Shivering, the cold chill of the mountain night woke him. Frantically his eyes bounced around, red tint had replaced the orange from earlier in the day. Full moons brightly illuminated the pond, making it look like the moon itself reflected the sun's light through a red tinted glass.
Typhus's face was halfway submerged, he pushed his upper body out of the water leaving his head drooping from exhaustion. Sharp pain erupted all over his body.
He crawled with his legs trailing unmoving behind him still underwater like an old dog whose rear legs no longer functioned. Focusing on his own heavy breathing, so his shaking arms didn't give out beneath him and slam him back into the water.
Dim purple light scattered throughout the blackened pond, the water changed in color since he had been asleep and the fluid's weight became more dense, feeling almost like mud and looking like someone dumped a barrel on purple tinted wine.
The water was too dark to see below. Carefully considering where he was setting his hands hoping not to burn them by accidentally placing them on the purple fragmented land mines beneath him.
Slowly, and with grunts of exertion Typhus crawled, moving like he was pushing aside dense syrup. Sliding onto the dry dirt floor that bordered between the forest and his pond like a sea lion he crashed down and rolled onto his back with a thud.
Finally, the main anomaly he felt earlier made itself known, in the middle of the starry sky. Two bright red moons each twice the size of earths floated overhead. Deeper red the closer to the center of the moons he looked, with craters of all sizes.
Turning his head to the side he saw his silver sword glittering from the moon's glow. Curiously, a small circle of water around the weapon had remained crystal clear. Two meters away the black longsword dimly shone in the familiar purple tint only being visible because it landed angled upward on a rock making the handle stand above the now sludge like water.
Pulsing pain resonated from his forearm tearing away his attention, purple glowing teeth were still embedded a few centimeters within his flesh. The pain was negligible compared to when he first got bit. But that didn't mean it wasn't debilitating in the present without the adrenaline. Typhus couldn't move his lower body if his life depended on it. After getting his upper body out of the purple sludge 'water' he decided to close his eyes half from fatigue and half to center himself.
Remembering his annoying notifications ringing, he focused on his status;
_________________________
HP: 23/130
SP: 4/190
MP: 250/250
Class:[Mage Level 2]
Strength: 20
Toughness: 14
Endurance: 20
Perception: 12
Agility: 18
Wisdom: 25
Control: 12
Prowess: 28
Profession: N/A
Skills: [swordsman-common]
Affinities:[chaos] [death]
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Considering all his training Typhus wondered if he had good stats. He chuckled out loud at such a stupid thought that could be the last he ever had. His forearm tensed painfully as another spike of the 'anti energy' he had felt earlier tried to pull in more healthy energy. Snarling he tempered his instinct to fight against the pain.
'Approach a problem as a scholar to study it, a warrior to defeat it, an open mind to understand it, or a savior if you want to be defeated by it'
Letting go of all his breath Typhus relaxed while accepting the pain was just one aspect of understanding this problem.
What exactly was this problem? If it was venom with enough potency to hurt this intensely it wouldn't stay restricted to the area of injection for this amount of time, unless it wasn't a blood based venom.
If it was an infection that too would have spread by now, and how could those skeletons have infected him simply by touch? Fast acting bacteria? Some viruses and chemicals could kill in seconds, he was aware of that. All of these answers felt… Wrong? But they were real possibilities, why was he so certain they weren't the problem?
The burning sensation would come in waves but there was no consistency to the pain of the waves. It was just random, lacking any pattern.
Chaotic.
*Ding*
Upon this realization he felt the 'anti energy's' power lessen along with most of the burden of pain. Shamelessly, he let out a deep sigh as he relaxed in the diminishing pain. As if the 'anti-energy' wanted Typhus to understand, with its form of communication being torment. Swirling throughout his body the streams of 'anti-energy' would ebb and flow but get restricted and contained whenever it would spread to certain points.
Specifically, his heart, throat, or head. Skeletal hand prints on his side just below his ribs, back of his head and shoulder all throbbed substantially. Dispersing almost immediately after pulsing his own wave of 'chaos energy'.
Hour after hour Typhus planned, examined, tested, hypothesized, categorized, strategized, tried to prove his theories, failed, succeeded. Around midnight he re opened his eyes, confident in his findings.
At first he inspected each wound carefully. Deeming his forearm as the most pressing concern, after some practice with moving his own 'Typhus energy' he found he could slowly disperse the smaller shrapnel energy quickly. 'Anti energy' was like black iron sand while his own 'energy' was like a magnet. He would push his own internal energy to the injured sites and the other energy would absorb into it and become non-hostile.
Some places took one push. Others took ten, the commonality was, it took longer the further away from the key points. His head healed fastest, his shoulder slower, his ribs took an agonizing amount of time to disperse.
His forearm however, the bite was still pushing fresh pain filled 'anti energy'. Realizing he never took the purple glowing teeth out he grabbed a nearby twig to bite into before ripping out each tooth by hand.
Blood poured from the wounds reflecting the two red moons off the dark red liquid like a nightmare. Each tooth would rip free a new spout of thinned blood. Flowing entirely too freely, adding merit to the blood based venom he had written off.
Fortunately from this demonic experience his HP started climbing shortly after the last tooth was pulled.
That fight had been a horrible display of ego on his part. One shotting so many undead in a row made Typhus arrogant in his physical abilities. He hadn't expected the skeletons to have a glass cannon approach to combat.
Strategies the undead employed also threw him off, for one reason or another, he figured the undead would be unthinking and purely primal in their attacks. Saying it out loud in his head, he now felt even more stupid, why would something outside the rules of nature attack with a natural pattern?
Purple glowing teeth littered his expanding pool of blood that crept in small veins towards the close by pond. Running through the fight mentally distracted him from the pain while prying out those damned teeth. Laying back once again the idea smacked him as his head fell harder from the exhaustion.
Nature had a pattern to it, muscles couldn't lie. In fighting someone can throw a feint to trick their opponent, if the opponent is reading too much into body language.
Flexing or tensing their muscles for a moment or two to convince their opponent of one attack while quickly switching to a completely different one. However, blood is limited by capacity. Making a roadmap of probable movements that can be read, and used against you. That was the trick to making people think you can 'trick' them into catching their fist, or that you can 'tell the future'.
His own blood made contact with the blackened water, slowly the trails of blood turned a similar color to the sludge water, darkness crept ever closer within the many rivers of blood like black and purple color dye invading water.
Natural things had order and rules to follow. Supernatural life forms could skip or bypass these rules that made sense to him. Life would rarely sacrifice itself to meagerly assist those left behind in some unsubstantial way. In death those skeletons would blow themselves up just to deal 13 HP in damage. Death works under different rules than orderly life.
Like the frog skeleton intentionality biting deep enough to leave its purple teeth in his skin, whatever directed it must have noticed those purple bones didn't turn to dust with the rest of the monster when his sword would touch them. Or maybe it already knew that?
Any number of variables could have made the difference between life and death. Typhus planned to eventually get a spouse, kids, a big house, and a lot of power to play with. Basically he wanted to spend life with a family and die at a ripe old age knowing they were taken care of. While money and power afforded the resources to think and solve problems. Time was all that stood in his way before this 'new frontier' bull shit. Time he could have spent-
Chaos. Time. Death energy.
Time. Time isn't what kills people who die at a ripe old age. Cells become unstable to the point of collapse causing any number of catastrophic events that end in death. In essence the living cells can only exist in orderly environments, making death mana the opposite of orderly life, death was chaotic in nature. Remembering that fact reminded him he had gotten a '[Death Mana Affinity].
Yet, it was pointed and purposed chaos, not necessarily ordered more so directed. So could he direct the power of death mana himself?
More energy control showed he not only could direct it, he could absorb it within himself, and his mana would regenerate. Should his previous assumptions all be correct, the theory should also work inversely. In the same way death mana tried to bring chaos to order, could he use his mana to reconstruct the wound by removing the damaging death mana?
'Randomness is chaotic in nature, chaos isn't always random in nature'
Typhus's mind worked in strange ways, all these lessons and quotes only coming back to him after he solved the current puzzle. Chaos wasn't just death, death is always chaotic.
Separating the death energy left undirected orderly power, he was certain the attack was primarily death. Yet, making pure death mana just wasn't something the purple bones were capable of.
Typhus absorbed all the death mana leaving small amounts of pure 'order mana'.Could he give healing intent to close his wounds? Similar to how he absorbed the chaotic energy, just pushing at the same time instead of only pulling?
White light started to flicker on his forearm as the 'order mana' was incredibly inefficient without direct commands. Occasionally the 'order mana' would be doing as told, but the bulk of its power was releasing into the atmosphere, seemingly much more against control then the death mana it was diluted from.
Reverse engineering the absorption process to cycle within a closed circuit the Death mana would corrupt the Order mana at a self-sustaining rate. Making the healing mana over compensate as means of defense against the invasive Death mana. Like how a vaccine worked for increasing white blood cell count. With Death mana it was like injecting himself with white blood cells themselves but his body made more anyways.
Death mana didn't have any harmful effects in terms of being around it because of his affinity towards it or his resistance. Still his body worked without that in mind trying to combat the death energy by increasing healing production. He increased his HP regeneration rate as the Death energy would harmlessly flow within the natural pathways of his body but the natural healing of a living body would still over produce regenerative properties to combat it.
[spell Unlocked: Sacrificial healing: Common: Siphon Death mana from any impure mana form, absorbing the pure death mana while expelling any other affinity, changing form to become healing in nature due to removing the harmful properties within the remaining mana. Can be used as a small heal to the living]
[Spell Unlocked: Dark Regeneration- Uncommon- Use mana of Death affinity to induce a passive healing power. Healing speed of regeneration directly correlates to amount of Death mana used and the hosts natural fortitude]
HP:41/130
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HP 43/130
Breathing came easier with each minute as the healing energy invaded his body, alternating between his new spells a distinction made itself known. [Dark Regeneration] pulled from his mana pool, [Sacrificial Healing] could use either his own mana or it could be pulled from external sources. For instance he didn't use any mana when he directed the death mana already coursing through his wounds to invert its intentions from destruction to restoration.
[Dark Regeneration] wouldn't accept external energy as a fuel source. Using the spell was like riding a bike, forcing external mana was akin to ripping off the handlebars and the tires. He could still peddle and push external Death mana into the spell, it's just nothing would happen afterward. The external mana lacked his own personal directives. His best guess was it's easier to inefficiently direct magical healing using mana that wasn't his own then it is to increase his own natural healing using mana from within himself based on the sheer amount of external power.
MP: 260/280
Pushing a bit more mana towards regeneration Typhus heard the trees start rustling, howls loudly sounding out within a kilometer of him but he was no expert. Able to move himself, yet still not with any form of grace he strained while sitting up. Wolves could smell blood over a kilometer away, and those howls were certainly closer than that. Observing the scene around him he hadn't realized how much blood he lost due to his shoddy removal of the teeth.
You're fucking joking Typhus chuckled about neglectful gods due to his circumstances.
Twisting his upper body he crawled into the pond while dragging his still shaking and useless legs. Another round of howling sounded like they were just beyond the trees surrounding the large pond. Running out of time Typhus decided to try to hide within the now darker liquid that the pond had turned into. Silently he crawled into the water the movement of liquid displacing was made more noticeable by the quiet of night.
There must be some way for him to avoid detection, hopefully the wolves would assume the kill had already been moved to a different location and go search elsewhere. Leaving Typhus enough time to fully heal and escape. Was the plan flawed? Yes, but he didn't have time to think of anything better. Keeping his nose and eyes above the water like a crocodile the animals crossed the threshold of vision, 4 wolves slinked between the trees approaching the water.
The largest of them came closer to the water while the others stayed within the trees. 2 and a half meters tall with a light brown coat of fur the behemoth warily approached with only light pressure on its paws with each step. The predator had unusual slitted red eyes that matched the color of the blood moons, scanning the pool its head snapped and stopped when reaching where Typhus floated completely still. Locking eye contact with him.
Stopping to sniff the air, the wolf stared for a few agonizing minutes before releasing a yelp, walking backwards. With tensed front legs its head remained unmoving to keep its attention planted on Typhus and slowly back stepped returning to its waiting pack. All of the animals walked back into the woods with the leader's red eyes tracking Typhus the entire way back into the darkness.
Exhaling through his nose sent small ripples outward from his face. Shaking from both the chill of the sludge water or raw fear he felt as the creature had stared into his very soul. While debating whether or not to get out of the water he felt a pull of Death mana from the surrounding sludge. Trying to invade his open wounds, the same Death mana attempted to test his defense against it.
Tensing his hand under the water he began filtering, letting the Death mana flow into his own body turning as much as he could into fuel for his mana to help replenish his health. Water currents calmly swirled around him while directing the corrupting force of mana to essentially 'tire itself out' within him.
Doing the swim crawl he grabbed the silver weapon first, acting like soap to dirt making the sludge disperse anywhere he moved the sword. Admiring his beautiful blade while drops of red tinted sludge would stream down the length turning into the clear water before reaching the hilt. Behind his silver blade he noticed the black hilt that would sway back and forth with the current of the refilling pond. Moving with a purpose he felt a calling from the blade that made him momentarily forget how hostile his environment was.
[Murkite Greatsword: Rare- an expertly crafted weapon, made from rare Murkith metal infusing the blade with Death mana. Grants increased proficiency to death mana manipulation]
Reaching for the weapon, the red cloth of the handle fluttered wildly for half a meter in the breeze. Gripping its hilt, it was a dense but lightweight metal, lighter than the smaller ornate silver sword.
Pulling the grip up the blade pushed water away as it rose from the darkness beneath it. A meter and a half worth of blade broke free from the liquid, holding the handle well above his head Typhus could see his own reflection from the light of the moon giving the slick blade mirror-like properties. His eyes were those of strangers as they shone a bright gold staring back at him.
That was the last he could remember before falling backwards into the sludge, feeling the heavier liquid engulf his body with his head being the last body part to be swallowed by the Death water. Red moons filled his sight before darkness crept over his vision.