Now that he was lucid and aware of his surroundings, Alex realised that he had somehow wandered into a completely different neighbourhood while he… hunted. Once again suppressing the horror rising within him, he pushed the thoughts to the back of his mind.

  ‘We can think about it and despair once my life isn’t in danger.’ He shook his head.

  As he rushed through much cleaner streets than the one he woke up in, Alex tried to fully get used to his new strength. All those stories of people gaining superpowers didn’t mention just how disorienting it was to suddenly be several times stronger than before.

  Each step sent him hurtling through the air, only by the grace of his new instincts was he able to stay at all on his feet. Every corner was a challenge, his face learning with extreme detail what the walls of these buildings felt like, though his coordination improved with time. The missing arm affecting his balance certainly didn’t help.

  Every time he collided with something, he had to readjust his grip on the severed forearm and necklace to ensure he didn’t drop them. Every movement sent droplets of blood spraying out of the arm, though due to how long it had been there wasn’t much left.

  Alex suddenly stopped and turned around, looking at the clear trail of blood left in his wake. “This can’t go on. I need to get rid of the arm or completely drain it of blood.” He muttered to himself.

  ‘Actually, why haven’t I bled out yet or even started feeling woozy?’ He thought to himself as he raised what remained of his left arm and looked at the stump, bracing himself for the sight. However, what greeted him was not a gruesome, bloody wound spurting blood and viscera.

  Instead, he saw smooth scar tissue stretched across the whole area, with a strange new protrusion pushing through in the middle. “Am I… regrowing an arm?” He questioned in disbelief, as he became aware of a mild itch emanating from the injury.

  ‘Now that I think about it, didn’t I slice myself up on the window glass as I was jumping out?’ Inspecting himself, he noticed some very light scarring on his arms, which he had used to take the brunt of the impact, as well as a bit on his torso. In fact, even as he watched, Alex realised that the scars were fading in real time.

  At this rate he would be completely healed in but a few minutes, leaving his skin as unblemished as a newborn baby’s.

  “That’s so fucking cool!” He muttered, “No permanent injuries for me, baby. All I have to do is make sure I don’t die.”

  After stoking his delusions of grandeur, Alex refocused on the task at hand.

  “Now, what to do with this arm? I need to drain all the blood so I guess… Whack it against the wall?” He hesitantly grabbed it by the hand and prepared to swing, before suddenly lowering it and slapping himself in the face.

  “No! Bad Alex! We don’t smack pieces of our body against a wall, no matter how detached they are from the rest of you!” He scolded himself while waving the limb around wildly, spraying blood over the street and walls. “Now look what you’ve done! Idiot!”

  Alex reconsidered his options. Gazing at the wall in front of him, he noticed the new splatters of blood from his recent handwaving, his eyes suddenly flashing with inspiration.

  Placing the necklace on the ground to ensure it didn’t get damaged or sent flying, he once again tightened his grip on the hand and started rotating, spinning it in circles. The rotations kept accelerating as he put more and more power into it, until the arm became nothing but a blur and emitted a low humming sound as it rubbed against the air.

  The centrifugal forces produced pushed the blood outwards, towards the opening in the elbow, and eventually out into the open air. Exiting the arm at such high velocity, the blood splattered across the entire street and several houses in its vicinity.

  After another minute of spinning, the amount of blood leaving the arm slowly reduced to nothing. Looking at it, Alex was shocked to see it once again looking like it did when he woke up earlier today, the extreme drainage having basically mummified it.

  Shrugging, he picked the necklace back up and gripped the severed limb in preparation to set off, before suddenly realising that he had no idea where he was or even where he should go. It’s not like he had a house he could stay in.

  ‘Breaking into one of these mansions is out of the question. I bet they also have a bunch of magical guards and shit. That means I just have to find the slums again and chill there. Now, how to find the slums…’

  While considering this dilemma, Alex chose a random direction and started walking, hoping to come across a solution to his problem. A few minutes later and no closer to solving the issue, Alex came upon a large tower erected in the middle of a square. The large bell hanging from its roof as well as the vague silhouettes of several men outlined against the starry sky quickly told him its purpose.

  ‘Oh yeah! I can just climb up to a better vantage point and find them that way! I’m so stupid.’ He berated himself before quickly slinking out of sight of the watchtower, unwilling to be seen.

  After escaping a certain distance to ensure they couldn’t spot him, Alex looked at the nearest mansion and started climbing. The building was three stories of pure marble, with a red shingle roof gently sloping downwards to avoid being flooded by rain.

  To the previous him, climbing such a building would have proved an impossible task, the smooth walls and lack of handholds would have made it challenging for even the best in the world. Fortunately, this wasn’t a concern for him now; his new abilities absolutely trivialised a previously impossible task. Backing up a bit, he took a running start before jumping as high as he could at the building.

  Soaring half a dozen yards into the air, he realised that he still wasn’t going to make it. As soon as he impacted the wall, he once again pushed with his legs and flew another several feet higher, finally reaching to catch the edge of the roof. Unfortunately, he had forgotten to stow his arm somewhere, so he had nothing to grab the ledge with.

  Alex tried hooking his elbow over it, but the brief hesitation meant he had already fallen too low to reach, so he reluctantly fell back down to the ground.

  “Damn it." He muttered under his breath. "Oh well, we try again.”

  Sizing up the distance, he decided to toss the arm up onto the roof, but had to make some practice throws first, especially since his aim wasn’t the best even before he lost control over his strength. After a few minutes of tossing the arm into the air and catching it, he was at least confident he wouldn’t overshoot by a mile and have to go searching for it in the streets.

  Backing up a bit to get a better angle, he carefully aimed before throwing it into the air. It drew a graceful parabola through the night sky before abruptly colliding with the roof with a muffled smack. Alex had prepared to go catch it if the slope caused it to roll off, but luckily it landed at an angle and didn’t move from its spot.

  With a nod, Alex once again took a running start, double jumped off the wall and this time successfully used his free hand to grab the ledge and smoothly vault onto the roof. Standing up, he scooped the arm off of where it lay on the red tiles and started looking around, finally getting a clearer look at his new location.

  As the night breeze ruffled his hair and the chill tried and failed to penetrate his pale skin, he beheld a vista the likes of which he could never have even imagined.

  In his immediate vicinity he saw a seemingly residential area with many mansions, similarly luxurious to the one he was standing on. The area appeared to stretch on for several blocks, each building surrounded by walls of stone or carefully trimmed bushes.

  Interrupting the monotony were occasional squares with watchtowers like the one he had come across earlier, their forms reaching up into the sky. On a brief count, he saw over a dozen, with the nearest merely a few hundred yards to his right while the furthest was positioned at least three miles directly behind him.

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  Centered around a small mountain directly in the middle of the metropolis, the watchtowers covered a vaguely circular area, the city outskirts being without their protection.

  Though calling it a mountain might have been a bit of a stretch.

  The first peculiarity Alex noticed about it—and the most obvious—was the shape. It was like a perfect half cube, as if a giant mason had carved it with a chisel before dropping it in the middle of the settlement. Smooth, seamless walls stretched upwards for over a thousand feet, bordered by razor sharp corners that simply could not have occurred naturally. The sheer strangeness of it was breathtaking.

  In fact, the scale of this monument was so large, that Alex briefly failed to grasp what exactly he was looking at. He had seen the Burj Khalifa, the Eiffel Tower, the great pyramids of Egypt, and many other impressive human monuments on earth, but all of them were completely dwarfed by the absolute scale of the object in front of him. This did not seem like something mere humans were capable of. It was the work of something… more. Something greater.

  The only apt comparison he could make was the time he had witnessed the Grand Canyon. The sheer magnitude of it, the awe it made him feel had shown him how truly insignificant humans were in the face of nature. To now see an obviously artificial structure evoke the same feeling within him… He was overwhelmed.

  When he finally snapped out of his shock, Alex realised that atop this impossible object were buildings. The whole top surface of the cube, which must have covered an area of almost a square mile, was completely filled with all sorts of impressive looking constructions, from mansions to palaces to fortresses.

  However, dominating over all other buildings on the cube was an absolutely colossal Greek-style temple, only dwarfed by the strange mountain it resided on. Over three hundred feet tall, and twice that wide, it towered over its surroundings. The huge, man-sized torches illuminating each column drew the eye, especially in the middle of the night, as if its monumental size wasn't enough.

  Taking a moment to appreciate the magnificent sight, Alex had resumed scanning the city when he noticed the horizon beginning to brighten to his left. Realising he only had half an hour at most to get to shelter before something very unpleasant happened, he discarded all distractions and sped up his search.

  Looking away from the mountain, he gazed past the watchtowers into the lands surrounding the protected area, idly noticing how it was all enclosed by a large wall he had somehow gotten over in his hunger. After another very tense minute of searching, he finally saw a collection of poorly constructed wooden buildings huddled together, stretching several miles beyond the city wall.

  Having found his target, he didn’t waste a second before setting off, not even bothering to get back to the ground. Instead, after pointing himself in the direction he needed to go, he sprinted across the rooftop before giving a powerful leap at the edge, sending him hurtling across the street and onto the opposite house.

  As soon as he landed, he kept the momentum going, charging further along the new roof and leaping again. In this way, he quickly traversed the city while avoiding any watchtowers, finally reaching the wall he had seen from a distance.

  Standing up close to it he was once again awed at the apparent engineering prowess of the people this world. A sheer, 50 foot tall wall of stone greeted him, once again covered in dense, flowing lines that seemed to shimmer slightly under the brightening sky. It loomed menacingly over the surrounding buildings at over twice their height, as if mocking their puny size.

  Having already encountered these lines several times that night, Alex realised that these were probably some kind of runic language belonging to the magic system of the world, something he greatly looked forward to exploring after he finally had some time to rest and gather himself together.

  'Hopefully these aren't passive offensive enchantments, or I'm about to get absolutely cooked.' He thought nervously as he observed it.

  Even despite knowing that the wall would not be a true obstacle to him, its sheer scale provided a not insignificant intimidation factor; he could only imagine what a regular human soldier would feel at the prospect of having to conquer it in the event of an attack.

  Now that he thought about it, a wall such as this was completely excessive if defending against mere men. ‘I wonder what kind of magical monsters this world has! Since they have magic weapons and stuff, surely they have other cool shit, like dragons! Though I hope not to meet one until I’m much, much stronger. I don’t think I’m dragon slayer material quite yet.’

  Having assessed the wall, Alex ascertained that he should be able to get over it with some effort. Biting down on the severed arm to free his hand, he readied himself before suddenly bursting into motion across the roof. Flexing all of his new muscles to the utmost, he stomped down on the ledge and sent himself streaking through the air towards the wall.

  The second he made contact, he once again exerted himself and shot upwards, repeating the process. Another few steps later he was almost at the top, but this is where gravity remembered he existed and betrayed him.

  “Fuck, so close!” He exclaimed unwittingly, desperately scrabbling at the wall to stop himself from falling.

  “Urk!” His downwards motion suddenly halted, almost jerking his shoulder out of its socket and slamming his torso against the wall, knocking the breath out of him.

  Raising his head while gasping for breath, Alex saw that his fingernails had caught around one of the swirls covering the wall. Puzzled as to how this was possible, he noticed that his nails didn’t look quite right. Instead of pale pink, he found that the ends of his digits had extended into wicked looking claws, seemingly carved from obsidian.

  Thinking back to his transformation earlier, he realised that this was what his hands had probably looked like. “Huh, never was a fan of long nails but I guess they do have their uses.” He mused, refusing to think about it too deeply before pulling as hard as he could and sending himself flying up the rest of the way.

  Catching the edge of the wall and pulling himself up was effortless, but when Alex turned around to go jump over the other side, he abruptly came face to face with a guard that was patrolling the parapets.

  Time slowed for Alex as he watched the guard’s eyes widen as he took a deep breath to call for help. As adrenaline surged through his veins, Alex suddenly lashed out with his good arm, his fist slamming into the man’s jaw.

  There was a sickening crack. The guard’s head snapped back, the sheer force behind the hit hurling him across the parapet. He struck the far wall with a dull thud before toppling over the edge.

  Alex’s heart lurched. “Shit—wait!” He darted forward, the severed arm slipping from between his teeth as he stretched out his left arm. For a half-second he forgot—forgot that there was nothing there to catch with.

  Only the blunt stump waved uselessly at the guard’s heels.

  Momentum carried Alex into the parapet, the impact rattling his ribs as he leaned desperately over the edge. His stomach dropped.

  Below, the man plummeted, his clothes fluttering in the wind. A final, wet impact echoed up the stone wall, followed by stillness.

  Alex remained frozen, breath caught in his throat, staring down at the crumpled figure on the cobblestones. His jaw clenched. He hadn’t meant for this to happen

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” He asked in disbelief. “Are you actually fucking kidding me!?”

  As he stared down at the man’s broken form, blood already beginning to pool around it, Alex clenched his fist in anger and punched the stone in front of him, uncaring of how it split his skin and splattered blood over the wall.

  Gazing at his already healing hand, Alex couldn’t help but feel bitter. “That's actually so stupid. I can reason away the woman back there. I wasn't myself and it was either me or her. Whatever. This guy however... I should've been paying more attention. Now not only have I killed another person for no reason, but I've also refreshed the trail I left behind. God damnit."

  Clenching his fully healed fist, Alex turned his gaze to the horizon, where the faint light of dawn was beginning to creep across the sky. “I can’t promise I’ll never hurt someone who doesn’t deserve it,” He admitted quietly. “Hell, I can’t even say I won’t end up killing an innocent person again. But I need boundaries—something to keep me from losing it completely. Violence is a tool, not a game. Not a last resort, but definitely not the first. I don’t believe that with great power comes great responsibility, but small responsibility is definitely needed.”

  With conviction blazing in his eyes, Alex finally climbed over the wall and launched himself forwards, landing in a roll on the street below. Getting up, he set off at a sprint towards the poorer area, racing against the clock to get to cover. He arrived in mere minutes, just as the first rays of sunlight kissed the massive temple on the cube.

  Knowing that he had no more time, Alex dashed to the nearest building for shelter; luckily it appeared empty.

  Running up to the door, Alex tried pulling it open but it didn't budge, only rattling in its frame. Looking up anxiously at the sun already illuminating the tip of the nearest watchtower, he could only grit his teeth and swing his arm back.

  'Sorry about this, whoever owns this place. I'll pay you back for the damages somehow.'

  He no longer hesitated and sent his fist into the door as hard as he could. With the sound of splintering wood, the door flew straight off its hinges and landed somewhere deep in the building with a crash.

  Wincing at the noise, something no doubt having broken, Alex once again apologised to the unknown owner before stumbling inside and away from the sun's deadly rays.

  Once he got into the relative safety of the shed, Alex finally relaxed. The adrenaline pumping through him faded as he suddenly collapsed to his knees, allowing exhaustion to finally slam into him. His eyes flickered as he briefly blacked out.

  “Woah.” He muttered, “That’s not good.”

  But today truly had been a crazy day now that he thought about it. He had woken up in an unknown location in a brand new body, run what must have been at least half a marathon, healed a bunch of injuries and climbed some very tall structures. It would be stranger if after all of that he was still full of energy.

  “Well, I think I earned my sleep.” He muttered, and with the sound of birds chirping in the air as the city slowly started coming to life, Alex finally drifted off into unconsciousness.