Clasped between Alec’s slender fingers was a black fountain pen with gold accents. Its sides curved perfectly, leading into the golden tip of the pen, which seemed to have a blue, ethereal ball of energy attached to it. Although it seemed relatively unassuming, Alec could feel some kind of connection between himself and the pen. When he experimentally tugged at that connection, the pen seemingly disappeared from his hand. Consecutively, the bloating in his stomach came back.

Once again, Alec thought back to the book person’s words. His soul had brought with him a fountain pen, which didn’t make much sense as he couldn’t remember the last time he actually held a pen. His entire job was typing on a keyboard and he didn’t have a habit of taking physical notes.

‘Maybe it’s more of a symbolic thing,’ he thought as he took the pen back out. ‘What does it do..?’

As soon as he contemplated, a needle of information penetrated deep into his consciousness, infusing him with knowledge related to the fountain pen.

This was a soul artifact, an object that tied itself to its host’s soul. Their connection to the host soul was omnipresent, making it retractable from anywhere in the universe, no matter how far.

The next wave of information crashed to the shores of Alec’s mind. This time, it was about the abilities of the fountain pen, which was nothing more than three simple sentences.

[An author’s job is not creating, but telling. This pen is your implement. You’ll need it if you want to do this right.]

‘Huh... Those lines sound awfully familiar for some reason,’ Alec commented mentally. A short while later, his mind shifted to the explanation excitedly. ‘My job is not creating but telling, does that mean I can outsource the creating job to the pen? Does it help me create things?’

He looked around to try and spot something he could draw on, unfortunately, the infirmary was devoid of anything that could pass as a piece of paper.

‘If only I could get up to scour the place...’ he muttered to himself. He had tried getting up from his bed. Unfortunately, his legs barely responded. If not for the fact that he could feel some pain and move his toes slightly, he would have thought that he had been permanently disabled.

As he kept looking around, his eyes fell on the innocent wooden bedside table.

‘Well... Beggars can’t be choosers I guess...’ He thought before raising his pen and bringing it closer to the surface of the table. However, much to his surprise, when he brought down the pen, the tip of it left a blue, glowing line on the table. His plan of carving out lines on the table was pleasantly discarded as he started scribbling on the table without a thought. Whatever line he drew quickly faded into non-existence, making him wonder if he had to train his writing speed.

‘What the fuck am I doing? I’m an author, not an artist,’ he reprimanded himself while looking at his horrid drawings before thinking of a few words to write.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Gently moving the pen, he noticed that the lines weren’t disappearing as quickly. They were filled with intent, something more than mere mana. One by one, glowing blue letters appeared on the table.

[Strength]

Suddenly, the bedside table was gently pushed, seemingly out of nowhere. The word inscribed into its surface faded away in a short while, disappearing without achieving anything meaningful. As he grinned in excitement with the new toy he had found, Alec noticed his mind getting slightly tired. His author instincts told him that this was more than a mere need for sleep.

‘Does this thing use mana? Maybe using mana tires my mind. What I can create seems to be limited by that,’ he quickly formulated. It made sense that the pen needed at least some sort of energy to function. If it could conjure anything out of nothing; once he got stronger, Alec could just write [Nuke] and [2 seconds delay] on a ball before gifting it to his enemies and using whatever means of fast transportation he had to escape.

Instantly, his mind kicked into action, starting to quickly create and discard one idea after the other. He had spent the last few years of his life producing different and creative ways to abuse overpowered abilities in his books. If he couldn’t even do that much, he wouldn’t have been chosen the best web novel author of the year.

As the cogs of his mind came to a stop, he grinned devilishly. He had found his path to greatness.

‘As expected of me, a seasoned web novel author. As long as I’m given a cheat ability, I can abuse it better than anyone else,’ he thought to himself as the fountain pen danced on the surface of the bedside table.

Glowing lines twisted and bent, connecting to create glowing words.

[Mana-Growth Potion]

They read. Alec sensed a horrible feeling creeping up from somewhere deep inside him as little motes of bluish light started escaping his body to charge the words with energy. At first, he felt the expenditure was manageable and reasonable. He didn’t think that a mana-growth potion would be a widespread and easy-to-make formula. If everyone had access to such a thing, everyone would become stronger and stronger, eventually leading to a mage singularity, right?

Well, he turned out to be right in a certain sense.

The motes of mana didn’t stop leaving his body, they accelerated even further. This made Alec first frown in confusion, then smile bitterly.

‘Of course. Why would a mana-growth potion be cheap enough for me to be able to afford it?’ he thought. He kept watching mana leave his body, making him more and more uncomfortable. However, he had no choice. He didn’t know how to stop the process of creation. He tried crossing out the words he had just written, which turned out to be an unsuccessful attempt, leaving him completely clueless about what to do.

At some point, Alec’s consciousness started becoming blurry as every part of his body started hurting in harmony. Swearing at his idiocy, Alec sighed and laid back down. If he was going to run out of mana and get sick(or possibly die), he would at least do it while lying down. Turning his head, Alec kept watching the process of creation. His eyes could pick up very faint, ghostly drops of water. They were most definitely ethereal, without substance. He very well understood that his mana reservoirs weren’t enough to accommodate something like this right now.

‘I’ve at least learned something...’ Alec thought as his blurry gaze lingered on the holographic droplets of a mana potion that wouldn’t be able to manifest into this world. Fortunately for him, the motes of mana leaving his body seemed to be getting more and more sparse, making him grateful that he was at least not getting sucked completely dry.

Chuckling to himself quietly, Alec passed out into a deep state of slumber. He could formulate a single last thought in his mind, before going dark.

‘The next time I try creating a liquid, I should do it inside a container...’