Chương 21: Inhuman

To my surprise, everything goes exactly as planned. Pressure builds in my mana veins as I contract them all at once. The mana tries to escape my body, but I keep it firmly lodged under my skin. Like squeezing a water balloon with a hole in it, the mana is siphoned out at one point between my mana core and my heart right above it. Looks like all the important stuff is in one place. I know to protect my heart in a fight, but it looks like the system thinks it's an extra special place for all of my goodies.

There's a good chance that's also where the metaphysical soul is, if it exists. Manipulating mana is a strange action. It's similar to sweeping a room with an inch of water, but you have as many brooms as you want. I can't push all of it, and the mana slips through the holes in my grasp, but I can will it into certain areas. When I push it towards the point right between my core and heart, it is slowly siphoned off. Like a drain in the middle of a flooded room, I have to keep sweeping the mana toward it.

It's incredibly faint, but a small well of vitality does open inside of me. Health and mana. [Health: 305(48)] [Mana: 260(259)] A giddy smile appears on my face upon seeing my mana.

"Hehe, I can cast spells now." I take a brief moment to imagine myself throwing fireballs and making goblins explode. Jumping for joy would be wonderful at the moment, but my wounds are begging for a reason to reopen. Focusing, I stare at the text and begin herding the mana towards the bond. Instantly, I realize the action is twice as hard without my eyes closed. That explains why the mage hobgoblin and shaman goblins were doing it in the middle of a fight. After a few moments, I decide to do something in between.

I close my eyes for one second and sweep the mana, opening my eyes right after to see any changes in my resources. Nothing. Another round. Nothing. I hope the resources on the system panel update in real time and change not only when I open them. Another round. Finally, a change. [Health: 305(48)] [Mana: 260(258)] Alright, the mana's going somewhere. That's good. The process repeats another three times before another mana point disappears. About one mana every three seconds.

I repeat the process a few dozen times to get a grasp on the statistics. One mana every three seconds, one health every twenty seconds. That's about a ratio of seven to one. Not horrible. That's three health and twenty mana a minute. 180 health and 1200 mana an hour. Way more mana than I have, so recovery will still be a long process. Far, far shorter, but still long. Only limited by my mana regeneration, whatever that might be.

I close my eyes and become the janitor of my own body, continuously sweeping mana into the bond. Minutes pass as I lose myself in the menial task. Chime Knowing what the chime is for, I ignore it and continue. Slowly, the amount of water to sweep lowers little by little. When there's nothing left, I open my eyes. A lance of pain shoots through my stomach. My throat feels like sandpaper. The thirst and hunger are gone, replaced with starvation and dehydration. I grasp my stomach and shoot upwards in pain.

The worst hunger I've ever faced twists like a knife through my stomach.

"Kevin, stop feeling pain," I spit out. Nothing changes. Needles of pain shoot up and down my throat every time I take a breath. My stomach feels like it's both shrunken to a quarter and filled with sea urchins. My eyes try to produce tears, but are empty. I clutch my midsection and bend as far as possible, but it only does a little to ease the suffering. A faint, sweet scent enters my nose. My eyes slam open, looking around in panic.

The smell returns, like the most delicious steak I've ever had the honor of being near. I look around frantically, but nothing in the surroundings has changed. My head whips around to the door, but the scent gets weaker. I turn back to the front and follow the scent. My nose leads my eyes down. The hobgoblin mage in my lap. Eyes cold and unseeing. Head crushed. Robe bunched up on my chest to stop bleeding. My mind becomes a jumbled mess. My body moves without thought.

Before I can stop myself, my arms reach out and drag the body closer. No. My body ignores the thought and pulls the arm of the corpse closer. No. I pull up the sleeve of the robe. NO! NO! The arm is raised to my mouth. My conscience screams murder, but my instinct crushes it like a bug. My mouth closes and cannot pierce fully. I swing my head and pull, ripping a chunk out of the hobgoblin's arm. Without hesitation, I chew once, twice, then swallow.

Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings. The texture is horrible. The sight is revolting. But the taste. The taste is amazing. All of my favorite sauces mixed into one. My teeth fail to bite all the way through. How can iron taste so good? It feels like knives travel down my throat as the chunk of flesh moves through the dry passage of my neck. But the only thing I can think of is the loss of flavor. My body is relentless.

I bite down and rip off another piece. I chew once. Then swallow. Like a ravenous wolf, I devour the mage's arm piece by piece. Blood flows down my chin and neck like a river, drenching my shirt. My mouth doesn't become half empty before I take another bite. Eventually, my teeth can't reach between the bones to get more. I pull the body over and draw up another sleeve, revealing the thing's other arm. For several more minutes, I rip, chew, and swallow my way through the arm. Exhaustion builds, slowly but surely.

I lay back on the cobblestone, still chewing as my eyes slowly bring me back to the depths of my own consciousness. For the second time in one day, my grimy eyes open slowly. Once again, the first thing I feel upon waking is the aching agony from my wounds. I try to speak and command to numb the pain, but my cheeks are full of food. The memory hits like a bolt of lightning. Twisting over to my side and wincing in pain, I spit out the bloody meat.

My eyes take me down to my shirt, dried blood crusted from my lips to my waist. Nausea sets in quickly, but I hold it down until I can speak.

"Kevin, don't vomit." The relieving feeling of my bile lowering is followed by a rising sense of panic.

"Kevin, don't be traumatised." Once again, the command sounds silly, but stomping out the rising panic attack calms me. My body falls back to the cobblestone ground in relief, while wincing and hissing in pain.

"Kevin, don't feel pain." I rub my eyes as I sigh. I think I've been asleep longer than I've been awake since I got here. The sight of the ripped-apart hobgoblin in front of me makes my stomach churn, but not nearly as much as my own actions. I didn't even cook it. In the end, it was my fault. There was an assumption that the mana would cover the nutrient cost of healing flesh. Clearly, I was wrong. Health. [Health: 305(101)] At least I know it worked. Time. [6. 89 cycles until next phase] What was it last time?

Like 7. 06? I do the math quickly in my head. Ten hours. Probably the shortest coma I've had so far. Grunting, I get off the floor, not enjoying my severe weakness. Before leaving the room, I gather all of the bread from the fallen hobgoblins and open the rewards chest. [You have discovered a reward] [Accept(13) / Bank / Consolidate] [Heal Tame(lv. 0) > (lv. 1)] Even in a weakened state, my greed grows alongside my smile as I press consolidate once more.

"I'd better get a reward that turns my shit into diamonds when this all finishes." Slowly, I trudge my way out of the room and through the hallway back to my home base. The journey feels far longer than usual. Which makes sense considering I'm two-thirds the way to death, apparently. Mana. [Mana: 260] Sweet, I thought it would take longer to refill. With this, I know it takes at most ten hours for my mana to completely regenerate. Eventually, I make it to the wooden door in joy.

I push it open, close it behind myself, then plop down against the wall. My jerky and bread supply sit silently next to me. Before I close my eyes to start another round of healing, I look down at the two handaxes still stuck in my shoulder and chest. Without thinking too much, I reach up and pull the axe out of my shoulder. It comes out with a weak amount of force and starts oozing blood slowly. I could wrap it to stop the bleeding, but with my new and improved bleed immunity, I decide to ignore it.

Besides, it will level the skill, and the healing will stop it soon anyway. I turn to the other axe in my chest and frown. This one wasn't a clumsy strike from a mage, this was a calculated swing from a warrior. Only saved by my quick reactions and some heavy lifting from my enhanced skeleton. I have to pull much harder this time, like removing a hatchet that's stuck in a log. It does eventually pop out, and with far more blood than the other wound.

I stuff a couple of bloody, used bread sashes into the wound before sighing with relief. Closing my eyes, I return to the mana in my body. Which, for some reason, has been manifested as a bathroom with a drain. Regardless, I continue sweeping the water into the drain mindlessly. When I'm finished, thirteen minutes later, I'm prepared. Hunger and thirst strike my core, and I rip into the meager bread and jerky in front of me.

After I finish, I get to my feet and make my way to the large bowl of water in the fifth tutorial room. The dirty water is still not my favorite, but I've long since stopped caring. Filled up and happy, I return to the main room. When I sit down again, I can't help but think of how delicious hobgoblin flesh was. Naturally, I was starving heavily at the time, which probably had a massive effect on it. Unless…

Unless hobgoblins are some kind of delicacy that I was simply not aware of, and the situation awoke a new desire. And there is a lot more hobgoblin meat to go around compared to jerky and bread… I shake my head to remove the intrusive thought. Without much else to do, I stare at my mana, counting the seconds to measure full recovery time. At 117 seconds, it goes up by one point. Another 112 seconds and it goes up again. About eight hours to recover my full mana bar.

Every full mana bar equals a sixth of my health when converted with my new healing skill. Four-sixths remaining. Thirty-two hours, minus natural health regeneration. A groan leaks from my throat. I forgot my mana is already full, plus the skill levels up, making things quicker.

"Ughh." I rub my eyes and flop on the ground. Anyway, it'll be under a day till I'm good as new. A long time to do nothing, but it sure as hell beats the weeks it would have taken with only natural regeneration, I take the cloth out of my chest and squeeze the muscles together. Wish I had stitches right now. I'd hate to fully heal and find a canyon in my flesh because it didn't heal properly. I tie several makeshift bandages together and wrap them around my wounds, forcing them closed.

Shutting my eyes, I retreat to the bathroom of my mana core to continue sweeping. I spend thirteen minutes enjoying myself in the menial work. Eventually, the mana runs dry. When I open my eyes, my body jerks upright, and I immediately tear into the jerky and bread like an animal. With my hunger sated, I jog over to the stone bowl and greedily suck in water. After I finish filling myself with the dirty liquid, I briefly consider washing my clothes and body in the water.

No, it's not worth tainting my only source of hydration. Doing the second best thing, I wet a couple of clean bread sashes and wipe my body down. Dang, I'm really going to stink when I meet new people in the party phase. Of course, there's no guarantee of meeting other people then, but the system has been pretty clear so far. Can't have a party with only one person, not to mention parties from RPGs and stuff.

There's a non-zero chance that my party is made of animals or goblins, but I don't think that will be the case. When I finish cleaning myself, I make my way back to the wooden door. I pick up a loose, bloody axe that I pulled out of myself as I walk by. Health. [Health: 305(154)]"Hahah! Sweet!" A satisfied smile appears on my face as I exit my home base. I whistle as I move through the large hallway to the room I almost just died in. Taking in the scene as I enter, I walk towards the hobgoblin warriors.

Picking through the corpses, I equip two greaves, ditching the old one I have that's worse in condition. Additionally, I put on two knee guards and shoulder guards. I would like to put on the forearm guards as well, but sadly, my gauntlets would get in the way and take up the same space. If only I had a chestplate, or even something lower for my privates I wince as I imagine a hobgoblin kicking me in the groin. Shaking my head, I knock my knuckles on my new armor with a smile.

I don't think I have taken an attack on my armor yet. Even that blade trap I stepped into happened to hit my only unarmored leg. Damn, that was unlucky. I'll be able to fight far more confidently with a full set. Just gotta pick it off the bodies I kill. Psyching myself up, I exit the room and continue walking down the smaller corridor. Just scouting this time. Absolutely no fighting this time until I'm healed. Just a peek, then I'm off to recover.... Unless…