CHAPTER 43: Shit + Piss

The odor emanating from the blood intensified as Alex's nose drew nearer, but he scarcely noticed. Undeterred, he extended his tongue and dipped it into the pungent liquid.

Despite his body's numbness Alex still felt a shock course through him the moment his tongue touched the blood.

Alex thought he had been mentally prepared for the taste of the blood, but he had been wrong.

To say the blood tasted 'bad' would be an understatement, however words like 'foul', 'repulsive', 'abhorrent', 'repugnant', would better capture the gravity of the sickening nature of the blood.

Nonetheless, even then those words couldn't properly showcase the horrific taste of the blood.

The revolting flavor could be likened to a cesspool of sewage which had been left to accumulate and ferment for decades which led to the smell worsening by a large degree.

Now, imagine having the misfortune to experience the taste of that nauseating abomination for even just a second. With a flavor like that, it wouldn't be surprising if Alex gave up and never drank it again, which would ultimately lead to his demise.

But his will to live was stronger than the repulsion he felt for the blood. After a brief hesitation, he dipped his tongue into the thick liquid once more, and after a few seconds, swallowed the minuscule trace amounts that were on his tongue.

The instant the blood reached his stomach Alex felt body greedily devour it, then moments later, for the first time in weeks, Alex felt a pang of hunger.

*GRUMBLE*

Alex's emotions the moment he heard the grumble were complex, on one hand he felt deep and extreme relief that he had heard that most welcome sound, but on the other hand he also had a feeling of great anxiety as a result of a very irrational fear that the blood would somehow disappear and he would never heard the sound of his stomach.

That fear made little sense but in Alex's current state it was the most significant worry he had, so after a few moments Alex once again dipped his tongue into the blood then swallowed it.

Alex repeated the same process again and again over the next few hours, and little by little his mental faculties were restored.

'How much Hani do I have now?' Alex thought suddenly as he was swallowing the blood.

After sensing the state of the Hani inside his body his eyebrow twitched. 'Still much too low to activate Segrio healing Stance.'

Even though the inky blood of the beast had more Hani than its body, all Alex had been doing for the past few hours was dipping his tongue into it. Doing that might be enough to get his brain to start functioning, but it was nowhere near enough for him to be able to regain full control of his body mechanics and functions.

Alex's senses were still very raw and could barely be used. However, from the little of his senses he was able to recover, Alex knew that it wasn't all good news.

'Shit,' Alex thought as he mentally gritted his teeth. 'I'm glad I'm recovering. Still...'

Alex felt a stabbing pain at his sides. '...I will miss not feeling any pain.'

Although the recovery of Alex's body was generally a good thing, there were still some unwanted side effects that Alex would prefer to do without.

One of those was the pain that had come with the return of his senses.

Now that Alex was on the road to recovery, his body was slowly transitioning out of survival mode. This meant that all the pains and sensations that had been withheld from him were now returning in full force.

The same also went for the hunger he felt that had been suppressed, and the scent and smell of the decayed corpse of the beast.

To ignore the pain Alex's thoughts shifted to something of tremendous concern to him.

'It feels like the smell has gotten worse.'

The smells from the beast's blood and its corpse were terrible, but the most disturbing thing Alex had come to realize soon after his senses returned was that there were some other strange smells.

Vile odors Alex would not have expected to find around himself, but the fact that they were there made him glad that nobody was around to witness this great shame.

Alex sniffed the air and immediately afterwards his nose involuntarily wrinkled up, and his mouth and a cough suddenly came out.

*COUGH*

'Either it has gotten worse or my sense of smell has recovered somewhat.'

The fetor around Alex was from the shit and piss that his traitorous body had excreted during the endlessly long month that he had been at death's door.

In reality, there was nothing that Alex could have done to stop the ejection of his body waste, he hadn't been in the right mental state to realize that it was going on, and even if he had he wasn't in control of his body at the time.

But knowing that it wasn't his fault didn't stop the feelings of shame and disgust that plagued Alex's thoughts and emotions, in fact, it probably even made them worse.

'Well, at least no one is around.' Alex thought. He then remembered that he hadn't opened his eyes since he first drank the blood. 'Maybe I can see better now.'

Alex eyelids scrunched up for a few moments before he gradually opened them.

At first he couldn't see much of anything, but after a few seconds his eyes adjusted to the low lighting.

The first thing he saw once his eyes adapted to the dim light was a white hollow pit of a large size, and for some strange reason Alex instinctively felt like it was staring at him.

Alex's body slightly jerked and his body tensed up, while what he saw caused his heart rate to involuntarily speed up, if not for his current frail and weakened physical state his reaction would have been worse and he definitely would have surely leaped up in fright.

*COUGH*

*COUGH*

The surprise caused Alex to start coughing, which went on for several seconds.

'Calm down,' Alex tried to get his breathing under control as he looked at the gaping pit. 'It's just the eye socket of the beast.'

The 'deep pit' that Alex had seen was actually the empty eye socket of the dead beast.

Now that such a great amount of time had passed, the beast's eyes had been fully decomposed, leaving only an empty void where its organ of sight had once been.

After Alex had calmed down, he cast his gaze upon the parts of the corpse visible to him without the need to move his head, mainly focusing on its face.

'Most of the flesh and muscles have deteriorated.' Alex thought passively as he observed the wide rotting smile from the corpse's jaw. 'All that's left of its head is the skull and its yellowed teeth.'

Seeing that gruesome sight reminded Alex of how that decomposed head could have been his if not for a random thought that had popped into his mind while he slipped into the abyss.

'I need to get stronger so that corpse will never be me.'

Alex then looked away from the dead body of Beastie, and resumed dipping his tongue into the pool of blood.

-

-

-

'It's time.'

Alex swallowed a mouth full of the inky-black blood and took a deep breath.

Over the past day Alex had progressed from dipping his tongue into the blood, to what he was now doing, gulping down mouthfuls.

It had been hard and it had been revolting, but there was now finally enough Hani in Alex's body for him to activate Segrio healing Stance.

Alex breathed out heavily then began slowly circulating his Hani using the Segrio healing Stance.

As a result of the terrible state of his body, examples being his shattered ribs, malnourished and horrendously burned frame, and the potential infections his body was fighting off, Alex had to move much more slowly and carefully than he normally would when healing himself.

The amount, extent and severity of the injuries made Alex healing himself much harder, this was because when Alex used a stance, he sometimes made use of all of his body.

This meant that now that different and important parts and organs of his body were injured, Alex had to be more cautious when circulating his Hani around those parts, if not it could do more harm than good and worsen the gravity of the injuries.

'I can't use Segrio healing Stance to heal my internal injuries, which is one of its major flaws.' Alex gritted his teeth in annoyance. 'So I'll have to focus on the broken ribs first.'

Alex directed the Hani he had circulated toward one of his broken ribs and initiated the healing process.

'It will take me at least twelve hours to heal this first rib enough that it won't snap very easily.'

He then planned his strategy for healing his remaining injuries.

'After the first rib, I'll move to the next one, and after that...'

Alex paused, considering his next moves. 'Well after that I'll figure it out.'

He then took another deep breath and sharpened his focus.

'Time to get started.'