Valentina didn't need additional context for my words.
She quickly rose from the floor and sat behind me, her slender palms pressing against my back.
"See, gay bestie, I don't understand what's happening, but it seems the blood I drew out is now affecting you."
I tightened my jaw.
'It hurts like hell.'
The pain was excruciating.
It felt as though my heart was trying to tear itself out of my chest.
But I had to endure it.
Just a little longer.
Argh…
I suppressed another strangled scream.
"Val, make sure my condition stays stable."
If it were anyone else, I would have hesitated to entrust them with my life. But this was Valentina.
She was a demonoid obsessed with my blood.
And as long as that obsession remained, I knew she wouldn't harm me.
I stretched out my trembling hand and emptied one bag of mana stones.
The bag resembled a pouch, holding thirty blue mana stones and twenty green ones.
In Meltonia, there were four types of mana stones:
Common, Normal, Rare, and Legendary.
The higher their rank, the harder they were to find in rifts.
Blue mana stones were Common grade, while Green ones were Normal.
With this pouch, I was confident I could form a core.
Holding two mana stones in my hand, I attempted to inject them into my body, but since I couldn't sense mana, they remained inert.
Valentina swiftly channeled mana into my hands, making the stones shimmer faintly.
Whoosh.
Like a rushing torrent, the mana surged into my arms.
Mmm…
I bit down on my lower lip so hard that blood trickled onto the ground.
The agony was unbearable.
Nothing in my life had ever felt so excruciating…
Not even my death.
Gradually my mind began to blur once more.
'Damnit…!'
I squeezed my eyes shut, cracks forming on my skin, as if the rampant energy was trying to find a way out.
Somehow, I could see inside my body—and it was chaos.
Purple codes drifted through me, colliding with serene blue ones.
Behind my formless spirit was a glitching wall—or rather, a membrane—encasing the space I occupied.
This was my body.
Those were the words I wanted to utter, but nothing left my lips.
The burning in my chest endured, but I forced my gaze forward.
I was Allen Park. No matter the agony I felt, I would never yield.
My nonexistent eyes scanned the projection of my body.
I immediately recognized the sight before me.
The wall was my body's firewall, and judging by its state, it had long been breached.
Or rather, someone had forced it open and sealed it shut again afterward.
My attention then shifted to the purple codes.
No god needed to explain what they were.
The most vile thing in any computer—viruses.
Someone had embedded a virus inside Allen's body, and it was slowly killing him from within.
The blue codes represented the operating system of my new body and the residual mana, still locked in a desperate struggle to resist.
And at the very center of the entire system was…
My core.
It was grotesque, covered in pulsating purple growths.
Yet beneath it all, a faint blue glow persisted.
It could be restored.
I could repair my body.
Though the pain still gnawed at me relentlessly…
I had finally discovered hope.