Chapter 5 - Hell [1]

A/N: long chapter for you lot today, like 2k words.

'Living for the master.'

That's what the man before me had just said my new purpose in life was.

"Pardon?"

I said, not liking the sound of what he was saying. Dedicating my life to someone was something I already didn't wanna do, but doing it for free? No, that simply wouldn't do.

"It's as I said, you're now a blade of The Master. You serve him, like the rest of us. And don't worry, we'll make sure you serve him, and it'll be by choice."

I smiled bitterly, I really didn't like the sound of what they were saying. At this rate, I might be better off trying to escape on my own. Even if I can't control my strength, or use it right, they won't kill me. So... trying my hand at escaping might not be the worst idea.

"Now then, I want to try something."

Then, before I knew what was going on, my arm fell to the ground with a plop. Before I could scream in pain, the old man grabbed my fallen and placed it against what remained. And soon, I began to heal myself, the output was low but soon my arm had been reconnected.

"Why... would you do that, god damn that hurt!"

The man smiled.

"I was curious. But, truly, your pain tolerance really is absurd, you didn't even scream. But anyways. I wanted to see if your body could rejoin a severed limb, rather than creating a new one. And it turns out it can, amazing, isn't it? Your body knows when it can save Mana and automically swaps to reattatchment rather than regeneration. Or maybe you did it consciously?"

'He really is a piece of crap. But I won't tell him that it was instinctive rather than conscious, who knows what else he'll get curious about.'

I fell to the ground, psychologically exhausted. My body could handle the burden of being diced, but my mind couldn't.

'But what worries me is that I couldn't see him cut my arm, I don't know how he even did that. How can a human just... sever an arm.'

The old man coughed before speaking.

"Ah, right. I have another question, do you feel tired? Or sleepy?"

I looked at the old man.

"A bit. Why?"

"Can you use your Arcane Healing on your brain, if you can't do it that specifically just yet, then just heal everything. I promise it won't cause any harm, all it'll do is waste your Mana. Not that wasting Mana is something you absolutely need avoid at the moment."

I did as the man asked, not wanting to be diced into pieces. And soon, my sleepiness began to leave me.

"Look at that, regular healing Magic can't do things beyond sealing wounds for the most part, but you can 'heal' from weariness. Wait, you probably don't need to eat either. When the body's starving, it breaks down things like muscle to survive. But you can pretty comfortably replace lost flesh, so you could theoretically never eat again. But, you probably wouldn't be able to fight at your best. But you can probably get away with never sleeping, but your mind would probably suffer since that's just how humans are. Though, I'd have to test to find out how you'd cope with dehydration."

The old man patted my shoulder.

"Now, you can go rest. Even if your Mana reserves are inexhaustible, your mind can only last for so long. Come, you'll rest up in a comfy little cell. And we'll repeat this process for a while, I honestly can't teach you anymore about Mana so all we'll do is have you heal and enhance yourself."

***

It had been a few hours since I had been released from that hellish training. I was a in a cell, I could probably break out using Arcane Enhancement but there was no point, I didn't know where to go.

And, I'm also not sure at how strong I am compared to everyone else here. Compared to that old man, I'm not strong at all. But, that's probably not true for every researcher here. I doubt they're all Awakened.

Another issue is that I'm not sure on what I can heal from. By that, I mean that I'm not sure if I could heal if my heart was crushed, or if my brain received a lot of damage. I knew that I couldn't heal if I died instantly, but like I said, I didn't know how much damage I could sustain before I couldn't heal myself. Or how much damage I can take before I can't heal fast enough.

And my knowledge from the book wasn't helpful at all, the novel didn't really mention Arcane Magic so I don't know much about it.

As I wallowed in my thoughts, the old man from before unlocked my cells door.

"Come, the Master has asked us to... Well, you'll find out."

I was then injected with something, and passed out immediately.

***

When I awoke, I found myself in... a jungle? A forest? Well, whatever it was, it didn't seem like a good spot to be in. Infront of me was a sword, and nothing else.

"You're awake. Good."

I heard a voice, the voice seem to come from all directions. This told me that wherever I was, it was an artifical habitat of some sort. In other words, I probably wouldn't be allowed to die which was good considering my goal was survival.

"Survive. That's all you need to think about. I've taught you enough to do at least that."

I had no idea what was going on, in the original story, Reinhardt had died and the facility had been wiped from the face of this planet. So, I had no way to know what else was in this hell hole.

Then, I heard footsteps, turning around I saw a beast of some sort. It looked like a hyena, it's skin was reddish brown and its eyes were crazed. It's eyes were a disturbing shade of red, it's fangs were about as long as my pinkie finger. It drooled as it looked at me. It seemed to exude a small amount of heat from it's body. Perhaps it was an innate ability of the beast.

I trembled slightly, before grabbing the sword behind me. To do this, I had to turn around and that's where I made my first mistake. The hyena like creature pounced as soon as I had turned around. Its claws pierced my back, fortunately they didn't seem to have gone that deep, not only due to the lacking length of its claws but it was also physically incapable of shoving its claws any deeper due it's lacking physical strength.

I began using my Arcane Enhancement at a low output, concentrating on spreading the enhancement out evenly. However, due to the low output, my durability wasn't great. And so, the beast bit the flesh between my shoulder and throat after struggling momentarily. It's bite was hit, extremely hot. I could feel my flesh beginning to burn.

"YOU PIECE OF-"

It tore a part of my flesh off as I roared, I felt my flesh and the surrounding skin burn and blister. I then stabbed myself, my sword was long enough to go through not only me but the beast's stomach. The beast stopped latching onto me and and ran back, creating space between the two of us.

Then, I used my Arcane Magic to heal myself, the pain was immense and the wound created by the creatures bite seemed to take longer to heal than the ones created by me and its claws. The bite was also rather hot, as if the flesh had been seared.

I held the sword out infront of me, trying my best to stay quiet. Who knew what sort of things were hiding in this place, screaming would only attract more creatures.

I slowly increased the output of my enhancement, having to be so precise with my control was incredibly annoying. But, unless I wanted to enter that cycle of regeneration and destruction, I had to do this.

The creature infront of me, I didn't know what it was called, but it was a Mana Beast of some variety. They were creatures who could innately wield Mana without a Mana Core. I didn't understand the process which they used to manipulate Mana, but all Mana beasts could manipulate Mana to some degree. Not all of them wielded attributes however, some of them simply had monstrous physical stats.

This one could manipulate fire, I wasn't sure if it could control anything else through. But at the very least, I knew it could only do it through its mouth. Or else, it would've used Mana from the other parts of its body when I turned my back.

I could also infer that it was a bottom feeder, it's ability to manipulate could barely be called fire manipulation. It was more like it could output a small amount of heat that could eventually become flame. Not only that, but it was physically weak.

Then, I dashed at the animal, and thrust my blade into its skull. This, was probably not a good idea considering the skull was a rather strong bone. But, my strength was rather overwhelming when compared to the beast, and so piercing its skull with a sword was possible.

My blade was now soaked in the creatures brain matter and blood. The creature fell to the ground, it's blood splattering everywhere.

I then let out a sigh of relief, but I didn't let my guard down. There could be more creatures like this, lurking around. Waiting for me to tire. But, from that little class on Magic that I had been given, so long as I had Mana I knew that my body wouldn't tire.

My mind however, would eventually crumble.

As I got rid of the brain matter and blood, more beasts began to come forward, they were all of the same type.

I sighed, it seemed like the one I had just killed was nothing more than a guinea pig to gauge my strength.

It was annoying, because I didn't know if stronger beast's of the same species would be able to do other things. Realistically, though the origin of their flame should still be their mouth. However, I don't know of the flame's potency.

Of course, I can heal from burns. But, their flame based attacks seem to take longer to heal from. It's likely due to the residual Flame Attribute Magic rather than the fact that the wound was caused by a flame.

But, even while taking all this into consideration, I wasn't worried.

"Thing is about bottom feeders like these, it's that they always hunt in groups to make up for individual weakness."