Ever since he’d acquired the Prophylaxis function, Lukas had spent every waking moment practicing his skills and getting more used to using them. It was a strange feeling, being able to perform something so flawlessly yet not have the slightest familiarity with it. It was like he was drawing on someone else’s experiences while his body acted out the movements.

“I told you. There is a difference between learning something and acquiring a skill. The former is familiarity drawn from your own limited experience. The latter is an ability etched into your very being. Just as you do not forget to breathe, you will not exercise a skill improperly.”

“It just makes no sense,” Lukas replied. “I’ll never do it wrong?”

“Never.”

Frowning, he placed his right hand over the surface of the still water. Once he’d found a groundwater pond, he took the opportunity to clean himself up and get rid of his horrid stench. Moss, as it turned out, was a perfectly good substitute for commercial scrub.

This entire experience was turning out to be a life changer for him. No contact with the outside world, no phones or computers or internet, no classes to attend, no social normal to entertain. All he had to contend with was a primal lifestyle that involved gaining strength, fighting monsters, and feeding to sate his hunger.

And the weirdest thing was…

He was starting to enjoy it.

Survival of the fittest. There was just something utterly beautiful about the simplicity of it—to stay in a world where danger lurked in every shadow, where even the weakest of things could kill you if caught off guard. He’d always been a light sleeper, but now his nap shattered from the slightest breeze. He’d travel all day, scanning and analyzing anything that caught his attention. He’d find prey worth his time, slice it in half, then roast it over a fire made by rubbing flint together.

It invoked a part of himself he never wanted to recognize. A part that did not concern itself with good and evil, or right and wrong. There was no morality, law, or culture down here. Merely the feeling of dominating another creature and seeing life slowly leave its eyes.

It was the feeling that came with being a hunter.

Focusing inward, Lukas felt lifeforce surge within him. A sudden warmth spread in his right hand—

Splash!

The still waters of the pond were disturbed by a massive upward spurt as a bar of pure kinetic motion escaped his arm and hit the water’s surface, splashing it everywhere.

“Having fun?”

“Successful experiments always are,” he replied with a satisfied grin. The more he studied his skills, the more he realized that they were far more than they appeared. The skill known as Momentum Manipulation allowed him to release lifeforce in the form of kinetic force outside his body. He may have acquired it mid-fight in a hopeless attempt to smack projectiles off of his hand, but now he could perform it anywhere.

More strangely, it was only one component of the skill. And because he’d unlocked it, it meant he could learn how to use the other components too. Provided he found them first.

It made no sense, but he supposed that was his life now.

“It took you less time to believe that your planet was gone and you were now carrying its consciousness within yourself. What does this say about you, I wonder.”

“That I’m a sucker who hates change,” Lukas grumbled, frustrated by his progress. He’d been testing his skills over and over, with different body parts each time. Every body part. It was only when he’d broken his nose and nearly fractured his ribs that he’d accepted her words at face value.

Although…

His fingers lightly twitched.

A little experimentation always squirreled its way into his daily activities.

“I don’t get it.” He let out a harsh breath. “I can shoot concussive blasts out of my freaking ass. Why is this simple trick so difficult? What am I missing here?”

“You are learning it from nothing,” Inanna deigned to reply, “rather than from the goddess who happens to speak to you from your mind.”

“But it’s the—”

“It is not the same thing. You are attempting to convert your lifeforce from its raw form into something more finely attuned to your body’s energy system.”

“I’m breathing.”

“Yes. While converting your lifeforce from its raw form into something more finely attuned to your body’s energy system.”

Lukas rolled his eyes. “Now you remind me of my teachers.”

“Likely because you have the intelligence and wisdom of a child. Tell me, mortal, do you even realize what lifeforce is?”

“It’s a form of energy produced by my body, and…” He trailed off. “Um, yeah. That’s about it.”

“I see.” Inanna nodded. “It is astounding how every time my estimation of you rises by an inch, you manage to push it down by a foot.”

His grin faltered. “Well, why don’t you explain it then? Without making a bargain out of it,” he quickly added.

“Unfortunately, it seems like the only way we will get around to doing something productive.”

Lukas’s eyes widened. Surely he had misheard? She hadn’t just—?

“I am merely taking pity on your stupidity,” she replied. “I already have two favors to collect from you. Might as well see them collected rather than watching you flounder about in this cavern for eternity.”

“Thank you,” he said, swallowing his inner wise-ass, despite how much he wanted to tell her what he really thought about her response.

“Lifeforce is, simply put, an energy of creation.”

“An energy?” Lukas asked. “Are you implying that there are more? Like mana and stuff?”

As soon as he uttered the words, his surroundings shifted. Gone was the pool and the rocky floor and the cavern walls. He was now in one of his university classrooms, wearing a clean T-shirt and sweatpants.

And in front of him stood the kind of beauty that wars were started over.

Lukas’s jaw hit the proverbial floor. Inanna wore a woman’s suit of charcoal gray, its cut immaculate. The pencil skirt and high heels accentuated her legs, and she wore a bone-white V-neck beneath her jacket, its neckline deep enough to make him want to watch if she took a deep breath. Opals set in silver flashed on her ears and at her throat, glittering through an array of colors like a strobing rainbow. Her black tresses were tightly wound into a neat bun behind her head, and she stood behind the teacher’s desk, staring at him knowingly.

Inanna hummed, observing herself with a scrutinizing eye. “How queer! This attire shows far less skin than my royal robes, yet it feels different somehow.”

“It uh, looks good on you,” he awkwardly said, thanking his lucky stars at being able to do something other than gawk at her like an imbecile.

“You should know this by now, mortal. Anything looks good on me.”

And wasn’t that the truth. Inanna was the sort of beauty that could rock a potato sack.

“Now then…” She sat atop the teacher’s desk and crossed her legs. “Let us continue.”

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“Continue…what?”

Her smile widened.

“Right, lifeforce.” His mind finished rebooting. “You were telling me about the energies.”

“Indeed,” she replied, resting her palms on either side. “There are four Paths of Creation. The Physical Path. The Immaterial Path. The Divine Path. And finally, the Demonic Path. The Physical Path is manifested through lifeforce. The Immaterial, through mana. The Divine is sought by harnessing faith, while the Demonic employs sin to do its bidding. You and every other creature that is physical and can draw breath and use lifeforce. With it, you may perform anything and everything, limited only by your own frail form.”

“What you just said makes no sense.”

Inanna dangerously arched an eyebrow.

“Sorry.” He winced. He needed to be more careful with his choice of words. “What I meant to say was, how can lifeforce do everything? Then there would be no reason for the other energies to exist.”

“I understand your quandary. It is easy to see why your mortal mind would limit possibilities to those constraints.”

“What are you, bigoted against mortals or something?”

Inanna laughed. The sound made him feel warm and fuzzy inside.

“I am not insulting you. You are limited to a linear comprehension of existence because of the illusions you believe in. But understand this. Creation is like mud. Its shape, size, charm, and worth all depend upon the whims of the creator. If you evoke the Paths of Creation, any of them, with the intention of nothing, then nothing is what you will create.”

Lukas fell silent. So far, he’d seen lifeforce used to perform a wide variety of things, from augmenting his body to throwing out concussive energy blasts. If it really was a single energy source, then it was the most versatile one he’d ever known. In fact, the only thing remotely similar to it was—

“What about the omphalos energy reserves? The ones I use for my anomaly functions?”

The goddess smiled again. “Anomalous energy. Very good. If there is a precursor to the four I mentioned, it would be that. The raw, wild power that comes from the Origin itself. A power that can be real or ethereal, or both. A power that makes no distinction between demonic and divine.”

Lukas narrowed his eyes. Precursor, huh? Did that imply that the four were derived from anomalous energy?

“Indeed,” she answered, happily proving once again that she could hear his waking thoughts. “The lifeforce within physical creations is synthesized from their essence, which is, at its core, a smidgen of anomalous energy. Immaterial creations lack an essence, but can churn anomalous energy into mana. Faith and sin are slightly more complex and require an understanding of the divine and demonic manifestations associated with the World. Put simply, they too can be converted from anomalous energy all the same.”

Oh.

Oh.

So that was what all this was about.

“Professor Inanna.” Lukas raised his hand. “I think I’ve figured you out.”

Her eyes glittered. “Oh?”

“Yup. You see, I’ve been having a bit of a bad time lately, what with the apocalyptic end of my planet and me finding myself in this crypt of worms or whatever.”

“I fail to see how that is relevant to our discussion.”

Lukas went on. “Then you come in, frighten the hell out of me, and win yourself a bargain where I play Sherlock Holmes for you. You twist circumstances so that I fall deeper into bargains that I should’ve gotten for free anyway. And now you come sauntering in, offering free help while,” he glanced over at her attire, “being ridiculously distracting. To be honest, I’m feeling too lucky.”

“Fortune is finicky. Sometimes it smiles upon the desperate.”

He shrugged. “Maybe it does. But I’ve been thinking that if something’s too good to be true, then it probably is. It doesn’t matter who’s doing it.”

Inanna’s lips lifted in a silent snarl, and suddenly he wasn’t able to move. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t do anything except clutch his head as his skull turned into a curtain of searing agony.

And then, it was over.

“Question my word again, and I will squash your head.”

Lukas stared at her, half-dazed from the pain and deeply, sincerely, wisely frightened. “I—” He coughed, spewing some blood from his mouth. “I don’t think you spoke anything but the truth! Just that it’s not the entire picture.” He felt her eyes converge on him. “You unveiled the potential of the anomalous energy within me. Potential that I can’t harness on my own. I remember.”

He stood up—or at least tried to. On the fourth try, he finally steadied himself with the support of the bench. “I remember your offer, Goddess Inanna. You wanted me to serve you. All of this wasn’t to help. This show of power was just another attempt at manipulating me into a bargain.”

As his vision grew steadier, his words found confidence.

“This was a way of showing me just how much I could gain. But I told you to look somewhere else. I don’t want to serve you.”

The angry, conceited look on Inanna’s face drained away bit by bit, leaving behind a blank mask that was empty of all emotion, like a sheet of pressed metal. It was unsettling to see a face so lovely suddenly transform into something alien, as though something lurked behind her eyes that had little in common with him and simply wouldn’t care to make the effort to understand.

Her features made his throat tighten, and he had to work not to tremble. But then she did something that made her look even more alien. More frightening.

She smiled. A slow smile, cruel and sharp, like broken glass. And when she spoke next, her voice sounded just as beautiful as it had before, but it was also empty and haunting. Each word made him want to lean closer to her, just so he could hear it more clearly.

“Liar,” Inanna said quietly, studying his face with calm, heavy eyes. “You crave it. You crave it so much that it pains you to deny your true nature. But your eyes cannot lie nearly as well as your tongue.”

“And what if I do?” he challenged. “Regardless, I won’t accept your offer. You may have tricked me twice, but that’s it. No more bargains between us.”

“Not today, perhaps, but one day you will be down upon your knees, begging me to give you such an offer. So I have decreed, so mote it be.”

The illusion wavered, and the feeling of being drenched in water returned as Lukas found himself back on the edge of the pond.

“So…” Lukas trailed off. “In the spirit of offering free tutelage, would you be willing to tell me what mana is? I mean, I’ve seen it used frequently in my world’s literature, so I’d like to know any differences that exist.”

A beat of silence passed before Inanna replied, her tone eerily calm. “You truly expect me to aid you?”

“I could always phrase it differently. In a way that fits our previous bargain.”

“Then do so.”

“You told me that anomalous energy is the precursor of lifeforce, mana, faith, and sin, and that it’s possible for the former to create the latter. If the world can do that using its own energy, then since I’m an anomaly, shouldn’t I be able to do the same?”

“In theory.”

Lukas grinned. That was good enough for him. “And how exactly does a world create or release mana into the environment? I imagine I have a similar capability within me.”

“You aim too high, mortal,” Inanna replied. “You are a physical creature, which is why lifeforce runs within you. With proper tutelage and a healthy amount of sheer blind luck, you may even discover how to convert anomalous energy into additional lifeforce. But to access the forge that would enable mana creation? You would need a mana skill.”

“That sounds good to me. How do I get a mana skill?”

“By accessing a forge, and learning how to manipulate the mana created into performing a skill.”

He blinked. “So, what you’re telling me is I need a forge to get the skill. But I need the skill to access the forge in the first place? That’s…”

“Poetic?”

“A fallacy. A really bizarre one, too.”

“What you call mana is also known as elemental energy. Using a mana forge, a creature can transmute it into a manifestation of the elements. Fire. Air. Water. Earth. Ether.”

Lukas couldn’t help but think about the mythologies he was familiar with. Stories of Merlin wielding magic against Morgana and the Saxons, of devas and asuras clashing, of the animated versions of angels and demons throwing around ice and fire like they were toys to play with. He thought of the holy people of the Native American tribes, the Aztecs, of Zeus hurling thunderbolts and Poseidon raising the tides.

If gods and goddesses were real, if mana was now real…

Were all those stories real?

He thought of the Screen. How do I use—no, how do I synthesize mana?

By accessing the Ley Line Network.

Lukas blinked. So…I have ley lines?

No.

Can I have ley lines?

Yes.

How?

By developing mana skills.

And how do I develop a mana skill?

Performing an act of mana and etching it to the Soul.

How do I perform an act of mana?

By accessing the Ley Line Network.

Lukas closed his eyes in resignation. He could practically feel Inanna’s smugness emanating from her mental presence. “Yes, I get it. Mana is a closed loop for me because I’m not supposed to wield it. The only way to do that is to acquire the skill from someone else.” He paused. “From you.”

“I do not believe in charity, mortal.”

“Shocker,” came his deadpan answer. “But you’re underestimating me. I haven’t forgotten that I still need more Soul Capacity before I can even think of acquiring new skills, whether they’re bargained for or developed from scratch. That means you can’t make me make impulsive choices. You want me to play hardball? Fine, I’ll do it. Skills or no skills, I can learn the hard way. I have a lifetime ahead of me to do it.”

“I see. Then what will you do now?”

“Attempt to convert my lifeforce from its raw form into something more finely attuned to my body’s energy.”

“Ah. In my day we called that breathing.”