If a man cannot buy his freedom, then all the world's wealth shall be as a grain of sand by the sea.

-Istan Triant, after the great slave revolt of 1540 AC

I assessed my options.

Admittedly, without any mana, they were more limited than I liked. Spending AP was one of my few real options, and a couple skills might actually be worth buying. Beyond the cost, however, there was an additional problem. I was fairly certain, or at least sufficiently paranoid, my captor could see at least some of my status with his analysis spells. There was no guarantee, of course, but an incorrect assumption could negatively alter my escape chances; it was better to be safe than sorry. This would make preparations harder, but it was better to be more paranoid than needed. Making more work for myself was a minor cost compared to tipping off my captor. I had to approach my situation as intelligently as possible.

With little in the way of options, it simplified what I could do. I would practice what little I had access to. By instinct, I was already drawing in mana continuously, so I decided to stop that and gain conscious control.

Never know what might prove useful.

A few minutes of effort allowed me to step the flow, though there was a constant urge to resume.

Feels like I need to pee.

Already feels wrong to stop. Absorbing the mana feels natural.

The mage perked up, presumably noticing when the mana stopped moving.

I needed a name for this guy, wizard, mage…

I didn’t understand him, and until I spoke the language I wouldn’t be able to ask his name.

Not that asking would be a good idea in this situation anyway.

So I started to think of a good name, eventually settling on ‘that annoying mage,’ or Tam for short. Tam sounded like a name, so it worked.

And, at the moment, Tam was looking surprised and excited. He cast more spells and traced them into the air as he examined me even closer.

Yes, yes. I know other half, he’s too close.

I resolved to ignore both Tam, and my other half, as I practiced. I pulled mana in, stopped, and then started up again. I didn’t have a body at the moment, but at least I could do something.

Eventually, after a couple hours of practice, I could stop and start up again with a thought. Continuous exposure had reduced the discomfort to no more than a tiny twinge.

Now that I could control it reliably, I decided to make my absorption more efficient, if possible. The skills available for purchase had both shown some form of mana drain resistance was possible, and that mana could be harvested more efficiently. If I wanted to have any mana, at all, to work with, I was going to need one or both of those types of skills.

For now, I was going to practice harvesting mana as long as Tam was in the room. He constantly released a rich cloud of mana and it was a shame to waste it. And when he wasn’t here, I would practice resisting the mana drain.

That had been all I did the last few days.

Not much had changed since I started practicing. Tam left, and came back, a few times. The lights on the ceiling dimmed, for nighttime I assumed, and then brightened a few minutes before he came back in the morning. The most excitement was Tam bringing a chair, a book, and a small table with him.

More like a tome.

It was thick, heavy, and handwritten, with drawings that I couldn’t make sense of. Shortly after sitting down each day, Tam cast a spell, looked off into space for a moment, and then turned to his book. Then he placed the book on the table when he left again.

He would take a few breaks, but otherwise it had been the same each day.

I quickly grew used to the sound of stiff paper pages rustling as they turned in Tam’s fingers. His breath emerged in a soft in and out that filled the room with faint sound. His chair creaked faintly as he moved, sounding a counterpoint against the constant whispering of paper. The sound of Tam’s feet on stone rang from the hallway to announce his impending arrival and followed his wake on exit. Even the sound of his clothes was noticeable as they swished softly and slid over his skin.

When Tam was not in the room, I was subjected to silence.

When I was human, I was never fully silent. The pulsing rush of blood in my veins merged with the high pitched sound in my eardrums to fill a silent room. These were gone. I took no breaths, had no gurgling stomach, flexing muscles, cracking joints, or heart beating a constant thrumming beat. In the absence of self produced sounds, I could hear the faintest whispering of air moving gently over stone. However, it was so faint that I would catch it for a moment, and then it would fade as I strained to listen for it. The silence grew maddening. It made me turn away from the outside, and delve inward. I fixated on my practice.

I’ll escape this.

When Tam was present, I continued my efforts to pull from the mana he released. I wasn’t sure why he released mana all the time.

Maybe because he’s a caster? Or is that something everything… organic does?

Presumably all humans, at least, produced it, due to what I knew from my soul mana ability. Tam was the only living being around, so it was hard to know for sure.

Every time Tam cast a spell I could see its structure. They looked like layers of glowing glass, though where the pieces overlapped they became an indefinite translucent mess. Any bit of the spell that entered into my aura allowed me to sense it more clearly, but otherwise I could only see from the perspective of my core. The spells wrapped little tendrils of power around and into my crystal. Even as I tried to pull them apart, I was also trying to understand what the spells were doing. With time, the spells slowly leaked mana and gradually turned more transparent. When Tam eventually dismissed them, they dissolved into nothing but mana.

Probably end up as nothing but mana if they were left alone long enough, too.

By the end of the first day I had improved my ability to focus where my mana absorbed. It wasn’t much progress, but I could exclude a tiny sliver of space from my mana drain. I still had a lot of room for improvement, but any improvement at all was a good sign for my plans.

I no longer needed to sleep, or do any other biological functions.

Would have been useful on Earth. Never need to sign out of an all night gaming session. Great for all night study sessions, too.

Mundane utility aside, it was also useful in my current situation. I no longer even seemed get tired mentally. Physically, well, I was a lump of rock. Some ability might make me tired, at some point in the future, but for now it seemed impossible. So, no more dreams for me.

Shame, always had crazy dreams.

So, working through the night was simple. The more I grew familiar with my mana absorption, the more it felt similar to the mana drain I was experiencing. It was just happening in reverse. Some of my problem almost certainly stemmed from having no idea what was actually happening. I had no conception of how my ability worked, which meant my attempts at improvement were blind. Attempting to turn the mana drain on and off, in the same way I had learned to master my own ability, resulted in no progress that first night. Of course, I knew this was going to take time.

I was right.

I spent days lost in the same routine. Tam would show up and I ignored him.

Not like he does anything interesting.

In my boredom, I did consider trying to contact Tam by turning my mana absorption on and off in sequence. I could do numbers, one, two, three, etc… Even though I knew it was a bad idea, my boredom made me want to take a different way out, to make something happen.

Even if I took that option, however, I didn’t speak the language. Even if Tam realized I was intelligent, we wouldn’t be able to communicate. He might eventually be able to teach me, but in the meantime I would be stuck in exactly the same situation.

No thanks.

That also assumed he wouldn’t decide I was too dangerous to be left alive. And, even it he kept me alive, he would probably grow both more fascinated and wary, taking additional precautions.

I’m not on Earth…

I was going to do my best to keep my own morals intact, not that I’ve had much chance to test them, but even my old world accepted killing in self defense.

What happens if I kill someone?

The new instincts were already more than I wanted to deal with. They had been a little quieter while I focused on my current plan, though I wasn’t sure if that was because I was doing something, or they simply had no interest in something as cerebral as training. If I killed someone, would they come to the forefront? Would I lose control? Even assuming I was able to get control of them again, they might do something very stupid in the heat of the moment.

Stick to the plan.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

I had a list of what I was going to do. My first option, escape, was still my priority. If that didn’t work, my second option was communication. Even if I managed to communicate to Tam that I was human, there was no guarantee that would be a solution to my problem. Plenty of Earth societies had had slaves and considered owning other humans perfectly normal. And far too many societies, even if they hadn’t had slaves outright, had considered lower class citizens less than human. With next to nothing known about Tam… it was a substantial risk. Regardless of his society, he could be a horrible person who would think nothing of capturing and torturing a human. That left my third option, killing him if I absolutely needed to. I didn’t want to, but if it proved necessary I was prepared to do it. Assuming I ever had the capability.

In the meantime, I mastered my boredom with the thought that failure might result in the death of me or someone else. Naturally, the thoughts of death drove my other half into more homicidal impulses.

Just ignore it.

I dove back into my training as best I could. Perhaps it helped, that I was rather ambivalent about death now. I wasn’t eager to rush into it, but…

It’s not the end.

That knowledge had increased the number of fates worse than death, substantially. The thought of killing in self defense was moderated by the knowledge that death wouldn’t be the end for anyone I killed. I still didn’t want want to do it.

I’m still taking away something they can’t get back. Besides… the pain of death doesn’t just hit the person who dies.

I didn’t let that thought linger, I had enough to do without worrying about my family.

With several days of concerted effort my mana absorption ability steadily improved. I could now exclude a third of my aura while still drawing from the rest. Shortly after I got to that level of proficiency I received a new message.

Your skill Mana Absorption I has changed and improved through your efforts. It has become:

Directed Mana Absorption I

Raw mana within your aura can be drawn into your core to increase your available mana. You can direct where to focus your absorption to increase your efficiency.

You have been awarded a new title!

Skill Evolution

You have altered a skill's capabilities beyond normal through concerted effort. Use it to acquire your dreams, or just richer mana.

+100 Ability Points

+5% easier to acquire merged or upgraded skills

Huh, wasn’t expecting that result.

I thought my Mana Absorption skill would level up. Which meant there was some other way to level it.

Actually, now that I think about it…

It was probably just a matter of speed. I had tried to be more efficient in where I got the mana from, but drawing in mana faster would probably have worked just as well.

Don’t scream. Probably wouldn’t discover this the normal way.

Spent a little extra effort and didn’t try the obvious. Oh well, not a big deal.

In balance, my ignorance probably worked out in my favor. At least in this case, anyone counting on ignorance to work out for them in the long run was doomed to disappointment.

Met a few of those.

Ugh, and met more than a few who were sheltered from reality by those around them.

You only needed one manager who had clearly failed upward to make you curse the whole lot.

Wonder if I could manage to learn actual curses here?

I shrugged off both the residual, and current, frustration and concentrated back on the present.

I had my new skill, so now I was going to try using it again.

Best to wait until Tam takes a break.

For now I kept my focus the same and tried absorbing faster instead… and succeeded immediately. I could go quite a bit faster. Apparently, I had not been using my maximum speed this entire time.

Fake breaths, fake breaths… you already knew that was likely.

It was possible the new skill was responsible, but since my speed only improved once I focused on it, I doubted it. And, of course, Tam noticed the change.

I swear I only screamed a little.

Since Tam already knew that something was happening I went for broke and tried to focus my ability more. The difference was amazing. I had been teaching myself, simply fumbling about trying to master the skill on my own, using an ability I truly didn’t understand. Now, directing my focus was so much simpler. A combination of techniques and what felt like muscle memory had slipped into my mind without me noticing until I used them. I didn’t have perfect control, but I could focus the drain onto a sphere about a foot wide.

Some part of me tried to freak out about the system editing my memories, but another part simply made fun of me for not fully realizing the implications earlier.

Of course the system can edit your memory.

Yeah, what did you think it did the first time, Caden? Did the skills just appear out of nothing?

Talking to myself in third person, I’m sure that’s a great sign.

Oh screw you, we did that back on Earth, too.

I did my best to disentangle the different lines of thought, even as I tried to focus on Tam.

Tam smiled excitement as he put the book on the ground and stood up. His eyes fixated on me, even as he cast more spells. This time, as I focused my skill on the spell, something different happened. Everything was perfectly normal… until Tam dismissed the spell. The spell dissolved and a good portion of the loose mana rushed into me. I could feel something warm in my core. I called up my status and stared in shock. I had two mana.

Make a monster to kill him!

I don’t even know how to make one!

No, stop that, it doesn’t matter.

I hadn’t purchased any monsters to summon, but that wasn’t important right now. No matter what some stupid instincts are saying… The only thing I could do was create aura, but I needed to keep Tam from noticing.

So, I tried expanding my aura downward, keeping it as narrow as possible.

My aura responded, growing effortlessly down to cover the entire stand. I almost stopped as I tapped into another skill that was imprinted into my brain. Don’t think I have a brain anymore. The same feeling of muscle memory happened without conscious direction and needed no extra thought. I simply knew.

I didn’t need to think about each individual muscle as I walked; I just did it effortlessly. Building aura was no different. I had no idea of the mechanics, but it was easy.

In the end, the minimum width of my aura proved to be about half a foot, but I hoped it was small enough to escape notice.

It reached the floor after covering the entire stand and I could feel the difference between the stone and the air. My aura expanded through it almost as easily, but the mana within felt thick. If the mana in the air was water, the mana in the stone was molasses, sluggish and slow. I ignored that for the moment, continuing the expansion in a narrow corridor toward the back wall opposite the hallway.

Getting more aura than I expected out of this… though… oh, yeah, pretty obvious.

A dungeon would be quite large, or so I assumed, based on my, admittedly little, knowledge sourced from another universe. Okay, not the best source. My aura continued expanding into the back wall, though I kept a safe distance from the surface of the floor and walls. My expansion risked entering some other room, but I could only control so much. In the end, my expanded aura stretched to cover about three feet across behind the wall, almost as large the width of my starting aura.

As far as I could tell, Tam had not noticed my aura expansion at all. I felt slightly different, however. I was getting more mana. Even focusing my absorption, I was getting a little trickle more. I did a little testing. Unless I turned my absorption off completely, I seemed to get a small passive flow from all my aura. Not sure if that was a permanent feature, or because my Directed Mana Absorption was only level one. Only time would tell.

After his brief surge of interest, Tam simply continued his routine, so I added expanding aura to my own. Every time one of his usual spells ended, I would channel it into creating more aura. I had debated trying to store up mana, but ultimately decided it was a bad idea for two reasons: Firstly, my mana was being drained, and second, I had to assume that Tam’s spell kept track of my mana level.

Best to avoid him seeing me with mana.

So, I did my best to examine the spells that Tam cast and then frantically suck in the remnant mana when they dissolved. By the end of the first day I had managed a reasonable coverage behind the back wall. I had started to have some trouble though. It was starting to get harder to expand my aura farther upward. Since it was directional, I thought I might be getting too far from my core. Another possibility was my connection needed to be wider. Tomorrow I was going to expand under the floor instead, which should help determine the issue.

If I can only have so much aura because of my level…

I tried not to think about it. Even a very limited distance from my core being allowable could prove disastrous.

Tam left, presumably to bed, the lights fading down to a dull glow.

It had been another few days. I had continued my attempts to prevent the mana drain, but unlike my mana absorption, I had noticed no change. It was possible that what I was trying to do was simply much harder, but it was equally likely that I was trying to do it wrong.

Or it simply isn’t possible.

It was time to do the only thing I could: acquire information and watch.

Same thing we do every night Pinky…

I watched the entire stand I sat upon, along with the outside of the white crystal below me, though it was still opaque to my sight. My ability had told me that concentrated mana could block my perception, so it wasn’t a great surprise. Tam was similarly opague, and even his clothes were hard to detect properly with my aura, lost in the haze of mana he leaked.

Too close to him.

I studied the runes on the stand. They were still gibberish, but I could see my mana flowing through the metal down toward the crystal. No, actually, my mana was flowing around something inside the metal, like an invisible pipe was guiding the mana down and away from me.

There was no sign of what did it, but I thought I could learn more.

Better be able to learn more.

Mana flowed passively toward me through my aura, the largest portion coming from below and behind me. It thickened in the narrower channel leading to my core. So, I tried to condense the flow of mana further, narrowing the flow around the stand. It worked, though it only condensed a little. There were gaps in the flow. The mana swirled like fog around glass. Hollow, though still indistinct, shapes in the mana were gradually coming into focus as I concentrated.

I traced the invisible shapes upward until it reached the top of my stand. There they extended up into my core and pulled mana right from where it was stored. My other half was really unhappy about this, what else is new, but I thought the absence of a good target moderated its rage a bit.

Not sure how this will help me, but at least it’s a place to start.