Corrine implied was there for him...

What could stop him?

He looked up at the ceiling with the image of what he could become clear in his mind. It was humbling. It would take hard work, but if it let him save his loved ones, and to save the loved ones of others, then…

“Thank you, DEUS,” he stopped speaking momentarily because his throat choked up. “Thank you for this opportunity. I’m not one to pray, but I am grateful to you for gifting me this chance …” he paused, for a moment, thinking about his family. Thinking about sister who was too young and innocent to be torn and thrown into a war zone. “I promise you that I won’t let you down. I’ll use this chance…” he stopped again unable to talk. Tears were leaking out of his eyes and trickling down his cheek. This was bigger than just saving his sister and family. It was about good people who had died. Sven, Michael, Jingyi, and the sacrifices they had come to Existentia to make, the sacrifices they had made without the benefit of a do-over.

Apart from Michael.

He had died twice for his ideals.

In his current emotional state, Tom did not want to think about him. If he did that, it would threaten a breakdown. His journey was about all of them. They all had their own motivators, their own Emilys, their own causes worth dying for, and it was his job to honour them.

He had to succeed for them, too.

“I’ll make the most of this.” He swore out loud. “I’ll find a way to win this competition. I’ll do it in your name, proudly. Thank you for giving me this grace.”

He wiped away the tears, nodded firmly, and then, both happy and sad, but mainly feeling inspired, he returned the syringes to the cupboards, and then went over to check the folder that contained the current ladder.

That would remind him of exactly what he needed to achieve. He would do it. He would get all the titles, dozens, maybe hundreds of sideway evolutions, and, in doing so, build the greatest base ever.

The dragon, that creature was evil on a level Tom couldn’t comprehend. It would die along with all of its kind.

And then, if he had done enough, if he was strong enough, he would go after the GOD and GODs that had chosen to champion such evil. The last bit might be a dream and a sentiment that he could never say out loud, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t hold the idea close to his heart, if fate was willing.

At the very least, he could try.