He had picked the cartridge named Fortress to be the first, and contrary to his expectations, the image that appeared on the screen wasn’t 2D at all; it seemed even better than the latest technology from Earth. It showed a big field with not much else apart from grass and a menu. Moving his hands while exploring the menu, Lucas quickly got used to the fancy gloves.
Being a somewhat experienced gamer, it didn’t take long for Lucas to get the gist of the game—and he had confirmed it was indeed a game. Essentially, the objective was to build a fortress and defend it from various threats. While the premise was simple enough, Lucas was surprised to see how many details were included; they ranged from deciding the fee of the guards to picking materials and overall developing your city as a whole.
Lucas had played a few games similar to this one before, but he never found such attention to detail. Remembering his conversation with Faruk about how the political scenario from Ponos had yet to show its ugly face, it got him wondering if the system was somehow trying to prepare him by sending him this game to play.
However, half an hour in, Lucas was already completely immersed in the gameplay, and all his concerns and other more meaningful thoughts were brushed away as he relived his gamer days.
Back on Earth, when he started his senior year in high school, he stopped playing everything. He needed to focus on his studies at the time and always had a hard time doing any hobby moderately. He either spent hours on end playing or he didn’t play at all, and responsibility made him choose the latter.
However, that sort of distraction was exactly what he needed at the moment to blow off some steam, so he embraced it and only stopped a few hours later. He hadn’t slept for a while now, and it was beginning to get to him. He put his gloves on the table and fell asleep shortly after.
Lucas woke up only eight hours later after a very weird dream where he had to protect his city at all costs, but everything just kept falling apart. The meaning of that dream was very obvious to him due to his recent loss of control and hours of gameplay, but he didn’t dwell on it too much. He was feeling much better now that he had gotten some sleep.
Despite his fuck-up still weighing on him a little, the clarity that came with a rested mind told him Maria probably died thousands of times already in other people’s runs, and his mistake wasn’t as bad as he had previously thought. Ultimately he just blamed his overreaction on stress and moved on.
Forced to leave the bed due to a rumble in his stomach, Lucas prepared himself a meal while he regarded the other cartridge lying on the table. If his early idea was correct and the system was trying to teach him something through these games, he expected that a game called Exploration would at least hint at the unseen multiverse.
He had become pretty curious about the multiverse as a whole ever since that last talk with Faruk, when he told Lucas his theory about Ponos basically being a playground world for newbies. However, he knew his multiverse exploration days weren’t anywhere in the near future. Before he could do that, he needed to first explore the planet and figure out a way to enter the real multiverse. Nonetheless, if that game could give him a sneak peak of what was waiting for him, he wouldn’t complain.
Finishing his meal quickly, Lucas checked how much time he had left and saw that there was still 22 hours left. I can play the game and then practice a little mana manipulation before I have to leave, Lucas thought, glad that he had already made the elixirs he needed during his previous stay in the waiting room. Excited to see what the tower had prepared for him, Lucas placed the cartridge in the console and put his gloves back on.
Exploration, as the name implied, was a game based on the exploration of multiple maps across worlds and, as predicted: the multiverse. The game was incredibly huge, and Lucas had no doubt in his mind that he could keep exploring for months without getting to the end of it—but only if his hand was able to sustain the tiring movements he had to make with his finger in order to walk.
It became clear after a few hours that the environments and planets weren’t simply generated. Lucas had a strong suspicion that a lot of these environments—if not all of them—were based on real places across the multiverse. This made Lucas even more fascinated with each place he discovered; it went from a mushroom forest to a world perpetually covered in a deep fog.
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The only downsides to the game were that Lucas couldn’t interact with anything he was seeing, apart from the portals that took him to different planets, and the lack of details in every environment. He could see the mushroom forest, but not what lived within or any sort of civilization around it. It was basically a game of sightseeing, which only served to entice his will to explore.
After a couple of hours of this, he stopped playing. He very much enjoyed this small peek into the mysteries that lay beyond, but he was afraid that if he played too much, it would take away the joy of actually seeing those places in the future.
Feeling pretty relaxed and refreshed, Lucas finally decided it was time to go back to his studies. As much as he enjoyed his well-deserved time off, he still felt an itch to keep improving himself that he couldn’t ignore for much longer.
Fortunately for him, his mana manipulation training, which essentially involved sculpting things using magic, was something he very much enjoyed doing. It almost felt like he was cheating by practicing like that, especially when he compared it to the hours he wasted reading boring technical books.
Between Lucas’ mana manipulation practice and improving his aim, the hours passed by quickly. His improvements were evident in the much better clay statues displayed at the table. He was even able to add small details to his figures now, showing his high level of proficiency in the activity. However, as much as he tried it, he was unable to split his mana in two.
As much as he hated to admit it, it was time for him to change his mana manipulation exercise. With sorrow in his heart, he said goodbye to his sculpture-making by creating one last sculpture, which was his best one to date. It took him nearly two hours to make it perfect, but he was pretty amazed by the result.
It depicted a pretty savage image of himself after the Sultan fight. His miniature version had an arm missing and a torn-up shirt. The other arm, however, had its hand closed in a fist with a pretty sharp blade sticking out of it. Feeling proud of his work, Lucas stored the sculpture in his ring and started to consider what he should do next.
The only course of action he could think of to actually improve his battle capabilities in that short period of time was training his magic. However, it had become obvious that his sculpting exercise had run its course.
The problem with that sort of training was that, even though it helped him improve his mana control and accuracy, it did very little for him in the battle department. Sure, a good mage needed to be familiar with their own mana, so the exercise was by no means a waste of time. But now that he had become pretty good at it, he needed to find a different challenge. And since he couldn’t split his mana just yet, that left only one option that he could think of.
Water wall it is, Lucas thought, rising from his chair and walking towards the training room. His last attempt at copying Elliot’s skill had ended in failure, but he hoped to get a better result this time around.
…
Minutes turned into hours in the training room without any significant progress. Yes, he was better at controlling his mana, but the problem was that Elliot’s skill didn’t follow any logic he could think of, and therefore it was difficult for him to create a method he could follow in order to obtain the skill.
It was almost like someone else trying to replicate his bone-blades—how would that person even go about doing it? The bone-blades, like that water wall, were skills that defied logic. That didn’t mean that Lucas doubted there was a method to acquire the water wall skill without going through the skill selection, but for the life of him. he couldn’t figure out what it was.
He had tried to mesh water with dirt—he was pretty good at this by now—but the result was plain mud that did nothing to stop any attacks. Then he tried using his thoughts to transform the characteristics of the water, but nothing happened. It was one of three things: he didn’t have the right requirements to do something like that, he wasn’t doing it right, or it simply wasn’t possible.
Lucas even considered taking a perception elixir to raise his odds, but ultimately gave up on the idea. He was saving that for the mana splitting skill once he was ready to try it out. For now, however, he would have to do with actually making the potion. There wasn’t much time left to spare, and he still wanted to take a nap to be well-rested for whatever was to come on the fourth floor.
…
He had to admit, it was a nice surprise to see how much he had improved in elixir crafting. He had reduced the crafting time by nearly half, so it didn’t take him too long to make the Perception Elixir. After some consideration he decided to make a Magic one as well in the extra time he had, just in case, before falling asleep for the last time in the waiting room
…
He was startled awake a few hours later by some sort of alarm, no doubt courtesy of the tower. Still a little drowsy, Lucas checked how much time he had left and saw there were only five minutes before he had to leave. Rushing out of bed, he washed his face on the sink and fully stretched his body before entering the elevator. As usual, everything went black before light returned to his eyes.