Support my contracted main novel and winner of Writing Prompts #26 - The Legendary Mage!
Desolate Mage: A Legend Reborn!
https://www.webnovel.com/book/12013957905760805/Desolate-Mage%3A-A-Legend-Reborn!
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"Challenge 3: Trial of Wisdom."
A mirror stood before Sam. A beautiful, ornate mirror standing more than 3m tall and 2m wide. The frame was intricate and made of gold and other precious metals; engraved and mouled into patterns like ivy and tree branches intertwining to outline the shape of the fragile-looking glass.
Looking into the mirror; she saw a reflection of herself.
She felt down. No, she *fell* down; down to her knees in sorrow.
Why wasn't she pretty...? Pretty like Romilda? Pretty like Caitlyn...?
Her black hair was chopped apart, looking like a hair-dresser had decided to play roulette to decide where he would trim her hair - some spots bald, some spots long and lustrous; the whole thing a horror.
'N... No.... No...!'
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!"
She sobbed.
What was the meaning of life if, if she looked so bad...?
What was the point of strength, power, skills... All of it...?
If she couldn't get a boyfriend...?
'Grandpa... I... I-I'm sorry...' She spoke to herself.
'I... Have to end it all...' Tears began to well up in her eyes before dripping to the soft earthen ground beneath her. The light yellow dirt turned brown as it became wet.
'I..."
*Kruk kruk*
'Haven't eaten yet...'
She stood up and stepped forward to finish the challenge as the bad-hair day girl in the mirror stepped out to meet her with a punch.
'!!!' "Oomphffp!!" Sam tasted metal in her mouth; probably from the iron that she was chewing on to distract herself from her hunger.
So when her reflection stepped out to punch her in the mouth, it really, really hurt; it felt like she had just been hit in the face by a train!
Struggling to recover, Sam spun into a backflip, dodging left and right as Sam unleashed a flurry of punches at Sam. Desperately, Sam ducked and lashed out at Sam with a kick, but to no avail. Sam casually jumped and spun once before releasing a relaxed looking spinning backfist.
Sam's hairs stood on end; the back of her neck felt like ice.
[Authors special note: Congratulations! Your reading comprehension is really good! Just to test it out, I used "Sam" for both of them, but you guys still understood the fight just now! Congratulations again! *Clap clap clap clap!*]
'Move!!!' Sam recognised this move - the same move she had used to one-shot the Diamond Golem just minutes ago - Demon-slaying Fist.
Time seemed to slow down as she felt like the fist was flying forward too fast while she herself was trapped in quicksand.
Just barely she managed to move out of the way of the seemingly-slow but incredibly swift strike.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!
The air beside her ear exploded; stunning her and leaving her ears ringing.
Dizzy, she felt her head spinning. But her doppelganger gave her no respite; she relentlessly pursued Sam and unleashed countless blows, pummeling her badly.
'I... I didn't know I was this strong...' The moves her reflection performed were magnificent even though Sam could feel that the copy's stats were more or less the same as hers. No, they were exactly the same - it was just a chasm of a difference in the application of force and techniques!
'I... What can I do...?' She felt a sinking feeling in her heart as she only managed to block roughly one out of three blows. The third would land cleanly on her skin and flesh, leaving her blue-black and some places red from the ruptured blood vessels.
This battle was a one-sided thrashing from beginning to now; she could literally count the number of times she had struck back on one hand - 7 times[1].
'Think Sam, think! There must an answer! There's gotta be! This trial is called the trial of...'
She froze; shocked.
'I forgot...?'
Her mirror-clone did not miss the golden opportunity to end the fight. It charged straight into Sam's chest, tackling her with a spear shoulder charge and knocked her tumbling head over heels. Before the pair of girls hit the ground, Sam felt her copy's arms snake around her neck and chest, and it's legs lock in place around her waist; latching on to her as she whirled around in the air - strangling her.
Coughing, Sam desperately triggered her maximum strength Full-Burst; overdrawing herself to gain power beyond her body's safe limits. She heard her bones cracking, blood vessels rupturing and muscles snapping as she fought all-out to pry herself free from the chokehold.
Just before they hit the ground, she managed to force her clone's arms open, then struck downwards at her opponent's clamped legs that were wrapped around her lower body. One strike, two strikes; then she had to fend off the clone's arms from choking her again.
Hitting the ground in a heap, they rolled around on the ground, one trying to get out of the life-threatening hold; the other trying to stay stuck to her.
'Can't... Get loose... Not much time left...!' Her eyes sparkled. She had to try it; the move she had promised herself not to use.
'God's Devouring Strike!!![2]'
She felt a hunger.
A ravening, obsessive hunger. One so great, her cells cried out for nourishment, her mind began to slip away under the tides of bloodthirst and avarice - as if a great fiend had starved for a million years and was faced with meat and wine for the first time since.
'Hungry...!!!!!'
But she did not bite.
Barely hanging on to any sense of rationality, she smashed a simple claw strike into her captor with the last vestiges of her overdrawn Full-Burst strength.
The instant the all-devouring, all-encompassing claw strike made contact with the clone's body, it disappeared into mist and mana flows, sucked into her body as nutrients for her starved cells.
Immediately she felt a burst of strength, charging her up and refreshing every inch of her body. She roared in exultation; this was it! A meal worth dying for!
A meal worth killing for.
'No!!!' She clutched her head, falling to her knees both in exhaustion and in conflict with her bestial, primal instincts to devour everything around her.
'I... I'm not an animal... I'm not a beast...! I'M A HUMAN BEING!!! I won't lose myself to this!!!' She screamed, crying out in pain and convulsing as she fought against the euphoric sensations of EATING another organism. The drug-like rush of mana, food and LIFE pulsating through her veins, supplying her cells and genes to further evolve...
To depart further and further from the limits of what could still be called a human.
She could barely maintain her sanity after having subsumed an entity made entirely of mana and life-force that was exactly equivalent to herself. It was like a snake eating another snake that was its carbon copy - it would bulge up to twice its size upon gorging itself on such a gluttonous feast!
Only for herself, there was no bulging up or ballooning despite what she had just devoured.
Instead, her skin, organs, cells, tissues... Everything in her body began to writhe like millions of tiny worms. Even her hair began to undulate like thin tentacles.
She gasped; unable to breathe as this process was carried out.
'No... No!! I, I'm human... I'm human... I'm human!!!'
She would have wept if she still had any control over her body.
Sickening sounds could be heard as the girl lay on the ground, squirming and twitching every few seconds as her body remodeled itself. Sounds of popping, breaking and the sliding of flesh against flesh. The grinding, screeching sound of her metallic bones against each other.
Inside, an even more grisly scene was taking place.
In the depths of her body near her heart, one particular black and white cell that looked like a seed was different from the other cells.
It was bigger, stronger... More malevolent. It began to move more actively, moving away from her heart as it approached other normal cells and pressed itself again them - then swallowed up the cell it touched. After some signs of brief struggle inside the black and white cell, it would spit the cell back out, but that cell would not be turned into a smaller clone, also black and white.
This repeated in quick succession, wreaking havoc in Sam's body. From 1 cell to 2, 2 to 4, then 8, 16, 32... Soon there were more than a thousand cells, and they were still spreading rapidly.
But the horror was just beginning. When the number of cells exceeded 10,000, they began to amalgamate, forming a squirming mass of tissues which then began to attack whichever other tissues, organs or systems nearby.
The unconscious girl began to bleed from all of her 7 orifices, unrealistic gushes of blood seeping from the corners of her mouth, ears, eyes and nose while the war for dominance over her body, soul and life took place within her.
Very quickly, the mass of black and white tissues had grown enough in magnitude to form a small organ. It looked somewhat like a short black and white bird, one with flat wings on either side of its body.
The "bird" then opened its "beak" in a silent screech and returned whence it came, headed towards Sam's heart. In but moments it traversed her blood stream, breaking apart every vein and artery on its way as it caused severe haemorrhaging where it passed. Despite her body's best efforts to heal and recover, she was losing blood and life-force quickly; too quickly.
The blob of black and white finally arrived before her heart; where a holy, divine sight unfolded.
Golden yellow light suffused and bathed the surrounding tissues and the walls of the thoracic cavity; where a mighty, heavily muscled organ was suspended by the strongest, most robust looking blood vessels that could be imagined. The fibrous pericardium layer surrounding the heart no longer looked like tissues; the layers were so thick and dense that the supposed yellow layer looked so dark, one might mistake it for black in poor lighting.
The heart looked more like a heavily armoured Primordial Astral Beast; a conqueror of the Endless Worlds and beyond!
The black and white mass of tissues paused in hesitation when it laid "eyes" on her heart. Then it steeled itself and charged straight for its jailor of countless years; ready to wrest what it believed to be its rightful ownership of this body.
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Author's Notes:
[1]
Sam: "1.. 2.. 3.. 4.. 5.. 6.. 7!" (Counting on one hand, showing random arrangements of fingers at each count). "Yay!"
Dhrtarastra: ...Someone save her.
Lucius: ...Someone save ME.
Author: ....Sam, even though I'm your writer, you're just too cute!!
[2] What do you think the original name is...? ;) The smart guy caught on before any slips of tongue on this one...