Character Information - Who is who?

Because I have created quite a variety of characters, I will now create little cheat sheets before a chapter for the characters who will appear in the chapter, but not for those who haven't. Please open the spoiler if you need some reminders. (Be careful, it can be a spoiler for the chapter!)

Alexander K. Leonandra (Wolf-kin)

* Transmigrated from the Earth and the MC

* The fourth child of the current Leonandra household

* Golden eyes

* Snow-white fur and hair color

Francesca Leonandra (Spider-kin)

* Maid of the Leonandra estate

* Personal maid of the MC

* Dark-blue eyes

* Black hair color

...

While Marisia was trying to calm Lorient down with her motherly love, Alexander, on the other hand, was having challenging problems controlling his mana.

He sat on his bed while trying to recreate the ignition construct. The anti-mana collar was at fault here, and while Green and his mother were talking that he shouldn't wear it 24/8, he would do it anyway as it was excellent training.

The only problem was that using [Mana Sense] felt like vertigo. Thus it meant that he stopped using it passively, which limited his overall senses to a stupid degree, and he only now noticed how dependent he was on it to navigate his environment.

If Alexander put some mana toward his eyes, which he did permanently, hoping it wouldn't damage his eyes, he could, with his sight, see shades of blue that represented the ambient mana.

When someone moved through the thin fog of ambient mana, it would also start to move, and he could make out others much faster. However, there was a much easier way to make out others by the brighter pockets of mana, which represented the people, and depending on the [Intelligence] attribute, they differed significantly in size.

It was a puzzle to Alexander why everyone had mana at all automatically. He could only attribute it that the mana veins inside the body playing a vital role in the body he received on this new planet.

Yet, he had a far-fetched hypothesis that, at some point, everyone developed mana automatically because they used it freely through mana skills. After building social structures, skills got restricted, held as secrets, etc. So it became nothing more than a relic of the past.

Alexander was sure to make it possible for everyone to use mana, which would shatter societies, 'I can't wait to put a torch to society... metaphorically, of course, and in small steps. I am not an anarchist or moron.'

After the short side thought, he returned to thinking through how his senses reacted to the mana. The sense of smell was another thing altogether. It worked the other way around as it killed smell. Nobody in his family could find him if he enveloped himself with mana. It was like a stealth skill against canine-kin.

Hearing, touch, and taste, he didn't test. He would need a lot of time to actually figure out what mana did with the other senses, and it was on his to-do list, which was very long even though it was cut much shorter.

Now, because of the anti-mana collar, he needed to push through and slowly adjust his [Mana Sense] to even begin to build a construct.

His many analyzing skills reacted to his thoughts and gave him an idea, 'Why does [Mana Sense] connect to my other senses at all?'

It wasn't like seeing and smelling were overly connected with each other, and only now did he understand something important, 'Did I try to use my [Mana Sense] only indirectly while I could do it directly?'

Alexander forgot about the training in making an ignition construct and threw himself into something more exciting. He wanted to isolate his [Mana Sense] and use it alone.

He slowly and carefully pushed the mana away from his senses while feeling like he was on a roller coaster. The feeling was jarring.

Besides the anti-mana collar, it wasn't that tricky. His mana veins and points were filled with mana, slowly radiating to the outside in small increments.

The new body and his new organs weren't isolated but fully integrated. He knew this through testing it over the years. For example, if he depleted his mana, the veins would contract, and a headache would result. He didn't know the why but only that it happened.

So, he needed more than an hour to push the mana inside his veins and isolate them. When he succeeded, he activated his [Mana Sense] and concentrated it on the inner part of his solar plexus. Suddenly the world had become black.

He experienced it lighten up a moment later in shades of colors he never saw that whirled crazily and erratically around him. He threw up.

After emptying his stomach, he immediately removed the collar and called a maid to change the bedding. While she did it, he sat in the corner, trying to recollect his thoughts and senses. At last, he felt okay again and now tried to remember what happened.

The world was full of new colors he didn't see but felt, altering and moving like erratic bees. So, he tried it again but without the handicap.

Now he needed only a mere moment to forcefully push all the mana back into his mana veins, and he sensed the world full of colors again moving the same. He gagged and almost threw up again.

"Are you well, Mr. Alexander?!"

He heard Francesca from the side and waved his hand in dismissal, "I am fine. Ignore me."

She frowned but heeded his words and went back to change the bedding. However, she would need to report it later to the lady.

Alexander tried to hypothesize what had happened to him. He had some ideas. However, mana was an enigma to him, even with all the literature he got.

It was described as a mysterious and universal energy altering the physical world. On the other hand, he could only smile tiredly at such a statement, 'It is only mysterious till one finds out how it actually works.'

He also thought about the one who wrote it and couldn't believe how the author exposed himself in his book, 'Merlin, you bastard, I can't believe you wrote such a moronic statement.'

Alexander read the book by Merlin and was 99% sure that the archmage came from Earth like he did. Why? He distinguished mana heavily from the physical world, which didn't make sense in the context of this world.

Saying that mana wasn't physical was a very nonsensical thing to say because it was physical, or why would, for some reason, electricity be physical, which Merlin also described and categorized as such in his book.

Merlin was apparently someone of great intellect but little to no formal research education, which Alexander had by studying and learning all of them at university. This he could see in how Merlin described certain things like mana. Everything should be interlinked, and in a world with mana, it was just another force or energy that acted in an, for now, unknown way.

He heard a ringing sound, and, luckily, Francesca, who was done, excused herself. Alexander opened his system window when she left and saw two new skills: [Mana Theory] and [Mana Seering].

'Holy moly...' he got immediately angry, "Excuse me?! I only get now the shit ass [Mana Theory] skill?! What about before... ah... damn!"

Alexander became more cognizant of the intricacies of mana now and how it worked by ripping apart Merlin's statements logically.

He became furious that it only happened now, and he genuinely thought there were no theoretical skills for mana like [Physics] or [Biology], 'This shit ass of a system, even after I tested so much, you only give me the skill now?! I can't believe it...'

However, after a long thought, he scratched his head in annoyance as he understood it more or less the same as Merlin did. He only now started to hypothesize it more clearly after reading his literature.

Alexander saw the flaws of his (maybe) brethren and the theorizing of mana he researched and suddenly had an insight. He punched the armchair, "Damn it! I am a dumbass too!"

He also understood why this happened to him and Merlin, as they had nobody to bounce ideas off. Merlin came up with new ideas and solutions, while nobody checked them on their merits and accepted them as gospel, 'You moron should've brought over the scientific method and peer review.'

Alexander leaned back in the chair, looking out the window at the moons, "It really is another world, and somewhere out there was probably another person who came over... was he stabbed too?"

This made Alexander giggle at the thought that everyone who came over here was to be stabbed by the crazy ex of their fiancé.

He calmed down and immediately thought about his disciple, 'I need to write something down for her so she can get it too. Maybe questions so she can write down an essay and explore it theoretically? Should be doable.'

He sighed and ignored it after organizing his thoughts. He had other things to do, and reminiscing about whatever took him to this world wouldn't bring him forward while he needed to remember to create homework for Ocilia.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

...

5 minutes later

"Urgh! I am dying... fuck me..."

After meditating for a few minutes to get a clear head, he put the collar on and tried to test his other new skill: [Mana Seering].

Alexander could hold it for a second or two before his whole being felt like it was put into a blender at maximum speed with rainbow-colored dragees. It was almost impossible for him to get a grip on the skill.

'Is this how mana is actually?!'

He thought that [Mana Sense] was the actual thing with what he could see mana, but that was apparently not the case as the new skill showed him something absolutely new, 'I need to ask Green how to train this stupid skill.'

Alexander got a little mellowed out and didn't want to risk it after almost dying multiple times. This was at least what he thought of himself. It was not true, as he was back at trying the skill since he was too curious to wait for his magic teacher to return.

So, for the following hours, he almost threw up multiple times while trying to hold onto the sensation as long as possible. The only positive was that the skill leveled substantially to level 6 as he tortured him.

But, the other positive effect was that he also controlled the negative impact of the anti-mana collar ever so better.

...

Two hours later

"I am tired."

Alexander was lying in his bed, and when he looked at the clock, it was already 3 am at night. He would get at most a couple of hours of sleep before Anastasia's lesson started, but he would also need to eat something before, 'First world problems, hehe!'

He wanted to go to sleep while feeling dizzy but suddenly remembered something and was in the mood to be riskier, 'Oh, is this possible?'

Alexander touched his collar since there was no need for a key to open the collar. It was built like a number lock with a fingerprint-like detector. One would need to tap a specific sequence of signs, which were engraved on the collar while using the predefined energy like mana to open it.

The moment someone tapped a sequence of four runes while putting energy in, that was the new entry key. It could be programmed when the collar was open. If someone tried to open it when inserting a wrong sequence or energy, an electrical shock would be produced as a penalty.

It was a small computer that Alexander wanted to do nothing more than open and inspect it. His mother told him to not do it under any circumstances, 'Well, she didn't say that I can't try to inspect it indirectly, hehe.'

His idea was to invade it with [Mana Sense] and inspect it indirectly while wearing it to see how it operated. Usually, he would stop and go to sleep at this point, but because he almost threw up multiple times, he was fully awake and interested in how the collar worked.

From the Artificing book he partly read, he knew that the material was conducive to mana, like the signs engraved into the collar, so in his mind, it should be possible.

He slowly manipulated his mana to the outside and brought it inside the collar through some cracks. He tried to sense it while metaphorically being thrown around by the collar's disorienting effect. Only after half an hour was he able to orient himself inside it.

But how could he sense the inside of the collar even though it gave no smell, couldn't see inside while only a little part had barely any mana? Indirect touch.

The little amount of mana was inside the entry point where one needed to put their energy inside, and it converted any energy into mana. An exciting concept Alexander made a mental note to research later.

After thinking about how to use mana for mapping purposes, he decided on an indirect approach. As Alexander's mana moved slowly around, the conductive material also reacted a little magnetic, and thus, he could slowly map the whole inner life of the collar out. He knew there was a wall whenever he felt his mana was pulled. He explained that something inside needed to get the energy and thus dragged his mana toward it.

Some places inside the collar pulled his mana much more potent than others, which should be the energy source and unlock mechanism for the energy.

So he mapped it fully out and found the only tiny box to the side of the collar, which had the strongest pull.

The mana slowly and carefully zig-zag around the innards without touching anything while the owner of that mana was in glee about being able to observe the inner living fully, 'Oh bad idea, little crafter, always have at least another insurance if someone like me wants to break into it.'

After some minutes, he decided to look at first, 'So, where the fuck is the thing for the input of the sequence?'

He looked around for a long time till he found a much more straightforward answer, 'Which moron designed it?!'

Since the signs were engraved from the inside and outside, it was hard to make them out, but he could make out his code which was the equivalent of 0000. How? When his mana moved close to the put-in engravings, his chosen sequence, it started to get pulled harder than by the others.

'I need to test it more... could be my imagination.'

He opened the collar while putting a new sequence in and putting it on again. His mana moved even better this time as he zig-zagged around the insides.

Now the pull was much weaker and differentiated itself from the other engravings, 'Holy shit, this thing actually is giving out the sequence?!'

The first sign of the sequence was the strongest, while the following ones decreased with their chosen arrangement. Also, they would pull very hard when the code had four similar signs.

'Not even a dummy? Huh.'

From his time working in IT, he knew that some systems would have at least some randomized dummies to trick the one who wanted to hack into it or honey pots, where it would, while staying in this example, have another and more powerful pull to lure the invader to it.

Alexander was joyous, 'Tsk tsk, I give the security an F, now, how the fuck do I trick the module which takes in the energy?'

He thought about it while his mana swirled around the collar, looking for another weak point till he suddenly found something distressing, 'This little shit built a master code?!'

He noticed it while going very close to every single engraving. At some point, he felt an extremely weak pull at specific signs. He put the sequence in without giving out any energy. It opened without any energy input.

"This fucker!"

Some coders intentionally created backdoors or bugs to abuse them later. Still, it was usually rare for more prestigious projects since multiple teams worked on it and used the pair programming principle, where one watched what the other fabricated. While the one who coded needed to explain every single input he did.

Alexander fumed since he saw this as a defective and dangerous product. When the mage had enough connections and knew who created the item, he/she could open it with the master code, thus, endangering the ones who took them as a prisoner.

He inhaled and exhaled till he calmed down, 'I will tell later, Mom. This shit is too dangerous.'

This concerned him the most as he imagined that she would capture some mage, put a collar on him, and the moment she turned around, she would have a giant fireball in her back, 'Whoever did this is dead meat.'

Even though he was angry, he used a new sequence and put it on again. His goal was not to rely on intentional bugs but rather on the system and its faults to open it.

He was again at the beginning, swirling around what he perceived as the energy module and brain of this whole item, 'So, how to crack it? How about a man-in-the-middle attack?'

Alexander pushed more mana inside, filling the collar out to clearly understand what happened while the whole mechanism played out.

He activated the sequence with his energy, and it opened as intended while seeing what he needed to see. He put the collar back on with a new sequence and started anew.

This time though, he slowly activated it with his mana from the inside and followed how his mana moved through the indentations between the engravings. Every time a new sign was activated, a part of another sign lit up, which looked like two halves of a circle. It was under the energy module, which Alexander thought before was the module.

With the correct sequence, one-half of the circle stopped the pulling effect. Alexander immediately stopped his mana from going to the energy module and redirected it to the other half of the circle. He thought that this was something akin to a verifier.

He discovered that it wasn't one and didn't work, seeing as a moment later he was shocked.

"Grrrr fucking assho... argh!"

...

Outside Alexander's bedroom

Francesca was sitting on a chair reading a novel her friends recommended when she heard her master screaming obscenities.

She turned the page and ignored him, 'Seems like Mr. Alexander failed a skill test again, hm.'

...

Inside Alexander's room

After some shock therapy, he returned to normal, 'Okay, it wasn't what I thought it was. Well, fuck me.'

A little break later, he was back inside the collar and looking for something, anything, that he didn't see before.

After looking for some time and finding nothing, he decided to go to the source: The module. With his [Mana Sense], he could make out that it was a small rectangular flat box over what he regarded as the authentification circle.

Pushing his mana inside would be challenging, and even though the effect of the anti-mana collar became very manageable, it would be a headache.

This reminded him of the time when he forgot his key and tried to pry the door open with a credit card and some pins from his sister while it was cold outside. He cursed at the door but, in the end, somehow managed to open it. This was the same; he saw this as a challenge. He conveniently forgot that his siblings were standing behind him all the time and laughed their asses off.

Alexander broke the most minor tiny thread of mana away he could and let it sliver inside, which was instantly pulled into something. Luckily, he was prepared as he knew there should be a stronger pull, so he pushed it away and barely managed to find a proper position where the mana would be attracted with the same force from all sides.

After excruciating minutes, he had done it, and the mana floated somewhere still and didn't move, 'Okay, what now, genius?'

He moved it slowly and tried to map the module by reference points. Now, why did he didn't open it? Because he found it boring, there was no other reason for him other than seeing this as a more complex Rubix cube that was fun to crack.

He could destroy the toy to pieces and build it back together with the solution in mind, but where would be the Fun? The other reason was that his mother would probably put him under house arrest.

After an hour of swimming around and mapping, he kind of understood it, 'So, if I am correct, there is a register for the energy and something like a... hell knows what.'

He described the part as a register that first recorded the energy signature. He thought that it was also what pulled the strongest since it also needed the energy in the first place.

So, he put it to the test, which would be tricky. He would need to split his mana into different parts while controlling them. Outside the module, he would need to put the sequence in, while inside, he would need to somehow interrupt the register and jump over it.

He was in the zone, concentrating to an insane degree. All his skills helped him in this endeavor as he wanted to avoid getting shocked again. The sequence was put in, and the energy went to the register through the collar. He stopped it as it was directly before it and let it jump over it. It went inside somewhere else, probably activating the true case, while the false case would stay inside the register.

After a short moment, he heard the clicking sound of the collar that opened together with a prompt from his system, and he became instantly euphoric.

Alexander jumped from his bed, dancing around and screaming, "Fuck yeah! Who is the sickest dude? I am the sickest dude!"

Alexander opened his system window to look for what the notification was for and became a little confused, "[Hacking]? It is also at level 13. What the... urgh."

His body suddenly started to ache and felt strained. This usually meant only one thing, 'I need to increase the weight of the weight-increase mana item to 3.5x, or should I go for 4x?'

Alexander learned again to many skills and increased them too fast in a short time. His [Mana Sense] was at level 68, while [Mana Manipulation] went straight to level 55. Some other skills increased, too, which aided his concentration.

He had a big smile and couldn't thank Green enough to recommend this kind of training to him. It was fun and gave fantastic results, 'Let's first freshen up.'

The first rays of the sunrise broke already through his window. He put the collar back on and started to construct the cleaning spell. He did it fast and precise.

There was barely any vertigo left as he adjusted his skills to the mana disturbance he felt before and could as naturally or even better control his mana outside the body.

After cleaning himself up and adjusting the weight increase to four times, he went outside to grab a snack and, maybe later on, ask his mother for a new collar. Also, he didn't forget to tell her about the master code.

There was much more to discover about the mana items and energies, as he understood that he had only scratched the surface.