Welcome to The Crucible

I was again inside the void burning and suffering the agony of my body being repaired – at least that’s what I think it was.

At some point, I believe I saw again the blue screen in front of me but I later couldn't remember if it really was there o it was just something my memory made up after.

This time somehow hit me worse than the others, or probably my mind just was already starting to succumb to the pain, anyway even after I was back to my hut it took me a while to come to my senses.

I then noticed the screen hovering in front of my eyes.

I closed my eyes and took deep breaths trying to sort out my emotions – this thing always found a way to shake me, that’s for sure.

A little part of me was a bit upset that I didn't get any choice in the matter, but there was nothing I could do to change it and since it was a reward it was potentially better than what I would have gotten otherwise.

“I can’t change anything anyway, for now, I’ll just be happy with the advantages I can get.” I thought in the end.

All in all, I was happy with the reward; I had better and more concrete chances to improve my situation and get out of here much sooner.

“What was the saying? Beggars can’t be choosers, I think… But I still wonder if this thing thinks I’m mentally or visually impaired, I mean, making some words smaller just make them stand out more no? Though It’s probably just to mess with me.” I thought exasperated.

I read it again to be sure I missed nothing and then closed it causing another window to pop out, the one with the body parts list.

There was a list of animals, and by clicking on any of them I was shown a list of body parts available for consumption with some general description on their usefulness.

They also had an image accompanying them.

I wanted to trow up.

I was already set on enhancing my hearing because my number one priority was to survive, therefore I had to have a way to locate predators before they ambushed me, and hearing was the best sense to do that.

The problem was that I had to consume their hearing apparatus… raw… and that’s where the need to empty my stomach came from.

Not that I would back away, of course; I still couldn’t say I would do anything to survive yet, but I was nearing the point, so, since I had to eat it, I would eat it, period.

I also didn’t want to risk cooking it and lose this opportunity.

After some deliberation I decided to let go of the bats' echolocation – I probably needed an organ to make ultrasounds to go with the hears since, even if it worked, going around shouting would be kind of counterproductive.

In the end, I settled for the cats hearing; I thought it was comparable to that of tigers and it was smaller so I had less to eat.

After I choose the screen disappeared and in its place was the thing I selected.

I cached it when it started to fall – it was a bit squishy in my hand.

Right after another screen popped up.

The manual mutation looked like a shapeshifting power.

“Well, no sense in waiting…” I thought.

I took a breath and threw it in my mouth and swallowed it whole.

It wasn’t as bad as I thought since I barely had time to taste anything.

The moment the thing went down my throat I suddenly felt something envelop me completely – I couldn’t move and see anything.

The situation was too similar to when I was revived and I panicked, expecting to be subjected to the usual agony, but fortunately, nothing of the sort happened.

Moments later when I calmed down enough I felt something shift in my stomach… or near it, I couldn’t tell for sure, but it didn’t seem to be in my stomach.

It wasn’t uncomfortable in itself, just strange enough to be.

I paid attention and it seemed like I could make out the shape, right after it looked like parts were separated, and after that, they kind of dissolved and I felt sensations I couldn't quite make heads or tails of.

It was all extremely confusing and I was sure it would take a huge amount of materials analyzed before I would be ready to attempt the manual mutation.

Then after that came the changes to the eardrums.

It was painful.

“Does everything here need to be painful?” I thought while trying to concentrate on what was happening – if I wanted to learn to do it manually I needed to pay attention every time, and luckily the pain wasn’t too much, at least compared to what I had to get through these days.

This time too, I didn’t understand anything but I was confident that one day I'd be able to do it.

After an unknown amount of time it finished changing; I felt something strange like a pressure but only if I concentrated on my hears.

Then a moment later I was back to where I was, or maybe I just hadn’t moved at all.

I felt the difference in my hearing right away; it wasn't pleasant.

There were too many sounds, and too different than what I was used to.

I brought my hands to my hears trying to shut the sounds, but I was only partially successful in muffling the sounds.

If it was any other place it may not have been so overwhelming but here it was anything but quiet during the day so I really had a hard time adapting.

It was probably because my brain wasn’t made to process so many frequencies and so all those signals were mixed up and confused.

I was completely disoriented and I could feel a headache coming.

I couldn’t do anything in this state, I wasn’t even sure I could walk straight so I just sat there and waited.

And that’s what I did the whole day.

At some point the headache got really bad, and, though it was nothing compared to the revival, it wasn’t a pleasant experience.

When night came I was finally able to relax a bit.

The sounds weren’t completely gone but it was a thousand times better than before, and after some time the pain in my head lessened slightly.

After the whole day spent there in pain I was really thirsty so I slowly walked to the pool and drank some water, and I immediately felt better.

I was also hungry but there wasn’t much I could do about it at the moment.

I felt really tired and I wanted nothing more than sleep at the moment but I wanted to make something to block my ears somehow.

I managed to make something with leaves and by wrapping cordage around my head and face – it worked enough though it probably looked ridiculous, but even if someone was watching me right now, I didn't care.

So, tired, hungry, with a headache, with leaves and cords wrapped around my head and still hearing disturbing sounds, I went to bed.

I fell asleep in seconds.