Finally, finally, I had a new routine.
Here's what I did.
During the day, I exercised under the scorching sun and drank a little of the black elixir every couple of hours.
At night, I went outside to absorb energy like snorting cocaine, and I exercised some more.
Technically, it was the same madness, just in a new location.
I called it growth.
Besides, did I mention how the rocks ghosted me? Well, there was one that didn't! I named him Waldo.
Waldo was a pretty little rock the size of my head who understood me completely. He was a friend, in fact, my best friend.
He accompanied me, with his spirit and immovable presence, and talked with me about everything. Even my darkest secrets... the ones I swore I’d take to the grave.
Waldo knew it all.
Like the time I cried for two hours because my pancake had a face and I couldn't bring myself to eat it. Or when I genuinely believed I was the reincarnation of a potato in my past life. I had dreams. Visions. Mashed ones.
Or even more recent, the time I spent $200 on a mobile game, trying to summon a waifu with better stats. Two big, round stats.
Those were secrets I would never tell anyone, not in my entire life.
While doing my 500th squat, I asked him, "Am I getting any stronger, Waldo? This black elixir sure is developing my senses, but I'm not sure."
Waldo just looked at me with a rocky expression. Classic Waldo.
"Yeah I think so too. I'm indeed getting strong. If I had a system, what would be my class and rank?"
His silence was as heavy as stone.
"Yeah... probably. I wouldn't even compare to them. I have to get stronger then."
Waldo told me exactly what I needed to hear: nothing. But somehow, it was the most encouraging nothing I’d ever heard.
The sensation of being stronger was a fleeting one, hell, I could barely smash a rock with my bare hands. Others would probably be able to lift entire buildings by now.
I had to keep pushing. If a rock thinks you're weak, you've hit rock bottom.
The routine stretched so far I lost track of time. Days, weeks, months. Just pain, rocks, and elixir smoothies.
Time had become hard to track, but if my memory wasn’t betraying me, I’d say a full year had passed.
About five months buried in that damp little cave, and the rest spent wandering the hills, my lovely death-brew pond district.
That day, something felt different. The black elixir… didn’t work.
Just like the yellow one before it, its effect on my body had run dry.
That was the sign I needed. The universal slap that screamed, 'Move along, idiot.'
I picked up Waldo, tucked him in a makeshift bag made with the top of my Pikachu's pajamas, and started walking.
I was a celebrity now. With Waldo on my back, every little rock tried to befriend me.
Oh, now the other rocks wanted to be friends? Classic. Ghost me for months, then get clingy when I’m with someone else.
"Not so fast," I warned them. "There is only space for my dear Waldo here. Shush. Go away."
I continued walking and walking and walking. Do you know what came after that? A riveting sequel called: Walk 2—The Footening.
Days passed. Nights passed. Everything passed. Except anything interesting.
I continued hydrating and nourishing myself with those abundant puddles of black elixir, and I maintained my routine of exercise and energy absorption without fail.
On the seventh day walking, I finally found something.The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
A huge crater in the ground, and far below, I could see hundreds of stones of every possible color piled up and glittering.
My brain, in the state it was in, locked onto it instantly, like a baby hypnotized by jingling car keys.
So, without further ado, I started climbing down the crater.
Yes, yes. I did a lot of stupid things. Take any book of survival warnings, and I could proudly say, I platinumed it. Who in their right mind would jump to a hole full of shiny rocks, in an alien wasteland? But we’re talking about me here. Sanity not included.
Anyway, back to the story.
I eventually reached the bottom and started examining the rocks.
"Don't be jealous, Waldo. You are the most precious of them all to me," I told him after he gave me the cold, mineral stare of betrayal, "You have your beauty, they have theirs."
But for some reason, those shiny, colorful rocks did not talk.
It wasn’t that they ignored me… they just didn’t talk. At all.
Because... damn.
Those weren’t rocks.
The closer I looked, the clearer it became these weren’t rocks. Not even close.
They were almost weightless, and there was movement inside.
Soft. Subtle.
Not good.
Which meant… an egg.
A fucking alien egg.
Damn, damn, damn. I shouldn't have gone down there.
I started climbing, faster than I'd ever climbed anything in my life. Possibly including stairs.
I planned to run away as soon as I reached the top, but of course, life had other plans for me.
As soon as I made it out of the crater, two creatures were waiting for me.
For the love of H.P. Lovecraft! If he had seen what stood before me, he’d have dropped dead mid-poem just to meet Cthulhu personally.
They were like dogs.
If dogs were twice the size of a husky, covered in twitching tentacles, and looked like they’d been dead for a week but refused to admit it.
Dozens of tiny, mismatched eyes blinked at me from all over their skulls. Cheeks, jaw, neck, and even their weirdly sagging shoulder meat.
Their skin peeled in wet layers, like a microwaved lasagna someone dropped in a puddle.
And the sounds... oh, the sounds.
Each twitch of their slimy little tendrils came with a noise that landed somewhere between wet chewing and a sinus infection trying to speak.
They stared at me.
I stared back.
Waldo, wisely, said nothing.
I saw it in their dozens of little eyes. My scent had betrayed me.
I touched their spawn. Their cosmic marbles. Their unholy jellybeans.
And just like that, diplomacy failed. Teeth first.
Strange as it sounds, I wasn’t afraid. In fact, I was kind of excited.
I'd spent practically a year training, consuming enough radioactive sludge to qualify as a walking biohazard, all to prepare for a situation like this.
I radiated confidence. Strength. Possibly madness. Definitively madness.
I would subdue those beasts, and make them my pets.
It lunged for my leg.
I responded with the punch of a lifetime. Fist clenched, back straight, anime-level focus.
I expected a crunch. Maybe a yelp.
What I got was... snap.
Mine.
My poor fingers broke again... like soggy woodsticks.
Damn, that creature's skin was tough. Tougher than rock.
A whole year of training down the cosmic drain.
I couldn’t even dent a tentacle mutt. Peak performance, right here.
The other creature tried to attack me, and I was barely able to dodge it.
The three of us then engaged in a fierce fight, which consisted mostly of dodging its attacks, as my blows were doing nothing.
I didn’t tire, but neither did those hideous beasts.
They moved like nightmares. Fast, twitchy, relentless. Every time I tried to land a punch, they slipped past me like greasy shadows wrapped in teeth.
Their tendrils scraped against my skin, cold and wet.
The fight continued for several hours, until a moment of carelessness doomed me.
Waldo was about to fall out of the makeshift backpack, and as I tried to save him, one of the alien dogs managed to bite my thigh.
I didn’t just feel the bite I heard it. A wet, meaty crunch as its jaws sank into my leg, like someone stomping on a watermelon full of nerves.
Holy crap... the force of that bite was overwhelming.
Pain spread through my leg, then the rest of my body.
The other beast leaped and bit into the side of my abdomen, causing even more pain.
My scream echoed across the crater, high-pitched enough to terrify birds in other dimensions.
I could feel their mouths pulling like they were trying to unzip me. And they were succeeding.
Damn.
Things weren’t looking good at all. Those creatures were far stronger than me.
I tried to move, I tried to struggle, but nothing worked.
Between the two of them, they managed to drag me to the bottom of the crater once more.
My fingers clawed at the ground, grabbing handfuls of dirt and rocks that slipped through like betrayal. Waldo was rattling inside the bag. I hoped he couldn’t see this. I hoped he’d forget.
I continued to struggle, trying my best to free myself, but it was no use.
Soon they pinned me to the ground and began feasting on my guts.
The first bite was unreal. Not pain. Not even agony. It was something else. Like my soul stubbed its toe.
I watched as my abdomen opened like a zipper, and one of them casually slurped out something red and important.
Good news: I had just discovered that the regeneration granted by the yellow elixir was truly supernatural.
I could see my organs regenerating in real time. It was mesmerizing in the worst possible way. My liver reappeared like it was rewinding time, only for another set of teeth to rip it away again like a sick looped GIF.
Bad news: I had just become Prometheus.
An unlimited food source for the two beasts and their babies.
But the more I regenerated... the hungrier I became, and the slower the regeneration.
And so, days and nights passed, strong enough to continue regenerating, but too weak to try anything. And those damned beasts knew it, since every time they ate from my body, they made sure I didn’t die.
I wasn’t just a meal. I was a farm. A protein dispensary.
Every time I faded near death, they stopped, waited, let me rebuild just enough before starting again.
I stopped screaming after the first few rounds. Not because the pain dulled. Just because it didn’t matter anymore.
But one day... one day they made a terrible mistake.
They left the nest.
For a while, I didn’t believe it. The chewing sounds were gone. No snarls, no twitching.
Only the wet sound of my own breathing and the faint twitch of some hanging intestine trying to grow back.
I was alone. Surrounded by hundreds of eggs.
And hungry.
Dear reader, you already know what will happen next.