Curious, and spurred onwards by the lack of pain, I did something that was somewhat extreme without thinking too hard.
I put my newly healed left hand into my mouth and ripped it off with my serrated teeth at the wrist before spitting it back out.
As I looked down at my new newly detached hand, I noticed a few things. Firstly, something that I hadn't taken note of previously, was that I didn't bleed. There was something that vaguely resembled a bone in my arm, but it didn't seem to be any harder or more solid than the rest of my body.
The hand that I had bitten off seemed to slowly start turning into a liquid, starting from the base. The liquid began slowly trickling up off the ground, defying gravity and twisting up towards my hand. The healing process seemed to be slower with the detached hand than it had been with just a cut, and not just because there was more to regenerate.
Pulling my hand back from the liquid and taking a few steps back, the speed at which it moved to repair itself did not change. Interested, I stepped back in and picked up what remained of the hand that hadn't returned to my body.
At this point, half the palm of my hand had already regenerated, so I held the remaining half back against the wound. It quickly began to bind itself back to my body, and within seconds it was healed. This meant that I didn't have to wait for any detached parts to completely liquify, and I could expedite the process by reattaching it myself.
I played around with my regeneration for a while longer before realizing that this probably wasn't normal. Not just the regeneration, but the fact that I had no qualms about ripping off my own hand. To be fair, it was hardly the craziest new change.
By now my mouth had disappeared again, and all the sharp pointy bits that showed up when I panicked were gone. Mentally going over the checklist of what I had planned to do, I came to the last thing that I could remember having wanted to do before I set off.
I made my way back over to the throne that I had woken up on. I hadn't noticed it before, but now that I was more comfortable with my body and abilities, I was sure of it. This throne was special, and I could feel a distinct bond with it.
Inspecting the throne further, I couldn't find any clues about what it was. Asking the system had it tell me that I didn't have the clearance level to know what it was yet, which only reinforced my suspicion that it was something important. The more I spent examining it the stronger the feeling I got that there was something I was missing.
I decided to act on instinct, and I put my hand on it and willed it to move as if I were trying to control my own body.
Something clicked into place just them. The throne began to twist and compress, turning into the same type of fluid that I seemed to become while healing, except more golden. When it did, my senses were temporarily blinded by the level of aetheric matter that it began emitting.
When I could see again, I found the throne had completely disappeared, and in its place, I had a golden band around each of my biceps. Intrigued, I reached up to touch it, but it felt no different than the rest of my skin, except perhaps a little harder.
Trying to replicate what I had just done, I willed them to move once more but this time my mind was firmly repulsed and pushed away. Further testing showed that while I couldn't manipulate their shape on my own, I could still control the arm that they were on and they would move and expand to fit the arm.
Something about it just felt so right though. I wasn't going to complain about having it attached to me, especially because I had been wondering what I was going to do with the throne. It didn't feel right to just leave it in the middle of this forest, so it was a win-win.
Now that the matter of the throne had been settled, I didn't have anything else to do. Inspecting my surroundings, there was nothing else of note hidden amidst the ruins that I could find.
There wasn't much else for me to do besides leave, and head off into the forest. I wasn't sure as to what my goal was, but I knew that getting stronger was high on that list. I never want to spend another day of my life slaving away for people with more power than me. I want the freedom to do as I please for the first time in my life, and to live without a collar around my neck.
Luckily, I had just the method for ensuring that it happened.
System, can you explain the XP and leveling system to me in more detail? And how to get new skills too.
[-Affirmative. The leveling system works by assimilating the aetheric matter of an outside source and converting it into a specialized version of life force called XP. Currently, the system can only transform the life force of others into XP, but as you grow, the system grows with you-]
[-XP is different from life force in that it can be used to reinforce skills and upgrade stats. It can also be stored and is a versatile resource-]
[-Skills can be gained through your actions. Sufficiently repeating an action will begin to engrain it into memory. Once a skill has been gained, XP can be used to upgrade the level of the skill. Upon reaching certain milestones in the level of the skill, the skill can be evolved, giving it new or changed properties-]
Hmm. I guess in trying to grow stronger, XP is going to be vital. Assuming that to transfer the life force of others I would need to kill him, the system confirmed my suspicion, though it did restate that as I grew I would unlock new methods.
Alright, time to set off. I made a loop around the ruins and found two remnants of what had once been roads or pathways of some sort. One seemed to be less traveled than the other, so I decided to take the one that must have been the main entrance. It would probably be easier to follow, and I guessed that it would be more likely to lead me somewhere interesting.
I also had noticed earlier that while I could maintain a decent level of awareness up to that 150-foot maximum, I simply didn't have the brainpower to keep my focus on everything. I found that by lowering my range down to 30 feet I was able to maintain a high enough level of awareness that I could monitor all around me at the same time without sacrificing too much range. I could go smaller, but at that point, I would be putting myself in too much danger by not giving myself enough reaction time.
After a bit more thought, I manifested an eye on my face so I would still have a chance to detect things a little bit further away. I estimated that I was only able to keep it active for maybe half a day before the strain got too high, but I surmised that I wanted to be as safe as possible, seeing as I was entering the forest for the first time and was unaware of the dangers it might possess.
Stepping further down the pathway, I was greeted with much darker surroundings than I had been in out in the clearing. The tree canopy was thick enough to obscure a decent amount of sunlight, and in addition to the setting sun, it made it harder to maintain visibility. That wasn't much of a problem for me as I could sense perfectly fine without light, but it did limit the usefulness of my eye.
Before venturing deeper, I took stock of my surroundings. The trees resembled images that I had seen of ancient redwoods, and they were massive. I briefly extended the full range of my detection to the maximum 450-foot cone, and I still couldn't detect the top. If I had to guess, I hadn't even seen up a quarter of the height of the tree.
Shrinking my vision back down, I began to wander further into the forest, trying my best to stick to the barely visible pathway that I had decided to follow. I was able to catch sight of a few small critters resembling 4 armed squirrels with porcupine tails, but they quickly darted away into the underbrush.
Things continued in this manner for about a half-hour before something changed. Out of nowhere, I detected a rock hurtling at the back of my head from above. I hadn't been anticipating an attack, but I was able to react in time to prevent my skull from caving in, hurtling myself to the side.
Well, almost in time. The rock had grazed the side of my head and taken off a moderate chunk of it.
I dropped into a stance and whirled to face the direction the rock had come from. My head was already healing as well. Whatever had thrown the rock was out of my detection radius, so I expanded it until it was around 75 feet large. I was able to briefly catch a glimpse of what it was that had thrown the rock but quickly had to break my focus and dodge again, this time to another attack from behind.
This time I had definitely been too slow. The rock had been targeted at my legs, and it impacted right at the base of my ankle.
I re-condensed my vision radius to 30 feet and instead grew multiple eyes on my body, on my back, my shoulders, all directions. There was a sudden spike in strain as I did so, but I deemed it worth the risk.
What I noticed when I had expanded my range was that there was not just one enemy, there were at least 3 around me, maybe more.
From the glimpse I got, the creatures resembled monkeys, except they were scaled. They also had canine heads, but I hadn't seen much else. What I did know was that they were throwing these rocks from the trees at crazy high speeds. Even with my enhanced agility, I could barely dodge them.
By limiting the range of my detection, I lost the ability to make out where they were but I was now able to keep my focus on all of my surroundings at all times and react fast enough to the rocks. I didn't want to completely lose sight of where the monkeys were, so I grew the eyes all over my body.
Another rock came at me from my right, and as I rolled forward I increased my count of how many there were from three to four. It seemed like they were coordinated and smart enough to position around me from all sides.
I dodged backward once more, narrowly avoiding another rock from my left this time. I was able to catch sight of it with the eye on my shoulder though, and from what I could tell, the monkey was in no rush to get closer. I had no way to close the gap, and I doubted I could climb a tree before they were able to injure me enough to disable me. Even if I was able to climb a tree I doubted that I would be able to catch one as this was their natural habitat.
As I contemplated just waiting for them to run out of ammunition, I dodged two more rocks thrown at me again, this time getting hit in the side of my chest. That is when I realized something. The actual bludgeoning damage wasn't much of a threat as I didn't have any internal organs to rupture, but I still needed to heal after each hit and I didn't know if I had a cap to my regeneration or not. The real problem was if the rocks were to hit my head or my limbs. Losing limbs would make it much harder to dodge or attack, and when the first rock hit my head I instinctively realized that if I lost my head completely I would not be able to control my body until it regenerated.