Chapter 13: Chapter 13: bad luck

I stretch as I slowly wake up from my probably too long nap. It’s a bit disappointing that the sun disappeared behind the clouds, which means it might start to rain sometime today. 

Taking out the metal tables reveals that one of them is still covered by blood and the fact that the bed is too tall for me to use them as cover, at least as they are. I probably need to fix that BEFORE it starts to rain. Maybe I can scrap the warped table and use the metal to extend the legs or to make a canopy?

The warped table is just as warped as I remembered, being twisted beyond belief. I start by breaking off the legs and straightening them. Then I flip over the non bloody table and start by extending the already attached legs with the newly straightened ones. 

This should be more than tall enough, though now significantly harder to set back up on its legs. Doing so also reveals that it’s quite unsteady and is just barely able to stand on the mostly flat grass.

The feet are also not far enough apart for the table to stand over the bed, but I fix both of those problems by bending the legs outwards. I finish off my shitty canopy by extending the table surface with the rest of the warped metal table.

Setting it over the top of the bed with the help of my inventory finish the look of “fancy bed standing in grass clearing covered by a shitty metal canopy” look I was going for. OK, maybe I wasn’t going for that look, but I prefer it to being drenched in my sleep. I can always make it prettier later.

At least I finished it in time, because the sky has gotten steadily grayer and darker during the afternoon. Luckily there isn’t any wind, because my canopy would not save me from sideways rain.

If I’m lucky, the rain will even wash the blood off my table before it properly dries, which it apparently doesn’t do in my inventory.

So what now? Just relax for the rest of the day? I can get behind that, but after all this utilitarian crafting, I’m itching to make something pretty. So what do I have to work with? The copper and the core of the golem, both of which is in pieces, the abominite, which I still need to empty of mana and fill with my own before I can use it, a bit of gold and various small crystals in the form of jewelry that I took off of the elves and finally the electric glass that my big lightning strike made. There is also the iron oven that can be repurposed. Some of the tools I picked up could also probably be disassembled.

I actually have a lot to work with, though most of it needs some processing before I can use it. Gonna hold off on the lightning glass for now, since I want to get better at crafting before I use it. The same goes for the golem core pieces. About half of the jewelry is enchanted and I might be able to use it for bartering when I meet up with the demons, so those are also out for now. Copper is going to remain my base material of choice for now seeing as I have somewhere between one and two tons of the stuff in assorted pieces. And I like the color of it, both the matte green and shiny orange.

Should I just bite the bullet and process the abominite so that I can use it? Taking it out I find it still has a rough exterior with one end having pieces of abomination still attached to it. Getting rid of the remaining pieces of abomination is the deciding factor. I could take the effort and scrape it off, but the surface of the area that was inside of the abomination has lots of small tendrils, making it almost impossible. Smoothing the surface needs me to fill it with my mana, which I need to do anyway if I want to properly use it.

So how do I do it? I know it’s not full since I spent a lot of it on obliterating that abomination, but I still can’t just push my mana into it. When I did it to that small piece I broke off, It became easy after I completely emptied it. What if I just absorb all the mana in it, then push it back in? Does it become my mana if I do that? Failing that I can just send the mana into the sky to make it a thundercloud instead of a raincloud. If I do that though, it will probably take a while to refill it. In the game It took Anana about a minute to completely refill her mana, but I’m definitely taking longer now. And with the crystal holding many times my mana, it’s going to take a while.

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I sit down on top of the magenta crystal and start to take out all the mana. In the beginning it’s as easy as I remembered, but as the quantity I hold in my body increases, it becomes noticeably harder to pull in more. The prickly feeling also returns, along with the increase in my personal arcs of lightning.

As I near the double of my capacity it becomes almost unbearable, before becoming slightly less bad as I continue. It continues to become easier as my head becomes lighter on my neck. When I feel like the crystal is almost empty is the point at which I realize that my body has gone limp and I have fallen backwards with only my legs remaining on top of the thing. The last thing I remember is the panic of loosing control of the mana stored in my body, before everything went black.

 

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The next thing I know, I stare out at a black void filled with sparking stars in the distance. I try to rub the dizziness out by rubbing my face, but as I do that, I can see through my hand. What's more, it doesn’t have claws. What’s going on?

Is this a weird dream? Studying the rest of my body, I find that it’s back to my fairly overweight human body, with the exception of my fluffy tail, and according to my furless hands, my ears. And the tiny fact that I’m transparent.

This is odd, and honestly quite uncomfortable.

As I try to figure out what’s going on, some aurora appears in the sky, or at least what I perceive as the sky, before folding down in an unnatural way around what I realize to be a massive face. A pair of eyes opens on the otherwise featureless face. The pupils are blacker than the black void around it and the iris is glowing in a multitude of ever changing colors, stretching infinitely deep into the void behind it.

I recognize that face, though it’s MUCH bigger and detailed than last I saw it. And before I could say something, Stella said in an ethereal voice that both boomed through reality itself, shaking it and was pleasantly quiet and melodic, soothing my mind.

“Hello Anna. Welcome to the afterlife.”