An esoteric landscape expands out from me. The earth is made of small portions of shining obsidian floating in the air. I'm walking, the shards of obsidian coming to meet my feet with each step. The sky is a light grey. The world is filled with nothing else. I feel an indomitable will sitting in my chest, guiding each of my actions with an unprecedented fervor that is kept cool only by the power of my mind. I can feel small ripples in the space around me. I instantly recognize it as ambient mana, a sensation I've only recently experienced for the first time. I can feel each strand of mana in the air around me. Opposed to the world I'm used to, this world has only thin strands of mana flowing through instead of a gentle wave of mana blanketing the world. With an incomprehensibly fast thrust, my right hand strikes the air in front of me. The space itself twists and warps with my hand at its center as I tear open a portal. The edges of the portal look similar to the first one I saw. It looks like static. Incomprehensible. I step through the portal.

My eyes open and I sit up in a smooth, unbroken motion, the confidence from my dream carrying over for a brief moment before crumbling away. My left eye is gone. My body aches. I seem to be safe, though. To my left, Eric, Amelia and Sophia are training together. James is to my right. He's exercising. We're in a long extensive plain. I can see wisps of smoke from the still burning town past James' head. We seem to be about 15 miles away from the town. A rogue headache strikes me, my scarred eye pulsing with a terrible fervor. My senses come back to me, hitting me in an intense wave. A rough wind is blowing through the plains, washing away what I would assume to be a disgusting scent from the remains of goblins on our bodies. My left shoulder aches with a dull throb and the rest of my arm is numb. I can only feel pain below my elbow. Everyone stops for a moment and looks at me. I'm sure I look terrible.

I wave my hand as reassuringly as I can.

"I'm fine."

My voice is gravelly and harsh, nearly a growl. I involuntarily cough a few times, taking a few heavy breaths. Eric looks at me with a worried expression. Everyone is worried. That's nice, at least. I have people that care about me at least a little. He speaks with a smooth, calming voice.

"Are you sure? You don't seem healthy"

His gaze lingers on my left eye, or what remains of it. I bring my right hand up to it and cover it for a brief moment, feeling the wound. I lay back down and close my eye.

"I'll live."

I let a few soothing breaths bring me into a calm state. The pain in my left shoulder stops me from calming down enough to sense mana, though. I bring my right hand over my right arm with a dark sigh. Gritting my teeth, I use [Recover]. As I use the skill, I try my best to analyze how it works. I force my right eye open and watch the skill do its magic. My muscles tense in anticipation as I watch a red mist envelope my left bicep. I see small, thin strands of flesh come from the cut in my arm, the pain overwhelming me for a brief moment. The strands of flesh pierce my skin and close the wound, stitching it together before fusing with the wound. The wound is much, much better now. It feels more like a bruise than a cut. I feel a deep curiosity urging me to test the skill more, but I feel that strange mana thirst telling me that I'm low on mana and I really don't want to feel that intense pain again.

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With a renewed effort, I close my eyes and slowly enter a calm, meditative state. I let time pass. It only takes a few seconds for me to feel the familiar pull of mana in my mind, the sensation growing in strength as I enter deeper and deeper into my meditation. I feel a strong pull on my consciousness towards the direction of the goblin invasion. The strength of what I assume to be the Goblin King's mana almost exerts a physical pull on me. We have to kill that thing. What a fucking joke.

Other than that, I feel small, almost unnoticeable pulls on my consciousness. I think it's the mana of my companions. The idea of mana is incredibly interesting to me. On that topic, I recall my dream. I can vividly feel how I felt in that dream. It felt so real, so vivid and immersive. I felt like a different person in that dream. In that dream, I had memories that I don't have. I knew things that I haven't learned yet. But I was definitely me.

Something that interests me is how I understood ambient mana. Apparently, the world that I'm currently in has a "gentle wave of mana blanketing the world". So, am I feeling the pull that people have on mana and not the mana itself? If so, what does that mean? Am I sensing other's consciousness? Why can I feel it more intensely, now? Is it because of my mana stat? Will I be able to sense the pull people have on mana without meditating once I have a high enough mana stat? Or if the other person has a high enough mana stat? Maybe that's what I was feeling from the Goblin King earlier? I don't know, but it's all so interesting. With my eye still closed, I hold up my right arm and activate [Recover]. I can still feel what I'm going to call a mana signature coming from those in my group but the feeling of it decreases as my focus is aimed towards the skill.

I feel a sharp, sudden tug on my consciousness as the skill activates. It feels like my perception is being pulled through a filter and stretched out of shape. The feeling is startling, but I quickly realize that it's the skill activating. I can sense the shape of my consciousness as the skill forms it into an intricate rune. The detail is far beyond my comprehension, but I can pick up on a sliver of the entire rune. It seems similar to the runes I saw back in the bathroom. The skill stops working, seeing as I haven't used it on anything, and my consciousness has a gentle recoil back towards my head that snaps me out of my meditation. Almost immediately I realize that it wasn't my consciousness that I was feeling. It was mana.

For what feels like a full hour, I keep entering that meditative state and analyzing mana and how it works, activating my skill over and over and familiarizing myself with the feeling of mana entering the rune of the skill and the following backlash as the skill fails. I'm not able to learn much, as my questions are replaced with more questions. If everyone has a pull on mana, why do I feel that pull on my own sense of self? Does everyone feel like that or am I unique? Can anyone else sense mana yet? How does my skill work? What even is a skill anyways? Where does the shape of the rune come from? Is it stored in the system? My body? The world?

I'm a bit frustrated by the lack of answers. I need to get stronger, and all of these dead ends aren't helping. I open my eye. Before I stand up, I realize that I forgot something. I mentally gesture for the closed system windows to open.

[Level 2 > 3]

[Level 3 > 4]

[Gained 2 Humanoid Cores (Common)]

I close the system windows, deciding to look at the notifications later with the group. Finally, I stand up and, after an awkward conversation, train with the rest of the group sans James. They're just using sticks that resemble the shape of the weapon they have. It doesn't seem very efficient, but it's better than nothing.