“These mana waves aren’t dense enough. We can’t do anything with them,” Brian said.

“And we can barely control them. Takes forever to even get a little bit into this damn blueprint,” Lucas said.

Lucas thought for a moment.

“Maybe we should try with Jack’s mana. It was way denser than this shit out here,” Lucas said.

“Okay, let’s wait until he comes back then. How is your hand doing?” Brian said.

“Fucking shit. Shit hurts like fire. And makes me thirsty as hell,” Lucas said, and took a sip off his water canteen.

“Yeah, how will we even get water from this damn place? I know we can get food, but water?” Brian said.

“I think meat has water. Or blood. Maybe eat some goblin meat?” Lucas said, and laughed.

“That’s disgusting. Let’s at least taste grasshopper meat before we do that,” Brian said.

“Why didn’t we bring a lighter or some shit? We can’t even cook it out here,” Lucas said.

“Should’ve bought a fire blueprint instead. Or fire skill. Hey, you think we should have bought like a healing skill instead of a healing blueprint? Your insect control is a magical skill right? What’s the difference between skill and blueprint?”

“Oh, eh. Never thought about it,” Lucas said.

“Maybe everyone can use the blueprint? For example Jack could show it to us. You can’t show us the blueprint for the insect skill?”

“Yeah, something like that,” Lucas said. He didn’t really care about the conversation. He was too distracted by the pain in his hand.

…

“Hey Jack! How are you?” Eugene said, in a cheerful and friendly tone.

Fuck. Five guys. All in gear. I have a machete. Eugene has a wooden spear. The other four are using wooden spears as well. They are covered by football gear. Think. Run away? Fight? Fuck. Run away in a direction away from Lucas and Brian. If chased, aim for the throat. You are also carrying your backup combat knife. They don’t know that. Fuck.

There were no college football dressed enemies right behind him, so he turned around and sprinted away.

He didn’t look back. He focused on running into any trees while running.

After a while of intense sprinting, he stopped and looked behind himself.

“You’re quite a runner,” Eugene said with a smile plastered on his face. He was right next to Jack. He did not look out of breath at all.

What the fuck?

Just before Jack could strike with his machete and take off running, Eugene raised his hands and said, “Hey! Sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you! I just wanna exchange info, Jack,” Eugene said.

Jack looked around and saw that the other men were gone.

“I told them to wait away from here. I’m sorry for scaring you like that,” Eugene said.

“What you wanna know?” Jack said.

“Thank you. I just wanna know like skills info. How y’all are holding up. The latinos are after your asses after you killed Fernando’s brother and the other two. They’ve got groups out searching for you,” Eugene said.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Fuck.

“Which areas are they at?” Jack said.

“Mainly the grasshopper and Balloon Monster areas. Where you were spotted most times,” Eugene said.

“Okay. Thanks for the heads up,” Jack said.

“Don’t worry about it. Now… so what skills did you get? You unlocked all the beginner quests and achievements right? You must’ve gotten something interesting,” Eugene said with a cunning smile on his face.

Jack was silent.

“Okay, I’ll go first. If you do 100 pushups in a row, you get an achievement and can pick from a bunch of body skills,” Eugene said.

Really? That simple? Just pushups?

“Your turn,” Jack said.

“Okay… I got a skill called Knife Fighting: Rank 1. If you get that skill, it feels like you’ve trained with a knife for thousands of hours. It gives you instincts like holding your knife in front of you at all times. I think it even overrides fear instincts,” Jack said.

“In-te-rest-ing… Mhm. I never thought about getting something like that,” Eugene said. “But that’s not the only skill you got, right? With your free points? You discovered any achievements or bought any other skills?”

“Yes. I bought 2 more ranks of Knife Fighting. They are useless. Just more knife fighting. Also, the skills for knife fighting do not transfer over to this machete, for example. I would not recommend getting that skill,” Jack said.

“What a waste of points,” Eugene said, and laughed.

“Lemme tell you some actual skills that aren’t shit. You gotta go for multiplicative, long-term effects that scale,” Eugene said.

Jack looked confused.

“Okay. Think about it like this. Oh, I’ll also give you one more tip. So, if you take Enhanced Strength, your entire body becomes 2,5% stronger, based on your current strength. Now that might sound cool. But, if you buy Enhanced Leg Strength your legs become 12,5% times stronger. The more specific you are with your skills, higher the specific percentages become. But those skills are also kind of limiting by themselves. So think about this. Enhanced Bodily Recover. That one makes your body recover faster. So if you couple the enhanced leg strength, and maybe get a running skill like good old me, AND get the enhanced recovery, you can really stack up some effects. You get me?” Eugene said.

Is that why this motherfucker runs so fast?

“I think I do. Kind of.”

But these idiots haven’t unlocked mana yet, right? So what is powering those bodily enhancements? For example the one Brian has on his right hand. What powers that?

Eugene stared at Jack. waiting for him to give some information now.

“I got a skill crystal which gave me Python Programming: Rank 1. It gave me some knowledge about python,” Jack said.

Eugene kept a smile on his face, but he looked annoyed by that information.

Eugene looked down at his watch, then looked behind himself.

“Gotta run. I’ll catch up with you another time,” he said, and ran off. Very quickly.

Fuck that guy.

…

“We gotta leave, now!” Jack said, as soon as he saw Lucas and Brian again.

Jack told them what happened and about the new information and they ran off to the goblin territory. Before they left their resting spot, Brian kicked and destroyed the blueprint on the ground.

When they were in the goblin territory, they grinded for a bit in a close formation, with Lucas just walking along behind them and not doing any attacking.

“Hey, this one has a crystal I think,” Lucas said. Pointing at the dead goblin.

Brian opened it up and found the crystal.

“Okay, my turn,” Brian said.

He crushed the yellow skill crystal and let the yellow energy go into his arm.

Enhanced Propriosense in Toes: Rank 1

“I would rather not have gotten this skill. This feels weird,” Brian said.

“Hey guys. Is it supposed to look like this?” Lucas said.

Many hours had passed and his cut off fingers were starting to turn black.

////////

Skills list:

Jack:

Knife Fighting: Rank 1

Knife Fighting: Rank 2

Python (programming language): Rank 1

Mana generation: Rank 1

Sand to Glass Conversion Mana Blueprint: Rank 1

Healing Mana Blueprint: Rank 1

Origami: Rank 1

Brian:

Shield Defending: Rank 1

Marksmanship (pistol): Rank 1

Right Arm Increased Strength: Rank 1

Mana manipulation: Rank 1

Mana Sense: Rank 1

Enhanced Propriosense in Toes: Rank 1

Lucas:

Enlarged Penis: Rank 1

Mana sense: Rank 1

Mana Manipulation: Rank 1

Surfing: Rank 1