Magic Breaker Ch 19-21

Chapter 19: Field Surgery

CW: Gore

The way we end up defeating the slimes is with Jess’ help.

She freezes them using her skill, turning the critters into little more than blobs of ice. Then, they don’t explode when killed. I stomp another one of them into angry ice cubes.

[You have killed a lv. 2 Slime]

Thatch leads on and we follow.

Slowly, the sun sets. Nighttime doesn’t come fast, really. It feels like the sun is clinging onto the sky, but its time is running dry. We still haven’t found Sylves, but we are heading the right way. 

Worst case, we’ll camp the night here. I think Norman and Bay might not be very happy with it but… well, they might need to get used to it. It doesn’t seem likely for us to camp in nice, comfortable beds all the time for the near future.

How many points in heart before the ground gives against my skin, I wonder? How much power before walls become suggestions? Well, I don’t really care about those two as much.

I move around the mana puzzle in my hands, twisting and turning it as I add more magic from my vessel into it. It makes me move it around, spin it around the maze’s twists and turns, while keeping it in thin threads.

It’s difficult, but a fun exercise. Every time I fail, I waste some energy, but the task is so delicate, it takes hardly any mana at all. I still work to solidify more of it, too, but it’s dissipating a little too fast. I need to keep my current stash of grains constantly filled with a part of my regeneration.

Add in the part of me that focuses on suppressing the damn parasite burrowing through my flesh, and my ongoing practice with the healing spell whenever I save up enough energy… well, suffice to say, I’ve been greedily tapping most slime cores we’ve come across.

My thoughts are interrupted when Thatch stops. “We’re here,” he says. The location he’d marked, then. Where he’d seen Sylves.

She’s not here anymore, of course. None of us have tracking skills, either. I can feel a faint, tiny difference in the mana in the air, but it’s far too small for me to describe, let alone follow. Instead, we’re just kinda left standing there.

“What now?” Amelie asks.

Her question makes sense, really. It does. And she isn’t asking out of malice, just curiosity. I need to find Sylves, so how do we find her? 

“It feels a little silly, but we could try just yelling really loudly,” Inu suggests.

I blink. “Sure. Go ahead.”

“What if we draw in more monsters?” Norman hisses. “We’ve only seen slimes, but there’s no way to know if those are the only things here.”

“Then we kill them,” Opal says casually, waving a hand. 

At that, he frowns, but remains quiet. I think they want a class, too. All of them probably do. Maybe it’s finally sunk in that being weak is as good as a death sentence in this world.

I wonder, for just a minute, if there will be another change tonight. Dungeons and lifted limits after the first day. Would the next change happen now, or after a week, or after a month?

Inu draws a deep breath of air into her lungs, then screams, as loudly as she can. “SYLVES!!!”

It makes my ears hurt a little. Must’ve been socializing too much, recently. We all hold our breath and wait, but there doesn’t seem to be a reply. I wish I could just text her, but my phone really has become not much more than a fancy mp3 player.

Not that I mind. I like music. As there isn’t an answer, I slowly sink to the ground, leaning against a tree. “Let’s call it a day,” I say. 

There aren’t any complaints. Everyone pulls out a bit of food and water from backpacks, eating dried and preserved things and washing them down. I turn on my headphones, and they connect with a beep, and I start playing music.

I close my eyes, and the world fades into silence.

For just a little bit, I feel serene.

Then that fucker in my abdomen squirms and starts nibbling on my ribs again. 

I hate it. The feeling is disgusting. I’ve been ignoring it, pushing it all aside, and I was very good at that, but right now, when it stopped me while taking a breather? That was too much.

Causing me pain and suffering I can tolerate, but not respecting my personal space? That’s where I draw the line.

“Gonna use the toilet for a sec,” I announce, getting up. “Be right back.”

And then I walk into the forest.

It’s darker, now. I might have nodded off for a moment to the music. I don’t care. The little fucker had done it. So, I walk into the darkness, below the leaves. There are no city lights here, no fireflies, nothing.

The silence is heavy and oppressive and I do not care. I pause my music, putting the headphones around my neck. I’m far enough away now. None of my friends would hear or see this.

I take a breath.

Four skills. [Selection], [Suppression], [Solidification], and [Deconstruction]. Those are my tools. My logic gates. The operations at hand that I can use on my environment and the thing inside me, alongside the botched healing spell, too shitty to even be recognized by the system. 

[Selection] is the one I use first, activating it on the thing. A tether connects me to it, and I can feel the way it rummages around inside me, almost as if it knows what is coming. It hurts, but that’s fine. I let the tether settle, making sure it’s properly in place, and focus.

[Suppression] comes down next. It triggers, slamming into the thing and turning it slow, sluggish. I can almost ignore it, but not quite. Its slimy exterior is still worming around in there. Writhing, struggling against my hold. It’s gorged itself.

Then, I lift my shirt. 

It’s in tatters. Stained with blood, and full of cuts, but still mostly covers me, which I’m grateful for. I don’t enjoy showing too much skin, generally. Now, though, I lift it, to see that there is a splotch of darkness showing beneath my flesh. It looks like a big bruise, a nasty, darkened patch of skin, but it moves under there. It’s alive. 

My suppression knits itself tighter, until I can barely see the squirming anymore. I take a deep breath, and take one of the goblin knives.

The blade is made from some kinda sharpened rock, maybe obsidian. Surgeons use that for scalpels, right? Surely this shouldn’t be a problem. Probably. Surely.

I use one of the cleaner ones, bringing its tip up against my scabbed skin, the thin gash where the creature had snuck into me.

And I slice myself open.

The pain is fast and burning. It’s not too bad, but I don’t have the focus to suppress it, so I simply accept the way it burns. I hiss quietly, breathing through my teeth. It would get worse, still, but that’s fine.

Part of my mind focuses on my solidified mana needles. I take one of them between my fingers, pinching it tightly, and squeezing it. Reshaping it.

[Solidification 3 > 4]

The thing becomes thinner, denser. Until it’s not much bigger than a tack. Then, I push it under my skin. 

Again, it hurts, but I ignore it. When my fingers can’t get it any further in, I push against the mana with my mind. It obeys, as it always does, slowly sinking deeper into my body. Through barely healed tissue, into the cavern carved out by the parasite. 

The inky thing tries to writhe, but my will clamps down around it. The needle presses into it, stabbing stygian flesh. It struggles, it fights, it tries to hammer against my skin and escape, eat its way out. And I [Suppress] it. Brutally. Over and over, my mind slams into it. Until the cage is woven so tightly it can’t move.

[Suppression 5 > 6]

My needle sinks into it. There’s a smoky darkness that tries to eat at it, tries to dissolve my skill, but it’s tight. I feed it a steady trickle of mana, keeping the tack alive, even as the thing tries to dispel it.

And then, it sinks in. Ethereal darkness parts to reveal inky flesh. It’s squishy, but the needle sinks in. How ironic is that? A piece of me, inside it, inside me again. Like a russian nesting doll.

I focus again, making a second tack. And a third. And a fourth. Until I am all out of solidified mana.

By then, my vessel stat feels low. I have been feeding all those bits of solidified mana more power to keep them going inside the thing’s body. They wanna fall apart, but I don’t let them, not yet. Not yet.

Only when the final one pierces the parasite, do I detonate them all.

My mana floods it, breaks into it, crashes into its mana and dispells it. The darkness the thing seems to ooze abates, suddenly no longer sustainable. I drain it, its resources evaporating as they clash against mine. 

My will clamps even tighter around it, not even letting it wriggle in pain. I know it must fucking suck to be in its position right now, but that’s fine. This is just the start of it. 

When the effect abates, when my needles have exhausted its resources, disabled its skills for a moment, I play my last card.

Mana spins into a spiral within my chest, forming a tool. [Deconstruction]. It’s a wonderful skill, I think, meant to destroy, take apart, and understand. I can choose to focus on different bits of that, and right now, I want to break the parasite. I want to tear it to pieces.

The skill begs me for a target. I give it one.

Chapter 20: Fast Friends

It fucking suffers. 

I’m sure of that much. I know it. My mana spins up to speed, whirring and hissing as it shoots forward into the monster. It grinds against its outer shell, against its insides, against its very nature as I pick it apart.

[Class up! Deconstructor 2 > 3]

Another point of vessel slightly restocks my reserves, and I pour all of it into [Deconstruction] immediately. The battlefield is now a tug of war. The parasite wants to keep existing, and I want it dead. 

[Deconstruction 2 > 3]

[Class up! Deconstructor 3 > 4]

Bits and pieces are stripped away from the parasite, and a tiny bit of their meaning is revealed to me. Tidbits about malleability, about shadows, mostly. I remember them, but I don’t let up. I wield [Deconstruction] like a grindsaw, tearing the thing to bits. Cut by cut, moment after moment.

Until its mana runs dry.

The little fucker is still alive. I grit my teeth. My mana is dead out, and I’ve almost killed it, but it’s still alive. 

It’s dimished. So much smaller. A little splotch of ink, compared to the parasite it was before. The bits of it that have been carved off are turned into nothing more than memories and smoke. Purple and black haze that leaks from the cut in my side. 

I pull at it a little, letting the gas escape faster. “If you get out right now, I’ll consider keeping you,” I tell the parasite. Not that it should understand me. And yet.

The little parasite crawls out of me.

That does surprise me a little, my eyes widening a tiny bit. Maybe if [Selection] can tell me things about a target, then that tether works both ways? 

My side is in terrible shape. The thing slithers out of my open wound, widening the gash even more, and a slough of gas leaves after it. But once it’s out, I don’t feel angry at it anymore.

It invaded my personal space. I made it pay. Now?

The little critter detaches from my side, falling to the forest floor with a pop. My mana is in crappy condition. I would love some extra to cast my botched healing, close up the wound, but I have none. Bits of it are still regenerating. Maybe in a few minutes I could squeeze out a healing spell.

But for now, I look at the little once-parasite. It just kinda sits on the forest floor, munching on some grass. [Selection] still connects us. I tilt my head a little. “Can you do a spin?”

No reaction. 

“Make some noise.” 

Nothing. 

“Hmmm. Guess I can only communicate general sentiment. Say. I’ll feed you if you listen to me.”

It perks up at feed. Seems it gets that.

Very carefully, I hold out a hand to it. Pitiful dregs of mana have gathered in my vessel, barely enough for anything at all, but I can cast perhaps the weakest [Suppression]. I do just that, making sure to numb my pain.

The critter approaches and eats some of me. First, bits of my fingernail that I don’t feel at all, and pieces of dead skin. Then, the uppermost layer of living skin. That one starts to hurt. It drinks a bit of my blood, too, and I don’t particularly mind.

[The Creeping Darkness is shocked at your actions.]

I raise my gaze to the sky. Those words alone make it almost worth it. I look at the critter, and pull my finger back. It lets go. 

“You know, we might have gotten off on the wrong foot, but I can see us being friends.” This way, someone is getting something out of my healing practice. Do I care about the thing? Not really. But that’s okay. I can still take care of it.

“Can you hide in my shadow?” I ask.

The critter responds to shadow, too. It turns into a dark blotch against the ground, infinitely thin. When it slithers closer to me, it and the darkness of the forest become one. “Neat,” I say, keeping the tether of [Selection] active. Using it to communicate. How nice.

[Selection 5 > 6]

With that level, I take a few more minutes to regain my breath. My mana regenerates. I cast a botched heal, a pathetic thing that is still better than any of my previous attempts, and it seals my wound shut. I feel blood collecting inside it, though, so I have to poke a hole to let it out.

It’s gross, but whenever the crimson liquid drips onto my shadow, it vanishes. Is this recycling? Probably. Maybe. I smile at the silly joke.

With the wound mostly sealed, I raise myself up off the floor. I feel filthy, but it’s still better than before. Plus, I have more pieces of spells or skills to dissect, memorizing the ones that my attack on the critter has brought me. More magic to do. 

Despite the pain, I smile, slowly stumbling back to camp. 

[Level Up! 10 > 11]

Another supremacy level. I blink. Did I… tame the shadow thing? Defeating it seems to have been enough to be acknowledged for my supremacy. I showed the system I’m worth more than the parasite, to some degree.

Regardless, this time, two points go to vessel, refilling my mana a little, and one point to heart. I observe the healing process as much as I safely can, then adjust my mimicry of it a bit, healing it from the inside out, this time.

My eyes bleed a little, but it’s not trouble, surely.

When I come back to the camp, the others have a small fire going. Thatch notices me first. “Holy shit,” he says.”

Then, Inu sees me. “Holy shit,” she says.

I tilt my head. [Suppression] is still running on the pain so it’s not that bad. Plus, the healing has already patched me back up a bunch.

“Snow, you look horrible,” Opal says. 

“... You won’t believe me if I say it was a very intense toilet trip?” I ask. They shake their heads. “Worth a try.”

“What happened?” Jess asks. She seems… worried about me? 

“There was a parasite under my skin since yesterday,” I say. “I took it out.”

“There was a what?!” Norman yells. 

I tilt my head. “There was a parasite under my skin, Norman.”

“You little-! And you didn’t think to tell us?!” 

“Please talk a little more quietly, I’m getting a bit of a headache,” I say, sliding down and leaning against a tree. The bark pokes into my back, but it’s tolerable. Better than nothing to rest against. I drink some water as Inu’s dad seems ready to strangle me. “I told Inu and Thatch,” I say.

At that, he seems halfway placated, and halfway more angry. He turns to his daughter. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“I-” she starts, but he interrupts her.

“What if it had taken Snow over? What then? What if something had come crawling out of there, ready to eat us all up? In our sleep?” he snaps.

Thatch leans forward. “Snow said it was handled.”

Norman throws his hands into the air. “And what if Snow’d been wrong, Thatch? What then?”

“Then we’d deal with it,” Opal says. Then, they yawn. “If Snow fucks up, I’ll do cleanup. So will Inu and Thatch. So will Sylves, once we find her. And so should you.”

“Should I?” the man snaps, leaning forward. “Really? I’ve been dragged around by you for two days now. Killing goblins, luring armors, getting acid slime splattered over me. I’m sick of it!”

At that, Jess looks at him. Norman tries to talk again, to yell some more, but the words stay stuck in his throat. Jess just looks at him, for a long moment, Norman’s body frozen. “Love,” she says, patiently taking one of his hands in hers. “Listen to yourself. You’re talking as if this will be over tomorrow.”

Gently, she shakes her head. “I don’t think it will. I think this is our new normal. I think Inu has the right idea of it. We need a group, we need classes, we need strength.”

“Jess, I-” Norman starts, but she shakes her head.

“This isn’t about you, right now,” she says, whisper-quiet. “The world is scary. I want to keep our daughter safe.”

Finally, he shuts up. Norman drops his head into his hands. “Fuck,” he says. “Fucking shit.”

Somewhat amusingly, I note that we’ve gone full circle. I come back to being told I look like shit, and now Norman is cursing again. How silly.

Seconds tick by quietly, turning to minutes. Opal yawns again. “Whelp,” they say, “I’mma sleep. Wake me in a few hours or if a wolf tries to eat my legs. Also if it’s something other than a wolf,” they add. “I thought I should specify.”

Just as their head hits the ground, though, a breeze tousles through my hair. It leaves my forehead a little itchy, with the telltale sensation of mana. 

“Hello?” a voice comes from the distance. “I heard someone yell about a person called Snow. I think we might be friends. Do you know where to find them?”

I recognize the sound carrying on the wind, and smile. 

“Come and join us, Sylves.”

Chapter 21: Forest Sprite

“You are my Snow!” Syvles chirps. 

The girl hops, skips, and almost floats into our clearing. She’s wearing a dress shaped like leaves. Some kinda cosplay, maybe? It even has fairy wings sewn in at the back. There’s a wreath of flowers around her head, and her blonde hair has a touch of green in it, floating lightly in the air.

Her earthy brown eyes turn towards me with an earnest smile. “Gosh, Snow! Could you have stopped causing trouble for even a moment?” she asks, hopping up to me. “You smell like blood! Fairies like me hate iron, you know?!” 

The words are equal parts accusatory and playful. I smile at her, looking at the petite girl in front of me. She’s just over a meter and a half tall, and rather thin, but very fast. She smells of flowers and moss, sporting long, blonde hair with streaks of faint green. “Hi Sylves,” I say.

She leans forward, her legs casually hovering above the ground. “Hmmmm? You’re barely even surprised, Snow!”

I nod. “Seems it.”

Her lips turn into a pout. “Hmph! You’re a boring bore.”

Again, I nod. “You caught me. Now, will you leave this bore to bleed out?”

Frustrated, she turns to Opal. “You! Be surprised!” Then to Thatch. “You! How’d you find me?” Then to Inu. “And you! You’re uh… I ran out of words!” Then she pouts again. 

Opal yawns. “You’re really going all in on the fairy shtick, huh?” they ask.

For the first time, Syl breaks character. She smiles, just faintly. “Was there ever any doubt?”

Opal shakes their head, smiling. “I suppose not, no.”

“Yes,” Sylves says. “Of course I’m going all in. I get to control the wind with my skills. And a bit of plants. I’m gonna grow a set of wings, too!” 

“Based,” Thatch says. “Have you been eating?”

“Oh right. I should do that. You got any food?” she asks.

I pass her a bag of dried fruit, and she chomps down on them. Things quiet down a little. They’re peaceful.

No parasite under my skin, all my friends gathered around where I can see them. The world might be ending. There might be species out there looking to kill me, looking to show the system that they’re worth more than me. There might be all sorts of dangers for my friends.

It’s calm. They talk, they joke, they get tired and fall asleep. I take a moment to redo the paint on my nails as they chat. It’s mundane, and vain, but I’m glad I stole the polish from Inu’s bathroom. Eventually, though, when all my friends are slumbering, I can feel my own eyes starting to get heavy. Jess notices first. “Go sleep,” she says. “I’ll keep a lookout.”

Not that I trust her, but still. It’s necessary. I need rest. My mind is worn out and tired. I’ll sleep lightly, and set my mind to wake up before midnight. It doesn’t need to be accurate entirely, but it should be good enough.

And then, slowly but surely, I drift off to sleep.

- - -

My mind snaps back awake. I feel the change in the world, the mana growing denser. It’s the same as the first night, and darkness creeps in. It’s thick as tar and pitch black. I can’t see the clearing or any of my friends anymore. 

[Congratulations!]

[You have survived the second stage of descent! Third stage of descent imminent.]

I look at the menus, knowing they’ll disappear after tonight. The third stage. Is it the final one? How many are there, I wonder. What’s the final stage? 

[Essence compatibility modification applied. Initializing instance synchronisation.]

The world shakes and twists again, changing in some fundamental way. Instance synchronisation… It sounds like there have been multiple apocalypses running simultaneously? Maybe in multiple places? And now they are merging.

I brace, feeling as a titanic grip takes hold of our world, and something shifts. I feel like two, three, four versions of myself are squashed together into some kind of meatball abomination - then I spring back into a human shape. 

My teeth feel sticky, but it’s okay. It’s over. The sensation is gone. I swallow down the horror of the situation, and watch as the darkness recedes, revealing our camp.

The fire has gone out, leaving flickering embers. Jess looks at it with wide open eyes, shocked by the notification. Instead of that, I swipe my gaze around. Instance Synchronisation, plus the feeling of multiple bodies being squished into mine definitely makes me think of some kind of merging.

And then, I catch a hint of blue.

Instantly, [Selection] flicks out, latching onto the piece of someone I caught. It catches something, creating a tether of dull mana, letting me know where it is, what it is. A small creature, light skin with a bluish hue.

It looks at me. I look at it. The creature has six eyes, two on each side of its face, and two on its forehead. It also has four arms.

I kind of want four arms. Can I make more with mana?

The creature takes a step closer. It can tell I’m watching it. Some kind of perception skill? Interesting. It takes another step. I keep staring at it, not bothering to hide my attention.

Slowly, the alien tilts its little head. It chitters a few noises that are unintelligible to me, but I know it’s curious. How do I know? I don’t know that. [Selection]? Probably the system, though. Translation functions seem like something it should have.

Again, the creature chitters, a longer amount of clicks this time. Its mouth is wide, and it has small mandibles at the side of its lips. They’re oddly cute. I wanna poke them. I tilt my head at it, too. “What are you?” I ask, quietly.

It jumps back. Jess, too, looks over, and I see a gasp freeze in her mouth, unspoken. I look at the thing again, waiting, unmoving. Tentatively, it starts walking forward again. Slowly, steadily, it walks up to our fire, then looks at me and chitters.

Something in the back of my mind tells me the noise is a request. The communication feels a little clearer. It looks at the remains of the campfire again, then at me. I nod. “Go for it.”

With my permission, the critter reaches down into the fire. It picks up a fistful of ash and glowing embers, then shoves them into its mouth. Pieces of not quite burnt wood crack and crunch, then it grabs another fistful of the remains of our fire and chews on them.

Its cheeks inflate a little bit, like a hamster. 

The alien wears clothing, too. It’s a little bit like a plush vest, but the design is full of webbing? Almost as if made to integrate spiderweb patterns. I watch as it eats yet another handful.

It chitters a few more words at me. Gratitude? It must’ve been hungry. What a strange critter. Another fistful of ash goes into its mouth, crunches, and gets devoured. The radiance dims a little. “Can you introduce yourself?” I ask.

Once more, the creature turns to me. Slowly, it nods. There is a chittering noise, a grinding, guttural sound, something that conveys a name. I look at it. “Really?” I ask, whisper-quiet. “Richard?”

The thing, between fistfuls of ash, makes a grunt of affirmation. The meanings become clearer in my mind. Almost understandable. A translation module slowly installing itself, maybe?

“Are you… happy with the food?” I ask.

Richard nods. “Ya,” she grunts. More noise. She says it’s tasty. 

Jess looks at me in a mix of horror and curiosity. I look at her. “You understand her, too?”

Slowly, she nods. “Barely,” she whispers. 

Hmmm. Maybe my [Selection] is making the process of grasping their language faster? The system definitely seems to be helping me out a little. I don’t think I should be learning an alien species’ communication method in a few minutes. 

Still, I sit, watch and wait as Richard eats the remains of our fire. I watch and wait, until there is another sound. A faint whistling.

I twist. Pain blossoms in my shoulder as an arrow pierces through it. I really hope that doesn’t become a theme.