"I'm so bored," Pear sighed unhappily to himself as he gazed sightlessly into the dark. "I thought I had it and I could see now, but I can't see anything unless a mana sparkle shows up and they're soooo sloooow! This sucks."

Still muttering to himself, he pulled his wand out and checked his MP

"95%?" he read. "Great, just another half an hour and I can kiss this damn debuff goodbye!"

Waving his wand through the air calling out spells from a series of movies about a secret wizarding world, Pear passed his remaining time trying to entertain himself and with a herculean effort of will, refrained from trying to use his manipulation spells. Finally, the notification he'd been waiting for appeared in front of him.

Debuff: Mana Scorched has been removed. You have allowed your mana to recover naturally without making use of outside methods. As your pool of mana is now refilled, you have lost the effect of the Deubff: Mana Scorched. Condition: Sensitive Channels gained. Sensitive Channels: The channels that mana flows through within your body have suffered from an overload of mana. For a period of one week, each time you use your mana, you risk suffering from the Debuff Series: Mana Burnt again. The chance of suffering from this Debuff Series can be lessened with careful use of your mana.

"Great," Pear muttered to himself. "I can use my mana again, but now I'm risking a relapse of something. Great."

Shaking his head, Pear turned sightlessly toward the wand in his hand before he felt a grin split his face.

"At least now I can play with it though," he chuckled. "And I'm blind now, so I'm not at risk of that happening again, right?"

Laughing to himself at the bad joke, Pear focused on moving his mana in small strands and gathering them together at the tip of his wand. Slowly, one strand of mana as thick as his index finger began to tease itself through his channels and down his arm to gather on the wand. Seeing the multicolored stream gather into a marble sized ball, Pear's grin grew wider and he pointed his wand outward before casting.

"Fire Manipulation," he said firmly.

Pear didn't see the flames shoot outward, but he felt their heat wash over him as the ball of light on the wand turned an angry red and then exploded forth in a cone that shot several feet out from him.

"So cool," he grinned to himself. "I'm going to get the hang of this in no time."

"This sucks!" Pear yelled, throwing his wand across the room as hard as he could. "Why can't I make it do anything but shoot out uncontrollably?!"

He couldn't see it, but the room that he stood in was covered in scorch marks and rounded piles of stone that formed tripping hazards with puddles of water dotting the ground. The only thing he could see was the ball of light that hung near the top of the twenty foot high ceiling as it magically bathed the room in bright yellow light.

"Two days," he griped. "I've been down here for two days and all I can do is shoot magic uncontrollably or make into a ball!"

Scowling at the ball of light, Pear grumbled more before turning his attention to the now familiar notification he'd gotten.

Debuff: Mana Crisped has been gained. Mana Crisped: You've burned yourself with raw mana that was under your control. You must replenish your mana a natural way for the next 1 hour. Skills and Potions that restore mana will not work until you have achieved 100% MP or 1 hour has passed, whichever comes first.

"This sucks," Pear muttered again before settling himself in for another hour of thinking.

"Okay," Pear said as he stretched his arms over his head, "Attempt to shape mana into more than a marble, attempt #687 or whatever it really is, probably 5 or something, is a go. We're going to be trying to shape arcane mana into a bolt shape and make the Ol' Reliable; the Magic Missile. Test is a go."

With a flourish of his wand, Pear pulled a strand of mana as small as a string from his pool and sent it into his wand, which he began to wave like a conductor at an orchestra. As his wand moved, Pear held the ends of his mana string in place and drew out a long shape that could only loosely be called a bolt. Several inches from nose to tail, the bolt had a blunted nose and no guiding wings at the tail.

Barely breathing, Pear focused on shaping the mana carefully before he breathed out the spell's name.

"Arcane Manipulation," he whispered.

Starting at the end of the string that he'd been leading with, the mana took on a deep purple hue and raced down the string's length like a burning fuse. As the last of the shape turned purple in Pear's vision, the entire drawing flashed brightly and fell uselessly to the ground where it faded away.

"GODDAMMIT!" Pear swore at his latest failure. "THIS IS SUCH BULLSHIT!"

Throwing his wand bodily at the ground and stamping his foot like a petulant child, Pear stomped his way over to his bag that rested beside a floating ball of golden light. Reaching into the bag, he blindly grabbed for one of the rations that Ripspell had stocked for him and began to gnaw at the strange combination of hard biscuit and dried meat.

"Four days, of this shit," Pear swore as he worked through the ration. "Four days of trying to get this to work and I've got dick all to show for it! This sucks!"

As he chewed, Pear turned his attention to his spells and tried to glare the restricted tag off of his Missile and Shield spells.

"Maybe the old fucker was lying to me," he muttered. "Just trying to get me to play his game. Maybe they actually work."

Setting his half-eaten ration aside, Pear moved back to where he'd left his wand and picked it up.

"Shield!" he cast the defensive spell, watching his mana flow out from his wand and shape itself into a series of shapes stacked on top of one another. Forgetting to pay attention to if the spell activated or not, Pear watched as he mana flowed in the deep purple color it took on when he cast his Arcane Manipulation.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

A circle formed nearly instantly with a square forming inside of it and stopping as its corners touched the circle's edge. Within the square two lines split it diagonally into four equal pieces. Finally, with a flash of light, the entire shape flared purple before falling to the ground and fading.

"No fucking way," Pear muttered to himself. "That's how Shield works?"

Pulling another string of mana from his pool, Pear sent it flowing through his wand and drew a circle with it. As the ends connected, he removed his connection to the string and watched as they melded together forming one whole. Excitedly, he called another string together and made the square before crossing through it with another two strings of mana.

Looking at the completed series of shapes, he watched as it flowed together and shifted color between each of the colors of the mana spectrum. Barely containing his excitement, he cast.

"Arcane Manipulation," he whispered. With a silent snap, the entire shape stopped shifting color before the lines flowed toward one another and filled in the space that seperated them. Almost instantly, Pear was looking at a purple circle before the whole thing expanded itself to cover the area around his body in a sphere with several inches between himself and the edge of the sphere.

You've learned the Skill: Mana Shape Mana Shape(Lesser): This skill is most often seen in use by Elementals from the Elemental Planes. Using this skill in conjunction with the Skill: Mana Manipulation will allow you to create and mimic new and unknown spells.

"That asshole didn't even give me all the stuff I needed!" Pear said unhappily. "First it was the Mana Manipulation, and now it's this Mana Shape. Such a dick. I'm going to kick him in the balls when I see him again."

Still grumbling, Pear grabbed his staff and settled it on his back before gathering his things back into his bag and tying it to his belt.

"Now that I know what the hell I'm doing with that stuff, I can start on the actual dungeon," he decided as he made his way through the ruined safe room and approached the door that lead deeper into the dungeon. Confidently, he grabbed the handle and pulled the door open.

Instantly his vision was filled with the purple of Arcane mana as it flowed and swirled throughout the floor. Everywhere he looked, the Arcane mana integrated itself with everything, flooding through the air so thickly that the few, small pockets of green Air mana stood out sharply from the rest of it. Standing in the middle of the room was a massive, swirling mass of deep purple that Pear couldn't help but Examine. As he did, another notification joined with what he saw.

Dragon King's Right Eye: The right eye of the now deceased King of Dragons. This eye is a powerful source of Arcane mana. Dungeon Quest: Claim the Dragon King's Eye has been started. You cannot refuse this quest due to your status as the Apprentice of Theobald Ripspell.

Claim the Dragon King's Eye: The Dragon King's Eye has been placed within the Dungeon of Elementals. The Eye is a powerful source of Arcane mana and has caused the Arcane Elementals to fight amongst themselves for the right to claim the Eye. Remove the Eye from the Dungeon to calm the rampaging Elementals and restore order to the Dungeon.

Reward: Dragon King's Right Eye; Passage to next floor; Arcane Perk.

"Well that doesn't sound good," Pear muttered to himself.

"Heads up, kid!" a woman's voice sounded out from his left.

Turning, Pear watched as the woman he couldn't actually see made her way through the dense Arcane mana as a dead spot with another denser mass of Arcane mana following her. Dodging around him, the woman passed him by, calling "Sorry!" over her shoulder as the Arcane mana impacted the Shield that Pear had formed a few minutes ago. With a terrible screech, the Arcane mana was pulled bodily into his shield and Pear watched as it noticably thickened.

"Whoa," the woman's voice said, out of breath from her running. "What the hell was that?"

"Who are you?" Pear asked as he raised his wand to a ready position. Kicking himself for not taking the time to try to learn his Missile or Bind spells.

"Who are you?" the woman responded.

"I asked you first," Pear said.

"Well, I won't answer until you do," she said. "So that's that."

"What are you doing here?" Pear asked ignoring her refusal to answer him.

"Trying to get past the Arcane Elemental King," she actually answered him in a tone that said it was obvious.

"The what?" he asked, confusion filling his voice.

"That huge thing in the middle of the room," she said, Arcane mana moving as a portion of the dead zone she was pushed it aside while she pointed. "Can't you see it?"

"Maybe," Pear said after peering intently at the source of Arcane mana in the room that still identified itself as the Dragon King's Right Eye. "I've gotten screwed over in the past few days and I'm stuck here until I can get out."

"Damn," the woman said sympathetically. "How bad are you screwed?"

"I'm blind to everything but magic," Pear told her bluntly. "I can only sort of see you because you're one big dead spot in the whole floor. Otherwise, it's all purple from the magic that's flowing and I'm probably going to be sick a few times cause the entire thing is moving like smoke or something and it's hard to watch."

"Do you have food?" she asked hopefully. "I went into the woods my first day in Astrana and fell down a hole. The Dungeon said that I could pop out in a stable exit if I went through so I came inside and that was a few days ago."

"I've got some rations," Pear admitted to her as he pulled his bag protectively to his chest.

"Can I have a few?" she asked that hope coloring her voice strongly as he felt her gaze burn into him. "I've got the Starving Debuff and it sucks so bad."

"Will one work out for you?" Pear asked carefully. "I don't have all that many."

"At this point, I'll eat you if it means I can stop having my stomach try to eat itself," the woman told him seriously. "It sucks cause when I leave my brain's telling me to eat something, but I can't because I'm trying to keep my figure, you know."

"Okay," Pear sighed. "I'll give you one."

"Oh sweet!" she said as he reached into his bag and and pulled out a ration. Without waiting for his hand to extend toward her, she snatched it from him and began to walk away. "Follow me, there's some water this way and it's clean."

Looking where his hand still sat, empty and extended, Pear began to follow the dead spot in the mana toward the promised water. His water skins were almost empty.

"I'm Savantha," the girl called back to him as they walked, her mouth full as she ate the ration. "What's your name?"

"Pear," he answered her as they moved through the dungeon. "What's this place look like to you?"

"Some sort of cave," she said. "It's weird though, the floor and ceiling don't have those pointy bits and the floor is flat. The walls are smooth too. The only features are that door you came through, and the hill in the center that the Elemental King is sitting on. That and the water hole."

"Weird," Pear muttered as she came to a stop and he bumped into her. "Ouch! Can you warn me next time? I'm functionally blind here."

"We're here," Savantha told him. "I usually sleep around here so I can get something to drink when I wake up."

"Great," Pear muttered as he tried to see something different about this area. The ground swirled a mixture of blue and purple in his vision and he assumed that was the water she'd mentioned.

Kneeling beside the pool, Pear dipped his hands in the water and drank a mouthful before recieving a notification.

You've consumed Arcane Waters. Your mana will restore itself twice as fast in environments heavy with Arcane mana until the water fades from your body.

"So Pear," Savantha's voice pulled him from his inspection of the notification, "I was thinking that if we both need to get out of here, it would go faster if we work together. Wanna Party up with me?"

You've recieved a Party Invitation from Player: Savantha. Accept? Y/N

"Sure," he said accepting the invitation. "You watch my back, and I'll watch yours."

"Oh great," she said with a grin he couldn't see. "Cause there's one of those elemental guys sneaking up on you."