I slowly woke up to the world shifting around me. A soft scraping noise came from beneath me and an occasional bump and jostle. My head felt like a dozen angry anthropomorphic turtles were chucking hammers around inside my skull. I opened my eyes slowly only to be inundated with pop-ups like a windows 95 computer and a searing bright light that stabbed into my eyes.

With a groan, I minimized them all and tried to sit up. I say tried, because I seemed to be bound in place, my arms at my side. I tried to rip free of them with my super human strength… only to feel as weak as a kitten.

“He’s awake,” a feminine voice said from nearby.

The movement and jostling stopped, and a cacophony of voices sounded off all around me. The angry turtles transformed into giant apes, chucking enormous barrels, and I groaned in pain again.

Fortunately, they stopped their vocal assault, and the apes became turtles once again. I slowly cracked an eye open, hoping to avoid the intense pain. I tried to speak, but only a croak came out.

“Get him some water,” someone said.

I felt a bottle pressed against my lips, and a tiny trickle of water flowed down my throat. Before I could properly swallow, it slipped into my airways and I ended up with a coughing spasm that brought to light more pain, this time in my ribs, my back, my arms, my legs… ok, everything hurt.

Once the coughing fit subsided, someone pressed the bottle against my lips again, and this time, they poured the water even more slowly. I could swallow the few drops that made it in and I could practically feel the dry tissues in my throat soaking up every molecule of water.

Once they saw I had swallowed that much without coughing, they let a bit more flow in and I could drink my fill. I still felt dried out, but my stomach sloshed uncomfortably and I had to stop.

“What happened?” I managed to croak out once they removed the bottle.

“Bro, we were hoping you could tell us. We all had the weirdest dream. When we woke up, there were dead bodies all around. You looked like someone used you as a pincushion. You slumped to the ground as I woke up. You were barely alive, a list of debuffs a mile long, and out cold,” Magnus said.

My mind slowly cleared. As it cleared, I could recall some of what happened. “Help me up,” I said, my voice still raspy.

They unbound my body and helped me sit up in what I then realized was a stretcher they made. As soon as I was sitting upright, a cool wet nose and a huge raspy tongue attacked my face. I sputtered and coughed, the tongue actually slipping in and out of my mouth for a moment as I wrestled the furry face away. “Blech, gah, yeah, I’m glad to see you too, girl. Give me a, bleurgh… give me a moment,” I managed to get out.

Rukia whined pitifully as she laid down in front of me. I managed to get my eyes open without being blinded again and saw her laying there. Her years were back and down, tail tucked under her rump and the saddest look I ever saw in her ice-blue eyes.

“I’m ok, girl,” I said to reassure her. I even reached out and scratched her behind her ears. She immediately started trying to lick the skin off of my hand, but I let her this time. At least it wasn’t my face. I looked around for a moment, trying to get my bearings. We were still in the giant pine forest, but we were nowhere near where we were ambushed by the Fae.

“I remember some of what happened,” I said, and with the occasional sip of water to further ease my parched throat, I told them what I could. I told them how I was caught in a glamour, one that made me think I was at home with my wife and son, how they kept trying to get me to eat or drink something.

I still wasn’t sure how I managed to break free of it, but I continued with how I found them all unconscious, about the Fae and how they ambushed us. I remembered a bit of the fight, but at some point, the world turned red and that I couldn’t remember anything after that until I woke up on the stretcher.

“Bro, I was back home with my dad. We were having a barbeque, and I had a beer with him. Next, I knew I was waking up here in the forest and you were almost dead,” Magnus said.

I looked around, and everyone had a similar story, except Cody. His was different. The Fae managed to make him think he was helping the sick and the injured, like back in town. They managed to get Cody and Malakai to burn through all their divine charges before tricking Cody into drinking what he thought was a Divine Charge restoration potion.

“So… yeah, I couldn’t heal you when we came to. We tried to give you a potion, but it barely did anything. Kiara here is a herbalist, though. She had some healing poultices that seemed to work better, just took longer,” Cody said.

I looked at Kiara and said, “Thank you. You saved my life.”

“It’s fine. The way I see it, you just saved my life for the second time… in one day. I still owe you one,” she replied.

“How long was I out?” I asked.

“It’s been a couple of hours now. It took a min to clear our heads. Once we could think clearly, we pulled out all the arrows and fed you a potion. It didn’t do much, so Kiara volunteered to give you first aid, pulled out a bunch of green paste wrapped in leaves from her bag, used a lot of Cody’s new bandages and wrapped you up like a mummy. Bro, you had almost two dozen arrows in you. I have no idea how you managed to survive that,” Magnus said.

“While Kiara worked on you, we looted all the bodies, made a stretcher out of those two by fours and a couple blankets. Then we buggered the hell out of there,” Magnus finished.

I grew dizzy again and had to lie back down. “If you guys are fine with it, I think I’m going to go through my notifications, then maybe nap some more,” I said. I was still exhausted from whatever happened to me. No one had a problem, and we got moving again, with me still on the stretcher. It turned out that they had me hooked up to Slate and he was the one pulling me along.

I pulled up my status first and got a good look at my list of current debuffs.

Debuffs:

Strained Endurance: Your Stamina pool zeroed out multiple times in a short span, -80% maximum stamina. Duration: 5hrs 31min.

Dehydration: Due to massive blood-loss, you are dehydrated. -30% health Recovery, -25% Stamina Recovery

Berserker Fatigue: -12 Strength, Constitution, Endurance. Duration 3hrs 31min. -50% Health Recovery, -66% Stamina Recovery. Duration 9hrs 31min

Concussion (moderate): -50% concentration, -50% Mental Stats, -50% Agility. Duration 2hrs 34min.

Ugh, that’s a lot of Debuffs. I was definitely put through the wringer. I was even hit over the head at some point, it seemed, that explains part of the head pounding. What is this Berserker Fatigue? I’ve never seen that one before. I dismissed the debuff list and pulled up my prompts.

Mental Resistance Check failed. You have succumbed to Glamour

Mental Resistance Check Succeeded. You have Broken Free of Glamour

I discarded several prompts about bleeding from arrow wounds and got to find out what the hell that Berserker Debuff was all about.

Congratulations!

You have unlocked a Bloodline ability

Bloodline: Berserker’s Fury

I clicked on Berserker’s Fury to get more information on this new bloodline. How did I manage to unlock it, without using a medium perk?

Bloodline Ability: Berserker’s Fury

Congratulations, one of your distant ancestors was an ascended being known for his Righteous fury in battle. This Fury transcended all mortal limits and made him nearly indestructible, but not without a price. Berserker’s Fury is a double-edged ability. The mortal body cannot sustain this amount of power, and requires a long recovery period once its effects end.

Berserker’s Fury:

+2 Strength, Constitution, Endurance per cultivation rank.

x3 Stamina Regeneration.

x2 combat speed, +50% damage on all physical attacks

Rapid Healing: recover 1Hp every 5 seconds, Injury based debuffs drop off after 5 seconds.

Red Haze: must make Mental Check to avoid confusing allies for enemies.

Duration: 5 minutes

Berserker Fatigue:

-50% Combat speed, -25% damage on all physical attacks. Duration 1 hour.

-2 Strength, Constitution, Endurance per cultivation rank. Duration 6 hours.

-50% healing recovery, -66% stamina recovery. Duration 12hrs

No wonder I’m so fucked up. These after-effects are gods damned insane. I’m basically hamstrung for half a day after using this damned thing once? I mean, the buffs are amazing, but motherfucker, that’s a hell of a price to pay. I took a moment to pull up my attributes and confirm the penalty.

John Baker

Sapient (Human)

Cultivation Rank: Body 6

Health points: 13/40*

Health regeneration: 1.6/day*

Stamina: 26/26*

Stamina Regeneration: 1/minute*

Strength 11*

Dexterity 19

Agility 9*

Constitution 8*

Endurance 13*

Intelligence 11*

Wisdom 11*

*Temporary modifier in effect

Fuuuuuuuuuk! Thanks to all the damned debuffs I’m suffering under, some lasting over nine more hours. My stats are all human normal or below normal. Well, except for my dexterity, I corrected myself. I shook my head at the numbers I was seeing, until those damned Turtles threatened to become giant apes again, then I kept my head still.

Aside from a very dangerous Bloodline Ability, to myself and my enemies, there was one good thing that came out from the ambush. I didn’t know how, but I had a massive jump in several of my skills.

Acrobatics went up two ranks, to rank 5, Athletics increased by three to rank 7. My Axe Skill went up from rank two to Rank seven, Evade Rose by five ranks as well, rank eight now. My grapple gained three ranks, now at four. My Perception (Sound) and my Polearms went up by two each, leaving me at ranks four and eleven, respectively. Even my Spiritual Sense increased by one rank.

I also picked up a new skill, Unarmed Combat, and leveled it to rank three.

Congratulations, you have gained the skill Unarmed Combat. Unarmed Combat rank 1

You are proficient with fighting without a weapon in hand. Every part of your body is a lethal weapon, able to deal punishing blunt force blows. +2% dmg per rank, +1% attack speed per rank.

Going off of the skill gains, I had to have been fighting like a jackrabbit on meth. Jumping, running, and fighting with everything I had.

After clearing all my prompts, I allowed myself the luxury of drifting off to sleep. The best method to deal with all this misery was to sleep off the debuffs, like those characters in the VR Litrpgs books, when they had to deal with death sickness. I wish I had a problem like death sickness. At least then the deaths wouldn’t be permanent, unlike in the real world. Unlike this world…

Everyone let me sleep as we traveled. Kiara woke me every hour to change out the poultices she used. Her Artisan class and the Herbalism skill allowed her to create Mana infused pastes that worked a lot better than just first aid, though normally not as effective as alchemy. The downside was that the poultices only worked for an hour after being applied, and she was using all her supplies on me.

I woke up a few times to the sound of fighting. I tried to get up and help, but someone was always there in a flash and pushed me back down and threatened to have Rukia sit on me if I resisted. It was beyond frustrating.

Everyone around me is risking themselves while I just lay here like a gods damned invalid. I mean, I know I only regenerate one Stamina per minute, and my max health was a measly forty points. I know I only have a whopping twenty-six stamina and would fall unconscious if I moved too quickly… fine; I was a fucking invalid. But that didn’t mean I had to like it.

The first debuff to drop off was Dehydration. All that one needed was for me to drink a bit each time I woke up and let my body process the liquids. That one alone increased my stamina regeneration up to a whole four points per minute.

After my second nap and dressing change, my Concussion (Moderate) downgraded to Concussion (Mild). The mild version only cost me twenty-five percent of my mental stats, my Agility and my concentration. That one had a two-hour timer for its duration, and could still drop off before my Strained Endurance finally went away, right before we stopped to make camp.

“Guys, I’m so sorry. I’ve been a dead weight all day,” I said once I could finally get up and move around. My body was still weak, but I only had under half an hour left before the stat penalties dropped off.

“Bro, it’s not your fault. If anything, you nearly died saving all of us from the Fae. We had all succumbed and would have been trapped forever. But you resisted, you fought them off. Protecting you while you recovered was, literally, the least we could do,” Magnus said.

“He is right. You saved me twice today. Using my poultices to help you recover was the least I could do to say thank you,” Kiara said as well.

I still felt bad for laying about all day while they risked their lives fighting monsters and dealing with my dead weight. I’ve never been one to lie back and convalesce well. Hell, when I was in my early twenties, I wrecked my scooter and tore up the ligaments in my knee. Within a week, I was back to work at a chicken joint with a leg brace on. The docs told me to rest it for a couple weeks, but I was going stir crazy and resting wouldn’t pay my rent.

“How’s your Ki levels doing?” Magnus asked.

“Bottomed out. The concussion wouldn’t let me concentrate enough to cultivate at all. Just another way I wasted a full day,” I said. The bitterness in my tone was clear to everyone around.

The group let the last bit of my comment pass and just moved on.

“Tess found a shallow cave mostly blocked off by one of those giant trees that we could make camp in, if John is still willing to use his forge again,” Rowan said.

“Yeah, let’s do that. How far is it?” I asked. I checked my stats again and saw my health was a full forty out of forty, and my stamina had a full one hundred thirty points, but I only regenerated four per minute, at least for the next half hour. I could walk on my own for a bit over half an hour without bottoming out my stamina, by which time my stats should be back to normal and ill get twenty-five stamina back per minute.

“It’s only about half a mile over there,” Rowan said while point off to the side.

With everyone’s agreement, we walked to the campsite. No one complained when I was the slowest person there. It was only about a fifteen minutes’ walk at my incredibly slow speed. My enhanced attributes definitely spoiled me. I felt miserable the whole way there. My legs ached; I was breathing hard even though I had nothing weighing me down. Even my Dantian felt hollow and wrong. I hadn’t been fully without Ki since the first day or two after Initialization.

Once we got to the location, I set up the doorway so it wouldn’t be visible from the outside and put up the blanket cover again, didn’t want any light escaping and had to deal with yet another ambush.

I pulled out another camp chair, place setting and food enough for everyone’s dinner before walking over to my corner of the shop and sitting down on my bed. I filled my Dantian from the Forge’s supply and immediately felt a little better. My Meridians still felt hallow and empty, so I settled in and cultivated to fully replenish my pool, and maybe make some progress on clearing out my Heart Meridian.