2 Awakening II

***A/N: I know this only chapter 2: but viewer discretion is advised, there will be occasional cursing in this novel, along with kinda brutal, but not too gruesome obviously scenes.***

The moment that the hands of the clock all reached the top to signify midnight, Magnus felt his entire body start to burn up and collapse.

The sudden jolt of pain surprised Magnus, at first, it just stung, it was like getting bitten by a bee or a wasp, except he felt it all over his body.

Shocked at the sudden pain, he tried to move, but the moment he tried to do so, he could feel every part of his body start to severely ache, and immediately, he curled up on the floor.

Magnus shouted out every curse he could think of in his mind, but that didn't seem to help whatsoever.

When his body started to indicate that midnight was going to be... special, he had thought about a few of the possibilities that could happen. He admitted that some of those possibilities were mere fantasy and wishful thinking, but he still was expecting something dramatic to happen and thus kept his mind prepared.

However, no amount of preparation could affect the amount of pain he was going through. With every passing second, he felt the amount of pain he felt increase. At first, it just felt like minor stings. Slowly, it started feeling like swollen wounds or bruises. After a couple of minutes, it felt like his bones were being ground up.

He wasn't used to experiencing such suffering. Over the years, he had gone through his own fair share of bullying, getting beaten up, and other injuries, but it had never been even close to what he felt like now.

He couldn't even open his eyes as blood started to seep through them. And that genuinely scared him. He had never had blood coming out of his eyes before, after all, he was just a child.

'Is there something wrong with me? AM I GOING TO DIE?'

He started to curse loudly in his head. He was anxious, scared, worried, and in pain. He was anxious about why he was experiencing this pain. Scared about what was happening to him and why. Worried about how long this torment would last. He was in tremendous pain. There was no other word to describe it.

He felt the insides of his body being squished and then torn open. He started to throw up, but all that came outside of his mouth was blood. It scared him, sure he had coughed up blood before, but never had it been to this extent.

It smelt disgusting, it tasted even worse, just thinking about the blood made him want to throw up even more blood. And yet, every time he opened his mouth, blood seemed to just gush out of nowhere.

"FUUUUUUUCKKK"

The barely 15-year-old boy was barely even able to scream as he went through excruciating pain.

*COUGH*

He coughed up even more blood. A lot of blood. After that one scream, he couldn't open his mouth without blood gushing out of it.

Magnus considered himself to be quite mature for his age, however, currently, he felt like shit. He wanted to cry for the first time in literal years. But only blood fell down from his eyes.

Blood started to pour out of all of his orifices, so much so that the blood loss added to the sense of fatigue and nausea that he was already feeling.

After about 5 more minutes of him just struggling to breathe with all the blood in his pipes leaking out, he started to lose his mind. All of the pipes in his body were filled with blood, and he was surprised that he was even able to barely breathe.

All of his arteries and veins were filled with so much blood that he could feel them almost breaking and bursting open.

Magnus was hardly even able to think straight, due to both the panic taking over his mind, and the physical pain that left him on the constant verge of death.

Was he really going to die like this? Of all the ways he saw my life going, this was not even close to any of them. He still had so much to do, so many goals, so many ambitions. No, not like this, he wasn't going to die like this. He may not have had much to lose, but he still had a lot to prove. To himself, and to the world.

He couldn't give up just yet. His eyes almost glowed with intense determination even while going through unspeakable misery.

He struggled and struggled, however, the blood just seemed to keep on pouring.

The thought of death giving in, and just biting his tongue or banging his head to the floor to kill himself crossed his mind multiple times. He was losing his perseverance and was beginning to doubt if this suffering would ever end.

It had already been an hour.

If all the pain Magnus had gone through in his entire life, which was much higher than the pain an average human went through, could be compared to a grain of sand, the amount of pain that Magnus had gone through in the past hour was literally an entire fucking desert.

Magnus was losing his rationality. Every part of his body hurt so much, he couldn't even bear to move. His eyes that were filled with tenacity an hour ago were now becoming cloudy.

He could barely even remember the intense resolve he had, just an hour ago. He wasn't even sure why he was still trying to survive, he could instinctively feel that all of this pain would stop the moment he gave up, in fact, he would never have to feel anything again. He wouldn't have to deal with this majorly fucked up world.

But he had to. He wasn't going to allow himself to take the easy way out. He was an extremely hard worker, he had always pushed himself to work multiple-fold than what the regular hard worker did. Giving up now would be comical, he wouldn't have the face to identify himself as a hard worker, something he took pride upon.

He had never been blessed, or talented. Every single thing he had was seized by him, not given by others. He had only himself to rely on, and he couldn't let himself down.

Besides, he could feel his intuition buzzing again, he could subtly feel it, if he gave up now, it would be the biggest mistake of his life, he would lose out. He wouldn't be able to forgive himself, ever.

He immediately bit his lip with all of his jaw strength, blood started to flow down from his already blood-soaked lips. Although it hurt, he could barely even feel it when compared to the rest of his body.

But now, he had something to concentrate on. He just kept his focus on the bite-wound on his lips, trying to ignore the pain he was going through.

The pain was one thing, but all the blood coming out of his body made things much worse.

He was afraid, afraid of the pain, but even more afraid of dying. He wanted to know what happened to his parents, he wanted to get stronger, to have his own belongings, to meet lots of people, and to make good friends. He had lots of goals, but first, he needed to survive this dogshit pain that came out of nowhere.

Strengthening his resolve, Magnus quietly persevered through the pain. He stopped screaming, he realized the best way to get through this was to not move or do anything that could cause him more pain.

But saying it and doing it are 2 different things. He grunted and growled, struggling for breath but the blood rushing out of his nose made everything so much more difficult.

Magnus couldn't see through all the blood in his eyes, and couldn't tell how much time had passed. All he knew was that he probably couldn't last for much longer, the blood loss was making him nauseous and he was repeatedly on the brink of losing consciousness, but he kept forcing himself to wake up because he didn't want to choke on the blood.

***

A lot of time passed.

Although Magnus was still awake, he had lost his thought process a long time ago, and couldn't see, smell, taste, or even feel anything. Thankfully, he had gone numb to the pain at some point, otherwise, he probably wouldn't have survived.

The pain seemed to have stopped. There was no more blood leaking out of his orifices. The stench of blood around the room was disgusting, he struggled to get up and have a clear mind.

He tried moving his body up, one step at a time, and even managed to make it up to one knee before losing balance and falling down straight on his head.

"Son of a bit-"

His already weak state of mind collapsed and he fell unconscious as soon as he hit his head.

Perhaps, it was due to his physical and mental state, but Magnus slept like a log. After getting a couple of hours of some much-needed rest, he woke up, naturally this time. He was able to keep his eyes somewhat open and looked around.

The entire floor where he slept was stained red in blood, and at some point, even black blood started to seep out from his pores. That seemed to have happened after he had knocked himself earlier as he had no recollection of seeing anything black back then.

Magnus prided himself on his resilience, and his ability to get back up no matter what he was faced with, in most situations anyway. Thus, he didn't waste much time panicking about the blood and decided that figuring out what the heck just happened could wait for later.

Getting up, he checked his body's condition. Although it was covered with blood, pus, and blood clots, and was layered with some black, sticky, gooey blood that looked like it was dangerous that it was released, his entire body didn't hurt at all, almost as if the last 10-ish hours or so were a lie.

He couldn't even feel any more blood inside any of his pipes, aside from the little amount that hadn't fully clotted and was slowly dripping out. His eyes felt so damn weird, he was worried that they might have stopped working after all the blood, but they seemed fine, other than the occasional bit of blood that slowly dripped down.

The most unusual part of it all, however, was that there were no injuries on his body, zero, not even the scars he had gotten from training, and getting beaten up for the past couple of years. However, he was far too groggy to have properly noticed this yet.

His ears were still somewhat ringing, but they were just adjusting and the little bit of blood was removed slowly by him as he confirmed that he still had his hearing.

Magnus then noticed something peculiar, the ring on his hand, which was by far his most important possession other than the family photograph, was missing.

Immediately descending into panic, he searched the entire room for about 10 minutes paying no attention to either his condition, nor the room, that was fully stained with blood. After confirming that the ring was nowhere to be found in his room, his expression turned very gloomy. He was sure he had it on his finger when he had gone to sleep.

He was about to take a really long sigh, when,

"Fuuu- wait what?"

He closed his eyes, as he opened his mouth, and yet, immediately opened them. He then proceeded to massage his temples and stretched his eyes for a minute or so, making sure there was no extra blood obscuring his vision, before closing them again. And it was still there.

『 Initiating Calibration - 1% 』

When he closed his eyes, inside what should be just infinite darkness, an infinite void with no light, was a text-like message saying, 'initiating calibration'.

'Initiating calibration? The heck does that even mean? Am I going insane? Or has the blood loss finally got to me?'

In the end, Magnus chose to just ignore it and think about it, and the ring, later, he couldn't exactly think straight when the rotten stench of his bloody body and disgustingly red clothes filled the room.

So he left the room, after carrying his only other pair of clothes that were just as shabby as the ones he was wearing, to change after taking a bath. He walked for around 10 minutes before reaching a river. Washing the blood off his clothes for some time, he went inside the river and proceeded to clean himself.

After finishing washing away the black, gooey blood on his body that seemed oddly sticky, he changed into his other set while carrying the new set of clothes in his hands. While walking on the way back, he noticed something.

He was faster.

At first, he thought it was just him getting lighter due to the blood loss, but no, something was definitely different. The same route he took every single day was a lot easier to go through.

Magnus thought about it for a bit and decided to think about it later, and then checked back at the 'calibration progress'.

『 68% 』

At some point or another, the calibrating message seemed to have disappeared leaving only the progress number.

It had been an hour and reached 68 percent, it seemed like he wouldn't have to wait long for it complete, though he wasn't sure if he should be scared of what came next.

Reaching back home, he decided to organize his thoughts while cleaning up the bloody mess on the ground. He grabbed an old mop and cleaning solution and got to work.

'Firstly, what the actual fuck was all that pain about. It hurt like a bitch.'

Magnus wasn't one to curse very often, and considering his age, he really shouldn't have been, but no one existed to teach him so or to reprimand him for doing so. Besides, considering the degree of pain would make anyone question how he was able to just stand up and clean the ground like it was nothing.

Of course, a part of it had to do with how he had 0 injuries even after all of that blood, and how he somehow even felt refreshed and better, but that didn't change the fact that he had just gone through so much pain that even torture couldn't compare.

He shuddered a bit wondering if he was a psychopath for feeling even better after that hellish experience.

'Am... I.....a masochist?'

He said, not even knowing the proper definition of the word. He knew something was obviously off about the fact that he felt better about the pain, but pushed that thought to the side.

'Secondly, what's up with the calibration progress?'

'And lastly, what the heck was my ring doing, and where even is it anymore?'

His ring, he remembered the red stone on it flashing intensely last night.

*Sigh*

Magnus wasn't exactly a genius, but even he could make a connection here.

"The moment I turn 15, my entire body starts to freak out, and I bleed all over. I feel excruciating pain for hours on end, and once it is over I feel healthier than ever. Plus this calibration message doesn't seem to want to go away. Fuck, am I going insane?" He once again closed his eyes and looked at the message that now said: 83%, before sighing again.

"Fuuuuu"

There was obviously something special happening, however, he couldn't tell if it was left by his parents, or if it was a mystery of the stone on the ring, perhaps it might have just been his body undergoing some sort of supernatural awakening.

Scenarios like that have happened before, ever since the Incursion, the Earth started pulsing out a new form of energy that was way more useful than any resource humanity had seen before. It was thus deemed, 'Mana'.

After mana had first appeared, random people all over the planet started gaining an affinity towards it, and after all these years, it wasn't hard to find people who could sense mana since most of the children from the generations born after the pulse automatically had an affinity, or could at least sense the presence of mana. Even so, the method of proper utilization could only be taught from select institutes, such as the Academy.

Unfortunately, Magnus was one of the unlucky bunch that had not received the innate ability to control mana. Of course, that didn't mean it was impossible to learn it in the future, but in most cases, their control over it would fall short compared to those with the innate blessing

This was why Magnus focused so hard on training his physical body, even as a child. He knew if he wanted to stand out, he had to do so using whatever he could to his advantage.

However, none of the records of any person ever undergoing a late mana awakening showed a calibration process like he was going through. And obviously, no one had ever had such a painful awakening experience.

*sigh*

He didn't know the answers to any of his 3 questions, however, he did know that whatever this calibration process was, it was probably responsible for what he just went through.

Whatever the case, considering the speed so far, he would probably only need to wait for another 20-ish minute or so to find out.

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(Small Author's Note: For anyone who is unaware, "Fuuuuu" is the sound created from sighing and breathing out very deeply. "Fuuu" along with *sigh*, and the occasional: "Haaaaaah" are what I'm going to use to describe Magnus sighing. So don't get confused XD.)