“Crap indeed” Mark said with yet another sigh

Noah looked at his cousin add one more sigh to the tally today when he got an idea “Wait can’t I just…” He activated his skill [Water Manipulation] and immediately conjured a waterball roughly 18cm in diameter, he then, like with the fireball, willed more mana into the spell but he noticed that this time, it was significantly easier and less mana-greedy than the fireball spell.

You have acquired the spell [Waterball]

And just like that he got the spell, he checked his total mana and sure enough it only shaved off five points. What’s more is that, the waterball was actually big enough to fill a small bucket up to the brim. “Looks like 5 mana is the minimum for these ball spells and yet they differ in volume, I wonder why.” Noah wondered for a second before noticing that he was actually burning through mana while the spell was idle, it was a small, almost negligible amount of mana but it was noteworthy nonetheless. “Hey Mark! I think I just solved our water problem!” Noah called out to his cousin from outside the bathroom “Open the door and grab a bucket!”

“Okay!” Mark opened the door with a bucket in hand and marveled at the bucket sized waterball floating in midair.

“Cool huh? Anyway, put the bucket on the floor. I’m not really sure if I can aim right yet” Noah slowly floated the ball over to the bucket which took well over 30 seconds and finally cut the mana flow to the spell, the waterball abruptly dropped into the bucket which caused a splash and still ended up soaking Mark “Oops…” Noah said with a wry smile

“Well, I was going to wash up anyway” Mark chuckled “With that problem solved, we can finally go on with our lives.”

“Yeah now go and wash up, I’ll get your luggage up here while you do.”

“Okay, thanks.”

After that, Noah and Mark washed up and went to bed hopeful for the new day, one of them at least. The other was on the top bunk busy thinking about what could have been if the apocalypse hadn’t arrived and could only sigh.

----------------------------------------

The next day, Noah woke up to the light of the sun shining directly on his face “It’s going to be a great day, I just know it.” He sat up in his bed and thought about what he should do while Mark was still asleep ”Hmmm… Now is as good a time as any to tinker with some spells.” And tinker he did.

He first completed the ball spells and then went on to the other basic spell he saw when he was first choosing his class. “Bullets huh, how do I even make a bullet. The obvious element to use would be earth but, with how there were differing mana requirements for the ball spells, I’m guessing it’ll be the same story with the bullet spells”

Noah first tried out earth but found that he couldn’t even make the concrete floor budge. “Is it because it’s concrete and not technically earth? Maybe I need more levels in [Earth Manipulation]?... At any rate, guess earth is gonna have to wait till we go outside or at least find a potted plant somewhere in the building.” Noah put earth aside for now and tried out [Air Manipulation]. He first started out with the simple airball spell but this time, tried to condense it into the shape of a bullet which was easier said than done. He was 5 minutes in to trying to condense the air when he got the idea to toggle his innate skill [Mana Sense] on and closed his eyes so that he could focus without any visual stimuli to distract him. This went on for 3 more minutes when…

You have acquired the spell [Air Bullet]

Noah did a fist pump but, because of that he lost control of the spell and the air bullet launched off into the wall opposite to him and made a loud “TACK” sound as it impacted the wall.

“WHERE IS IT. WHERE IS IT.” Mark said as he fell from the top bunk and was abruptly woken from his sleep.

“Uhhh, sorry about that. I lost control of a spell because of a notification and well, dented that wall over there.” Noah said shyly

“So there’s no monster?” Mark asked still quite in doubt

“Nope, just me playing around with spells.” Noah said as he grinned

Mark sighed in relief and sat down beside Noah “So, what’s on our agenda today oh captain my captain?” he said “Oh, and may I remind you that even though there was supposed to be a convenience store on the first floor, it wasn’t stocked yet since there weren’t any tenants to sell to yet so we don’t really have any food right now.”

“Food it is then!” Noah said while rubbing his hands “I needed some target practice for my spells anyway”

With that, Noah and Mark went down nine flights of stairs to the ground floor, they were a little winded but fortunately neither of them was that out of shape and unbeknownst to them, they were already more than humans. With mana suffusing the world, from the air they breathed, down to the very ground they walked on, their bodies were gradually, cell by cell, atom by atom, adapting to mana and making what was once a daunting task like, going down nine flights of stairs become nothing but a light sweat.

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As they approached the main entrance to the building they noticed that there were scratch marks on the glass doors “I’m not exactly sure how sharp something needs to be to scratch tempered glass but it was definitely the right idea to sleep on the top floor” Mark said with a grim expression on his face.

“Yeah, imagine if those beasts caught a whiff of our sent. Glass doors probably won’t protect us for long against beasts that have leveled up a few times.” Noah replied with a bit of gloom in his voice.

“We need to level up too if we don’t want to fall behind and die.” Mark said with conviction and resolutely stepped forward to open the doors.

“Wait” Noah stopped his cousin and said “I’ll go first, since we don’t have a melee fighter with us, me going first is the next best thing besides, you know what they say, the best offense is sometimes the best defense.”

“You’ve got that backwards but I get what you’re saying, I’ll stay in the back and heal you in case you get injured.” Mark smiled and patted his chest “Leave the healing to me, you go get injured”

Noah just smirked at that last bit and continued on outside into the parking lot. As he looked and examined his surroundings, he saw nothing of note and called out “Coast is clear so far.” Mark came running and they both started heading cautiously in the direction of the surrounding forest.

A few minutes later they finally happened upon some fairly obvious tracks, they were deep and a fair bit of distance away from each other so they deduced that it was big and heavy. They followed the trail for a few more minutes until they heard some deep grunts coming from a few meters ahead of them. Noah stopped marching forward and crouched behind a tree.

They peeked around it and saw two massive boars butting heads while another smaller boar stood off to the side with its head held high as if it wasn’t involved in the fight when it was obviously the prize that the two male boars were fighting for. “I don’t think we’ll be able to take them all on” said Mark in a worried tone.

“You’re probably right, let’s go look for something else, something much smaller to start with.” Noah sighed and turned his back on the boars. Although he felt that it was a waste to just leave such premium meat behind, the fact of the matter is that those boars would probably be the ones eating today if they hadn’t retreated.

So, with heavy hearts, they trudged on and tried to find easier prey that could fill their empty stomachs until two hours later when they finally found some food in the form of a berry bush but, before Noah could pick one and put it in his mouth, he remembered that some berries were poisonous. “How could I forget!” he focused on the dark purple berry in his hands and said “Analyze!”

Berry

“Uhhh, I guess a lvl 1 skill can’t give me much information” then, in a bid to imitate what he did with his spells, he willed more mana into the skill until 15 whole points were burned away which left him a little lightheaded.

Elderberry

“Hey Mark, you used to be a boy scout right? Any idea if an Elderberry is edible or not?”

“I was barely one but sure I’ve heard of them, should be good to eat without any problems.” Mark said with a hint of recognition.

With that, he popped the berry in his mouth and savored the flavor, it was a bit bitter but beggars couldn’t be choosers. He and Mark ate their fill and picked the bush clean while using their shirts as makeshift containers for the berries. As they were walking back to the apartment building something occurred to Mark “Hey Noah, just a thought, can’t you theoretically put all these berries in that planet of yours? Maybe you could even plant some seeds?”

Noah abruptly stopped “Mark you are a genius! I was so busy tinkering with my spells that I completely disregarded everything else. I really need to do better, we need to use everything at our disposal in order to survive, like that analyze spell earlier. I should be using it on everything so that I can level it up, speaking of…” Noah focused on his cousin and said “Analyze”

Human - lvl 1

“What does it say?” Mark asked curiously

“It just says that you’re a lvl 1 human, nothing we didn’t know before. But I can imagine where this skill is heading, maybe some time in the near future I can look at the statuses of beasts and people alike without their knowledge.

“Yup and that would both help us choose prey and help is deal with strangers, anyway let’s get back to hunting, I still haven’t seen you get beat up by some lvl 5 rabbit yet” Mark teased as he watched the berries disappear into the little blue marble.

“Yeah, yeah, now let’s go kill some shit!” Noah did a fist pump and said excitedly

They walked on, further into the forest for close to an hour when they heard the sound of a stick breaking and suddenly, a massive figure came charging towards them. Noah immediately used “Analyze” and quickly shouted “Get out of the way!”

Boar – lvl 3

“SHIT SHIT SHIT, do something Noah!” Mark hurriedly got out of the way and said helplessly as he could only heal and not really do any damage, at least not yet.

“FIREBALL” Noah threw a fire ball at the boar that just skidded to a stop after its charge, successfully lighting its fur on fire but, that didn’t stop the beast as it turned around and prepared for another charge. Noah switched over to his most damaging spell [Air Bullet] since fireball just made it mad and waited. He only had two shots of the spell before he ran out of mana so he had to make it count so, he got the bright idea to use himself as bait.

He moved around as much as possible in order to keep the boar’s attention on him and it worked. The boar charged at him while he prepared an [Air Bullet] and once the beast was close enough that he was sure he wouldn’t miss, he fired and aimed for the space between its eyes, his goal was to knock the beast out and it worked! But Noah didn’t completely get away in time and the boar fucked his foot up, he could’ve sworn that he felt the bone crack.

“GOD FUCKING DAMNIT THAT HURTS” Noah screamed in pain

Mark hurriedly tried to heal his cousin but Noah stopped him and said “I’m okay, ugh, just get a rock and smash its brains in until you get the notification”

“Are you sure?” Mark said in askance

“Yes! We don’t know how long it’ll be knocked out so this is our chance.” Noah said while hissing through the pain

Realizing the gravity of the situation, Mark looked for a big enough rock for a minute and proceeded to smash the boar’s head in three times, six times, and finally on the tenth time he got the kill notification along with another one right below it.

You have leveled up!

You have six status points to spend!