Chapter 18: The Fog

After falling through the empty black void towards the distant light for well over five minutes, Murphy came to the conclusion that he was, in fact, not getting that much closer to it.

He also came to the conclusion that the void he was falling through wasn’t quite as empty as he’d previously thought. It wasn’t anything specific that gave him that impression. More an amalgamation of clues. For starters, the odd sound now and then, which somehow managed to only barely be on the very edge of his hearing, even with his impressive senses.

Then there was the odd sensation of seeing something out of the corner of his eye that he couldn’t quite catch. The shadow in his vision, naturally, fled back into the darkness the moment he tried to turn and spot it. Even after throwing some fireballs about the place, he still couldn’t see anything.

The fireballs didn’t illuminate anything at all, regardless of how far away from him he through them. That said, it did allow him to be certain he was still falling. After throwing them about the place, he managed to surround himself with a cluster of a hundred odd fireballs that were all falling at the same speed as him except at varying distances around him.

Silently thanking Galileo, the long-dead pre-apocalypse polymath scholar, Murphy tried to focus his senses in an attempt to find whatever it was that was disturbing him. This was unnecessary though, because just as he was closing his eyes to focus his hearing, a glint not dissimilar to metal catching light shown from the darkness of the void.

Then, almost as soon as he’d noticed it, a flying sword blew through a handful of his fireballs and stabbed him in the thigh. The most disturbing part of this was that his high endurance didn’t seem to be capable of defending him at all. Even more disconcerting was the manner in which the sword then dislodged itself from his thigh and retreated back into the darkness.

Murphy didn’t even have time to react. He just silently stared at his rapidly repairing leg with wide eyes. Only for a brief moment though, as his ears picked up the cry of hundreds of swords being unsheathed in the darkness, beyond the light of his makeshift flaming lanterns.

“It’s fresh meat! Fresh meat!” A voice echoed from the void, sounding like an echo of a child and sword being unsheathed at the same time.

“Hahaha! I, Shiniest of shining swords, shall claim this being as my sword puppet!”

“Nay! This sword puppet shall be miinneeee.”

Voices of all different backgrounds began to ring out around Murphy. ‘What the fuck is a sword puppet?’ he wondered to himself.

Unfortunately, he didn’t get the opportunity to ponder on it long as thousands of swords began surging out from the void towards him. His fire lanterns exploding in a conflagration of red light before the void collapsed in around him in the wake of a tide of flying swords.

“What the fuck?”

Murphy hardly had the time to react before the fastest of the swords had already blown past him, cutting tiny slices from his flesh. The first wave of swords was so fast that his Deflect skill didn’t even seem to register them as projectiles until they were gone, making him look like a jerky stop-motion that was jumbled up and clipped together haphazardly.

His sword would swing to deflect a sword only half a second after it already passed.

‘Fuck! I’m going to be diced to pieces.’ Murphy thought to himself as he watched the next wave of swords rapidly approaching him, consisting of thousands of larger and slower swords. The problem was, while he couldn’t deflect those fast swords, they only numbered in the hundreds, and his body was able to easily keep up.

With a wave of thousands of huge 2-metre long bastard swords and thick great swords however, he suspected that even if his deflect could help him, the sheer number of projectiles would drown him in rusty iron before he’d even diverted a dozen swords.

Murphy looked down at his own sword with a furrowed brow. Although he didn’t manage to deflect any of those earlier swords, he did clip a few. Imagine his shock and surprise when he discovered chips had been gauged out of his supposedly invincible sword.

Obviously, I can account for the big bite impression in the side as my deprive mana, but why the fuck are all these other random swords chipping away at this piece of shit.

What invincible sword? This is a wooden tooth pick!

“Wheewww.”

With a long exhale, I calm myself down slightly and focus on the incoming sword tide. I may have no choice but to completely unleash my deprive skill again, but I’m slightly afraid. If I lose control again, what’s to say I won’t completely deprive myself of a body and soul?

I slowly start releasing deprive mana form my body, expecting it to start spreading out in waves like previous times. To my surprise, no deprive mana leaves my body at all. With a furrowed brow I look at my hands and realise that mana is leaving my body, just nothing like it normally does.

Instead, it’s all pouring out through my hand, seemingly getting sucked up by my sword which is now glowing an ominous dark purple.

“Shwinngggg”

It almost sounds like the sword is crying out as it starts vibrating rapidly.

“Ah shit.” I got distracted with my crappy sword, and now I’m about to be engulfed by the...

As the sword wave approached within half a metre of Murphy, it looked from his view like a curving wall of sharp metal completely surrounding him from every direction.

Just as he half expected to die, his sword hand jerked back into a guard position then flicked his sword out, making it start spinning rapidly. Murphy felt a burst of expectations and hope fill him, only to seconds latter lose sight of the sword as he was completely engulfed by the wave of metal.

A loud screeching of metal sounded out and a shockwave of air blasted out from the giant ball of flying swords attempting to skewer the new visitor to their domain. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, there were so many swords crowding into a single space that they somehow managed to all get into each other’s way at the critical moment.

This created a rather awkward scene as Murphy tentatively opened his eyes to see thousands of swords stuck only a few centimetres from his body. All of them buzzing angrily and trying to be the first one to dash forward and skewer Murphy, but being compressed together into a solid wall due to so many of them fighting for the same chance.

“Fuck! Get out of my way Glorious Roaving Sword!”

“Stop pushing! Argh!! Stop pushing! I’m made of softer metals! You all are compressing my soft body!”

“Get out of the way up front! That there is my sword puppet! Move aside!”

“Who just touched my hilt?! Get off me you pervert! Stop! No! Do you believe this lady sword here won’t self-explode if you keep vibrating against me like-OH! Mmm ... never mind. Just ... ooohh ... go a bit to the right!”

“PILE ON! IT’S A PILE ON! EVERYONE GET IN HERE!”

Murphy’s eyebrows raised slightly as all the swords started saying strange things to each other. He wasn’t quite sure what to make of this situation. Especially the idea that swords could do ‘that’ with each other. Then he started wondering just where the hell his sword was.

After a brief inspection, he found it directly above his head stuck halfway into the sword wall. It must have been trying to protect his head or something?

“Heh heh! You won’t be getting out this way little sword brother. Trying to make your escape under the eyes of yours truly! Humph!”

“Shwiinggg!” His sword violently vibrated as it kept trying to move. It could neither move forward or retreat backwards.

Murphy was quite glad about that, especially considering if his sword moved from the wall it would probably collapse in on top of him. He then reached a hand out and pushed it against a sword, watching with horrified amazement as he discovered the sword was so sharp he didn’t even feel as it sliced three of his fingers off.

“Haha! Take that you stupid puppet! I may be the bluntest sword in this sword domain but I can still take three of your fingers without even moving! HAHAHA! Fear not! Once you have been eviscerated, I shall claim you as my puppet and put your bits back together!”

Murphy looked at his hand, then glanced around himself at the wall of swords. After a few seconds, his fingers grew back and his eyes lit up as they focused back on the sword which claimed to be the dullest blade here.

With glee written on his face, he willingly reached out both hands and started vigorously touching it’s blade.

“Eh? Wait! What are you ... oh god! Stop! You’re going to rust my blade with all this blood! Stop! Oh god! How can that be possible!”

“What is that puppet doing over there?”

“He looks to be ... self-mutilating?”

“Oh god! That’s disgusting! He’s not even trying to cut himself properly! This is an affront to us sharper swords!”

“That’s right! You have to hit that other part of your arm with a sword to cut it completely!”

“Hey guys? Why is their so much blood pooling up down here on us bottom swords? Is there something going on up there?”

“Argh! I’m blind! The blood is completely covering my blade!”

Murphy’s eye’s looked like lanterns as the excited gleam within became a roaring fire! Once his fingers were gone, he started with his hands. When they had been sliced to bits he started with the wrists, then arms.

Once he had completely carved off his shoulders, Murphy went to scratch his back and then sighed. He’d lost a lot of blood and was probably going to pass out if he kept going without giving his body a chance to heal.

He looked down and realised the circular room made of swords he was in must be falling at the same speed as him, because he was still floating right in the middle of it, about half a foot above an ankle-high pool of blood.

This made Murphy slightly nervous.

“If we reach the bottom and I’m still as soft as right now, won’t the sword sphere explode and kill me?”

Gritting his teeth, Murphy angled his body slightly and used a foot to very gently push himself towards the wall behind himself. Almost immediately his back became heaven as his body was filled with pleasure. Hundreds of pointy blades very slowly started to sink into his body from behind like dropping a block of butter on heated skewers.

There was literally zero resistance from his body. Murphy became completely oblivious to the world around him as the swords pierced right through and his eyes rolled back into his head. Now and again his hips would jerk about making the swords slice him up a bit more.

“What in the fuck is going on? Hey you guys over there, what did you do to my sword puppet?! He’s gone all weird!”

“We didn’t do shit! Oi, move over so I can go have a look!”

“Oh sure, I’ll just push these other 40 thousand swords piled onto of me to the side so I can give you some space, you stupid piece of shit!”

“Ohhh yesssssss!”

“God damnit! Who told lusty sword about this gathering! This was warrior swords only!”

“Fuck off with your warrior swords only! Every sword in the fucking domain is here right now!”

Time passed slowly as blood dribbled out of the jerking body of Murphy. The swords continued to bicker and argue with each other, but none agreed to back off. Instead, the thousands of sword all continued to pile on and started pushing harder.

This resulted in the giant ball of swords slowly compressing, hundreds of weaker swords being completely shattered, their sword spirit’s being gobbled up to strengthen their competitive brothers. The problem was, the majority of swords that grew stronger were at the front, so while they encroached slightly closer to Murphy, the pushing sword from behind couldn’t continue to pressure them, resulting in another stalemate of sorts.

By now, Murphy was skewered on the tips of swords from all sides. Even if he were in a situation where he could move, it would only be to move onto the edge of another sword. The various swords impaling him hummed and vibrated now and again as they tried to slice his body apart.

This stalemate continued on for half a day and the blood draining from Murphy’s body had already filled the space he was in up to his waist. Then something finally changed.

“Hey! What are you doing? Stop pushing back!”

“Who’s pushing back?! Cut that out! You’re going to help out those bastards on the other side!”

“I-I’m not! It’s ... the puppet is pushing me back!”

“What!”

“Impossible!”

“Nonsense!”

“Oh! Not the grip! Ooooo...”

While the swords started breaking out in a cacophony of nonsense once more and the Lust Swords were taking advantage, Murphy’s body was rapidly trying to patch itself up and slowly rejecting the foreign bits of steel sticking into it.

It has to be said that had the swords not been continuously vibrating and trying to sashimi Murphy, he most likely would have eventually died from the fatigue caused by his body regenerating all the lost blood. They just would have been forced to wait slightly longer.

Unfortunately, the swords were unaware of Murphy’s disturbing penchant for adapting to various life-threatening damages, so had unintentionally been exacerbating his body’s strange talents the whole time. Now it was too late for them to cry, as Murphy’s body had reached the state in which it was sturdy enough to take the punishments of the unmoving swords. Even the vibrating swords could only be slowly forced back.

It was at this time that Murphy finally awoke from his disturbing pleasure coma. The satisfied feeling of starving to death struck him almost as quickly as he opened his eyes. He felt like he was about to fall into a food coma, which was quite the opposite of how his body should have been screaming for sustenance.

Knowing by this point the intricacies of his own suffering, Murphy forced his arm through a series of blades until he could reach his mouth and started stuffing as much food and water as he possibly could from his inventory into his mouth. At the same time, he pondered where exactly his body was getting the resources to produce so much blood.

Ignoring the inconsistency of his body, Murphy then turned his attention to his supposedly legendary sword that was currently stuck between other swords just above his head. While forcing a glowing mushroom into his mouth that seemed to be dripping caustic acid, Murphy squinted at the sword.

Finally, after half an hour he had emptied his inventory of nearly everything he deemed edible and his body’s repair had sped up considerably, even causing a few of the weaker swords stuck in him to shatter or bend from the pressure of his body forcing them out.

After some finicking with his arm again, and having sliced various bits of meat from himself as he tried to navigate the hundreds of swords skewering his body, his hand finally got in a good position to reach out for his sword.

As I reached out for my sword, I let the deprive mana within me flow from ... well, where ever the hell it comes from. My soul, or my body fat, or maybe from indigestion. Who can say? Probably Seelie, and it’s likely she’s told me before, but I’m not ... remembering of stuff. Anyway, who really cares apart from people who love the science of magic? Not me, obviously.

Argh! Fuck these fucking swords. They don’t seem to appreciate my deprive mana, so now they’re all just vibrating as hard as they can and it feels so good! I really think I need to find a curse that turns pleasure into pain. Surely such a thing exists. It sounds like something those whack job sinister magic user’s would come up with.

Oh? What’s that you say? I’m a sinister magic user? Shut up conscience! Magic is a tool. Just because it was created by bad people to do bad things doesn’t make me bad if I’m using it to help people!

No! Obviously, I’d never use those really horrendous curses! Just because a tool is mindless doesn’t mean it isn’t destructive. A plasma bomb is completely indiscriminate for example. In almost no situation is wiping out thousands of square kilometres of land going to be an acceptable loss/gain scenario. Although, perhaps things could be considered a little different in this world. After all...

No! I can’t think like that. Next thing you know I’ll just be unleashing blood fly plagues in unsuspecting cities for the experience points. Or worse, using the puppet curse to create an army of unwilling servants.

Whew. Need to focus! The pleasure of my body being slowly eviscerated is making me dizzy. I don’t normally have my deprive energy active, mostly because it’s fucking frightening. Now and again when I’m practising with it, it will flare up violently for no discernible reason. While I may appear to be mostly immune to it, I am in fact not at all immune to it.

Namely being that it deprives me of the use of all others skills and mana types, and if it’s feeling particularly excitable, I might even start having stats be gobbled up into my deprive energy.

That’s not too much of a problem when I’m alone, because the energy all comes back to me eventually and everything I’m deprived of once more becomes mine. In a dangerous situation though, for example when surrounded by countless violent psycho flying swords, I may end up dying and bleeding out from a simple cut because my stats have been so dramatically weakened.

It was only recently I’ve been having this issue though. Specifically ever since that kiss. That one, amazing, life-changing kiss.

Well, I may be exaggerating it a little bit, but who can honestly say they weren’t changed by their first real kiss with a girl. Ok, that may be over exaggerating again. I understand nothing about these things. I honestly expected to die alone, quietly bleeding out on the roadside after being hit by another car.

Which now makes me wonder about how things are going on earth. Half my adoptive family has followed me in here and now I can’t get rid of them, while the other half probably haven’t even realised I’m gone. I should definitely go back and see how things are going on good old Earth.