When Aiden was receiving a daily report from the Executives, Margaret came in with an excited Cassie trailing behind. She approached the group and motioned for him. He nodded and quickly finished up his business with the Executives and turned towards the new comers. “You need to come see this.” was all Maggie said with a mysterious smile. He tried to get a clue of what was going on from Cassandra but only received a shit eating grin and a “You’ll see” from her.
Wondering what the hell this was about he followed them outside to the residential district. The place was quite nice now, with the lush greenery and garden’s just outside. He wouldn’t mind living in such a place himself to be honest. They approached where he knew Cassandra's family lived and headed inside, up to the third floor, fourth door on the right, which was Charlies (Cassie’s younger brother) room if he remembered correctly.
When he entered he saw Charlie sitting on a chair in the kitchen talking excitedly about something with his parents fretting over him. When he got closer he learned why. Charlie had unlocked a status menu. “You’ve got to be shitting me...” He murdered to himself. A stupefied expression on his face.
Aiden quickly learned from the boy what happened. Apparently when he was eating breakfast this morning he heard a loud voice in his head congratulating him on awakening his Mana. A lot of messages followed after that explaining the system to him, and he was now a lvl 0 classless (f) ranked human.
Aiden was extremely excited at this news, as were most of the others in the room. This could very well mean that it was possible for the same to happen to other normal people. This excited him for many reasons. One of which was the slowly growing divide between the two populations.
It was small things like slight looks of distaste he noticed from a few people being directed at those without Mana, or grumbles about freeloaders. He was worried however that this divide would grown in the future and the awakened would start to treat the others as second class citizens.
He wasn’t fully blaming them as he was subconsciously doing the same, placing more priority on the need’s of the awakened little by little, most of the time without realizing that he was even doing it and had to have it pointed out to him by others, Victoria mostly. If more people continued to awaken then that problem would evntually solve itself.
Aiden stayed and asked a few more questions of the boy. How did it feel when it happened? Did he feel any different now? What had he been eating for the last 3 months? Where he spent most of his time? Those sorts of things. With every answer the boy gave Aiden’s suspicions that his theory was correct grew. There was no way to tell yet however, and he would need to wait and see if this happened again.
Two days later Aiden was back in the residential district, this time paying a visit to a family he didn’t know and their 7 year old daughter. The day after that he was visiting Teresa and her daughter for the same reason. It seemed it was really happening, so far it was only children, but it was still happening. People were awakening their Mana.
He was ecstatic at where this could lead. Fengaria had a population of over eleven hundred non Mana awakened at the time. If this change took place in all of them it would change things significantly.
The next day he got together with the few medical professionals in town and shared his theory with them, which resulted in a prolonged discussion on the topic. They eventually admitted that it was plausible and that they couldn’t come up with any other answer for what was happening.
Aidens theory was that everything now contained Mana in various quantities. The soil, water, plants, air, monsters, everything. So it wasn’t such a stretch to say a person took in small amounts of Mana into his or her body everyday from eating, drinking or even just breathing. He thought that eventually everyone body’s would absorb enough Mana to adapt and readjust to begin creating its own, thus unlocking their Mana.
The one thing in common he found with all the kids other than consuming monster meat occasionally and eating the crops from the Mana rich fields, was that they all bathed outside in the river right next to the town almost daily. He though that the river running out of the mountain must be sitting on a large concentration of Mana and the water was extremely rich with it.
There was no real way to test this theory unless they finally found a dungeon inside the caves of the mountain range. They had been looking for one for over two months now. If there was one there, then it would be confirmation that the area produced excess Mana. He would wait another few days and see if it happened to some of the others, who bathed there often to make up his mind about it.
Aiden was sitting in his study and tapping his pen against the page of the document in front of him. He was trying to write out a basic speech to give the citizens in the town square today. Six more people had awakened their Mana in the last three day’s, one of them even being a young adult. One of the women that was rescued from the basement, where he first met Cassie and Margaret.
This was good, very good, and his theory checked out. All the people were on his list of those that used the river to splash around in regularly. He wondered if he should make that a mandatory thing from now on. He figured why the hell not, a few minutes spent in the river wouldn’t be an issue even for the elderly.
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There were still things they didn’t know and that bothered him somewhat. Would this continue to happen regularly? or was it just a few special cases that had come close to being able to awaken their Mana before, and were slowly pushed closer over time until it eventually happened. That would be bad in his opinion, a lot of the normal people had been jealous over those that had Mana. He had started to pay special attention to the citizens the last few day’s in particular and had noticed it.
It did create quite the divide after all, a financial one especially. With the Mana awakened having a lot more credits from killing monsters then a regular citizen made from the work they did in the town. Aiden planned on increasing their wages slowly, but they currently still needed money for a lot of projects he had in mind.
He would finally be letting the whole town know about what they had learned today. It was kept quiet for now to not start random speculation’s about it, but today he was going to reveal what they had learned to the citizens. This would create a huge commotion he was sure. A celebration of some sort was inevitable so he would need to schedule some extra nice food to be cooked for everyone along with some free booze. He took a look at his personal fund. ‘328,003 credits’ and winced.
‘Yeah that’s not gonna cut it probably. Guess I’ll have to dip into the town fund for this. Let’s see.., The bar charges 50 credits per pint, and if I buy in bulk that should bring the price down a bit. The population in Eden is now...’ He quickly checked the interface. ‘2,283, minus the kids and some of those that don’t drink. Hmmm.. that’s a total of at least 400,000 credits for booze assuming people have more then one round, which they definitely will, and another 700,000 for food at least.' He stared at the number as if it was another message about the world ending. ‘Yeah no.. fuck that, the people can pay for their own shit. They can damn well afford it.’
He got up and rubbed at his tired eyes. He was spending too much time in the town, and it was wearing on him a bit. ‘I need to go out and kill some shit, I’ve been cooped up here far too long. I’ll head over to the Mines in a day or two and help with the exploration, that should revitalize me somewhat. Victoria seems quite out of it as well and will probably tag along.’
He still hadn’t figured out why his body and mind was wanting him to go out and fight, all though he had finally confessed to Vicky about the feeling. He was relieved and a little worried that she felt the same. ‘A possible side effect of having Mana running through a person? A subliminal message from the system?? ‘Go out and fight ye mortals! And feed me the excess Mana!’
He sighed and stretched a bit. ‘It would probably be something like that yeah... Well whatever its not like its harming us at any rate.’ He sat back down and went over what else needed to be done today. He flipped though the few files he had received earlier from the Executives, who now had a few helpers of their own.
‘The caravan with food sent out to Hardwick should be back later today so that’s done with for now.’ The resident of Hardwick didn’t have a farm until recently. When Aiden told them it was a necessity they finally started one. They still received shipments of fresh grown crops from Eden tho as it wasn’t up and running yet.
‘This should be the last shipment, their own farm will be bringing in a harvest soon. Hopefully it will last them through winter. If not Then they’ll have to make due with meat, fish, and what they can buy from the system. Its their own damn fault for not being prepared.’ He grumbled. He was really starting to feel cranky and that wasn’t a good thing for a leader to be feeling.
He discarded that notice and looked over the next one. This one having to do with newly announced pregnancies in the the town. It seemed people were pairing up quickly and copulating like bunnies. 7 new women learned they were pregnant this week. Aiden though back to a week ago when he finally got around to checking up on the women that had been assaulted, or used as sex slaves.
The first group from before Eden became a thing was thankfully fine, with no pregnancy’s there. The second was not so lucky. 9 of the women were with child after their ordeal. All wanted to keep the children thinking it wrong to terminate. Aiden really didn’t want to weigh in on the issue so left the decision entirely up to them, washing his hands of it.
Their over all mental health was still a work in progress but they were getting better. It would leave mental scars for sure but hopefully they could cope with it in time. A new unofficial organization was formed under Margaret that dealt with mental trauma now, and they were doing good work. With more and more people going to see them everyday, forcing them to ask some more people to join.
The new members slowly began learning from some of the books they had on the topic from the school library, as well as what was found by the scouting party’s going out into the closest town ruins, to dig out anything of value. It wasn’t the professional help they needed really, but even just that seemed to be helping.
He next looked at requests to start up various shops and such. He accepted most of them seeing no harm in having an extra restaurant or an official furniture shop. He quickly rejected the application for a brothel for the third time this month. ‘Seriously what the fuck is wrong with this guy, If anyone of the women here knew he wanted to start a brothel they would skin him alive.’ He had ran a check on the guy of course, sending Tom to shadow him for a few days.
Turned out it was just some random low level 17 year old kid that had dreams of running a business empire and wanted to start with a brothel of all things, thinking it was something everyone would want. He was clearly an idiot but would bare watching just in case he got any more stupid ideas. With a sigh Aiden set the last report down and got up.
He headed into his bedroom and changed into slightly nicer clothes for the event, then headed downstairs to face the music. He really hated giving speeches, but unfortunately it needed to be done. It was also a way for the citizens to see him out and about and interacting with him. A leader needed to be visible and liked by his people after all. ‘I really need to get away from the town for a few days’ He though as he walked outside and noticed the huge group of people waiting for him.