"Caelum!" King yelled out.
The little fox had whizzed past him at a speed that was at the peak of D rank. He reacted belatedly, and the weakest link had instantly been launched across the battlefield.
That weakest link was me.
Lying down in a pool of blood made me feel helpless. The stench of the mound of corpses that cushioned my fall was suffocating.
I could feel the world around me blur. My vision waned into absolute darkness for a hot moment. I looked down, and I saw three deep trenches in my chest. My bones had been crushed and bone shards were sent piercing into my lungs and heart.
Blood erupted from the wounds, and I was coughing up blood.
I was dying.
"Gods... damn it..."
This was what I got for bringing the wrong teammates to the wrong occasion. Rose and King weren't the types who could properly protect a weaker ally. But, it wasn't like I could've known in advance that this was going to occur.
I did not have the ability to see that far into the future.
"It's... a mess," I coughed up even more blood as my words left my lips. My vision was growing darker and darker as I lay in a growing pool of blood. Eternal slumber was gradually clutching me within its silent grasp.
No...
No.
No!
I could not allow this.
Death should not come for me like this. Not now, not ever. Immortality should be mine to hold, nullifying all notions of death.
I cannot die.
Absolutely not!
A deep rage seethed within me. This damn world..! This world was my creation. All things about it should be mine to control. Mine to command.
'The timeline of events is changing,' I thought to myself, 'And they're changing fast.'
Fate was still the same, tragedy would come for the same people. Death would clutch at those both weak and strong. It was simply the [ When ] that has changed.
Thus, I must adapt.
Out from my cloak came a potion that I had kept with me since my first dive into a dungeon. The Mana Viscosity potion.
Originally, I was going to use this during my evolution into a High Human, but I needed it now. Similar to how the events that were taking place were happening during different times, I now had to move my plans around and change their sequence.
I glanced at the battlefield. I watched as the two lovers fought a difficult battle with a small yet powerful beast. They could not help me. King and Rose could not turn their backs on the sly fox, or else they would pay the price.
Thus, I was utterly resolved to use the potion.
Gulp— gulp— gulp—!
Using the last bits of my strength, I poured whatever was in the bottle into my throat. I swallowed, and the potion passed through my wrecked oesophagus, seeping through my body in a different manner than recommended.
But it still worked.
In fact, it seemed to have worked even better than if I had digested the potion normally.
I could feel my mana change in nature. It grew viscous. Difficult to manipulate and to move. Like the difference between water and honey.
But, this characteristic meant that it did not leak out any residues. It stayed in my body and did not flow like the rest of the mana in the world.
With it, I could heighten the raw abilities of my body to a much greater degree. And thus, that was just about what I did.
Whooooom—!
A low hum resonated from deep within my bones. I gained weight through the mana that coursed through me.
This was good.
I breathed in and even more mana poured into my body. It was then transformed into its viscous variant.
I then forced it—with all my might—to envelope the wounds on my chest. The three deep trenches then suddenly stopped bleeding out. My mana was preventing anything from changing. Things fell into a lull as I lay there, motionless and desperate to survive.
This was all I could do for now.
I was living simply through the mana that had flooded my wounds. How that worked scientifically? Well, it would be a long lecture. But to make such a long story short, my viscous mana was basically acting like the slime monster of fantasy books.
A brainless, organless, and difficult-to-kill monster that when cut into pieces, could still regenerate and survive.
I was basically part slime—at least for now. The Mana Viscosity potion's effects were still at their peak.
All of my body processes were operating through a formless blob of mana that one could not see with the naked eye. To onlookers, it looked like my blood had clotted and sealed my wounds.
But if they touched it, it would be like jelly. And if they put their hands in, then they would feel the rush of molecules moving as different currents, supplying my body with the nutrients and oxygen it needed to survive.
Frankly, it was a weird state to be in.
But it would keep me alive, and that was all that mattered.
'This is exactly why tank-builds would love viscous and dense mana. They would be unkillable.' I thought to myself, in awe of the worldly mechanics that I had fashioned out of a variety of inspiring books.
...
While I was busy trying to survive, the five-tailed fox and the mage still battled like there was no tomorrow... And the mage was on the losing side.
Despite the rain of attacks that the mage kept throwing at the five-tailed fox, none of her attacks actually dealt any damage. The fox was blocking each volley with precise and efficient casts of an advanced form of Mana Shield.
The two were technically at a standstill, but the mage was spending much more mana with the attacks that she was sending out. The five-tailed fox was simply pacing itself. Waiting for the human mage to run out of mana.
I looked elsewhere, and there, King and Rose were fighting a battle of their own with a beast that wasn't even as tall as their knees.
A small, black blur kept running around them, keeping a certain distance from Rose's spells. The magic school of music was centred around [ AOE ] spells, after all. And when one was at the centre of any one spell, that was where music magic dealt the most amount of damage.
'At least on this side, things seemed to be going well.' I thought to myself.
But it wasn't enough.