He woke up with a start, fully expecting to find his body in pieces. Instead he lay, naked, on a resurrection altar. He rested his cheeks on the cold stone for a few minutes, examining his body.

Only his left hand was throbbing with pain. It was a curled up stump. The mana had torn of his fingers and left his palms curled into a tiny ball. The stump was the same colour as his skin, a grey black. When he touched it with his right hand, it felt like stone; like it had permanently fallen asleep.

He tossed on the black robes and ran out of the altar to the nearest Screen booth.

Time Remaining: 7 days 14 hours

Stats: ?/20

He stared at the Screen in horror. A question mark?

He focused on his body. The stump vibrated. Then the base of his skull. The two of them pulsed, one after the other. He could feel a thin line connecting the two points.

Before he needed ambient mana to even use his Stat, now at least he could feel it. Yes, he leveled up!

He tried pulling mana out of his mana bases. (Or should he call it mana cores; or mana nodes; or mana thingamabob? Ah! The pains of learning something by yourself.)

He failed. Oh well, progress was progress. He needed to focus on the mana bases to feel it pulse. Once he removed his attention the pulse faded into the background.

He refreshed the Screen.

Time Remaining: 7 days 14 hours

Stats: 10/20

Yes! Time to change races.

The helmet did not make him feel better. Black eyes had him lie on a rubber mat. The man (or whatever race he was) fixed a huge helmet on his head, adjusting straps, fitting electrodes and tinkering on stuff Corn couldn’t see.

The equipment attached to the helmet and the helmet reminded Corn of the equipment used for changing freedom ranks. He tried to rub his neck for comfort, but black eyes tutted. Touching the dangling wires would interfere his work.

He finished his work and grinned at Corn, “If you ever succeed, come find me. I’ll set you up with people in the underworld.”

He pulled a lever.

The world went black (again).

He felt tired. He tried stretching out an arm, but the sheer fatigue caused him to stop. Maybe it was the sheer number of times he was resurrecting, but he felt tired. Even the cold stone slab etched with spell circles felt comfy. Time to sleep.

The comforting darkness lulled him.

A bell rang somewhere.

Later, later, sleep now.

The bell chimed. Like at thousand flutes.

He heard but his body refused to respond.

A gong rang, breaking his ear drums, tearing his head in two. It commanded him to move. Now!

He ran out of the room but ran straight into the monster and rebounded.

The bell softened, still commanding, but more of a whisper than a scream. The gap gave rise to a flood of anger at being controlled that way. As though he were an animal and not a person. He grabbed a black robe and stumbled out of the room.

He ran into someone, hearing an angry, “Watch where you’re going!” He whacked into a balustrade and rolled down the stairs. That’s odd, he wasn’t that clumsy. Why couldn’t he see those…. oh, he hadn’t opened his eyes. How silly. He tried opening his eyes but realized there was only inky blackness, instead of the muted greys décor of resurrection altar.

He lifted his right hand to check what was wrong with his vision.

He had no eyes.

In the place of his fleshy sockets was smooth skin and the hardness of his skull. He felt his entire face but there was just a mouth. No ears and nose either, though those senses worked perfectly fine.

W-What had he become?

Before he could even feel horror, a bell tore his head apart, commanding egress. He was hounded by the monster and its bell into fumbling down the stairs, into the thick crowd of the hall and exiting the gates.

He stood still to catch his breath, but was jostled back and forth by the crowd. They threw him into a wall that he had to grope to move forward. Finally, he reached an alleyway, stinking of spoilt food and sweat.

Corn fell into a heap, chest rising and falling. The sleep that had beckoned him before now eluded him.

He started thinking. If he lost any counter, he would be beckoned back to the resurrection altar. Check. He lost a Race counter, so he would become a Chaotic Race. Check. Chaotic Races were an entire different breed of races. Either he was a feral or a race that ate mana. He didn’t particularly feel like a blundering, drooling cannibal.

He saw a flash. Corn leapt up. Food! Crunchy, steaming, savory food that would fill his belly. Oh, how he hungered.

Just as the hunger came, it faded away. Corn, with horror, fell back into the heap. Was he feral? No. the transfer should have worked. But as he brooded, hunger clawed his belly. At first the pangs were light, just tickles. Then they started drawing blood. It was like nothing he ever experienced. Two years as a Base Slave was not equivalent to this screaming need to feed. To eat.

He couldn’t even brood. The hunger ate him. Eat now, think later. But where is food?

He tried to get up, but he was too tired. He needed food. He fell back. If only he had eyes, then he could go and stuff himself.

Imagine if he had a nice juicy roach, how the fat would dribble from his mouth as he slurped and licked his finger. Maybe even a rat. Raw rat. Raw, bloody rat. Raw, bloody, squirming rat. What satisfaction he would feel when he ate it. How good to not feel hungry. And on and on, he fantasised.

The hunger became Hunger. An existence beyond Corn. There was no Corn, only Hunger.

Someone fell on him.

His tongue darted out like a snake and pushed on skin. He could feel himself suck and drink.

Ahhhhh!

The mana quenched his thirst. His cracked throat and his screaming stomach both let out a sigh of relief. As the mana ran out, he stopped drinking and of with practice ease his tongue snaked back into his mouth.

Someone screamed, pushed Corn and ran away.

The Hunger receded giving way to Corn. Had he drained someone’s mana? Instead of repulsion the idea filled Corn with curiosity. How was that even possible? He clearly wasn’t a feral, but what was he?

He stuck his tongue out and began to touch it. It was thin and sinuous, with tiny barbed hooks all over, and seemed as long as his forearm. He followed his tongue all the way to his impossibly sized mouth and thin, jagged rows of teeth.

He retracted his tongue. He certainly wasn’t a looker, sex was going to be hard. It would be great if he more humanoid like a succubus or vampire. Oh well.

His stomach grumbled. It seemed to say, ‘I know you have filled me for now, but you think that morsel was enough? I want more, the sooner the better.’

Feeding was going to be issue, considering he was pitch blind. Not to mention that deadline looming over his head.

He spread out his arms trying to navigate the alleyway. He reached a wall and headed back to the main street.

Corn saw flashes of light. He jumped back in fright, wasn’t he blind? He peered back into the main street. It would be wrong to say he was seeing flashes of light, it was more like he was tasting it, breathing it and understanding its existence at the same time.

Like fireflies, they blinked in and out of existence. Different colours, different flavours and different smells.

Was it mana? Ambient mana?

Corn felt a thrill ran up his spine. He could see mana. This was Magic and more. All that he wanted. He breathed in slowly to calm himself. He tried focusing on the lights but it was impossible to keep track of a thousand blinking lights. He narrowed down on one light but it bobbed up and down and disappeared.

It would be easier if he could observe a narrower region. So he tried to ignore lights that weren’t close to him.

His mana senses figured out how to contract vision. His mana nodes shuddered at the new sensation. Now, Corn could only sense mana in a sphere with a radius of ten feet around him. The lights became clearer images.

There … there a floating sword just passed by him. Next it was a suit of armour. He wasn’t just seeing these mana made objects like with his eyes. He could sense their entire three dimensional figure and smell and taste their individual mana make up.

He could sense the sour metal tanginess of the sword. Imagine its’ crunch. And the armour, it was a feast just waiting to be eaten. He could survive a week on it. Just imagining the taste made Corn drool.

But he was Corn, not Hunger. Those weapons were likely Mauled and even now he could only see mana not use it. Their undeserving, ungrateful owners could finish him off in one punch. Better not risk it.

He contracted his vision further. A sphere of radius five feet. His mana nodes tingled with unease.

Threads of mana weaved in and out everywhere. On the edges of his senses he could see mana ripple out in waves. What was that? He expanded his range. Corn saw taste a fancy ring; the fragrance of ice mana and metal mana wafted out.

Amazing. Changing the range of his vision, changed the sheer properties of mana he could sense. He contracted the range. The threads twisted, turned and tangled with each other. He could see shapes within shapes in their interaction.

Corn dry retched. His head started throbbing. Instinctively, Corn expanded all his senses to their default and he could feel the pain disappear.

He tried contracting his mana, but sputtered midway, nauseous again. He kept contracting. The urge hovered along his throat as he pushed his vision to sense mana objects. There, he kept it stable. What would vomited mana look like anyway?

Contract. Contract. Expand. Expand. Contract. Contract.

Crouching besides the wall, he practiced.

Mana was everywhere. Lines, squiggles and waves. And Corn began to see the pattern. It was like looking through one of the glass bridges in Fountain Plaza. Reality was distorted. What was wide, looked bone thin; what was tall, looked squat. His mana senses was showing him the world in disorder. But it was the world.

Mana passed through everything. Except the mana made objects that leaked it out to the world. He couldn’t understand why the clear cut imaging of his second vision became bizarre when he viewed it though his third vision.

He rose up and walked through the crowd. Or tried.

No vision was better than bad vision. Judging distances was impossible. He was shoved, kicked, tripped and jostled along.

Briefly, he switched to his second vision. Unfortunately he couldn’t see everything not mana made: people, pavements, pets and everything in between. That quickly left him on the floor, kicked and stamped on until someone with a ginormous head (or a tiny one, who could say) helped him up and promptly fled once they saw his face.

Navigating was a greater nightmare. He could at best see ten feet in front of him clearly. Which street was which and, where he was heading was a bigger mystery than usual.

The crowd thinned out.

Without the boisterous crowd to guide him, he couldn’t cross the street. He had to keep switching from his second to his third vision and use his ears to judge movement.

So far, he hadn’t lost any limbs or too much blood. That certainly was progress.

Someone screamed, “Not a slave.”

Cocking his head to the alleyway, Corn followed the screams. Mana blinded his senses. His mana nodes curled themselves insides, leaving him back to inky blackness. Did he just shut down his mana senses? Did he just blink?

He opened his senses to see. A small disc bleed out mana. Was it going to explode? No, it remained stable. Corn tried doing the equivalent of squinting and shielding his eyes with his hands but his senses didn’t work that.

He was forced to shift to his first vision. Fireflies around a burning lamp. Even now the disc burned bright. Was it a Freedom counter?

He heard arguments and the thud of bodies hitting the pavement. Someone was sobbing, begging and pleading and someone else was doing the stealing. It was exactly like the dwarves from the Rock clan.

He ran straight to the burning dis, but the bandits ran away too quickly. Corn turned back to the victim. He switched to his second and then third vision. He could see a collar on his feet and no other Freedom counters left around.

This kid was going to be a Base slave. His heart broke for him, but there was nothing he could do. The kid was doomed.

Hunger wanted to feed on him, it whined and pleaded. But Corn stilled it with terrible ferocity. He would rather die, than drain the mana of a Base Slave.

Why would someone do this?

He trudged back to a Screen booth.

Time Remaining: 23 hours 26 minutes

Stats: 12/20

No.

Seven days gone just like that?!!