Valentina didn’t need additional context for my words.
She quickly rose from the floor and sat in front of , her slender palms pressing against mine.
"See, bestie, I don’t understand what’s happening, but it seems the blood I drew out is now affecting you."
I tightened my jaw.
’It hurts like hell.’
The pain was excruciating.
It felt as though my heart was trying to tear itself out of my chest.
But I had to endure it.
Just a little longer.
Argh...
I suppressed another strangled scream.
"Val, make sure my condition stays stable."
If it were anyone else, I would have hesitated to entrust them with my life. But this was Valentina.
She was a demonoid obsessed with my blood.
And as long as that obsession remained, I knew she wouldn’t harm .
Besides, the novel portrayed her as an innocent character, so I was sure she wouldn’t sche against .
I stretched out my trembling hand and emptied one bag of mana stones.
The bag resembled a pouch, holding thirty blue mana stones and twenty green ones.
In ltonia, there were four types of mana stones:
Common, Normal, Rare, and Legendary.
The higher their rank, the harder they were to find in rifts.
Blue mana stones were Common grade, while Green ones were Normal.
With this pouch, I was confident I could form a core.
Holding two mana stones in my hand, I attempted to inject them into my body, but since I couldn’t sense mana, they remained inert.
Valentina swiftly channeled mana into my hands, making the stones shimr faintly.
Whoosh.
Like a rushing torrent, the mana surged into my arms.
Mmm...
I bit down on my lower lip so hard that blood trickled onto the ground.
The agony was unbearable.
Nothing in my life had ever felt so excruciating...
Not even my death.
Gradually my mind began to blur once more.
’Damnit...!’
I squeezed my eyes shut, cracks forming on my skin, as if the rampant energy was trying to find a way out.
Sohow, I could see inside my body—and it was chaos.
Purple runes drifted through , colliding with and corrupting the serene blue mana in my system.
Behind my formless spirit was a glitching wall—or rather, a mbrane—encasing the space I occupied.
This was my body.
Those were the words I wanted to utter, but nothing left my lips.
The burning in my chest endured, but I forced my gaze forward.
I was Allen Park. No matter the agony I felt, I would never yield.
My nonexistent eyes scanned the projection of my body.
I imdiately recognized the sight before .
The wall was my body’s firewall, and judging by its state, it had long been breached.
Or rather, soone had forced it open and sealed it shut again afterward.
My attention then shifted to the purple runes.
No god needed to explain what they were.
The most vile thing in any computer—viruses. And from my predecessor’s mories, I could translate them into normal codes.
It seed like soone had purposefully embedded a virus inside Allen’s body to slowly eat away at his mana, his core, and his entire body.
The blue mana and faint codes, caught in a deadly fight with the viruses, represented my uncorrupted mana and the new operating system that my first awakening was creating to replace my old one.
And at the very center of the entire system was... My core.
It was grotesque, covered in pulsating purple growths.
Yet beneath it all, a faint white glow persisted.
Seeing its moonlight glow illuminate my soul even through the growths, I knew it could be restored... I could repair my body.
Though the pain still gnawed at relentlessly...
I had finally discovered hope.
But how exactly was I going to fix it?
One thing was knowing it could be fixed, and another was actually fixing it.
I tried placing my hand on my chin, but failed.
Should I control the foreign and existing mana?
If I controlled my system’s mana and uncorrupted codes, then it would definitely be possible for to fix my body.
I could patch my firewall.
Then try to erase the virus.
But I still didn’t have a real body.
Hmm...
I tried moving closer to the codes and virus, only for one of the purple codes to slam into .
Argh...
It hurt...
It really hurt...
However, the side of my arm that had been hit now bore a strange symbol.
And...
A visual projection.
I could see my left shoulder now, though the pixels were still missing.
How could I have forgotten?
I stretched out my nonexistent arms, letting the mana I had flow into my immune system.
The control was all scrambled, but control wasn’t what I was seeking.
As if drawn to my form, the blue codes and existing blue mana began moving toward .
They swirled around ...
Then, my body began levitating in the hovering space.
The glowing binary codes plunged into before I could even react...
It was warm...
Not cold...
Not hot...
Actually, I wasn’t sure how it felt; however, what I did know was that it felt good.
Really good.
I closed my eyes as the codes entered as if they were part of ...
Technically, they were part of , but this ti it felt like we had rged.
Gradually, the energy settled, and my body began glowing a bright blue light. It felt like I had just programd an in-ga avatar inside my own system.
The energy flowed around without my control, and as it reached the shoulder that the purple virus had touched, it began glowing red.
Argh...
The warm sensation around started fading.
Mmmhh...
I held back a scream as the blue light fought against the purple viruses in my body.
However, the way they were fighting was far too inefficient.
Instead of launching a full attack against the viruses, they waited for it to strike before defending.
They had the numbers, but they weren’t designed to combat these viruses.
That ant I had to do it myself.
I plunged my arm into my chest as a loud scream escaped my lips.
I could finally speak—now I wished I couldn’t.
Gradually, I began moving the existing mana and code with my own arms.
I wasn’t trying to form a formation with them or anything.
I needed an antivirus.
If I had that, then facing the viruses here would be far easier.
Furthermore, I doubted the thing around my core would just let clean it off.
I clenched my fist and began coding, scribbling the translated form of a simple antivirus app onto the unused mana and placing it over the blue codes and the rest of my system.
"Let’s see if you can beat antivirus, you fucker!"
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