Chapter 2

Walking up to the seated monk, Mikey lowered his belongings to the floor and joined him on his laid out cloth, taking a spot right in front of him. "Hey can I ask you something?"

"What is it you seek little one," the monk said as he opened his eyes to stare at the curious young man in front of him. He was wearing the traditional monk clothes that you would expect from television, a shaved head that was well polished, and most importantly he had a kind and understanding smile.

"I was hoping to learn about your beliefs," the round teenager said as he tried to lean in closer without upsetting his stomach.

"What specifically would you like to know?" the monk responded, closing his eyes with a wrinkle

"I recently had an experience related to death, can you tell me what you think comes next after our time here has passed?" Mikey asked

"From the burden you carry I can only assume that you are a mage?" the monk asked while he gestured to his pack.

Mikey scratched his head as he answered back, "Not yet, I'm still in training right now. Although that reminds me. I also don't know how I feel about having to take the life of another."

"I think I’m starting to understand. The best way I can put it is that existence is a cycle that will endlessly turn. Death gives meaning to life, just as how life gives meaning to death. It is natural to mourn for the departed but one must understand that death is just as natural as living."

Mikey nodded unsurely as if trying to wrap his head around the idea.

"But there is no need to worry, child, for the body is only a temporary vessel for the soul. The soul itself is eternal, once the body dies the remnants and intent we create are released and recycled back into nature while the spirit will go to the next world," the monk said as he gestured to his surroundings, specifically to that of a weed that was growing beside him when he saw the boy look confused. "Take this small plant for example, despite it being so small it is filled with the intent of the world. Intent is the spiritual force that binds us and the world together, the birds, the plants, the rivers, even mountains are considered to have intent. We wish to leave an intent that creates a more beautiful world for those that follow."

'This intent thing, is ringing some bells,' Mikey thought. "So what about people that have died, can they be returned to the world?"

"Maybe one day but, I think that will be a sad day for so much of the beauty of this world comes from life’s ephemeral or fleeting nature," the monk declared.

It didn't satisfy his curiosity, but he guessed that that was enough of an answer for the time being. He was sure that reincarnation was a thing in this universe seeing as magic existed but how would that apply someone from another world.

Looking at the monk he asked something else, "Mister, do you happen to have any talismans that I can see?"

He nodded before reaching into his robe and pulled out a paper talisman, "I do in fact have a few for sale, this one is a good luck charm for safe travels."

Mikey took the extended charm into his hands with the utmost care.

The tag was filled with egyptian hieroglyphics written in a pattern that would have made no sense if he tried reading it like he would in his basic symbolism class but the veins that ran through it said it worked. The mana flowed through it just like the talismans he had received with his pack.

'So it’s just as I thought, there are multiple magic systems in this new world. Even better is the possibility that these other systems could affect a concept like luck can be improved. That means I could use these talismans to improve my strengthening ability,' concluded the lovably large teen as he observed the tag with care.

Although this was the first time holding one since his transmigration, Mikey was familiar with talismans from old earth. Like most young men, Mikey went through an unfortunate phase where he believed miko’s were the coolest thing including their fashion at least until he found out they were typically female. He had even gotten special permission by a local shrine to make a few charms of his own, so he was well versed in the making of such talismans.

Giving the charm back to the monk he stood up and took out a fifty Dollar bill before dropping it in his cup. "Thank you for the information."

The monk thanked him as Mikey picked up his things and began to walk away. He still needed to get food and start churning out more stock for his shop, but that talisman did give him some new ideas.

After finishing his shopping and quickly making his way back to his apartment, Mikey was now sitting on the floor surrounded by a small hill of crumpled up paper all with different designs scrawled across them.

"What the heck? The monks' talisman worked, why can’t mine? I gotta be missing something." he pondered out loud as he scratched his head before flopping into the surrounding pile of failed talismans. Looking at one of the pieces of rectangular paper, it had the basic characteristics of a talisman, the very center had the name of the deity whose power he had to invoke while on the bottom it had a basic prayer along what he wanted it to do. He tried strengthening it to see if he could give it a ‘jumpstart’ magically, but all it did was increase the paper's durability, making it feel more like cardboard.

It was then that the clouds parted and innovation struck in the form of a snow angel he had made during his very ‘grown-up’ fit of irritated flailing. Mikey slapped himself on his forehead, "Of course! The name of the deity doesn't work in this world because they don't exist here but, how am I supposed to make talismans without a deity? Does this new world even have a local shrine? And if they did, would they even let me make talismans for myself?"

Standing up, he stretched his limbs and walked to the newly stocked fridge. He had spent all the money he had taken with him on materials for potential products and supplies to fully stock the kitchen.

Opening the door of the fridge he scanned the inside for anything new he hadn't tried yet, you never knew how magic could affect food. Taking out an onion from the vegetable compartment he bit into it and immediately spat it out. You wouldn’t have guessed it but an onion still tasted like an onion folks, but it didn't taste as bad as he remembered weirdly enough.

It was already night out so he couldn't be too loud. He paced around the room trying to think of a way to fix his problem. It had occurred to him that these talismans would be a big help to him in his store if they could increase his ability to strengthen items and now he felt like he had tunnel vision on trying to get these scraps of paper to work. What was even worse was that despite the enormous amount of fictional knowledge that said runes could do anything, he had never once heard of a rune script in this world being able to increase something ephemeral like luck before.

He stopped his pacing and walked over to the window by the bed.

Taking another bite of his onion which he immediately regretted, he looked out to see the full moon shine over the citizens of his new home.

"The moon sure is bright tonight. Hmm…" looking at the onion in his hand he noticed that he had bitten to the core, placing it side by side with the moon outside he began to get an idea, "Could it be possible?"

Deciding to give it a try he picked up a rectangular piece of parchment and a fountain pen, dipping the tip of the pen into an ink bottle mixed with drops of his blood, he wrote down the runes for Moon deity or more precisely a rune that referred to any celestial body connected to the rune for spirit and then the rest of the prayer in what looked like three circles around the center to make it look like an onion because why not? He lit up a small candle and some incense that he had bought earlier that day and passed the talisman through the fire and smoke three times before he placed them beside the candle.

All he needed to do now was wait for the candle to fully burn out to see if it had worked. "It should work in theory. If people leave intent and this world’s history matches my own then there should be plenty of intent left in the sky from the believers of the past. Usually in fiction gods and deities gain their power from how many worshipers they have, which kind of lines up with the intent of that monk's faith."

It took fifteen minutes but once the candle's flame finally went out he took a look at the talisman and sure enough it showed veins similar to the one the priests had although this one would have more of a focus on his ability to strengthen things if the prayers worked right.

"Yes! It worked!" Mikey shouted as he shot up to his feet and did his victory dance while holding the talisman. "Now all the parchment and paper I bought won't be put to waste."

He looked over at the boxes of materials he had bought earlier that day. He had two boxes full of paper just waiting to become tags which, if his math was correct, would give him a little less than 4,000 more tags once processed. Taking out about fifty slips of paper he began to go through the duty of repeating the process and then set them on the side until the small candle burned out. Now that he knew he could create talismans, it was time to get to other business.

He took his wooden sword, it was shaped like a Chinese double-edged sword that was common in wuxia novels. Seeing as he was in a fantasy-like world, he hoped that maybe he could use some other fiction ideas, like the air walking since that would make running away much easier.

Sending as much mana into the wooden sword as possible. He planned to strengthen it as much as possible before passing out and letting his reserves increase as he slept, then he would test it tomorrow.

He felt his magic reserves plummet and his vision started to get fuzzy, he just had enough energy to clumsily throw himself on his bed with one final thought, “I will be the greatest craftsman this world has ever known.”

It was several hours later before he woke up again and after stretching and making a quick breakfast he got his supplies and headed outside. Today was reserved for training in a few new magical techniques, just because he didn't want to fight didn't mean that he was opposed to learning some of those fictional abilities.

He had the mage pack that he had won yesterday strapped to his back, which was almost the same size as him height wise. The young teen had only briefly looked at the contents yesterday before he started to make the talismans.

He arrived at practicing area 0-B, a park-like place reserved for students that was only a few blocks away from the school. Luckily there was no one there, but that wasn't a surprise since it was barely five AM on a Sunday morning.

Unstrapping his backpack, he decided to get a workout before starting his experiments.

Mikey, who had the memories of many a fictional tales, knew that this was usually the part where the protagonist would say something motivating and start an outrageous training program, usually involving running dozens of miles or doing hundreds of push-ups using pure strength of will but unlike the people in those questionable stories, he was still human. He was only able to do two laps around the small clearing before he had to rest, and was only able to do three and a half push ups before his body refused to get off the ground.

He turned himself over to stare at the sky from his place on the damp grass, a heavy amount of sweat was dripping off him. "Training is hard, this sucks. Flippin Main characters and their wills of steel, this just proves that I’m a lover not a fighter. Still, I should at least be able to run away from danger."

Struggling to his feet, he dragged himself to his pack and unzipped the opening before proceeding to turn it over, so all of the items fell to the ground. He organized it into groups to get a better look at what he had to work with.

The technology level of this world is confusing because guns exist but throwing knives and blades were more popular for the amount of space to place enchantments and runes. Same with transportation being mostly magical carriages despite early iterations of cars being around for those not as confident in their magical strength. So his pack was a little all over the place.

Eighteen small throwing knives, thirty weird stone tiles, fifteen explosive talismans, twenty flashlight talismans, ten tiny gems, five spools of magically treated wire, and a large medical kit.

Taking the large medical kit that looked like a rectangular green leather bag with a red cross on the front he opened up to see what it contained.

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Twenty blood replenishing Pills, five ration bars, fifteen bandages, two disinfecting wipes, one healing paste, and one set of surgical tools. Mikey took a single bandage to see if he could strengthen it.

Looking closely, he could barely see the tiny gray veins that would be receptive to his technique.

"So it isn't just weapons and armor that can be strengthened, but also things like this. But what could upgrading something like this do, since it has no point being tougher. Still I should try it since it's so small," the chubby student said as he began to strengthen the small bandage.

Running his magic through the grayed veins he started to grow familiar enough with the process that it takes hold without much fight or at least the first one does. Kenji feels the absorption or maybe it would be better to say the conversion of that intent into the strengthening of the bandage.

"Vitality? No maybe stamina or regeneration. It should be about health or something like in those games or does this mean something else. Another thing is that some of the strengthening points along the veins needed to be filled while reaching the next level. Does it have anything to do with the quality of the item or just the item in question. Oh well, only one way to find out?" he said with a shrug as he proceeded to strengthen it to the highest level possible.

Staring down at the normal looking strengthened bandage between his fingers he wanted to test out the effect it had gained after filling a vein but didn't know how since he was unharmed, and he was not about to injure himself just for his curiosity.

Taking a couple more bandages he decided to strengthen them as well since he had plenty of time.

A couple of minutes later, after many failures he finally had two more bandages with one vein completely filled and a bandage with three veins filled giving it three effects related to recovery, assuming mikey is reading the veins correctly.

"So the talismans really did work, although I had to use ten just for this one bandage alone. Perhaps I should make stronger talismans in the future."

He gently picked it up and inspected it before commenting on his latest discoveries, "Wow, so it gains an effect every time I fill a vein. The ability is also related to the intent infused into the item. What would that mean if I fill all the veins? Plus those skills, if I'm feeling them right, are incredible. If a simple bandage is capable of converting mana into healing magic then it would be a huge selling point to mage teams that don't have a healing specialist on the team. Looks like I found my first product for the store,"

He wanted to experiment some more, but right now his reserves were already at half capacity and he still wanted to test at least a few fiction ideas.

Getting into a stance he slowly began to go through the steps to draw mana to his feets but didn't go about applying any magic just yet. Once he felt that he had a clear grasp on the idea he shoved his mana downwards. He felt magic leave his body like whenever he strengthened an item, but this time he just felt it was being expelled from his body before his vision suddenly shifted.

One second, he was standing next to his pack on the ground, next he was flying 10 feet away covered in smoke, worse yet was that the sky had decided to switch places with the ground. Mikey's only thought was, 'well that was effective,' then his face planted into the ground so hard some would think he took a certain rap song’s lyrics too literally.

He saw stars and it left him dazed for some minutes, he touched his nose and saw his fingers covered in blood. "Well I still bleed red. That’s good to know but at least now I can test one of the bandages."

Taking out the first one he had created he took off the metal piece keeping the roll together, and after wiping his nose of some blood, he wrapped it around his face like a kid trying to dress up as a mummy for halloween. He immediately felt a small piece of mana get sucked into the bandage, and with a loud crack, felt his pain lesson by some degree. "Oh! So this is the effect of a bandage with one vein filled. Wait, does this mean that all special effects need mana to activate?"

The small teenager decided to leave those questions for later when he wasn't suffering from a concussion or possibly worse.

Staggeredly walking over to his pack he began to inspect the rest of the items and strengthen at least some of them with the remainder of his mana.

Flooding them he took notice of how simple it was to strengthen an object compared to how it was a few days ago.

He stopped before he could go on any longer since he was dangerously close to losing the rest of his mana from strengthening all of those items and the magic experimentation.

"However there is still one thing I want to test, and I should have enough mana for this," he said as he went to his pack and got out a small red bag that was tied with a string. Unwrapping the string, he opened it and saw dozens of cheap pieces of jewelry inside, most being made of cheap plastic or colorful stones. There were rings, bracelets, necklaces, even some earrings since he wanted to test out what effect they might have once he leveled them up. He had almost a hundred different pieces to test and they only cost him fifty cents each.

This specific idea came from a common trope in fiction where varying accessories can be enchanted to increase an attribute or provide a passive boost or strengthening to the wearer. While accessories like that are sold in this world they are few and far inbetween due to the rarity and value of the resources required to make such an item. Cheap plastic and glass are not those kinds of resources.

"No special attributes huh?" Mikey commented upon seeing the fragile vein structures that interlaced through the small glass ring he held.

Carefully pulling his mana through the veins while filling whatever metaphysical cracks the piece possessed. He fumbled around for a minute with his mana not taking hold of anything before deciding to fill one of the large metaphysical cracks in the veins with a capillary made of his own mana and something clicked. The piece could now hold his mana adding to his reserves.

"Nice," he said as he slipped the glass ring onto his finger and immediately felt his mana fill up. Taking it off he felt it leave him again, "So the boost only works when I’m wearing the item. Figures. Still with more of these rings I could strengthen more stuff at a faster rate, I hope I can create one that will boost my mana regeneration."

Throwing everything back into the pack, he decided it was time to explore a little more about the history of his new world. Plus he needed to know if there was any chance that he could get out of being a contracted mage in the first place.

"To the library!" the excitable round boy shouted to no one in particular. It was an awkwardly quiet fifteen minute walk where he kicked several rocks until he hit a particularly big one and stubbed his toe.

He seated himself in one of the long wooden tables in the public library completely hidden by the small hill of books that he had gathered. Mikey could hear giggling around him, glancing up from the notebook he had been writing on he spotted a couple of elderly women pointing at him while covering their mouths. He supposed that the sight of a slightly overweight teen surrounded by books and studying so intensely would be pretty funny, especially if he kept swinging his legs which couldn’t even reach the floor.

There was a growing list of things Mikey wanted to do. Convinced he was in some poorly written fiction, he wanted to protect himself from whatever messed up scenario the plot would drag him into. Categorizing his priorities he decided first to work on his speed, if only to escape dangerous situations.

I'll practice air walking, and some sort of speed enhancement spell until I can effectively dodge higher-level opponents, Mikey thought as he wrote it down on a pad of paper.

Second he decided to focus on recovery, If I'm ever unable to escape healing spells would be a huge help. I'll have to make sure to find a book of spells for that later.

Hand-to-hand combat was third on his list titled Super Survival Tactics. If I'm forced to fight an enemy, then I should be able to stall them until reinforcements come, or at least until I find an opportunity to escape.

Thanks to his chunni martial arts phase he had some practice in the art of fighting, which several white belts from the local dojos of his old world can attest to, and thanks to his magical selves memories he was also fairly skilled in the schools self defense style, so worst came to worst he had multiple references to work from.

The last order of business was finding a safer place to live, or at least moving towards the outer part of town. Mikey didn’t want to take a chance on having his home getting destroyed in whatever shenanigans are gonna surround the academy.

I also need my own place in general, maybe I can move to Minnesota, never heard of anything happening there. But to do that, I'm going to need money and a lot of it, he thought.

Looking at the books around him an idea hit him with all the subtlety of a metaphorical bull in a china shop, maybe I can write and sell novels. This world seems to lack all of my favorite stories. Of course I'm going to need to change a couple of things that they might not understand but I'm sure that I can at least sell enough to make a living.

"Now then, it's time to start studying," he said with a determined look, eliciting more light giggles from the surrounding older women.

He spent the next hours looking through books having to do with medicine, plants and herbs, crafting, law, and even just children's books, since anything having to do with mana had been locked away in the magician’s library that was located in the school itself.

It was only when his stomach let out a furious roar disturbing the nearby table occupants that he finally left the library.

Looking at the position of the sun, Mikey estimated that it was around four in the afternoon. He wandered the food stalls in the market area just buying small things, wanting to test everything.

Finally, he arrived at a very familiar noodle stand, it was just like the one from his favorite stories, thankfully there was no one with a protagonist hair type sitting there.

Seeing a free seat, he plopped down and looked at the menu.

A young brown-haired girl smiled at him and asked in a friendly tone, "What can I get ya?"

"That spaghetti and meatballs seems to be calling my name" he said as he got out the money from his wallet, it was about five Dollars per bowl.

"One bowl of the house special," she called to the back of the stand. She didn't say anything else as she went back to cleaning the counters letting Mikey fall back into his thoughts. He didn’t want to mess with the plot too much but these kinds of stories were notorious for having a spot with amazing food the main character would frequent.

Five minutes later a bowl of spaghetti and meatballs was in front of him. It was so full that it took skill to eat it without spilling any of the precious food onto the counter. Taking a fork he began to eat it slowly, trying to taste every single noodle and every drop of sauce until it was all gone.

"That was good." he said, high on pure deliciousness.

"I'm glad you enjoyed it," The joyful lady said as she watched him in curiosity

"Thank you for the meal," he bowed to her before hopping off his seat and began to make his way down the street. However before he exited the stand he stopped and stood there conflicted on what he should do. With a sigh he turned back around and opened up his dumpling shaped purse and took out 100 Dollars before placing it on the counter.

The young lady looked confused, "Do you want another bowl?"

"No. …Yes," Mikey responded to her, "I do, but not for me."

"Okay, so who's this going to?" the girl said as she took out a notepad to write down the order.

"Do you know a kid that always yells about being Chieftain of Cahokia? Give them to him if he is ever short on money," the small student said as he began to head back out again.

"Atlas? Why would you do that?" she said shocked that anyone else would do something for the small boy who was practically family from how often he ate there.

"The future Cheiftan shouldn't miss a meal," was all he said before walking away. He could be wrong about Atlas being a protagonist but if he was then at least he helped out young kid with grat aspirations. He was cautious to interfere with anything having to do with the potential protagonist since he knew that every single death, every single moment of sadness, and every dangerous situation that the kid would find himself in would ultimately shape him into the great hero that he was destined to be but-

kids need to eat.

Taking a stroll back to the practicing area he took out his wooden sword and stood in front of a set of three large wooden posts in the middle of the clearing, "Now then, I should really get back to training."

He took the strengthened sword in his right hand and swung it as hard as he could in a downward slash. The sword smacked against the wooden post and amazingly left a small gash in the bark of the wood. Quickly inspecting the sword Mikey noticed that it didn't have a single mark on it proving the effectiveness of his strengthening ability. Now that he knew that his sword wouldn't break, he got into an odd looking stance, and began to go through the different stances from his favorite shows. This particular form was inspired by that one show that was set in space with the really cool laser swords.

Constantly moving shifting from spot to spot against his fiercest foe yet, the evil post of doom. While slightly silly Mikey was starting to pick up on which strikes left deeper marks and if anyone around claimed he was making the humming noises of a laser sword while practicing then they were a lying liar who lies.

Slash, Stab, Chop, Deflect, Block, Parry, Riposte, and Feint. On and on he practiced until he fell to his knees breathing heavily in exhaustion, his palms were blistered and his wrists stung from the repeated impacts yet, the logs were barely affected, but Mikey was happy at the progress no matter how little it was.

Checking his mana level again, he noticed that it had only grown by a small amount since the morning but it was a great deal slower than when he would use up all of his mana from upgrading. Usually he does a quick two hour power nap and his reserves would be full again with the bonus of it increasing his total reserves.

With little mana to play with and bruised hands, Mikey planted the sword in the ground and started to do more stretching trying to limber himself up. He had plenty of time before he needed to go home, and he was going to use it to the best of his abilities. Sufficiently stretched out, he began to go through some martial arts forms that he copied from that one movie about a kid learning karate from an old man.

Often referred to as a soft style of martial arts involving a lot of palm strikes and sweeping attacks, focusing on either dodging or redirecting the opponents attacks compared to a the blocks and strikes of a hard style. The argument of hard versus soft martial arts still remains in this new world despite one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight Nibilian Family being famous for taking a soft style to its peak and integrating it with their special ability.

By the time that the sun had set, Mikey was exhausted. While the katas were done slowly it was agonizing to maintain a steady rhythm and flow from one movement into another seamlessly.

Arriving back at his home, he took a bath to wash away all of the sweat and dirt from training, and after making dinner resumed his talisman making. He hoped to use them to help strengthen his sword enough that he could fill a vein with mana and give it a special ability.

While he set them to finish, he took a blank piece of paper and began the boring process of trying to rewrite all of the novels that he had ever read. "I think I'm going to need more paper. I also have to remember to sleep early, tomorrow I have school."

Carefully feeling out his mana reserves he could tell they were mostly recovered, "I should probably strengthen more items before going to bed."

The small teenager stood hunched over his makeshift cardboard desk, never noticing the talismans give off a strange aura before stopping.