Feral
Mike had no idea how long he'd been unconscious, but seeing as he wasn't being blinded by sunlight when he woke up, he guessed that it must have been nighttime.
He lay there for a few seconds as he tried to make sense of his surroundings. That's when the pain hit, and he suddenly remembered everything that happened.
With a groan, he rolled on his back and stared up. The ravine was quite deep, at least 50 meters, and the jagged rock from the edges obscured his vision, stopping him from seeing the sky properly.
He took a few breaths before raising his head to inspect his body, wincing in the process.
He'd been... in better conditions, to say the least.
His shirt was almost completely blown off, and the skin beneath had been burned pretty badly. He guessed that they were 2-degree burns since they hurt like hell.
Moreover, his chest felt uncomfortably tight, and there was a dull throbbing pain that definitely wasn't just from bruises.
'Definitely some broken ribs...' He thought as he dropped his head back down.
He raised his hands and looked at them as well. Similar to his upper body, they were burned pretty badly, but they weren't broken at the very least. His legs also felt operational for the most part, so it seemed like his torso had taken the brunt of the impact.
He just lay there for a while, considering his life choices.
'I should have just stayed home.' He thought. If he'd known this would have happened, he would have just done his usual stuff and scavenged in places he was familiar with.
'At least then, the chances of getting blown up by a ship's gun wouldn't happen. Why did I get shot at anyway? Did it see me as a threat?' He huffed internally. He truly wasn't happy with the turn of events. He had half a mind to curse Big Joe internally, but the man probably didn't know this would happen either, so Mike couldn't exactly blame him.
'Still, this sucks.' He sighed
He lay there for a few more minutes before grunting and rolling to his side before gradually pushing himself to his feet. Any sort of pressure on his chest hurt so much that his vision would start to get white spots whenever he applied said pressure, so he was determined to keep his chest as free as possible.
After lots of cursing and grunting, Mike got to his feet, then he immediately wobbled and leaned against the nearby wall. He felt a metallic taste in his mouth and coughed up something warm on his hands.
He couldn't see properly due to the darkness and his bad vision, but the metallic smell told him all he needed to know.
'Internal bleeding. Great.' He thought sarcastically and looked up before giving the ship he assumed to be above the middle finger. Who attacks someone for just standing there?
'Climbing isn't an option...' He sighed. He remembered the fall vividly and already knew that he wasn't gonna be able to climb out, especially in this condition.
He contemplated his choices for a moment, then he recalled that the ravine stretched out quite far in one direction.
'If it slopes upward naturally, I could probably get pretty close to the surface.' He mused as he closed his eyes and remembered his orientation before he started walking.
Each step hurt like hell, and he had to clench his teeth to stop himself from grunting every five seconds. Eventually, he turned off his thoughts as his mind was constantly filled with desires to just stop walking and rest. He knew that if he stopped walking, he probably wouldn't get up again.
He quickly lost track of time as he walked, his sole focus on getting out.
He thought he heard explosions in the distance. But those could also just be from the banging in his head, so he ignored them.
He had no idea if he had walked for a few minutes or hours, but after a while, he paused as he saw something odd.
A light source.
A low, almost imperceptible glow lay ahead of him, and he had to blink a few times to ensure that he wasn't hallucinating.
'Why would there be a light source? Natural light perhaps?' Driven by curiosity and desperate for anything that wasn't the same never-ending darkness, he walked towards the glow.
What he found was a crack in the ravine wall, barely wide enough for a person to fit through. The glow was brighter deeper inside.
'I heard that sometimes, there can be underground spaces that have vegetation in them, and they sometimes give off light. What was it called again? Bio... lumi-something. There can't be vegetation without water, so there could be water in there.' The thought of water was quite appealing at the moment, saying he was parched at the moment was an exaggeration, and he needed all the strength he could get.
Then again, drinking water from an underground source probably wasn't the smartest choice, but he lacked choices at the moment, so what could one do?
He teased himself into the crack and slowly slipped into it. He'd been prepared for it to grow more and more narrow, but to his surprise, after crossing a certain threshold, the crack started to widen, and he had an easier time passing through until he suddenly found himself in a large chamber with intense blue light.
He had to shield his eyes as he waited for them to adjust to the sudden light after being in darkness for who knows how long, and when he recovered, he was caught off-guard by what he saw.
It was a sort of circular underground chamber that had a ceiling about 10 meters tall and was almost 20 meters in diameter. Needless to say, it was quite large. The walls had carvings of what looked like wolves and moons. Each wolf was large, some were large, others smaller, and above each wolf was a moon. Some were crescent moons, others were half moons, and some were full moons.
However, what caught Mike's attention was the altar in the center of the chamber. Or rather, what was once the chamber.
A large wolf statue sat there. It was carved so expertly that it looked like it truly was alive. It was made of some sort of white material that looked like porcelain, but also not quite.
Mike felt a little intimidated by the statue as it felt as though it was looking right at him with blue gemstones for eyes.
But the most eye-catching thing was what sat in the mouth of the wolf, and it took Mike a few seconds to make sure he wasn't dreaming.
A fist-sized blue orb sat in the mouth of the wolf, and judging by the light it gave off, it was responsible for the brightness in the chamber. Faint white wisps also swam within the orb.
'A-An... Ability orb...' He identified with genuine shock. Shock which quickly turned into elation.
Ability orbs were rare. Incredibly rare.
In fact, most of the population that possessed abilities came from people who were descendants of individuals who had received ability orbs during the Bestowal.
These people were usually part of some prominent family or something similar. But in general, most ability users were in a centralized group, and the chances of gaining an ability when one wasn't born with it were so astronomically low that it might as well not even be mentioned.
But here was Mike, staring at an ability orb.
He didn't even know when his legs carried him across the room and onto the altar. By the time he came to, he was standing right in front of the menacing wolf statue.
Upon closer inspection, the detail of the statue was truly immaculate. Every strand of fur was done to perfection, the face on the wolf looked almost too realistic, and Mike felt like its eyes were filled with pride, almost.
Then his eyes dropped to the orb in its mouth. His heart raced as he stared at it. He remembered that ability orbs, if touched directly, would automatically go inside the person who touched them. The exception to this was someone who already had an ability as their body would reject it. So for anyone who didn't have an ability, the best way to carry it would be to use something else to transport it.
Suddenly, Mike's vision blurred and he stumbled. He felt more blood bubble up from his throat and he coughed it up, the red liquid drenching his chest as he was suddenly hit with a wave of weakness.
He swayed and reached forward to grab the statue for support, but he just happened to put his hand into its mouth and touch the ability orb. As soon as his hand made contact, it turned into motes of light that seeped into his body.
That wasn't all, though, as he collapsed and felt his vision start to fade. He vaguely heard loud blasts pretty close to him, but he also heard a faint 'Ding' noise. But before he could dwell on it, he lost consciousness.
As soon as he lost consciousness, a strange phenomenon occurred.
As soon as the ability orb entered his body, all the carvings in the walls suddenly lit up. The eyes of the various wolves shone with colors, and the moons above them followed suit.
These lights shot out of them and entered Mike's body like a tide, and once this was finished, the previously immaculately looking carvings suddenly looked old and aged, with cracks surrounding them
A moment later, the large wolf statue also turned into a ray of light and entered his body.
Shortly after, a large blast sounded as a large hole was blasted into the wall.
The room was immediately filled with dust, and lights from torches as several figures emerged. But they weren't humans.
Towering muscular scaled bodies with varying colors, long reptilian snouts instead of simple flat mouths, circular holes for ears, slitted pupils, and long, whip-like tails trailing behind them.
Each one wore special armor as the group of five Lizardmen entered the chamber.
They spoke to each other in a strange language that had lots of slithering, their long forked tongues flicking out from time to time.
A prominent feature each one possessed was a singular spike that stood on the backs of their heads.
They spotted the unconscious Mike on the ground, but instead of attempting to harm him, one of the Lizardmen moved forward and grabbed him, effortlessly slinging him over its shoulder as it nodded to its companions.
They all left the hole they had created and began to leave the ravine.
However, just before reaching the surface, they heard a growl, followed by a gurgling noise.
They paused and turned to looked at their companion with wide eyes.
The Lizardman was frozen as a large maw was clamped over its throat. Where once there was Mike, there was now a towering, hulking figure that nearly dwarfed the Lizardmen both in height and muscle.
An air of pure ferocity emanated from the bipedal wolf-like creature as with a jerk, it ripped out most of the Lizard's throat in a single motion.
Blood sprayed everywhere as the Lizardmen stared in shock. Their shock then turned to rage as they pulled up their weapons while one of them had faint green wisps of energy leak from their body as they rushed forward to attack the massive creature.