Accept Skill: Y/N: Meditation Lvl 0 - (Common)

Through focused concentration, the invisible can be seen, and the broken can be mended. While in a Meditative State, the user will experience a minor increase in their rate of Mana Regeneration. For each hour spent in Meditation, the user's Passive ability to sense mana will infinitesimally increase.

Clover wondered why the System even offered him the option to reject the Skill - who in their right mind would do that? The prospect of increasing his ability to sense mana and his ability to recover it was too good to pass up.

As Clover confirmed his selection, the group, now larger than it had been initially, shuffled out of the apartment complex, thankfully uninjured. Despite their good luck, some looked disappointed. Clover closed the array of blue screens he had opened and wheeled over with Ron to see what had happened.

“I almost wish we had run into something,” Phil, whose name he learned from eavesdropping, said to a burly man to his right. The man nodded.

Clover met back up with Rodger and Seb - the old man. They gave him a rundown of what they had seen inside. In short, a whole lot of nothing had happened.

"Be careful. And tell others about the Safe Zone if you can," Doctor White said, then shook someone's hand. A large assembly of people milled about, cautiously heading back to the Safe Zone.

With six new members, the newly minted expedition group departed, and soon, a blue pillar of light in the sky became visible. Miles down the road, there was another Safe Zone. He filed the information away. If the situation became untenable at the factory, he could escape to the Safe Zone on the other side of the city.

And with that discovery, Clover ran out of productive thoughts to occupy himself with. So, lest he fall prey to the constant swarm of fears in his head, he wheeled over to Ron's side, ignoring the familiar prickle of anxiety that welled up in his chest. He rapidly tapped the arm of his wheelchair and then stopped.

"Ron! I have a question," he said, doing his best impression of a normal and socially adjusted person. He reckoned he did an alright enough approximation because Ron grinned at him.

Ron adjusted the cuff of his cheap suit. "I have answers. Ask away," he said. From his tone, it was clear that he was inordinately happy that someone thought he was a reliable source of information.

The sun rose a bit higher in the sky, casting back the shadows that entrenched their path.

"When you used the Skill Stone, what happened? Did you see anything? How did it work?" Clover asked in rapid-fire fashion.

Clover left out the fact that he had also used a Skill Stone. It wasn't that he didn't trust Ron. It was just that he didn't know who else was listening in on their conversation. Going so far in the name of secrecy made him feel a bit paranoid.

“It was crazy. Some real Matrix mind download type stuff.” He patted his shoulder. “It may not look like it, but I took karate lessons as a kid. I had forgotten most of it, but the System brought it back.”

“Wow, that’s cool,” Clover added, feeling like it was the right thing to say.

"The best way to describe it would be that I fell into a memory, and when I hit the ground, I was back in the Valley View Mall, where I used to take lessons. Back then, all the technique and stuff went over my head, so I'm not sure how the System did it, but as I watched my younger self practice, it all made sense. After a bit, I came to, and suddenly I knew how to fight."

Clover scratched his head. "Thanks for sharing," he said, lost in thought. He was reasonably certain he hadn't been a one-handed sculpting apprentice at any point in his life, so he wasn't sure why his experience had been so different.

Once again, the group stopped as they encountered a medium-sized apartment complex. A man dug a set of keys out of his pocket and opened the door to the lobby. Similarly to last time, a contingent of the group followed, entering the building to search it for danger.

Clover did not follow. He had a new Skill to test out. But before he did that, he asked a question that had been nagging at him for the entire time that he had known Ron, "What did you do before all this happened?" With how he was dressed, he must have had a fancy job - the type smart people worked at.

Ron was silent for a moment. "McDonald's." He readjusted the neck of his poorly fitting pinstripe suit. "I worked at the cash register. But you know, I wasn't going to work there forever. I had an interview lined up at a used car dealership."

“I think you would have made a great car salesman - you look the part.”

They laughed. Clover knew he should be working right now, but he was having too much fun. This was the first time since he had graduated high school that he had had an extended conversation with someone his own age.

“What did you used to do?” Ron returned the question.

"Nothing. I spent most of the summer after I graduated stuck in the hospital; there wasn't much time for anything else." Clover sighed. He was sure that if he tried, he could have gotten a part-time job somewhere, but, at that point, he figured that if he was going to die no matter what, there wasn't much point in spending his remaining time working.

“But after you got better, what did you want to do with the rest of your life?”

Clover smiled wryly. Ron didn’t know. When he looked at him, he probably just saw someone in a wheelchair. He didn’t know that he was terminally ill.

He wanted to keep it that way.

"When I was young, I wanted to be a garbage collector. I knew it wasn't the most glamorous or high-paying job, but that didn't matter. I wanted to do something with meaning. Even if it's not fancy, they make the world a better place every day they're out there. Some look down on them, but no one hates the garbage guy. Plus, the truck looked cool." He looked down at his legs.

"After the accident, that dream of mine became impossible, but from time to time, I still think back on it and wonder what my life would have been like," Clover said with a far-off look in his eyes.

Ron hummed. “Maybe, someday soon, we won’t have to wonder what our lives would have been like - nothing is impossible anymore.”

“Maybe.” Clover looked back up at Ron. “Ya’know, there’s probably going to be a bunch of empty mansions in the city after this is all over.” The thought was somewhat morbid, but he had always wondered what it would be like to live in one.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Catching on, Ron rubbed his hands together. "There's probably a bunch of abandoned sports cars, too," he said in an excited tone.

“You know how to hotwire a car?”

“No,” Ron said sheepishly, “But I totally could figure it out.”

Clover laughed. He enjoyed talking to Ron. Despite their different backgrounds, they both had quite similar personalities. He considered asking Ron to be his friend, but naively asking like that sounded too pathetic and formal even in his own head. He didn't want to ruin the mood. Though, if it was weird to ask, Clover wondered how exactly people became friends. Maybe they already were.

They continued to talk about random things for a few more minutes before they both returned to grinding their Skills.

Excited to see first-hand what [Meditation] could do, he closed his eyes and soon discovered that his eagerness paradoxically made it difficult to enter a meditative state.

Stray thoughts wandered through his head, distracting him.

To his credit, it wasn't that he lacked talent. It was just that these weren't the easiest of circumstances to [Meditate] in. Out on the street, they could be attacked at any moment. He constantly listened for signs of danger, and the anticipation made it challenging to enter a calm headspace.

He opened his eyes and reassessed his strategy. This wasn't working. Clover didn't know much about [Meditation], though; he had gleaned the basics from a TV special he had watched one night when he had been especially bored. Additionally, unlike with [Unstable Mana Bolt] and [Sculpting], the System hadn't elected to cram basic knowledge of how to get started into his brain.

Which he took to mean that he already knew enough; he just had to apply it. Clover reclosed his eyes and did his best to focus on nothing in particular, which was much harder than it sounded. He vaguely knew there were multiple types of [Meditation]; he wondered if they would interact with the Skill differently. He scowled. He had gotten distracted again!

He refocused on his breath's in-and-out motion, following its path through his body.

After persevering for a moderate amount of time, Clover felt something click inside him, and instinctively, he knew [Meditation] had activated.

With each breath, he felt a cold trickle of energy enter his body and disperse itself in previously unused pathways, briefly illuminating them to his senses as they traveled. Coincidentally, just a few seconds after he had experienced his first notes of success with the Skill, he felt a strong urge to scratch his nose.

Like a Tibetan monk, he tried to stay strong and ignore the sensation. However, the longer he ignored it, the more powerfully it nagged at him. Eventually, he broke down and scratched his nose. The minor action was enough to break him out of his meditative state. He opened his eyes with a groan.

Congratulations! Meditation has reached Lvl 1. +1 Skill Points.

Clover took note of his Mana Pool. While he couldn’t precisely measure how much [Meditation] increased his Mana Regen, he could at least get a rough estimate.

Once more, he closed his eyes and focused on his breathing.

Before long, he slipped back into a meditative state. It was much easier the second time around. For a moment, he simply observed, not thinking about what he was seeing and feeling, just noting it.

In this way, he concluded that while meditating, what he had taken to calling ambient mana - the flows and currents he had sensed when he had first put a point into his Magic Stat were much more apparent than usual. [Meditation]'s description hadn’t explicitly noted that effect.

He wondered if the System had omitted any other important details in the description of his other Skills. It probably had! He became so caught up in his theorizing that [Meditation] deactivated itself.

Congratulations! Meditation has reached Lvl 2. +1 Skill Points.

He squinted his eyes. Some amount of stray thoughts and attention didn’t break the state, but it was a delicate balance.

He had recovered one Point of Mana.

Even though he had done nothing but fail, Clover still felt he was making progress. However small that may have been, he was more skilled than before.

For the third time, Clover dropped back into [Meditation]. A slight whispering wind blew across his hair, distracting him. He did his best to ignore it and instead tried to focus his perception on the ambient mana.

Clover did not like silence.

He soon discovered that, for some reason, it seemed [Meditation] held more leniency in its limits when he was observing the ambient mana. He could divert a sizable amount of his attention to tracking it without the Skill failing.

With nothing else to do, he peered into the beyond. To his weak senses, the ambient mana tended to blur together, but if he focused, he could partially differentiate separate bands and blobs of energy. He practiced tracking them.

The wind increased in intensity by a negligible amount.

It was enough to shake him from his meditative state.

He opened his eyes. The wind stopped.

Congratulations! Meditation has reached Lvl 3. +1 Skill Points.

Clover rubbed his chest. It was obvious in retrospect that his magic-related Skills Leveled much faster than [Sculpting]. He wondered why.

Slightly banged up but in good spirits, the group exited the building. Once again, Clover and Ron approached to see what had happened.

From what he managed to overhear, some Deep Ants had hidden themselves within the walls of the apartment hallway and ambushed the group when they went in. No one had been killed in the encounter, but some were injured.

In reward for killing the monsters, a man who carried a shovel over his shoulder - Clover didn’t know his name, had gained a Skill Stone that gave him access to some sort of earthen magic.

The inhabitants of the apartment complex followed the group out of the building. Intoxicated by the tales of gaining magical powers, some decided to join the group as they continued heading west. In contrast, others decided to head back toward the Safe Zone.

Slightly paranoid, he glanced down at his electric wheelchair. Out of his max range of twelve miles, it still had a good amount of charge left - the majority. However, once it ran out of charge, he didn't know what he would do. Or, even before that, if it malfunctioned, he would be stranded.

It was a constant stress that he had tried to ignore. But, he knew, eventually it would happen, no matter what he did. Before that day came, he needed to raise his Level. That way, maybe if he was strong enough, he could magic his way out of the problem.

Now, with an even larger group, they set off, venturing nearer to the city's commercial district.

They didn’t get far.

“Wait! Everyone stop!" Dr. White said in a mix between a whisper and a yell as they turned a corner, revealing a new stretch of road.

The group stopped with varying degrees of quickness.

In the middle of the road, blocking their path, was a golem made of rubble and debris stacked together in a vaguely humanoid shape. A scattered layer of deep green moss somehow held the golem together. And, in its center, wedged between a stack of precariously balanced boulders that made up the golem's chest, a jagged blue crystal rested.

Clover gulped.

The monster was tall, more than twice the size of a man, and wider than a pickup truck. Above its head, the System displayed its Level in blood-red letters, deeper and darker than any monster he had seen before.

Old Golem - Lvl 6.

Not having heard the warning, a middle-aged man wandered out from the around corner with a relaxed gait. He froze as he saw the behemoth ahead of him, his eyes almost comically wide. The golem turned to face the man, rocks grinding against each other in an unnerving sound. A light dusting of dirt fell from its torso with the movement.

The Old Golem stared at the man.