Descent

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A-Rank Wormhole, Unknown Subspace

Plummeting to my demise, I felt obliged to wonder where I had gone wrong in life. Should I have sat in my comfortable office chair until the end of my days by Wrath's hand? Or, did I go wrong in trusting Maddy's judgment that this would be a good subspace to venture into?

It was surreal, falling like this. Everything seemed to be going in slow motion. I could see each and every rock that my headlamp illuminated.

I clipped a rock, sending me spiraling out of control. I assumed I was in shock, seeing as I didn't even feel any pain from the impact. The spinning threw off any sense of direction I could have had, leaving me completely disorientated.

And then, through all of the chaos, an idea came to me. I used my unique magic to superheat my hands and forearms to a few thousand degrees before extending them outward. I felt a distinct, strange impact as my hands collided with the stone. The stone melted at my touch, granting leverage akin to grasping Jell-O.

I was able to stop the spastic spinning for a moment before slamming my leg directly on an outcropping.

Again, I didn't feel any pain.

However, as a result, I was flung upside down and hit my back on the wall. Feeling my vision starting to fade, I resorted to a desperate technique that would incinerate anyone unfortunate enough to be nearby and leave me defenseless.

With a shout, I expelled all of the fire energy in my body in a single motion, directing it all below. It was too crude to even be considered a technique, but the result was that everything in the way was turned to magma. I cushioned myself in the liquid, hoping it would allow me to stop falling downward for at least a few moments.

It seemed that the damage I had accumulated was too much. I could barely even see in front of me despite all of the luminescence. Even though it was pointless, I checked my status to see how close to dying I was.

—Status—

HP: 89/679

Mana: 0/609

Not having time to laugh at myself, I slammed into the molten rock below me. It was far too viscous to provide a proper cushion, but it helped eat most of my kinetic energy.

And yet, it was too fluid to grasp. My hands slipped through and I felt myself slide down the chute once again.

I accepted my fate. This was impossible for me to survive. Only a handful of people had the ability sets to survive a freefall of this extent. I had tried my best, right?

I saw my life flash before my eyes. The parents who always despised me, the first days of the apocalypse, my glory days as a Divine, Wrath's murder, and the years of inaction thereafter—it passed as a series of screenshots.

A cold shock suddenly overwhelmed my senses. I felt the breath leave my lungs once again. This time, trying to breathe led to the sudden realization that I was underwater.

Sputtering and gagging on the water as I started to drown, I willed my ruined body to swim to the surface. Slowly, agonizingly, I fought for every centimeter. My right leg was unresponsive, but I had three other limbs to utilize.

I wanted to live, damn it!

I surfaced after what felt like hours, hacking out the water in my lungs like a maniac. Still eerily unable to feel any pain in my right leg, I started to swim in a random direction. I had incinerated the headlamp and my mana reserves were still empty, leaving me in the complete dark.

An unknown amount of time later, I felt the comforting bluntness of rock reach my fingertips. I pulled myself onto the surfaced stone and collapsed from exhaustion.

…

When I awoke, I was greeted by the pleasant feeling of excruciating agony.

"I'm… alive?" I spoke out loud in an attempt to confirm the sensations I was feeling. It took a moment to work myself up to it, but I eventually forced myself to create a small flame to examine my body.

In the small amount of light provided, things looked dire, yet not quite lethal. My leg had been brutalized, looking like it was about to fall off. The rest of me, however, seemed to only be bruised up and lacerated.

I noticed that I seemed to be inspecting myself with the dispassion of someone who wasn't involved. Speaking of which, it was surreal to think about how calm I had been during the fall. Better yet, it was surreal to think about how I had even managed to survive.

Before losing myself too deep in thought, I tried to take inventory. Once again, my clothes were all-but-destroyed and my boots had fallen off at some point during the process. Briskly touching my head revealed that the helmet and headlamp were also gone. However, what I did notice was that my backpack was somehow still on my back.

It took a few minutes to just take it off without furthering my agony, but I was able to take stock of what had survived. The backpack was littered with tears and burns, some large enough to empty the contents of that section of the bag. Hope still fueled me as I started unzipping various compartments and emptying them out in front of me. The wisp of flame I had produced didn't allow for great vision, but it was enough to identify what was left.

There was enough food and water for what I estimated to be around 4 days. One of the spare headlamps had also survived, along with the auto-mapper. Most importantly, I still had 2 health potions and 1 mana potion in the bag.

Before even considering anything else, I chugged a health potion and laid back down, allowing its healing energy to course through my body for the next 30 minutes. After its effects had settled in, my skin looked a lot healthier. Most of the bruises had disappeared and the lacerations were starting to close.

A quick check of my status revealed that the healing potion had put me back to 155 HP. I wanted to take the other one, but I wasn't sure how beneficial it would be at this point. I didn't have the inspection abilities to determine what status effects were plaguing me, but I did know that my ruined leg wouldn't be helped by a mere healing potion. The leg alone was probably keeping my HP pool below half.

Sighing, I picked up the auto-mapper and turned it on. To my relief, it didn't seem to be damaged. It revealed to me that I was approximately 3 kilometers below where we had entered the subspace and that the tunnel I had fallen down was 1700 meters tall.

Once again, I was amazed that I had survived the plummet. I was technically considered a god by the system, but that really didn't mean all that much. It wasn't like my divinity provided any form of innate armor. If I hit my head hard enough on a rock, I would die. The fighter that I had let die proved as much.

The key difference, though, was likely my HP pool. HP alone had its limits but in this particular scenario, it was what allowed for my survival. If an ordinary person had somewhere around 5–10 HP, then my 671 HP represented a life force around 100 times that of a normal human, a systemless one.

Still, it wasn't a great conversion. I was pretty sure that a contact shot from a 12-gauge to the head would kill me in a single shot, despite not being able to penetrate 100 heads in a row.

All in all, I needed to improve. My baseline Might stat didn't allow me to wear a plethora of different armors, but our lab would ideally be able to get some powerful enchantments on lighter armor in near future.

"Now," I rasped, "how am I going to get out of here?"

Realizing that I was severely dehydrated, I started drinking the bottled water. I went to check the time using my watch, but my right wrist was vacant. The watch was almost certainly destroyed by superheating my arms.

I grabbed the subspace mapper again and turned it on. To my relief, it also logged the time. Apparently, it had been over 16 hours since the last time I had checked.

A pang of worry shot through me. Was the rest of the team okay? The scout and healer I had been with were dead—there was no doubt about that. I hadn't seen them falling, but there was no way they weren't human paste right now.

The rest, however, could be alive and well. I hoped that having melted the main chute would not prove too problematic for Maddy.

"All right." I stiffly stood up with all my pressure on my good leg. I felt nauseous just looking at the mangled leg, but I forced myself to try to understand its failings to the best of my abilities.

"Let's hope this works."