Chapter 2 - An New Sense
As time passed on I grew nervous. What world would I be born in? What will my parents be like? Will I have any siblings? And what about the language? It seems unlikely that the main language in my new world will be even remotely close to German or English, the languages I spoke the best.
As I continued pondering over my many worries, I noticed that something was ... odd? It felt like something was tingeling in the back of my mind, barely noticable but still there. I was, however, unable to figure out more, as everytime i tried shifting my perception towards it, it dodged? I can't really explain any better, it felt like it was actively avoiding my perception.
With the passing of time, this feeling grew stronger and stronger. And more annoying. It was like an itch that couldn't be scratched. Every second of feeling this feeling that is unable to be felt directly made my sanity slowly drain away.
Every second of my existence was now fully focused on catching this feeling. I in poured everything I had. In this moment, I wished for nothing more than to make it stop.
And thats when it happened. I can't say what changed, but something certainly did. It felt like something in my mind just "clicked" into place. Like I finally found the piece of the puzzle I have been trying to solve for so long.
Any annoyance I had felt up to this point vanished instantly. Instead I just felt wondrous. It was like a whole new world opend up for me. A world that I, who was currently unable to move or see, could actually experience.
I was unable to see it, but it felt colorful. So vibrant and full of life. I could feel it flowing around me, surrounding me from every side, everpresent and everywhere. It was so incredibly beautiful, no words could ever hoper to capture it's essence.
Unlike before, it did not seem to avoid me. I even felt like I would be able to influence the way it moved, though that may as well have been my imagination.
Having calmed down a bit, I felt ecstatic at what this new sense could potentially allow me to do. If I use it correctly, there may be a way for me to perceive this new world. Even if I was not yet born.
With this opportunkty being present, I went to work immediately. I increased my focus as much as I could and tried to shut off every other of the few senses that I currently had. I immersd myself in it, trying to gather any information from the way it was flowing around me.
However, I faced a few problems regarding this. For once, I didn't have any idea how large anything is, as I had no reference to judge any distances or lengths. My only real option was my own body, which I knew should be around the size of an average fetus.
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As my sense of my own body was the opposite of good, I was unable to extract anything usefull. Therefore, I simply could not know what range my new sense has and thus had to base any assumptions I would make from my new sense on nothing. I could only guess. This is however quite unfortunate when having to decode information from something.
I still tried, I had nothing to lose after all. And nothing else to do. And I was succesfull. Really succesfull actually. Probably.
The first thing I noticed, was that the "flow" I felt was seperated into many "Streams", clusters that seemed to flow into the same direction, though sometimes branching of into smaller substreams. When only focusing on the significantly large streams and dismissing any smaller streams and otherwise occupied or non-moving areas, I found something that I vagually recognize.
It was somewhat of a humanoid figure, more specifically, the human blood circulatory system. Additional evidence for this theory is the big cluster, when comparing to the humanoid figure, straight "above" me. The heart.
This means that what im sensing is something that flows along with the blood in my mothers bloodstream, but exists also in the surrounding area around my mother. In reference to my old worlds culture, I termed it [Mana].
Now what to do? Since this world has an energy that appears to behave like the mana in various "fantasy" worlds, this will almost certainly be one of them. From what I can sense through the surrounding mana, my mother should be human, which should imply me being human as well.
I just don't know how people in this world live. I don't even know if they are aware of the omnipresent mana, though I'm convinced that is not thr case. But I don't know how they use mana. Or rather, how mana should be used. How can one use mana to get stronger?
Unfortunately my mother mostly seems like a normal human beeing. My reason for this conclusion is the density of the mana in her blood stream. As the density of the mana in her body is basically the same as the density of the space outside her body, she does not have something akin a "storage" for mana that would signify her progress in cultivating mana. No magic circles, no mana core, not even any remarkable high density areas of mana at all.
The only logical conclusion that remains is that my new mother is as normal of a human being as this world allows.
Though I may also be wrong. One fact that I overlooked is, that the mana is only in her blood. Blood is almost everywhere in the human body. And since I am connected to my mothers bloodstream through the placenta, my very own blood should contain mana as well.
It doesn't.
What I think this means, is that the mana doesn't flow with the blood, but in a completely seperate network, like a circulatory system for mana.
Since this network is not correlated to the bloodstream, even though I receive blood directly from my mother, I'm still devoid of any mana.
This, however, means that my mother is not as "weak" as a human from Earth. As her mana density, even in her heart, is quite low, she should be rather weak, probably average at best.
Nevertheless, since the center of the mana system seems to be the heart as well, at least I'm nlw certain of the way I'm going spend the remaining time before my birth, namely with accumulating mana in my heart.