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* Grove in ''[[Vampire Hunter D]]'' is in the latest stages of this.
* In ''[[Death Note]]'' , humans can acquire the ability to see people's names and lifespans [[Deadly Upgrade|at the cost of half their own life.]]
* In ''[[Witchblade (anime)|Witchblade]]'' it is an inevitability that all who are equipped with and use a Witchblade or Cloneblade will eventually but gradually crack and crumble into ash, along with some of it (it's mostly an inanimate device, thus doesn't regenerate). Witchblade itself causes deterioration in a somewhat different way, but it's clearly unhealthy too. To make things worse, it is impossible to remove a Witchblade without slicing off your hand and wrist with it (if it allows even this).
** If you take it in context of [[Witchblade (Comic Book)|the larger canon]] — that's what happens if Witchblade has only a minute or two to pick the new wielder from those in range: a slightly-above-average human is not up to this, whether physically or mentally.
* ''[[Chrono Crusade]]'' has an interesting variation of this. When Chrono uses his powers, he doesn't suffer any sort of decay -- ''[[Beast and Beauty|Rosette]]'' does, as they're powered by her soul. [[Your Days Are Numbered|In the best circumstances, she's only expected to live until thirty]]. Since Chrono has a [[Bodyguard Crush]] on her, he's not really happy about this.
* In ''[[D.Gray-man|D Gray Man]]'', anyone with a parasite-type Innocence tends to have a much shorter than average life expectancy, even outside of the whole "constantly fighting freaky-ass monsters" issue. Considering that this includes [[Cute Shotaro Boy|the hero]], it's no wonder he's [[The Woobie]].
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* ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'': Psykers get a double-shot of awfulness: not only does the act of using their powers leave the potential of letting a [[Our Demons Are Different|Warp daemon]] take over their body and open a Warp Rift with their mind, but many of the granted abilities take a severe toll on the body, leaving them exhausted, injured through strain and sometimes dead from the brain [[Your Head Asplode|literally tearing itself apart]]. How to avoid this and still be a functioning psyhic? Heavy [[Cybernetics Eat Your Soul|cybernetic augmentation]], or "soul binding" which tends to do things like [[Eye Scream|pop your eyeballs]] and kill all your emotions. All things considered though, this is a small price to pay to potentially be an incredibly powerful being in an [[Crapsack World|unbelievably brutal an unforgiving galaxy]].
* A relatively obscure alternate form of spellcasting in ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]] 3.5'' called chaos casting has this as a caveat : instead of using a spell slot system with a limited selection of spells, chaos casting allows the caster to create every spell on the fly and [[Cast From Hit Points|casting deals nonlethal damage that can only be healed by a full night rest to the caster.]] Except every spell requires a Spellcraft check to succeed (difficulty depending on the level of the spell created), and failing has a chance to apply a permanent negative effect to the caster who either [[Sanity Slippage|slowly goes insane]] or [[Body Horror|suffers awful physical transformations]]. Too many failures lead to [[Deader Than Dead|permanent, irreversible death.]]
* ''[[Stars Without Number]]''/''Other Dust'' has "torching" for psychics out of power, but pushing on, or not properly trained. ItThis causes permanent neural damage that doesn't heal normally, and enough of it leads to death or raving insanity. While ''usually'' this doesn't happen due to external influences. Right until it did everywhere at once and usually [[Superpower Meltdown|all the way through]].
 
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