C95: End to it all Pt2, Awakening
8/29/26
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"Hmm, ughhhh, huuuu" A series of groans escape a certain hole in the ground as a naked figure rouses awake.
Slumping over to their back, the figure groans as they open their eyes only to close them again and enter a fetal state as a powerful headache threatens to split their head in half. Images flash through the person's head of recent events.
Learning of multiple critical factors of their life. Firstly, there is the realization that they were already dead, having slit their own wrists vertically before having his throat slit by Mar…Maria. He did the same in return to help them both die together to escape the nightmare they had, through their actions together alongside others, created.
Yes this entire Nightmare here, the Hunters Nightmare, was started by them at the forefront. Sure there was also Byrgenwerth before them but they barely scratched the surface of what was going on. They had turned the folk of the hamlet into slaves and experiments. Instead of actually finding out about anything, they had rather accelerated the changes in these people before being forced to run like cowards.
It was at this point that the healing church stepped in followed by requesting Gehrman, me and Maria too.
Our united forces had fought ... .that thing, on the beach. ….Our Cruelty, that which personified the monstrosity that is Humanity. It reared its head like never before in the presence of that Eldritch creature. We sacrificed much. Pain, Injury, Loss, Death; All these introduced new monstrosities that remained after us.
As these thoughts hover in the center of my mind, I reminisce of something. A name, a form, a video here, a memory there. It brings to light the final gift that 'Kos' left for me.
Her child, the Orphan.
A child that could no longer be born, except here. A child stuck in loss, like me. A child that has no future except to be here, to face me.
Slam, "shit" I snap myself out of my thoughts, I hit my hand on the ground, but I underestimated how far away I hit and struck the edge where the hole begins to rise. The impact causes a static feeling to zap through the arm. Said impact causes me to sit up and massage my hand as I finally realize that my body feels very different compared to what it was before.
My muscles don't feel as compact as compared to before, thus releasing less power. My joints are more rigid compared to before thus limiting my flexibility that felt akin to 360 shifting with how much range of movement my attacks and dodges had before. Finally there are my bones which while still felt akin to segmented puppet sections had actually been like that in disguise. They were closer to grains of sands that clumped together except during movements and impacts where they were more like tendrils to better disperse damage and shock.
'It's been so long. I haven't felt this human since forever.' I can't help but think as I slowly get up and dust myself off. I naturally notice that my clothes are gone but there is little I can do about that until I open the system to get to my inventory and am struck by the literal swarm of alerts slapping me in the face. I almost go blind as a result.
The first set of alerts were back from when I encountered the One Reborn, the actual modifiers for the boss. Amongst these was a modifier called "corruptive Force". Following that is the Prey Slaughtered Alert. The third was a warning for a followup on corruptive force stating that the host couldn't read these messages and the main system would be rebooting.
The new alerts following the reboot were attempts to communicate with me as well as the challenge mode for Nicolash. Yet what followed was the corruption causing it to automatically be set to 90. Not 100 like I believed but he was still pretty hard.
The next few messages were further attempts to talk to me or guide me towards Nicolash when he was hiding around in the space expanding arena. Yet what followed was another antivirus check for the corruption which it then cut contact for a while. The knowledge procs then occurred as the system realized it was shut out of it's own functions and had to preserve it's own core features and instead created a failsafe to protect me…at a cost.
This then leads to the virus version of the system to hack itself apart to create a super state for the curse to activate on me. This includes the corruption that was stopping the system from working. Thankfully the subsystems were able to still access the core system and thus safeguard to, which was how I was able to use my inventory and whatnot.
The main core attempted to commune with me via the pet system since it would be less likely for the curse and corruption to feed into it due to how unused it was but the system overestimated me as well.
Unfortunately for my system, my momentary captivation with buffing Gerald to have more elemental affinities was shot down the moment I learned I could only have him learn 3 at most. Then it showed me a gacha system which further drowned every desire with said system. As a result, I was indeed too dumb to notice its peculiar hints and thus never realized anything.
Not long after that were the messages for the warnings about the Brain of Mensis lying to me, and offering an alternative via the system system, at a high price of course.
Following that were the many alerts regarding skill levels and advancements from using the skill refinery.
Everything changed once I reached the Astral Clocktower and had spoken to Adeline, the truth seemed to hit harder than I expected as the curse had reached an uproar and blatantly suppressed the subsystems and nearly corrupted them too. Luckily enough, I had not had a need to use either of them after that anyways.
My fight against the Living Failure had been a proper grade 100 enemy that I took down. I should have died as well there but the corrupted system, aka the curse, had chosen to help me in exchange for what it did to me there. All of its actions had accumulated suppress my 'guardian angel' and cheat, all to…wait.
"Hey, why the fuck did you take away my Nox physique too? Looking at the history of messages, that was 100% your creation. Not the corruption. Either refund my effort into that shit or just give it back." I complain as I see clearly that I had gotten the Nox physique long before I got the Seeker racial change.
[A new physique is available for due to host's actions and accumulated achievements]
"Ya know what, no. I'm not gonna do that anymore. I know I just said to refund me but I'm done not being human anymore, it's what got me into this mess in the first place. Just give me the echoes for my effort and open the system store so I can respecc.
[Granted] the system responds then I feel a flood of echoes fill me for a total of 170 million echoes.
That is a great sum of echoes. At least I think it's a good sum. In all honesty, I don't know how this whole thing translates to as a majority of my early xp into my physique was the skill shards and then the early support skill, Lesser energy flow.
Though I do feel that with me having obtained billions by this point, millions certainly feels small but let's see what the store has to offer me now that the system is supposedly on my side now.
"Hmmm, the old early skills are there just like before. The various body skills that I never took as the majority of them were simply assimilated into my physique back then. Though it is nice to see that the higher grade skills shrunk in price with the sole exception of the health regen skill that I was eyeing a million years ago. Why is that one still so expensive?" I ramble to myself about some of the changes the shop has gone through.
[ Ding: health Regen is a top grade skill comparable to the Tier 4 magical creator even when not upgraded.]
"You say that but I certainly didn't spend billions of SP to reach 'Magical Creator'. So why would regen cost so much more? I don't even need the full skill. Just give me something so I don't die from bloodloss, you little shit"
I wave my still bleeding arms around. For some reason, my throat injury was sealed again when I changed back but my arms are still bleeding me dry. It's weird how that works, perhaps because it was self-inflicted so my body treats it like some sort of sin. Though with the secondary memories, it doesnt truly feel like my sin, at least not fully.
[Degraded skill available for purchase now]
My mind snaps off my internal discourse about my two sets of memories creating conflicting perceptions about the current world as my attention returns to the system shop and I see the new skill there.
[Lesser Health Regen Level MAX. 30 Million Blood Echoes: A newly formed variation of the standard health Regeneration skill, with the sole purpose to ensure the user doesnt passively die from his born injuries.]
"Well…that's nice, I guess." I make a simple comment before outright buying it and I feel a seed of life flow into my chest before latching onto my heart. I feel a pain as I siphons some of my blood, only to then begin to amplify my natural blood flow which somehow improves my vitality as the amount of blood I bleed out from my arms doesnt matter anymore.
"I guess that works" I shrug as I no longer see my health dropping on the system screen. I still feel occasionally weak in my arms but then it recovers quickly. It feels as though my arms intermittently fall asleep and feel static-like only to then be fine and this process repeats over and over again. When I was in my Eldritch physique, I simply felt so strong that a little blood couldn't do anything to me. Yet it's different now.
'No matter, let's see what else is available to me. Wait no. Let's see my status once more. 'I think to myself before I pause as I just realized I saw something missing from my status.
….
"Fuck yes, the Caryll curse is finally gone. I can use all my runes as I fucking please. I'm no longer glass even if I'm weaker now. Still…seeing that I lost an average of 130 in every stat still hurts me in my heart, more than the new seed of life I got.
I remember that my current Blood-Hunter physique was primarily strength-build oriented, so my flexibility in terms of Skill along with my bloodtinge and arcane stats suffered the most. I lost more than a 1/3rd of my magic power as a result of this change so I have to be more strategic about my magic skills, so I can't use them haphazardly like I did before.
Realizing this massive gap exists. I think through my current situation properly. There is the orphan not more than 50 feet from my current location…probably. It's waiting for me. But I don't know how strong it actually is. If it holds even a fragment of power of the original Kin it came from then even my current level of 904 would not be enough.
'In the game, even reaching level 100 makes it possible to kill it but it's movements are predictable and it's possible to beat down by repeatedly striking it's back with a heavy strike over and over again with Ripostes mixed in. '
'Yet the power of a true child of a god is not so simple. I should expect to break every limb before I can finish it off. Not even counting on the system to revive me should be expected. Ludwig back then beat me down and he wasn't even at the 100th NG+ back then. '
I rise to my feet and get dressed firstly. Out of a strange sentiment, I put on my personal set of hunter clothes, the very same cursed set that only has the use of increasing my curse value. Yet due to the transformation, the full curse had dissipated from my body and now these clothes only hold a gloomy aura on them. Thankfully, the system finally does its god damn job and protects me from said curse.
Same with my axe as I take it out. I remember I dropped it back in the clocktower after I was struck on the neck by the shark giant but it and a set of two Rakuyos' in my inventory too. One is Lost-type while the other is uncanny.
Click Click
My axe extends to its full length before I shrink it back down before putting it on my back so I can climb the ladder up. Arriving at the top, I see a lever that I pull which calls down a giant floating rock platform. I don't bother with it as I walk down a pathway where I notice a bunch of snail women bent over in a state of prayer in a unified direction, even if limited by the cave itself. They simply form two lines along the left and right of the cave, leaving the middle open for me to walk along on.
Reaching the end of the cave, it leads out to a wide open beach, grains of sand everywhere with various ship wreck pieces scattered on the beach itself. This makes it all appear incredibly gloomy and dark. With only 1 single exception to this whole atmosphere.
That single piece is the corpse of the Eldritch god that died in this place. Kos (or some say Kosm), the very being that cursed every single hunter to turn to the greatest beast it can with only murder on their mind. The very reason that my teacher, Gascoigne, fell to beasthood before falling to my blade.
Its blue white flesh remains in the center of the location near the water itself as its curse spreads through the water itself, affecting all who drink it and manifest the mutations that affect the hamlet citizens.
I pause at the entrance as I take out a certain gemstone I got very long ago.
The [Grand Blood Tempering Gemstone.] Something that I retrieved so long ago and was only usable on a weapon that was at it's very limits, aka +10. I never had a weapon that met that criteria except my axe but it was cursed so I couldn't use it so I just forgot about it.
I bring out my portable workshop and get to work on embedding it into my personal weapon with over a dozen gemstone slots due to years of crafting. I never used more than 3 but with my current skill set, Im curious if it is possible. Especially since all the slots are droplet styled.
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Word Count = 2635