Thankfully, spending stat points was fast. Not only the changes to my Status, but the actual physical result, too: I'd boosted Dexterity while sprinting before and felt the immediate boost in speed. While I couldn't 'feel' Constitution in the same way, I felt safe assuming it functioned similarly.

  Not that dumping a single level-up worth of points into Constitution was likely to let me land safely, or permit me to live despite my shattered ribs and shredded lungs, along with whatever other fatal internal damage I'd suffered. Hopefully it would help, though, and it certainly wouldn't make things worse.

  Something else that would help was a healing potion, and one of my arms still responded, so while one strand of concentration was busy spending stat points, another had pulled the second of three from my storage ring and was busy trying to shove it into my mouth. I even managed to swallow the magical liquid, although what happened to it from there was anyone's guess. With all the leaks I had in my torso, I couldn't claim with any certainty that my throat still led to my stomach.

  Nevertheless, the potion did something. There had been surprisingly little pain from the monster's strike. Yes, it hurt, but beyond a certain point, things were just too badly mangled to give meaningful feedback. Half the nerves that were supposed to transmit pain were probably gone.

  The potion apparently restored them.

  I'd had no feeling at all in my limbs, while my torso was a frozen, aching block of ice. Suddenly it caught on fire. It felt as if a nest of ants had made themselves at home in my chest. Multiple nests. At least one for each organ, with a couple more scattered around for good measure. The sickening, crawling sensation was almost unbearable.

  I desperately tried to suck in air, hoping that the potion would stitch me up sufficiently in the few seconds remaining before my ballistic trajectory impacted the jungle canopy. Not that there was enough time to cast [Heal], but I had a more immediate need, anyway.

  "Float," I wheezed. It was the tiniest scrap of breath, barely a whisper, and even that much sent me into a coughing fit, hacking up mouthfuls of blood. Despite that, it was enough for the magic.

  [Float] wasn't a flight spell. It freed me from the bonds of gravity, but I was already falling. The spell did little to arrest my existing momentum, so I slowed, but did not stop, crashing through branches and leaves and slamming back-first into the soil. With my Constitution, the fall shouldn't have been dangerous. Even without the aid of [Float], it probably wouldn't have been fatal had I been in perfect condition at the point of landing.

  I was not in perfect condition at the point of landing.

  The impact instantly undid the hard work of the healing potion. More bones cracked, including both legs and, judging from the way I lost all feeling and movement below my waist, my spine. My vision swam as head impacted dirt.

  I was so damn tired. Despite the pain, despite my Constitution and Marks, it was taking everything I had to cling to consciousness.

  I started charging [Heal], but the landing had obviously messed up my lungs again, because I couldn't get any air. I went for my final potion instead, downing it. Then I pulled out my warding stone, activating it and dropping it. Hopefully nothing had seen me land, because I wasn't moving for a long time.

  Ten seconds later, the potion had pulled enough of my body together to get a mouthful of air back into my lungs.

  "Heal," I whispered, getting more feeling—and hence more pain—back for my trouble. More blood was coughed up, but that was good. Blood I coughed out wasn't sitting in my lungs, drowning me. The next breath came a little easier. "Heal," I repeated, this time a little more strongly.

  For minutes I lay there, unmoving, doing nothing but charging and casting [Heal] repeatedly. Going until my Mana ran dry, uncertain if [Heal] was even sufficient to fix me. I knew the spell couldn't regenerate missing body parts, but how badly damaged did an organ need to be to count as 'missing'? They were still there. They'd just been mixed together, along with my ribs, and blended slightly. Could [Heal] unblend them? At the least, I could breathe more easily, and my heart was still beating, but for all I knew, my stomach was busy leaking acid into my chest cavity.

  "Fuck my life," I repeated. I was still obviously injured—something about my body simply felt wrong, in a way beyond mere pain—and it was still a struggle to remain conscious. The improvements made by the healing were more than counteracted by the effects of low Mana.

  But I'd healed as much as I could. I had no more potions or Mana. I had my warding stone set up, and didn't feel like moving. I no longer had anything in particular to remain conscious for. Perhaps past-me would know a better healing spell.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  I closed my eyes.

  "Wow, you look awful," said a voice I didn't recognise. Female, and vaguely amused, which wasn't an emotion that seemed appropriate.

  I opened my eyes. The 'sky' was pitch black. A ceiling of empty nothingness.

  "Oh, I'm here again," I commented dryly. "And you are?" I added, flicking my eyes around trying to find the speaker, but without moving my head, I saw nothing but the empty void.

  "Sheesh. You're always going on about how I'm your favourite, and then you go and forget me?" asked the voice. "And you know this place isn't real, right? Why're you still acting injured?"

  "Favourite?" I asked, having no idea what she was on about. "Wait..." I added, as a memory stirred. Something I'd thought when I'd gained [Fragment of the Past]. A memory that wasn't quite mine. "Hayley? My favourite... concubine?"

  "Concubine?" snorted the voice. "Test subject, more like. Most men might think with their dicks, but I honestly have no idea what you think with. Doing this to me, ogling me all the time, but never once taking me to bed? You kinda give mixed signals."

  I paused to think for a moment. Why the heck was she here? How could I talk with her? That was even stranger than having a conversation with myself. And the way she was speaking... She seemed to be treating me as if I was still past-me, and yet there was no fear there. Frustration, maybe, but good-natured if so. Wasn't past-me an evil bugger? He hadn't given the impression of having friends.

  And acting injured? Shooting pains with every breath I took made it quite clear that I wasn't simply acting. I didn't want to twist my neck, in case I'd broken it in the fall.

  But if this place wasn't real, and was merely some sort of dream, did I need to dream I was injured?

  With a simple act of will, I sat up, the way the muscles required were still somewhat shredded not impeding my movement in the slightest. There came a flood of warning signals from my 'body', but I ignored them. I wasn't physically here, and it wasn't really my body. Sure enough, the pain faded like it was nothing.

  In front of me was... someone in a monster costume? Maybe? But the ears were twitching. Were they real?

  "And what's that stupid look for? You're acting like we've never met before," said the young girl, swishing her tail.

  "We haven't," I admitted as I stared. "I'm not who you think I am."

  She seemed mostly human; a girl of about twenty. Or at least, a girl that looked about twenty. Her skin was pale, as if she'd never been outside working in the sun, and was beautifully smooth. Her hair was yellow. Not blond, but an unnatural bright yellow. The colour of sunflowers. The colour of the sun. Sticking out of the top of that yellow hair were a pair of cat-like ears, scaled up to human size, covered in yellow fur with small tufts of white fluff at their base. Whether there were proper human ears hidden under her hair, too, I couldn't see. Her eyes were green, the pupils oddly elongated, and her clothing was, well, apparently not a part of this dream world, if I was going to be polite about it.

  She had a tail. A big, bushy thing, covered in fur the same bright colour as her hair.

  She grinned, revealing canines that were perhaps a little longer and sharper than the average human. "Not who I think you are? Really? As if there's anyone else on the planet that stares at my tail with that expression, if only because everyone knows full well what you'd do to them if they did."

  I blinked, then dragged my eyes back to her face. "Sorry," I said, not entirely sure what sort of expression I'd been making. Given that she was naked, pretty, and very fluffy, I could imagine my face had been a little impolite.

  "Sorry?" she echoed incredulously. "Hmm... Can't imagine you ever apologising for staring at my tail. You're the one that grafted it, without even asking me first. Maybe this memory loss thing hit you harder than I thought."

  "I did that?" I asked. Was she originally human, then? That would certainly explain why she referred to herself as a test subject.

  She shrugged, then took a couple of paces forward and hopped into my lap, the action sufficiently unexpected that by the time I'd considered that perhaps I should stop her or at least react in some way, she was already seated, her tail wrapping itself around a leg.

  "Err," I said.

  She giggled. "This innocent version of you is pretty cute, though," she said. "Alas, as much as I'd like to play around with you, I suspect the real you would get pissy about it."

  "I am the real me," I denied, the implicit suggestion that I wasn't the 'real' one pulling my attention back from the scent that had distracted me. The oddly friendly cat-girl had a pleasant floral smell about her; not overpowering, but with her sitting in my lap, very noticeable.

  She shrugged. "Then why are you here, dreaming of me?"

  "Buggered if I know. I don't even know where I am!"

  She grinned again. "You must do, because I do, and since you're dreaming me, how can I know anything you don't?"

  "Then how about you explain, since you know so much?"

  "I'd love to, but I'm afraid we don't have the time. You really ought to wake up now."

  "Should I?" I asked

  "Well, yes. Unless you want to be eaten by all those dinosaurs."

  I blinked. "Yeah, no," I agreed.

  "Then get going already."

  She waved a hand dismissively, and, despite my 'eyes' already being open, I opened my eyes again, finding myself lying exactly where I'd been when I fell unconscious.

  I quickly sat up, and there were indeed dinosaurs.

  I needn't have hurried, though. Every single monster within ten metres of me was dead. Among the corpses were a pair of braccus tyrants. A small group of braccus raptors were watching me, partially hidden behind the massive corpses, but they weren't moving. They were just staring, completely motionless.

  I wasn't good with dinosaur features, but if I had to ascribe an emotion to them, it would be fear.

  Without making a sound, the monsters turned and ran. For the first time since I'd started adventuring, the innate hostility of monsters towards humans failed. Creatures that normally had zero survival instinct when it came to self-destructively throwing themselves against a superior force ran for their lives.

  "Well then," I commented, watching them leave. And then it occurred to me that I'd sat up without any difficulty. I might have switched my injuries off in the dream world, but that didn't work in the real world, and yet despite a few aches, I felt fine.

  "I guess I should thank me," I mumbled.

  Patreon.