Chapter 5

Her breathing was steady but light. I was worried. She'd lost a lot of blood and was probably in shock. I looked into her eyes, seeing if she was awake. Tara blinked lightly, she was awake for now, but I could see she was fighting not to pass out.

"I'm sorry in advance. If this works, it will hurt like hell."

She looked at me confused but looked like she prepared herself for the worst. I ignited the heightened sense mode I practiced, and suddenly all the xin in the area lit up like fireworks. I saw her core, but also… white veins, spreading from her crystal all over to her body. I started to understand, this was probably used like blood vessels to spread xin everywhere in her body she needs. I should start looking into this as well.

"You look much better than when I last saw you." She croaked and immediately started coughing heavily. What a nice compliment, I no longer looked like a corpse.

"Don't talk, stupid! Try to relax, I need to focus." I scolded her. She needed to conserve all her energy for the recovery. Anyway, I need to concentrate.

I put two fingers on her chest, where her crystal was. I tried pushing in my xin slowly, and in small amounts. She groaned, but the foreign magic wasn't rejected from her body, and reluctantly it accepted it. It struck me again, that sometimes xin looked and felt like it was alive and conscious. Right now, her core didn't even try to purify my xin, just accepted it. Filling her core to around halfway, I pulled it from her core to the stump what was once her right arm. I used the xin veins, and it moved easily from her core, quickly as well.

I pulled my xin through her body to the surface of the wound, and once there were enough gathered there, I ignited my recovery skill. Her eyes immediately rolled up, her mouth agape in a silent scream, and not even a second in Tara was out cold. Well crap. What was interesting and completely unwelcome, that I was feeling the pain as well. Not as bad as Tara probably, but it was still hard to think straight.

Regardless, her stump grew a centimeter of bone and various vessels and muscles started appearing on it as well. The burnt wound started opening up again, but there was no bleeding, as the flesh knitted itself to the bone, and skin crawled up encasing it safely. Her crystal was running empty after not even three centimeters of regrowing the arm. I kept my hand on her core and kept supplying more and more xin from my own. I was around 40 percent full, so I was confident I had enough for this, based on progress so far, but it was a bit disconcerting emptying it after so painstakingly filling it up halfway.

It took hours of hard work and pain to get to her hand. Cold sweat was dripping from my head, my core was almost empty, and both my arms were burning due to the flow of this much xin. I really need to develop those veins soon. But as I was thinking about that, I saw two faint lines coming from my core and going toward both my palms. I felt it channeling the immense amount of xin through it, and although it was small and weak, I knew it was helping.

I was at around 10 percent, or more like 8, when I got to the fingers. I made her thumb first, then moved on to the rest. Bone, growing millimeter by millimeter, tendons, a bit of fat, the nail and skin wrapping around it. It was honestly pretty disgusting, but more so exhausting.

Not only my core, but the immense concentration of guiding xin in someone else's body, and using a skill at that, it was not easy. My right hand also felt the pain of every part of Tara's new one being constructed, every bone, every bit of skin and all the muscles. It was like being dissected and put back together.

Finally, the pinky was covered in light pink skin, and the process was over. I collapsed next to Tara. She was lucky she wasn't conscious for this one, it would've drove her mad probably. I knew how bad this can hurt, and although I haven't grown back entire limbs, I healed pretty ugly injuries. This was probably much worse. Healing and fusing broken bone together were one thing, creating completely new one was another matter entirely.

My core was sucked dry, I had two or three percent at most. I needed to gather a bit, so I don't faint. I was still in the heightened state I used to manipulate xin on an advanced level, so I could just command the xin around me to fill me up. A few streams appeared and started marching into my empty crystal. Suddenly the carcass of the snapping turtle started glowing brightly like a beacon. I'm an idiot, how could I forget?

I hurried over on staggering legs, with my knife in my hand, and after strengthening my body I started carving. It was easy knowing where to dig as I could see the glowing crystal through its flesh. It only took fifteen minutes of digging around until I got it, it was buried deep. The crystal was glowing even without the xin sight. I started retrieving the massive amounts of xin from its crystal. I settled down next to Tara on the ground to keep watch, and after a while when I gathered some, I used the recovery skill on her once again to check if there were any other injuries. Immediately I felt like I was run over by a car as it started to heal her broken ribs.

The pain was intense, but nothing compared to growing back an arm. It only took a few seconds to mend her bones back together, and I felt her breathing falling into a steady and healthy rhythm. Maybe I should've started with this? Whoops.

I squeezed my hand under her back and legs and picked her up. I carried her over to my improvised sleeping bag made of leaves and put her down gently. I closed the leaves on her and settled down in front of the small hideout. I was exhausted, but we couldn't be both asleep at the same time.

I took out the crystal from my pocket and started to absorb the xin again. It was like a massive wave rushing over me, it was hot and violent, but full of energy. I had to hold it in both my hands and use the emerging xin veins that looked so sad and weak. But while absorbing this crystal, they grew stronger and more complex every hour. The progress was small but noticeable.

When the sun came up, I only emptied half of the crystal from the turtle. I was almost full too, so it was a bit puzzling. Aren't my xin reserves supposed to be like, massive? So why am I almost full? I decided to stop for a moment and enjoy this much magic flowing through my body at once. I've never felt this good since waking up from that damn glacier. I checked up on Tara, she was still sleeping. She will be probably hungry when she wakes up, so I should go hunt for something.

I was reluctant leaving her here alone, but this hideout was pretty good, looked natural so even I'd have a hard time noticing it if I hadn't made it. I started augmenting my body in a thick layer of xin, and suddenly I got very light. This was also different from before, with much better results. I decided to dial it back for a while, I don't want to mend any more broken bones today. I started running towards a thicker part of the forest. I dodged the trees while looking like a speeding bullet.

I spotted a yellowish white blob glowing ahead of me, changed my direction slightly and I jumped from the trunk of a thick tree with such force it cracked beneath my feet and started collapsing a bit. I smiled and using my feet and arms, like swimming between the trees, went after my prey. It was a smaller roe type thing, probably also had some deformation, but I didn't have time to look for it, and didn't really care anyway.

With a final push and another tree destroyed, I found myself next to the animal, and with a firm punch I killed it instantly. It tumbled for a while as we were going quite fast, but eventually came to a stop. I used some rope made from dried grass to tie its legs together and put it on my back like a backpack. I hurried back to our hideout in the same fashion, it felt fantastic going this fast.

The wind stung my eyes and face, my fingertips were scratched by the twigs. The colors and shapes of the forest melted together, and I felt myself flying in between the trees. I felt a sudden urge and using some thick twigs I shot up above the trees. I was now running on top of the few leaves of the canopies. Now this truly felt like flying. The small deer creature was hitting my back pretty heavily, so I decided to stop destroying the forest and move at a more modest pace.

I was still running like a maniac, but not at breakneck speed and I didn't have to worry about breaking the sound barrier. After a few minutes I arrived at our little camp and put down the deer. I started processing it, I've gotten quite good at it lately. I also started a small fire and started roasting the meat. I cleaned off the crystal and put it to the side, Tara will probably need it later. I have the turtle's anyway.

It didn't take long after the smell of roasting meat filled the air that I heard rustling behind me.

"Huh? Wha-?" Tara's tired croaky voice came from inside the improvised tent. I lifted the leaves that hid her from the outside. Her eyes focused on me lazily, and it looked like she finally somewhat understood where she was.

"Morning. Slept well?" I asked her.

"What happened? Wait… My arm is... huh?" She looked even more confused now after she touched her brand new arm where her stump was.

"Yeah, you passed out during it thankfully… It was pretty brutal."

"Did you heal my arm? How?"

"Not as much healed, rather I grew it back. Sort of. I discovered that I have a recovery skill, probably what helped me survive in the ice."

"That's amazing, you gave back my arm!" She looked confused but happy at the same time. She tried it out, did some shoulder circles and small movements, moved her fingers, checked for individual control in her fingers.

"How did you manage to do this? Not even the best of healers are capable of growing back a single finger, and you did a whole arm."

"Yeah well… I think normal healing abilities rely on the body's ability to regenerate, just helps it do it faster. This one, however, builds completely new cells using xin. It needs a lot though, so I poured my xin into your crystal, sorry if it feels uncomfortable or something. I'm not an expert at these kinds of things."

"You gave me… xin?" She looked more and more stunned by the minute.

"Well, your crystal was empty, and you probably needed my xin to use this skill… Also, your crystal was filled and emptied around thirty times while I rebuilt it. Hungry? You slept for a while." I handed her a piece of meat, a bit of grease was still sizzling on it. She took it, sat down next to me and started eating. She devoured the whole thing almost immediately.

"Wow. I have a bit more, but we'll have to roast it."

"No no, that's okay. Sorry for eating your food." She looked a bit bashful. Seriously, this girl. I had to suppress a laugh.

"Don't worry about it, I hunted for both of us, and I wouldn't even be able to eat the whole thing even if I wanted to." I said to her, smiling. She reluctantly accepted, and we roasted a bit more meat on the fire. After a bit of silence, I asked her:

"So, did you perhaps come here looking for me?" It was a question that swirled in my mind since yesterday when I saw her.

"Well, obviously," Tara said matter-of-factly. "We only started teaching you the basics, so I was almost sure you'd die, but I'm glad you're safe. And you learned a skill as well, a pretty powerful one. Must've been hard."

"I don't think it was that big a deal. I mean I almost died a few times, but it made me stronger and helped me understand a bit more about this magic business." She sighed.

"You know, I really was afraid you were going to be a lot cockier having this much power."

"Huh? Like after you melted me out?" I asked, a bit confused. How could she have expectations for someone she didn't even know existed? She looked a bit flustered, and I felt like I caught her red handed. What is this about?

"Uhm… Yeah! When I um… saw you in the ice, I was thinking you'll have a big head due to the size of your crystal." She wouldn't look me in the eye. Strange.

"Well, okay." We continued to roast the remaining meat in silence. It was pretty awkward. Honestly, I was never good with girls, and I'm the loner type who's completely fine by myself. I had a few friends in high school, but I haven't seen them for months or years after the meteors fell, and obviously they were all dead by now. This thought was pretty depressing.

Of course, I had a few crushes and such, but never to the point of actually asking someone out. The risk of a rejection completely destroying my already low self-esteem completely outweighed the miniscule chance of succeeding in a happy relationship. Also, my mom died when I was three. So, this was probably the longest conversation I had with someone of the opposite gender. I felt more and more self-conscious of the girl sitting next to me, who was objectively beautiful, and got more and more uncomfortable.

Please give me a monster to fight, then at least I know what to do. This is so awkward someone kill me already please. I gave my portion of the remaining deer to Tara to hold over the fire while I went to look for some more firewood. Come on man, one pretty girl and I feel like a snotty fifteen year old again. I needed to get my act together. After hauling a good few chunks of wood back to the camp, I picked up the turtle core again.

"Hey, so my crystal feels super small for some reason. This one crystal will fill it up completely, wasn't it supposed to be massive or something?" I asked Tara, thinking back to my worries a bit earlier.

"Well, it could be like how your stomach shrinks after not eating for a while? I don't think you ever actually filled it up or used it when it was full." She said with her signature furrowed brows she wore when she was thinking hard. "I don't think you actually need to worry about it much. Also, like this, it's probably like a hundred times the size of mine."

"Perhaps, but it emptied me almost completely when I healed your arm, and it worries me a bit. I'll just try to absorb this one completely and see what happens when I go over the edge."

"Okay but please be careful, I don't want you to explode or something." She warned me with a cute wry smile. How was I supposed to concentrate like this? After shaking these weird adolescent feelings off, I started absorbing the xin from the crystal again. The heat was a bit less intense than last time.

I took a few breaks to check up on Tara, who was absorbing the deer crystal and sitting cross-legged across the fire. She was immersed in the task of replenishing her xin, and her features smoothed out as she was concentrating. I vaguely noticed that the fire had gone out, but that wasn't a problem, we were two mages who could light a fire quite easily after all. I went back to draining the crystal.

It was nighttime when I got to the edge of my capacity. It felt more and more uncomfortable absorbing the xin, and at a point it got painful. It felt like I needed to burp but couldn't. A weird pressure in my chest, directly opposite to my heart, on the right side. I felt the pressure rise and rise, and when I thought I couldn't take more, it finally snapped, and my crystal opened up a bit more. Well, I say a bit, but it was more than ten times bigger than before. I could rebuild five full people with this much if I fill it up completely. Tara's eyes snapped open and looked at me curiously.

"Wow, so I was right! I have a bucket's worth of xin, you had a lake until now, but this is more like a sea. Impressive"

"Thanks! Well, I didn't do much to achieve this. But it feels so much better than before. Like I've been running in sand this whole time." She looked at me, and her eyes radiated such wisdom, it was hardly out of place on a girl this young.

"How much is left in the core?" She asked.

"Not much honestly, relative to my new capacity at least. I'll finish up tomorrow." I haven't slept since I healed her, which was now almost 24 hours ago. I was exhausted after I did it as well. I had a new kind of strength running through my body now, but that didn't replace the sleep I needed.

"You go rest, I'll take first watch. I need to empty this one as well and build my veins back up again."

"Okay, thanks." I headed into the small hole that I made into a bed and practically collapsed into it. My head didn't even reach the leaves and I was already asleep.

A few hours were all I needed apparently as I woke up without Tara waking me up. I stretched and crawled out. It was still nighttime. Tara was still meditating, illuminated by the faint moonlight through the tree canopies. The crystal was gone, and she just sat there silently. I watched her a bit until I realized it was probably creepy as hell, so I gently touched her shoulder.

"Hey. You should rest up too." By her reaction, I honestly didn't know if she really was meditating or if she fell asleep accidentally.

"Oh, sure." She climbed in the hideout. I grabbed the crystal and continued emptying it. It went noticeably faster than before, and it barely felt uncomfortable. My veins were developing nicely.

Not much time was needed in the end to completely empty it. But there was a new feeling, like what was left wasn't power entirely, it was something else.

I went deeper into the meditation phase to decipher what was going on. I continued pulling on it, but there was no xin left inside the crystal. However, it didn't crumble, and was shining, although not as brightly when it was full. What is this?

I started analyzing it through the xin vision and tried to open it up a bit more. And then I realized. There was a skill hidden inside this crystal. I felt excitement wash over me when I figured it out. Now I just have to get it out somehow. I tugged on it one more time mentally, and this time it gave, but it wasn't xin that came out, it was… knowledge.

A new way to manipulate xin in the atmosphere, it showed me the interaction between the air, pressure, viscosity and density. Suddenly I gained insight to how to manipulate these variables freely, and when it was finished and all of it was transferred, the crystal finally crumbled to fine dust and evaporated. And I pushed myself away from the floor and floated up gently above the trees.