Weapon
{Prolly, 50 years} a thought crawled into my head. Not a big thought, I was wondering just how many years have I been fighting without dying. Wondering when I will return to square zero, because it always happened. No matter how many I killed there was always a bastard stronger than me. Sometimes they fought normally other times they used weird shit with glowing circles and some kind of weird symbols that spewed out lighting or poison.
This time I'm fighting a fucking army of Molten Rock Dwellers, at least that's how they are called by the windows. And boy, they sure are freaking weird. They look like a dragon that was put into a shell of a huge ass boulder that is constantly melting and solidifying. Their strength is no joke, they can level down mountains with their tails, and while I'm fighting with them the whole terrain around us is changing with every move. The Dwellers fight with their claws, tails, throw molten rock at you and do other weird shit.
I use a weapon that... has grown out of me. It first started about 150 or 170 years ago, around 20 deaths before this timeline. One day I started to sense a funny feeling near my heart, with every kill I felt it more and it spread further out into my body. One day I noticed I could control it and after that bit by bit I became able to control it well enough to make it flow to different parts of my body. By experimentation and also using trial and error I became aware as to how I could use it, also I decided to call it "energy". By focusing the energy into different parts of my body I could enhance them. Be it making my bones as hard as rock or my muscles so fast that I could outrun cars.
After further experimentation I found that with enough time I could disperse this energy from my body. By dispersing it over a wide area, It would become my sixth sense, allowing me to sense almost everything in this area. Another use was forming a weapon, so I decided to start with a simple string. It was rather easy to use but hard to master, because you had to control it and pour your energy into it to keep it sharp. With each use and each idea on how to use this energy I had more and more weird abilities. Like being able to stitch myself up, keep my blood pumping without a heart or even controlling corpses, which costs me enormous amounts of energy and they aren't even that strong.
Every death I try to use a different weapon, this time I'm using gloves. At first using a weapon would drain not a lot but a substantial amount of energy, but after getting used to manifesting the weapons and simplifying their designs my usage of energy came to minimum. I must say running out of energy is painful and exhausts you which means you are basically dead.
After taking out all of the 17 dwellers I looked around and saw all the carnage around me. Giant craters, charred ground and multiple giant corpses surrounded me. Everything in a radius of around 20 kilometers looked like that. While coming out victorious I still lost my left eye and my right arm. My arm I could restore, but my eye was another story. By using a scaffold made out of my energy and using my left arm as a guide I could rebuild my right arm with the use of a considerable amount of energy and calories from food, but eyes are out of the question. Which means that if I were to lose both of my eyes I would need to depend on my energy sense to see anything.
"They sure taste weird" I said out loud, eating the flesh of the dwellers. Like a chicken mixed with salmon and dirt. But to live you gotta eat and drink. My main source of water is blood, because there is no source of fresh water anywhere here, and it rains fucking acid. Without water or any mirrors anywhere I couldn't see what I looked like, I think I may have forgotten my name around 200 years ago. With nobody around, names just become obsolete. You are just you, at this moment, whatever you're doing, be it resting, eating or fighting. But it does get quite lonely.
§
What Earl has done with his miasma is basically body arts without consciously condensing the miasma. By just letting his miasma accumulate in his body, basically in quantities that are not possible without learning anything about it, Earl has done the impossible. Instead of dimiasma, Earl has gone up to trimiasma. Which is basically an even more condensed form of energy, which is theoretically possible, but practically impossible. As you need enough miasma to compress it even further than dimiasma without having already accumulated some of it in your heart. This is impossible, because without body arts or magic, which is also out of the question if you want trimiasma, you would need to depend on physical strength to survive, while accumulating miasma naturally (which is slow af).
Earl's weapons are constructs made up by his trimiasma manifesting outside his body. Which is actually ape shit insane if you think about it. Miasma is simply speaking energy, so it cannot take form, it can only influence things it comes into contact with. So by this train of thought it would be possible to strengthen a sword by running energy through it, but making a sword out of energy is an entirely different matter. But because Earl has achieved trimiasma the density of energy is on a whole nother level, and so by focusing this energy into extremely small dimensions you could theoretically construct weapons. The first string Earl has conjured was akin to a human's hair, it was thin and rather brittle, but by the product of constant battles and experimentations Earl has learned how to better conjure weapons. They are also highly unstable while they are taking root in the body. Which caused a lot of pain and a few deaths to Earl as his energy went haywire and basically made him explode from the sudden influx of energy to different parts of his body.
Miasma, dimiasma and even trimiasma is like your stamina, the more you use it the more you end up having and the faster you recover after using it. Like a professional athlete, you come to know your limits and just how much you can expend without straining yourself, and this applies to miasma. By utilizing it more you understand it better and by understanding it more you utilize it better. Earl had an average talent in using miasma and even worse with understanding it, but even an average talent will be phenomenal with enough time. And Earl had a ton of time.
§
The worst thing about having to survive in such a deserted place is the lack of anybody to talk to. I often find myself zoning out speaking to a dead tree, a dead monster or just to myself. The effects of lack of socialization have affected me. I forgot my name, forgot who I even was before, I only remember strands of my former life. The glimpses of a normal life sometimes fade, sometimes get stronger, but I know that thinking about my past self is meaningless. Without the choice of death the only right path is straight forward. If I were to ever falter and regress I know I couldn't look at myself the same. The only thing pushing me forward isn't the survival instinct nor my emotions, it is the momentum I have amassed over such a long period of time. The momentum to polish my sword, strengthen myself just to fail again only to pick myself up and go even further. My every life comes to an end, but in every single one of them I know that I can say that I pushed myself to the absolute limits of what I could do. Besides the momentum, is what I would call simply my "spirit". I find it frustrating meeting an opponent that easily dispatches of me. I sometimes struggle in some fights, but with enough tries I will break through even the toughest of walls and overcome even the fiercest enemies.
Currently, I am standing at a peak of the highest mountain that I could see, wondering just how vast and unfriendly this world is. Thousands of kilometers upon kilometers of red or orange terrain with clouds of monsters sometimes fighting sometimes living in their own little tribes. A strange sound snaps me out of my thinking zone, a screech of some sorts. Looking at the origin of the sound I see a giant lizard with wings plunging towards me.
"Another one of these, huh?" I said out loud launching myself up, above the creature going towards me. Extending my energy to touch the ground I pull down myself accelerating towards my opponent. Swoosh, and it's done, another one bites the dust. Forming a blade in my hands in a few milliseconds and going down at a neck breaking speed I killed it one swift motion.
[Congratulations for killing "Dark Wyvern"]
"Fuck, not this" I lamented to myself seeing hundreds of shadows covering the ground. Ah yes, I entered into their domain, so of course every single one of the wyvern tribe has to come storming towards me to try to kill me. I accept the challenge, but don't expect me to die so easily.
"Come at me!" I lunge towards the closest wyvern forming a second shortsword in my hand. They try to evade, but it is too late, I have already connected my swords with their necks. Blood splattering everywhere, however I don't even have a moment to be disgusted at the warm shower. I immediately jump out of the way of a ball of fire coming towards me. A red wyvern, I think the colors indicate what type of "things" they can shoot, as I have seen only red wyverns spewing fire, while blue ones shoot out streams of highly concentrated water. While being relatively weak in one on one fights they make up for it in sheer numbers. By utilizing basic tactics they can overwhelm opponents stronger than any one of them.
By being constantly exposed to life threatening situations I have developed some type of an intuition of some sorts. I think it's an unconscious unity of all of my senses that is quite useful. You know when and where you're gonna get hit, of course it's not an omnipotent thing, but by circulating energy in my eyes, ears, nose, skin and sometimes even in my tongue my intuition becomes even sharper. I honestly think that because of such things my humanity is slipping away more and more. I see just how far I have come and I realize that I still have an even longer way to go.
{Like it even matters in such a situation} I push any thoughts to the side and focus on my battle. Constantly dodging, expending energy to cover myself when I can't dodge and counter attacking. The fight goes on and on. To me, an eternity may have passed, the flow of time dilutes as I focus more and more. Everything around me is getting slower and slower but I start accelerating. The fight to an outsider would look extremely hectic. Me dashing everywhere, disappearing and reappearing in an attempt to confuse and catch the wyverns off-guard. With any chance given to me I plunge my swords into their necks.
The opponents finally diminished in numbers after perhaps an hour. The wyverns have lost their morale. The more of them run away the more will follow those who have run. I finally find myself with only corpses surrounding me, the mountain a bit roughed up, but definitely less destroyed than if I were to fight a group of Rock Dwellers. With a moment of peace I just lay there, drenched in orange blood, with a blank stare and mind jammed with questions I will probably never know answers to. Like, "what the dog doin?"
§
As time passes by, sometimes long eons can become a blink of an eye when everything feels the same. The scenery burned into my retinas remains the same, scorched ground, red sky and dead vegetation, sometimes remains of some type of civilization, but one thing never changes. There always is an enemy in front of me. Be it small or enormous, be it weak or a Dragon Lord, be it weird or gruesome, there always is one. It has been like that and always will be like that… but I sometimes wonder. Wonder about who I was, and why I am here. I wonder if there was even a me before this, or a different world apart from this hell. I wonder about different worlds and I wonder if I will be able to rest. Sometimes my questions lead me nowhere, sometimes they inspire me to grow further and stronger. By questioning what I see, I came to understand the nature of what I could see. By questioning what I couldn't see, I understood the invisible barriers and laws that manage this world. By questioning myself I came aware of my timeline and saw just how weird it looked.
It spread out in every possible direction, as chaotic as the universe itself. However one thing struck me the most, out of all possible branches, almost every single one of them came to an end. The only that wasn't closed was the current me, and with every single one of my deaths a new one opened and the last one closed. However, if you were to look back at the core of every single branch, you would see 'it'. The singularity, where every single one of my branches started and where my linear timeline ended. By observing it I came to understand that what caused my time loop was my presence here, in this reality. However with no knowledge of how to escape from this hell I was trapped. Endlessly put into this loop of fighting and dying.
However, at one point in my timeline, the loop changed. I wasn't dying, finally! I became so strong that I was able to kill a Dragon Lord. Nevertheless, my joy was not long, as my strength was stimulating enough to awaken beings that were originally beyond my comprehension.
Those beings are what I decided to call "Batshit insane ones". Batshits, as I like to call them, were impervious to my normal arsenal. With eons of trial and error, observation and replication I was able to achieve a state of being able to cause them harm. I have compressed my energy so much that it seemingly collapsed into itself, creating a singularity, then I poured so much energy into it that it seemingly reverted and turned from a black hole into a white one. The white hole exuded energy so pure and so enigmatic that it baffled me, how something like that could even exist. And alas it was my weapon against those that defied common sense.
Batshits were distraught by my ability to harm them, and thus decided to fight me with all their might. The fight that took place was seemingly almost as long as my whole life up to that point, but in reality it spanned at most 42.69 days. The repercussions of the fight were great, the land shook with the fabric of reality following it behind. Many mountains were flattened, many continents were moved and many more creatures died and even a bit of something cracked.
In the end I watched as the corpses of the batshits evaporated into thin air. Leaving only the destruction around behind.
"Finally, free at last" I sighed aloud. There were no more enemies to kill, only solitude and loneliness left. With nothing else left to do I started exploring. From the smallest grain to the biggest structure, from the simplest to the most complex. And nothing baffled me more than the thing that cracked.
I could deduce that what cracked wasn't of this dimension. It seemed there yet, I couldn't touch, hear or even smell it. Only by filling my eyes with the energy from the white hole could I faintly see it. No, I guess saying "see" is a wrong word, I guess I felt it?
"Haaaa, I don't even know anymore what is what" I looked helplessly at the place where I could feel the crack. As the place the fight took in was "everywhere you could see" the cracks were formed sparsely over the space of over 500 square kilometers mostly in the place where the most energy was used.
§
And so, Earl has gone so far as to rival the strongest beings in all of hell. Every sub district of hell has "beings" which are the oldest amalgamations of hell borns that have simply surpassed the limits of mortal beings. They use a higher form of miasma, some would call it Divine Energy or some other power above human understanding, however in hell it has a simple name - "Core" energy. Its name comes from the source of it in the body, a core that exudes it. Forming the core requires an absurd amount of miasma and time, but it is highly unlikely to be completed in a normal human's lifespan.
Also, what "cracked" is Ephila's boundary and during this phase of it healing itself it is highly unstable. Which means that if an enormous strength is used it would collapse. While it collapsing is a big problem it isn't a word ending problem as after collapsing Gaia will sense it and almost immediately rebuild it.
§
"Hmmm, what If I tried something along the lines of nuclear fusion, but with energy?" As I was extremely bored I started experimenting with my energy. As I found out by using an outrageous amount of energy I could manifest for example a table along with chairs. Also I found out that my need for food was gone, I didn't need to eat nor drink and my body seemed not to decay. Well my aging was stopped not only by me turning back time but also it seemed that after a certain threshold of energy your aging would slow down.
Well anyway back to experimenting with dumb shit. Firstly I molded a bit of my energy into a ball and started cleaving it into two equal parts. It quickly went from a ball the size of a fist to a speck of dust. But it was my energy so I could feel it, not very strong but I could still feel it. So I pushed it to even smaller sizes. And finally after making the ball so small that I could barely even feel it enhancing my eyes with energy. Not knowing what to do next as If I were to try to make the ball smaller It would vanish from my sight I started to focus on this abysmal point in front of me. As I was sitting focused on my energy something clicked and I could see billions of such specks of energy everywhere around me. Almost as soon as I saw them my energy in front of me started to draw them in. As it grew in size the energy I could feel from it alarmed me.
"Shit, what did I do, a fucking nuclear bomb?" I cursed as I tried to disperse the energy. And as it turned out my words were kinda true, because after the energy grew to a size of a baseball ball it imploded into its smallest form and exploded sending everything around it flying.
"Fuc…" were my last words before I lost consciousness.