After a few minutes of messing around with the mana in his Core, Alex decided to stop and see if he could get some outside advice. He glanced at his mana pool in the floating blue window before dismissing it.
47/60
Leaning forward, he rolled his desk chair closer to the edge of his desk, where his cracked phone lay.
If he stuck with the analogy of mana being water in a pool, then what he’d been doing so far felt like the equivalent of a toddler splashing around in the kiddie pool. The mana hadn’t been pushed or moved to any effect, just thrown from the Core to dissipate in his body.
Navigating to the Nexus Hub website, Alex checked for any notifications or recent forum posts.
He was mortified to see an article posted 20 minutes ago, one with a picture of him as the thumbnail.
His stomach jumped up into his chest. Worried that he’d be easily identified, he pulled up the article and zoomed in as far as his phone would allow.
He let out a sigh of relief when he realized the picture was too hard to make out. The light of the portal behind him made him look more like a silhouette than anything else. On top of that, he had been covering most of his face with the arm that had his jacket in it, as he was caught off guard by the change in scenery and lights from the outside.
Alex scanned the article just to see what they were saying.
‘John Riley’s group of five enters yet another Rift!’ ’…protectors of the city…’
Blah, blah, blah…
‘…rescued a solo Awakened from grave danger. Judging by the state of the poor soul that was…’
He forced his face to go deadpan as he skimmed the article.
It didn’t really matter since they didn’t actually know who he was. But, for some reason, it really rubbed him the wrong way to think that the article was written as if he were some damsel in distress.
I fought that monster on my own, thank you very much.
Backing out of the article, he began to scan through the other articles. There wasn’t much of interest there.
An idea came to him, and he locked his phone, scooting the chair up to his desk while double-tapping his keyboard to wake up his computer.
It didn’t take long to turn on the VPN and create a throwaway email address. From there, he made a new account on Nexus Hub, making up a silly, throw-away username.
His main goal in all of this internet cloak and dagger was to make a post asking for more specific information. While this wasn’t abnormal, and he had even tried doing it from his main account, he hadn’t known anything about anything last time. Most of the posts that were just asking for information never went anywhere. The only people commenting on those were others with more questions.
Alex had a feeling that if he added some information about his experience in the Rift or made it clear that he’d been awakened, then he might actually get some responses this time.
He opened the page to post a new thread and paused.
What should I ask? There are so many questions. What should I share? Enough, but nothing too revealing?
He was already kicking himself for telling John and his group what his Trait was. He had a feeling that wasn’t something people normally shared.
I’m a newly Awakened One and wanted to see if someone could help answer some questions for me.
1. My magic stats are all higher than my physical stats, how is that possible? I’ve been moving my body all my life, but have never had magic before today?
2. How can I cast a spell? I can feel my mana move now, but what do I actually do with it?
I unlocked my trait but don’t want to share it here. I’m surprised that we can end up getting three traits. Is there also a cap on Active or Passive skills?***
Any help is appreciated, thanks!
Refreshing the page every few seconds, Alex waited for any response or messages of help. He noticed his foot bouncing under the desk and forced it to still.
A direct message appeared in his inbox.
Then another.
And another.
He refreshed the page and found two comments on the post. Leaning forward, he checked out the first comment response.
BUZZLIGHTYEARLOVER99: Are you really an Awakened? I have some questions too. Can you DM me? I want to know what magic feels like!
Then the other comment from someone with a barcode username.
IIlIIIlll: Yo! @2Stupid4Magic Welcome to the club, bro! You’re not going to find much help here. I’ll see you later, when you find The Guild. Also, love the username! Melee for life!
More DMs began to flood his inbox, but Alex looked at the post for another few seconds. It seemed that one person who responded was awakened, and one was just looking for answers, like he was. Ignoring the one, he reread what the other said.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Find the guild? He wrote it like The Guild was something specific, though.
“Hmm…” Alex muttered to himself.
He also just says outright that I won’t get much help here.
Clicking the reply button, Alex tried to respond; however, as soon as the page refreshed to open a comment reply, he received an error from the website.
“What?”
He refreshed the page and tried again, but it didn’t do anything.
They must have already taken it down? That fast?
Navigating back to the homepage, Alex checked. Sure enough, his post wasn’t listed among those from the last hour.
He groaned, wishing he had checked and remembered that guy’s username.
His attention was drawn to the 30+ direct messages he received.
At least I can get some answers here.
Oh, how wrong he was. Of the close to 40 messages, only two had any relevant information. All the others were spam links, recruitment messages, or offers to pay him to sponsor some sort of product and mention that he was Awakened.
One of the useful messages was actually a cryptic warning, telling him that the people who ran the site were probably linked to the Hunter’s Association and that they would definitely scrape information from his account and attempt to contact or recruit him. They suggested he delete the post before they did or be prepared to deal with military recruiters banging on his door.
I’m really glad that I took the time to make this throwaway account…
The second message was a lot more helpful, though the message was short and focused on answering only one of his questions.
TimonNotPumbaa: Hey, you won’t find a lot of help here. Just a quick tip for you, though, spells come from skills or learning, as far as we can tell right now. Some people have gotten spell books as rewards from Rifts to help them learn a new skill, but you won’t be able to just throw mana around and figure one out. They’re really complicated. Same username in AG. Look me up when you get in.
PS - - Try visualizing your mana. It was the most helpful for me.
This response alone made all the nonsense of creating the post and it getting removed worth it.
Alex began to feel a bit nervous about somehow being tracked. He wouldn’t put it past the government to use some means of tracking people they found out had awakened. Without waiting any longer, he deleted the account from the page and closed his browser, turning off the VPN and shutting down his computer.
Only after a few minutes of staring at his black computer screen did he let out the breath he was holding.
Idiot. It’s not like they’re going to come right now.
Wanting to distract himself before his brain grasped onto the paranoia, Alex thought back to the advice from TimonNotPumbaa.
Try to visualize my mana?
Feeling more than a little silly, he moved from his desk chair to the bed and found a comfortable position before closing his eyes.
Starting from the beginning, he did his best to imagine his mind traveling down toward the area where he believed his Core to be, envisioning a floating blue ball of mana.
From his exposure to fantasy games and novels in the past, his brain wanted to think about mana flowing like water.
Maybe that was from anime?
Fuck. Focus, Alex.
He started again, forming the image of the Core in his mind and thinking about a small stream breaching out from the Core. He was used to visualizing things through images from doing art for so many years. Alex tried to lean into that experience as much as possible.
Almost immediately, he could feel a difference. Focusing his attention on the movement of the mana and how it flowed from the source to where he wanted it to go seemed to help his control.
His grip slipped on the small tendril, but even this was significantly more than the first time he had tried splashing around.
Alex lost himself in the repeated exercise of slowly teasing the streams of mana from the Core, doing his best to hold onto them and manipulate them into different directions. As a random exercise, he began to try bending that stream into different general shapes, which greatly increased the difficulty. However, after each repetition, he could see gradual improvements.
A headache began to form, and he pulled up his status screen. He was surprised to see that he was down to the last 20 points of mana.
Did I use too much of it too quickly?
The ache wasn’t too bad, and he felt close to a breakthrough. He had been able to make a circle so far, and a square wasn’t too much harder, though he had been trying to work the shape into something a bit more complex.
Unwilling to stop playing with his new toy—
Literal magic…
He continued the exercise. A certain sadistic part of him was also interested to see if the headache continued to worsen as his mana levels continued to drop.
It was hard for him to keep track of time as he worked with the mana. He closed his eyes and dedicated his focus and intent completely to the task at hand.
A short time later, he reached a breakthrough.
New Skill Learned: [Mana Shaping] (Novice - Level 1)
Do you accept? Yes/ No?
This notification surprised him for a few reasons.
First and foremost, his eyes were still closed, yet he could see the blue screen, clear as day.
Second, he couldn’t figure out why he would want to deny gaining a skill. He opened his eyes and thought through the situation.
I just learned a skill? From what, sitting on my bed and playing with imaginary shapes?
Alex mentally accepted the prompt and received his new skill.
"Mana shaping", he tested the skill's name on his tongue. "That sounds pretty straightforward." He willed the description to appear.
[Mana Shaping] - Allows the Awakened One to shape mana more easily to their will.
"Hmm, very straightforward, but magic is magic - and I've got it."
If I ever meet up with that Timon dude, I’m really going to thank him.
He gripped his head and winced, feeling even more sluggish than before. Pulling up his status, he saw that he was down to his last ten mana points. For some reason, the way this had escalated made him really not want to push himself down to the single digits.
Despite the pain, Alex felt a sense of exaltation and smiled.
Hell yeah! I’ve got magic. I killed a monster. I learned a skill. I’ve got a System in my head that shows me my stats. Oh— and I can’t forget the fact that I traveled to an entirely different world today.
As he thought about it, the stress of the day finally caught up to him. He was exhausted.
Did all of that really happen today?
It was overwhelming and entirely too much.
And yet— he couldn’t stop smiling.