Chapter 9

My eyes snapped open, as I shot up into a sitting position, I quickly open my senses, trying to scan the entire room, before a splitting headache shuts that Idea down, a quick inspection of myself shows my soul in a terrible state, filled with cracks and damaged pathways, I sigh understanding how tedious it would be to heal all that damage, as I rub my eyes, having dropped my face into my palms after noticing I was in a hospital room.

I was disappointed, disappointed in myself for making such a stupid mistake, it seemed that my powerful quirk had made me forget that I lived in a world where the laws of physics were more of a guideline than an indisputable fact. And that even the most normal person, or weakest quirk, could be dangerous in the right situation.

I was so confident in my superiority, in my ability to react before I took damage, that I had neglected defense, most of my quirk training going towards new ways to use it in different ways to increase versatility or offensive capabilities, I had been content with simply my inhuman reaction, durability, and regeneration, and had neglected my defense.

In hindsight there was so much I could have done to prevent this, even something as simple as creating an area of warped space above my skin could have worked, but no, I did nothing. Sure I couldn't maintain a constant impenetrable barrier, but I could work around it. I had developed runes years ago in an effort to automate tedious tasks, but had found it simpler to simply use my abilities manually in most cases.

Runes were complex structures that I could simply run my power through passively, and depending on how I designed them, they would work differently, an ability entirely of my own design, as it worked by the imprint that existed on any energy under my control recognising the patterns and automatically doing the required task, sacrificing versatility for incredible efficiency.

My powers allowed me to sense anything interacting with things under my control with no delay, say I had an area of space under my control a light second away from me, I would know the light was coming a second before it reached me, even if the knife had grown faster than the speed of light, If I simply created a thin layer of space around me in which my energy flowed naturally and set a rune system to automatically intercept things entering said space I would have easily came out of that situation unharmed.

My nails began to cut into my skin as I brooded. The biggest reason for my concern was how close I had come to death. I had survived, yes, but I knew if there had been even one more attacker, just one, who had survived that desperate attack I had made at the last moment, I would be dead. If I hadn't been found soon enough I would be dead. I knew how close I had come to death, the biological records within my cells telling the entire story of my recovery, despite the seeming lack of damage by the end, I had come dangerously close to death.

The problem was my blood, I could lose a lot of it and be fine, but there was a cut off point, a point where it went from a non issue to certain death, if I had lost just a tiny bit more, my body would not have been able to produce more blood on its own until I healed, and since my body was incompatible with normal human blood after the numerous changes it had undergone, that would be a death sentence, as my hibernating cells could not last forever, and I would die eventually.

I lowered my right hand to my neck, still resting my face on my left, as I felt the perfectly smooth skin, completely bereft of any signs of the near fatal injury I had sustained just days before, my neck having healed perfectly, and my nails dug into the skin.

My entire body bubbled with anger, focused entirely towards myself, I felt nothing for my attacker, not even the fact that I had killed him, this was after all, not the first time I had killed someone, although not in this life, I had killed a few back in my first life, including myself. No, I was angry at my arrogance, the fact that I had allowed myself to be injured in such a stupid fashion, and nearly killed by an inexperienced and stupid criminal, who just so happened to have a quirk niche enough to hurt me due to my stupidity.

My nails dug into my neck till it bled, As I tore a long gash along the length of my neck, from below my chin to my left shoulder blade, roughly outlining the edge of the injury that had left me bedridden just days before.

I felt my regeneration kick in, but I didn't let it, forcing the injury to scar, as black blood poured down my neck, a mirror built from warped space redirecting light back at me showing me the results, as I burned away the remaining blood, showing me a long, new scar along my neck, a reminder, a reminder of my stupidity on that day, of how close I had come to my own death, how close I had came to leaving Nier alone, to forcing my parents to hold my funeral so early, and a reminder of the lesson I had learned that day, how I would never let myself make the same mistake again.

At the same time, outside of my knowledge, deep within my soul, a brilliant chain of energy, inspiring a sense of invincibility and divine power, was blemished by the appearance of a dark, branching crack covering its brilliant surface, merely a scratch on its divine surface, not unlike a scratch within a cars paint, that had manifested upon its length, its divine lusted dimming slightly.

(an, second chapter today, plus an update to all my other active stories? What happened to my lazy procrastinating self? Anyway I got bored and started daydreaming and ended up thinking about this story and how I wanted to expand it so I decided to write another chapter, hope you guys enjoyed it. A cheeky bit of foreshadowing at the end there was fun, let's see if anyone can guess what I'm doing with this, or if it's a completely inconsequential piece of information I put in to mess with my readers. Don't worry, I'm not that sadistic, maybe. Guess you guys will just have to find out next time, ON DRAGON BAL— *technical difficulties. Author will return in the next chapter.*)