Jack was squinting. It was as if he was trying to see Lucas while also trying to ‘see’ the mana inside his core.

He tried ignoring Lucas’ excited face.

Don’t drop it. Don’t drop it.

He grabbed Lucas’ fingerless hand and shoved it under his t-shirt and pressed it into the skin on his stomach nearest to the mana core he had shaped into the blueprint.

Okay. Now what? Maintain it. Maintain it. Okay, how do I fucking use this? How does this shit work?

For a minute, he tried activating it while maintaining it.

Eventually, he took a long look at the mana blueprint as whole, and could kind of see how it was like a mouse puzzle with an opening and an end.

While maintaining the mana blueprint, he simultaneously tried to run mana through it. So he was trying to do two things at once. He could finally feel something happening after running a big amount of mana through the circle. Some kind of output was–

“Achooo!” Brian sneezed.

The mana construct collapsed and Jack dropped to the ground in frustration.

“I give up.”

Lucas and Brian tried talking to him but he completely ignored them and took a nap.

When he woke up he explained what had happened and how it was very hard to concentrate and make the mana blueprint. And he still wasn’t sure if it even worked because he didn’t get to do it completely.

Then he laid down on the ground again and closed his eyes. Manipulating mana was very mentally exhausting.

While Jack was taking his break, Lucas and Brian talked for a bit.

“Does it hurt?” Brian said, pointing at Lucas’ hand.

“No, my fingers feel nice. The fuck you think! Of course it hurts. Every fucking moment,” Lucas said.

“I meant, does it hurt being gay?” Brian said.

“I don’t know. Does it?” Lucas said.

“What you gonna spend that skill point on? You know you can basically get anything from this system,” Lucas said.

“Yeah, but to actually get something useful you need a ton of skill points. I have decided that I will just keep this skill in reserve. For when we actually need it. I never wanna get caught in this situation again, where we had to run around trying to chase a skill point,” Brian said.

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“Smart choice,” Lucas said. “I would have gotten Rank 2 of Enlarged Penis. Maybe the second rank gives me double the growth of the previous rank.”

Brian wasn’t sure if Lucas was joking or if he was serious.

After a while, Jack stood up while yawning.

“You fresh, princess?” Brian said.

Jack raised a middle finger while looking into the distance.

“I refuse to do anything mental right now. I wanna test out the ritual I got, but fuck that. First let’s do some good old grinding. No brain shit,” Jack said.

“Sounds good,” Lucas said.

“Let’s go!” Brian said.

Lucas was in support while Brian was in the attack position. Jack felt like being the scout. So he was luring in a line of 5 butterflies towards Brian.

That dragonfly was scary as fuck. Makes these giant butterflies look almost cute.

Jack tripped over a branch and quickly got up and ran again.

I keep tripping and making small mistakes. It must be the mental fatigue. I feel super drained mentally, but physically I have a lot of energy. Actually, moving that mana around my body kind of gave me energy in a way? I’m not sure.

“Five!” Jack yelled and ran past Brian. While running past him, he did a low high-five to him. And one to Lucas while running past him. Then he got behind Lucas.

This was the formation they had eventually come up with.

After Brian had defeated the monsters, Jack was to run out again to lure more in.

Brian stepped in and slashed the first butterfly in the head. It dropped down to the ground.

He took a step back. Waited a few seconds for the next butterfly, and slashed again.

After the second butterfly, he took a sidestep to avoid tripping over the dead butterflies, something they had to learn from experience.

While he sidestepped, Lucas and Jack did the same, but slightly to the side so they weren’t completely behind Brian and still had visibility and were ready to jump in.

Brian followed the routine and successfully killed all five butterfly monsters.

“I sense a skill crystal!” Brian yelled.

He popped the skill crystal and the yellow energy flowed into his hand.

French oil painting technique: Rank 1

After grinding some more and harvesting a lot of silk, they moved away from the old camp and set up camp at a new place. They moved spots regularly now. They had become very paranoid after Howard had found their camp. They no longer felt safe despite how big the gameworld was. Besides inside the grasshopper territory where Fernando had all his hispanics everywhere, it was very hard to run into other people in most zones.

“Okay, time to do the ritual. Everyone, watch and learn. Brian, record this so you two can maybe try it or some shit,” Jack said. And Brian started recording.

All of the words and gestures and the sequence was imprinted into Jack’s mind through the Specialized Mental Sacrifice Ritual Focus Borrow: Rank 1 skill. He just had to execute them. Which was not hard to do and he didn’t need any focus to do it. But it was boring.

For about five minutes, Lucas and Brian watched him do weird hand gestures and body movements and saying alien sounding words.

Right after saying the final word, Jack felt something ‘snap’ into place. And then everything…

//////////

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

Enhanced Bodily Recovery: Rank 1

Speed Counting: Rank 1

Enemy Weakness Identification: Rank 1

Poetry: Rank 2

Blueprint visualizer: Rank 1

Mana Sense: Rank 1

Blunt Force Resistance: Rank 1

Pool: Rank 1

Mana Manipulation: Rank 1

Specialized Mental Sacrifice Ritual Focus Borrow: Rank 1

Typography: Rank 1