“I told you you'd have to come back here for the rest of the spiel, right?”
Oh. Yeah. The spiel.
“Anyways. So here's a packet for you. It's only a few pages, but it's pretty comprehensive.” Hagrid handed me the papers and I started reading along as he talked. “The world follows a standard copper, silver, gold currency system. One hundred copper to a silver, one hundred silver to a gold. I see you picked the game bag storage skill, so I'll do you a favor and add a bank function to it. Any money you receive will automatically be transferred to your bag. To take money out, just concentrate on how much you need and it'll appear, having been deducted from the total amount in your skill. It also acts as a coin converter when needed. The same mana cost rule will apply though. A small amount of mana is required to take money out.”
“There's five major continents. The eastern continent is populated mostly by elves, western by dwarves, the southern by beast kin, and the northern by demons. The central and largest continent is mostly humans, but it's got a good mix of races in there. When you get down there, you'll have a mini map function that can expand to show the globe. Only places you've been to before will show on the map, and it'll be automatically updated with more places and the geographical information you learn.”
“For the most part, humans get along well with everybody, so you shouldn't have too much trouble getting around. Except with mermaids. Did I mention how they can be tricky little pricks? Feel free to wreak havoc with them. There's also a possibility of a Demon King appearing in a few centuries. If you're still around, would you mind taking care of that for me? I'd appreciate it, even give you a reward if you do.”
Uh, did he just say Demon King? And in a few centuries?!
“Other than that, I don't have much else to add. Any questions before you go?”
“Yeah, how do skills level? I see a lot of them improve as they level, but I don't know how to level them. And how do I see my skill levels and resource pools?” All seem like reasonable questions to me.
Yet he looked at me like I was stupid. “All the time you've spent in the time bubble, and never once did you say the word ‘Status’ out loud? Given how hardcore a gamer and weeb you were, I figured that would've been one of the first things you did.”
“You don't have to be rude about it,” I mumbled.
“Status.”
User: Claff:
Health 100/100
Stamina 100/100
Mana 100/100
SKILLS
PASSIVE
ACTIVE
“Why don't I see the skills I chose?”
Hagrid laughed a little at this. “They'll appear after I send you down. If you have any last questions, I'll send you down immediately if you want.”
“Well yeah, I do, actually. Is there any other life purpose I'm supposed to have? Or just if I live for a few centuries, try to take out a possible Demon King?”
“Claff, since your whole second life will be due to a divine error, you can do quite literally whatever you want. If you want to be a street bumpkin, that's totally your choice. You will have no divine pressure for your entire existence . Have fun, go enjoy life. I'd prefer you not start any harems, but if that's your prerogative, then go for it. Do what you want, bud. This one is on us.”
Oh hell yeah, this is going to be fun. But no harems though. I didn't get a skill that lets me talk to girls.
“Alright, I think I'm ready. If I need to contact you, how can I do that?”
“Visit a church once in a while. I'll check in occasionally, see how it's going. Say maybe, in 50 years? Sound good? Good. In that case, I'll send you on your way. When you wake up, you'll be around a 5 hour walk away from the nearest city. Head east and you'll get there eventually. You should see it on your mini map. Have fun my friend.”
And with that, I passed out.
I woke up under a tree on the side of a wide dirt road in what looks like a forest. I was extremely groggy and a little bit sore. I saw a little flashing light in the top left corner of my vision. When focused on it, a notification appeared.
Skills acquired. Attention required. Please open your status at your earliest convenience.
“Status.”
User: Claff:
Health 120/120
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Stamina 120/120
Mana 120/120
SKILLS
PASSIVE
Enhanced Body Lv 1 [0%]
Increased Mental Capacity Lv1 [0%]
*Regeneration Lv1 [0%]
ACTIVE
Arcane Magic Lv1 [0%]
Barrier MagicLv1 [0%]
*Game-like Storage Lv1 [0%]
Awesome! My skills showed up! But it looked like I had two notifications instead of just one. Odd. I mentally clicked on the regeneration skill and another notification popped up.
Please select primary resource pool and secondary resource pool. Once designated, these cannot be changed. Choose carefully.
Oh right, I forgot about this part. I figured I should have health as primary, and mana as secondary. That way I'll always be at full health, and my mana will be topped off right after I'm fully healed.
I went ahead and gave the resources their designations and got a confirmation alert in its place. After confirming, I checked the second notification. The unexpected one for my storage skill.
“Open bag,” I thought.
A screen popped up showing that I had four empty slots available to be filled. Industry, I didn't have anything to put in there at the moment. But above the first slot I saw some writing.
0G 10S 0C
When I saw this, another notification popped up.
“Here's some starter money. Enjoy! -Hagrid”
Well damn. He knew about me calling him Hagrid, huh? I guess that comes with the whole being a god territory. Well, he took it in good fun, I guess. That was pretty nice of him.
Now that everything seems to be settled, it is time to start with the really important part of the journey: MAGIC!
I dismissed all the notifications and closed my bag. I called my status screen up again and mentally clicked on the Arcane Magic Skill. After focusing on it for a few seconds, I got a horrible headache. It felt like someone was driving a nail in the back of my skull.
Mana Bolt pattern has been learned.
I could barely read the notification when it came up. After a couple of seconds, my head started to clear. Something tells me it would take a lot longer to be able to think again if it weren't for Increased Mental Capacity. That being said, holy hell did that hurt.
But now I know magic! Time to test this baby out!
I took a second to look more closely at the pattern that just got shoved in my head. It looks like all I have to do is concentrate on shoving mana into the shape of an arrow at the end of my finger and release it. This shouldn't be too difficult.
Except. What does mana feel like?
I didn't have it in my old world, so I have no concept of what mana was. I started to panic for a minute until I remembered something. I have my bag skill that takes mana automatically when I put something in a slot or take it out.
I quickly grabbed a handful of grass from next to me and called up my storage skill. “Open bag.”
4 slots appeared and I focused on the grass being in the first slot. A few seconds of concentration later, the head disappeared from my hand and I felt a small warm rush flow throughout my body, like drinking coffee on a snowy day. I looked at the UI and there appeared a picture of a few blades of grass in the first slot. It worked!
“So that's mana, huh? Shouldn't be too hard to figure this out.”
I called my status up again to see how much mana that took. Looks like it's only 6 points for that handful. Not bad. I looked at the grass image again and noticed the number 6 in small writing in the button corner. It looks like there's 6 blades of grass in there. Does that mean it takes 1 point per blade of grass?
I focused on one blade of grass going from the UI into my hand. The seconds later, a single blade pops into existence in my hand. Looking at my status again, I see I'm down to 113/120 points of mana. As I continue watching, it bumps up to 114/120. I guess that's my regeneration hard at work.
Back to the matter at hand. Magic!
I thought back to the pattern for mana bolt. I now know what mana feels like, so this should be a lot easier. I focused on the warm feeling that ran through my body earlier. I tried to imagine that feeling, where it originated from. I pulled out another blade of grass and felt the warmth inside my chest, next to my heart.
I closed my eyes and focused on moving that feeling from my heart and moving it down my right arm. From my arm, it needs to move to my hand. From my hand into my index finger. And from my finger to the tip. Hold it there. Let it gather and build energy. Imagine the mana elongating into an arrow. I opened my eyes and extended my arm. There was a glowing bolt, about 6 inches long at the end of my finger.
There was a tree similar to the one I'm sitting under across the dirt road. I pointed my fighter and mentally commanded the energy in my hand to shoot at the tree. The next thing I knew, there was a hole clean through the tree the size of my pinky.
“Holy crap that's awesome! I did magic!” I got up and started yelling in excitement. I just did magic. Real. Life. Magic! Oh this is so great. Steve and Dallas would be so jealous of me right now. “In your face guys!”
I got a little sad after that, thinking of my gaming buddies. I missed them a little, but not near enough to even think of trying to find a way back to my old world. I have magic here! I'm going to be a badass!
“Okay, that's enough messing around for now. Let's head to the city Hagrid mentioned. He said east, so that's where I'll go.”
As I walked, I tried shooting some more mana bolts. The first three that I shot off required extreme concentration. But the fourth one I was able to do while maintaining a slow walking pace. While I was in the middle of charging my ninth ever mana bolt, I suddenly started feeling a light headed. I pulled up my status and saw I was running low on mana. I still had 26/120 mana, but I decided to wait until I was back up to at least 50/120.
“Oh right, arcane magic is a mana intensive skill. Time to let regeneration shine!”
I kept looking at my status screen and saw I gained a point of mana after a couple minutes of walking. I pulled up my status again and focused on the regeneration skill. It looks like it doubles the regeneration rate of whatever pool it is currently on. With the increased mental capacity, im regeneration about 24 mana per hour. It will only get faster as I level the skills up, so starting at an already pretty high multiplier made me super excited.
For now, I decided to focus on just walking. I have plenty of time to level, and regen is already doing its job while I walk. Time to relax and enjoy my walk. Right now, I haven’t a care in the world.