Chapter 5: Light at the end of the tunnel.

  Skylar awoke with a fright, expecting his body to be sore from all the flailing around. There was no such soreness. In fact, he felt fantastic. He was better than ever. That single bite of squiggling purple alien meat was really something.

  “Hahaha! Yes! I’m alive!”

  He toggled his Soul Orb tab from his interface to check for any changes. Despite looking the same, like a soap bubble, it felt like it had popped a few times and been welded back together. Weak points were now strong points, and the uniformity was gone. He even felt emotionally repaired, but that could just be from him feeling magnitudes better than he expected.

  A new problem slammed into his face as if to spite him. It was pitch dark. There were two blue moons, which was kind of cool, but they didn’t illuminate anything nearly as much as he’d expect. He tried to find a sense of direction toward the lake he began at, but couldn’t see enough. He couldn’t even see the tree he had climbed on to carve some flesh away. In fact, he could barely see his hand in front of his face. He would be terrified, except that he knew there weren’t any animals. If there were, they’d likely be enormous like every other one he had seen. Something had to have happened to this entire planet to make it this way, and he decided to trust that instinct. There was nothing he could do about it anyways.

  In some ways, he felt safer than he would in the dark in the woods on Earth. There weren’t any ticks, or bears, or badgers, or snakes, spider, scorpions, worms, or anything as far as he could tell. The rumbling ground was enough of a warning, but then again, he couldn’t defend himself against anything massive enough to cause an Earthquake with its footsteps.

  He sighed, and checked his notifications.

  “New Title. New Skill.”

  “Titles:

  Crushed By Abomination

  Hungry? Take a bite of Godzilla.”

  He started laughing hysterically at the new Title. Was this interface making jokes? He took a few deep breathes, and selected his newest title. It read, “You found yourself starving in a strange land, and decided to eat a living Abomination while it was still alive. Reward: New Skill, You Are What You Eat.”

  He mentally tabbed back and into the Skills tab to see, “Endurance,” and “You Are What You Eat.” He selected the new skill.

  “You can now absorb some of the properties of what you consume. Be careful, for this will not always mean you survive the process. Some things are just too dangerous to try and eat.”

  “Things? Why would I eat, a thing?” He frowned and pursed his lips. Does that mean he could eat lava and gain fire powers? Huh. That’s probably why it came with a warning. Definitely wouldn’t survive that.

  “Dude, what?! I can absorb the properties of one those Abominations?!” He wasn’t sure if he was talking to himself, or to the system, or what. But he grinned, nonetheless. For he was about to be a superhero. It was finally starting to sink in.

  He opened his Soul Orb panel to take a look at his Soul. That was such an odd thing to even think, but he was definitely here and doing it. At this point, he knew magic was real, but so far he was just becoming some kind of beast rather than a mage. He wanted to sit down and ponder on his trajectory and really think about how his Skills were developing.

  He found a third and fourth Glyph accompanying his new title and skill. They were just as weird as the others. The “Hungry? Take a Bite of Godzilla” title was the shape of a toothy maw, and the accompanying skill was completely alien. It was the most unintelligible Glyph he had. He noticed after a little while of staring at his Soul Orb that there was something inside. It was like a lightly colored mist flowing around. It was barely perceptible, like the dim moonlight on this dark night. It was there, but only barely. He tried to connect with it, analyze it, and feel it.

  He had nothing better to do than to think and wait, so that’s exactly what he did. Over the next few hours, he found out that his Soul Orb was filled with the faintest of energy. It was a pastel green color, and he had some control over it. If he tried to grab ahold of it, he could. If he wanted it to swirl in a particular direction it would. After a while of practicing with it, he tried to condense it down. It did brighten a little into a small ball inside the Soul Orb, but then went back to a calmly swirling mist after he let go every time.

  Suddenly he realized that he was fiddling around with a nearby river stone. He had exited his Soul Orb vision, just to be in his body again. But as he thought about things, he found a stone in his hand he was fidgeting with. The size of the rock he was holding should have been around a hundred pounds. But, he was messing with it like a ten pound rock. He had even tossed it into the air for less than an inch and caught it in his other hand. He rolled it back and forth with ease.

  He dropped the rock on the ground, and it made a really hard thud onto the soil. He grinned in the darkness. If a single bite of meat made him that much stronger, due to his new ability, what if he ate some more? He gasped, realizing he had forgotten all about the chunk of flesh he stuck in his other pocket. He grabbed it out immediately, tearing his pocket wide open on accident.

  “Ah, shit.”

  He was so much stronger, that simply tugging on his pocket lining ripped it wide open. Now he had a massive hole there. He sighed, and promised to himself to be more careful.

  He took the larger rock he could handle and started smashing the chunk of meat. It became a flat and flaccid mass. He was glad to not have to look at it. Luckily, the meat tasted like tropical fruit and spicy peppers, so it wasn’t the worst thing. Without further hesitation, he chomped his teeth down into the meat and ripped a piece off. The spiciness was far less than it was before. It was now like a hot curry back home, instead of a war crime in his mouth.

  He still twitched and convulsed, but it wasn’t nearly as severe as the first time. Severe muscle cramps hit his whole body again for a few minutes, and then a rush of power hit him. He could feel the Glyph on his Soul Orb brighten and strengthen as it added energy to his flesh. It rushed through his body like a hot cup of coffee on a cold morning. When it was done, he took another bite. Then another. Until there was no more meat to eat, and his stomach was full.

  He could actually see a couple feet in front of him now. He looked up at the moons, and they weren’t in any better of a position to provide such light. His eyes had just adjusted to where they would normally be on any Earth night outside. He felt like the world was more normal. He could be sitting in any National Forest in the United States for all he knew. The rocks felt a little heavy still, but far more normal in their feel. The soft mulch ridden ground actually gave way with his footsteps, but his shoes felt like they were being stressed at the seams.

  He breathed a sigh of relief, as a spark of hope finally ignited inside him. He could do this. If he could continue getting stronger, it was only a matter of time before he found civilization again.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  He looked again at his First Quest, at the task of killing something; which in his case meant killing an Abomination as his very first task. What a ridiculous feat that would be. The specific wording only said he had to damage it before it died. So, what if he could intercept a dying one and give it a good stab? Would that count? Either way, he was determined to try, if only to continue eating the flesh of these giant monsters and growing stronger as a result.

  He couldn’t continue just sitting in the dark though. On a hunch, he tried to feel that misty energy inside his Soul, and gather some outside of his body in the palm of his right hand. Instantly he could feel it there. He wasn’t sure if he was imagining it though, due to it being so dark. He pulled from everything he knew about photons and light, and tried to make it glow. If light was just energy, then, well, it just needed to vibrate at the right frequency to be light. He started out with trying to vibrate it in a slow rumbling, to not disrupt it or waste the energy. He wanted to be careful.

  As he worked through the idea of an electromagnetic frequency of energy, he started on the lowest end for a couple reasons. High frequency energy is also known as ionizing radiation, and he didn’t want to cook himself. Although, if he remembered correctly, he would have to pass through the Radio and Microwave radiation spectrum before getting to visible light. That was far less harmful than Gamma Rays and X-Rays. Although, if he could accomplish any of those, the applications were endless. The laws of physics were broken here though, as far as he could tell. So he couldn’t be fully confident in any of it.

  As he tried to vibrate it, he began to feel an inner exhaustion. He was out of energy and suddenly extremely tired. He almost forgot he was supposed to sleep. Almost starving to death had been far more pressing of a concern. He was slightly worried that he hadn’t had any other bodily functions, but there was nothing he could do about it at the moment. He pushed away the small rocks and big sticks under neath him in a circle, and lay down to sleep. He immediately passed out.

  He woke up with the sun blazing.

  “Ahh. Oh boy. Did all that really happen?”

  It was at least a few hours into daylight when he woke. He expected to wake up at least once from the cold, or find that his arm was numb, or his body was sore from the hard ground, but no. None of that happened, and he simply felt refreshed and ready to go. He set out to find another downed Abomination to feed on, or a fight to hopefully run in and stab the losing opponent and take some credit from. He didn’t have any weapon that could damage a beast yet. It was just dumb luck that he was able to carve a chunk out of something that was downed like that.

  He got up and chipped a piece of loose bark off a tree with his finger, kicked some dirt around, and came to a conclusion. He was at his normal strength and durability in comparison to the surrounding environment, finally. It only took him running on an empty stomach and convulsing for a day trying to magically digest a still alive piece of giant lizard.

  His clothes felt like wet tissue paper, and he wondered how he didn’t trip and die all the sudden earlier. He had to make a conscious effort not to tear his clothes apart on his way back to the top of his hill. It was a much harder hike going up a thousand feet than it was jogging down it. He expected from his increased strength that he would feel lighter, but his density must be matching the current environment now. He could only guess how heavy he was, but if he was anything close to the multiplicative density of the other materials, he would weigh as much as maybe even five or six horses. Although, he didn’t actually know how much a horse weighed. The support structure of his shoes tore after only a quarter mile, and they were pretty much just flaps hanging on for dear life.

  That smashed Abomination steak he had the night before kept him full, and he was wondering how long that would be. He guessed that his Endurance skill was using the environmental energy to keep him going rather than his nutrition. That biologically didn’t make any sense, but neither did increasing his weight to more than a ton. Water was thirty times heavier by his estimation, wood was one hundred times heavier, and rocks were about twenty times. That meant that there was no real way to test his weight using an Earth metric like a pound or kilogram on an alien world with little consistency of density changes. But he could guess.

  If the average weight increase was thirty times heavier given the same size, than he should multiply his own previous weight by thirty. That made him 4,500 pounds now. No, that’s completely absurd. How could that possibly happen from eating a single piece of meat? Was he insane? It didn’t even mean anything, except for that he was now at the strength of a normal human in a wilderness environment. Those monstrosities are still mind boggling in their size and strength, and he knew that his increased weight would not make a difference at all.

  He found his reflection in the still waters of the small lake, and looked down at himself. His bright blonde hair was shoulder length and flowing in the light breeze. His face was gaunt, he appeared to have lost weight. He didn’t even look any more masculine, despite the bones of his face sticking out more clearly.

  He stood watch at the top of the hill, keeping a keen eye on the far distance to try and spot any fights or even just a single beast at all. It was so boring. The sheer beauty of the place kept his attention for about half the day. However, with no activity, and even more growing evidence of a lack of bugs and smaller creatures, he was still worried sick. He took a break from his diligence, and broke down and cried for his earlier sudden departure. His best friend, his tomboy of a girlfriend, his Uncle Jerry, they probably won’t ever see him again. Even if he could go back, he would weigh too much to do anything with his lover, and he’d break any vehicle he tried to get into. The feelings of loss and separation reminded him of a funeral. It was essentially as if they all died. If he’d literally never see them again, what was the difference?

  “They live on,” he said out loud to reassure himself. “They’ll live good lives, and remember me. Hopefully Uncle will tell them the truth. But, maybe that’s more cruel than just saying I died in a submarine implosion or whatever.” He sighed.

  “I swear to myself to enjoy the moment, and enjoy the people in my life when I have the chance.” Thus, a new mantra was born.

  For the rest of the day, he didn’t see any colossal beings. The weather got a little warmer than it was the day before, and he decided to go swimming. He floated in the lake, now appropriately weighted to swim in the dense water. He opened his eyes and looked down into the depths of the clear water. It was so pretty. Every now and then he would lift his head and take a breath of air and continue looking around. He could easily see the bottom when he was floating in the middle. He guessed it was around thirty or forty feet. It was kind of a pond really. But by the end of the day of exploring the little lake, he realized that it was a footprint. An actual claw print of a similar shape to an eagle talon was what indented the ground. It didn’t make any sense whatsoever that there was a spring of water coming from the top of the hill, given that it was the very top of everything nearby. Water pressure maybe?

  That night, he realized a little too late that he was strong enough to start a friction fire now. Or, so he thought. He hadn’t really ever done that, but had seen it done in person once. He shrugged. He didn’t really need a fire. So, he made himself comfortable on the sand next to the lake, and tried once again to make visible light. This time he just jumped straight to the level of vibration he would expect light to be. The visible spectrum was such a tiny sliver of the available electromagnetic spectrum, he expected it to take a while.

  He pushed with this new and bizarre energy from his Soul Orb and intended to create light in his hand.

  A flash of light exploded from his hand for a just a second like a flashbang. He flinched, and rolled on his back groaning at the pain in his eyes. There was a bright mark burned into his retinas where his hand was. He could see the outline of everything he was facing also burned into his sight. He had basically attacked himself. Then he started laughing.

  “I did magic!” he screamed. “I’m a freaking wizard!” He pumped both fists up from the ground in his excitement. “Well. I guess I was technically magical the moment I drank my first sip of that water.” He mumbled to himself.

  “Ugh.” He was getting really bored despite the magic.

  Once his eyes recovered, he let out a tiny trickle of that same energy, and willed it to be visible light. Plink.

  “New Skill: Light; You can create light in various spectrums for different purposes. This is a base glyph that can be expanded upon to create other skills and use cases. Experiment wisely.”

  He felt the glyph burn into his Soul Orb. It was the symbol of a star in a night sky, and just as bright. It ended up almost on the opposite side of the Soul Orb. It didn’t really have a front and back, or an up or down. But the side with a bunch of Glyphs had started to feel like the front until now.

  He gasped. He just realized that he could make a beacon of light to get someone’s attention now. It might even be able to draw in curious beasts too. He really didn’t want to be running away from an Abomination in the middle of the night with just a flashlight though. If they were drawn to the light, then he wouldn’t even be able to use the light to run away with.

  "Gah! What am I supposed to do!" he yelled at the night sky.