Frozen in place, the wave of pain coursing through his body was momentarily forgotten as his gaze fixated on the writhing mass of black dots in the distance.
They looked like clusters of snakes slithering towards him, undulating in an irregular manner and growing closer with every passing second.
His heart pounded in his chest, hearing a ringing sound in his ears. He felt panicked and scared.
He struggled to his feet, trying to ignore the excruciating pain in his mangled hand. He looked down at the ground, where a mix of blood and black liquid from the previous cluster-like creature coated the once spotless gray ground.
The surrounding area, previously desolate, had now been sparsely populated by the ominous cluster forms in the distance.
At his wits' end, his mind raced to come up with a viable solution. Running away seemed impossible; he was too weak to evade them, let alone slip through.
Time was running out; the cluster forms slithering toward him. He found himself stuck in a predicament, with nowhere to run and no apparent escape route in sight.
Will I die? He thought, loosening his grip on his wrist where he now missed a hand. He saw no hope of escaping from this dire situation.
As his mind desperately raced to think, he saw the mangled mess of flesh and black liquid writhe slowly, and a shimmering blue globe began forming, as if it was feeding on the black goo to form.
He eyed it warily, taking a few steps back, but nothing harmful seemed to be happening.
A shimmering blue globe formed quickly from the writhing mess on the ground. It seemed as if the black goo was consumed and transformed into this strange blue sphere. All that remained left behind of the monster's corpse looked like lusterless black ink or ichor on the ground - remnants of the creature - along with his hand's scattered pieces.
Watching the phenomenon, the globe glittered and whirled with energy, full of potential.
Meanwhile, the black clusters in the distance were getting closer. They moved in an odd manner like they were alive and possessed a will of their own; with him being their target.
Looking at the globe, then scanning around; his teeth felt like they were going to break because he was gritting them so harshly - to muffle the pain and fear, but it was of little comfort.
His eyes reflected the blue glowing globe, and he walked forward, leaning down and using his remaining hand to grab it.
Trembling fingers touched the globe, it lost all coloration, turning a misty gray. Without warning, a network of tiny cracks webbed across its surface. In a swift motion, it collapsed into a pile of ashen fragments, leaving only wisps of the shimmering blue energy it had previously held.
Retracting his hand, he stared at his palm, it was bloody, the same it before.
No visible change occured, yet a strange feeling coursed through his body - the feeling faint like there wasn't enough stimulation for it to form a tangible change.
A crazy thought formed in his head.
With his diminishing strength, leaning down to touch the globe had almost made him topple face-first onto the ground, but he straightened up with difficulty and looked at the closest writhing black cluster, about 7 slabs away - around 42 meters.
Walking - staggering - towards it, the pain in his wrist got more pronounced at the thought of executing the crazy plan he came up with - if you could even call it a plan.
An experiment. A crazy experiment with an unknown outcome.
When he got closer to the writhing mass, he looked at it with the coldest expression he could manage and thrust his right arm with the missing hand into the mass.
Another sickening sound filled the space, and a mess of black substance exploded, writhing, along with half of his forearm.
Boom! Splatter!
Biting his bottom lip so hard that blood seeped out onto his white teeth, he let out a muffled scream against his left hand, his hoarse voice pained.
He retched, pressure building up in his throat along with a burning sensation and a sour taste, and his legs lost their strength as the writhing mass formed another blue globe.
When the globe formed, he reached out his shaking left hand to touch it and it turned into a misty gray, crumbling to ashes like the previous one.
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The faint energy he felt in his body got more pronounced but still ambiguous.
It wasn't enough. He needed more for the change to occur.
"It... Not enough..." He muttered, "...... Maybe... one, more time..." He tried to encourage himself, barely able to speak.
Under the pressure of time, he mustered all his strength to stagger to his feet, his gaze fixed on the next target.
In a couple more minutes, he would be swarmed by more than one of these cluster masses, so he needed to bear it and continue.
Otherwise, death is certain. He steeled himself, dragging his feet along the smooth ground to the next writhing mass a few slabs away.
"AAGH!" He thrust his right arm into it.
Boom! Splatter!
A fleshy explosion accompanied by the raining down of black liquid, and mangled parts of his forearm.
His forearm was now gone.
Falling to his knees, breaths came in ragged, "I- I ca- an't, no... No..."
Darkness took over his vision…
Shortly after, he jolted up by pure instinct. His head darted around warily, to his relief, it didn't seem like he passed out.
Trembling fingers touched the blue globe and a sense of dread hit him as it crumbled to ash. Not enough yet...
More of this energy was needed.
Hesitation and unwillingness took over his mind.
The pain and shock of losing his hand and forearm were almost too much to bear. He could barely breathe, and his mind clouded with fear and panic that were about to overcome his will. But he pushed through the agony and forced himself onto his knees, his body trembling and his mind racing.
Desperate for a way to fight back, he crawled his way with his left hand toward the nearest writhing black mass, his right arm sinking into the dark, slimy mass.
He bit back a scream of pain, the sharp, sickening crunch of flesh and bone ringing in his ears. He withdrew his maimed arm, wincing at the sight of how he'd lost most of his right upper limb.
The voice in his head to give up the struggle and give in to the tiredness. He resisted, opening his reddened eyes widely like a madman, touching the blue globe that had formed.
"No..." It wasn't enough.
... He cried, but tears didn't come out besides the faint dampness in his dry eyes, too dehydrated and weak to even cry properly. It still wasn't enough, he felt like he needed one more.
Curling on the ground, he retched once again, tasting sourness in his mouth.
He choked out as he forcefully stopped crying, "At- at least... I'm... Left-handed... Ha.. ha." He tried to humor himself, but it wasn't helpful.
In desperation, he dragged his body towards the nearest mass, which wasn't that far away now. Not long left before he got swarmed.
Eat this..! He sunk what remained of his right arm into the writhing cluster.
With a final burst of excruciating pain, he looked at the stump left near his shoulder.
He couldn't even react before he blacked out.
A head hit the ground harshly in the puddle of black liquid, but its owner didn't wake up.
The black clusters undulated and walked towards the passed-out human. Not very fast, but steadily.
———————
The black gooey liquid formed tendrils feeding into a forming globe, the globe wasn't light blue, but sunset orange.
It swirled with energy, still in place as the tendrils surrounded it.
The tendrils soon lost luster, crumbling as the orange globe formed.
The tendrils collapsed, and the smooth globe rolled on the ground due to it.
Slowly, it touched the left arm of the passed-out human, which lay motionlessly.
The globe turned to a misty gray, a web of cracks forming on it, and it crumbled to ashes.
———————
He jolted with a heavy headache awakening him. His head was filled with information - too much information to the point where the brain felt stuffed and about to explode.
A very intense but brief headache that filled him with certain knowledge.
Unfamiliar powers coursed through him but he didn't have time to linger and examine them in detail. He exerted himself to sit upright, the nearest writhing mass only a few meters away.
He reached out his left arm, but this time not to sacrifice his hand to defend himself - a glow emanated in front of his palm, and his mind worked through the newly learned information.
A bolt of white energy shot out of his palm, hitting the writhing mass and exploding along with it.
Staring at the sight, a feeling of pure relief hit him briefly before he remembered that the next writhing mass was also about to reach him.
He tried to cast the spell again, but despite the information in his head telling him he could cast it, he couldn't do it again just yet.
Time was of importance, with some time since the writhing masses moved at an average speed, he tore off a bit of the rags covering his body and wrapped it around the stump that remained of his right arm awkwardly with difficulty.
After that, the spell finally 'recharged', so reaching out, he fired another bolt that hit the closest writhing mass.
Crawling, his body on the edge of collapsing, he reached the corpse, or remnants, of the first cluster, and touched the formed blue globe.
It seemed like he needed more of these globes this time around for a tangible change to happen.
His heart finally settled. Although his emotional and physical states were in shambles, he still felt much calmer.
As for the blood loss from his right arm... He tried not to think about it for a minute or two, lest he collapse from stress.
He tightened the rags tied around the stump of his right arm, reducing the bleeding to a minimum.
With the spell he learned, he had a bit of breathing room.
He could move around to the corpses of the dead monsters and collect the globes of mana left behind after killing them with the Magic Bolt spell.
Yes, mana globes are what they're called.
With whatever happened before, his mind was filled with quite a bit of information.
The spell he 'learned' was called Magic Bolt, it's a spell that hurls a magic projectile toward the desired location. His mind now had the casting incantation, gesture, runic language, magic circle, and intricacies of the spell, although most of them were still missing, resulting in a 'non-mastered' or 'defective' outcome. What he cast currently would be more of a faulty spell with a lot of room for improvement.
However, he didn't know what that improvement would be, all of the previous conclusions were based on the information he gained.
So, collecting these Mana Globes is the priority, because although sparse, I feel like the 'monsters' are getting more frequent... I need to figure out how to 'master' this spell... And food... water... treating my right arm... sleep...
He swept his dirty hair out of his face with his left hand, sighing.
It still proved to be a hopeless situation. His current breathing room will only last so long before he collapses again.
But literally, nothing else seemed viable to do in this endless expanse, stretching beyond what the eyes could see, dull and lifeless besides these monstrous writhing forms.
Even his own body had been affected by this place, he had turned overly pale over time, and his hair had turned white, he couldn't even begin to question or think why this had all happened.
He braved through for the next period of time, killing the writhing clusters and collecting globes.
One thing he found out; sunset orange globes occasionally form, they store more mana than light blue ones, providing a better supplement for growth.
Finally, as he touched one globe, he felt an excruciating headache.
He collapsed to the side onto the ground, I knew that this would happen...
After writhing like those clusters on the ground for a while, the headache subsided.
"I-... I could actually die if this continues..." He mutters hoarsely, browsing through the new information.
It was a complicated string of magic runic language, circles, incantations, and such, surrounding the Magic Bolt spell.
He could now cast two bolts of energy at a time, but aiming them in two different directions would be hard currently, as they followed the same trajectory.
Regardless a good thing, it doubled his output of damage.
But also, he was about to pass out, no, die. If he let his guard down, the clusters would catch him - he held on and persisted purely by will.
As he thought about that, the remnants of the monsters he had slayed, the lusterless black goo or ashes, began to all writhe.
"..." He stared speechlessly all around, feeling a premonition, "Alright, fuck, I guess I'll die! Fuck! Fuck!" He cursed with his cracked voice, despite normally not saying such words. He couldn't even move fast. He tried to crawl away, but it was reminiscent of a snail moving.
The remnants all shot up into the sky and then fell in front of him, converging.
He stared at it with wide eyes, giving up...
Fortunately, the premonition was perhaps misplaced.
Because the next moment, the moving dust dissipated to reveal a chest, with text on it written in English.
'Irregularity - An Experiment'.
