Chapter 30

The water grows turbulent. The camera zooms in on a good-looking smaller creature being chased by a huge pile of shit with teeth.

The viewers notice it’s the amazing protagonist.

Screen freezes.

Narration – “Now, you might wonder how I got in this situation. Well, it all st...”

*Chomp!*

“Ugh! Gosh, darn it! I’m trying out a real-life sitcom parody! Do you mind not messing this up for me?”

Apparently, the bastard did mind and with a flash of searing pain. I now had a new hole on my left flank.

*Swoosh!*

I dive towards the swinging canopy, tail flailing at full speed. The local greynery blurs in my vision, turning everything into one giant optical illusion. Still, I persist, fear driving me to use my newfound agility in ways I've never thought about before.

By sheer luck, I barely avoid another lunge from the grey shadow I dubbed ‘sawface’, while fresh pain blossoms from the hole left by it. What was a curious amusement before, now turns into dread, as the fact that I might actually die, hits me hard.

“That’s it, there’s only a little bit left until I’m safe!” – An unwelcome bad-luck remark crosses my mind, and a few seconds later I find myself being swung around. Sharp teeth tear through my backside and with a horrible snapping feeling, the rest of my body is thrown upwards. Further from the safety, and this time, without a way to escape.

It takes a moment for the world to stop spinning, and when my vision returns – I’m staring right into the jaws of death. There’s no time to think. In a last-ditch effort, I activate the one real cheat I had from the very beginning – Inventory. A sea of sand blurs into existence between sawface and myself, while the water, having nowhere to go, separates us. In a flash of genius, I release some of the collected water in a concentrated point above me. The pressure blast clears out the surrounding foliage but also throws me downwards – closer to my intended target.

At this point, I’m not even sure if the thing is still following me, but once I reach the ground, I activate my drilling powers.

“I need to hide!”

Deeper and deeper I go, while the ground fills up behind. Darkness envelops my vision, as my natural glow gets matted in the surrounding dust cloud. But for once, I don’t mind. It will only improve my chances of survival.

I don’t know how long I’ve been digging until I’m finally interrupted - “It’s okay, you can stop now. It’s gone,” – A voice I haven’t heard in a while calms my tense mind

I stop, taking a moment to collect myself. She’s right, the threat is gone. And while, currently, a large part of me now is in someone’s stomach, I get to live another day.

It’s time to reflect on this disaster. It’s obvious that plan A – 'the rinse & repeat' is a failure. I really should’ve known that if a plan sounds insane from the get-go, then it probably is. But Blinded as I was by my last hunting success, I was in a rush to get more of the mysterious element X – also commonly known as vespine. That’s when a little devil whispered in my ear; suggesting a fool’s proof plan, which, in a hindsight, had no proofing and was meant for a fool.

“Yes, I’m blaming this on you, Kevin!”

Long story short, the plan only works if you’re small and lucky enough. There was a reason why every movie ‘slash’ book, where a hero kills a monster this way, never repeats the exercise. Come to think of - They would’ve made a monster movie with dedicated ‘eat me’ crew, as the main heroes if it was such a viable strategy. Oh, got sidetracked again. Well, my new cancer upgrade together with the tail made me too large to swallow whole. And after I found my next target, instead of complying and becoming my resource node, the bastard bit me.

“Here I sit broken boned

Came to rule, but was dethroned.

See the enemy – unguarded!

Thought I’m smart, but was retarded.”

Oh, no! It’s bad! When have I ever tried to think in prose? Something must be wrong with my mind.

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/Level up!

-Bard LVL 3 reached!

-Increased effectiveness of all Bard skills

=======

You know what? If you’re still insisting on going on with this bard bullshit – how about giving me something useful? Like a chance to charm enemies with my movement. Or how about my songs having a real-life effect? I’ll sing AC/DC all day if my enemies get struck by it.

I look at my dwindling supply of biomass. One inconvenience of gaining more specialised stuff meant that I couldn’t just buy a replacement instantly. I was left with a need to supply a constant stream of biomass to the injured places, while my little worker bees, automatically repair the damage. In this case, complexity meant expenses. My savings should last for now, but I need to work on my emergency reserves.

It’s quite fascinating, feeling everything in great detail as my body regenerates. A cell is born from another, as the biomass gets collected inside. I concentrate on the cancerous tissue and even with my mind unlinked from the actual cell, I feel its growth. More and more bumps, bud outward and grow in size until they could be considered a separate entity, and then the process gets repeated. It’s quite unlike the normal meiosis, but then again, it’s what I expect of the so-called cancer tissue.

I turn my attention towards the never-ending battlefield. Dead bodies litter the land. Millions of soldiers die every second while the ravenous beasts feast on the remains. From them, the dead are born anew. Ready to continue the fight. A land of death, but also survival. My survival. There, my body’s defenders are fighting against the nasty infection the sawface’s teeth left in my flesh. Similar to the repair work, I’m sending a stream of resources there. However, I soon learn to be more vigilant, as part of the infection quickly discovers the cache and use it to spread. Nevertheless, after some basic resource management, victory draws near.

On a side note, I think my sense of time is a little bit broken. The last time I spent heavily injured, I almost lost it. I’m either getting more entertained by stuff that could be described as watching paint dry, or, clearly, something fucked up inside me.

And on another side note – “IT FUCKING HURTS!”

I can only do so much to distract myself from the fact that every place in my body feels like hell. Of course, I’m trying to distract myself! There is nothing fucking wrong with my sense of time. I still get horribly bored and I still want an inbuilt TV in my brain.

I would give a lot for some pain pills right now. Seriously, I would name my firstborn after anyone who could provide. Heck, I’ll give you my firstborn for them. Why stop here? I’ll even make another one for something to ease the building pressure in my stomach.

“Goddammit, not now!”

*Zap!*