Luke woke to his body screaming at him to breathe. He tried to roll over and out of under whatever had trapped him, but what little flailing he could manage after all the damage he'd sustained was useless as he was trapped inside a coffin of his own making. It took him what felt like ages to remember his predicament before bursting out of his armor and erupting from the earth with a shower of dirt and breathed deeply. One arm hung limply, painfully itching at his body as his body attempted to keep the already decayed flesh alive, some of which had been left back in his anti-lightning armor, the other arm arm and its opposite leg were simply gone.

  Luke felt the edges of magic overdraw begin to seep back into the edge of his decayed arm as he surveyed the scene in the arena. There was no fraxion to be seen, so he set himself down on the ground. No additional flesh had to be sacrificed to escape, so he just sat there for hours, breathing and letting his magic capacity return to him. He was uncertain how long he sat in the middle of the arena's clearing, but without any telekinesis available to him and his shot nerves, he was unable to move. The time spent conscious was short, though, as the trauma caught back up and he passed back out once more.

  When he finally woke, it was with a start. Going from unconscious to seeing light was a first in years. All his nights in the arena, so far, had been spent in holes he'd made underground, in the timber wall, inside individual trees, or, on rare occasion, under the ocean. After trying to roll over from his uncomfortable position and failing, he risked telekinesis, gently rolling himself onto his back. Not feeling any pain from being near his magic capacity, he attempted to start the painful process of regenerating and reconnecting his nervous system. The only parts connected to his brain at this point were his head, heart, and lungs.

  The electricity had fried every other connection in his body.

  The restoration went smoothly, if extremely painfully. Every time he connected a live region to his brain, it was blaring at him about the damage he'd sustained. Newly created nerves weren't much better, but at least they weren't frayed from the get go. He was healing himself slowly to make sure he didn't abruptly sprint over his magic capacity. So, what would have taken him a few minutes at most took almost an hour.

  After managing to connect his leg and stomach muscles back to the network, he sat up and assessed the damage more thoroughly. While he inspected the many burns running through his skin from the electricity having run through him, he idly wondered where the new fraxion is. It left him alone instead of following the no rest suicide tactics from the few fraxions before it and wasn't anywhere to be seen in the small area of the arena he could see. No traces of it, either, simply not there.

  He used the diagnosis portion of medical magic, alongside selectively making portions of himself invisible, to find all the damage, eventually working up a plan on how to heal his own body. He was hungry, but healing himself took priority over cooking some of himself. He could last weeks without food. He would probably die in just a few more hours if he didn't get his internal organs working properly.

  When he finally bumped up against his magic capacity once again, he had already restored all his internal organs to perfect condition, only needing to restore his skin, remake his amputated limbs, and deal with the decayed flesh that was his left arm.

  He figured out how to get up onto his one working leg, which was weak and painful from unhealed damage, and jumped over to the woods. After his first jump, most of the flesh remaining on his hand sloughed off, taking the tips of all but his thumb with it. The remaining trip to the woods saw more flesh and bone fall off, though the trail he made in his direction of travel did not reach the woods itself, all the loosest flesh having been left behind in his armor underground or having fallen off long before he actually reached the trees.

  Just to be safe, he hopped around the clearing a little more than a third of the way before actually making his way in to the woods proper. The trail of decayed flesh would, hopefully, lead his fraxion opponent astray if it came back to look for him. Once he made his way between the many trees, he searched for a nice, obscured area to hide and attempted to make it hide himself even better. With only a single leg, the effectiveness of that was negligible, if even useful at all.

  He looked back into the clearing one last time before committing to staying in his hiding spot, making sure he left no trail to follow to his position. As he did, he realized that the corpses of his opponents were nowhere to be found. His fraxion opponent must have taken the time to bury his brethren, since Luke definitely didn't have the time or ability to do so.

  He sat with his back to a large tree and rested, though staying alert as he did.

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  Luke had rested long enough to have recovered a significant portion of his magic capacity. Having sat still for around six hours, he would have recovered around a fifth of his capacity, maybe less because of the damage his soul had undergone. Recovering the portions of your magic capacity untouched by magic overdraw was slower after losing a portion of it. To what degree that would affect him, given his already large capacity and the amount of damage done, Luke was unsure, but it had been six hours. Under normal circumstances, that would be about half of his magic capacity.

  He was intending to wait for 24 hours from when he sat down to get the most back he could, but he began to hear rustling of the woods in the distance, across the clearing in the arena. Luke knew that meant the fraxion was back, since no living thing existed anywhere he'd managed to travel to on this planet besides the trees and underbrush of the arena and its combatants and wind was never a factor.

  He listened as his opponent slowly made their way in his general direction, tensed up as his hiding spot was not great. After a few minutes of the rustling increasing in volume, the rustling stopped. Luke figured the fraxion must have entered the clearing. Not long after, he heard a few thumps followed by a fire being lit. His stomach, still not sated from long before the fight, grumbled at the sound of a fire, since he'd been eating fire-cooked meat for years at this point.

  With the distance from the clearing and the sound of the fire, he hoped that his inadvertent sound didn't reveal his location.

  After a few minutes and even fewer additional stomach growls later, it seemed that he would be safe for now, as this fraxion had not found his hiding spot. He hadn't even heard it attempt to check the direction his decayed arm flesh indicated he escaped the clearing in. Luke figured that this new fraxion was either unconcerned about killing him or figured he'd be long gone by now.

  He still wasn't sure why he wasn't killed in the time he was unconscious underground, when the fraxion must have known for a fact where he'd been.

  Over the next few hours, Luke would hear the fraxion occasionally add new wood to the fire. He wasn't sure exactly what they would have been cooking or why they would have had a fire going if not to cook anything, since the sun was always up to keep them warm, but he kept those questions to himself. It wasn't like there was anyone around to answer them, anyway.

  When the fire finally died down, Luke heard the fraxion leave in the opposite direction from his flesh trail and let all the tension in his body fade. With how long he had been awake and the state of his body, sleep - actual, restful sleep, rather than being unable to keep himself conscious - took him.

  When he woke up, he began tending to his wounds, certain he had enough magic capacity to heal himself and still have some more in the tank to escape, if need be. And he was right. After chopping off the decayed flesh of his left arm, he sealed the wound off, as he would never be able to regrow that limb again. He then cut open the temporary skin coverings of his missing left leg and right arm before growing those portions of his body back over a couple minutes.

  He then finished up all the other repairs around his body, alleviating various pains he'd been feeling since the lightning fiasco that weren't an emergency to fix. His burned skin returned to normal, all the torn tendons, ligaments, and muscles were stitched back together, and his his nervous system was fully restored to working order. He knew you could make prosthetics that could interface with nerves left over in the stump of an amputated limb, but did not know enough about manufacturing that kind of thing to craft one of his own, so he also shortened the nerves on his stump to prevent phantom pains as much as possible.

  Then he conjured water directly into his stomach and started cooking a chunk of his leg, which he immediately healed, in the same location the fraxion had its fire. Using the same location would put him at risk of being found due to the smoke, but the ashes would not be an indicator of his presence once the fraxion returned. If the fraxion returned.

  It wasn't long before he knew if it would.

  Before he even finished cooking his leg meat, Luke heard the fraxion returning. He immediately flew up and over the trees, on his way out of the arena entirely, taking his half-cooked meat with him. As he passed the tree tops, flying backwards to he could make sure his opponent wasn't following and wouldn't attack him mid-flight, with a mirror beside him to confirm no barriers would prevent his escape, he saw the fraxion for a few fractions of a second. He couldn't see its face, but he saw its horse-like torso through the trees, moving toward the clearing.

  He made his way out to the wasteland unopposed before setting up a fire far enough away from the arena to see the fraxion coming, finish cooking his meat, and leave long before the fraxion could attack him. Not that that happened, but he was prepared in the case it did.

  Over the rest of the day, he stayed within visual range of the arena, only a couple miles out from it, to see if the fraxion would try to follow him. He played chess against himself alongside other activities he had found to amuse himself over the years. He had only ever played chess a few times before coming to the arena, so he figured the chess heads back home were very frustrated with him every time he did. But, even with the distractions to keep himself sane, he never saw this new fraxion leave. Granted, the arena was massive compared to the distance he was from it, but what confirmed the fraxion had stayed inside was the intermittent smoke columns from additional fires being made.

  It seemed this new fraxion was here for the long haul, like he was, or at least was attempting to put up the appearance that that was the case.