Dante left the empty takeaway container on his desk and stood up with great difficulty. It took all of his concentration not to shed a tear, the world spinning along with his churning stomach. It felt like a knife was stuck between his ribs, piercing into his flesh and grinding on his nerves with even the tiniest of movements.

He could have easily asked Michael for help, but he didn’t want him to know how much pain he was really in. The guilt of worrying his closest friend was still eating him up, so telling him that his injuries were actually worse was the last thing he wanted to do. Of course, that was only because his injuries weren’t fatal. If they were, he definitely would have been making some noise about.

As for how he knew? He wasn’t dead yet, and his lungs weren’t filling up with liquid, so that was as good a sign as any.

Dante walked over to the medicine chest at the foot of his bed, his breathing shallow so that he didn’t jolt his ribs. Michael sat on the edge of the bed, holding a bottle in his left hand while a pill rested in his right palm. It was the size of his pinkie nail and glowed a gentle blue, which was strange since the pill was actually a milky white colour.

“What does it do?” Dante said, leaning over to look at the pill in Michael’s palm. It smelled like ozone, he noticed, reminding him of the ‘clean’ smell it was associated with. “Light up the inside of your body so you can see injuries from the outside?”

Michael glanced at the label on the side of the jar before looking up at Dante with a smirk. “Close. It actually increases the recovery speed of your astral body, mainly focussing on healing strain to your channels. Which are…”

“Well, blood essence is contained within your blood, meaning it also moves through your blood vessels. As for your astral energy, which resides in your spirit body?”

Michael nodded with a look of understanding. “It flows through the channels in your spirit, right?”

“Yeah, that’s exactly right. Blood essence moves through your blood vessels, and your astral energy moves through your spirit channels.”

“What about soul force? Are there mind canals or something?”

“Soul force canals?” Dante said, holding back a chuckle at the strange name. “Have you ever laid down at the beach and relaxed, leaving your mind to wander? Maybe a random memory pops up when you see a kid building a sandcastle, then you recall seeing the toy he was playing with at the shops before remembering you have to buy a gift for your cousin for their birthday?”

Michael nodded.

“That’s your soul force. Unlike the other two, which move around your body and spirit in set patterns, soul force is a chaotic and wild energy that does as it pleases. And since it doesn’t move in a set pattern through your channels, it means the strain caused by its use is handled directly by the mind itself.”

Michael nodded, clearly deep in thought. The apocalypse was a lot to take in, and the strange concepts related to the three energies were quite abstruse compared to regular ideas.

“How about we find something that can fix me up?” Dante said, picking up a jar of crimson fluid in the medicine chest. “I’ll even drink the gross ones that taste like raw sewage. I know, I’m the manliest man you’ve ever met.”

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever,” Michael scoffed with a smile, separating a jar of golden pills from the rest of the medicines. “I’ll put anything useful here so we don’t lose track.”

Dante nodded, looking at his own jar as he swirled it around by the lid. It was the size of a mason jar and was almost topped off with a crimson fluid that looked painfully similar to blood. No part of it glowed, and no strange colours were swirling about. From the surface, it looked exactly like a jar of fresh blood.

Glancing at the label, which was in English, strangely enough, Dante confirmed his suspicions.

Crimsonbone Elixir

Concocted using the refined blood and bone marrow of a Crimsonbone bat.

Medicinal effect: Increases regeneration of blood at a rate of one drop to one percent of total blood content per hour (effect lasts for nine hours).

Directions: One drop at a time on tongue.

Warning: Usage while undernourished or dehydrated may cause starvation and death. Consumption on an empty stomach may inflict nausea and heartburn. Overuse will create deformed blood cells.

Dante felt his stomach turn as he read the main ingredients. He didn’t mind a little bit of blood in a steak, and he had even had beef patties mixed with bone marrow before, but seeing the two blended into a jar of viscous liquid was another beast entirely.

“You know what, you might have to tie me down and force me to drink some of these,” Dante said, passing the bottle to Michael. He grimaced as he read the bottle, even gagging when he opened the lid.

But besides the gross ingredients, he was pretty surprised at the detail. He more or less expected a name and something along the lines of ‘improves blood regeneration’. The fact that it included precise calculations, measurable numbers, and even time periods was incredibly shocking. It even had specific directions of use and warning labels.

Even if there was literal magic going on, this was closer to a science than he thought.

Moving it onto the bed for later use, Dante continued to sort through all of the different elixirs, pills, and pastes. There were elixirs for internal injuries and bruises, pills for general recovery and mending bones, and pastes for healing cuts and killing infections. From organising more than half of them, he realised there wasn’t much difference between the three.

Pastes went on the outside of your body, elixirs worked quickly inside, and pills were the slow-release version of elixirs. Each type was just a different delivery method, likely chosen depending on the medicine’s purpose. For instance, an elixir to close up a bleeding cut wouldn’t be as effective as a paste that would go on the wound directly.

You didn’t even have to change the base materials. All you needed to do was get a powder and press it into a pill or mix it with water to turn it into an elixir. Of course, Dante could be totally wrong, and some of them just happened to be pastes due to the crafting process. He had absolutely no education on the topic from Laurelai, so that was a genuine possibility.

After sorting through them all, Dante held a tub of assorted pills, four tins of paste, and one elixir. The pastes were for closing up his cuts, healing his bruises, regenerating the flesh on his forearm, and killing infections. The pills included a little bit of everything from mending bones to healing internal injuries, even involving a food pill that provided him with an enormous amount of nutrients.

It was a really convenient pill since it not only replaced eating, taking up a tiny amount of space in your stomach, but could also be absorbed at the pace your body needed. That meant Dante could use it up in a day if he consumed a lot of medicines, or shockingly enough, allow him to not eat for an entire fortnight.

As for the elixir? It was Crimsonbone elixir that regenerated blood, which he sorely needed. Dante had multiple cuts all over his body, the worst one being the bite on his arm. It bled a lot before he managed to tie a piece of his ripped shirt around it, but it was slowly bleeding through the bandage even now, making him feel lightheaded.

Michael looked at the handful of pills with concern. “You think it’s okay to take all the pills at once? These aren’t gummy vitamins. They’re magic, or some shit close to it.”

“Eh,” Dante shrugged, swallowing the food pill first. “I’ll take them slowly, giving them all a bit of time to settle. Besides, I had a chat about this kind of stuff with Laurelai. She said that your will is sovereign within your own body, meaning the energy in the medicine won’t clash unless you purposely make them.”

“Still…”

Of course, taking so many medicines all at once could send a sudden rush of power through his body, possibly injuring him. And if someone forced several down his throat while he was unconscious, they would definitely mix inside his stomach to disastrous effect.

After applying the salves to his cuts and bruises with some help from Michael, Dante then took a single drop of the Crimsonbone elixir since it would recover nine percent of his blood volume by the morning. The greasy, metallic drops of blood slid down his throat, coating it in a disgusting layer that made him involuntarily gag.

Once he was done with that, he took out the first pill. It was as clear as a glass marble and filled with purple lightning. Swallowing it in one go, arcs of lightning began to flash through his veins before it even landed in his stomach, guiding his blood essence into his injuries to speed up recovery.

Grabbing the next pill, Dante tossed it into his mouth.

***

After a good night’s rest, Dante was basically recovered. His arm had fully regenerated the chunk that was torn out, even regrowing the hairs that were missing. His cuts and bruises were basically all gone, his broken ribs mended despite still being tender, and even his cheeks were rosy from the boosted circulation of a few pills that were lingering in his system.

It was incredible, but sort of expected since the effects were recorded on the labels. The best part was definitely the experience itself. The salves didn’t give much feeling, but each pill he took was always more unique than the last. The most memorable of them all was a pill that transformed into a tiny, ethereal ghost that drifted around his body, repairing damaged blood vessels.

Dante had no idea how that was even possible, but it happened all the same.

For the next two days, Dante went on to teach Michael the basics. He explained everything he knew about the three energies, including how to use them and even their strengths and demerits. Michael had no talent for soul force, but he did have a little talent for astral energy and a lot of talent for blood essence.

In fact, he didn’t even need an explanation. Once Dante taught him how to visualise his blood essence, he immediately guided it into his muscles, causing a haze of red-tinged mist to spring up around his skin. It was almost invisible, like steam rising off a pot of boiling water, but the effect of the technique wasn’t.

“Woah, that’s fucking nuts,” Dante shouted, taking a step back. “You’re like a secret government super soldier.”

Michael stumbled a bit, almost losing his balance as he held a couch over his head. It didn’t seem too heavy to him, but its size was obviously unwieldy and cumbersome at best. Just getting it into a position where he could lift it was hard enough.

“Super soldier? Where? I’ll kick his ass bro, I’m pretty much a superhero now,” Michael laughed, but he stopped when the haze from his strengthening skill began to flicker, guttering out as his energy ran low. “Oh, fuck.”

Michael began to go red in the face from the exertion, his arms trembling. Dante ran up to help, grabbing one side of the couch, but Michael was already halfway through dropping the cumbersome piece of furniture. It fell forward off his shoulders, slamming into the coffee table that Dante’s grandfather hand-carved for his grandmother on their anniversary. All four of the legs snapped off at once as it crashed into the ground, shattering the table itself.

“Uh,” Was all Michael said, more embarrassed than Dante had ever seen him. His lips moved, but no words came out as his eyes began to dart around the room.

“It’s okay, man. Mistakes happen. Besides, my grandmother hates that table anyway. Better that we put it out of its misery now before the world ends.”

“Sorry,” Michael squeaked out, obviously still embarrassed. “Not making excuses, but when the skill was running out of juice, everything in my body started to ache. Even now my veins feel raw, like they’ve been scrubbed clean and stretched. And that’s not even including the muscles in my arms and chest. I can barely move them they’re so sore.”

“Oh, is that how the strain feels?” Dante asked, turning to walk upstairs. “So using soul force creates a bad headache, blood essence strains your circulatory system, and now all we’re missing is what using astral energy feels like.”

“Am I injured? Do I need to take a pill or something now?” Michael followed Dante upstairs, panting slightly from the exertion now that he was out of blood essence.

“No, this is meant to happen. The pain you’re feeling now will go away with rest, strengthening your veins and muscles in the process. It’s basically the same as working out, but now it’s much more intense on your circulatory system.”

“So, that means I can take medicine to heal faster?”

Michael sat down at the desk while Dante laid down on his bed, stretching out.

“There are certain medicines and stimulants you can take to speed up your growth after a training session, but I don’t know what those would look like. It makes sense that some medicines would help your situation, but you can also just let your body naturally recover, allowing us to save the medicines for when we really need them.”

“That’s true. We don’t know how to make them… yet.”

Dante looked over at the chest full of chemistry equipment. They had a general idea of what to do since there were instructions, but it was challenging and complicated work. Not to mention that they had no ingredients to work with. They needed to be rich in primal aura, but they couldn’t sense aura for some reason, making it impossible to find any ingredients at all.

Maybe they needed a skill to sense primal aura? He hadn’t reached that point in his studies with Laurelai before getting booted out of the tutorial.

“What skills do you have now?” Dante said, turning to Michael. “I can levitate stuff and make a blade out of soul force, but that’s it for now.”

“I just have the Strengthening skill I gained when I first did something with my blood essence. Should I try and figure out a new skill? Maybe something like a ranged spell or a magic barrier?”

“I don’t actually know. I only have access to one type of energy, so this isn’t a problem for me, but maybe you can use multiple energy types? You can use blood essence and astral energy to a lesser degree, so maybe you can use both. It’s just...”

“Just what?”

“Well, from the way Laurelai talked about it, she made it sound like you could only use one. But she has said some things in passing that hint at being able to use both.”

“Like what?” Michael asked, sitting up with interest.

“Blood essence is simple to use but highly effective at close combat. Astral energy is more diverse, but it works better outside the body in ranged techniques. That means blood essence is worse in ranged scenarios than astral energy, and vice versa. Yet Laurelai said that they could be used together to fix the other’s flaws.”

“Maybe she’s saying to use blood essence for close combat and astral energy for ranged. No need to overcomplicate it. Just use both.”

Dante smiled. “That would be great, but I can only use soul force.”

For the rest of the weekend, Dante and Michael continued to play around and train. And despite the world ending within a year, he had a lot of fun. It felt great to destress after the last three weeks, and he came out of the weekend with a healthier mindset.

But nothing good ever lasted for eternity, and the weekend ended. It was time to go back to school.