For as long as I could remember, I rarely ever caught colds. Both in my last life and in this one too. Actually, I probably never caught any disease since coming to this world. At first, I thought maybe I was special or maybe because diseases weren’t a thing here. Obviously neither turned out to be the case. Apparently, people with little mana weren’t affected by the pathogens of this world which invaded mana rich systems and used mana to replicate. Didn’t that actually make me somewhat special though? This was why, most people didn’t eat the black Manafish as that would temporarily increase mana capacity a bit too much, rendering people susceptible to disease. Of course, there were various ways to prevent that and even medicines you could take daily to not get any disease at all (which were pretty expensive). Also, most people didn’t really like the taste of the black one and I was one of them.
Once you got a disease or fever, there was nothing one could do but let it run its course. You could mitigate the effects, sure. But you could not just whack the fever out of you. Unfortunately, antibiotics didn’t exist here.
Sigh.
My fault for not being more mindful. My fault for not looking into it more. I was granted a new life. A new life full of potential, without any of the chains from my old life. Yet… I hadn’t changed at all. I was still the same lost kid who was pretending to be an adult. Actually, I was probably worse than most of the child geniuses going here.
What the fuck am I even doing? At this rate, what chance did I have against the church?
.
..
…
Sometime later Shia came to visit and she’d brought me lunch. We chatted for a few minutes before she went out. Apparently, the cafeteria served porridge too, so she’d brought me that. Tasted okay.
I didn’t have a bad fever. Just a bad case of runny nose and sneezes. Didn’t feel particularly serious, so I was probably going to be fine; Miss Chamille advised me to just stay in my room. It’s only the first day though.
Day two began with a high fever. Not too high but at least a hundred and one degrees. I basically slept the whole day. Shia came by to give me a cold wipe but that was about it. Oh yeah, she’d brought me food.
Day three, the fever worsened. Mike came to see me today and although I didn’t feel particularly good, we chatted for a while and that eased my mind a little. Again, I slept the whole day. At this point, I was sleeping like 20 hours a day, I guess?
On Day four, the fever more or less died down. My runny nose was now a stuffy nose and although I did get some sneezes, I didn’t have a cough and I felt good. My mouth tasted shit and I smelled terrible though.
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Better take a shower. I was supposed to show up at Anya’s place three days ago but that couldn’t be helped.
The next day, I recovered fully. I wanted to get back into my daily routine, but considering how sick I’d been just two days before, I took it slowly. There was no point in trying hard and falling sick again.
I showed up for work, sure, but I didn’t do any work. Strangely, my work shifts were covered. Both at the library and at the church. Apparently, Mike and Shia covered for me. Neither did a good job and probably did more harm than good but they covered for me.
I made a mental note about treating them some good food and thanking them later. I also pledged to help them in their time of need.
***
Catching a fever was bad but it did give me some ideas about mana. Maybe my idea of mana was wrong. I always imagined it as something mystical that gave you mystical powers. But what if it was like electricity or radiation? Energy in other words. Energy in some pure form that you could change into other forms. Dark energy maybe?
The best way to change raw energy was to maybe convert it to heat energy. So, fire magic. I knew how fire worked. I’d read about it since middle school. I even had ideas regarding plasma, blue fires, and even white fire. Besides, Rexen used Fire magic too and since I was connected to him, I should have had an edge, right?
Well, hopefully.
I took a fishbone in my mouth. Felt wrong. I literally just recovered too… wait, wait! I couldn’t just try this in my frigging room!
So, I went outside.
Early afternoon, so kids were practicing and some were playing. I saw Mike and friends in the distance but I didn’t go towards them.
Let’s see, oxygen helps burn the hydrocarbon stuff but it should also burn any carbon in adequate manner, right? When I imagined a fire, the first thing came to mind was natural gas burning on a stove. Natural gas was mostly methane and it was made of hydrogen and carbon atoms. There was hydrogen and carbons in the air but the amount was pretty negligent compared to oxygen. So, combining them (I didn’t know how) and burning, would have been impossible, at least for me.
Meanwhile, creating a new compound (again, I didn’t know how) and controlling it would have also been pretty much impossible.
So what? How about just converting raw energy to heat energy like I originally planned? But how….
Hot? I imagined hot, or rather, a fire burning in my hands. I concentrated but I didn’t really see much of anything. So, I closed my eyes and tried. Again, nothing. Then burn the oxygen, I guess? Just igni-
Whoosh! In a split second, all the tingly feeling of my body warped to my hand, concentrated there and everything lit up!
“WOAH!” I fell on my behind from the intense heat. A flaming tornado spun in my hand for about a second before vanishing in thin air with a white smoke. Crunnch! My teeth clamored against each other. The bone in my mouth was gone, like there was nothing left of it, not even the dust.
Students rushed to me, some helped me get up, others drowsed with me water. I didn’t really burn myself but I was damn close to doing so. No wait, my palm was pretty busted.
“You okay?” Mike said, concerned.
“I’m fine… just wasn’t expecting that…” I said. My heart beat so fast, I wouldn’t have been surprised if it jumped out of my chest.
“Me neither. Didn’t think you…” he didn’t finish.
The world felt light as I was floating. My head hurt; my skin burned a little but… but… Damn… that was magic.
My magic.