Brains

I was standing in front of the workshop mirror.

“Huh.”

I had finished eating the entirety of the heart a few minutes ago.

“Hmm.”

The second game stated that the whole heart had to be eaten, so I did that.

“Hmph.”

My skin had started tingling, and I was pretty sure I saw something weird in the mirror, out the corner of my eye, but I hadn’t managed to replicate it yet.

“Could also be a hallucination.”

I stared intensely at my reflection. What could the new power be? Was it related to my skin—

“Ah!”

I was in the mirror again, but a moment ago, I wasn’t!

“Invisibility! Or optical camouflage?! Either way, that could be a game-breaker!”

As far as I knew, no game had an MC that could go invisible. The systems weren’t really set up for taking advantage of the power, especially not with how shoddy the detection ranges of the enemies were.

I stared at myself in the mirror while making all sorts of faces. It was then that I realized I had missed having a face that could still function.

“Thank you mysterious lady for letting me have a functional face again.”

But no matter what art-gallery-worthy face I made, I couldn’t reproduce the effect.

“Shit. This is hard. Think, Tim, think. You’ve just gotten a superpower. How do you activate it for the first time?”

Nope. I had too many ideas. But, that meant I had ideas. I went and wrote them all down—every single activation condition, ritual, or chant I could recall from any story I had in my head. If I couldn’t just intuit how to use these powers, then I’d go down the trial-and-error route.

Anything to save the goddesses of my heart.

***

Twenty minutes and 86 attempts later—

“Okay. Activation word: Vanish Veil!”

Nothing. Not even a twitch.

“Okay, maybe it’s not anime dramatic. Let’s try a low-energy one: Veil On.”

Still nothing.

“Blood sacrifice.”

I bit my finger hard enough to draw blood.

“Nothing.”
I licked the blood.
“Still nothing. Great, now I’m edgy and have the taste of iron in my mouth… But good to know that my blood tastes how it should.”

Next.

“Strong emotion. Maybe I just need to feel it.”
I started reaching for my worst memories—

“Nope, nope, nope. Can’t don’t. Won’t do it. Not doing it.”
Then I imagined the dev team sitting in a room deciding to kill off all the moms in the prologue.
There. A flicker. Just for a second.
“Oh my god. Am I fueled by spite? That can’t be healthy.”

I jotted that down regardless.

“I don’t think I was angry earlier, though.”

Next.

“Physical motion-based triggers.”
I tried a spin. Nothing.
A clap. Nothing.
Ninja hand seals.

Okay, that was stupid. I didn’t know I was doing. I was just smashing my hands together in exotic and random finger configurations.

But then I had an idea. I put my fingers together the way meditating people did and let out a nice long “Ohm.”

Nothing.

“Shit, I really thought I had it there.” I scribbled in my notebook. “But I should consider doing meditation, just in case there are some hidden cultivation-like mechanics.”

I rubbed my chest as I looked at the next idea.

“Could it be breath-based?”

Deep inhale.

Hold.

My reflection disappeared. Clothes and all!

“Holy shit!” I said, snapping my fingers.

I was visible again. Thinking about it, yeah, I did tend to hold my breath when I was focusing. It was an old habit.

Excited, I held my breath again and saw myself disappear.

“This is awesome. I got it! My Rank 2 power is Invisibility! And it’s really convenient!”

This was a game-changer; with this, the infiltration option became significantly more viable.

“But I need to break it.”

I rifled through the potion shelves. Bottles clinked, corks bounced, and one tiny unlabeled vial spilled onto my sleeve and started burning a hole through it.

“Whoops, not that one.”

Finally, in the back row, behind some suspiciously wiggling mushrooms growing from the shelf, I found what I was looking for.

A dark-glass bottle labeled in Timaeus’s tiny, precise handwriting:

“Nymph’s Bane —Breath Retention Inducer. DO NOT COMBINE WITH ANY STIMULANTS.”

“Well, that’s a suggestion.”

I turned the bottle to reread the label. The thing was developed for prolonged underwater retrieval expeditions and toxin-rich cavern diving. It slowed the body’s respiratory system, while pumping it full of easy-to-absorb nutrients and chemicals. It could extend a held breath to anywhere between four and seven minutes, with suicidal ideation and fatigue being the aftereffects. Not the worst.

“If I master some breathing techniques, maybe I can extend the time some more… Is there a potion that minimizes energy consumption? Why don’t we have more magical potions, like something that turns me into a fire elemental?”

Done with griping, I uncorked the bottle and put one of the pellets under my tongue. It dissolved within moments, I felt the difference, and I held my breath. It felt like the air I was holding in my chest was freezing.

My heart rate slowed. My chest stopped rising and falling noticeably.

I wrote down my observations in between confirming that I was still invisible.

After about five minutes, I couldn’t do it anymore and let out the breath. It came out like an exhale on a snowy day.

“Five minutes isn’t really enough… but on-demand invisibility is still useful… Just requires me to be smart.”

I finished my note-taking and congratulated myself. I had two new abilities now, proving that I had the same trait that the MCs from the games had.

I clasped my hands and prayed, thanking Timaeus’s departed mother for her bravery and love. I never met her, and I didn’t have any memory of her, but I just knew that she was probably the type of character who would have inspired me just as hard as the trio of goddesses would have.

The day of eating was not done. There was still one thing on my table—the brain.

I approached it cautiously, eyes narrowing on the gray, wrinkly mass. “It’s unnerving how much it resembles a human brain.”

Hearts had a special property. Would it be unreasonable to think that brains might, too? A brain was more impressive than a heart. Would that fact be reflected in this world’s power-up system?

What sort of alchemist would I be if I shied away from this inquiry? Could I really say I would stop at nothing to save the momma goddesses if I wasn’t willing to eat wrinkly flesh?

I would not back down. I seared the meat, spiced it, and ate it.

…

Holy shit—the consequences came fast.

I hit the ground hard.
My legs had given out without warning. I didn’t black out. I was very, very awake—painfully awake. My eyes flew wide as my whole body lit up with a burning heat, as if every cell had just decided to develop nerves and hook into my spine.

The shadows in the corners of the room jittered and pulsed. The light in my workshop flickered even though nothing was wrong with the flame. My hand—the dim network came alive. It was like magma breaking through the earth.

Then images flashed across my eyes.

Marshlands. Eyes on the ground, the muck, the water. The smell of the air, the sound of the splashing. A pain came from the center of my head. It was like nails had gotten an inch into my brain and were now being scraped back and forth like someone was trying to etch glyphs.

I screamed.

Or maybe I thought I screamed. I wasn’t sure my voice box and breathing were working the way they should. The high-pitched buzz that burst from inside my own ears was maddening too. My stomach lurched, and I barely had time to grab the bucket I’d prepped before vomiting hard. I was cognizant enough to see that what came up was just stomach fluid—there was no sign of the cursed meat.

“Nonononono—Shit!”

I gripped the edge of my table and forced myself up—it was the hardest pull-up of my life.

Leaning against the table, my focus narrowed on the potions. I grabbed one by instinct and bit off the cork like a lunatic. I downed the Stomach Purger first. It scorched my throat on the way down, and I vomited again, violently enough to make my torso cramp.

“Shit! Did it get digested immediately?!” I yelled, seeing no trace of meat in the mess.
Next: Liver Cleanser. Then the Mana Dampener. This one actually did something. The blazing mana network across my body settled down. It didn’t look like nature’s wrath anymore.

But I was still in giant trouble. I reached for the blessed liquids. Drank half of it, poured a quarter of it over my head, and then used the last quarter to draw a cross on my forehead with my finger.

“God, why have you forsaken me!?” I yelled as I desperately clawed the table.

My veins felt like they were full of fireflies made of razors. My arms twitched. I felt every organ in my body trying to crawl out of me, like they’d all grown feelers and nails at the same time.

My reality was flashing. One second, I’d be staring at my hands gripping the table, only to flicker to the arms of a Gloomspawn gripping a boulder.

“This is misery!”

I had one solution—Sleeping Beauty. I grabbed this potion and downed it. Within 5 minutes, I would be forcefully put to sleep, after which, my body would be forced into a sort of hibernation state while it repaired itself. It was sort of like taking sleeping pills upon getting the first sign of a migraine, in order to just sleep through it.

I quickly pulled bottles of the supplements that needed to be taken with the potion and ate a pill of each one. Sleeping Beauty required the nutrients in the body in order to function, so loading up was recommended.

Thank god I had been used to operating while in pain. A flash of incredible insight then visited me.

Knowing my luck, one of the women is going to come to the workshop while I’m down. They’ll probably find me in a sorry state, and then they’ll see the head and torso of a spawn on the floor. Then they’ll lose their shit.

No, I was smarter than that. I quickly took the brainless head and the heartless torso, dragged myself across the floor, pried open a hidden compartment below the floor, and shoved the parts underneath.

“There…”

My body crumpled, sweat flying from every pore.

“I’ve taken enough drugs…”

My eyes closed.

“My body should be resilient enough… right? I trust… the mom who died so that her son could live…”