Flattened mountains [an unknown location in the new world], local time [1793.10.03 1793.09.26]
Somewhere, in uncharted lands, a primitive man was sitting in a cave. Crude tools cluttered the vicinity, a telling of at least rudimentary intelligence. His body naked, not even a loincloth could be seen. His body well-built, but filthy. His dark brown, almost black hair, greasy. Most of his face was hidden under bushy facial hair, only his silver eyes standing out as something distinctive. The eyes he could see staring back from the strange contraption he was holding with his left hand. A clear pool frozen in time, reflecting everything around it with impossible clarity. Then he looked to his right hand. A lusterless, dark-silver triangular object, flat as a leaf.
At least, that was how Zeph felt right now.
After living for four months the life of Robinson Crusoe, he developed a deep respect for the man.
Zeph was preparing to shave, using his small mirror and a throwing knife. His shoulders-long hair was tied in a low ponytail to accommodate his helmet. He was sure that any attempts at shortening them with a knife would end up as a horrendous parody of a haircut.
A small, primitive water basin was near him. After getting his facial hair in order, he planned to clean himself as best as possible. He managed to create a basic soap, using ashes from his fireplace and plant oils. Extracting the oils was a pain, though.
He was in the middle of shaving, so he almost cut himself when a System modification showed up suddenly.
“Jezus! Be more careful, System!” he exclaimed before checking the contents.
[System Weather Service]: Emergency Alert!
[Mana surge] is closing on to the [Area]. All organisms below [Standard level 210], or unable to withstand equivalent [Mana density], should evacuate from the [Plateau Areas] before the event begins.
Time estimation for the event beginning: 14d, 14h.
Oh, this is something new, he thought, looking suspiciously at the notification. I almost feel the whiff of civilization from it. But I better remember to ask about it, too. The System giving free information? There is no way.
“Looks like we have to speed up the timetable a little, buddy. Those wild Mana fluctuations here weren’t just a hearsay,” he said into the air.
“Gru,” an affirming vibration answered.
He finished cleaning himself and put his armor on. He now knew how far away his armor could be, but not only that.
Three months ago, he changed his Willpower Perk, ‘Mana and Will control training assist’, to a Perk from his Intuition Achievement, a better version of Intuition’s first and second Perks that he got at 10 and 100 Intuition respectively. ‘Precise Soul and Mana perception training assist’ allowed him to finally understand how and why Mana-related skills worked.
First of all, he made a clear distinction between his Mana and external Mana, both of ‘non-elemental’ kind, calling them Mana-Z and Mana-O respectively. Next, he decided to spare himself some sanity, and call the ‘elemental’ Mana groups by giving them prefixes. He was naturally producing three types right now, thanks to the Soul contamination. Will-Mana, Space-Mana, and a new addition, the Alloy-Mana. The new Soul contamination formed naturally, as his Source Net was built from that alloy and was now a part of his body, thus changing his Soul. He also decided to refer to all ‘elemental’ Mana types as E-Mana.
This distinction was very important. Mana-Z was produced by his Soul, thus the two were linked in such a way, that his Soul could tell what was happening to the Mana.
Mana-Z interacted with Mana-O, losing the connection to his Soul but returning information. Mana-O and Mana-Z interacted with matter, changing into E-Mana-O. How and why ‘non-elemental’ Mana was changing into, for example, Water-Mana in the well, he had no idea. But because matter interacted with Mana, it also worked like an isolator to a degree. Air, being a gas, seemed to have a very small effect on Mana, though.
Now, how could he perceive Mana? Well, he couldn’t perceive Mana-O directly. He had to touch it with Mana-Z for his Soul to tell, or rather ‘feel’, what was around. Almost like by a touch.
So, how do you do it? The Mana-Z he over-regenerated, the one dissolving into the surrounding atmosphere, was creating a ‘bubble’ around him. It wasn’t a linear, regular ‘bubble’, though, there was no defined ‘range’. It all depended on the relative density of Mana-Z in the vicinity, which was decreasing with the distance, and changed shape when he moved or stayed in a wind. Even humidity was a factor here. The less Mana-Z was in a place, the more hazy and weak the ‘feel’ was, because less and less was returned to his Soul through the connection.
So, the two most important factors defining his perception range were his Mana-Z regeneration speed and Mana-O density in the area. But that was not all to the perception. To make it simple - had he a Soul contamination of an ‘Earth group’, assuming it existed, he would have a much better range of perception in the ground, because the matter would not change Earth-Mana-Z again into Earth-Mana. Or, at least, would interact with it on a much smaller scale.
With his meager Mana regeneration and quite high Mana density around, he started training in his cave, spending most of his time inside to populate the place with Mana-Z.
But the ‘bubble’ defined so much more than just his Mana perception. The range of his Soul-link, the distance of an effective Spell construction, the effective range of Willpower and Will usage, effects of Ambient Mana channeling.
I was very lucky for choosing Phleya for my armor. Thanks to the Mana-resistant material, it can survive longer without being in a Mana-Z bubble. Half a day, at least. Especially because my current effective range is only one meter or so, he thought while exiting the cave.
He stopped outside for a moment and concentrated. He used his Will to interact with Will-Mana-Z around him, spending it to strengthen the manipulation of Mana-Z and creating a vortex around his body, close to the skin. The movement sucked in Mana-O, and the whole stream flowed through his body. He easily set the rate of Ambient Mana channeling by increasing the range of the vortex. Then he prepared his crossbow.
The Will was still a mystery to him. Soul was responsible for moving Mana internally, he just needed to flex it a little. Which was a funny thought, seeing as Flexibility was responsible for that, too. Will was responsible for interacting with Mana externally, where his Soul couldn’t reach. But normally, it was doing that in a very roundabout way, through the Soul Enhancement - the Willpower.
Will was… should be intangible. So, most probably, the Soul was responsible for the energy required for the external manipulation, while Will was responsible for directing it.
It reminded him of information theory. Our Ego, theoretically, was just an information construct produced by our brain, it was intangible in a similar way, or maybe even the same way, but was the reason for so much ingenuity, for most of the decisions we ever made. Will seemed to be similar, but going beyond being a simple effect of brain functionality. It was the most basic question, ‘how does Will interact with Mana?’ The only way he could think of, even if it was doing it together with the Soul, was by changing the informational state of Mana. In other words, by influencing an analogue of atomic-scale probability, changing purely entropic behavior into self-organizing behavior. Like our bodies do with the matter, self-organizing it into a working organism. Only, it didn’t make much sense to him.
Good thing then, that his Will was able to interact energetically with Mana and Soul. It was much more tangible. ‘Spontaneous’ creation of Will-Mana was the direct effect of such interaction, and it further strengthened his control. He now knew, it was impossible to move his Will. What he had been feeling up to now when manipulating his Will was a movement of Mana and Will-Mana, maybe even the creation of it. The Will-powered Mana manipulation was what he felt. He could not sense his Will in any way, he could only manipulate it to do something and notice the physical effects.
That’s why Will-powered Mana perception didn’t exist.
It was confusing.
He formed a Will-Mana into a thin tentacle surrounded by what was left of his Mana-Z in the air. He moved the 10 meters long ‘limb’ quickly through the air before him, using it almost like insects use their feelers, to scan surrounding Mana. It dissolved after a few seconds, but he managed to sense a higher density of Mana-O coming from the right.
Animals’ Mana perception was working exactly the same, there was a 'bubble' of their own Mana around them. If he got too close, they would sense him. But at the same time, Mana-O density in the vicinity was inflated. It lingered in the air like a cloud of smoke.
He was unable to differentiate between sources of Mana-O. Only when enough of his Mana touched the body directly, he could guess what it was. He would have named the Mana belonging to other organisms as Mana-X, but it was unperceivable for him, so there was no sense in doing so. He left it in the Mana-O group.
Either way, he was able to trace the increased relative density of Mana-O that the animals left behind. If it wasn’t windy. For tracing and detection purposes, it was a method even better than Soul perception.
Ambient Mana channeling made sure his trace would disappear in seconds. He even managed to use it as a rudimentary ‘Mana stealth’, decreasing the effective detection range of animals when coming into contact with their Mana. It wasn’t good enough to get a Skill for it, though.
He stepped into the overgrown town, using the feeler every now and then. The birds learned that the tower area was dangerous, so he had to devise better hunting methods to reduce the time spent. The traces would last maybe for a minute, so the game should be close.
It would be much easier if he wasn’t tracking birds.
After 10 minutes of meandering, he finally heard some chirping. He got to work.
After getting 10 birds, he decided it was enough for today and returned to the camp. It didn’t take much time to prepare the meat. His metal utensils were the same, but an addition of a board, a table, primitive bowls, and other tools sped up the process significantly. He also learned which plants were edible. Feeding only on meat wasn’t healthy, even if the Garuan helped him with digesting.
After he finished his meal and smoked the rest of the meat, he cleaned everything and went to the cave.
He set the wet feathers on the table to dry and took yesterday’s batch. Using something only slightly resembling mortar and pestle, he was rubbing them until fibers came apart. The final product resembled cotton wool. Then he took two fresh, long leaves of a certain reed plant from a pile and started to interlace them to create a small hollow ball, maybe 5 centimeters in diameter. Before closing it, he filled it with the feathers’ fibers. He capped the opening from inside with a dried, cut-off piece of a certain mushroom that was minimally bigger than the opening itself. The protruding parts of leaves were tied above the fungi, and the rest cut off. He set the smoke/smell bomb aside to dry.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
“This will be… 834th, I don’t think I will be able to take much more into the backpack. This will be the last batch,” he said, looking at the wet feathers, then at his pillow. “What a waste… would it even be worth it to take them all? I could just compress them while they are wet, hmm…”
“Gruu,” it advised.
“I would rather not eat feathers. I don’t even know in what circumstances that could be my only choice. Besides, wouldn’t that be nutritious mostly for you?”
“Grara…”
“Ye ye, we never know… Whatever, my inner scrooge won’t allow me to just leave them,” he answered, standing up. “But I plan to move a day after tomorrow… it will be ‘hard nights’, again,” he mumbled while preparing a bowl to wet all the feathers.
His ‘Corora lifeforms’ wasn’t the only Skill Zeph abused in the last months. Thanks to his herbarium, he was able to find flora that produced the most intense and irritating smell when burned. He tested each plant and the feathers on the Talpa. Indeed, he scouted them a few times. Book knowledge was one thing, life tests were a must. The smoke/smell bombs he finally developed were terrifyingly effective, but not so bad for him. On that occasion, he even managed to observe Talpa behavior a little from the plateau ridge. The steps weren’t steep, so after finding a good spot on a ridge above them, he was able to see the pass. It was maybe 70 meters below him. After almost a day of waiting, he was lucky enough to observe a conflict between two Talpa. The pass was more of a territorial hazard for them than something to be used to travel. He decided to try a few more times, and he saw at least one fight each day. The conflicts were quite frequent.
After he placed a heavy, flat stone on the wet feathers, he stretched a little and took a seat on the ever-so-comfortable rock.
“I became soft,” he lamented while reaching for the ‘goal board’. “But let’s concentrate, it’s time to revise our progress, Gru,” he said.
“Grrrrrrrra!” his chest growled.
“Ha! I also can’t wait to show them who is an apex predator here,” he answered, laughing. He opened his Interface. After months of using it, he found a few ‘hidden’ properties, like General Skills grouping and ‘changes report’. He thought for a moment about using the report option, but the changes were massive enough to render it useless.
[https://i.imgur.com/Fb2xKor.jpg]
“Look at that, my Will contamination raised again! Now, I am almost sure it’s linked to how much Will-Mana I am producing by using Will-powered skills, and consequently how much I accumulate in my body,” he declared.
“Gru!” resounded the affirming vibration.
Thanks to Gru’s Soul gathering method, I even managed to level up. But it’s as slow as I have thought. At least my Mana capacity finally started to rise, he thought. It defined which Skill Matrices he could use, but nothing more. His regeneration filled him again in less than half a second, and manually constructed Spells didn’t consume his internal Mana supply. I will need more in the near future, though, and every bit of Power is welcome. I suppose, my priorities for spending points are clear, for now, he thought, analyzing the main page and planning for the future.
“A shame I didn’t have much time to train Greater Willpower, only 5 trained points… Better than nothing, I suppose,” he said out loud.
“Grur,” it shrugged.
“I am sure it will be necessary in the future. Besides, it increases my Mana regeneration,” he argued.
“Growww,” his chest vibrated indifferently.
“I am not so sure. With the speed it is going, my training will have more impact than my Class. Anyway, let’s prepare Matrices accordingly,” he decided, changing the Skills to battle-ready ones. He changed the set-up of the Interface a little. It would be bad if he made the mistake of choosing a Skill with unworkable parameters, so he added the necessary details.
[https://i.imgur.com/FLgurIY.jpg]
The Matrix Skills had their restrictions. He couldn’t control the output that much, and modifying them in any way was impossible. But they were fast. At least two times faster than what he could do manually.
On the topic of Mana cost, he finally managed to calculate how much energy 1 Mana represents. If his math was correct, it was around 50 Joules, but the value fluctuated depending on the Spell. He guessed it was the same old problem of efficiency of the process and of energy loss.
Not long after he started the new training regime, along with the first fully mastered cantrip, an interesting message showed up. He checked it once more to make sure he remembered correctly.
Congratulations! You have mastered a [Class Skill] [Heat] [Tier 0]! You can choose to transform it into an [Energy Enhancement] or a [Passive Class Skill].
[Heat] [Spell] related [Class Skill Matrices] have been unlocked!
Both options required 1 Matrix slot, so he ignored them for the time being. He wasn’t sure what either would do, even after trying to read into the message. But the second part was a nice surprise. He could, of course, unlock new Matrices by re-inventing Spells, which oftentimes gave him even better benefits because of the ‘new data from the learning process’. But now he had access to a whole tree of related Spells. He planned to check it as soon as his Mana capacity would allow.
Besides the notification, a new part of the Interface became accessible.
[https://i.imgur.com/NjfHCAe.jpg]
He still didn’t manage to create a purely offensive Spell, but he read enough about Bearats from his General Skill to know that it wasn’t necessary either way. He now had an arsenal of Spells and techniques that would give him a gigantic advantage, as long as he wasn’t swarmed.
Most importantly, because those were manually cast Spells, he didn’t have to rely on his Mana capacity. Until a Matrix Skill was a channeling type, they always required him to have enough Mana capacity to activate. Truthfully, though, he was unable to tell the difference between a Spell and a Skill. Some of them required additional resources, like Soul-related ones, but all of them used Mana constructs in one way, or another. The only distinction between Skills, that he could make, was internal and external usage.
After mastering a handful of useful cantrips, he tried to put them together into one Spell, sometimes using structures he learned from his more advanced Spells. For example, the Space lens produced a Space-Mana-Z and moved it in a vortex, creating an effect of a barely noticeable magnifying glass. He modified the structure responsible for moving Mana to shape it more like a cone. Then he added Heat cantrip, thus creating a jet of hot air at the cone’s tip. This was enough to unlock ‘Lesser Ignite’ and he immediately changed Matrices and studied the System version. It was much more optimized, to his delight.
The tier 1 Spells were much tougher. Like ‘Primitive Life detection’. It sent a wave of Space-Mana-Z, making use of its secondary compatibility with the life, to allow his Soul to register living organisms in the vicinity. Inevitably informing them of his presence. He optimized it by taking parts of ‘Mana highlight’ responsible for interaction with the ambient Mana. It did that by utilizing Will-Mana or Space-Mana of a different type, a Space2-Mana. Now, instead of interacting with the body of an animal, it interacted mostly with Mana-O connected to a living organism, or rather, with Mana-X. The change was enough for animals to ignore the signal.
Most of the new Spells were quite straightforward, like creating Flash from ‘Mana highlight’. But there were three interesting ones.
The first was the ‘Lesser Life ward’. Not because of what it did, but how. It was ‘Partially Self-Sustaining’. He used parts of ‘Lesser Metabolic enhancement’ responsible for sustaining it to create a Spell that worked as long, as it was in a Mana-Z bubble of a certain density. It auto-fed itself. He could construct the Spell before going to sleep, and it would work all night. Thus, he trained himself to wake up when a jolt in his Soul, the Spell’s feedback, showed up. Gru’s help was necessary for it to work, of course, vibrations were waking him up for a good week until his organism remembered how to react.
The second was the ‘Lesser Telekinesis’. Burning Mana to apply a directed force to an object was absolutely above his head, he wasn’t sure if it was even possible. But transferring energy was another thing. He used the same trick with the Space-Mana vortex to create a tunnel and filled it with Force-Mana the Scrubbing cantrip produced. It wasn’t really a Force-Mana, but he didn’t have a better name for it. The Spell worked a little like a sand-paper made from the omnidirectional force, so he decided it was as good a name as any. He funneled it into the tunnel, and the construct worked like a hydraulic pipe. When he physically pushed on one side, the force was transferred to the other one. It was very inefficient and had a maximum range of 2 meters, but he was happy nonetheless. He could do a weak punch one meter ahead of his fist, it was worth it.
The last one was ‘Primitive Enchanting’. If he managed to create a Mana construct inside a solid matter, and kept it there long enough, for a short amount of time the material could keep the shape in place. Normally, Mana constructs were prone to dissolve if moved, but with this, the Spell moved with the material. The more he moved the object, the faster the Spell would fail. By applying the self-sustaining construct to the Spell, he didn’t have to interact with the object anymore. Of course, using Heat on his spear tip was not only useless and inefficient, but also could damage the knife. Harden Spell was another story. By using ‘Lesser Grinding’, he could make the knife as sharp as a scalpel. Then he could use ‘Lesser Harden’ to keep the edge intact for longer.
“It was so much hard work, but for some reason, I don’t feel fed-up at all,” he said, looking with pride at the list.
“Gru!”
“Ha! Thanks, I definitely like magic. I am also glad I took the Shaman as a Profession. The new Spells unlocked quite a lot of other Skills in it,” he said with a smile.
Next, he quickly scanned his General Skill list.
[https://i.imgur.com/zAsCeaE.jpg]
The Physical Actions group wasn’t anything special. It was the same as Knowledge Skills, just categorized differently.
Or I am missing something, he thought soberly. But it’s a good thing I don’t have to read the Skills to level them up, just get better and learn more about a topic they feature. I can only pay for Tier 1 level 30 knowledge reading… What a pain.
The only interesting part was about Level 50 of Tier 2 Skills. General Skills unlocked certain things after getting to that level. In the case of Will and Will-powered Mana Manipulation, he got a surprise from the System.
Conditions met! [General Skill] unlocked new [Advanced properties]!
Congratulations! You used your Will enough for us to create basic statistics for it.
[https://i.imgur.com/2EtaoWj.jpg]
“And now I know my limits,” he said, laughing.
“Grara…” his chest answered, unsure.
The first part showed how much Mana he could influence in total before his Will drops to the lower depletion state. Those were statistics, so the states were just the most important, or the most characteristic, points. Especially regeneration and time values. They were here only to showcase these points; they didn’t change in stages. His Will was also replenishing at all times, so even if he had 500 Mana-Z in the air, he shouldn’t be able to deplete his Will. But the important message was received. Never go beyond the Critical depletion state.
He suspected that getting Soul Skills to Tier 2 Level 50 would unlock some statistics pertaining to the range of Mana-Z bubble and Soul perception, or something like that. It was a long way, though. He was lucky to get Will Skills at Tier 2 from the beginning.
“The rest should be without change,” he said, quickly scanning the contents. “I still don’t understand why my Soul fragmentation isn’t decreasing, though. I am getting Soul fragments, after all…”
“Garau,” it answered, as uncertain as him.
[https://i.imgur.com/PdL4CkY.jpg]
[https://i.imgur.com/0uRYHIy.jpg]
“My Universal Points didn’t change that much either,” he said, looking at the panel.
[https://i.imgur.com/zpnCMb9.jpg]
“Eh, whatever. The million I got from a new Skill creation is more than enough for now,” he declared.
“GRU!” it vibrated excitedly.
“Ye ye, we will have a shopping spree as soon as we find this System Shrine, or whatever. Maybe we will even manage to fix the problem with showing our Interfaces to each other. The System did say something about ‘Passive Enhancements exchange not working’, after all. Communicating all the details by speaking is a real burden,” he commented.
“Gru, Gru,” it agreed, giving an image of closed eyes and a nod.
“But you sure got a lot of Points. Being responsible for three Skill creations will do that, I suppose. You little Soul prodigy,” he said, laughing.
“Gurururu…” sounded the pleased, but a little embarrassed, vibration.
“Oh, don’t be so shy, you earned it.” His Soul-bond was becoming quite cute. “But enough of it, we are as ready as we could be. Let’s start preparing to move the camp!”
“GRU!”