"Oh, I… didn't die?"
Once again, he woke up, only this time he lay face down on a bed of grass.
James rolled over and sat up, or at least he tried to. Only to find he didn't have any strength in his body.
All he managed was a feeble jerk, like freshly chopped meat's postmortem muscle spasms.
"Heh, it sure was fun to poke those squishy and twitchy pieces of meat. But seriously, the hell's happening to me?"
There was no way he could forget how he dragged his dying body through the ground in such a humiliating way.
But that's just the thing, he couldn't feel pain; it felt as if he were drugged with an almost lethal dose.
With his limbs remaining heavy and unresponsive, James was left with one option.
"I've never taken such a long, close look at soil before. But now that I'm staring at it… It's kinda interesting. These grains of soil, don't they look like the ones Mom used in her garden?"
That's right. Yapping.
Just like when he was lonely after a long day at work, talking to himself was one of the main reasons he stayed sane for so long.
"Soil, huh… It's really brown when I look at it closer."
The moment those words left his lips, he could feel something.
*Thump*
"Hmm? What was that? Did something happen?"
For a moment, something stirred inside him, a strange and foreign feeling, one he had never experienced in his whole 27 years of life on earth.
Then, in just a moment, that sensation vanished.
There was nothing he could do about it; he could only let out a long sigh before he yapped again.
"What was that white tiger doing anyway? Leaving a half-dead prey just like that? I'm sure it chased after me, right? So why am I still alive then?"
Was he still alive, or was he already in the afterlife? Why did the tiger leave him alone after basically crippled him? So many questions left unanswered.
He recalled a saying that, to answer such questions, recounting what had happened was crucial. So, that's what he did.
"Let's recount it then. First of all, I got reincarnated in this forest."
*thump*
Again, the same feeling as before filled his chest. This time it was louder, as if his heart was directly slamming against his chest.
"Well, I can't feel my body at all, but that feeling surely is in the approximate area of my chest."
*thump*
Once again, right after he finished his statement, another thumping in his chest could be felt.
By this point, he was convinced that the more he talked, the more this throbbing in his heart would happen.
He just hasn't figured out what the criterion was for this phenomenon to occur.
Another thing that came to mind was, what's the reason behind it?
"Maybe the structure I saw before is the cause? If so, then there's a chance that this is not a good thing. But there's also the possibility that it's a good thing."
This time, the throbbing didn't occur. Realizing that fact, James concluded.
First of all, the 'throbbing' won't occur when he is asking questions.
He closed his eyes, trying his best to remember what had happened to him so far.
"Alright, let's continue. Right after I opened my eyes, I shouted the word '—fair'."
*thump*
"There's a high possibility that this was to continue what I was about to say at that mysterious place."
Again, he felt that throbbing sensation right after one part of his statement; this time, when he opened his eyes, he could see the grains of the soil with more clarity.
The shape of the grains, the sharp and round edges, and even the shadows cast by each grain feel clearer and more distinct, as if he were looking at the soil before him with an expensive camera.
'Does this throbbing increase my eyesight? Why would it increase my eyesight when it starts from my chest, tho?'
"Anyway, this isn't the time to think about that. I have to focus on figuring out what the rule is for that phenomenon."
Shaking his head, he decided that there was no point in asking such a question. The only thing he could do now was to test it by trial and error.
Recounting his entire experience after his reincarnation and other tests, he determined a few rules for the mysterious throbbing in his chest area.
First, the speech must be a declarative statement that expresses a truth about reality as it is perceived or known at that moment. Questions or speculation do not trigger the 'throbbing'.
Second, when an untrue statement is spoken, no 'throbbing' occurs. In its place comes a sense of weakness. His sharpened vision abruptly dulled back to normal, and a faint headache pressed at his skull, as though something tried to break out of his head.
Third, when the speech is merely a repetition of what he had already said, or when the truth within the words has already been spoken before, no 'throbbing' occurs.
However, if he first lied and endured what he began to call the 'penalty'—the headache and loss of heightened vision— then the same statement could be spoken again, and the 'throbbing' would return.
Now that he had established the rules, James steeled himself.
The letter's words resurfaced in his mind: 'Unique Ability already Awakened'. Perhaps this 'throbbing' really was his UA.
So far, its effect remained unclear, but aside from the penalty, everything about it seemed positive enough.
After 'resetting' the throbbing with a lie, he began.
"Let's start again then. I got reincarnated. I spoke sarcastically to the mysterious 'Great True Immortal.' I threw the extraordinary Knife, and it struck a nearby tree. I put the food identifier ring on my right middle finger…"
On and on he went, stacking statements one after another. With each one, the throbbing in his chest grew heavier and stronger.
At some point, it stopped feeling like a heartbeat and more like a deep, warm current slowly filling his chest.
After a dozen or so declarations, the changes became undeniable. His vision sharpened to an unnatural degree, and his thoughts seemed to flow quicker than ever.
But more importantly, for the first time since he regained consciousness, he could feel it— the faint, muted feeling of his body.
Sensation gradually returned to his right arm and legs.
His left side, though, remained a hollow void; the only thing he could sense was the faint, prickling sensation at the base of his left arm.
By the time he reached the thirty-fourth statement, his mind felt as clear as the surface of the lake in the middle of spring. His eyesight? Clearer than it had ever been in his last life.
At this point, he also managed to stand up, and he looked around him.
"Ooh, I—"
James hurriedly stopped mid-sentence.
He was about to comment on how the construct in the distance resembled a tesseract, but the reminder from the tingling at his missing left arm and mangled leg brought his attention back to them.
Looking down, he could see the stump where his left arm was missing. And it looked like it's…
'... Regenerating? No, there's no way, I mean, that letter says that regeneration isn't my Unique Ability. Did the Great Immortal lie to me, or is there another power in effect?'
If his unique ability was regeneration, then what was the throbbing that appeared each time he spoke the truth?
Besides, there was a reason he stopped spamming statements; his intuition screamed that the next statement would break the numb state protecting him from the full agony of his injuries.
Not to mention, it was currently regenerating. So why would he deliberately choose to experience such misery when he could just wait for it to heal completely?
'Oh well…'
With that resigned thought, James lowered himself back to the ground and turned his gaze toward the construct in the distance.
He had called it a tesseract before, but upon observing it slowly, the shape didn't quite fit.
It wasn't a smaller cube suspended inside a larger one. Instead, it was three layers deep—an outer cube, an inner cube, and finally an inner-inner cube nested at the core.
'And in the innermost cube, there's something… burning? Is that a scroll? So, a burning scroll then?'
With nothing to do, he could only silently observe all around him. Of course, he had already walked away from the edge of the clearing he was currently in.
Who knows? Maybe the white tiger would suddenly appear once again.
Another thing to note would be the fact that the gray shirt and black pants he wore also regenerated.
It was pretty slow, about half as fast as his wound regeneration.
'But really, regeneration looked disgusting.'
He couldn't help but thought so when he looked properly at his regenerating stump. It was bubbling with meat and pieces of bone, occasionally visible.
'Eugh.'
James quietly looked away and silently watched the clear midday blue sky, the fluffy white clouds, and the bright, dark red sun…
"The sun... It's... not yellow..."
*Thump*
"Ohhh…"
He didn't even get to register what he had just said before everything rushed in.
The pain, the clarity of mind, and the heightened sensation flooded straight into his skull as though a dam had finally broken.
"GAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!"