Chapter 3: Forket mana, where's my noms?
So. A long time has passed. Of course, since there’s no time function or clock I don’t know how long, but it was probably a long time. I have been used for about 40-odd meals, so that’s 13-ish days if I was being used for 3 a day. Unless forks aren’t used for breakfast, in which case it may be 20 days. Nothing exciting has happened. I’ve diligently been eating food, so why haven’t I gotten something new? It wasn’t kidding when it said there was only a chance for it to happen.
Since I’m not sure if overstuffing myself with mana can make me explode or something, I stopped eating mana, apart from the small amounts I am apparently eating with meals according to the skill description. So, I’ve spent 13-20+ days watching white balls float around with nothing but a few messages saying, ‘you got nothing from doing this! Good job!’
What’s that you’re asking? Can I do magic now? No. I can only presume it’s because I have no control skill, but I can’t move mana, inside or outside my body. Imagine you got a pool of, I dunno… not water coz it’s essential to life and mana isn’t… hmm, how about lemonade.
Yeah, you got this pool of lemonade, and you wanna drink some. But you got no cup, mug, not even a bowl or bucket. What? Use your hands you say? Screw you racist pricks, I got no hands, don’t judge. Anyway, you can’t drink the lemonade. Can’t do a thing with it. So, no magic.
What’s that? Did I forget about experience? I should have levelled up by now? Yeah, I did. Twice. Got 2.5 status points per level. Yeah, you can get pretty precise with your point allocation. Interestingly, I can put points in Durability and hardness, as well as the more generic ones. Being the weird fork that I am, I unhesitantly put points in to even my stats to round numbers, leaving me with 3.6 points, which annoyed me, so I dumped 1.1 into hardness, 1 into durability, 1 into Cha and .5 into wisdom. Unfortunately, I am unable to increase luck, so it looks like it’s going to be stuck like that forever.
Status
Name: None
Race: Living Fork
Level: 2
Experience: 15.52/300
Gender: None
Age: 5 weeks (local time)
Allegiance: None
Fame: None
Strength: 0.0
Intelligence: 11.0
Dexterity: 0.0
Wisdom: 7.5
Charisma: 3.0
Luck: 5.1
Hardness: 15.1
Durability: 6.0/6.0
Mana: 110/110
Mana regen: 0.75/min
Titles
Traits
Skills
Round numbers also makes the maths for finding out how far my vision is much easier! I mean, I could’ve done it easy before, if I had pen and paper so I don’t forget numbers, but – oh wait! – I’m a fork and couldn’t hold a pen if I had one. But now! 11x7.5 is… 77 + 55/10 = 77 + 5.5 = 82.5 then divide by 5 and hey presto, it’s 16.5m.
Now that you, and I, and who am I talking to, wait, I’m thinking, because I can’t talk, Because I Have No Mouth, BECAUSE I’M A FORK! Am bored again, let’s stop this insane internal monologue.
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Fluid of… absorbed
Flesh of… absorbed
Flesh of… absorbed
… absorbed
…
…
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Fluid of lvl 10 slime absorbed
Experience gained: 13.78
Durability recovered: 1.53 (Exceeds maximum durability, reducing to 0)
Skill proficiency increased: Absorb 0.4%, Mana sight 3.2% (Exceeds 100%, reduced to 2.1%)
Skills gained: Mana sight (Advanced)
Traits gained: None
Window will close in 29s
Pain blossoms in my head and blackness overcomes me. Just kidding, I don’t have a head, and the blackness is what happened when I toggled the mana sight skill off. I wanted to be able to control it this time just in case there was pain again. Which, in retrospect, may not have been the best of ideas.
Mana sight (Advanced) (High Rare, Passive/toggled) 0.00% - You are capable of seeing smaller congregations of mana than before within (Intelligence*Wisdom)/2m. Their forms are now more distinct, but still blurred.
I stare, figuratively speaking, at the button which activates my mana sight, literally speaking. I mean, I can activate and deactivate it by willing it, but I can also do it from the skill list. Which I am now staring at while I try to persuade myself it won’t hurt that much.
It doesn’t work. I think of just closing my eyes and jabbing at the skill to activate it, before remembering: I have neither eyes nor fingers with which to jab. So I grit my tines and… give up.
What are you looking at me like that for?
Hey, you telling me that you can knowingly walk into something which you are fairly sure will replicate the most painful experience of your lives? You are one of three, no four things: 1. Lying to yourself, 2. You have crazy willpower, 3. You have never experienced pain greater than a chipped nail or, 4. You are stupid.
I’m not going to simply activate mana sight when-
A twinge of pain jolts me from my crazed monologue as my vision once again blooms with light. And this time, it isn’t just little white balls. But, of course, I am too busy rejoicing the distinct lack of pain in comparison to the previous time to take note of this. Once I finish celebrating and wipe the tears I don’t have from the eyes I don’t have with the fingers I don’t have, I, uh, look around? You can’t really call it ‘looking around’ when you have a permanent sphere of vision.
But lo and behold that sphere is now a dome! Yesiree, and I’m not sad about it at all! Why? Well, that’s because I can SEE THE GROUND! Yes, you heard me, I can see the earth (presumably) beneath me! How you ask? Mana! There is mana dang near everywhere! In the ground! Still some floatin’ around like some sorta magic wind currents! Trees! Wait, trees? I’m outside? Huh. Didn’t expect that.
But the biggest shock comes when I finally look a bit ‘closer to home’, so to speak. After all, directly next to the center of my vision, me -who is by the way seemingly floating off the ground a meter or so, don’t ask me why, I’d probably know if I could levitate – is…
A humanoid figure outlined by the white glow of mana! Yeah, thinking about it, not so surprising. Actually, back to that floating part, why am I doing that? And why is this person not caring about the fork levitating a constant distance from his back? Uhhh…. What?
Looking closer - and yes, I can look closer - I can just barely see a thin stretch of mana above and below me. Looking again, I can also see mana faintly in the shape of various objects. I can vaguely make out the shape of… a squirrel? The heck? Well, it isn’t moving, and looking again, I can see it is standing on a circular… thing.
Hey, I can do shape but not material, got it? I won’t even be able to tell between this person and a statue of him if he is standing still. Assuming the material of the statue contains mana.
Back to the squirrel! It’s still a squirrel. I’m guessing it’s a wood carving or figurine or something. Unless it’s stuffed and glued onto that stand. Can’t tell the difference. That may be awkward in the future. Just imagine,
“Nice statue of a bald dude”
“That’s a criminal, he was impaled.”
“Oh.”
Yeah. Not that I can talk. I would say I’m working on that, but I’m just as likely to get teleportation as speech from this lottery. Or maybe not.
So, back to the humanoid. And I say humanoid because, again, I can only see vague shape. So I probably won’t be able to tell this person from any other person. Well, this is an improvement, I guess. At least I can see the general gist of what’s happening around me. Talking of which, I think we - as in I, the fork and he, the humanoid - are currently moving through a forest. By which I mean he/she/it is moving through a forest with me in their backpack.
Hey hey, I should be able to keep track of time now, if I just count it as a day every time this dude sleeps, right? That’s kinda nice. What’s he doing now? Looking around, I can see a group of four small humanoids.
Which, given my lack of high definition, could mean they are human children, gnomes, dwarves, goblins, halflings or simply short people. Of course, half of those assume this is a fantasy world, but hey, there’s mana, a system thing and I’m a sentient fork. There should at least be dwarves n’ goblins, yeah?
So, what’ll they do? I see, turn around and walk away. That’s cool, I totally wasn’t anticipating my first view of live combat in either life. Albeit in 144p.