Waking up, I half expected to wake up in the Prisoner's Quarters, a sign that the time had come for the next run.
Meaning I would have to experiment with whatever the hell I had gained during my self induced coma on the run to make up for lost time.
So when it turned out that I was still falling down from heavens above, I was completely fine with the arrangement.
I now hated heights with a passion however, and not because I fear it, but because I'm just that sick of falling.
So giant rigid corpse who's insides had been surgically removed aside, I planted my hands on the ground beneath and heaved myself off the ground that was surprisingly comfortable for something so warm.
Feeling the bad case of bed hair on my head, I got up from the ground and rubbed the back of it, still feeling the heat transmitted to it.
Blinking at how tired I felt, I slapped my face with a dash of fire instantly awakening the weary soul hidden underneath my flesh with the fear of being burned.
And with the sudden awakening and realization of the senses, I started to summarise what the God of Fun wanted from me.
He wanted me to start using the other two powers that I had been granted with the accompaniment of soul splitting pain.
'But how is the question.' Rubbing my chin, I stared off into the black forest in the distance, the sun hanging high up in the sky as it futilely sent heat into this eternally falling place
'It's just that the other powers don't have that much use in this place.'
To summarize the powers from each aspect, Minecraft is a purely survival based set up where everything was made to survive just a bit longer.
Terraria was a place where you decimate the world in search of better materials to make better armor to better tear apart boss monsters, something I guess would be useful right now, but it was currently useless without the proper materials.
Dead cells on the other hand was to put it bluntly... purely combat.
And to summarize what this island was like in a few words... It was a death trap.
Look at the summarizations and tell me, what would be the best fit for this island filled to the brim with undead that would happily maul my face if they got the chance to do so?
And they all had special quirks to them that made themselves a lot more threatening than they initially appeared? Ergo the zombies with their deceptive strength hidden in their wiry forms.
Yeah, I don't exactly see how the purely survival aspect of Minecraft would help me here if it the Zombies could break through the walls I erect?
At the least the repair function of the Minecraftian system was incredibly useful in keeping whatever I liked intact.
But the Terrarian System was useless outside of the inventory system cause where the hell am I supposed to get the materials needed for the weapons?
Far from this place that's where.
'I doubt that I'll even be able to get anywhere if those bird erasing walls are everywhere'
Recalling the image of birds being vaporised the very instant that they tried to reach the other island through the sea separating them I smiled wryly.
'Yeah fat chance.'
And this was all with the malaise nerfed to one sixth of it's full potential.
Yeah, I don't exactly see how I'm supposed to be using these powers if I wouldn't be able to live to see the next day.
A jolt shook my body as I collapsed against the ground once more as the loop of falling repeated itself all over again.
'Well I guess living to see the next day doesn't have the same weight here since I'm living to see yesterday.'
Pushing myself off of the ground once more, I stretched my stiff limbs and jumped up and down in place, a brief gap lifting me up into the air before falling faster than the hundred kilogram chunk of stone.
'I'm no physicist but I'm sure that this isn't supposed to happen.'
But strange physics of this place aside when time doesn't even work properly here, I limbered my limbs up in preparation of trying to find out what the blood rune granted me.
Looking at my chest, I was half surprised to see that the Death insignia was still where it was, completely intact, a ring of blood lookalike now surrounding it.
What caught me off guard however was the blood shifting around to resemble two pixelated hearts from the game minecraft.
'I guess that's how I know have two wishes left'
Instantly connecting it to the finger that the God of Fun had placed against my heart, I ignored the two marks of God in favor of understanding what the Vampire had given me.
'For one, it definitely has something to do with blood'
Coming from a vampire, it seemed obvious, but it was a good habit to list the obvious things before trying other things.
Because sometimes, the best answer was sometimes the best one.
'What these blood powers cover on the other hand is a mystery.'
Pulling out a small knife from my inventory, the fragmented remains of one of the twin daggers, I cut my wrist and began to infuse mana into the tattoo on my heart.
But before I even could start, the small wound instantly closed over, the small beads of blood being sucked back into the wound as the skin knitted itself together, making it as if the wound never even existed.
'That's... interesting, but I guess obvious in hindsight.'
Since the Blaze and Inferno rune gave me a substantial boost in my resistance to flames mostly of my own make, it made sense that the blood rune would be semi autonomous.
'The cost seems negligible as well but that's probably because the wound was so small.'
I wasn't going to be testing how effective this regeneration was of course, but it paid well to remember this when I was wounded beyond my own will.
'Anyways, passive regeneration aside, what else can I do?'
Cutting open the palm of my hand once more with the half broken weapon, instead of letting the blood disappear underneath the regenerating flesh, with a small nagging at the back of my head saying I can do this I willed the flesh to not regenerate at that part.
And surprise surprise.
It worked.
Blinking slightly, I ignored the fact that I could now control the passive regeneration of my body like an on off switch, I pulled at the Blood on my hand.
Using the same instinct granted to me when I first received the other runes, the man flowed around my heart and began to transform the blood into a myriad of forms.
Forming a rough ball at first, with some concentration, the blood ball transformed into a triangle, then a square, then a cylinder then a circle again.
'This is more difficult than I thought'
Sweat pooling on my forehead as the mental strain of trying to shape the liquid ball of blood into perfectly solid forms, I instead switched to using it more like a liquid should be.
Turning the cuboid blood block into a liquid sphere of undulating blood, I imagined it as a whip.
Forming a long line of crimson red, it stretched along my side before coiling up at my side.
Raising my hand, the blood whip followed my motion before cracking at the air in front of me when i swung my hand.
'Oh... So I can do it like that.'
Feeling a brain blast incoming, the blood whip in front of my hands instantly morphed into a ring of blood which instantly began to circle me like some overprotective parents with access to a swarm of nanobots.
Feeling my awareness extend to the blood ring even from behind me where my eyes couldn't see I smiled.
It seemed that I found another tool to use.
'But to actually find out its effectiveness in battle requires enemies.;
I looked towards the towers filled to the brim with so many bats that it's a miracle that the tower hadn't collapsed from their combined weight,
'And I think I know where exactly to find the test subjects for it'
---
'Well that was uneventful.'
Dusting off my shoulders, I wondered what the use of a 999 stack of bat wings would be useful for before throwing out all but one stack of bat wings, keeping it for.. something.
I dunno, I was a hoarder.
Anyways, the bat massacre aside, the usage of the blood rune alongside its many other rune counterparts opened my eyes to the world of fighting with my back facing against the wall.
Literally.
When you were surrounded, there was only so much you could do before getting overwhelmed from all six cardinal directions left, right, front, down, back and up
So the solution?
Cut down on how many cardinal directions you had to face off against with at once.
'Another use for the minecraftian system.'
Using blocks to surround my body, I basically forced the numerous crimson colored bats to face me from the front, the up and the right.
Fighting in the air without your back faced against the wall was ill advised, something I escaped by the skin of my teeth using the gravity generating ram runes on the soles of my feet.
They were surprisingly effective in keeping me grounded.
But either way, making sure that the six paths that the bats could attack me through were now cut down in half, it made the fight exponentially easier.
Sure they could break through the stone, but why go through the hardship of trying to make a new path when you could take the much more accessible one?
A common mentality that seemed present in even the dead.
'I really abused that mentality in the warzone.'
Recalling a simple time when I wasn't trying to die to zombie hordes, I felt the numerous tiny scratches covering my body heal up on their own.
'And the passive regeneration is already pulling in it's weight.'
Smiling to myself, it seemed that I wouldn't need to use the three charges of the potion to heal the not so significant wounds anymore.
I also didn't need to stab myself in the wound with the tonic if I wanted to heal myself.
So less pain than usual, Yay!
Flicking out the blood still clinging to my spear, the blood rune engraved on my chest flared to life and ripped it off the blade, sending it flying away where it ignited with a flare of the Inferno rune.
As it turns out, the blood rune didn't require only my blood to be able to function.
'Really helpful if I need to fight an army of zombies again, the mana consumption remains that much of a problem though.'
Feeling the hidden well of energy hiding within my body slowly deplete like a well that about to be tapped dry, I refilled it with a crushing of the cell in my hand., filling the well back to full.
'And now that we're on the topic of the blood rune, I should probably organize what the rest of my runes can do.'
Taking off my clothes without any shame, leaving only my pants on, it revealed a heavily muscled body to the world which not to brag was something that was entirely mine.
But bragging rights aside, several tattoos representing the runes I had used appeared on my body like a patchwork of color.
The Blood rune, the newest addition to the tattoos slowly taking over my body, but also the one we just covered so I was skipping this one.
The Ram rune, something that I had received in the ossuary, the place I was just at right before meeting death and allowed the formation of gravity fields on the soles of my feet.
Resembling that of a rams horns, when activated, they dragged me to wherever my feet were pointed.
In other words, if I was able to control my body well enough, I should be able to fly around in the air like a reverse super man.
The Blaze rune, the dark orange cousin of the Inferno rune, but the only fire related tattoo on my body that was only effective on things in the immediate vicinity of my body.
This included my body of course and was the cause of how I was able to coat my body in flames.
The Inferno rune, the light orange cousin of the blaze rune and the only fire related tattoo on my body that was effective wherever I could directly sense.
Forming pillars of fire on my hands to fly around like a rocket, forming fireballs that could burn through swaths of enemies, anything that could be created through the power of flames could be replicated with good enough control and the corresponding mana amount.
The Teleportation rune... Yeah I still haven't found out what it means by that.
I know that it works by clapping my hands, but the results of doing this were so chaotic and uncontrollable that I usually just refrain from doing so.
It's a pure gamble using that power, and I didn't want to test my luck if I were to end up inside a wall or not.
The Challenge rune... I also have no clue what this is about but have an inkling of an idea of what it may do so I'll just skip this one.
The Time rune unlike it's name sake was definitely unable to slow down time to a halt.
Instead, to make it seem as if time had slowed down to a halt, the time rune made it so that my thoughts were dozens if not hundreds of times faster than the usual.
This extra time makes it so that I have more time to react to incoming projectiles that appeared out of nowhere and saved my life more times than I can count.
(I forgot how many times at this point)
The Vine Rune, one of the first ever runes I have ever received, and the one responsible for growing the vine like tattoo's on my arm.
Infusing mana into the tattoos made it so that the plants both dead or alive would suddenly gain a growth spurt according to my will.
Forming whatever I want, most of the time, the plant growths form sudden walls that protected me from sudden strikes at my side, using the blocks of wood contained in my inventory to initiate a counterattack
But in cases where I was surrounded by a forest or the equivalent in dead trees... well the Concierge happens.
I don't know if the God sigils count as runes though, but I guess I can explain them...
The Death sigil looked like a skull with a hoodie and sunglasses that were somehow tired of life despite literally being devoid of life.
The Fun Sigil on the other hand was just two heavily pixelated game hearts representing my two wishes that I currently had.
To summon the two gods respectively, I had to nearly die and to have fun.
How fun.
[Did you call me?]
No I did not, I was just being ironic.
+++
Tree