CHAPTER 9 - A helping hand
I feel pain all over my body. My back and head hurt so much in fact that when I try to sit the pain makes me flinch and force me back on the bed. I try to recall what happened after a I passed out, but the last thing I can recall is my hitting the cold stone and losing consciousness.
I look around from my laid back position and notice I am in a comfortable bed inside a cozy bedroom. I nearly laugh by myself seeing that for once I probably was lucky, it doesn't really seem like the worst case scenario I could find myself the moment I woke up. I could be dead already for so many reasons that I prefer to stop thinking about it already. Worst yet, I could be a prisoner of some sort of the monsters to be eaten at a later time. However, no use in thinking about other outcomes when I am not even sure if my actual one is that good either. We didn't see anyone in all the flats we entered in search for a safe place and that's concerning now that I am in one.
I hear some noise coming from the room on my right and I try to get up slowly to try and not exert too much strength on my back which together with my head seem to be the places where I received the most amount of damage. I can still stand up on my own so even if I am in no good condition I should be able to recover just fine with some time and rest, but I can't stay sitting on my butt till I don't know if I am safe.
I help myself up with a chair that is near the bed where I lay and sit on it. With the help of the chair I get myself up and reach for anything I can grab on to hold myself up. I quietly try to get to the wall on the right to try and hear through it their conversation and with some effort and help from the furniture I do just that and I stick my ear to the wall hoping for the walls to be thin enough.
I wait for a while for any small talk to start while hearing some noise from their movements but with no results. After a few minutes I decide I need to get more information so I look for something that can help me walk like a crane. I end up with empty hands as there is nothing similar I can use.
Forced to use my hands only, I walk to the door at a slow pace while enduring the pain which makes me wince as I do so. I open the door slowly trying to look as innocent as I can in case there is a lookout of some sort watching over the room to make me seem as peaceful as I can.
Getting out of the room there is no lookout and I find a hallway with two rooms to my right and another two to my left. I know that someone must be on the right as that's where the sounds are coming from so I walk the other way. Every step is so hard that I feel like my body weighs a ton. I reach the first room which is a bathroom and passing it by I get to the one at the end of the hallway where after silently opening the door I take a peek inside.
I see an average bedroom with a double bed where someone is sleeping. After squinting my eyes I can make out the bulge on the bed to be a elderly woman and I close the door without seeing anything suspicious in the room either.
Maybe I was lucky enough to be taken by a elderly couple that just wanted to help, I am pretty sure that is one of the best possible outcomes to be honest. I somehow get to the first room on the right while stumbling and I peek over the first one to see a kitchen. The probability of a elderly couple giving out a helping hand is more and more probable as I see an old man preparing launch step by step ever so slowly.
I decide to go back to the bed I woke up in, there was no more information to get for now, no conversation and I couldn't explore more as the man could see me if I tried to go to the other room. However, it wasn't such a big deal, it was probably the exit as it was the only door left and I needed to rest anyway. I go back to the bed leaving everything in the same place as before without making a sound and started planning my strategy from now on.
First off, I need to rest and recover to peak condition if I want to be able to stand properly against all those monsters roaming the streets. I don't even know how all that whole phenomenon of the artificial strom ended. I can't go back to meet up with the two girls I was with or continue my search for my family. Actually, I am fucked, I now have no way to communicate with my family as my mobile phone lays broken is the table next to the bed. 'Another hint that these guys that rescued me probably have no ill intentions.'
I now at least have time to think ahead, it doesn't feel like I will need anything more to recover than rest so that's something. The question is how much time will I need, but no use of thinking about that. I now recall the latest events, I can't help but recall how I was so exhausted after my strong swing with the weapon of the monster. I smell something fishy and I am down to discover the truth of how I was able to deliver such a strong blow with so little strength. I was only able to leave the blockage so easily because of that monster death, but I ended up with nearly no energy to flee the scene after all the other monsters decided that I was the only one that needed to die.
Basically, I need to be able to determine what I did and how. I need to be able to control it. I don't want it to happen so as to not get me into that undesired situations and at the same time it is a good thing to have as a trump card if I can manifest it whenever I want.
I can still feel the thrill I felt when I released all that power at once, the feeling of having the strength to do anything for it to be replaced later on by the fatigue I was left with. I couldn't even rejoice on the short lasting effect as I was running for my life, but I am sure I can manage to somehow replicate it. I have all the time I need while I am bedridden and I am a genius! It can't be that hard.
I wait for a while till my saviors come to see how am I doing and I don't need to wait too long. The woman that was sleeping enters the room and notices that I am awake.
"Hello, how are you doing? Are you feeling well?"
"Yes, could be better thought. Thank you for saving me when I was out cold." I sincerely tell her truthfully thankful for their actions.
"My husband saw you lying around when he left to search for someone in the area and you are the only one who he manage to encounter."
"Well, I haven't seen nearly anyone from the moment the monsters started appearing, everyone seems to be missing or hiding."
"Makes sense I guess. I will call Joe, we will be relieved to know that you finally woke up, I will bring you something to eat too."
"Okay, thank you."
She calls the elderly man to come and talk and then tell me how they tried to survive without going out, but in the end they ran out of food and wanted to know how the situation was outside too. I tell them some things I know, not revealing too much though, like how I killed some monsters. Giving them bits of information just enough to assure them that leaving their hideout is not that good of an idea.
They appreciate my information and tell me to rest in their house while I recover, which I gladly accept as I don't have any other option right now.
"I will have to depend on you for a little while then, thank you for everything, I will definitely repay you when I get better."
They leave after bringing me food I so desperately needed to get back my strength and I start my plan. I will use all this time I will be healing to try and take hold of this strange energy I used to strengthen myself before.
-First day of recovery
I try to get a hold on the feeling I felt when I was fighting, but it's hard to replicate it when I am not fighting with my life on the line so I have some complications getting the hang of it. After a few hours of looking into it I manage to recreate it and to my surprise a wave of euphoria washes over me not letting me think straight or feel anything else at all.
My body loses itself on the pleasure of the strange energy surfacing and doesn't let me feel anything else at all. I end up wasting all my energy for the day like that after doing a few more times and I can only wait for the next day while trying to remember anything of the feeling that I could scratch out of the numbing sensation I felt. Is probably a side effect that my body uses to not distract itself as I get a full sore body after each time I do it apart from the usual fatigue.
-Second day of recovery
I wake up surprised to know that my sore body from yesterday is completely fine again, at least the sore part. I am bedridden anyways, but that is something worth noticing and I start following yesterday's steps. However, today I try to do something different, every time I start feeling the euphoria coming in I try to focus on my body to see if I can get some type of information about what is happening to me. I try and try again till I am done for the day and while I do find some type of connection between my body and the weird sensation, I can't make head or tails of it.
-Fifth day of recovery
Just as the days before I continue to try deciphering how to use the strange power and today for the first time I manage to isolate myself enough from the side effects to center my focus on the real deal. I focus on my body which has a similar sensation as if some kind of liquid was cycling inside my body to help it move and exert more strength. I try my best to remember the feeling and after exhausting myself, I try again till I can't try no more, every time feeling more used to the sensation and isolating it more from the euphoria.
-Sixth day of recovery
I wake up and it isn't long before the couple that is taking charge of me walks in as always to have some conversation. All these days they come to me in a regular basis to make small talk and sometimes we discuss serious topics like how to confront our actual problems like the food shortage and so on. I told them to download some information online and even offer myself to do it for them as I would like it too and I can't move. Sadly they tell me we don't have electricity anymore so it's already late. 'Well, no use crying over spilled milk I guess.'
They tell me they will go get some food from the neighboring flats that are void of any life. I don't want them to die, but it's not like I can do much, I am still pretty much useless. I can't even walk properly yet, so it is better if I just focus on what I can do.
-Tenth day of recovery
It has already been ten days since I was hurt and started recovering and I am starting to see some results. First, the couple that rescued me really have a kind heart as they haven't kicked me out yet. They give me food, water and someone to talk with while I am bored.
When it comes to my recovery I am still a mess, however I can stand on my own now, even if I can't walk or run by myself. At this point I am pretty sure I broke a rib of something, but I can't be sure either. These past days I have been practicing nearly all day with the power I discovered and I have made some progress. I am now capable of isolating the euphoric sensation off, which in turn helped me to discover that it influenced my whole body everytime I cycle it. It is like a closed track where I give the starting sign and it cycles on its own after till all the energy is lost while traveling.
At first it starts in one specific point in my body where it accumulates and then fires off to the next one quickly. Then it starts losing speed and strength as it dissipates all over my body till I stop feeling it and then the fatigue and sore body comes in. I am sure I can get to a point where I am the one controlling it and deciding where it starts and where it goes. Firstly, I want to know how it influences my body so I start to try and make stable pulsations of the energy while I try to decipher how it enhances or modifies the parts of my body that it goes through.
-Twentieth day of recovery
'Fuck this.'
I enjoy discovering each new thing of this power, but I start to feel super depressed as I need to stay still all day long with nothing better to do. I start to talk more with the couple, I start to move my body too, walking around the house a little bit with caution trying to build up some resilience to the pain. However, it doesn't help that much. I have been laying on my back for twenty fucking days in a row and it's taking a toll on my mental health.
The bright side is my progress on my experiments. I am now able to replicate the energy at a moment's notice. It does have its downsides like the fatigue and the sore sensation that last for nearly all day, but I am getting better and each time I improve the side effects diminish in some way. I still need to take a huge part of my attention to nullify the euphoric sensation I feel everytime I use it thought, but with each time I improve my control over it too.
I am starting to manipulate the intensity of the thing to try and make it more versatile. I am surprisingly able to do that. However, the power lost while doing that is so much, that for now it is useless if I don't use it at full force. Baby steps, yeah, baby steps. I just need to continue experimenting and grinding, its a matter of trial and error.
–Twentieth-fifth day of recovery
Fortunately I am nearly fully recovered, I am pretty sure the strange foreign energy I am using all these days is the cause of the speeding of my healing process. It's not that hard to notice it, the last three days I started to differentiate how to guide the energy somehow to the places I wanted the 'boost' in. From that point onward I just started guiding every single speck of it to my chest as the head pain disappeared a long time ago. It's not that difficult either, it's like luring a fish, you need to accumulate a new starting point of the energy where you want the big pulse to go and then you use the small one as bait to lure the big one like a magnet and then the wave of energy rushes to it attracted by the pull.
It's kind of funny when you get the hang of it, and the strength you get from it gives you a feeling that soothes you and empowers making it hard to not want to get better at it. I have been investing all my stamina and energy in my recovery by guiding the biggest amount of energy I could to my chest. Action that granted me a greater recovery rate and nearly instant relief of the pain I was feeling, making it pretty obvious it does have healing power in some way.
I feel like in less than a week time I will be as good as new and even stronger taking into account the fact that I have this new energy at my disposal. I am sure that I could take on the lesser variant of the orcs on my own for example with my new power. On my own meaning unarmed, taking advantage of the boost of strength to kill them with a precise strike to the vitals. The power I can exert with the energy boosting me is no joke, the only downside is that it uses up a lot of stamina, making it less expendable. I will think of something to make up for it though. It helps a lot knowing that over the course of these weeks I have been feeling the volume of the energy I could produce growing, probably hinting that it grows in quantity and quality over time with practice. I really hope so, as the monsters I have seen so far are not weaklings at all.
-Twentieth-sixth day of recovery
I am nearly ready, I am fully recovered already. Today I am preparing to leave this flat for the first time in weeks. I am really grateful with the couple that looked after me and I am definitely going to help them out now in return. However, I can't be careless, nothing assures me that my new strength will save me from harm, in fact I am kind of skeptical about how much of a helper it will be coupled with the new longsword I got from my last fight which the elderly man have kindly brought with me when he found me. I have been practicing with the sword lately so as not to rush in blindly the moment I leave and honestly, the sword is perfect. It's super durable, being tougher than steel and sharp enough to slice through anything I tried so far. I am even hyped to go and try to fight with it against some of the stronger monsters I saw, but I know better, for now…
After my preparations to depart it became noon already so I decide to leave tomorrow at dawn instead. I have been feeling antsy for a while already and can't wait to put my newfound power to good use.
-Twentieth-seventh day of recovery
It's time, I am finally ready to set off so I give my thanks to both Joe and Melisa before departing. I leave the flat and carefully get to the streets as ready as I can be, sword hanged on my back with an improvised scabbard.
'Let's see what we can do.'