I am warm.
And full.
So then…
Why do I feel like something is wrong…?
And, since when had my bed been this, sticky? Or damp?
Or smelling of blood?
Suddenly I become intimately, aware of the suffocating stench of blood practically imprinted onto my nostrils.
I flinch and jerk back from the smell, only for my hearing to come back and for it to be welcomed by the sound of my thrashing in a thick liquid…
It was then that I remembered I had eyes and with notable effort, I open them to what was either a pitch black void, or a cavern of some kind…
It was only then that the memories of the past come back to haunt me.
Now having a fairly clear understanding of where I was, I slumped and began to analyze the fight.
'It went pretty well until that last bit with the whole, plunging into it, why didn't we run, again?' A passionately stupid part started up first.
'Oh, right, the system…' they trailed off with a bit of reluctance.
'It could have gone better, all things considered, not to say we didn't prepare but really, we could have gone for the back of the neck, we really didn't need to do something that gross...' it was a more arrogant part who spoke next.
'My question is, where did it come from?' An inquisitive voice asked, which had the rest of my head pausing in thought
'It had the bloodlust to be a Beast of a Tide, but how did it get to our cabin?' A preppy voice extrapolated on the question with his own.
'And where… were the warning bellows to warn of a Tide's coming…' something wise added onto it all with another substantial question.
'The town might be in danger!' It was a voice that bled with innocence, who proclaimed the conclusion they had all been dreading.
'Even if we hadn't fallen off a cliff, the towns full of people plenty stong enough to protect itself, as it has for years before us.' A voice with some firmness to it spoke up for the first time in a while.
'She's right, we have bigger things to worry about,' Red stated with certainty.
Right, let's get up then.
And with that, I opened my eyes again, and tried to move, only to find my body incredibly sore and achey but luckily, not broken.
Disregarding the pain, I crawl out of the hole I made and move to my left, to -what I'm pretty sure is the direction of the mouth?
Only to find that the path is much more of a tight squeeze than it was when I got here, it would seem that not all that much time had passed if rigor mortis was still in effect, this is gunna be uncomfortable…
And in just a few minutes of inching through fresh corpse flesh I managed to make it through to the jaws, only to find that due to the state the body was in, the jaws couldn't open, and on top of that, the tongue was forcing itself up to the roof of the mouth, leading to a blocked off exit… so I shift around and head for the stomach, and the hole I made there.
- - - -
After another long crawl through the bears innards, I made it to that cavern it called a stomach. Only to find myself shivering at the sheer chill that was brought from a gust of wind from the outside. It would seem the beast had fallen on it's side when it fell.
I scuttle back from the cold, But then think better of it, and instead drag some of the fish carcasses to the hole, to block the the wind…
It is then, in a relatively safe and windless environment that I place my attention on the system that has been trying to get my attention this whole time.
[Ding]
[quest system activated: EMERGENCY QUEST: DIRE TROUBLE:
OBJECTIVE: Run or fight?: COMPLETE.
REWARD: random E-rank reward: COMPLETE.
SECRET REWARD: learn to endure. There is more to the body than enhancement magic: COMPLETE.
SECRET REWARD: complete objective without going down to half mana reserves: FAILED.
Eat. It's. Heart. Fresh. And. Still. Beating.: COMPLETE.
Retrieving random E-rank reward…
Retrieving secret reward (1)…
Analyzing body for gains from personal sacrifice…
Process will take thirty minutes…]
…
I blink at the board dimly lighting the small cavern of meat I was had decided to sit in…
"Sacrifice board." I say in a dead tone
[ding.] it indicates it's attention.
"What exactly did I put in my body..?"
[the. Item. Details. are. being. retrieved. in. Twenty. Nine. Minutes. Fifty. Four. Seconds.]
Ah. I see…
"So, just for my state of mind. There wasn't anything, unhealthy, about eating that heart raw?"
[no. It. would. have. been. downgraded. To. F. Rank. If. There. Was. A. possibility. Of. Desease. Or. More. Risk. Than. Was. Originally. Stated. And. the. Sacrifice. Board. Automatically. Filters. out. F. Rank. Items.]
That's a relief…
"So, F-ranks are deadly, or trash?"
[Ding.] the chalk board changes to say something new
[Usually.] it simply states.
I blinked at the new information given from the board, that's good to know, not really applicable but any knowledge is good.
Shaking my head I decided to shift some of the fish carcasses to the side so I could get a better look at the outside.
…
And to my astonishment, what greeted my eyes was the view of a seemingly endless flat plane of pure white sand, under another seemingly endless tapestry of unfiltered night sky. Except for the moon, of course, which hung In the very center like a work of art.
In that moment I suddenly knew exactly where I was.
I'm in the damned Grand Mana Zone of Hail!
Known to the townsfolk as Dyfen Hagol.
Of course, that's just the old way of saying it, the name people use nowadays would be, the Desert of Hail.
And all of that ivory sand-esque stuff? Yeah, that's all hail, all of it is hail. The only reason that this wasn't an impossible situation is simply due to the sheer cold here, there isn't really a chance for air to get any real push behind it, since it's all getting pushed downward and killed off, and therefore, there most likely wouldn't be any sudden hale storms…
Or, that's what I thought at least, but from the rather violent gusts of wind still trying to invade the inside of the bear, that might not be true.
But the real danger of this place, is the extreme instability…
Let's just say there used to be teams of people dedicated to searching for the source of the Tides, that had been eaten by this hail for stepping in the wrong spot.
The moment was then ruined by the incredibly loud noise of the sudden post mortem bowel expelling of the dire bear I was standing in…
Getting back on track, it's not like this place is safe, in fact it's probably one of the worst places to be trapped in.
For context. The Grand Mana Zone of ice, snow, and hail, as it is collectively known, is split into three 'territories' technically, it's three grand mana zones of very similar concepts.
There's the most dangerous, the Desert of Hail. The second most dangerous, the Rolling Hills of Snow. And the least dangerous, the Illick Mountain range.
Well, I say least dangerous, but that's a misnomer, they are all dangerous, it's just you get the most warning from the mountains…
Fun fact: the mountains are where the town gets all of it's rare metal to sell, since there is an actual mountain range under all that ice.
…
So, all that aside, how am I going to get out of here..?
Hmm…
I'm still not fully recovered on mana, and my body is similarly not in hard movement condition…
So, I'll just do a bit of scouting… see if I can't find out just how big that cliff we fell off was…
- - - -
As I skitter back into the belly of the beast, I shiver as I shove the fish in place and go and sit at the far end of the stomach…
…
The, cliff face…
Was… I don't know how large, other than it was a like a wall of sheer icy rock spanning so far up that it looked practically impossible to climb…
Just looking at it reminded me of my old fear of heights…
I doubt that in my current condition, I would be able to get up even one quarter of it. On top of that. Stopping at all here, even with a mana skin, means that the hail below is going to start to stick to what ever is on it…
Luckily I had my mana skin extra thick down at my feet, because I am of course, barefoot…
What do I do…?
'Wait…' a part of them said, starting to get an idea.
'The three parts of the grand mana zone. Their connected, Right?' Said the side who was getting somewhat of an idea.
'Yeah, so?' Rebuked a one of the sides needlessly.
'Hey fuck you! Say that to my face you bastard rat!' Said a side who doesn't even know how to insult someone correctly…
'Soo that means that we can travel between them! And the town has direct access to Illick!, and that means, all we have to do is get there and we'll get home!'
'Huh, that's actually a good point…' said a side finally understanding the plan. And with that, the panic begins to subside.
'But wait, if we weren't able to stand still for a little bit in all that hail, wouldn't that mean we would have to run across the entire desert in one go..?' Said a side with a good point.
'Hmm… not necessarily…' said one side, projecting a mental image of probably the worst plan they could've made…
'Your not suggesting..!' Said another part, with a slowly creeping giddiness.
And with the mental image of the basic part of the plan in mind. My head snaps upwards, excited to get to work.
(I was a bit delirious at the time, so the idea seemed much better then…)
Only to be met with a system board, had it already been thirty minutes..?
[DING]
[FITTING REWARDS RETRIEVED.
ITEM NAME: ENSCRIBING KNIFE
ITEM RANK: E-RANK
ITEM DETAILS: ONCE THE PROPERTY OF A GREAT ENCHANTER, THIS WELL LOVED KNIFE CAN CARVE INTO ALMOST ANYTHING.
ITEM FUNCTION: PUSHING MANA INTO THE HILT WILL MAKE THE KNIFE SHARPER, AND ANYTHING THAT IS CARVED WHILE MANA CHARGED WILL BE FAR MORE RECEPTIVE TO THE MANA OF THE CASTER.
ITEM FLAW: WELL LOVED: THIS TOOL HAS BEEN USED FOR MORE YEARS THAN YOU HAVE BEEN ALIVE, AND THEREFORE IS MUCH MORE LIKELY TO BREAK.]
[SECRET REWARD: MANA SKIN MALLEABILITY - NOTABLE INCREASE.]
[sacrifice. Reward. Applying.
Item. Name.: FRESH DIRE BEAR HEART.
Item. Rank.: B-RANK.
Item. Activation. Requirements.: CONSUME ORALLY WHILE ORGAN IS STILL RAW.
Item. Function.: INCREASES THE NATURAL REGENERATION RATE OF USER TWO FOLD
Item. Description.: IT IS SAID THAT WITHIN THE BEATING HEART OF ALL MAGIC BEASTS LAY THE POTENTIAL FOR ONE TO GAIN A PORTION OF THAT BEAST'S POWER.
Item. Cost.: DOUBLE THE SPEED OF REGENERATION, DOUBLE THE NEED FOR PROTEIN, VITAMINS, FIBERS, AND WATER. POTENTIAL FOR PHYSICAL MUTATIONS.]
What the hell did it mean, 'potential for physical mutations' exactly?
It was as I was thinking about that last bit that I felt a sudden maddening ache in my lower torso.
I only slightly acknowledged the knife now embedded in the stomach lining, too focused on the sheer pain coursing out from my organs and through to my bloodstream.
I was bent over clutching my stomach then writhing at the pain, then curling up into a ball.
It was like thousands of mealworms had infested my veins and were eating me from the inside out.
At the same time it felt like my every muscle was made out of white hot steel, and burning my every nerve.
I didn't even notice that I had started to emit steam, nor when I started to cry from the pain, not even when, only moments later, those tears also evaporated…
It was around then that I fell into a blessed unconscious as my body was forcefully altered by the sacrifice of the bear heart.
- - - -
I tried to make this one longer, I think it worked!
I hope you like the idea of the triple grand mana zone, cuz, we're gonna be here for a while…
Thank you for reading! Just wait until next time, when Shepard begins the journey back to town in unfortunately the only way she can think of…
Edit: just a few modifications, the first conversation between the parts of Shepard's mind was a bit too, much for now, we'll get to what they talked about eventually.
(Edit edit, forgot that I hadn't revealed the organization style yet, sorry about that)
Hope you liked the chapter.