* * *
'Continue.'
He turned drowning into a metronome, his clock.
Fall.
Burn.
Cut.
Think. At least try to…
Seconds passed, so did minutes, definitely hours, days certainly.
It was worth pondering as to how someone else, who had this ability, would have managed it, this… Absolute Immortality.
'Thankfully, I am not 'someone else''
He did not sleep, he didn't need to, at least not in the way this body wanted to. Each time darkness rose to swallow him, he lit it with what he considered will and the trait, Absolute Immortality, never letting himself drift all the way out, not that he was afraid of death, but it was unnecessary for now.
Moreover, he could have sworn he brushed across one of his memories where the concept called Death was more beneath him than the ground before him.
'Continue.'
Now, he needed a measure, so he chose his heart, one of the most consistent things in the human body.
Days had passed, and adaptability did not fail him. He could manage subtle movements now, even faster than he would have on land.
He lay limply against a stone and started 'counting'. His heart assisted.
*THUD THUD.*
'One.'
*THUD THUD.*
'Two.'
…
He was learning to hold his breath for longer…
At first, he lost the count as soon as the pain of suffocation hit him. Even with Immortality, his body's panic was loud enough to blur his thinking.
So he trained that too.
Every time the feeling of suffocation sought to drown his thoughts, he would let the ache grow, but always force his inner voice to keep stepping over the constant hammering in his chest.
'Continue…'
'Seven. Eight. Nine—'
The urge to breathe became a claw raking at his throat.
'Continue…'
'Ten. Eleven. Twelve—'
At this point, his vision, which had sharpened over days, shrank to a grey tunnel.
He once again experienced the profound 'light at the end of the tunnel' even in this new world.
'Continue…'
'Thirteen. Fourteen—'
On this day, as he hit the edge…
'No matter' He thought, then stretched his will to do something he had done countless times now, albeit a bit different;
[HEAL – Lungs, Heart, Brain]
The world snapped back into hard clarity.
His chest felt hollow for a moment, like something had been scooped out and replaced. The stone against his back was cold and reassuringly real.
'Wha-?'
Then it came.
[Defense: 0.1 → 0.14]
[Spirit: 0.1 → 0.13]
[Stamina: 0.1 → 0.28]
His first quantifiable increase in statistics.
The panel flickered in the background of his mental as the numbers nudged upward in tiny steps.
'How did Spirit increase though? Defense I understand due to the endless friction between me and water, but Spirit… what is Spirit?'
'No matter. Continue.'
He never stopped, not even his thoughts will stop him. So he did it again.
And again.
And again…
By that time in which the pale light overhead had shifted from one side of the ring to the other and back more times than he cared to count– for dummies this means days passed– he could ride twenty heartbeats before the 'drowning-reflex' tried to seize control.
By then, the panic had changed character.
It wasn't a screaming, formless terror anymore. Haki, in his ruthless repetitiveness had transformed it into a signal.
'It's still Loud, demanding and annoying though…'
He almost got angry at his lungs for still being this weak.
'You can complain,' he told his lungs silently, as the pressure mounted on another cycle. 'You do not decide, I'll make sure of it.'
He let it climb just a fraction further each time, then hit the switch.
[HEAL – Lungs]
'Continue.'
* * *
Now, he did not stay still while he suffered. Between drownings, he moved whatever he could.
He had started with fingers and toes.
While underwater, with nothing but the endless murmur of the waterfall he had confirmed, and the pressure of liquid on his skin, he curled the smallest finger on his right hand and tried to keep all the others relaxed.
They all curled with it anyway, but that was at first, as tiny baby muscles didn't know how to isolate. So he just kept going.
'Continue.' He intentionally sought precise control of more aspects of his body
Open, close.
Open, close.
Open, close.
Eventually, his forearm cramped due to the excessive contraction and release of his muscles. His wrists ached from the unfamiliar tension but he did not stop because of it.
He held the curl a heartbeat longer, feeling the burn spread from his tiny little knuckles to his elbow, only then did he finally let the finger relax.
[HEAL – Right Hand, 40%]
He did more experiments, using immortality to perform partial healing, mostly to let pain stick around for a while.
Warmth bled down his arm as he healed.
'Good,' he thought. 'You need to remember this pain.'
He switched hands and did the same.
His left hand was worse.
'The signals from this side had always lagged, even in my old body.' He thought 'But then, I had forced myself to master the way of the ambidextrous.'
Now, again, in this infant body, the delay felt even more exaggerated.
'Well, no matter, I'll just have to train it again. It should even be easier now, since this is an infant's body… '
He curled the smallest finger on his left hand and all the others tried to join in, trembling.
Open, close.
Open, close.
Open, close.
The strain in his forearm built faster this time. His head throbbed faintly from the extra focus.
He had noticed that Spirit, which he had found out to be something related to his mental, didn't like being asked to track so much in such a small, fresh brain, therefore, he tracked it anyway.
'Now I know how to train you too.'
[HEAL – Neural Structures, 30%]
He healed his mental fatigue partially and… he was right. Apart from the slight feeling of ease coming from his mind, he focused enough on the Spirit stat and saw it inch upwards ever so slightly.
[HEAL – Left Hand, 40%]
The backdrop ache in his left arm faded just enough.
[Strength: 0.1 → 0.11]
[Agility: 0.1 → 0.12]
[Spirit: 0.1 → 0.15]
[Stamina: 0.28 → 0.3]
The numbers nudged, although in pathetic fractions, still, they moved anyways.
'Continue.'
He gave his fingers a moment to float, then his mind went lower, to his toes. He bent his right big toe in the water, trying to separate it from the others. The motion pulled all the way up his calf, into a muscle that seemed to have never done anything but twitch uselessly.
The water made it stranger as it had done for other muscle groups.
The water's resistance hugged every part of him as each of his tiny movements dragged against the liquid, making his limbs feel heavier than they actually were, but contradictorily easier at the same time.
'There is less impact, but more drag.' He thought.
He didn't dwell on whether it was an advantage or not, he just used it.
He began by curling and uncurling once again, unbothered by how ridiculous it would have looked from above. Imagine a baby's foot barely twitching under the surface of a shallow basin…
But it seemed no one was around to watch, not like it would have mattered anyway, right?
'Just continue.'
Once, twice, ten times, until his shin burned with a low, deep ache.
Only then did he heal.
[HEAL – Right Leg, 30%]
[Agility: 0.12 → 0.14]
He repeated all of it for his left leg.
Drowning stayed as the baseline under everything, he never let too much time pass between cycles of drowning. He would work a set of micro-movements until a part of him cramped, then let himself go limp, let his body sink, close his eyes, and hold. He counted breath holds in heartbeats.
'One. Two. Three…'
The first few series, he'd struggled to keep count past ten consistently, once a few times he had reached twenty though. Then, after what the world might have called "days" which he in turn called "iterations," he could go further.
Seventeen. Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty—
He could hold for twenty breaths consistently, every time. He now got used to the tiny spots of light dancing at the corners of his vision.
His throat would spasm, trying to drag water in, it could not be stressed how painful it had been these past few days. Unimaginably painful.
He would clench every internal muscle he could still command and wait two more heartbeats longer than his usual threshold, riding the edge where consciousness began to fuzz. This was how he surpassed his limits.
'Continue.' This was his only comfort.
[HEAL – Lungs, Heart, Brain]
[Spirit: 0.15 → 0.19]
[Defense: 0.14 → 0.18]
His chest got cleared, the ache cut instantly and the grey world around him sharpened even further.
He could now float upward without fighting.
[Haki]
[Trait: Absolute Immortality]
[Stats]
[Strength: 0.11]
[Speed: 0.1]
[Agility: 0.14]
[Defense: 0.18]
[Spirit: 0.19]
[Stamina: 0.3]
[Vitality: 0.1]
…Bubble…
He let his face break the surface as he floated upwards, took one measured breath, then rolled and sank again.
He had learnt to adjust his body's density and position, mainly by filling his lungs with air to become less dense than water, allowing something he remembered being called the "upward buoyant force", to overcome gravity.
'Less talk, more continue… but wait…'
It was at that moment he finally noticed it. He had long expected it at some point though…