Chapter 8: The End of Grace

The water felt so refreshing that for a moment he wanted to just flow along with the current and just relax. He allowed himself to just sit there with his eyes closed enjoying the moment.

When he closed his eyes, he habitual began to meditate. In the past when battles were frequent Tide had to constantly be refreshing his mana, so almost every moment of rest was used to meditate. After a couple of minutes his eyes shot open, and he sat up in shock.

Why didn’t he think of this? As he was sitting there at peace, he noticed that the water was teeming with mana as well. Of course, it was vastly different than mana found in the earth, but he found a couple of motes that were absorbed into his body naturally.

If he could gain affinity with the earth, why couldn’t he also gain affinities with the other elements! Perhaps if he got all four of the basic ones, he would get a Epic class. A the very least it wasn’t a bad idea to try for the achievements when gaining the affinity.

Tide quickly sat down and began meditating at the water, this time he wasn’t relax and was seriously studying the interactions better.

He continued to do so for a while hoping to get the into the same state where the mana flowed between him and the water interchangeably. The mana in the water was just to slippery, whenever he tried to absorb any it would flow right around him resting his attempt to pull it into himself. He continued to try for another thirty minutes before growing frustrated.

He accomplished the flow earlier when he wasn’t even trying, but now he could even get one mote of mana to absorb into his body. Maybe it was where he was in the river. In all the movies and books, the main character would train while sitting under the waterfall, letting the water crash on to their backs. Tide knew it seemed a bit childish, but perhaps it would work this time.

He got up out of the water and made his way towards the waterfall. He slowly made his way along the rocks beneath it and soon the water was hit the top of his head and shoulders. After reaching halfway across where the most water was falling, he found a sturdy rock to sit on.

Once again, he tried to mediate. It was a bit more difficult to do so as gallons of water were pelting him, but he somehow managed to. This time the flow of mana in the water was as fierce as the waterfall itself.

He hoped to use the momentum of the mana to overcome the repelling nature of different mana types, in order to force feed his body the water mana. This went on until Tide’s back began to redden from the constant barrage of water. Soon it got the point where the pain and itch on his back became to much and he gave up coming out from the waterfall.

Each time he tried to absorb the mana in the water it would just flow around him and continue following the flow of the water itself. He was obviously missing something. As he walked back down along side the river, he calmed down a bit and began to think a bit more clearly.

He collected himself before easing into the river back where he previously rested. He began meditating once again. This time Tide wanted to just take his time and cover his bases. Instead of greedily grabbing for the mana he just watched flow by him and continue down the river. The mana was much more calm here free to meander slowly sometimes stopping to swirl around a rock or stick in the way.

Perhaps, he was being too hasty earlier obviously he wouldn’t be able to absorb the mana from the water like he did the earth mana. This time Tide decided to relinquish his hold of his mana. Normally it would circulate around his body to fill every nook and cranny with mana, but now it just swirled around ebbing and flowing in and out of limbs or even pooling in certain spots of the body.

After being in the state for a couple of minutes Tide noticed the repulsion between his and the waters mana weakened a considerable amount. It wasn’t enough yet to facilitate a transfer of mana yet.

Perhaps he would have to go one step further. Normally mages and wizards bound the mana inside their body to maintain control and prevent it from leaking out, wasting their most precious resource. Slowly, he released the control of his mana, and it began to diffuse out into the water flowing along with the water. As he did so his body began to empty out losing most of his mana.

Just when he was about to stop and conserve some of his mana he noticed that mana from the water was now flowing into his body filling up the space his mana was holding earlier. A wave of calm and soothing mana flowed in and then out of his body like it wasn’t even there. Keeping this feeling alive he tied to absolutely nothing.

As he did so his mind wandered free as time began to pass like a blur. He only exited this trance after he slipped off the rock underneath him plunging his head underwater. In shock he stood up and spat out a mouth full of water.

When he opened his eyes, he was greeted by another system window in front of him.

Congrats on gaining a new affinity!

For being the first human in your town to gain the water affinity, you will be given the skill water manipulation as reward.

Tide was a bit upset that he wasn’t the first human to gain the affinity, but the main goal here was to gain the skills. The extra stat would have been nice though.

Once he closed that window he looked around and realized that it was almost dusk and that he was very cold. It turns out a lot of time passed while he was meditating in the river. He waded over to the side of the river and began to climb the bank to get out.

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He had spent almost six hours in the water and his hands and feet were extremely wrinkly like prunes. He quickly put on his dry clean clothes before heading up the cliff to make his camp past the water fall this time. He also gathered wood along the way and set up camp quite quickly. His dinner was a bit special today because while gathering tinder he found a berry bush that had edible fruit.

As he laid down to go to sleep, curled up near the fire for warmth. Before he went to sleep, he checked on his status screen one more time to see his affinity with water.

Tide Blackwater

Lv:1

Class: None

Health: 150/150 (Regen 8/h)

Mana: 243/400 (Regen 40/h)

Stamina: 120/200 (Regen 20/h)

Vitality: 3

Strength: 3

Endurance: 4

Agility: 3

Intelligence: 9

Wisdom: 8

Control: 6

Skills: Mana Manipulation, Meditation, Earth Manipulation, Water Manipulation

Traits: Observant

Affinities:

-Earth: 3%

-Water: 2%

Satisfied with his gains today he soon drifted off to sleep.

The next day Tide woke up near the remains of his fire and took a moment to stretch his back. Sleeping on the ground was doing a number on his back. Perhaps once he found a good place to set up perminatly he would go about purchasing a mattress at town.

This got him thinking of the logistics of carrying the mattress out of town.

“I guess if I folded it up it might fight into my storage ring” He muttered to him self standing up and shaking away the lingering tiredness his body contained.

Today was the last day of the grace period and he would soon be getting his new class. On today’s agenda he put down gaining the air and fire affinities.

This was a great goal and all, but he had no clue how to go about attaining it. Tide decided to go for the air affinity first. After all it was all around him. Not too much of a set up would be needed.

Finding a nice hill, he sat at the very top exposed to a small breeze that flowed throughout the forested area. He started to mediate and began to look for mana present in the air to study.

There wasn’t much to be found. The amount of mana in the air was sparser than either the earth or water he did previously. All the mana would do is gently collide with Tides body before bouncing away never to be seen again. It was hard to characterize or even study the mana due to the short window of interaction.

He tried various strategize this time around. He imagined himself being porous and allowing the wind mana to condense inside of him. This did absolutely nothing besides waste an hour of his precious time remaining. Next up he tried holding his arms out like a plane to help feel the wind a bit better, but that only caused him to feel a bit foolish for T posing on top of a hill. If anyone was to come across this sight, they would assume he was crazy. After a bunch more different approaches the sun quickly rose in the sky.

Completely stumped and frustrated Tide gave up. It was easy for him to keep going with the water mana because he notices a slight merger at the very beginning. With air though there was no indication that he was getting anywhere close.

He decided to stop wasting his time and got ready to switch gears towards gaining the fire affinity. This needed a tad bit of set up to start though.

Tide had a bit of wood left over from yesterday's fire, but he would need much more. He pulled out his wood axe and walked along the forest until he saw a fallen tree. Making sure the tree had been died for a while and dried out he began to chop it into logs. Whenever he got the wood into usable pieces, he would stash them in his storage ring. Soon his arms became too sore and exhausted to keep swing the axe and he made his way back to the waterfall.

He wanted to be near the body of water so he could use water manipulation if he needs to quickly put out the fire. Once he got their it seemed like the sun was already setting in the sky. He was running out of time before the day was over.

He began to construct a convoluted circle of wood and tinder that went around a patch of soil big enough that Tide could sit in the middle without being burned. He used the sparker in the fire kit to get it going and soon the fire encircled him entirely.

Tide sat down legs crossed and began to meditate. The heat and sound of the flames around him made it quite difficult but he eventually settled into good mental state.

He began to observe the mana coming off the fire. It was fast and chaotic flying up in random directions escaping from the flames. When it hit his skin he looked to see the interation it had with his body and was surprised to see that his own mana would collide with the fire mana to neutralize the angry wisps of mana.

Tide tried to disarm his mana and let the foreign mana hit his body. Instantly he winced as he began to feel a burning sensation from all directions. The fire mana was colliding with him alright, but instead of being absorbed it was just wreaking his skin. That didn’t seem to be the right way to go about this. He released his control over his mana allowing it to once again go to his bodies defense.

Tide once again was brainstorming for ideas on how to gain the affinity. He tried a couple of various tricks, but again nothing seemed to be working. He even burnt his hand pretty badly to see if the trick was direct contact with the flames. Of course, it wasn’t, and the only thing he accomplished was ruining his meditation and letting out some colorful language.

After this he added more fuel to the fire and began to just take it one step at a time. He looked back at the processes he went through to obtain the other two affinities and made a realization.

For earth he gained affinity by slowing the mana down in his body and making it more solid and stable like the ground itself. For water it was about giving his mana the freedom to flow and bend in a natural way to mimic the waters characteristic.

Perhaps he would have to do the same with fire. While the other two were much kinder, mana with the fire property was energetic and violent.

I must fight fire with fire! Tide realized having reached an epiphany. Tide began to pump more energy into his mana. Forced it to go faster and faster in his body. His mana became disorderly and collided into each other. Soon he felt his body began to heat up significantly as sweat began to roll off of him in waves.

Soon his mana was a monster in its own right and began to damage Tides innards. In a panic Tide tried to guide the mana out of his body. If he didn’t do something quickly, he would fry himself. A stroke of genius sparked in his mind as he applied what he tried earlier to the air affinity. He began to guide the mana to the pores around his body and force it out into the air.

If someone was in the nearby area, they would have seen a man to appeared to be on fire. He didn’t catch fire and start to burn though. Flames simply leaked out of his pores all round his body they were spouts for a gas grill. Soon all the pent-up mana leaked out of his body and stop causing him any pain.

Instead, his own mana now with the fire affinity imbued into them mix and merged with the fires around him. Tide now felt a comforting warmth spread throughout his body. He stayed in that state until a small dinging sound was heard.

Opening his eyes Tide was surprised to see that it was completely dark now with the only lights being the fire around him. In front of him was a message from the system with an announcement on it.

The grace period is now over please select your class!