As I contemplated which boon would be more useful, I drew out the last dregs from my water skin. Frowning at the now empty vessel, I considered the difficulty I might have refilling it. I couldn’t hear the predator lurking at the entrance to the hole anymore, but it could still be in the area. I couldn't even tell if it was morning yet, so I was going to have to be extra careful leaving the hole.
Dismissing such matters as a problem for later, I returned to the question at hand; Which boon should I choose?
I wasn't sure how useful the codex would be. I didn't know what sort of information it would hold, or even how to use it. Would I be able to just record words, or could it be used for more? How hard would it be for me to get to the recorded information? What would I even want to record?
Back when I was learning how to paint sigils, I would have loved to have an easy place to store notes. Out in the wilds, I couldn’t see as much use. Perhaps I could record maps or take notes on useful plants?
I could easily see how the mana pool would be useful. Normally, I was never able to write more than a couple of sigils before running out of usable mana. If I had a pool to draw from, I likely could make more robust wards.
Would I actually be able to use it? The description said that it would be usable for system abilities, but didn’t indicate whether or not it would be useful for other purposes.
There was also the concern about how safe it would be. I had heard plenty of grim tales of hunters who had the misfortune of stumbling into extremely mana rich areas. From the sounds of it, mana poisoning was not a pleasant way to go. I was in no hurry to experience it for myself.
My choices could be summed up as safe but worthless, or risky but potentially powerful. It didn’t take me long to decide. If I was going to play it safe, would I have accepted this system in the first place?
Upon resolving my choice in my head, my status updated itself.
Name: Kyo —-----
Class: System Initiate (2/10, 0%)
Boons:
System interface
Mana Pool
While it was nice that I didn’t have to speak my choice aloud, I still found the mental connection unnerving. Strangely, I didn’t really notice anything different. Evidently, I wasn’t going to be immediately succumbing to mana poisoning, but I expected at least something to be different.
I started casting mana sight again, but realized that it probably wouldn’t really help much. From the little I saw of the initialization, the system was likely inside my head. Regular mana sight wasn’t designed for people who wanted to peer into their own skull.
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Thinking about it, I realized that the skull from last night must have been the previous bearer of this system. Glancing towards the back of the hole, I noticed that the original gray rectangle was no longer there.
Weaving the mana around me into a slightly different form, I cast a modified version of mana sight. Instead of a flood of colors, it instead felt like being plunged into a river. I could feel the mana flowing around me. Using this mana sense spell let me feel the density of mana as a temperature, rather than seeing it as a color. The thin mana in the air around me felt chilly, but that was to be expected. What wasn’t expected was the tiny inferno in my head.
One of the key components for the sense mana spell was the limiter. Without it, even a moderately dense patch of mana would be overwhelming. Considering that the sensation was already a little painful, I was quite glad that it couldn’t get any hotter.
Besides the little fireball in my head, I could feel a much cooler source of heat in my chest. As I focused on it, I could feel the heat slowly growing. It seemed that the mana pool needed time to form. I cast a glance at my interface.
Name: Kyo —-----
Class: System Initiate (2/10, 17%)
Boons:
System interface
Mana Pool
Perhaps that little growing number was my boon’s progress towards completion? The heat in my chest and the number seemed to be growing at a similar rate, so it was certainly possible.
Oddly, I couldn’t sense very much mana from the skull anymore. Likely, most of it was now in my head. That was definitely going to take some getting used to.
Looking towards the entrance to the hole, I could make out the dim light of early morning. It was probably safe for me to start worming my way back up to the surface.
Before facing the world again, I figured I should probably take stock of what I had left on hand. Sadly, my bag was almost empty. I only had an empty water skin, two jars of mana rich clay, and a bone knife. I had a spear yesterday morning, but embarrassingly, I dropped it while fleeing from the mother drake.
With the light slowly growing outside, I worked my way forwards. Putting my hand against the wall of the passage, I noticed something odd. There were some thin, warm lines on the wall. Tracing over them, I found them to form something like sigils. I couldn’t discern their exact intent, but I could make some guesses.
I wasn’t able to see the marks with mana sight, despite the mana flowing through them. Feeling the mana in the air near the unknown symbols, I could tell that it was flowing oddly. Perhaps the sigils were meant to distort magical perceptions from a distance? If the marks were also designed to drive animals away from the hole, that would explain why the only occupant of the hole was the system’s prior owner. The low ambient mana likely stemmed from these marks as well in some form or another.
While interesting, I didn’t have any means of recording the symbols. Perhaps if I had taken the codex, I could have done something with them. A little disappointed, I climbed out of the hole.
The shadows around me were still deeper than I would have liked, but at least the worst creatures would have returned to hiding by now. Perhaps I would even be lucky enough to avoid any predators today.
As a growl sounded behind me, I knew that I shouldn't have even hoped.