Chapter 131: Hypothermia (Patreon)

Chime

The dungeon's cool air burns against my inflamed skin. My legs tremble, and I fall to my knees. 

A well of life blooms in my chest. Energy enters my muscles. My mind speeds up. My vision becomes just a little more clear. Muscles ripple under my skin, reinforcing themselves and growing stronger.

The spike in my stats makes me gasp, only for my breath to get cut off by blood. Falling to my knees, I cough and splatter blood against the ground.

The redness and inflammation fade into a whitish-purple near my elbows. The situation is the same around my ankles, all sensation gone from my feet.

I deform both gauntlets, freeing my hands. They hold the same color as my feet and hang limply.

With One Mind/Two Bodies still active, I turn my attention inward.

The blood in my veins churns through my torso, but ignores my limbs. Half of my ribs are broken, and three of them are bent inward, stabbing into my left lung. Blood rushes through the tears left by my ribs, filling the insides.

“Kevi–” I bend down and hack out more blood.

“Kevin, stop using your left lung and close it off–” I hardly finish before more blood chokes me out.

My coughing fit continues, gradually weakening as less blood leaks out of my wounded lung. Only half my chest expands with each breath.

It feels… wrong. 

Pushing to my feet, I stumble out of the room and toward the hallway. My ankles don’t listen, but the command supports me. Lifeless feet drag against the cobblestone as I turn down the hallway and step into my room. Several times, I step on the side of my foot, twisting both my ankles.

I fall against the sink and push myself into the shower. My hand comes up, but smacks against the knob uselessly. I extend my neck and turn the valve with my teeth, sending cold water raining down on me.

Droplets that hit my bracer flash-freeze, while those that hit my body sizzle and dissolve into steam.

My gaze locks onto my hands and feet as I hold them under the water, which slowly gets warmer. Minutes go by, and the water stops freezing against my bracers.

But the ends of my limbs don’t recover.

The last dregs of my mana flow into Heal Companion, leaving my mana current empty.

When I look inside, blood still refuses to enter and circulate.

“Kevin, circulate blood through your entire body.” I huff, leaning against the glass shower wall.

I can almost feel my veins open as blood rushes in. Steadily, my hands and feet lose their purple coloring. Relief floods through me as I slump down and sigh.

“Kevin, stop making an absurd amount of body heat.”

The deathly cold recedes from my arms, escaping to the rest of my body.

When it moves deep enough, my heart stutters.

My eye snaps open, and I lurch up, grabbing my chest. When the cold reaches the center, my heart stutters. The weight of the world presses down on my chest as my heart spasms inside.

Terror fills my mind as my breaths quicken. I try to stand, but my body only half-listens, and I fall.

My head crashes into the wall, sending shards of ceramic tile falling over me.

Darkness creeps into the edge of my vision, and my eyelid droops.

“Kevin… don’t die.”

My eye slowly opens to an inky sky devoid of everything.

The pain is gone.

The tightness, the heat, the cold. All gone.

My mind is empty, but my body fights.

My arms flail against the current dragging me downward.

Why did I give that command?

It’s so peaceful. So…

Relieving.

This time, I don’t rise.

My body battles the inevitable, and this time, it loses.

The current is stronger than last time.

It’s too powerful.

It makes me happy.

Knowing that I won’t have to suffer anymore.

My body descends, fighting like hell.

But it’s useless.

I just wish… I had a little more time.

The deeper I go, the slower my thoughts become.

The weaker my body becomes.

Oppressive darkness moves in, clouding my view of the surface.

Then, I stop.

No, please.

Don’t make me go back.

Please.

An invisible force reaches down, and my body grasps for it.

My ethereal hands grip it, and I’m ripped upward.

The pressure of the ocean pushes against me as my body gleefully holds on.

My body greets the surface with open arms.

The world flies at me.

Then, I breach.

My eye snaps open, and I gasp for air. The aches and pains of my body come crashing back. Strain returns to my arms and shoulders, and the unnatural pain in my chest is as usual.

But the pressure is gone. My heart feels fine.

A single droplet of red falls onto my face, making me look up. 

Thick, dark blood mixed with tiny chunks of flesh cover every inch of the glass shower walls. The chaos leads to the ceiling, where there’s a circular splatter of the same thing. Small plates of bone peek through the mess, slowly sliding downward.

“What the fuck?” I turn left and right, but no spot is untouched.

I lower my gaze, and the sight makes fear creep down my spine.

Instead of burn scars, my chest is covered in bulbous tumors.

One Mind/Two Bodies

Things are even worse inside.

Instead of the complex muscle groups shaped over millions of years, my chest is a mess of chaotic muscle fibers. Each strand weaves around the others haphazardly, with no regard for continuity.

There’s no clean line between my lungs and the connecting tissue. Like the work of a novice welder, my left lung is awkwardly malformed between the gaps in my bones. 

My ribcage looks just like my lung. The fractures have healed exactly as they were, some running diagonally or vertically across other ribs. fit together perfectly over my abdomen, but those near my chest are a jumbled mess, some lying sideways and others on top of one another.

It’s all wrong.

What the hell happened to me?

System, resources.

[Health: 3017]

[Mana: 2432(47)]

[Stamina: 4034(621)]

I…

I’m full health.

How?

I was dying, and I’d just used all my mana.

I don’t think my health was too low, because I felt pretty good, even though I somehow had a heart attack.

Again, I lower my gaze to my lumpy chest.

Can I even call this healing?

I take a deep breath, and it feels normal. My chest still feels strange, but my lungs work fine, malformed as they are.

I rise carefully beneath the still-running shower, letting the hot water wash away the blood. In awe, I inspect myself. 

Everything else seems normal. The burn scars are still there, but that’s expected.

Minutes pass as I try and fail to process what happened.

System, show me everything.

[   Primary Objective: Completed   ]

[   Secondary Objective: Completed   ]

[   Title Upgraded: (IX) Solo Stomper > (MAX+++) Solo Stomper   ]

[   (MAX+++) Solo Stomper   ]

[   Awarded to users who have completed the Exfiltration section of the System’s tutorial for new galaxies   ]

[   (+) Finished with 0.1 cycles left in the solo phase   ]

[   (+) Finished with 0.25 cycles left in the solo phase   ]

[   (+) Finished with 0.5 cycles left in the solo phase   ]

[   Grants a 13% increase to all stats   ]

[   You have earned: 1 (MAX+++) Exfiltration Crate   ]

[   Accept / Bank   ]

Oh.

I see.

That’s where the rush of stats came from after I returned.

Thirteen percent doesn’t sound like a lot, but it applies to everything.

I sure as hell can’t complain. The plus marks stop at half a cycle, but it’s safe to assume that I could’ve earned more for finishing quicker. The next bonus probably appears at one cycle, but I’m happy.

Really, really happy.

[   You have slain (IV) Frost Troll lv. 07   ]

[   Partial experience granted x2   ]

[   Companionship Pact Leader (lv. 43) > (lv. 45)   ]

[   Class upgrade selection available   ]

[   Excess experience banked   ]

[    (II) High Human (lv. 28) > (lv. 30)   ]

[   Species evolution selection available   ]

[   Excess experience banked   ]

A smile pulls itself onto my face, which quickly grows into a grin.

It’s finally here.

After so long, I’ll have the chance to become more than I am.

I want to read more, but my stomach is throwing a tantrum. Once I finish showering, I unhook the showerhead and wash the horrifying scene off the walls. The dark blood leaks through the drain, leaving behind small chunks of meat and tiny plates of bone.

Ugh.

It’s like the drain protector after doing dishes.

Nasty.

Back in my room, I find the single pair of bloody clothes I left here earlier. Shrugging, I take them to the shower and wash them off. They’re still wet when I put them on, but I couldn't care less.

Almost dying has a way of raising your tolerance for discomfort.

Reaching over my back, I pull my backpack off.

At least, what used to be a backpack. The shoulder straps are fine, and a couple inches of leather flaps hang in good condition, but the rest is gone.

And it’s not just ripped off. It’s cut with machine-like precision. The troll didn’t strike me as something with dexterity, and the tortoise people didn’t seem malicious enough to do this.

Maybe it was Stasis?

I quickly sift through my status and pull up the skill’s description.

[   Stasis   ]

[   Select a duration to hide between dimensions after anchoring to anything. Regeneration rate of health, stamina, and mana increases between dimensions. The user will not experience the flow of time when in this state. Regeneration rate scales with skill level.   ]

Hm. It’s a bit vague.

It says I ‘hide’ between dimensions, but what counts as ‘me’?

Not the backpack, clearly. 

But the skill didn’t treat my weapons the same way. They still look fine.

…

Eh, I’ll test it out later, unless I forget.

I’ll probably forget.

Just to be safe, I won’t use Stasis while someone else is touching me. Unless it’s an enemy, of course. They’re practically made for testing skills on.

As I walk down to the kitchen, I continue reading from the floating screen.

[   Empower Suggest Companion (lv. 18) > (lv. MAX)   ]

[   Skill upgrade available   ]

Well, that’s a good start.

The greedy side of me wants to open the upgrade screen, but the rational side tells me to wait. Food will clear my mind so I won’t make any rash decisions.

“You know what? System, remove the little level signifier from skill level-ups,” I say to the air.

The text on the screen shifts and shrinks slightly, making me smile.

It never hurts to optimize my interface.

[   One Mind/Two Bodies (14) > (16)   ]

It looks strange, but that’s probably because I’m used to how it looked before.

I’m sure I’ll warm up to it.

[   Danger Detection (9) > (11)   ]

[   Companion’s Assistance (7) > (8)   ]

[   Efficient Heal Companion (13) > (18)   ]

Okay, now THAT is weird.

I healed during the fight, but I sure as hell didn’t do enough for five skill level-ups.

I’m so confused.

My eye narrows and I stroke my chin as I think. The only explanation would be the way I had survived in the shower after my heart attack.

So I guess the source is Heal Companion… somehow?

The thing is, I was out of mana.

And Heal Companion doesn’t repair me in the strange, chaotic way my chest got healed. Something’s missing, and I have no clue what it is.

I bet a warrior wouldn’t have to deal with all this.

[   High Human’s Enduring Musculature (5) > (6)   ]

[   Reinforced Skeleton (16) > (19)   ]

[   Stasis (2) > (3)   ]

[   Bleed Immunity (19) > (MAX)   ]

[   Bleed Immunity > Bleed Nullity   ]

[   Bleed Nullity   ]

[   Greatly reduces internal and external blood loss. Greatly speeds up the process of hemostasis. Grants moderate resistance to all harmful effects ‌which manipulate the user’s blood. Harmful effect resistance scales with fortitude. Hemostasis, harmful effect resistance, and bleed resistance scale with skill level.   ]

Not many changes from Bleed Immunity, except better value. Also, it used to list a bunch of stuff that it resisted, but now it just says ‘all harmful effects’, which seems to be the only new part of the skill.

I don't give the Bleeding skill line much credit, but Bleed Resistance was my first species skill. That alone proves how much I rely on it. There have been dozens of situations where I would’ve panicked and rushed for healing if Bleed Resistance hadn’t had my back.

It’s not my coolest or most powerful skill, but it’s there every time I need it.

If I had to choose a skill to lose, Bleed Nullity would be one of the last choices.

Right behind Control Tame and Danger Sense.

Danger Sense, of course, is at the number one spot.

I love you, Danger Sense.