71 Regeneration

Picking himself up from the floor, Manco cast his eyes around the room. Seeing no signs of immediate danger, he opened his inventory, retrieved several potion vials, consumed some to recover his health and mana, and slotted the rest to his belt. Whether he could find something here or not, he had to be out of here before Morana logged in and noticed he was online.

The first thing he noticed was that despite the open windows, there were no insects inside. Except for the few dozen that were falling out of his clothes.

'This place probably had some magical ward that repelled them,' thought Manco as he flicked away a grasshopper that had been clinging to the back of his neck. It fell on the floor, then stood up and half-hopped, half-flew out the window.

Near the wall opposite to the door he just came in through stood a stone oven. There were still embers inside it, which cast a dim orange light which illuminated the place.

Lighting a torch, Manco inspected the room. The first unusual thing he noticed was everything was heaped into the four corners: chairs, tables, utensils. The middle of the room was empty except for a large wool carpet.

At the corner next to the oven was a wooden cupboard. Its doors were all opened and its contents ransacked. From the remaining items dumped all over the floor, it seemed to be what's left of the kitchen. Next to the cupboard was the remains of a dining table and chair, broken into pieces and dumped into a heap.

Poking around the second and then third corner, he found nothing besides broken furniture, dirty rags and ruined household items. Not only was the place thoroughly looted, it seemed whoever was in here went out of their way to destroy everything they could.

In the last corner, he pulled away a large, brown-stained sheet covering a bunch of junk.

'Huh, what's this?'

Leaning against the wall was a wooden barrel, about 1 meter tall and 40 centimeter in diameter. Next to it was a wooden staff about 1.5 meters long. One end was small enough for him to hold in his hands, while the other was as large as his thigh.

Manco tried using Inspect on the two, but received no response. This was unusual, as almost all items in the game, including vendor trash, had names and a brief description, if not more.

Curious, he knocked on the barrel with his knuckles.

'Hmm, it's empty,' muttering, he tried lifting the thing, and found it quite heavy. He turned it over and found that the 'barrel' had no bottom. It would be more accurate to call it a large, handle-less bucket.

Turning the bucket upright, he brought the torch closer for a better look. The inside was smooth, except for a small crack, and the bottom was curved instead of flat. He realized the thing seemed to have been carved out of a single block of wood.

'So it's not a bucket? And why does this staff look kind of familiar?' His train of thoughts was interrupted when he saw something twitching inside the bucket.

"Hmm?" Bringing the torch in closer, Manco saw a slug-like creature squeezing its way out of a small crack on the bucket's wall. The pink-colored slug exposed a part of its body out of the crack, then shuddered. In an instant, it formed an eye and stared at him.

"What?" As he cried out in surprise, the thing retreated back inside the crack with a squishing sound.

Deciding to finish looking around first before taking a closer look at the strange creature, he stepped away from the bucket and activated [Arcane Vision].

His vision became blue tinted, and the middle of the floor lit up with a drawings and symbols forming a large encircled pentagram. Besides the drawings and the slug-like creature in the bucket, there was no more trace of mana inside the room.

'A spell formation, huh?'

Deactivating Arcane Vision, he moved the carpet aside and saw that the formation was actually drawn onto the floor with a caked brown substance. In the center of the pentagram was a dirt covered patch. Upon closer inspection, he realized someone had removed a part of the floor, dug through the ground underneath and buried something down there.

Hearing a clattering behind him, he turned around to find the heavy wooden bucket lying on its side. The slug had crawled out of the bucket and was slithering toward him.

Stepping aside, he realized the creature was making its way toward the spell formation.

When the slug came in contact with the outermost line, it hissed in pain and recoiled. It then tried to circle around, trying to reach the center, but was repelled every single time. After a while, it stayed still, defeated.

"Need a hand?" He asked. The slug turned to him and made a motion that he interpreted as a nod.

"Alright!" using his dagger, he cut a groove on the floor from the outermost layer of the formation to the center of the pentagram.

With an appreciative nod, the slug dashed to the dirt-filled hole and dug its way down.

Manco took a few steps back from the hole. He had a feeling whatever was coming was not pretty.

A formless black creature emerged from the hole, pushing aside dirt and rubble. The thing looked like a cross between tar and charred wood. The moment it left the hole, the smell of burned wood and charred flesh filled the room, making him wince.

At first glance, it looked like a slime, but a quick inspection dismissed that notion.

[??? (???, level 150) - Attitude: Neutral]

"It's an NPC?" Manco muttered as he backed up near the door. Keeping one hand on the door handle, he got ready to run if things went wrong.

The non-slime pulled from the center of the pentagram and slithered away out of the formation. Manco caught sight of a pink patch on the tar-black body, which seemed to be the pink slug he saw earlier.

After completely leaving the formation, the creature lied still on the floor, looking no different than a black puddle of goo.

As Manco stared, it began to transform. A wave rippled from the pink patch and spread out onto the rest of the puddle. The color changed from black to various shades of red, pink and white. No longer dry and cracked, the texture became wet and shiny. He felt like he was looking at a liquefied human body.

His suspicion was confirmed as the puddle began to squirm around and forming a vaguely humanoid shape. To be more precise, it looked like a large pink starfish, with one short limb, two medium-length limbs and two long limbs.

Like a reversed video of a wax sculpture being melted down, the limbs took more distinct shapes. Two arms, two legs and a head. Muscles and sinews became more prominent, and were eventually covered with regenerated skin.

"If this is just 'normal gore,' what the hell counts as 'advanced gore'?" Manco muttered, amused by the nauseating level of details for this supposed PG-13 package.

In less than a minute, the regeneration spell was complete. A complete human body lied face down on the floor.

Complete wasn't quite the right word. Half of the head was missing. Only the face was intact.

Manco was considering whether or not to poke the body when it twitched. Groggily it got on all four and stood up, its back facing him.

It was a woman, almost as tall as he was. With the only thing covering her body being a mixture of blood, grime, and sweat, there was almost nothing left to the imagination.

Inspecting her once more, he noticed the change in attitude.

[Attitude: Hostile]

"Shit!" Cursing, he reached for the door handle, his eyes trained on her back.

As the door creaked open, she whirled around. With inhumanly fast movements, her right hand slammed the door shut, while the left clamped around his throat and lifted him up.

"Uh… Hi?" Struggling to free himself from the vise-like grip, he choked out a greeting.

"WHO ARE YOU? WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME? WHAT ELSE CAN YOU TAKE FROM ME?" She growled, baring pointed teeth, her green eyes gleaming with madness.

"I've… no idea what you're talking about. I've never been here!" as she loosened her grip to let him speak, he sputtered out the answer.

"LIES!" the hand closed back in around his throat and he felt a 'Suffocated' status effect coming.

Manco considered his options. He could try to cast spell, but she was already agitated. Using spells or raising a weapon might be taken as a sign of aggression. The dialogue assistance provided no help, so he was entirely on his own.

"I'm not… lying," he said through gritted teeth, "Who… did this… to you?"

"WHO DID THIS? Who… did this?" Her eyes glazed over as she repeated the question. For a moment her face was filled with confusion.

She let go of him and clutched her head, as if trying to remember. "I don't… I can't remember!"

'No kidding, you're missing a whole brain,' making sure his brain-mouth filter was on, he picked his words. "That formation on the floor," he pointed at the hole where she was buried, "does it remind you of anything?"

"That…" she looked at where his finger was pointing and her face darkened. "Reruovk K'nim," she muttered

"It had something to do with the Mind Devourer?" Manco asked.

"Yes… the sacrifice," she lifted her hands to her head and felt the gaping hole. Then she let out a dry laugh: "And it looked like I was on the receiving end, for once."