Mana Devourer [LitRPG/Mana Cultivation]

Markus could feel the touch of something warm and furred against his forehead. A soft hand.

"Breathe."

Markus was breathing. He was breathing already. He didn't need to be told to fucking breathe. He was fine. He was alive. He could move. Why couldn't he get up?

He still had his legs, didn't he? They hadn't been taken? His mind hadn't been crushed once again, had it?

"Breathe."

"I'm fucking breathing!" Markus panted, blinked, stared. He searched for his attacker.

Rika looked down at him. Her expression was firm, her eyes unblinking.

"You need to listen to me, Markus."

"Fuck you."

"No…"

"I'm tired… of people telling me what to do." Markus withered in his seat. Felt the wood pressing against his limbs. "I can't anymore. I can't. I just can't…"

"You're going to get through this."

"How do you know?"

"Because you get through everything," she said.

Markus stopped attempting to raise his head. To fight against an enemy he couldn't see. There was nothing there. Nothing to fight.

He let his body droop. He inhaled through his nose. His chest quivered as he exhaled.

"Back in my village, we learned a ritual when we were young. One we practiced after a hunt. After a battle. Even after a kinsman was slain."

Rika didn't usually sound so formal. It was almost as if someone had replaced her. As if she were channelling another's words.

"Let me show it to you."

Markus could barely lift his head. He whispered a refusal, but his chest didn't carry the words.

"Envision your whole body. All of it. These are the parts of you that you share with the world."

Markus could barely see a version of himself that wasn't scattered, maimed, or dismembered in some way. He felt as if he'd left a thousand hims behind. As if he should be dead and gone already.

"Envision your whole self. Every thought, every feeling. Every memory. These are the parts of you that you take from the world."

They only take from him. His memories were of being stolen from, deprived, hurt, abused, pushed to things he didn't want.

But she didn't speak again. Only maintained that solid contact. She breathed loudly, in a rhythm that was so discordant with his panicked gasps, but that he began to unconsciously mirror the longer their tether held, his breaths becoming deeper and yet more slow.

Eventually, Markus thought beyond the torment. He didn't know how long it took. How long they sat there like that for the first positive memory to drift into Markus' mind.

Even then it was clouded by sadness, mired by the knowledge that he might never see the person in it again, or even the world it had came from.

But it was a part of him. That one memory helped to define who he was.

As did another. And yet another.

After a time, he remembered Rika. Remembered her, even though she'd been sat there before him all along, unwavering.

He remembered others, too. People, places, feelings, music, jokes, laughter, warmth, happiness, the sun…

These things were as much a part of him as any darkness or turmoil. No matter how distant they might've felt, no matter how out of reach any light or whimsy might've been.

He at least had her. A small light in this blackened pit. Sitting there. Patient. Waiting for him to respond. To get up. To be the person he'd shown himself to be.

Still it was difficult. Still he felt it easier to slump than to rise.

He couldn't forget the things that had happened to him. The thousand cuts, real and imagined.

"Envision your whole body."

My whole body…

Markus felt empty.

Felt ghostly sensation from parts of him long cut away and regrown, rewound, and unwritten.

"All of it."

But still he was whole.

Still, when he sent a signal to his fingertip, it responded. To his toes. To his elbows, his shoulders, his back, his twitching nose, his too-dry eyes…

To his hand. He brought it up to his face.

He clasped it around hers.

The warmth was a comfort.

He breathed.

"These are the parts of the world that I give to you," Rika said.

She placed her other hand on Markus' right cheek. She cradled his face.

She hummed low. The purring rumble was dulcet, almost like that of a strange lullaby.

Markus breathed in tides of shifting sound.

He exhaled anger, vitriol, confusion.

Excised it from his body.

"That which you give to the world," she breathed, "and that which you take from it. That which is given to you freely, and that which is taken from you…"

Her tone drifted. Lost its musicality. Returned to her signature scratchy tone. "Find peace with it. Find comfort in what you have. Cherish all that you've gained, and all that you've lost in turn. Accept each passing. Be strengthened by…"

She stopped talking.

Or maybe she continued.

Markus wasn't really sure.

He thought he might've drifted to sleep.

Or perhaps into another state entirely.

He wasn't running anymore.

He didn't need to run.

That was all he knew.

***

Markus' memories of the next few hours were blurry. His body was exhausted. His Toxicosis was cutting his mana generation, and seemed to be slowing his healing, even his respite.

He ached all over. Potions helped with that. Took the pain away for a while. Left him in a stupor of sterility that was almost peaceful for short moments.

He shared a bed with Rika. She cuddled him at times.

Memories of horrific events that had transpired floated and meshed between those of happier times, a constant, shifting, waking hallucination.

"How long have I been…"

"You're getting better," Rika stated. "You'll be better soon."

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Was he? He wasn't sure if it'd been hours or days. If he felt any better at all. His memory of everything since the fight was so…

"Do you feel any better?"

Markus didn't know how to answer. He felt dizzy and confused.

He drifted back to sleep.

He awoke to find her missing.

She might've gotten up for an hour, a day, a week. Abandoned him entirely.

How was he to know?

He fell asleep once more.

He found her beside him on his next waking moment.

"Markus…"

She sounded upset. Had he been laid here a day, or a hundred?

He was feverish. His eyes blurred.

He attempted to look at her. Lifted his head.

"You're going to be okay, aren't you?"

Markus didn't know how to respond.

He didn't like this.

He felt so powerless.

"Tell me you're going to be okay," Rika said.

"I…"

His voice was hoarse.

"I don't know what to tell you."

"Just tell me that everything's going to be okay. That we'll talk, and laugh, and you'll read to me, and we'll—"

"Everything is going to be—"

He looked at her.

Felt her touch against him.

Her uncertainty.

Her worry.

Her need.

He flinched away from it.

"Markus?"

"Why…" He coughed.

"Why what?"

"Why are you still here?"

He felt a touch of clarity against the delirium. A tug of something familiar.

Something wrong.

Rika's head tilted. "Because I want you to get better? Because I'm trying to look after you? What are you asking me?"

Markus felt a turbulent lurch against his brain as he shifted himself to sitting. "Well, I'm better. You don't need to do that anymore."

Rika bit her lip, stared at him. "Really? Just like that?"

"Yeah, really. Or maybe not. What's it matter?" Anger shifted like a worm within his brain, tunnelling deeper into his psyche. "Why do you need me to be better? Huh?"

He coughed again. He could barely make out her features.

"I don't know what you're asking me."

"Why does it matter to you so much that I make a fucking recovery…" He sighed. His anger pulsed. He raised an arm against protest, pointed a finger at her. "What do you want?"

"Nothing. I just want you to—"

"To do something for you. To help you. To reassure you. To take something from me. Right?"

"Markus, you're sick. You're not thinking straight. You need to rest, you need to lay back down and—"

"You know what? You're a piece of shit."

"I'm a what?"

"You haven't changed," Markus said, staring at his bitch mother. "And I'm not sick. I just see things clearer now."

He pointed harder at the blotted shape before him. "You only ever cared about yourself."

The woman beside him sighed. She sniffled. She raised to her feet.

"I don't know what happened to you. I really tried to help you. I thought you cared about me." She moved a single step. "What the fuck happened for you to end up like this?"

"You happened to me."

"What?.."

"Sorry I'm such a fucking disappointment. Why don't you stop pretending to give a shit now and fuck off?"

"Mar…"

He heard receding footsteps.

He blinked, and she was gone.

He'd gotten rid of her.

He didn't have to run away.

He didn't need to run.

Markus smiled.

He laid his head back into the pillow, allowing vertigo to take him.

After some time, Markus began to shiver.

***

Where was Rika?

Had she left to work?

He hoped she'd be back soon.

He missed her.

***

Where was she?

He'd gotten used to her being around. He hated that he didn't completely trust her.

He wanted to.

He was going to try to make a better effort to.

She'd helped him when he'd been at his lowest. The details were hazy, but he was sure that even with his latest issues she'd taken an interest in helping him.

He remembered her tones, if not her words. Remembered a soft, low hum.

He remembered her touch.

He hated the rebellious nature of his brain. The desire to minimise and decry anything that might be genuine or true or in any small way positive.

He wanted to have this.

And so he chose to cling to those shaky memories.

To imagine that wherever Rika was, she would be back soon.

He focussed his mind only on recovery.

He needed to be better.

Not just for his sake.

***

Markus was plagued by nightmares.

Pasts he'd never lived. Futures drawn as destiny.

He felt a tug against his spirit and pushed back against it.

He couldn't be at the behest of the whims of others, he needed to find his own clarity.

Not an affectation of it. Real clarity.

He needed to remember who he was, and why he was here. Why he'd made the choices that he'd made.

He decided to burn it into his brain. Temper his anger with the desire for change and freedom.

Tired, sweating, aching, his body numb… Markus began to cycle his mana.

It hurt like fucking crazy. Like someone was pushing needles into a million points beneath his skin all at once.

He had to stop after only a few seconds, panting, sweating, head swimming.

He rested for about thirty minutes, then tried again.

The same pain. He managed perhaps a couple seconds longer. Those extra couple of seconds felt like their own entire marathon.

Something inside of him was broken and frayed. It wasn't just sickness, it was his mana usage entirely. Without the numbing effects of Overcharge, without the adrenaline, he was crippled by his Toxicosis. It served as a barrier to his abilities and made wielding his own energy five times as difficult.

He'd never gotten to the point where it was second nature, but now, it wasn't the difficulty to grasp his powers that he struggled with, but the pressure it took to maintain them for any time. Simply separating his mana into different components was something that made him want to claw beneath his skin and scratch at his own veins for how they burned.

But, no matter how much his body ached, how hard his heart pumped, how his mind ached and threatened to split open…

Markus didn't die. Even when he was drooling and laying in a complete daze from overexertion, he didn't kick the bucket. He didn't lose consciousness for long. He didn't lose the ability to use his mana completely.

He was still sick. He would recover from said sickness. He would learn to use his mana so well that his Toxicosis wasn't a limitation for him.

He couldn't enter Overcharge anymore. To do so would be to risk increasing his symptoms further. He needed to keep his mana capacity at a low percentage while he figured out how to harness his energy through this illness.

Then there would be the matter of figuring out how to use skills and spells again. Toxicosis made him hurt like a bitch and dizzier than a binge drinker just from cycling his mana, he didn't want to imagine what it would be like to use it in actual proactive ways. He imagined the effects would be akin to the pain of death, perhaps worse.

But it was something he nevertheless needed to figure out. Not something he could leave to later or take his sweet time with, something he needed to figure out soon.

This place had thrown a creature like Randall at him. He'd barely survived that and at a massive cost. He still had, he assumed, five fights remaining in this place and he very much doubted he'd just be allowed to walk free without a fuss after even if he did magically manage to survive them.

This place was a deathtrap, and while some might try and help him for their own reasons, that wasn't something he could rely upon. Markus needed to be ready to deal with each problem as it came, and that meant fighting even when his body felt incapable, training even when his mind wanted to wither away.

And he needed to get a better fucking handle on this place. He knew there were so many things up until now he could've done better, and somehow, he'd still been given an opportunity to continue on. He couldn't waste that.

He had the tools to do something about this shit. With the amount of mana his body could currently contain, with his reduced generation, and with how many points he had to spend…

Markus shifted in bed at the thought, fresh cleansing powders sprinkling off the bed and to the floor as he did so.

His points. His levels… he hadn't checked any of them since the fight. He had no clue how he'd changed from the experience he'd been through, beyond the obvious tolls the fight had taken on him.

Had it at least made him strong? Had going through such impossible torment at least made him a good deal more powerful than he'd been previously?

Opening his system menu and staring at the screen gave him an answer.

And that answer was a resounding 'fuck yes'.

Titles, levels and points in spades, skill increases, path selections…

And then, sitting at the top of it all, a Skill Evolution option for Mana Manipulation, his reward for levelling his core passive to 5.

Markus stared at the options. Each was more tempting than the last.