The milky white sky above Mikayla greeted her as she regained consciousness, roused by a stinging pain in her arm. “What . . . what happened? Did I pass out?”
Her throat was dry and scratchy, but that was the least of her worries as she picked herself up and discovered that about half of the lizard’s head was still wrapped around her arm. “. . Oh, this is going to suck,” she groaned, gripping the lower jaw and carefully, gingerly, removing the scaly head from her arm so that she could inspect the damage.
Mikayla didn’t have much reference for ‘giant lizard bite injuries’, but it didn’t look that bad? There were several wounds, but they looked shallow. Even if they were very painful and bleeding quite a lot . . her arm was absolutely caked with blood and she didn’t know how much of it was hers and how much was the gecko’s.
Gritting her teeth, she ripped off a strip from her shirt and wrapped it around the injuries as a makeshift tourniquet. It . . it was pathetic, and she was probably just asking for it to get infected, but it was the best she could do with no medical supplies.
“Well, I’m already counting on finding stuff to keep me alive at the Spear. Let’s just add medical supplies to that list, shall we?” She forced herself to stand up. Every inch of her body ached, but she knew that if she just stayed here and felt sorry for herself, she would die. And that was not okay.
Her stomach rebelled as she steadied herself, looking around and confirming that she could still see the towering monolith that was Astralia’s Spear between the tree canopies. It was time to keep walking . . and to really desperately hope that there weren’t any more monsters nearby enough to be lured in by the scent of blood.
But every step was painful, every motion made her head spin and her guts want to expel themselves from her stomach. She gripped her right upper arm with her left hand, hoping that pressure would make it scab over faster. It only took a few minutes of this misery before her resolve to suffer in silence broke, and she moaned, “Why do I feel so awful?”
[STATUS: RADIATION SICKNESS]
“Radiation . . what?” She blinked dumbly at the words. “Okay - okay! Firstly! When the hell did I get radiation sickness? Secondly! I should not have had to ask for you to tell me that I have radiation sickness!”
Was it her imagination, or did the screen seem to wilt?
She wracked her brains, and recalled the green energy bolts that the gecko had shot at her from its eyes. Had that thing been nuclear powered? That was . . god, for all she knew, that was normal in this hellish place.
With a groan that was part aggravation and part pain, Mikayla checked her Mana bar.
[MANA: 121/1200]
“. . Good enough. Mana Assistance, Black Knight!”
Three seconds of transformation sequence later, she was once again clad in the black-and-red armour. “Girl? What happened? Did we move?” Nocturnus asked, sounding disoriented.
“I have a lot of very pressing questions, and apparently I can only talk to you while I have Mana to spend. Which I probably should have figured out since I’m using Mana Assistance to activate these gems,” Mikayla groaned and rubbed her head, not paying any attention to how the armour seemed to phase through itself and permit her to touch her own forehead. “I am not on top of my game today,”
“You’re actually using Mana Assistance?” Nocturnus scoffed. “That’s for children and idiots who don’t know their hands from their feet,”
Mikayla’s eye twitched. “Yeah? Well I got to this world today, in case you forgot that little detail! Mana as a concept is new to me! I don’t know a damn thing about how to use it, and if that makes me an idiot, what does that say about the asshole using my Mana to laugh at me instead of helping?!”
“. . You put points into Willpower, didn’t you?”
“Three of them!” Mikayla confirmed with a sharp nod. She forced herself to keep moving as she talked, already regretting her decision to let Nocturnus talk to her again. Knowledge is power, no matter how painful to acquire.
“Oh dear. Alright then . . that aside, what do you mean, Mana is new to you? You’ve never used it before?” Nocturnus’s voice had turned baffled.
A twinge of pain from her arm had her ignoring the question and snapping, “Would it kill you to show some sympathy for my injuries?!”
“That little flesh wound? Don’t be dramatic, I once had half my arm chewed off and I still ripped the beast that did it into splinters. What sort of warrior are you to make such a fuss about that?”
Mikayla’s eye twitched. “Let me make one thing very, very clear to you, you bastard! I am not a warrior! I’m a goddamn history student! I’ve never seriously fought in my life before today! Frankly, I’m surprised that I won two fights with giant wild animals at all! We don’t have magic in my world! We don’t have monsters! We don’t fight! We don’t need to! So get off your high horse and tell me something useful or I will turn you off and save my Mana for the next fight!”
“I . . I see,” Nocturnus said, digesting her outburst. “I apologise. The life that I had grown accustomed to living . . such encounters as you have had are mundane, relaxing, even, compared to some of the greatest foes I once faced. I had forgotten what the life I live looks like to those unaccustomed to it. I will endeavour to be more considerate of your needs going forwards,”
Mikayla breathed, forcing her ragged emotions in check. “Okay. Good. Thank you,”
“Still, it cannot be the case that there is no magic in your world,” Nocturnus seemed to want to distract her from the pain and her unbalanced state of mind. “All living beings have Mana. Including you, or you would not be able to fuel the Core Controller,”
“Huh?” She frowned. “. . You’re sure I couldn’t just be being given Mana by the System?”
“No, that’s not how the System works, not unless a Faerie created a special exception for you. No, I think it’s more likely that you always had Mana and your world’s society simply doesn’t have the knowledge of how to consciously use it,”
Mikayla mulled this over. “Maybe?” she hesitantly admitted after a long moment. There were hundreds of old folk tales about wizards and shamans from all over the world. Perhaps it all wasn’t as baseless as most people believed. “Well, whatever, that’s not important. I have Mana and don’t know how to use it. Speaking of things I don’t know how to use, what the hell is the deal with this System thing?”
“Hm?” Nocturnus sounded confused for a moment, then made a noise of dawning realisation. “Oh, of course! How foolish of me. My apologies, once again, I should not have overlooked that. The Ataraxian System is so ubiquitous a part of life that I forget it is not simply a natural thing. Of course you didn’t have it where you came from,”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
“It’s not? Someone made this?”
“Aye! The origins of the System date back two thousand years, to the Age of Chaos -“
“Wait, wait wait wait,” Mikayla waved her arms to stop him, shaking her head. “As interested as I am to hear this, I’ve only got so much Mana before I can’t talk to you anymore. I’ve learned my lesson about letting you go on about less important things like monster kings and where the System came from. Skip to the part that’ll help me use it right now and deal with my injuries, or at the very least the Radiation Sickness I got from that gecko. You can explain the rest when we’ve got time for idle conversation, okay?”
“Ah, fine then. Have you determined how to view your profile?”
Mikayla shook her head.
“Simply ask for your profile,”
“Alright. Can I please see my profile?”
[NAME: Mikayla Aiadon
LEVEL: 4
RACE: Human
STATISTICS:
HEALTH: 651/1000
MANA: 118/1200
STAMINA: 370/900
STRENGTH: 9
DEXTERITY: 10
CONSTITUTION: 10
CHARISMA: 11
INTELLIGENCE: 12
WILLPOWER: 13
UNUSED: 2
ABILITIES:
CORES:
LAPIS OF BLACK KNIGHT (Rank III): Expend Mana continuously to conjure an Armour of the Black Knight. Enhancements: Goliath
RUBY OF SWORD (Rank II): Expend Mana continuously to conjure a Sword. Enhancements: Goliath
TECHNIQUES:
NONE
STATUSES:
RADIATION SICKNESS: You have been contaminated with toxic energy. You may experience nausea, dizziness and diarrhoea. Estimated time to recover: 63 days.
BURNED: You have suffered burns from concentrated radiation on parts of your body. Seek medical attention. Estimated time to recover: 44 days.
BLEEDING: You have suffered wounds that are bad enough to not properly scab over in a timely manner. Estimated time to recover: 8 hours.
EQUIPPED:
LAPIS OF BLACK KNIGHT (CORE)
RUBY OF SWORD (CORE)
INVENTORY:
PHONE (0% CHARGE)
MAY YOU FIND ATARAXIA WHEN YOU NEED IT MOST.]
Mikayla knew she should have been distressed to see the ‘Radiation Sickness’ and ‘Burned’ afflictions, but after everything that had happened so far during this horrible day, all that she could muster was a sort of detached acknowledgement that that was bad.
“Hold on. The System elevated Cores to the same level as Techniques?!” Nocturnus sounded shocked as he read her profile. “Astralia’s little experiments must have been successful beyond our wildest dreams,”
“Uh-huh. Can we focus on the radiation sickness as the more pressing issue?” Mikayla requested.
“Oh! Yes, yes, of course. Can’t have you dying on me,” Nocturnus agreed with a grimace. “Well, the news is mixed. The first thing to do is assign your two unused points to Charisma and improve your ability to heal,”
“Sure. Unused points to Charisma, please,” Mikayla was past questioning the logic of her statistics.
[CHARISMA: 13]
“But that isn’t going to be enough to make much difference on its own. I do have knowledge of a Technique that will improve your healing and regeneration, but teaching it to you will be difficult,”
“A Technique?”
“Techniques . . how to put it. They’re grouped together, but can be delineated by whether they use Mana or Stamina. Or both, there’s a few strange ones. It’s like,” he hesitated, stumbling over his words, “like moving your body and directing your energy to achieve a given result, such as throwing a fireball or conjuring a barrier,”
“Spells. Techniques are spells?!”
“Don’t know what those are, but sure, lass,”
“Whoa. Alright, how do I learn this healing technique?”
“And there’s the problem. I’m currently not exactly equipped to demonstrate for you,”
Mikayla tilted her head. “Huh? Why not?”
“Well, let me just lift my arms and stretch my legs, get the blood flowing. Ah, no, I cannot, how foolish of me to forget,” Nocturnus drawled.
She rolled her eyes. “You can see through my eyes. You can tell me if I’m doing the right motions or whatever,”
“It is much more complicated than merely waving your arms around a certain way. You need to direct your energy, harmonise with the world around you. I cannot teach you that, not without my own body to demonstrate and direct yours,”
“Of course not,” Mikayla groaned. “So, what? We’re doing this through trial and error?”
“Yes, we shall have to. Find a spot to sit down, legs folded. Techniques work through directing the circulation of Mana or Stamina in your body. Fortunately for you, this one uses Stamina. Most of the ones I knew do. I wasn’t one for Mana until Astralia got me to test her . . well, whatever,”
Mikayla settled down, crossing her legs. “Next press your elbows to your thighs, keep your back perfectly straight, palms upwards. Good, now put your first two fingers together and bend them inwards. Same with the other three. Bend your pinky more. There. Do that with both hands,”
She tilted her head. “This is -“
“Back straight! Neck upright!” Nocturnus corrected her. “Now. This is the part where I would show you how to direct your Stamina to restore your health. But I cannot,” His voice turned uncertain. “You need to, eh, reach inside yourself. Imagine that there are two rivers coursing through your body, separate but in the same place. One of Mana and one of Stamina. Whilst your health, your flesh, is the banks that they flow through. Try to, ah, think of your injuries and poisoning as rocks and rubbish that has piled up on the riverbanks. Accelerate the flow of your stamina. Erode the rubbish away until there’s nothing left. Make the riverbanks pristine again through force of will,”
Mikayla nodded, closing her eyes and focusing, reaching inside of herself.
It was a strange fringe benefit, but emptying her Mana reserves and trying to fight the gecko on individual points of Mana was working in her favour. She could feel her Mana channels by tracing the patterns of fatigue that were still echoing through her body. From there, she reached out, trying to focus on sensing the insides of her cells, searching for the twin river of her stamina. She kept her attention on her arms, guessing that they would be identical, if mirrored, and by searching for differences between her uninjured left arm and the bloody wounds in her right arm, she might be able to find the damage and consciously heal it.
She could feel it, she realised with a start. Not the Stamina, it was still eluding her grasp, but she could feel the radiation poisoning in her body, soaking into her flesh and eating away at her vitality. She pressed against it, trying to beat it back, expel it from her body with sheer Willpower.
Something came at her call. She could barely tell what, perhaps it was her own vitality? Her Stamina? She was still too fatigued to care, really. Whatever it was, it was working and it was helping. She could feel it. As though every cell in her body was a soldier, banding together and fighting back against the invading illness. She focused on the burn on her left shoulder, blocking out the more pressing wound to her arm as something to worry about afterwards.
This felt too good to be true. Surely she was imagining the pain fading away? She glanced down, unable to resist the impulse, and sharply inhaled. It was working. Fresh skin was forming, the burned and blistered flesh flaking away to reveal pristine new growth underneath.
The surprise and amazement at the sight was enough to distract her, and she lost her focus on marshalling her inner reserves of energy.
“Do not lose your concentration!” Nocturnus barked a moment too late.
“I don’t believe it. That really was some kind of healing spell. How did I do that?” Mikayla breathed. She was smiling, she realised. For the first time since appearing in this hellish tundra, something unambiguously good had happened. She had healed herself. With magic.
“Good, you’ve made progress, then. I was hoping you’d get further, but you still have Stamina to use. Heh,” Nocturnus chuckled. “Before you continue, check your profile again, the Abilities category,”
“Alright. Profile, Abilities, please,”
[ABILITIES:
CORES:
LAPIS OF BLACK KNIGHT (Rank III): Expend Mana to conjure an Armour of the Black Knight. Enhancements: Goliath, Burst
RUBY OF SWORD (RANK II): Expend Mana to conjure a Sword. Enhancements: Goliath
TECHNIQUES:
CIRCULATION OF STAMINA (Faulty): Expend Stamina while meditating to accelerate the natural healing process.]
Mikayla quirked an eyebrow. “Why is it tagged as ‘faulty’?!”
“Because you’re still a complete novice at it! By the Frank Axe’s beard, lass, most trainees are thrilled to see their first Technique appear in their profile. Quit whining and get back to it, you’re still an awful sight,”