After a few minutes his body naturally slid to the side and fell over. Once again he woke up. This time due to his startle reflex he came awake due to a rush of adrenaline. With no immediate real threat he became confused.
'What is going on?'
After a few moments of looking around in some sort of shock he decided that there was no threat and started wiping his face. Unfortunately the blood had already started to dry and the mess was going to need more than a half effort of wiping to clean. Calming himself down and letting his dizziness fade Hal knew he had to make something happen.
[Don't go crazy! You only have so much mana! Take it easy!]
This time he saw Flo's message right away and nodded. If he fainted again he might not wake up.
He had to do this right.
'What do I need to do right now to survive?'
With a bloody stump of an arm and possible internal injuries from being hit by the goblin Hal choose to try to heal his arm first.
So he reached out and picked up two pieces of his arm. It was easy to see which parts were his in all the mess on the grass around him. They were the flesh chunks that actually had flesh and blood. The goblin was largely still all together, if less a lot of blood.
To Hal's way of thinking it should have been a simple matter to put his arm back together. But it didn't happen like that. The key point of making the ends of his bones sparkle, just wasn't happening again.
'What am I doing wrong?'
He hadn't meant it to be a question for Flo and she didn't answer it. She could read the room and tell that he was lost in his thoughts and didn't want to be disturbed. However, the system AI was impressed with Hal. As an artificial product the system was designed to help newly awakened beings to use their skills and abilities. It usually took at least a few generations if not thousands of years for beings to slowly work out how to use mana on their own.
If not for the system, the vast majority of individuals would die meaningless deaths upon being elevated to a higher plane. Protection and training wheels, that was Flo's roll.
[Keep it up! You can do it!!]
Occasionally she would write some notes to Hal. Whether he saw them of not she didn't know.
Thinking carefully, Hal took himself back to the moment he had made the bone end sparkle. There were various ways that the old novels had always described magic. Some books had magic happening in a relaxed state with no concentration at all. Others triggered magic through words or a gesture. There were also runes, arrays, potions... There were so many possibilities.
But really none of that matters. He hadn't been using any props and he hadn't made any gestures.
'Actually I can't rule out gestures. What did I do?'
What followed as a long period of time where Hal tried to mimic the exact movement of his hands moments before the bone started to glow. When that didn't work he tried to put his whole body back into the position he had been in before. After another ten minutes of trying be looked up at the sky in failure.
'Wait, that is a good point. Was it the time of day or the position of the stars?'
Shaking his head Hal decided to go back to the most basic.
[Actually, the time and position of the various heavenly bodies do have an effect...]
Fortunately, Hal completely ignored Flo's text this time.
For Hal, the most likely way to trigger the magic was either in letting go, relaxing to let the magic happen or in concentration so firm that he could command the bone to sparkle.
Yet when he completely relaxed into a meditation or contemplation nothing happened and when he focused so hard the veins in his forehead bulged nothing happened either.
'What am I missing?'
Frustrated, he felt like he had passed the point of no return. He really should have gone back. Going back to the clearing by the lake where all of his servants could help him would have been the right action to take. Instead he was going to bleed out here trying to play with these bones.
Suddenly he started to laugh. The beginning of the feeling he had had while fighting came back. Everything slowed down. It wasn't as slow as in that moment staring the goblin down, knowing he was going to die in a very immediate way. But it was still a very real knowing. His body was telling him that this was real, that he was going to die.
Yet instead of becoming anxious, instead his body was naturally letting go. Everything was opening up. Acceptance was the emotion he was feeling more than anything else.
And yet while accepting the state of his body Hal found that he could also realize and gain inspiration in this state. For example he realized that it wasn't meditation or concentration. It was both. He had to be able to do both at the same time.
Back before the world rouse to a higher plane, just yesterday, this probably would have been called a trance. Only in this state could he both relax completely while also being able to focus on one thought above all others.
And just like that the end of his humerus started to sparkle.
"Yes! I did it! Ha!!!"
Out loud Hal yelled to the heavens.
Of course as soon as he exited the trance state the sparkling stopped.
"Oh, well, at least I know how to do it. Ack, ack, ack!"
Yelling like that also made him spit up blood again.
It took another hour to get back into the trance state again. His body had to process all the wrong kinds of energy out of his brain before he could get back into the right state again. Or at least that is what Hal started to think.
In high school he had received top marks in his anatomy class and had memorized all the bones in the human body. His teacher had said that he should be a doctor, but at the time Hal had just waved him off. He had had no interest in becoming something so difficult as being a doctor let alone any other profession.
In those same classes he had learned that it only takes fifteen minutes or less for residual neurotransmitters to exit the brain. It took him an hour to get back into the trance state because he kept on getting it wrong and inducing more excitement.
What he really needed was a sort of apathy and disgust. But those two emotions were anything but easy to achieve. Just the thought of being able to perform magic was exciting!
Hal was helped in no small part by the fact that he was slowing dying. Giving his mind wings from a pure animalistic need to stay alive. The trance state was natural or at least it was natural while dying.
Once he was back in the trance and focused on the bones of his arm that he had arrayed out in front of him Hal made quick work. Knowing that he might loose the trance at any moment he connected all the bones. The elbow joint had been trenched and Hal could twist the see that he bones were not tightly connected. But the muscles and ligaments were still connected so after the major bones, the humerus, radius, and ulna were put back together most of the arm was back in one piece. Of course the miracle of putting the bones back together did nothing for the flesh torn places and just cut into in other.
The hand was the hardest. It wasn't hard to collect all the pieces and put them back together again. Most of the fingers and metacarpal bones hadn't been destroyed. So after Hal had repaired what was broken he had to resort to putting everything together an then awkwardly wrapping the bones with leather from the goblin's harness.
With one hand Hal couldn't even tear his own tunic. Fortunately the goblin's outfit was mostly a loin cloth and bits of leather.
Without being able to use [Bone Realm] to heal the tissues all he could to was place all the bones in a line. The rough position was correct and all the pieces of bone were repaired. It was time to reconnect the arm back to the bone sticking out of his shoulder.
Carefully Hal laid down and after wiggling around a lot he found the right position and then touched the ends of his sparkling bones together about a third of the way down from his shoulder.
It was done.
Not caring about the trance now, Hal whistled his appreciation.
"Hell yes, I did it! Yeah!!"
But in the next moment the flesh on his arm quickly necrotized and burned away. All that was left was the bones which slowly lit up in a frosty blue light.
"What?? Why!!"
Seeing his arm become smoke and twist away slowly in the light breeze was humbling, Hal was horrified.
[It makes sense, [Bone Realm] is death magic, it wouldn't make sense for it to play well with living flesh and blood.]
Hal just stared at Flo's cerulean text box. It was gut wrenching to realize his mistake. Without realizing was he was doing he smacked his left hand against his forehead.
'You couldn't tell me ahead of time?'
[I am sorry, Hal, I am limited. It is the rules. I can't help you in any way, unless you ask for it.]
'Argh!'
The bleached white bones clacked and their rough texture was a surprise. His mind played tricks with him trying to both identify the hand as a foreign object and also as his own arm. Experience told him that he should feel his hand touching his head. He did, but only through the skin on his head. The hand while obeying his subconscious commands to move didn't feel anything at all.
A sudden urge to throw up, which couldn't be contained, made the grass and scattered bones even more of a mess. But at this point it was just another layer.
'What am I going to do?'
[Well, take a moment. You can do this!]
Flo said her text boxing flashing.
'Isn't that help? Why can you help me now and not before?'
Hal was angry.
[You literally just asked, 'What am I going to do?' ...]
The box popped up promptly and Hal looking at it sighed.
'Alright, alright, I am not mad at you. Just at myself. Look at me!'
Carefully Hal took his own advice and lifted up his left arm. At first he had thought that the blue light had completely gone away. But now that he was looking closer he saw that between all his joints the blue light continued to burn. Wispy the connections between each bone fluttered a little something with and sometimes against the actual wind that was intermittently blowing the grass around him a little bit.
And just like Hal had learned to do from his previous life he let go of his expectations and desires.
'If there is one thing I am good at it is continuing on after disappointments.'
Standing up carefully, Hal was again overwhelmed with weakness. He felt like he would throw up again if he didn't take it slow, so he carefully took a step or two.
In doing so his eye caught an irregularity in the trees at the edge of the grass field that he was currently in. There was a blind, a look out, not even more than a human height in one of the trees.
'Was this goblin on look out duty?'
Fear suddenly clenched his heart. There was a high probability that other goblins would come if that was a look out post.
Despite the need to rush, Hal still took his time and resolutely made his way over to the base of the tree.
Sure enough there were hand and foot holds here cleverly disguised not to be too obvious from a distance. However, up close like this it was easy to see and hopeful that there might be something in the blind that could benefit him he stepped up to climb.
The first time he tried to grip a hold with his left hand he was greeted with another bit of harsh reality. His left hand and arm in general was super weak. He couldn't feel it holding any weight at all. Which meant that while he had the arm, it literally couldn't help him with this strenous task at all. Well maybe for balancing, but even then it was so light compared to a normal arm of flesh that it wasn't much good even then.
A good hour later, after getting used to climbing one handed, Hal finally made it into the blind and breathed a sigh of relief. It looked like this was still a look out post, but that this goblin was living here. There was a bed, table, and a chair all arranged. It was endearing. Most endearing of all was that there was a large chest at the foot of the bed.
'This can't be like in games where there is a treasure chest are every quest? Can it?'
[No, but most beings have to have somewhere to keep their stuff. This is normal, completely normal. You are going to find, food, clothes, maybe some tools, basically everything that guy needed to survive out by himself.]
Flo, trying to be helpful informed Hal.
'Hmmm, your right, I do have to ask a question, otherwise all you can give me is support. I get it now!'
One handed Hal opened the trunk and was greeted with the sight of all the goblin's worldly goods. As far as clothes went there was only one spare loin cloth pushed into a corner. Most of the volume within the trunk was taken by supplies. Seasonings, oil, and some kind of hardtack biscuit.
'Oh, I pity, this guy, this hardtack looks horrible to eat.'
[As far as I understand it is pretty horrible!]
'Wait, but actually, this is probably the food I will be eating for the foreseeable future. We'll have to see.'
Also in the trunk under some simple tools, there was a smaller box. Removing the tools and then lifting the box gave Hal some hope. The box was heavier than expected if it just had some more food or clothes in it.
"What do we have here?"