Chapter 81
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Blackthorne crept along the cliff at the edge of the cavern slowly. Numerous open gashes crisscrossed his back and forearms. His life force long gone, he struggled onward in the hopes of finding a path back into the light.

Without the sun to tell him the truth, he had no actual idea how long he had been underground. As of yet, he had not woken up. So, he guessed that only a few hours had passed in the waking world.

"This place is brutal," he whispered to himself with a slight hiss.

Before he could lament his current fate further, a slight moan reached him. He dodged back instinctively and narrowly avoided the downward swipe of a long desiccated hand.

The noise made by the undead adventurer granted Blackthorne a faint inkling of where it was due to his ability to utilize echolocation. However, its lack of temperature and coloration made it easily blend into the background of the cavern. His heat vision was useless as the creature was the same temperature as its surroundings, and it gave off no life force to measure with his other senses. The only time he could 'see' the undead in total darkness was when they made a noise.

In truth, it was the shambling corpses of those who failed to find the ring that proved to be the most difficult opponents in this place. He could only sense them when they moved. Every other creature was basically meat and experience points to him.

Blackthorne clacked his jaws together and listened intently. He managed to sense the location of a vaguely human shape just a few feet in front of him. Unwilling to let the creature get its hands on him, like the last few times he fought a zombie in the dark, the little dragon took a deep breath.

As he breathed in, tiny motes of shimmering darkness flowed toward the center of his mouth. Ominous red light blazed from his eyes, and then just as the zombie stepped forward, Blackthorne adjusted his orientation and unleashed a gout of black fire laced with lightning. "Ptooh!"

More like a fireball than an actual flamethrower, the dark flame slammed into the zombie with explosive force. It sent the beast flying back. It shrieked as it burned, the noise of its shrieks and its flailing limbs sent Blackthorne's echolocation into overdrive. He could properly sense the entire cavern up ahead now. Several more zombies barred his path and were even now shambling toward him.

"Why couldn't I at least get to keep some of my camping stuff?" he groused. A torchstone would have settled the entire issue. Even the tiniest bit of light would have been enough for his draconic eyes.

The pain of using his breath attack with no extra life force available was almost too much to bear. "Did I break something this time?" he wheezed loudly. The use of life force at any time put a strain on the body, but utilizing abilities without it caused notable injuries. In truth, he had injured himself more than the creatures in the cavern. Though, it was only through those extreme encounters that he realized that he could use abilities without his life force present. As a human, it would have been nigh-impossible. As a dragon his regenerative powers allowed him to make the effort at an exceedingly high cost.

He had no time to check and see how much damage his body had taken, or its severity. He waddled forward and clacked his jaws together. He only received a vague impression of where the zombies might be from doing that, due to his echolocation ability, but it was enough to avoid their grasping hands. Blackthorne could not afford another fight, not until he could find a way through to the light of day.

On more than one occasion he unknowingly dodged an immobile cluster of stalagmites that looked vaguely human, but even so he managed to work his way past the small pack of undead and found his way to a promising rock formation. Using his powerful little claws, he clambered up the face of the short cliff and crawled onto what seemed to be an underground plateau. He slowly clacked his teeth and listened carefully. There was nothing atop the plateau save for a few stalagmites.

Blackthorne worked his way around the area briefly then sank down to the ground with a sigh. No bats. No Scorpions. Best of all there were no zombies. He had discovered the eye of the underground storm, so to speak.

He blew out an exasperated breath then spread his little legs out in exhaustion. Getting out alive was proving to be much harder than actually changing races. He got to be something incredible, an actual change to his life! Yet, despite all the power that he possessed he was still just one little guy in a sea of other guys who wanted to eat him alive.

"Man, it's like high school in Juvie all over again..." groused Blackthorne.

His vaunted regeneration worked wonders on life force, but actual injuries still required a considerable time to mend. For the first time in what seemed like forever, Blackthorne took a moment to check his body status in order to see what manner of wounds he possessed.

 

Body Status: Lightly Injured – [With a Heavy wound]

Status Effects

Bleeding [Light]

Damage: 17.65

Regeneration Time: 6.05 Hours

Poisoned [Slight]

Damage: 0.05

Regeneration Time: 1.03 Minutes

Diseased [Slight]

Damage: 2.43

Regeneration Time: 49.99 Minutes

Internal Bleeding: [Moderate]

Damage: 24.35 [+0.01 Per Minute/ 17 Minutes]

Regeneration Time: 8.41 Hours

Lacerations: [Heavy]

Damage: 33.47

Regeneration Time: 11.47 Hours

Internal Stress Damage: [Moderate]

Damage: 26.37

Regeneration Time: 9.04 Hours

Regeneration Rate: 1 Point | 20.57 Minutes

 

"Good lord, I'll take forever to heal..." he grumbled. His eyes widened a little, however, as he realized something profound. "I'd probably be dead if I was human, blindness in the dark notwithstanding..."

The damage to his body was extensive, and honestly if he were human he would need medical attention to completely heal if the raw damage taken alone did not kill him. Thankfully, his draconic body was a little sturdier. None of his wounds were severe on their own and thus he could regenerate properly without surgery, skills, or certain potions. More to the point, none of his wounds were particularly difficult to work around. He had neither broken bones, nor paralysis, to deal with at the moment.

His internal bleeding bothered him for a moment until he did the math. As long as he chose not to aggravate the wound, the continued bleeding would stop long before it cost him even one more point of damage to heal.

Blackthorne's grumbling about how long it would take to heal was enough to make him laugh at himself. "I'm bitching because it'll take hours to heal from wounds that would have taken medical attention and over a week to heal when I was human, if they healed at all."

In truth, his regenerative factor was the worst cheat of all the bonuses that he received. With his improved draconic vitality he healed his wound damage ten times faster than a human with the same vitality modifier. His life force increased at two and a half times the typical speed. Quite plainly, if he was not so badly injured he could heal more of his life force in two minutes than his old body had in its entirety.

The way the system determined damage was odd, but it did seem to model the damage healing times on something resembling real world humans. An ordinary man might take days, or weeks to completely heal a bruise. Someone with his current vitality modifier could heal in a day, what a normal man might heal in a week. Meanwhile, an ordinary man would probably require stitches and over a month to heal from the lacerations alone, if not longer since heavier wounds took longer to heal at times.

As a dragon his regeneration ability bumped his status up a full tier when it came to self-regeneration. A human with a moderate wound might need medical attention to heal properly. They might be able to perform first aid on themselves, but that was still the case. Heavy wounds almost always required medical attention, and severe wounds would always require it.

His draconic regeneration made it so moderate injuries were no different than light injuries. His heavy wounds might benefit from medical attention but he could probably handle it with a little first aid. Only Critical injuries would require medical attention as an absolute, while severe injuries would make it likely that he needed such treatments. It would be possible that he would not heal correctly without treatment.

Blackthorne marveled at his body status for a moment. Were he an ordinary human with basic human vitality, any damage above two points might require medical attention. At seven points in any given injury he would be at death's door and awaiting his time to walk with the reaper.

He chuckled to himself when he remembered his thoughts on the injuries that he received during one of his first forays into the world. He had gotten things wrong, almost immediately. Blackthorne of that era innocently thought that a single wound that would require him to regenerate over five points of damage was something that a normal man would be able to heal within a few days. He proved foolishly naive at the time.

The wounds that he received during his first day in the dream were a conglomeration of numerous wounds spread across his body. The damage was not centralized. In that way the numbers could not be trusted as the injuries taken were not severe on their own, especially when those numbers were combined with his well above average vigor.

A single wound of similar destructive force taken all at once, on an average man? It would have been akin to taking a shot gun blast to the chest. Albeit, it would not have been a center shot as that would have been fatal. The amount of time for such egregious wounds to heal increased by a large margin because of the need for medical attention. The likelihood of the wound becoming worse on its own without medical attention is quite high. Even slight bleeding wounds might cause infection to set in, something Blackthorne had learned first-hand due to being around so many rotting dead things while carrying open wounds. Crawling through bat and scorpion feces for hours on end didn't help things either.

The absolute numbers for damage taken were just the system's best guess regarding the situation, when external factors were not included. Someone could carry any number of wounds, though if those wounds met certain numerical limits it would cause the body to be more damaged than any single wound might cause.

Nothing better to do while he waited, Blackthorne did the math. "I've got seven points of vitality modifier to work with, and a base vitality of eighteen..."

He did a little simple multiplication and came up with one hundred twenty-six points. He let out a slow whistle, a strange tinny metallic sound when it came from a dragon's maw, after he added up all of his damage. "I'm close to breakthrough damage... if I take too many more hits anywhere, I'm in trouble."

Breakthrough damage, an odd concept that only occurred within the system that governed the dream. There was a threshold for damage that a creature might take. They could receive wounds anywhere and in any amount depending on their vitality and modifiers. However, if the total amount of damage reached an equivalent amount to their modifier multiplied by their base vitality it would break their damage threshold. When that happened the overall damage level for their body status would increase. After a certain point it would slow down regeneration speed.

"My total damage is just above one hundred four points, which is probably why my status claims I am only lightly wounded on the whole," he said.

If he reached the point of breakthrough damage, his body would be shocked into worsening all of his wounds. When he was injured that time as a human, his wounds were so small in comparison that the numerical average of all of his wounds only counted as a light injury. Since his worst injury was also rated as a light injury there was no additional information provided.

As a dragon all of his current injury levels combined ended up rating as a light injury, but he also had a heavy wound. It was a weird system, but it sort of made sense with a little insight. He could take a fatal headshot and die instantly, but the rest of his body might be perfectly fine. It was that sort of system.

"Light injuries being the limit, if I take enough damage my body will be moderately injured... the shock to my system would worsen all of my wounds by what, five to ten percent?" Blackthorne frowned then groaned. If he took just a few more points of damage, his heavy wound would easily turn severe. That could cause a snowballing effect, one that could drastically worsen his entire body condition once more. If that happened it might also once again worsen his entire body condition! Once enough injuries racked up, people went down fast, it seemed.

Blackthorne quickly did a little mental math then growled in an annoyed, and vaguely adorable, manner. "It doesn't seem it at first glance, but even a little more damage could easily put me in a death spiral... I'm stuck on this damn rock for a few hours at least and can't even practice my skills without making it worse."

His eyes widened a moment later as the math that he was doing led him to a decidedly disturbing conclusion. "No! No. No.... No dammit!"

He looked to his status screen then growled loudly. Blackthorne slammed his little fist down on the ground in frustration. His body status was based on the average of all of his wounds. As ridiculous as it sounded, once his slight injuries were healed his body condition would actually grow worse, not better.

"What a stupid way to do things!" he snapped.

"Don't be bad. Don't be bad..." he mumbled to himself as he ran the numbers. A moment later he closed his eyes then sighed in relief. The system shock to his body would worsen his wounds, but the absolute worst it could do was mostly reset the time it took to heal his remaining wounds to something near to their current state. It was a pain in the ass, but survivable. By the time his third smallest injury healed in six hours, his other wounds would have dropped well below the danger zone.

"That was close," he muttered. The system was weird, but some things like that happened in real life too. An individual seemed to get better and then suddenly got worse without much comprehensible reason. Sometimes they didn't make it, other times the inexplicable worsening eventually alleviated and they got better.

"Once the shock hits me, it'll take a good two hours before my heavy wound drops to moderate..." thought Blackthorne. His eyes lit up and a parody of a smile appeared on his scaly draconic lips. "By then all my wounds will have lessened... Good. Good."

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