When Rest ended, John was in no hurry to get up. He lay on the camping bed for a while, unmoving, trying to regain some semblance of self-control. Much of the last half hour or so had been… rather undignified, from his perspective. The void world Rest plunged him into allowed him to let loose and blow off some steam. Showing even a fraction of the behaviour he'd got up to in the real world would surely put his Aura so deeply into the negatives he'd never get back out.

It had been cathartic, at least. Unfortunately, he couldn't help wishing he hadn't upgraded Rest so much. A good eight hours of unrestrained raging would have done him good.

The room Doug had showed him to was some kind of small office at a back corner of the community centre. Any distinguishing features it might have had prior to the apocalypse had long been torn to shreds by the monster waves constantly rushing through. Now, it was little more than a bare room with rubble and detritus covering every square inch of the floor. Even the wallpaper had been torn off.

His camping bed stood alone as a small island in the middle of that sea of detritus. It was one of those fold out things, its metal frame keeping the thin, quilted mattress off the ground. He was pretty sure Doug had explained where they'd got it from, but the older man's words had gone in one ear and straight out the other.

It wasn't the most comfortable thing ever, but it wasn't the worst, either. In other circumstances, he was sure he wouldn't have had too much trouble getting a full night's sleep on it. While camping wasn't his family's most common holiday activity, they'd done it a few times. He could've dealt.

John closed his eyes and focused on keeping his breathing even, still feeling the lingering dregs of the heightened emotion he'd allowed himself to feel in Rest's inky void.

He wished he could blame the quality of the bed for having to resort to Rest. When he'd first entered the room, he'd decided, quite impulsively, that he was going to try and get some real sleep. He'd wanted nothing more than to be truly unconscious for a few hours, give himself a proper reset. A break.

His overactive mind had nixed that plan. Sadly, it turned out he couldn't just switch off his brain at a whim. The darkness behind his eyelids had proved to be a fantastic canvas for his imagination, allowing his useless subconscious to paint guilt-inducing portraits of the three people whose corpses were currently weighing down his Inventory.

Tossing and turning for a good hour despite his bone-deep exhaustion had been an increasingly frustrating experience, leading to building anger, which just made it even harder to get to sleep. Eventually, he'd given in and decided to just use Rest anyway, so he at least wouldn't have to deal with the exhaustion anymore.

And now here he was. Thirty minutes later, give or take. The burning sky outside the window was still veiled. He could still hear the low murmur of conversation between Doug and Lily, punctuated by the parrots chattering away to each other elsewhere. The temperature was quite mild despite the raging inferno hanging over the world. He was glad for his leather jacket.

John felt well rested, physically speaking. The fatigue that had been weighing him down was gone. He could think clearly now.

Not that he wanted to. Rest had lifted the veil of exhaustion on his body, but his mind still felt wrung out. He was tempted to lie here and keep trying to sleep for real, but he knew it'd be pointless.

With a sigh, he swung his legs off the camping bed and slowly sat up. He spent a minute or so stretching out every part of his body. There were a few little aches and pains, cuts and bruises and whatnot. Nothing worth spending Aura on a level up, even if he had a lot of points to work with right now.

This was exactly the kind of thing Biomancy was for. He activated it and got to work.

The Spell was a strange one, all things considered. Not in a general sense; there were far odder Spells even in his own repertoire, and he'd seen some weird shit from his comrades and enemies, too. It was the feeling of the Spell that was distinctly weird, essentially giving him an entire new sense to contend with, and somehow leaving him feeling like he'd always had it.

It granted him a 3-D map of his body that didn't really translate to any of the traditional five senses. The closest analogy was feeling his body, but even that didn't quite fit. It was a fey awareness, eldritch and weird, but it was also somehow just as intuitive as physically seeing his biology.

It could work on either a macro or micro level, whether he wanted to make general changes or dig deep and make adjustments on a cellular scale. There was something to be said for the First Aid aspect he'd merged into it there, he reckoned.

Prior to that Combination, there'd been an air of freedom and uncertainty to it. Like he was given a blank canvas and told to paint whatever he wanted. With the aspect, he'd essentially been given a set of anatomical diagrams he could reference, if he wanted to.

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A trade-off, artistry for science.

Using First Aid's instinctual knowledge, he set to methodically seeking out the minor bits of damage his body was sporting, and dealt with them one by one. It wasn't a hard task. A bruise here, a scrape there. Some areas of muscle that were a little sore. Minor lacerations, barely noticeable aches. Honestly, he kind of wished it was more difficult. Something to really occupy his mind would have been welcome.

On top of that, he had to admit that healing himself with Biomancy was rather boring, compared to relying on a level up. There was no rush of ecstasy, no burst of power that drove liquid nirvana through his veins, only a methodical removal of pain as he restructured his cells into a healthy state. It was undoubtedly a more economical method, but a disappointing experience all the same.

Before long, he was out of pains to fix. John sat there for a long moment, staring at one of his hands, taking in the little imperfections there. Moles, scars, marks. His eyes narrowed. Maybe there was more to "fix" after all.

First Aid's assistance, it turned out, was relegated to healing problems with his body. As far as it was concerned, he was now healed, and anything else he wanted to do was up to him. With the reassurance that it would probably let him correct any mistakes if he fucked up, he dove back in.

First, he focused on the hand that had given him the idea. There was a little mole on one of his knuckles that had once earned him the nickname "molehand" for a whole month in primary school when an older girl noticed it.

In but a handful of seconds, it was gone, replaced by unblemished skin as he used its surroundings as a template.

That same trick let him smooth out any imperfections on his hands, then up his arms, and along his torso, up his neck, on his face, then back down to his legs. Soon, his skin was smooth as a baby's, sporting not a hint of mole or birthmark. That ended up looking weird, so he put a few back in strategic places.

On a whim, he added some extra hair to his arms, legs, and chest. One time, everyone had made fun of him for his lack of hair when changing for PE, asking him if he shaved like a girl, and it had been so humiliating that he'd taken to changing to the toilets for weeks after, only for them to make fun of him for that, too. That had always been the worst feeling. The inability to escape from their taunts, like there was nothing he could do that would get them off his back.

He didn't go overboard with it. He didn't want to look like a furry. As long as his body could finally look like something people would have no cause to laugh at, he was content.

Along that same vein, he next turned his attention to his muscles. Increasing Strength and Vitality all the way up to Level 7 had packed on some serious power to his frame, but he felt he could do better.

Like an artist putting the finishing touches on a sculpture, he went in with a fine brush. A little extra definition here, less fat there. A bit of trial and error, making infinitesimal tweaks all over the place, and soon enough his body looked like that of a man who was about to walk onto a photo shoot for a men's health magazine.

The temptation to take off his clothes and see his body with his own eyes arose, but he resisted it. He couldn't imagine the humiliation if someone happened to walk in while he was admiring himself. Even with enhanced hearing to warn him of anyone approaching, he didn't want to risk it.

Next, he turned his attention to his face. He was far more cautious there, all too aware that adjustments would be far more noticeable; the last thing he wanted was to walk out into the community centre to meet the others, only to find they could immediately see that he'd changed himself.

So he did his best to be subtle. A little tweak to his nose to make it just a little smaller. A smidgen of attention to his jawline to make it only a fraction sharper. A feather-light touch of plumpness to his lips, trying to ease the pale thinness that had always bothered him ever since some girl had asked him if he even had lips at all.

He continued in that vein, raising his cheek bones, adding definition to his eyebrows, reshaping his eyes. All tiny, tiny changes. So small that even he would barely notice them. But each one, no matter how small, was a boon for his confidence. By the time he was done, he was starting to feel like his chest would remain permanently puffed out.

Last on the agenda was his hair. His first move was to fix his hairline, making it straight as a ruler and covering his temples. Somehow, that alone felt like it probably did as much for his self-esteem as every other change he'd made so far combined, even though he'd never thought of his hair as a particularly deep insecurity.

After that, he tried a few different looks, cycling through styles he'd seen here and there, since he found he could essentially lengthen and shorten it at will. From a buzz cut, to luscious flowing locks that cascaded down his shoulders, though, there wasn't really anything that felt… right.

If nothing was right, he decided, the best thing he could do was aim for cool.

Unfortunately, he wasn't at all confident in his ability to judge such a thing, either. He'd been doing alright in acting cool so far, stumbling on methods through a combination of trial and error and luck. For the majority of his life, he'd simply kept his hair short and simple, not wanting to draw attention.

Seeing as his judgement was unreliable, he delved through his memory for examples of guys people considered cool. Brad Pitt in Fight Club. Keanu Reeves in John Wick. Ryan Gosling in Drive. He basically went through a whole list of actors that generally seemed to be admired for their coolness factor, doing his best to mimic what he could remember of their hairstyles.

None of them seemed to fit, somehow. Some instinct in him that had been attuned to the system told him it would be unimpressed with those styles. It wanted him dual wielding a scythe and a katana, wearing a red leather jacket and sunglasses, while wrapped in a cloak made of darkness, not strutting around like a Hollywood movie star.

With that thought, he knew what he had to do.

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