Hell Difficulty Tutorial - Beyond Death

Walking is hard.

No, really. It's a symphony of movement involving more than 50 major muscles working in tandem, orchestrated by billions of neurons firing through intricate neural pathways refined over years of trial and error. Running? What the fuck is that?

Babies spend months—sometimes years—learning to walk, wobble, and run without toppling over. So, when someone is forced to do it manually, micromanaging each twitch and contraction, screwing up is inevitable.

The voice of Reason assures me this is normal as I faceplant into the dirt for the seventh time.

I don't even bother catching myself with my good hand anymore. It's better to let gravity win, to savor the earthy taste of dirt—it adds just enough spiteful determination to fuel my next attempt.

What went wrong this time? Did I bend the knee too much?

I press my mind inward, activating Flesh Perception, and direct my attention to what I've lovingly named the Goblin Suit Mk0.

It's nothing complicated, really—just a complete disregard for conventional biology.

I recovered my leg bones from where I'd buried them alongside myself, scraping out as much of the necrosed marrow as possible before reattaching them to the stumps of my femurs. What I ended up with were literally bare bones for legs.

Those alone didn't cut it, though. Movement needs muscles, so I scavenged goblin scraps and what little remained of my own flesh to craft the essentials: quadriceps, hamstrings, calf muscles and the like.

Of course, the tissue I used was long dead. Rigor mortis had set in, and the blood had clotted into unmovable sludge, but magic doesn't seem to care about such trivialities. Guided by my will, the muscles still contract, as if to spite the universe which deemed them lifeless.

No oxygen, no ATP, no carefully balanced temperature or pH? Who cares? What the fuck is homeostasis anyway.

I might've laughed out loud a few times during the process.

Watching logic unravel...If drugs make someone feel like this, I can totally understand becoming addicted.

Even so, biology and physics refused to die completely, clinging on like a stubborn ghost. The rules wouldn't bend entirely to my will. I couldn't merge the dead tissue directly with my living body since that was... well... suicide.

So, I had to get creative.

Methodically, I layered tendons upon tendons and muscles upon muscles across my skin, wrapping them over my abdomen and torso like a patchwork of belts. These improvised constructs were connected to the femur and served as replacements for the hip abductors and gluteal muscles which I couldn't use properly despite having parts of them intact. It was basically a beggar's exosuit, but every layer of dead tissue was carefully arranged to serve its function.

With Flesh Perception guiding me, I shaped and twisted the goblin scraps until the suit fit snugly—too snugly, in fact, in some places...

Dark veins crisscrossed the surface like exposed wiring, with bulging knots where muscles fused at odd angles. It wasn't pretty, but it...kinda worked?

The goblin skins, meanwhile, were layered over the suit and myself, tanned into makeshift armor. The rough texture itched against the seams of my torso, but that was the least of my problems.

Lo and behold, voices in my head, System Gods or whoever the fuck is reading my mind.

I am the bone of my sword,

The Architect of Flesh,

Bone is my Frame, and Blood is my Ink.

I have molded countless forms,

Unbound by Life, yet unclaimed by Death.

Have endured Agony to shape this Vessel,

Yet these hands will never know Completion.

Hahahaaa...

Jokes aside, I probably look like a cannibal straight out of the Outlast games.

My left whip-arm twitches sporadically, a faint, jerking motion that would've been concerning if not for the lack of pain. It's probably fine.

The less fine part, however, is the lack of neural feedback from the dead flesh. Without any sensation or reflexes, complex movements are slow and imprecise. Every step demands conscious effort, so my top speed hovers somewhere between "barely moving" and "slow as fuck", and that's only when I manage to remain upright for more than 2 minutes.

I groan, pushing myself upright again, the voice of Discipline snarling at me to keep going. Any thoughts of rest were vetoed before they could even take root. Sleep is for later—much later, once I'd leveled up a bit and gained a few more points in Constitution.

The suit had taken just half an hour to make, but in that short time, Flesh Perception had leveled to 2.

Small victories, eh?