Cheat Awakening

Thud!

Myne's unconscious body crumpled onto the platform like a puppet with its strings cut. One arm hung at an unnatural angle, obviously broken in a horrific way. Blood seeped from various wounds, and his breaths grew shallow, fading with each passing second, as more blood flowed from his wounds, clearly even for a strong man like Myne falling from a height of more than 50 meters wasn't a joke.

The small white figure, who had narrowly escaped the clutches of the golden disk thanks to Myne's unexpected help, rushed towards him in a panic. It couldn't comprehend the sudden change.

A moment ago, Myne was radiating blinding golden light full of warmth and power, and the next second, he fell from the air like a broken kite without any apparent reason, now lying on the floor, broken and lifeless.

The white figure hovered over Myne before landing on his forehead, its entire form hazy and translucent with indistinct features, no bigger than a palm. It stayed there for a few seconds, before anxiously flying all over him again, but it was clearly no help for Myne.

Finally, after two agonizing minutes, just as Myne seemed on the verge of his last breath, The Fate Ring Of Mysteries, the mysterious wedding ring given to Myne by Gal, on his right hand began to glow in a faint green light, and right next moment warm energy surged through his body. Slowly, his most critical injuries, the ones bleeding profusely, began to heal.

Though the process was prolonged, it offered a glimmer of hope for Myne to see another sunrise.

The gradual recovery continued for half an hour before Myne stirred slightly and weakly opened his eyes.

"Cough. Cough. f*ck, my arm... it's hurting like hell," He rasped, taking a deep breath.

With great difficulty, he turned his body and lay on his back on the cold, dark floor, carved with a giant pentagram and thousands of unknown symbols filled with blood. He stared into the chilling darkness, unable to see anything beyond. Find exclusive stories on empire

After five minutes of dazed contemplation, a deep sigh escaped his bloodied lips. Gritting his teeth, he moved his left hand, which was also severely injured but in the condition of moving. With each small movement, he could hear the sickening crunch of broken bones. As he willed it, a small, palm-sized blue potion bottle materialized in his hand.

His hands trembled as he lifted the bottle to his mouth and used his teeth to pry open the lid, thankfully not too tightly sealed. Otherwise, given Myne's current condition, he might not have been able to open it no matter how much he tried.

The moment the high-grade mana potion touched his throat, the Ultra Regeneration skill, which had been working like a 100-year-old grandmother while absorbing every bit of mana in Myne's body to barely sustain his life as soon as he opened his eyes, instantly came alive.

As if a dying fish had found water, the skill surged with renewed vigour, and Myne's injuries began to heal at an incredible pace. Within a few minutes, he was completely healed.

However, there was no joy on his face, no relief from the pain. Instead, only regret and despair remained. Even after ten full minutes of being fully healed, he didn't move. He simply lay there, his mind a swirling vortex of unknown emotions.

The small white figure continued to flit around him, even landing on his face a few times in a desperate attempt to get his attention. But as if he couldn't see or feel it, Myne remained unresponsive.

"Sigh..."

With a heavy sigh, Myne finally rose from the ground, his face etched with a lifeless gloom. He slowly walked towards the altar, his eyes fixed on the slowly spinning golden disk above it. He reached out, expecting it to automatically fly into his hand, but of course, it wasn't as simple as it seemed in No.7's demonstration.

After failing to retrieve it using the method shown by the others, Myne activated his Etheric Marionette, his telekinesis skill. But no matter how much mana he poured into it, it felt like he was trying to move a mountain. The disk remained stubbornly in place. He couldn't even pause its spinning, let alone pull it down.

Frustration contorting his face which was ugly as shit, Myne refused to give up. He leapt onto the altar and activated his Unbeatable and Absolute Evasion skill, rendering him practically immortal for a few seconds. With a final surge of effort, he jumped high and reached for the disk with his bare hands. But obviously, his foolish decision made in a burst of emotion wasn't the right choice.

As soon as he neared the disk as if sensing the danger, it began to spin wildly, pulling Myne towards it. Just as his hand was about to touch it, the spinning stopped abruptly for a moment, and then...

BOOM!

The golden disk unleashed a surge of energy no less powerful than Myne's Unique Magic: Lightning. This spell, fueled by his entire mana reserve, unleashed a devastating blast that destroyed everything within a hundred-meter radius. However, Myne's skill was limited by his ever-depleting mana pool, a problem the golden disk seemed to lack.

The energy blast it fired was so potent that Myne felt like a fly caught in a hurricane. He was flung hundreds of meters and slammed into the hall's wall with such force that his body literally imprinted itself several dozen meters into the solid, specially forged stone.

But Myne wasn't the only one unlucky. Hundreds of corpses hung in the chilling darkness and those submerged in the blood pool were all reduced to ash and disappeared just like that. Learning about this outcome, some people were definitely going to be shedding buckets of tears.

"Cough, cough. What a powerful attack! Thank goodness I was prepared, otherwise, I might have already joined my mother and father," Myne muttered with a light chuckle, it seems after getting his head hit hard by the energy attack of the golden disk, he back to reality, and finally showed signs of getting back to normal, instead of behaving like a living zombie, drowning in despair and self-blame.

"However, it seems my ultimate defensive skills are as omnipotent as I always thought. Without my monstrous mana supply, they become mere defensive skills with flashy names. Useless once the caster runs out of mana, no wonder their original owner was just random nobodies."

Myne lay embedded within the wall, coughing up blood incessantly. A faint, disappointed smile played on his lips. Both arms had turned to ash at some point which he only realised now, legs twisted grotesquely, his head spun, and his vision blurred, he could hardly focus on anything. His beautiful hair had been singed, leaving a charred, ugly bald head. But overall, he was alive.

If he could avoid losing consciousness due to mana exhaustion, survival was assured.

Perhaps driven by his strong will to live, or perhaps because he feared that if he died now, all his girls, at least Maya, would definitely come to hell behind him with her weird magic tricks and beat him there for eternity, Myne strengthened his willpower. Somehow, he took out a mana potion from his inventory, gripped the top part with his teeth, and bit down hard.

Click!

With a shattering sound, he forcefully broke the top, discarding it before biting down on the lower part of the bottle. He tilted his head back and gulped down the potion, unfazed by the small glass shards that likely entered his stomach with the liquid.

Just like before, as soon as mana started running into his body again, Ultra Regeneration kicked in. Visible to the naked eye, Myne's most critical injuries began to mend. However, before his arms and legs could start regenerating, a wave of dizziness hit him hard which almost knocked him unconscious. He reacted instinctively, forcibly cutting off Ultra Regeneration.

This was the biggest drawback of passive skills: they didn't care if the user was on the verge of passing out due to mana exhaustion. They would continue draining mana relentlessly until the caster was left dry and unconscious.

"Sigh, it seems mana will never be enough in this life," Myne muttered with a bitter smile. He took a deep breath to combat the severe dizziness before pulling out another mana potion and repeating the process, then repasting Ultra Regeneration.

As for why he wasn't using a healing potion, it was because, firstly, they couldn't regenerate lost limbs, and secondly, their healing speed was nowhere near as fast and effective as Ultra Regeneration.

Finally, after downing three high-grade mana potions, Myne recovered to his peak and breathed a sigh of relief. Now he felt like he should have bought more mana potions. The previous 50 or so potions were nowhere near sufficient as he had thought.

"Seems like I need to discuss this problem with Big Sis. Maybe she has a way to increase mana recovery speed. If not, then I can only trouble Mother-in-law. As the queen, she might have quite a lot of mana potions in stock.

It shouldn't be a big problem to sell a few thousand from her one and only, most favourite and lovable son-in-law, right?" chuckled to himself, already formulating a plan to convince Garnet to part with a large supply of high-grade mana potions, while coming out of the small cave he made and peered into the impenetrable darkness ahead, in which seeing anything was literally impossible.