Jeff woke up from the System induced visions and immediately threw up. His heart beat hard remembering that last memory. The tree person, dryad, ent thing was terrifyingly powerful. It shook him to his core.

He rolled himself over to avoid the mess and nearly passed out again. The pain of even simple movements wracked his whole spirit.

Before yesterday he would have been hard pressed to know what part of him was his spirit. Or if a spirit even existed at all. Now he could unfortunately feel every bit of him that was related to his spirit. It flowed all through him, but was centered around his sternum area. The area of the proverbial heart rather than his physical one.

He felt his torn spirit reach out to the speckles of Myst that hit his skin regularly. He gingerly let his yearning connect to the drops of Myst and brought them in. He wasn't sure exactly what he was doing, like sucking on a cut finger he just did felt natural and made the pain a bit better.

Kazi groaned in his ear. The Spore was probably feeling much worse than him. Could it pass out from pain? He wondered.

In response the Spore brought a blue screen up that he could see even with his eyes closed.

No, I can't pass out from pain, but I'll talk through these screens for now. This takes much less effort.

"Sounds good," Jeff muttered in response. Maybe he didn't need to talk out loud, but it still felt weird to think his responses to the Spore. He was sure it would be natural after a week, but it hadn't even been a full 24 hrs yet. He was still getting used to all of this.

"That hurt," he stated plainly. "Did we at least get something out of all of that?"

Kazi added another line of text then popped up a new screen.

Yes. Your depth actually went up by 2 more due to the Systems meddling. Stretching yourself thin like that seems to have paid off. And you got this.

New Myst Connection:

Survival

New Survival Abilities:

Foraging

You can spot and harvest organic resources.

Tracking

You can see the clues to track down monsters.

Jeff saw one last screen pop up on the side highlighting the stat changes Kazi mentioned.

Spirit - Tier 1

Might : 1

Sense: 3

*Depth: 7

Jeff was confused about getting two abilities and 2 stat points when the reward was just supposed to be a new connection. He forced himself to think the question to his companion instead of saying it aloud.

Kazi, how did I get so many rewards just for bringing my Depth up to 5?

First off, your starting Depth of 4 was unprecedented. I know 1 of that is from our name title that gives +1 to all attributes. I'm sure you have other titles, but that's the only one that is allowed to be active during the tutorial. The other 3 points for depth were probably from your 92% affinity with discs. Having your first connection be so pure is also unprecedented.

The last two stat points probably came from the system's meddling. Your spirit was already strained when it started. Pushing you so close to destruction must had provided some benefit.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Wait, what do you mean close to destruction? Jeff asked, but the Spore continued on with new words popping up on the screen.

As for the two abilities, that's fairly normal when creating a new Myst Connection. Being able to connect with Myst naturally brings new abilities. I read about someone getting 6 abilities with one new connection, but that is extremely rare. Usually a new connection comes with 1-3 new abilities.

Jeff was surprised by that. He thought having one ability was so amazing he didn't think about getting others. Then when he got Disc Manipulation it seemed so similar to what he was already doing with Disc Throw that it did didn't feel like a new ability as much as an improvement to the one he already had.

Now he had two new abilities. He remembered how Hrashtel used the Tracking ability in the vision. He had learned some very rudimentary tracking abilities. Those memories had been lived through during the System vision as well. What Hrashtel did was truly magical, though. Did he really have that same ability now?

Most of his memories seemed focused on Survival itself, but he also saw how the System brought up memories related to his new Gathering ability as well. The System must have guided him toward that ability. Hrashtel’s memories must also have been selected to provide that specific ability.

So what does 7 in Depth give me? It's my highest stat and I still don't really know what it does, Jeff asked.

In a general sense, it lets you do more magic before your spirit feels strained. Having more depth also lets you have more Connections and Abilities. Unfortunately, there's not a hard number, but if your depth is below 10 then it is extremely unlikely to have more than 3 connections. There are outliers that get 4 or 5, but those almost never happen.

What about recovery? How fast does my mana regenerate?

It's best to not think of it as mana. It's not a number that ticks up one point at a time, and once you get to 10 you can cast an ability again. No. Your spirit is more like a muscle. If you go on a light jog and get tired you will still be able to suddenly sprint if you need to. But if you wear yourself out by sprinting till your legs give out it may take a full day to recover. That's basically what happened during the vision.

You might be able to use the occasional ability today, but you better take it easy while you recover.

He accepted the advise and stayed there while letting the Myst continue to prickle his skin. Jeff didn't want to be resigned to just resting all day, though. He decided to try getting up and seeing exactly how he was feeling.

It took him a full minute of grunting and groaning just to stand up. It was weird, cause his body felt okay. It was just his spiritual essence that kept him crippled. He crawled himself away from the foul smelling vomit and then flipped down into a sitting position against a rock.

He looked around to make sure there were no monsters sneaking up on him. He wouldn't be able to fight them if there were, but taking a cursory glance put his mind at ease.

He looked up and got his first view of the foreign night sky. He had no clue how long he had been passed out, but it was still dark. The stars were so bright it took his breath away. There were 3 moons in the sky. One that glowed red and two that looked mostly blue. They weren't as bright and big as Earth's Moon, but they still glowed beautifully in the night sky.

He was curious to know if these moons were also tidaly locked. Did they orbit the planet at different speeds? Why did they reflect a different color from this solar systems star?

Jeff calmed his mind down. It wasn’t time to be geeking out about astronomy. He was certain those questions had answers, but it wasn’t the time to be answering them. He started focusing again on the Myst hitting his skin. He brought each spark of life that touched him gently into his spirit. It soothed his pain ever so slightly. Soon he fell into a type of meditative trance as he used the Myst to patch together his tattered spirit.

He followed his gut and let out a part of his spiritual senses. It wasn't the more flexed, searching version he had used in the forest. This was more relaxing, like letting his eyes lose focus. His sense went farther than it had before and covered the majority of the rocky outcropping.

He felt the Myst as it flowed around him. It swayed in the breeze like a leaf in the wind. Then it would ride against the wind and create small crashing waves in the air. The Myst left alive and it went where it wanted to go. It filled the whole area with a beautiful tapestry of life that only his spiritual senses could see.

He stayed that way as the sky grew slightly brighter and when the clouds rolled overhead. He continued drawing in the Myst as the morning showers started with small droplets of rain. Soon a heavy downpour was falling upon him.

The rain felt warmer than he’d expected. It was humid here near the ocean and it actually made sitting in a rain storm quite pleasant. The Myst danced through the rain refracting light in beautiful, fast falling prisms.

He continued his meditation through the hour-long downpour and when the first rays of sunlight broke through the dispersing clouds above. He meditated till his spiritual senses felt a tickle at the edge of his perception. Something wrong filled that portion of the tapestry, then another and another. It took him a moment to realized the feeling as monsters within his sense field.

He returned to the present and prepared himself for a Monster fight.