Chapter 1

    As soon as I got a vague idea of what happened, and what was going to follow. I sat my ass back on the ground immediately, and tried to enter a meditative state. By the time the entity had finished its countdown, I was as ready as I could ever be. It wasn’t nearly enough to deal with what seemed like an ocean of water trying to stuff itself inside my body. To avoid exploding like an overfilled balloon, I took hold of as much of this stuff, which I assumed was mana, and threw it back everywhere that was not my body: the ground, the wind, the trees and grass, the water in the stream on my left. Finally after the rushing ocean became just a trickle, and I learned to channel the mana subconsciously I allowed myself to pass out.

    I woke up and the first thing I felt was pain. I was sore like I ran three marathons; I had a headache; my stomach was killing me and my bladder was full. Actually that last fact meant that I didn’t soil myself when the mana rushed into my body, so that’s a positive at least. After some time waiting for the pain to go away, with little success, I opened my eyes. The view was magnificent.  I was on a little hill, to my left was a little stream that flowed downhill to get lost inside a gigantic forest that spread as far as the eye could see. On the hill beside the water stream, there was only grass and an enormous tree with branches thicker than my body.

    Before I could even get up from my prone position on the ground something that I could only interpret as a notification appeared in my mind:                                                                                            

Due to your actions during a mana overload you have learned the skill: mana cultivation

For surviving intact and beating the odds, you have been gifted with the skill:  elemental manipulation. It was extremely disconcerting, having all this information rushing through my mind at once from seemingly nowhere.  But it was undeniable that I now knew how to take mana from my surroundings and channel it through my body and back in the environment again. I also knew that channeling mana through my body allowed my mana reserves to increase, that it could reinforce my organs, bones, muscles and that I could use it to replenish my reserves. While Elemental manipulation made me understand exactly how to use my mana to bend the environment to my will. After processing this new information for a few seconds, I took the time to focus, and like I expected this appeared in my mind:

Traits

World traveler: you have walked on many worlds; gain skill allspeak.                                                    

Mana vacuum: you have no limit on how fast you can take mana into your body.  

Skills

Allspeak: understand and speak every language written or spoken as if it were your mother tongue.                                                                                                                                                                           

Mana cultivation: ability to cycle mana within and without your body to increase your mana pool.                                                  

Elemental manipulation: ability to move and control the elements in your surroundings.

   After I examined the information that the notification gave me, I decided to do what all the instructions videos that I ever watched on the internet tell us to do: look for water, shelter and food. Water was already taken care of; even if the water was not good to drink I could boil it with my skill. I should also be able to use the skill to dig myself a little burrow in the ground of the hill.so food was the most immediate of my concerns…there were fruits on the tree that was on the hill and berries in a few bushed at its base but I had no way to know if they were edible or poisonous.

     After several minutes of deliberations I decided not to touch any of them. Thanks to a few application of wind manipulation and a few bowls made of earth that I had created with earth manipulation I had five bowls full of what might be food or poisons. Sitting there in front of these bowls thinking of a solution I take a moment to appreciate the cycling of mana in and out of my body. This moment of reflection make me aware of the fact that each little mote of mana that comes into my body carries with it an impression of where it was before. This little detail is what led me to sit with the five bowls in front of me. I carefully channeled some mana into the fruit of this bowl and take the mana back. It worked! The first two gave very little impression but I clearly picked up the poisonous feelings of the third and I could feel the pure life that was contained in the fruit. After this little experiment I tried to eat the three types of berries that did not seem poisonous to my senses but while I could feel them nourishing my body they tasted bland. The fruit on the other hand tasted heavenly, and I could feel with certitude that all the damage that was done to my body yesterday because of the mana overload was completely healed. But the mana of the fruit itself carried a note of finality to it and I knew without knowing how that the fruit would not heal me anymore even though I knew they would always feed me.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

      Fed and hydrated I was ready to start the construction of my shelter. I first had to decide how I was going to do it and where and from what materials… these decisions were made trivial by my ability to mold earth as I wished. Even the bowls that I used to separate the different berries were quite solid even though they were made from dirt. I decided I would dig into the hill while making sure not to damage the tree or collapse the entire thing on me. To start I spread my mana in the ground under my feet to try and feel where the roots were so as to avoid digging there. as soon as I succeeded I knew thanks to the helpful interface dinging inside my mind along with the associated notification that I gained a new skill: mana sensing: sense everything your mana touches.

      While the information that this new skill was overwhelming I adapted to it quickly enough to use it to analyze my surrounding both outside and inside the ground around me .right now the information that my mind could process was limited, but I suspect that deeper cultivation would increase my skills’ potencies. When I knew where to dig I sat myself in the lotus position and channeled as much mana as my body could take and pushed it in the earth with a very detailed and clear picture in mind. I stayed in that state the whole night.

    Exiting my meditative state made me very aware of the fact that staying immobile through an entire night is extremely painful. But even with the soreness my attention rested solely on the hole in the ground. It was exactly as I imagined it: one room, a bed along one wall, a table in the middle, a few air holes connected to a chimney and a space to cook on the wall opposite the bed.

    Now that all my needs were taken care of it was time to rest and experiment with my magic. But first I planned on going to sleep then. I took my first steps into my new home. A simple thought made the doorway close behind me. The only light that could get in were those of the air holes. But the lack of light did not bother me. I just received mana sensing a few hours ago but I could already use it to replace all my senses with very little concentration. I went to bed with a full stomach and a giddiness that was completely inappropriate considering Earth didn’t exist anymore. Even the gloomy and depressing thoughts are quickly drowned by the fact that I can do magic! ‘This is going to be awesome’ was my last thought before my head hit the rock-pillow and I knocked myself unconscious.

    I woke up a few hours later with a bump on my head, and a gigantic dose of embarrassment. The most important thing to do today was to see if I could control only the four primary elements: earth, water, air and fire or if my ability allowed me to control other things.as it turns out; yes I could control other things. Once I discovered that I could control plants just like any of the four elements, I went a little crazy and put plant everywhere inside my little burrow. At the end of today I finally had the essentials to live by myself in this forest. Food; check, water; check shelter; check. Now that I had access to the fundamentals of my survival, I decided that tomorrow I would focus on my new passion: Magic.

    I woke up, ate one of the apple-like fruit that grows on the tree and readied myself.  I sat myself in the lotus position, something I could not have done before starting my cultivation, and after a deep breath I focused the entirety of my attention on the pool of mana that I could feel  in the center of my being; where my heart should be. In fact once my concentration was great enough I could feel a little pulse of mana that escaped my body with each heartbeat. After simply feeling my mana and heartbeat in unison I went deeper to try to see my manapool from the inside.

    Once inside the pool I could feel that the deeper I went the denser the mana became, and while the channeling exercises served to widen the pool, Nothing I tried deepened it.

    After a few hours spent looking and poking at my mana in its pure state to see how it reacted to certain stimuli. I decided to try and view the mana in the world round me. After taking a few motes of mana and sending them to my eyes I was able to see all the shapes and colors of the world around me. It was only after several hours of staring around me at this awe inspiring spectacle that my stomach growled and that I realized that I had become so lost in my new magic that I completely forgot to take care of myself.

    After eating, drinking and relieving I decided to approach my learning with a little bit more caution. But even now without mana in my eyes I could still see and feel the magic in everything around us. After thinking for a few minutes I realized that the more experienced I got at anything would slowly deepen my mana pool. I also realized that the deeper my mana pool was the more potent my spell, and the sharper my thoughts.

   While closing my eyes I tried to reach to the mana that I could feel around me. I was met with success. Each time I reached for the mana with my mind I got some impressions about where the mana came from, what it was doing but most importantly what it could do. And each new usage that I learned of I would practice obsessively.

    After a week of doing that I started to wonder about the lack of predator animals in my surroundings, this led me to the magical barrier that would make any animal bigger than a rabbit avoid my little hill. After discovering the barrier I spent an entire week just focusing all my attention to learning it, after all a S.E.P field is always useful, unfortunately while learning the pattern of the spell I would not be able to cast it until my mana density doubled or tripled. It was still useful after a few days of tinkering so that the various insects in my surroundings left me alone.

    I also discovered that the entity that sent me here set the barrier to fall approximately a month after my arrival. Learning this motivated me even more to learn all I could about the elements that I could bend to my will.

    This was how my next week of protection behind the barrier went: I would eat a fruit from the tree on the hill and spend the rest of the first half of the day cultivating my mana to increase the size my manapool. The second half of the day, after another fruit, was spent improving my ability to manipulate my environment to deal with any beasts that will surely attack me once the barrier dissipates.

    The last week I reserved solely for meditation; I needed to deal with the grief and sorrow that the death of my home world caused in me. While I had always been apathetic I still loved my family and my only friend. To know that I would most probably never see them again made me cry myself to sleep every night. So I spent the last week inside the S.E.P meditating without any distraction; I didn’t experiment with my mana I didn’t cultivate my mana… I just meditated and thought of everything that I loved about my old world that I was going to miss and let them go one by one.

     After this last week I dealt with enough of my grief that I was feeling at peace with myself and with my new situation. on the last day, feeling the barrier starting to dissolve itself. I felt myself ready to leave my little home but… something was missing. Deciding to trust my instincts I decided to wait another month at most.