Chapter 313: Depths of Madness
Coop used both hands to cup some river water and soak his face, but his hands lingered just a bit longer than necessary. Both palms gingerly rested against his cheeks, covering his eyes with his fingers as droplets fell down. He wasn’t sobbing, but he certainly felt like he should.
After a few moments, he released his face, letting his hands sink back into the chilly river, and took a steadying breath. He watched his reflection in the ripples as the surface settled down. Staring back at him was, thankfully, a regular, basic human.
It looked like he had gone one too many rounds with a heavyweight prize fighter without knowing how to properly guard. The side of his lower lip was swollen with a small split, he had the two worst black eyes he had ever seen, and the puffiness of his right cheek made his nose look crooked. One of his ears had a tear at the top, and a long strip of his skin had split somewhere in his scalp and ran halfway down his forehead. And that was just the physical damage to his head.
The irises of his eyes now had subtle stripes that hinted at supernatural spectral and abyssal energy, not completely different from the patterns in the manifestations of his weapons and armor, and his vision hadn’t cleared up one bit since declining his position as the Abyssal One. It seemed like mana was interfering with his eyes after having his head struck by a few too many attacks during his bouts with boss monsters. All in all, in spite of everything, he was still happy to see his appearance. He was beaten, but not an abomination.
All of the wounds on his body would heal with unbelievable efficiency, thanks to mana. Of course, other than some small acid burns and a few dozen puncture wounds, the vast majority of the damage had been caused by the Icon or his canceled evolution, both of which had also been the result of mana. Coop would have to call it a wash at best.
Knowing that he would heal didn’t make it any easier to take such damage. He winced as he gingerly tested the edges of some of the more egregious bruises on his torso. If he didn’t have the opportunity to rest and relax, being repeatedly beaten to a pulp every day would probably break him. It was no wonder the idea of grinding monsters was such a hard sell in the beginning.
However, the physical effects of a few big fights weren’t the reason he was barely holding back the tears. The pain of his battered body was nothing compared to the initial anguish at seeing his status for the first time after he woke back up. Normally, when regaining consciousness, he would have expected the nightmare to end, and yet here he was, living it.
He took a deep breath and resumed cleaning himself, careful not to be too rough with the bruises that had appeared all across his body from the thousands of collisions with the Icon’s offensive aura or around the puncture wounds from the projectiles of the Insurgents. He sat in the crystal clear water of the Mississippi Sea, still feeling exhausted. He looked more like a train had run him over than any other time in his life, but the real damage had been to his mental state. It was like his momentum had finally been halted and he didn’t have an obvious path to break through.
The two newest members of the Lighthouse watched from a distance, having their own discussion about the situation they had put themselves in, occasionally stealing glances at Coop that he imagined were filled with wonder. The little worm guy had started wriggling in the sand, back and forth, so that its oversized puppy dog-like eyes were each visible one after the other as it turned. It was making sounds that were similar in a way to a kitten, except it always ended with a ‘P’ sound. It seemed like it could only say variations of ‘Mwoop,’ but Lyriel understood its meaning just fine despite the system failing, or refusing, to translate for Coop.
Coop splashed more water into his hair and gently worked his fingers along his scalp, still thinking through everything that had happened in the aftermath of the defeat of another Icon of Mana. According to Lyriel, he had only fainted for a few hours. Apparently, pushing himself to rise to the challenge of another boss fight so soon after canceling a physical evolution was beyond even his limits.
“At least for now.” He declared, trying to find the internal strength to regain his momentum and push forward, no matter how impossible it seemed.
Looking at things in their totality, it wasn’t that bad. In fact, Coop could easily make an argument that the penalties he had received might actually be a good thing in the long run. For one, the loss of 11 million credits was completely negligible, especially after he gained more than that in the Omega Construct fight alone, so he could easily pass it off as nothing.