Falling down from a place so high you can see the entirety of Oldcastle Island if you panned around for half a month was a different kind of trial than the problems I was used to
Where I was used to dealing with problems directly in front of me oftentimes resulting in the use of steel and iron, the problem in front of me wasn't something I could solve through brute force and violence.
Lord knows I tried
Now if I ignored the massive stack of bat wings that had suddenly appeared in my inventory at the use of brute force, I could focus on the many things I received from the Monster that was Dracula.
And as expected of a boss, just like the others, he dropped a rune much like the others, something that I should now check if I didn't want to get caught unawares by a second phase.
I paid the price of that knowledge with my arm
And speaking of my arm, once I had awoken from an uncomfortable sleep intermittently interrupted by me lifting up slightly and falling every so often, I checked up on it.
And Hells it looked terrible
A fragmented mass of torn flesh and broken bone held together only by thick fibres made of wood substituting for my arm
Opening the wooden shell up, it was a miracle how it didn't pulse with pain as my heart pumped blood into the twitching limb.
But I guess I had the burnt nerve ends for that, a wonder what you could endure without any pain to punish you for it.
(I guess you could probably ignore your heart being torn out of your chest and be none the wiser to the fact but it's not about my heart right now)
Anyways, as I tried to find a way to heal the arm without the bones setting weirdly, I glanced at the insides of my inventory on hopes of a solution
And besides the two traps that haven't seen the light of day since I bought them, the only things I could think would be useful were the tonic and the grenades
The grenade being something I would've liked to remember before my arm was chewed up by a massive green vampire with a tendency to want human extinctio
Turning away from the murderous monster that had chewed up and spit out my arm leaving it ripped apart in ways I never thought possible I focused on the things within my inventory all the while I fell.
And fell
And fell
They never mentioned how monotonous falling to your doom for what seems like an eternity with jack else to do could be.
Damned if I was going to see another pair of towers filled with bloodsuckers, both metaphorically and literally.
But anyways
The orange miracle worker I guzzled down was definitely working
The problem was that it was incorporating the wood shell into my flesh, and before I realized it I now had an arm that was a lot more wood colored attached to my body.
No idea how to feel about it.
I also have no idea how the runes appeared on the surface of the wooden shell but I'm guessing it's magic
Not exactly local enough to understand magic of course but I knew enough to know it's magic
'Ok... Now of the things that the Vampire gave me from his corpse I got the Boss Cell, a Rune called Blood rune and a quiver filled with bloody arrows
Charming
Literally
Placing the blood quiver into the charm section of the Terrarian inventory, I briefly wondered what it would do before realising it probably had something to do with blood and arrows
I guess Mr Obvious had a hand in my generation
Anyways...
Focusing on the blood rune and the boss cell, I ignored the boss cell since I don't exactly recall why I was getting it in the first place and instead focused on the Rune
Bloody
That was the aura it gave off
With a scent of iron filling the air the instant it touched it, I stared at the crimson stained stone with an image of a heart
Much like all others, it was of course a simplistic carving on a shard of stone harder then it looks
That was until you ran mana in it and it fragmented into a series of different parts that tried to inflict the highest amount of pain imaginable on a certain body part
Which in this case as indicated by the carving on the rune seemed to be on the heart.
I wonder if it'll surround death's sigil, merge with it like the other runes or just serve as a backdrop?
I didn't think it would erase the sigil since it's literally an imprint of God, but I did wonder
And no better way than to find out first hand right?
Rubbing my left hand together and feeling the wood grain in my finger tips which somehow felt sensation, I ran Mana through the stone and let it dissolve into a series of blood colored sparks that flew around in the shape of a bat briefly before diving straight into my heart.
And then I experienced a heart attack.
'I should've expected this'
Feeling a piercing pain attack my chest, I felt the blood flow going to my brain briefly stutter.
What do you get when someone konked out of their nutrients from fast tracked regeneration loses a tiny bit of the vital oxygen required to think properly?
Very violent sleep
At the least I can properly rest this time without being forced to wake up whenever the fall reset itself and caused my body to go briefly airborne awakening my mind with a miniature heart attack
---
The world of the dream was...
Weird looking to say the least
Built like every single arcade, carnival and playground I've ever been to, giant arcade screens playing 8 bit games that gave me unprecedented nostalgia despite me never having seen them before was flanked by large carnival streakers hanging from an ephemeral ceiling as sliders galore hung about in front
It was supposed to be jarring to see all three elements altogether, but strangely enough they all fit together as if pieces to a giant puzzle that I still couldn't see the full picture of.
[That's because your missing all the murder holes, the gambling dens, the theaters and the back of the newspaper crosswords puzzles!]
'Ah' Feeling my back instinctively straighten at the sound of the jovial and young voice, my head snapped to the side where a young boy with colorful eyes licked a lollipop the size of... A house?
Well that's certainly not jarring
[You're funny]
Looking at me with interest as my fist and legs whiffed straight through the God, he giggled and opened his mouth impossibly wide to fit the giant sized lollipop.
"yeah yeah I'm hilarious" rolling my eyes, the astronaut bounced around while carrying a stack of cards and let them fly about in the air like birds, rearranging to form a house of cards.
[You really are] Laughing loudly as my fist whiffed through their face again, the God of Fun turned to look at me
[Do you know why I brought you here to my domain of fun and games?]
"I don't know but can you become solid so I can just punch you a few times?"
[Well until you figure out how no, I don't like needing myself so that gamers can enjoy themselves] Fun giggled as he manifested a sun totem
[I'm pretty sure those fellas who praise the sun love that though]
"Yeah I don't know what goes on in their minds" shaking my head at the thought of the strange fellows from the soulsbourne genre, I turned to look at Fun ignoring the leg whiffing through their cranium
[Well I brought you here because you are frustrating me to death]
"Eh?" Pausing for a moment as I let those words sink in, anger flared within me as I started to action surge the number of fists and legs trying to pass through his body
At one moment I'm pretty sure my arm split into two, and not with an after image
"Frustrating you to death!? What do you think I feel!?" Growling loudly, I recalled what had happened in the beginning before I was thrust into a world on the brink of destruction
"First, I die, bit surprised, and I get to meet the big wig behind it all big whoop"
"Then, I find out that because I died earlier than I was supposed to, I was supposed to be processed in a special facility so I can get the death equivalent of proper papers"
"Then YOU come in and tell me to pick out three cards as the God of Fun-"
[Call me Fun]
"-No, and force them into my body! And you didn't even know if it would cause irreparable harm to my soul!"
[That's the fun of it no?] The kid splayed his hands outwards as a manic grin split his face in literal halves [Exploring the unknown and testing the dangers that come in the unknown?]
"Not when I felt as if everything was happening all at once giving me the world's worst anxiety attack" grumbling under my breath, I controlled my breathing desperately as my heart rate spiked through the roof.
"And right after I had the worst anxiety attack known to man, THREE TIMES mind you, you sent me to a world where I had to deal with so many God damned Undead that I think I would rather eat a bomb"
[First off, I thought you weren't a racist-]
"you're the exception"
[-Fun, and second off you can actually a bomb here, some of my guys like that because of the risk-]
'Wut'
[-And third off, you seemed to be adapting well to the environment I sent you in.]
I grunted "Well when you have special forces training telling you to never panic during situations where you should definitely panic, it helps, especially when Death himself tries to lend me a helping hand." I paused and pointed to the Brat.
"Something that you seem to have forgot."
[Well I agree, I should've given you a tutorial of my own, but since Death gave an overall summary for you I thought it was fine if I didn't]
Shrugging his shoulders, my eyes twitched as I felt my blood pressure rise
Could I have a heart attack here? No right? I had a heart attack to get in here, it wouldn't make sense if I could get another heart attack.
Right?
[Well we're getting off track, I was getting frustrated because you aren't properly utilizing the gifts that I gave you, perhaps a refresher would reawaken you]
Clapping his hands, the smile on fun's face widened and split into two before more and more avatars of fun appeared all around me wearing alien costumes as if they were the most normal things in the world.
And seeing as that this brat is a God no matter how many times I wrapped around it, I guess it would still be pretty normal.
'I'm literally trying to beat up God and a child now I think about it, what the Hell.' Thinking about my situation, Fun snapped his fingers with a grin as the lights went out.
And in the swirling darkness
A pair of forever shifting neo chromatic eyes stared out in the darkness, my mind blurring at the edges as the world shattered around me
+++
Tell me anyone who's still reading this novel of mine
Are you enjoying it? The fruits of my labor that is
Also I noticed that everything has gotten a lot darker, probably a reflection of my mental state lmao
I'll try to rectify it and bring this novel back to the power fantasy with a barely coherent plot of saving the world
(Note I should probably write down what Slade has before I forget)
Tree