Chapter 6: A Strong Foundation
When Tide opened his eyes, he found himself somewhere very familiar. The town center, a large, paved circle currently occupied by a thousand bewildered humans all freaking out in various ways. The town looked a bit different. The layout of the buildings was off. Looks like he got spawned into a different town than his previous trial. They were probably all the same just in different places or even in separate subworlds.
Tide thought in his mind status screen, and a blue transparent rectangle appeared before him.
Tide Blackwater
Lv:1
Class: None
Health: 150 (Regen 30/h)
Mana: 20 (Regen 4/h)
Stamina: 150 (Regen 20/h)
Vitality: 3
Strength: 2
Endurance: 2
Agility: 3
Intelligence: 6
Wisdom: 4
Control: 5
Skills: None
Traits: Observant- Users senses are much more sensitive than the average person.
Tide let out a deep sigh. It took him blood sweat and tears to raise his stats in the last run. Now he had to do it all over again.
“Come on, couldn't you at least given me an op skill or something?” he muttered to himself. Tide did notice that this time he had already awakened mana. His well was still clogged but the small bit leaking out would be vital this time around. Tide made his way towards the edge of the town center and waited for the announcement.
He didn’t have to wait long. Above all the people in the town circle, a hologram of Alianda appeared and began to give the intro speech. The words were crisp and projected to each person individually making it sound like Alianda was right in front of them.
Welcome to the Trials. Your species whose self-declared name is “Humans” has reached the end of the incubation period. As such all of you which are suitable candidates have been taken from your world to participate in the Trials. Right now, there are a total of 1 million of you that were selected to participate in this round. To accommodate you all two thousand towns have been provided. Only one thousand of you may proceed to the next stage of the Trails so do your best!
The Trials are systematic challenges given to sentient races to separate the strong from the weak. If you persevere and struggle you will be awarded what you are due, but if you wallow in self-pity and do nothing you will die. Let me be clear, YOU WILL DIE. This is not a dream, a joke or anything else! It is a contest of survival.
After the first three days, monsters will begin to spawn and will actively try to kill you. As time passes the monsters will grow stronger, more intelligent and more complex. Occasionally to mix things up there will be events that have been designed to challenge you all so, work hard everyone!
Don't fret, order to give you some chance the system will give out classes and skills at the end of the grace period. Hunt monsters to gain exp and make yourself stronger by leveling up.
Each of you has been given a status page that will quantify your progress. In order to look at it just think “status screen” and it will appear.
As a last piece of advice, train yourself as hard as possible during this first week and embrace the system. You will need its power to survive.
Good luck.
Alianda
Contender of the Third Trial.
Tide was surprised with how long the introduction was this time last time it was essentially just, welcome to the trials, good luck. Looks like they weren’t all talk and made some of the changes that were suggested.
“This has got to be a joke, if this is a tv show or something I can’t be in it I have work tomorrow ” A woman said.
Tide let out a sigh, it seems that even with the very blatant warning people didn’t take this seriously. They’ll learn soon enough though.
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Once the message was over Tide used it as a que to head out of the square. He wanted to find somewhere he could be alone. For the next hour or so it would be extremely chaotic in the town.
After slipping out of eye shot of everyone else, Tide left the town. Walking out of the gate he was greeted by the sight of meadows sparsely populated with bunches of trees and bushes. Past the meadows a dark forest loomed in the distance. A river split the land near the town and ran deep into those woods.
Tide started jogging at a light pace until he reached one of the groves of trees. He found a good spot that he wouldn’t be noticed that easily in a sat down.
Closing his eyes, Tide began to breath slowly and emptied his mind. Once he reached a state where he wasn’t thinking, and nothing was distracting him he drew his attention inward to his abdomen. It drifted to a spot slightly above his solar plexus where his mana well sat dormant.
He let his consciousness sit there until he found the weakly glowing wisps of mana leaking out of the hole in his well. Using his tempered will he grabbed on to the wisps and bundled them up and concentrated them until he was left with one wisp that let out a healthier glow. He brought this wisp back to his mana well and inserted it to the hole that Merdon left. Slowly and painfully he grinded against the edges of the hole. Bit by bit the breach widened letting out more mana. Tide would grab those as well adding to the strand he was already using.
After a half an hour of this Tide had to take a break. He had widened the hole to almost double its size, but it was still taking way to long and too much concentration. It would probably take the rest of the day to open it all the way.
Tide didn’t have time for this. Each moment in the grace period they were give was valuable. Tide quickly made up his mind and reach down grabbing a decently sized stick. He put it in his mouth and bit down gently, before once again meditating.
This time rather than sanding down the hole slowly he would take a different approach. He gathered up all the mana inside himself into a ball and morphed its shape into a cone. He brought this cones tip up to the hole in his mana well and took an especially deep breath.
Using his willpower like a hammer, he slammed the cone’s point into the blockage. As the blockage buckled an intense pain rocket through Tides body. His teeth clenched tightly on the stick in his mouth that was stopping him from biting his tongue off. While letting out muffled scream, Tide’s concentration faltered, and the cone of mana unraveled.
After taking a moment to recover and get over the pain, he began to meditate again. This time when he checked his mana well he saw that the original hole was much larger and that cracks fractured off of it. Tide pushed down urge to avoid the pain that was coming and began to remake another spike of mana. This time it was a decent amount bigger. There was much more mana leaking out that Tide could use.
Letting out a silent prayer that this time would be the last, he pounded the spike into the blockage. All of Tides nerves flared and almost all of his muscles clenched causing him to go ridged. Tide felt his consciousness begin to fade, but he was saved by a sense of relief that was washing through his body easing the pain.
The spike of mana had driven clean through the blockage and a wave of mana burst out of his open well. It raced wildly throughout his body removing the fatigue and pain in all his muscles. It circulated around his body until a steady flow formed and he reached equilibrium.
Tide opened his mouth and spat out the splinters of the stick in his mouth. He apparently snapped it in half. Luckily his tongue was still intact. Tide took another moment to rest and opened his stats again. Much to his surprise a different screen appeared with text on it.
Congrats on learning two new skills!
You have gained the common skills, Meditation and Mana Control.
For being the first to learn a skill in your town you will be granted a magical item.
For being the first Human in the trial to awaken your mana you will be granted +3 Wisdom and +3 Intelligence.
This must be those rewards for an achieving a feat. That change went through as well Tide noted. He dismissed the prompt and his status screen opened allowing him to check the changes.
Tide Blackwater
Lv:1
Class: None
Health: 147/150 (Regen 15/h)
Mana: 314/350 (Regen 35/h)
Stamina: 72/200 (Regen 20/h)
Vitality: 3
Strength: 2
Endurance: 2
Agility: 3
Intelligence: 9
Wisdom: 7
Control: 5
Skills: Mana Manipulation, Meditation
Traits: Observant
Tide smiled at the nice boost in stats. If he could get more achievements and stack up more stats this go around, he would be much stronger. When he closed the panel, he noticed a ripple in space before him. There was a small blip of light and a silver ring with a grey gem imbedded in it appeared. It fell to the ground in front of Tide.
Reaching down Tide picked it up and opened its description.
Ring of Storage
A silver ring containing a pocket subspace with 2 cubic meters of space in which anything nonliving thing could be placed in.
Tide was surprised rings of storage were quite rare, especially any with a storage over 1 cubic meter in space. Tide thought he was just lucky, but as he looked at the ring, he noticed a small, messy M was engraved into the inside of the silver band. This ring looked to be the work of a Merdon meaning that the mage had some influence on the Trials or it was a weird coincidence.
He slid the ring on to his figure and spent a couple of minutes experimenting on how it works. Eventually, he got it down and was bring sticks and rocks in and out of the subspace like a pro.
With that settled Tide began making his way back to the town satisfied with his gains. While he began his jog back, he thought about what he should do next, and how to optimize his time during the grace period.
The most important thing was making sure he got a good class. Previously he got lucky and received geomancer. If these classes are given out based on the actions during the grace period, he was on his way to getting a class revolving around magic in some way.
What class would he go for this time around. Tide began to eliminate options. Ideally, he would still be a castor. He felt like geomancer was a good fit for him last time. He was also still familiar with its skills and combat style. What if he got a more advanced version of that class. Perhaps he could get metalmancer which was a tier higher than geomancer. Tide was somewhat happy with that idea, but how would he go about getting it.
He had no clue how the system would evaluate him for his classes. The best way would probably be to gain some affinity with earth and then try eating some metal. Tide let out a brief chuckle imaging chewing on a nice ingot of iron and breaking a molar.
Either way he would need some supplies from the towns general store. His stomach was already growling from exerting himself earlier. The jog back to town would only make him hungrier.