His head lolled down, neck refusing to support him as he tried to blink… think… think about why nothing seemed to be working right. N-no, no, nonoo, he meant blink.
Right?
He blinked, one eye closing shut and then the other after it, a few seconds later, down at his arm… armarmarm… where was his arm?
It wasn’t… wasn’t there anymore.
No, not gone.
Just... noise. Just meat-noise.
Nerve static where his left shoulder used to connect to something useful, meat hanging off bone like the world's worst barbecue accident. Also, he’d been impaled. Something cold and jagged punched straight through his midsection, something that felt like wood, like a fence or a telephone pole or maybe just life waking up and going "Greg? Yeah, him. Fuck him specifically."
He could feel, could see that he was in water… water up to his chest, pinned in what looked like the inside of some kind of ship before Leviathan had decided to get big into urban planning. No, no, he was w-wrong, wrong. What this was, Greg knew now, he knew.
The ship graveyard stretched around him like a metal tomb, a twisted sea cemetery of steel and sludge and probably some very confused fish wondering why their neighborhood suddenly smelled like a butcher shop.
His powers... screens floating in front of his vision, words he couldn't read, everything red and flashing like a Christmas tree having a seizure. Too many screens, too many words, toooooo much information when his brain felt like it was running on dial-up and missing half its RAM.
Can't even read. Don't even want to...
Pain wasn't pain anymore. Pain was irritating. Like when your mom kept asking if you'd done your homework except the homework was "not dying" and he was definitely failing that class.
Darkvision kicked in automatically because apparently his body thought this was a perfect time for night vision, and suddenly he could see everything around him in perfect, horrible, excruciatingly bright detail. Water’s not supposed to look like a stop sign.
"Okay, damage report t-tiiimmme,” words slurred through the taste of copper and missing teeth in his mouth, his voice sounding as ragged as he expected, lungs and vocal chords probably torn through by some huge wood. “Let's see how fucked I am on a scale of one to..."
The word on his lips was Aerith, but it vanished as he stared down, brain providing him just enough blood to realize…
My l-l-leg… Had apparently gone exactly the same way as his arm; his right leg was just as gone, like completely missing from the knee down, which was definitely not where he’d left it this morning. "Huh. That's new. That's def... definitely new."
To make things worse, he was pretty sure something that felt suspiciously like a liver… is that mine?... was floating next to him in the murky water. "Oh cool, my internal organs are now external organs. Bold fashion choice, very... yeah, no, that’s just blood..."
All the screens vanished, replaced by a single silhouette. Glowing white body with blazing red damage zones pulsing across head, stomach, chest, right arm, left leg. Right leg wasn't even there. Just blank space where his best-foot used to live.
Left arm too.
"Oh... that's not good."
The damage zones pulsed like a Christmas tree designed by Satan after he'd had a really bad day at the office.
"Ms Game, I'm pretty sure that's not supposed to be that color..."
A notification popped up: [CRITICAL DAMAGE - SEEK IMMEDIATE MEDICAL ATTENTION]
"Oh thanks, Ms Game. Really helpful. 'Seek medical attention.' In the middle of a fucking... fucking Endbringer fight. While trapped underwater. In a shipwreck. With no..."
Wait, was I just talking? When did I start talking?
He dismissed the notification. “...g’way.” It popped back up. Passive-aggressive little shit. Greg let out something between a laugh and a death rattle as his head lolled back down.
All he can do is sit and look, Darkvision won’t let him be blind anymore.
Concrete chunks the size of cars floating in water that looked like raspberry juice mixed with motor oil. Steel beams twisted into abstract art pieces that would've been impressive if they weren't currently trying to kill him through interpretive architecture.
Blood. So much blood. "My sword..."
Leviathan broke Gram.
The punch-back shattered it like it was nothing, like it hadn't been the one thing that... the pawnshop, that day when he'd bought the original pig-iron replica, cheap mall ninja shit that he'd known was cheap but it had lasted months, become something real, something that cut through everything without Reinforcement, become more than what it started as and Leviathan just...
Fucking sea monster broke my sword. "Do you know how hard—how hard it is to find—dragon blood—fuUUUUck." Talking to no one but talking helped; at least it kept the panic from eating his brain completely. "That thing cost me three weeks of allowance. Three w-weeks! I could… have… b… bought… chicken nuggets..."
Somehow, that hurt worse than the missing body parts.
Nonono, pain worse. Even so, that sword had been with him through everything. Not even a real legendary sword from myth and story, just some mall ninja shit that got lucky, but it was his mall ninja shit, and now it was gone and he was dying and…
– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –
Eyes opened. Dark again. When… wh-when… d…
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– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –
… D-did I close my eyes?
He tried to laugh but it came out as more of a wheeze, like his lungs were auditioning for a horror movie soundtrack. Glanced down at himself, chest staked through the midsection by what appeared to be a twisted piece of ship's mast.
"Okay Greg, time for some field medicine. What's the worst that... don't answer that. Seriously, universe, do NOT answer that."
His working hand shook.
Grabbed the pole skewering him like a kebab. Cold metal slick with things he didn't want to think about.
He pulled.
Everything spilled.
He—
No, no that’s not—
That’s mine. That’s my fucking stuff.
Why’s it floating?
Intestines flooded into the water like the world's worst magic trick and he couldn't scream because he was already screaming inside his head, volume turned up to eleven and the feedback was deafening.
Blood turned the water black around him.
That's supposed to stay INSIDE.
More of the inside spilled outside, which was… this is fine, totally, totally fine, just aaaanatomy lesson here. What he thought was much quieter and calmer than what he said, a wordless scream tearing itself out of a still-bleeding, still-healing throat, cutting through the storm outside, mindless and sharp and loud enough to wake every dead fish in the harbor.
A freight train made of used needles on fire.
It hit him like that.
Transcendent.
Like, spiritual-experience levels of agony, the kind of hurt that made you understand why people found religion in foxholes because maybe if there was a God he'd make this stop, please, just make it stop, but there wasn't and it didn't and it didn’t hurt enough to knock him out and Greg realized he was screaming, had been screaming, throat raw and ragged a—
Red. Everything red, like someone had smeared cherry Kool-Aid into his eyeballs, like someone had tossed him feet-first into a woodchipper. Couldn't think through the... through the... what was he thinking about?
Blood. So much blood.
Nothing had felt this bad since... since Bakuda turned him into hamburger… since his body had been scattered across the parking lot of Brockton Bay Medical and into… to… to... thirty points to VIT! he thought, screamed, willed into existence with the desperation of a drowning man grabbing for anything that might float.
Internal healing spiked through his system, still slow, still like someone pouring molten lead directly into his veins, but fast enough that the pain receded just enough for him to realize he'd been screaming his throat ragged this entire time.
He sat there breathing heavy, unsure how long… how long what? Time felt slippery, like trying to hold water in his hands, and Greg's ragged pulls of air turned into equally jagged laughter because what else was there to do?
"I'm so fucking grounded, aren't I?" Blood stained his mouth with every chuckle, metallic taste mixing with hysteria. "Mom's gonna take away my PC." Snort. "The PC I haven't touched in three months. She's gonna take it away from me." His voice cracked again, pitch sliding up into manic territory. "My games, noooo..."
Still laughing, Greg let his head fall back against the metal bulkhead, the cold steel almost soothing against his skull. "If I live enough to have a kid," he glanced down down at his legs, pretty sure his junk was still intact — thank Christ, "If I can still have kids..." he let out another snort that turned into a ragged wheeze, "they are never touching a fucking video game."
His Vitality jumped, another chunk of points flowing in from all the damage he’d taken, delayed but appreciated as his open wounds started becoming... less open, flesh visibly knitting together like some kind of time-lapse horror movie.
"Okay that's deeply unsettling but I'll take it."
Blood production kicked into overdrive to replace what he'd lost, his body making noises that definitely weren't in any anatomy textbook he'd ever seen. Greg tried not to think about what that gurgling sound meant.
"Note to self," his voice barely above a whisper now, "human bodies make really weird noises when they're healing at super-speed."
When had he opened his inventory?
He stared down at a wrapped gyro in his hand, energy bar, flask of soup that smelled like chicken and vegetables and home. The taste hit his tongue and Greg almost cried because it was warm, still warm, perfect stasis keeping everything exactly as it was when he'd stored it.
"Mmm, nothing like a gas station gyro while bleeding out in a shipwreck," he mumbled through a mouthful of processed meat and questionable sauce. "Really does a body good."
Each bite sent warmth through his system, accelerating the healing, bones knitting themselves back together with audible pops and clicks. His left arm stopped being a collection of meat strips held together by hope and stubbornness, becoming something that resembled an arm again.
"Okay, that's better. Still missing... some important chunks. But. Yeah. Getting somewhere. I think.” He scarfed down the energy bar, frowning at the fact that the thing tasted like cardboard and false advertising, texture somewhere between sawdust and sadness. "These things are made of lies and disappointment, I swear."
How long had he been eating?
Had he... He blinked down as he realized the bar was gone. Greg blinked again, trying to focus, trying to remember what he'd been doing before the taste of chicken soup filled his mouth.
Right. Dying. He'd been dying.
He pulled up his skill page with a thought and touched the screen with shaking fingers, data scrolling past vision that kept trying to blur at the edges. No sword. Nothing that could take down Leviathan. No plan worth mentioning. Leviathan was still out there, still killing people, probably walking off that hit like it was a mosquito bite.
"Okay, so my entire build is fucked. Cool. Love that for me."
Scrolled through his perks, looking for anything, anything that might let him get back in there and finish what he'd started, and then... there it was.
Pulling Out All The Stops (0/10)
"Go beyond the limits... Limit Break! For 1 minute, your WP and MP are unlimited. However, your HP drops to 0 after exactly sixty seconds."
Cost: 2 PP.
Two.
Greg had a grand total of fifteen.
"Infinite mana and will," he muttered, deliberately not reading the last part again because ignorance was bliss and bliss was all he had left. "That's good..." Then quieter, his voice cracking, "Not like I'll last sixty seconds out there anyway."
Greg stared at the perk description until the words started to blur together. Definitely said his HP dropped to zero after sixty seconds. Definitely a suicide button, very dramatic, very shiny, very final.
"But infinite mana though..."
He kept scrolling, muscle memory more than conscious thought, until something else caught his attention.
Geo-Armor Lv MAX
"Harness the Elements. Be the Fortress."
Builds armor exoskeleton from surrounding material.
Scales with mana.
"Oh, right. The Mush power. I totally forgot about that thing."
He'd gotten it after that really unpleasant fight where Mush had tried to drown him in garbage, which honestly wasn't even in the top ten worst ways someone had tried to kill him this year. Greg had never used the skill, not past a single attempt where he'd tried to see if it was worth the mana drain.
Fun fact: it wasn't. Armor felt slow, and clunky, and it barely lasted a few minutes before he was already lagging on mana just from trying to pull off an ASTARTES cosplay out of wrecked cars.
But now? Surrounded by scrap steel, concrete chunks, entire ship carcasses just waiting...
Building blocks. Everywhere he looked, building blocks.
Slow, jagged, bloody grin split his face like a crack in a windshield. "Fourteen perk points to [Pulling Out All the Stops]."
The perk glowed, warmth spreading through his chest that had nothing to do with healing and everything to do with power, raw potential waiting to be unleashed.
[PULLING OUT ALL THE STOPS - LEVEL 7 ACQUIRED] [DURATION: 420 SECONDS] [WARNING: CATASTROPHIC PHYSIOLOGICAL FAILURE GUARANTEED]
"Seven minutes," His voice gained strength, gaining something that might have been hope if hope was made of spite and very poor life choices. "That's better. I can work with seven."
Before he could do anything, another pop-up appeared right in front of his eyes, and then the grin got wider, wider, and wider still until it hurt almost as much as everything else. "Time to show that oversized gecko what happens when you break a man's favorite sword."
His voice echoed in the sunken steel graveyard, bouncing off twisted metal and broken dreams, carrying promises of violence and very questionable decision-making.
"Let's do this."
Gregory Lucas Veder
Student
Level 50
Title: Endbringer Fighter
XP: 1150/125000
Age: 16
HP: 6600 (+900 from VIT, +600 from leveling, +500 from title)
MP: 2612 (+60 from INT, +520 from leveling, + 250 from title)
Will: 2847 (+105 from VIT+INT increase, +530 from leveling, +250 from title)
STR: 350 (+80)
SPD: 240 (+70)
VIT: 360 (+90)
INT: 130 (+30)
WIS: 22 (-70%)
CHA: 44 (+9) (-90%)
Unspent Stat Points: 25
Unspent Perk Points: 1
Cash: $5,726,825
Combat Skills:
- Reinforcement: 12 → 25
- Pyrokinesis: 22 → 40
- Aerokinesis: 28 → 40
- Mana Platform: 10 → 25
Resistance Skills:
- Resistance: Blunt: 75 → 85
- Resistance: Pierce: 42 → 55
- Resistance: Tox: 6 → 10
Endbringer Fighter "Some fights change you. Others prove what you already were."
- +250% damage against Endbringers
- +500 HP
- +250 Will
- +250 MP
- +25% recovery rate from injuries sustained in S-Class encounters