Chapter 53 - System Shutdown And A Reunion.

[User is experiencing tremendous blood loss, will now use remaining nutrients to sustain body regeneration...Failed]

[ERROR! Toxin found..... analyzed]

[Toxin causing deterioration of hosts body, will now supply energy for hosts regeneration..... Complete]

[Imminent shutdown of system, Time until reboot: 1 month]

"Ugh, my head." I said with a dry raspy voice as I forced my eyes to open. After my eyesight cleared up I found myself in a cave that was covered in crystals, in front of me were bars made from jet black stone. Something inside of me recognized these stones but for the life of me I couldn't remember what they were.

"Brother, your finally awake I was so worried." Said a voice from behind me. 

I looked to see a  Lizardman with deep brown scales that looked like solid stone. He was huge even for being a Lizardman. He reminded me a bit of my grandfather who I only saw briefly what felt like so long ago.

"Brother? I'm sorry I don't have Lizardman siblings, all my brothers and sisters are dragons." I said while trying to swallow any saliva I had to make my throat not hurt as bad.

"Well I can see how you might think that, and in truth your right, but Vexsus I am your brother. As a matter of fact I was the only one that stood up for you when all the others wanted nothing more than your death."

I sat there listening to this guy speak but the more he spoke about being my brother and even saying things that only my family would know, I started to get the idea of who he was.

"Until that is I betrayed your trust and was fooled into believing you were the bad guy by that snake Salus. I took one look at Marico's body that night and after everything he told me I couldn't see anything else besides what a monster you were. It wasn't until later on that I found out the truth and sought out vengeance for his scheming. But alas that bastard Aurum stood by his side even after hearing the truth."

"I found out that he had gained the power of Envy and was using it to cloud every ones mind. But I had gained a skill called the Virtue of Diligence, and it somehow made me resistant to his mind powers. Because of his control over minds he was able to somehow use powers that were related to souls and while I was sleeping had actually broken my soul..... I was forced to devolve into what is known as a Fallen Dragonoid. I am just barely above a Lizardman in terms of power, but as far as my dragon powers and form? They are gone forever."

He looked down in sorrow and pain as I just sat there stunned by the revelation of who this guy was. 

"G-G-Gaia? Is-Is-Is that really you?" I couldn't help but stutter as all I felt was how happy I was to reunite with my brother after all this time, but then the feelings of hate and betrayal started to well up in me after remembering looking at his face as he stared at me in disgust after being fooled by that bastard. I knew he wasn't to blame but my heart was hurt nonetheless.

I shook my head and tried to stand up but was only able to get on my knees before having to fall back down. My body was shaking and was so incredibly pale, I tried to look up my status but for whatever reason I was unable to until eventually a pop up faintly came into view.

[Host has been locked out of system until reboot.]

[Time until reboot: 28 days]

'What the fck? Is it because I almost died from Digger turning me into kebab? No that can't be the reason. Sure my body is paler than usual but I don't feel any pain from being stabbed so my body must have healed while I was out.'

'Dude what the hell happened to you?' I heard as a groggy sounding voice spoke up in my head.

'Oh nice of you to wake up, any clues on what the hell happened to the system?' 

'Man I don't know, as soon as you went out so did I. When we woke up I tried to access the system to check on our bodies condition but it told me that we were locked out until it rebooted.'

'Shit, so you are to. That's just great, but hey atleast your still around, so maybe that means that all the skills I learned can still be used. But still that leaves the question of just what the hell happened to us?'

'Yea, but we can worry about that later, right now the hunger is starting to rise and all I see around here is living breathing people. We need to get out of here as soon as possible and find our next meal.'

After my Dual mind said that I started to feel it rising up in me. I tried my best to focus and push it down but it seemed like something deep down inside of me was squirming and clashing against my control to be let out and feed.

"Fck Gaia, listen now's a happy time and all but real quick is there any food around here?" I ask with panic starting to set in.

He looks up with tears still in his eyes. 'Sniffle' "Yea over there next to the bars. Some of the more humanoid ants bring us big portions of goblin meat and other stuff but they leave it right next to the bars made of some kind of material that starts sapping away my strength as soon as I get a few feet away from it. Everybody here has gotten into a routine of a few people a day go and grab as much food as they can and bring it back to the others, the ones who do however immediately fall unconscious for half a day."

Once he said that I felt a mental click as the information of what the bars were made of came rushing back. 

'Holy hell, Hey Dual mind look into why I had a temporary lapse in memory.'

'Can do.' 

"Oh, well that is because this cave is made up of unrefined mana crystals that are refined through the process of naturally draining the mana of whatever is around them. I actually have experience in refining these things, but man let me tell ya they take alot out of ya to even refine one. They do however make quite a boom when you make them explode so watch out haha." 

"Anyways, if you guys are here than your mana is still being absorbed by the crystals but from what your telling me it's only when you get close? That kinda makes sense I guess but then why haven't they refined themselves yet?" I asked as I walked closer to the food not even caring about the massive draw I felt in my body from the crystals drawing a huge amount of mana.

I took a huge goblin leg that was packed with muscle and began eating it right there as I studied the bars. I noticed that connecting to the bars was weird organic looking cables that ran from the bars and away into an doorway that was built into the cave. It was glowing with a purplish light of what I am assuming was my mana.

"Hey Vexsus get away from there or you pass out like the others. Nobody can stand to be near these things for more than a few seconds at a time." Gaia said as he came and quickly grabbed my arm and pulled me back.

"Hey man watch it." I said as I pulled my arm back. "I was just trying to figure out what's going on. Do any of you know where the cables lead to? I can guess that the reason the crystals haven't refined is because the power is being taken away and used somewhere else.... Thinking about it, it's actually a genius use of them." I said but then I remembered who I was praising and quickly felt disgust.

"Ah well thanks for the words of praise Vexsus, it means alot coming from one of my companions." A voice said from behind me. 

"Ugh you just had to hear that didn't you, Digger." I turned around and rolled my eyes as I spoke.

"Well atleast your body went back to normal. You don't look like such a hideous monstrosity anymore. Hey maybe your experiments are working and you can let us out soon?" I asked condescendingly.

"Vexsus what are you doing, quit pissing off the guy who locked us up. Don't bring anymore trouble than we already got." Gaia whispered.

"Shush man I know this idiot, he may have almost killed me but that's not gonna stop me from being an asshole to him. If death is gonna happen no matter what you do than why be afraid of it." I said with a smile as I walked up to the bars.

"So Digger have you found our friends? How are they?" 

He looked at me with clear anger in his eyes before his arm changed into that grotesque 3 clawed hand and grabbed my throat.

"If you know what's best for you, you'll shut the hell up and quit being so cocky. You're at my mercy not the other way around. So act like it." He then shoved me back causing me to stumble and fall on the ground.

"Ow man, is that anyway to treat your leader. I thought we had a good thing going. You leave and only come back when it's convenient for story progression, and me not really giving a shit about whether you lived or died. Oh did you know that I actually made you a small handheld crossbow that you could use in your mole form? I guess now its useless but it did get me the crafting skill so I guess you did have some use other than a scout after all." I smirked and chuckled slightly as I saw him tense up shortly after turning around and start to walk off. 

He sighed and just shook his head and continued leaving and opened up the door that the cables disappeared behind and shut the door before a loud high pitch squeal could be heard from behind it.

"Man that guy is really torturing that queen. After you passed out he grabbed the queen by the neck and dragged her into that room. Every now and then we would hear her cries of pain before he comes out covered in blood." Gaia said as he helped me up from the ground.

"Oh really? Damn that sucks for her. But listen I have some friends that are still nearby. They should be coming up with a plan to help me escape soon, I am going to need your help when that time comes. Do you still have your earth powers?" I asked while I took a look at his body closer.

He was covered in a ragged shirt and some pants that were frayed and barely covered the essentials. His tail was short and scarred as you could see a large portion of it was lopped off. His scales had cracks and some were even missing altogether. 

"Yea I do but right now all I can muster is a enough to barely control a small stone. I don't have even a 4th of the power that I held before that bastard took it away." He said in anger as he clenched his hands hard enough to break the skin with his claws.

"Well I'm sure we can fix that, or atleast make you strong again in the future but right now I am going to eat some more and then I'll show you a trick I learned to help with that annoying mana drain problem." 

I walked back over to the food pile and picked up one of the bowls that was filled with different goblin parts and even a bowl that was filled with nothing but blood and brought it over to a corner nearest the bars that nobody wanted and ate it all. Afterwards I closed my eyes and focused on manually taking control of the limited mana around us to be absorbed by my body. 

I felt a little better minute by minute, but not nearly as fast as I wanted, only because the damn crystal bars would take about 80% of the mana I managed to absorb. It was like trying to fill a bottle that had holes around the bottom and that would leak out constantly no matter how much you produced.

After a few hours of trying but ultimately failing in causing a forced refinement of the bars. I was rudely shaken out of focus by Gaia. Apparently what I was doing was sucking away the mana that was barely sustaining the other prisoners aside from us. 

Come to find out that Gaia had a limited Mana Regeneration after his Virtue awakened but because of his Devolution into whatever he was now. It worked even less but just enough to keep him from dying in here. The others however were not so lucky as after I stopped focusing I soon saw other prisoners who I, Embarrassingly had not paid any attention to, had actually dropped unconscious and were now barely waking up after I stopped.

"Ugh dammit, I mean I'm terribly sorry and I had no idea just how limited the mana was in here. All I was trying to do was refine the crystal bars to help break us out of here."

"Well asshole that didn't work and you almost killed my brother!" said a small raccoon like beastman 

There were various others agreeing with him from the other prisoners. Some were saying how their siblings or parents almost died just now but I stopped listening after a while. I admit I felt bad but obviously they were better now after I stopped so why should I care anymore. I just won't absorb any of the ambient mana, doesn't mean my body doesn't regen mana by itself at an adequate amount.

SO I just conserved what little I could muster and walked up to the bars and looked out again. I soon saw as a few of the mutant ants walked back and forth between caves carrying what looked like child sized eggs with something moving inside. I had a sudden idea and slashed my hand open with my claw, as I started dripping blood on the ground and I imbued my Pheromones using my Pheromone senses. It drew them in to investigate and when they came close enough and one tried to eat my hand I quickly grabbed onto one of their mandibles and used Vampirism to absorb their energies.

A rush of life flowed through my hand and into my body, circulating and providing the sustenance to control my hunger. I felt a slight boost in my strength and my scales seemed a little harder aswell. I looked now being able to think more clearly and saw that is was one of the ants that had an overdeveloped carapace that Digger used in making the Royal guards even stronger. No wonder my body felt stronger.

But shortly afterwards the ant dried up like a mummy and the others just dragged it away not even caring that their sibling got turned into a husk. I still felt a short burst of strength so I used my lightning slashes to try and break the bars, only to see that the bars would regrow after I broke them. 

"Ahhahaha, Vexsus I knew you would do something like this, but trust me it won't work. You see I made these bars outfitted with regeneration runes all along the shafts that uses up stored energy that it takes from you all just for times like this. It has hardening runes aswell but obviously it doesn't work against such a powerful Dragonoid such as yourself.. Hahaha but it won't be long now before I am ready for you so just be patient my friend, be Patient."