I was a little bit at a loss on how to proceed. I could just turn around and take a different hallway, maybe avoid the goblins altogether. And I probably would have done just that, if I had had food and water.

Alas, I didn’t, and the goblins did.

So, I had to take it from them, simple as that. Not that I enjoyed the idea of stealing stuff, but I figured that just asking or begging was plain stupid – based on the goblins’ displayed behavior, they were going to attack on sight.

I just needed the right opportunity. Maybe I could have just brazenly moved into the room and grab some meat, but, despite the small size of the goblins, I didn’t trust myself taking them on all at once in a fight. While I was bigger, I was not in any fighting shape, had no weapons, and had no idea how many of those little buggers were out there. 

And, frankly, I would rather avoid fighting them in the first place. Perhaps my moral compunction of simply killing other sapient beings was stupid, but I was not ready to go out there and snuff them out for some scraps of food. Not yet, at any rate.

So I sat down and began to wait.

Not one to waste time by just sitting around, I took the opportunity to experiment a little bit with my mana. The first thing I wanted to figure out was what happened if I incorporated mana into my mana cycle. My last experiment had already shown that it did matter where the mana went – black mana going to silver mana didn’t have any impact on my mana pool, whereas black mana going to the black mana cycling through my body translated into a one to one increase in the mana potential in my body.

Was this a particular feature of silver mana that it didn’t take on black mana? If so, then putting black mana into the amber cycle was perhaps going to have some type of effect. Slowing my breathing, I started to get into a meditative state and slowly pulled a small portion of the diffuse black mana toward the amber mana rushing through the figure eight in my body.

Only with great effort could I get the black mana to do my bidding – it was as if it was some type of living, untamed organism that I needed to bring under my control first before I could do anything with it.

Once the black mana touched the amber mana, things suddenly went quickly. Within a split second, the black mana disappeared, wholly assimilated by the amber mana. I stared at the spot for a couple of seconds, waiting to see any effect, but nothing was visible. And then I checked my status screen and noticed that there was absolutely no change in amber mana.

I scratched my head. So… what did that mean?

Since I only had two mana types, any conclusions were slightly premature, but based on the given evidence… black mana would only go to black mana, but not to other mana. It could be somehow absorbed by the other mana types because it clearly disappeared, but it didn’t do anything, or at least not enough to be noticeable. Perhaps something would change if I used a larger quantity, but I was not ready to risk my limited mana just to find the answer to that question.

Of course, I was assuming that putting black mana into the black mana cycle would still gain me a one to one increase in mana potential… at this point, pure conjecture. Immediately, and somewhat worried, I tried the same procedure, but this time attempted to add the free-floating black mana to the black man cycle.

Things proceeded somewhat more smoothly, even though there was still substantial resistance I had to overcome for the black mana to do as I wanted. To my relief, once the black mana had been successfully absorbed by the mana cycle, the status screen showed a corresponding increase in mana potential by the remaining four points I had had available.

I quickly checked the room if anything had changed, but everything seemed about the same - the goblins were still hanging around, occasionally turning the spits over the fire, and otherwise sitting on their asses grunting at each other in their guttural language, only interrupted by the occasional fight.

So what to do with my mana?

Seeing stuff was awesome, and kind of a precondition for survival in a dark cave system, but, hopefully, it was not all I could do with silver mana and black mana. Of course, there was healing as well, which was extremely important… but overall I sorely lacked offense and defense.

Perhaps I could somehow harden my skin? Or create something that repelled attacks?

I drew the silver mana out toward my skin, covering everything in a thin layer. Immediately, my whole body started glowing in an eerie, silver light. Suppressing a curse, I instantly stopped what I was doing – not a good idea to be shining like a Christmas tree in a hostile surrounding.

That said… tentatively, I pulled the silver mana once more to my skin, but this time stopped casting Mana Vision – there was no visible glow from my skin any longer.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

I breathed a quiet sigh of relief and started investigating the impact of distributing silver mana in that way. First, I hit myself on the leg, to see if I had gained some type of armor, resistance, or anything of that sort. Alas, there was no noticeable difference, at least none I could tell.

It hurt, and that was about it.

I took a small splinter from my walking stick and cut and poked myself, at the off chance that it was a shield against cutting or piercing damage, but not blunt trauma. But all I got for my efforts was a few small, bloody wounds.

Out of ideas, I let the silver mana slip away and repeated the process with black mana. And now, rather than my skin starting to glow… it felt as if it became strangely mottled, infused with moving shadows. For a moment I got worried that this might actually hurt me somehow, like a hex I had involuntary cast on myself, but I didn’t feel any discomfort or pain and hence decided to repeat the previous sequence of tests.

Unfortunately, the black mana left me just as vulnerable and soft as the silver mana – meaning it didn’t do shit.

So perhaps instead of a skin enhancement, I should create some sort of shield or a weapon?

For either one, the first step would be to get the mana to manifest outside of my body.

Somehow.

That would be the fundamental building block for any cool magical skill that went beyond enhancing my own body. I mean, that was already plenty cool. Who does not dream of becoming invisible, or creating some type of shadow armor, or making oneself super strong? Well, perhaps not everyone dreams of those things, but I certainly did.

I decided to first try with my silver mana because it had been the easiest to handle so far and it ought to do something other than just giving me some fancy 20/20 mana vision, right?

I pushed the mana down my arms, into my fingertips, and then tried to make it go outside my body from there. I could feel the mana flowing in the right direction, slowly accumulating in my fingertips, swirling, full of silky energy, but no matter how hard I pushed, the mana was not leaving my body.

After a few minutes of cursing quietly and pushing until I got a headache, I gave up and decided to give it a shot with the black and amber mana instead.

With the exact same result. 

After another twenty to thirty minutes of fruitless experimentation with the mana, I heard a commotion from the other side of the door. As I peeked through the keyhole, I saw a somewhat bigger goblin, dressed in boots, a kilt, and a leather armor strut through the room with a scowl on its brutish face.

The other goblins in the room were visibly afraid, scurrying out of the way, and making high-pitched whimpering noises rather than their previous guttural shouts.

After surveying the room for a moment and, to my annoyance, grabbing one of the spits of succulent giant bat from the fire, the goblin barked an order, turned around and left my field of vision. Immediately, the other goblins started rushing around, some grabbing weapons, while others ran toward the crates, opening them somewhat haphazardly, and rummaging around their contents.

It almost looked as if some of them were getting ready to leave, whereas others were responsible for providing provisions… Not exactly what I would have expected from goblins. Frankly, I would have thought them to be just savages without organization at all… but there it was, rudimentary division of labor, specialization, and perhaps more.

Or perhaps it was just random actions - it did look rather disorganized.   

Either way, once the armed goblins would leave, that would be my chance. I would still face odds of one against four perhaps, from the looks of it. But I thought I might be able to handle that, especially if I could get hold of a weapon.

And, hopefully, I would have the element of surprise.

A couple of minutes later, things quieted down again, and I got ready to make my move. Gently, I pressed down on the door handle, careful to avoid any unnecessary noise. And then I slowly pulled the door. It didn’t move an inch.

And pushing didn’t do anything either.

Shit, I was so screwed.

The door was obviously locked, and there was no way I could break down the sturdy, metal-reinforced door with the tools I had available. I sank down to the floor, resting my back against the door.

What now?

Maybe I could pick the lock?

It was, after all, not like a modern security lock. At most two or three tumblers. So, all I needed to do was plug in some wire or metal pieces, lift those tumblers, and the door would be open.

A piece of cake.

At least, based on the movies I had seen. The hero usually would plug in a bit of wire, wiggle it around and, voila, a minute later, the door was open.

Of course, I didn’t have any wire. Nor did I have any metal pieces at all. All I had were my cane and my truncheon, sneakers, light pants, and a mostly torn t-shirt.

After a moment of hesitation, I took off my t-shirt, wrapped it around the cane, and then snapped the stick over my knee. Despite the t-shirt blocking a lot of the noise, the cracking seemed as loud as thunder. With heart hammering like crazy in my chest, I crouched down, ready to run or fight at a moment’s notice.

But for once I had lucked out – none of the goblins seemed to have heard the noise and neither did I hear any clicking or clacking noise that might indicate spiders or other giant vermin from further down the corridor.

Carefully, I unwrapped my t-shirt and found what I had been hoping for – the wood had not snapped cleanly but had left some jagged pieces that I could break off and hopefully use as makeshift lock picks. Not the best tools, but you gotta play the hand you have been dealt.

Hoping for the best, I stuck the pieces into the lock and moved them around, trying to catch something that I could move. Of course, I had no fucking clue how to do that, so the whole exercise was pretty pointless. 

And I felt that slowly but surely my time was running out. Any minute, the other goblins might come back, and I would be stuck behind this door until I starved to death.

Perhaps I was getting a tad melodramatic, but the situation was somewhat dire. Where was the magic key that opened all doors when you really needed it…?

Wait. Magic.

I quietly cursed myself for not thinking about magic sooner. It was not as if I had a magic spell ready to go that would deal with my problems… but both black and silver mana provided some vision so far, and maybe I could tweak that a bit to look at the inside of the lock.

Not something I would bet my life on, usually, but I was kind of out of other options. I was only getting weaker, and exploring the rest of the hallways randomly if food and water were known to be behind the door seemed even riskier.

No, I needed to get into that room.