NOVGO.NET Chapter 312: Hunted and change
Chapter 312: Hunted and change
Time bled.
Like everything else in this place, it stopped making sense.
Minutes. Hours. Days?
He didn’t know.
He just moved.
One foot after another. Step. Drag. Push. Bleed.
His mouth was dry. No, beyond dry. Cracked. His tongue felt like it belonged to someone else—a dead thing left to rot in a warm skull. He tried to swallow and only tasted iron.
Thirst clawed at his throat like sandpaper dipped in fire.
And hunger—
Gods.
It wasn’t a pang.
It was a need.
Raw. Primal. His stomach stopped growling hours ago. Now it just twisted in on itself, a silent void that demanded something. Anything.
He stumbled, caught himself on a jagged edge of a ruined glyph, and leaned against it—blood smearing across the pale surface.
Every inch of his body ached.
No, not ached.
Screamed.
The wounds were countless now—carved into him like someone was trying to write a language with his skin. Deep. Ragged. Bleeding slow but constant. His clothes were torn, his arms painted in red. His breath hitched every third step.
And the worst part?
He still couldn’t see the fucking thing.
Still no attacker.
Still no form.
Just pain.
’Haaah…’
His thoughts were slower now. Like trudging through mud.
’Gotta… keep moving.’
But did he?
Was there still ground under his feet?
He blinked.
Shapes.
Just on the edge of his vision.
Figures standing… no, floating?
Watching?
He blinked again—gone.
Then back.
Closer.
’No… not real. Not real.’
But his pulse didn’t agree. It pounded harder now. Loud in his ears. His vision shimmered, doubling over itself.
’Am I… hallucinating?’
He shook his head. No time for that.
And yet the ground shifted.
No, his perception of it did. The edges of the horizon blurred. The sky pulsed with colorless light.
’Am I… losing it?’
SWOOSH.
Another cut.
His side this time—just above the hip. Sharp. Fast. Precise.
He barely registered it.
The pain was distant now. Like someone else’s suffering echoing through a cracked wall.
His body jolted, staggered—
But didn’t stop.
Didn’t cry out.
Didn’t care.
All that was left was the voice in his throat, cracked and dry as rust.
“Thirsty…”
A mumble. Barely audible.
“Hungry…”
His tongue moved without thought. Words came like muscle memory.
His vision swam again—blues, golds, reds. The sky pulsed above him, now blooming with colors he knew didn’t exist. The edges of his sight quivered like torn film.
Water.
He could see it now. Just ahead. A stream. Cool. Running. Laughing over rocks. It wasn’t real, but gods, it looked real.
Meat. Fire-roasted. Sizzling. Juices dripping.
His stomach twisted so violently he almost vomited air.
Then—
He dropped.
Legs gave out.
His body hit the ground hard—jolting his shoulder, scraping his palms, dust caking the blood already drying across his arms.
He didn’t get up.
Couldn’t.
The body had nothing left.
The machine was spent.
But not the core.
That little black flame of stubborn will still sparked in his chest.
’I won’t die. Not here.’
His eyes fluttered. A breath rattled out of him.
’No.’
Even thought had become crude. Fragmented.
No plans. No strategy.
Just raw refusal.
And then—
SWOOSH.
Even while he lay on the ground, something cut through him again—this time across his upper arm, cleaving a shallow but wide line into his flesh.
His fingers twitched.
Blood poured freely.
His lips barely moved.
’No.’
He wasn’t begging.
He wasn’t lamenting.
He was refusing.
The edges of his consciousness frayed—blackness creeping in from the corners, the way it always did when death was close enough to touch.
But something else stirred.
Primal.
His thoughts no longer formed sentences. Just images.
Pressure.
Heat.
Survival.
His hand moved, slow and clumsy, fingers splayed wide.
He clenched it.
Felt the grit of the ground press into his palm.
Breath came, not strong, but there.
Something in his chest snarled, wordless and deep.
Damien didn’t think anymore.
He let go.
Not of life.
Not of will.
Just of thought.
No more trying. No more planning. No more reaching for something that didn’t want to be caught.
Damien left it to the body.
Whatever fragments of him still worked, he let them decide.
Eyes half-lidded. Breath shallow. Heart thudding somewhere deep beneath a skin that barely clung to coherence.
And then—
Something shifted.
Not outside.
Inside.
A strange warmth bled into the cracks. Slow. Gentle. Like mist rising after a storm.
His body didn’t flinch.
It accepted it.
Welcomed it.
There was no pulse, no grand ignition, no surge of power.
Just…
entry.
A thin current seeped into his limbs. A faint trickle—not into his veins, but around them. Beneath them. Something quieter than blood, older than breath.
He didn’t register it as mana.
Didn’t think at all.
But his cells did.
They drank.
As if starving for something they hadn’t known they missed.
The strange air—heavy with stillness and watching presence—fed him.
Not his thoughts. Not his core.
Him.
The flesh. The marrow. The thing beneath the human construct.
It soaked in the energy like water on desert bone.
And Damien—
He twitched once.
A slow exhale dripped from his throat.
Not relief.
Not clarity.
Just…
Existence.
And for the first time since he landed in this forsaken place—
His body wasn’t dying.
SWOOSH.
Another cut.
This time across his leg—just above the knee. It sliced clean, hot, precise.
But Damien didn’t flinch.
Didn’t move.
His mind, half-sunk in black, felt it—but only distantly. Like pain trying to knock on a door no longer answered.
Instead, something else pulled his focus.
The warmth.
That subtle thread, weaving through his nerves, pulsing through tissue. He couldn’t name it. Couldn’t think around it. But his body knew.
The taste.
The feel.
As if sunlight were being poured into the hollow parts of him, slow and thick and gold.
He drank it in.
Each breath carried more of it—drawn through lungs that finally remembered how to work. The mana here didn’t just exist. It nourished. Like it had waited for him to stop fighting and start receiving.
And his body—
It listened.
His muscles, once deflated and stringy, began to tighten. Rehydrating. Filling. Twitching.
The cuts on his arms no longer bled so freely. The skin around them darkened, sealed. Not healed, not yet—but reclaiming itself.
His veins pulsed stronger.
The heat inside him rose—not feverish, but alive. Awake.
Darkness still rimmed his vision, but now?
Now there was color.
Soft, at first—like dawn bleeding into night. The sky stopped pulsing. The ruins stopped spinning. The lines of stone glowed faintly.
Damien’s fingers twitched again.
More deliberately this time.
His chest rose. Fell. Rose again.
Thoughts stirred—slow, sluggish, like a language being relearned by instinct alone.
But they were his.
His cells, his nerves, his core—not the crafted one, not the trained one—the original.
The thing that wanted to live.
That refused to die.
And in that space—on the edge of death’s jaws—something clicked.
A connection.
Not spiritual.
Biological.
Primal.
His body wasn’t channeling mana.
It was eating it.
And it wanted more.
He opened his eyes—not just his sight, but something deeper.
And the world around him bloomed in full color.
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