“I’m back,” Dylan called as he closed the door.
“In the kitchen.” The words drifted through the house accompanied by the smell of slightly charred meat.
Dylan’s feet were guided by his rumbling stomach. “I thought you said meat supplies were limited.” He found his father hunched over a small portable grill next to an open window.
“Lucked out when I went looking for some of the materials you wanted.” The man moved the cut of steak he’d been working with to join two he'd already finished on a plate next to him and began cooking another. “When I was picking up a few monster corpses, they’d just finished a batch of purification work and were about ready to transport the stuff. Wilcroft in logistics owed me a favor, so I managed to convince him to let me get a share before it reached the distribution point.”
Dylan watched the meat sizzle and asked, “He won’t get in trouble, will he?”
“He’ll be fine. Most of what the town purifies is distributed on a first-come, first-served basis. You just need to leave your name so they know when you got a portion. Each household can only have some once every three days.” He took his eyes off the grill and gazed out the window. “Still doesn’t leave enough for everybody, but it helps spread things around a bit.”
Dylan nodded, but then realized his father couldn’t see it. “So, what is it?”
“What?”
“The meat you’re cooking.”
“Oh, a cut of one of the smaller clay bears,” His father replied. “They seem to be the least affected by any mutations caused by the break, so they’re the focus of the town’s purification efforts.”
“Does anyone know why?”
“Nope, and with everything else going on, there’s no one free enough to look into it.” The man shook his head. “Doubt it’d matter, but that does remind me,” he flipped the steak and then turned to Dylan, “I wasn’t able to get you a clay bear corpse for your cards. They’re all being reserved for food.”
“I understand.”
Hearing the touch of disappointment in the words, his father continued, “It’s not all bad though. You said you were interested in mana cores, and I was able to get a few from just about every monster we’ve had attacking the town, including the bears.” He nodded at the door leading to the basement. “It’s all downstairs with the rest of stuff I gathered. We’ll take a look after dinner.”
“Good.” Dylan smiled. “I hope it wasn’t too much trouble.”
“Getting what I could was easy, but there may not be the variety you wanted. Town’s got plenty of monster materials, but our other supplies are a bit limited.”
“Again, that’s understandable.” Dylan leaned back against the wall. “I don’t have enough Blank Cards for everything I’d like to try anyway.” Especially if I want to save any for Assimilating Void.
The conversation lulled for a moment, the quiet house filled only by the sounds of the meat on the grill and the breeze passing by the window.
“How much longer until food’s ready?” Dylan asked.
“This is the last one. Why don’t you bring the rest to the table?”
“Got it.”
A few minutes later, the two sat down and began to eat, and as they did, Dylan told his father about his day.
He summarized his training and the results he’d seen before moving on to the questions he’d been wanting to ask.
When he mentioned Hensly’s big explosion and Risha’s reaction to the Fire Mage, he learned that the man hadn’t done anything truly reckless or overbearing, but his father told him that he didn’t think the mage would always consider the full consequences of his actions. He was capable and straight to the point, but his seemingly instinctual focus on efficiency rubbed some people the wrong way.
It was only after asking that Dylan realized that while most of the town was grateful to the man, there were a lot of mixed feelings about him among the guard. The gratitude was still there, but for many, it was accompanied by an annoyance with what they felt was an overly cavalier attitude. There were even a small handful who viewed the man’s actions as a way of looking down on the guard as incompetent, but Dylan’s father told him that was nonsense. It was just a few men and women looking for a place to vent after letting the stress of town’s situation get to them.
“Ultimately, Hensly’s given us a lot of support since the break, but his methods tend to favor solving problems over helping people. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Problem solving and providing help aren’t mutually exclusive. It’s just…”
Dylan watched his father take a large bite of his food while thinking about how to phrase what he wanted to say.
“Well, just look at today’s situation as an example,” the man continued. “How Hensly handled the flying monsters was certainly the fastest way to get rid of them all, but the only reason he made the explosion so big was because the creatures were spread out. There weren’t actually that many of them. The guard could have easily handled things before there was any threat to the town. Less commotion all around. But Hensly saw a problem that a quick explosion could fix, so he fixed it.”
Dylan nodded in understanding, but his attention was caught by one of the details his father had mentioned. “If he had to make the fireball that big only to catch a limited number of monsters, wouldn’t that be a waste of mana? I thought you said he was focused on efficiency.”
“To him, that was efficient. Based on our interactions, he values efficiency in time more than anything else, and besides, he’s got some kind of skill that lets him reabsorb the fire he wields to regenerate some of his mana. He probably didn’t lose much.”
Dylan recalled the scene of the blast’s remnant flames being drawn to a point on top of the wall. “So that’s what that was,” he muttered.
“Things are different when he’s in a real battle, but if all he needs is a single explosion, his skill’s enough to just about negates the cost of it.”
“Impressive,” Dylan said. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t jealous. It’d be nice to have a skill to boost my mana regen that’s not directly tied to what cards I play.
As if reading Dylan’s mind, his father said, “You’re just starting out. I’m sure you’ll find more of your own advantages in the future.”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Speaking of that,” Dylan remembered another of his questions, “I wanted to ask your advice about how to train mana techniques.”
After hearing the explanation of what had happened during the day with the Phantom Soldiers, his father raised an eyebrow. “I’m a bit surprised. It usually takes longer than this for someone to experience the initial form of their first mana technique.”
“Initial form?”
“Right, you haven’t covered much of this in school yet.” The man began to habitually rap his fingers against the table. “What’ve you learned so far?”
“Just that after the Tutorial, we’ll have a growing sensitivity to the mana around and within us, and with enough effort, we’ll eventually be able to manipulate that mana to perform techniques that complement our abilities.”
Dylan’s father nodded. “That’s a decent enough summary, but I wish they’d have given you a bit more of an explanation about how it actually works.” He sighed. “Though, I guess techniques don’t usually appear until one to three years after the Tutorial. Probably thought they’d have plenty of time to get into it after you all got back. Anyway, to answer your question, the initial form of a mana technique is basically what it sounds like. It’s the way a technique first manifests.”
Dylan shoveled the last of his food into his mouth as his father spoke.
“We all eventually experience a sudden burst of activity in our normal mana flow that allows us to do things that we previously couldn’t. In a way, it’s almost like gaining a new class skill. It’s one you’ll have to work to fully unlock, but it’s also one that you’ll have more control over. And everyone’s first mana technique is special. Some people call it a blessing from the System, and others call it our innate human talent. But where it comes from doesn’t really matter; what’s important is that it’s always tailored to fit each person.
“You can see that in the initial form you described. You’ve always been a bit in your own head, and now you have a class demanding that you split your focus to simultaneously micromanage different aspects of your abilities. It’s not surprising that your first technique seems to be a mental one that can help you handle your new burdens.”
But if that first time is anything to go off of, it also adds a new burden to my mana issues. “But how do I go from initial form to something I can actually use?” Dylan asked.
“A lot of hard work. You need to learn how your technique operates and how to replicate it on command. Once you’ve mastered that, you start to develop it to better suit your needs as the rest of your abilities grow and change. It won’t be a short process.”
“And how do I get started?”
“The fact that you’ve experienced your technique’s initial form means that form is already ingrained in the core of your mana. You may not be able to control it yet, but it’ll happen again; the more it does, the better you’ll be able to recognize how it works. With enough repetition, you’ll begin to feel how to do it yourself. It’s not quite the same thing, but you can think of it as a baby slowly learning to control their arms and legs.”
Dylan was comforted by idea that the technique was already a part of him; he didn’t need to worry about forgetting how it worked or being unable to find a way to learn it. But now he had a new concern. “Does that mean I won’t be able to control when the technique triggers until I start to master it?”
“That’s usually how it goes.”
“That’s no good.” Dylan quickly shook his head. “When it was active before, it was a big drain on my mana. With all of my other mana sinks, I can’t have that happening outside of my control.”
His father frowned, knuckles hitting the table with more force. “That is a problem.” He hummed a bit. “We’ll just have to see if we can find a way to help you learn faster. Until then I’ll try to get my hands on a mana potion you can use in case of emergencies.”
A small trickle of relief wound its way through Dylan’s anxiety. It wasn’t enough to calm him completely, but it helped him find an anchor. “Thanks.”
“Don’t expect too much from the potion. With the break, I probably won’t be able to get anything beyond the most basic kind.”
“It’s better than nothing,” Dylan said. “Now, do you have any advice on how I can start learning?”
“The most fundamental requirement to mastering a technique is to become familiar with your own mana. How it feels. How it runs. Everything. Only once you’re intimately aware of every detail of its normal operation can you really understand the changes that happen when the technique triggers.”
Makes sense. Dylan nodded.
“Pay special attention to the area around your head. You said that’s where you felt the current before, so that’s where you need to be most prepared to examine any potential abnormalities. But don’t neglect everything else. Just because you only noticed the current up here,” his father pointed to his temples, “doesn’t mean there weren’t important changes happening somewhere else.
“Next, it wouldn’t hurt if you started taking some time during meditation to run extra mana through any areas that seem affected by the technique triggering. So, your head for now. That’ll help prepare those parts of your body to receive excess mana in the future and will smooth the way for your technique’s activation.”
“Anything else?” Dylan asked.
“Not that I can think of at the moment.” His father shook his head. “That’s about all the general advice I can give you. Anything else would be more specific to my own situation and may not actually help. It could even be counterproductive.” The man leaned back in his chair. “I wish your uncle were here. Jack’s always been better at mana techniques than I am.”
“Where is he now anyway?”
“It’s not always easy to get in touch with him at the best of times, but ever since the break, even official communications through the relay can be spotty. Getting a personal message out is probably gonna have to wait until our situation is more stable.” His father sighed. “Last time I managed to get a hold of your uncle was a month ago. He’d joined an adventuring team set to explore a newly discovered challenge dungeon in the wilds north of Donver.”
Isn’t that where Rowan was from? Dylan wondered, bringing up a map in his mind.
Donver was part of an alliance of city states a couple hundred miles west of the Asheford Republic, but since Fairbasin was on the eastern edge of the nation, that meant his uncle was just about a thousand miles away.
If things were normal, the distance wouldn’t actually be that far. With working teleportation arrays and the mana crystals to pay for using them, it would be possible to reach Donver within a day. And the largest chunk of that time would be spent on the road traveling from Fairbasin to Middlepass.
Right now, though, the distance to his uncle felt impassible.
But with his mind having drifted to their closest major city, Dylan found another question. “Have we heard anything new from Middlepass?”
“They say they’re preparing an assault to take back one of the three dungeons around the city, but they’ve been saying that every day for nearly a week. No clue when that’ll actually materialize.” His father moved to start clearing the table. “But enough about all this. Help me clean up, and then I’ll show you what I managed to get for you today.”
The two were quick; it was only a few minutes later that they began descending the stairs to the basement, but his father stopped just before reaching the bottom and turned to look at Dylan with a serious expression.
“I’ve been thinking. I want you to use all of your mana crystals. Make your mana cards and then use what’s left for meditation.”
“But what about the town?” Dylan asked.
“They’re close to compromising on asking for half of the crystals from your group, but like I told you before, I should be able to make a case for you to contribute less because of the way your class can use them. But even if I can’t, I still want you to keep the crystals. I’ll cover what they ask for from my own supply.”
Dylan was shocked. Going against the town leaders’ decision wasn’t something he would expect from his father. “But isn’t your supply what the town’s given you to use in the fight?”
“So what? I’m strong enough to handle most of the monsters we’re facing in single combat anyway. I’ll be fine.”
Most isn’t all, and you’re not facing them in single combat. Dylan wanted to say something, but the look on his father’s face made him stop. He’d never seen the man with such insistent eyes.
“Use them. You need them more than I do. You’ll be on the wall soon, and even if we’re going to try to introduce you all to the defense in the safest way we can, there are no guarantees.” Hands fell on Dylan’s shoulders. “You need more ways to ensure your longevity in combat, especially now that you’ve gained a budding mana technique that could suddenly start draining you in the middle of a battle.”
Dylan swallowed his objections and nodded.
He thought about suggesting that they simply lie about how many crystals he’d earned in the Tutorial. He and his father were the only ones who knew the exact number anyway, and he was confident that there would be others doing the same thing when the town came to collect. But he knew the man better than that. Dylan was surprised enough seeing his father want to bend the rules in his favor; he knew that he wouldn’t break them entirely.
“Good,” his father said. “Now, let’s take a look at the rest of the materials that I got you.”
The two finished the short walk down the stairs and stepped into the basement.