As my consciousness slowly returned to me, I found myself in the world of darkness once more. This time there were no dreams, only silence.
“What? Where am I?... Did I fall asleep again... I should have watched my mana more carefully. *Magic Perception*.” As I said those words, lights, colors and the sounds of the world returned to me.
”How funny that I can turn my senses on and off like a light switch, I wish I had this ability when I was a human. *Self Awareness*.” I mumbled to myself before opening my status window.
***
*Self Awareness Status*
-Ontopary Bush Lv1-
Rarity: Common
Health: 4/4
Mana: 13/13
Stamina: 3/3
Race: Berry Bush
Status: Intelligent(Unique)
Skills:
*Magic Perception Lv2* *Self Awareness Lv1* *Calm Mind Lv1* *Inspect Lv1*
Titles:
*Clutz*
***
“Shame my mana didn’t rise, now that I have *Inspect* skill it's time to get the information I desire!”.
*Calm Mind leveled up to Lv2*
I heard the mighty voice inside my head as if it was destiny, “Perfect I start with this *Inspect* *Calm Mind*!”
***
*Calm Mind* - Increase the resistance to stress and mind attacks.
***
“Well I expected more but yeah I think only because of this skill I am still holding myself within the realm of sanity. Anyway, where was I before the dark ages? Right, Inspect... It's time for inception, *Inspect* *Inspect*.”
***
*Inspect* - A skill that helps the user to get information from objects, material, or data. The usage of mana depends on the object, level of the skill, and other abilities of the user.
***
“Oh so it uses mana, I should be careful with that as well, *Inspect* *Self Awareness*.”
***
*Self Awareness* - One of the most basic skills, helps the user to know the current state/condition of his body and mind.
***
“Most of the explanations are vague and simple, maybe because the level of the *Inspect* skill is still too low? Ah right, it said it uses mana every time, at least I should check how much it uses, *Self Awareness*.” I used the *Self Awareness* skill to check my mana, but to my surprise, it didn’t even decrease by one.
“Looks like it does not use lots of mana or it does not use mana at all? If I remember correctly it said that I can inspect objects as well.” I moved my view and looked at the big tree that was located behind me, and said with a curious voice, “Inspect Golden Tree.”
*Big Tree*- Tree with golden leaves, with a height close to sixty meters.
With a face full of disappointment if I had a face I said, “I thought the explanations of my skills were vague, but forget vague this information is useless, golden leaves no shit! At least thanks for using the metric system, but still this does not change anything, it's still useless.”
Then a thought came to my mind. “I still don’t know much about myself. Should I check my plant family? Inspect *Ontopary bush*.”
*Ontopary bush* - Common bush that is mostly found in the Great Forest Of Dusk, the bush grows berries all year long, as it can collect lots of mana from the air and the ground. Some people call it a weak monster lure because lots of small-level monsters are attracted to its berries as a food source.
“How lovely I was correct yet again, I am really going to be eaten by a cow sooner or later, but this is funny. Why is the explanation of my plant family so in-depth, and the explanation of the tree so lacking?” I tilted my view to the side a little bit in confusion.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Maybe it's because foreign objects need a higher level of *Inspect* skill and my skills or my plant family that part of my being can be inspected easily. Maybe even if it’s connected somehow to my being it will be easier to inspect as well...” I waited a few moments to let me digest this thought slowly in my head.
“At least I know that my name is not Ontopary, no I was already sure that it wasn’t my name, I had this weird hunch.” That hunch was true, it gave me the feeling as if my memories were locked behind walls, and not really lost. With time I should collect them, but for now, I only could only peek at them from time to time, as they were surrounded by the walls.
I started to understand little by little the limits of the *Inspect* skill, and my other skills and even learn a little about myself as well. I especially understood that I need to raise its level, for me to get out of this mess because only it can give me the answers that I am looking for.
I started using the *Inspect* skill on the trees under the cliff and making sure to focus only on one tree at a time, I didn't want to use it by mistake on all the forest and lose consciousness like before. At the same time, I used the *Self Awareness* skill to look at my mana usage and not to let it drain out completely.
“Inspect Tree… Inspect Tree… Inspect Tree...”
*Small Blue Tree* - Tree with blue leaves.
*Small Purple Tree* - Tree with purple leaves.
*Small Red Tree* - Tree with red leaves.
The answers that I got from the trees with the *Inspect* skill, had even less information than from the golden tree. “I guess the distance is a factor as well for the inspect skill, I shall notice this in the future.” I said in a thoughtful manner, it wasn’t so far away from the truth but how could I know that I was wrong, it still was the first day of me using the skill to its fullest.
“*Self Awareness*.” I checked the mana usage again and said “After inspecting more than twelve trees the mana decreased only by one, how much did I inspect? Close to fifty or so I think, but the skill still didn’t level up.” My current mana was at eighth, four got used by the inspection of the fifty trees and one was used by *Magic Perception*.
“Oh right, I almost forgot I still need to inspect the *Magic Perception* skill as well, inspect *Magic Perception*.” How could I forget the most important skill that helped me to see and feel this world? I didn’t know, it could be because I was still disoriented or maybe it was part of my personality.
***
*Magic Perception* - Lets the user feel and see the magic essence around him, can be used in many forms even to replace some of the senses, such as sight touch, smell, and hearing.
***
“That just confirms my theory... Now that I think about it I really don’t have any eyeballs, why is my view so limited? Wouldn’t it be possible for me to see 360 degrees in all directions, even the *Inspect* skill said that I can feel the magic power around me, and there was no place it said that there was some kind of limitation, at least I should try there nothing to lose.”
I focused all of my mind on the view in front of me, seeing this huge mighty forest shining with all its beautiful colors, I tried to increase the view and let all the forest fit into my perspective. A few moments passed by, and then a minute, and even after a few more nothing happened, and then suddenly the view just twitched a little bit and that's it.
I changed my tactic and tried to use *Magic Perception* to its fullest. I pressured it again and again not releasing my focus from it at all, even after an hour of trying there were no changes, but then when I shouted with frustration.
“Ah screw this shit!” And pushed my mind to its limit, just as I almost gave up it happened. I guess what happened at that time is that I increased the pressure on my magic perception skill for over an hour, and then released it all in one go.
What happened next left me speechless, with a weird sound of *woosh* very similar to the sound of water flow when you open the valve of a huge water pipeline, and then all its pressure vanishes and lets the water flow. All the surroundings became clear as glass, as well my perspective started to grow in all directions slowly, little by little just, and just after a few moments, everything entered my view.
I could see the sky above me, I could see the ground under me, the forest that was in front of me. Every leaf of the brother bush that was to my right and the big golden tree too, even the edges of the cliff that looked so close to me but in reality were a few meters away.
The howls of weird creatures, and the rushing wind against the golden leaves above me, those sounds became so much clearer, it felt as if they were coming from nearby, and not from afar. Nothing could escape my senses, nothing could escape me at all… Except for my stupidity of course.
Have you ever wondered how a blind person, that was blind for all of his life, would feel if he got a sense of sight? No? Shame... But that was the exact feeling that I got. I was astonished, I had no words, it felt like a whole new world opened before me, “This is amazing! I think I hit the jackpot!” I shouted with excitement, as those thoughts went through my mind I stopped for a moment and the feeling of happiness almost disappeared in an instant...
What followed after was only pain, fear, and horror, as my mind felt like being squished and squeezed by a terrible force. My view became all blurry and started to shatter and tear, my hearing became chaotic and weird as if demons from hell were screaming into my ears, while the sounds of static TV were heard between their screams.
It felt as if my mind was going to explode, the pain was as if one hundred hot nails entered my head, fear and dread filled me. I tried my best to turn it all off, even tried screaming, “*Magic Perception*!” But I couldn't.
I couldn't do anything at all because my mind was in so much pain and chaos that I could barely hold myself together, and the only thing that was left for me is to try my best to resist. I got more and more confused, I couldn’t even find the difference between down and up, left and right.
I wasn’t sure even if I was alive, it felt like I was a small child that was trying to build a sand castle on the beach and the waves were coming and breaking it again and again while that sand castle was my own mind.
Only screams of agony could be heard inside my head, and only I could hear them. I didn’t know how much time had passed in this purgatory, for me it felt like hours but in reality, not even a minute had passed.
Not only did my senses got affected, even my sense of time got all weird. Everything that happened just took a little bit less than ten seconds from start to finish, from the moment I released the pressure to now.
After those ten seconds or maybe even less, the pain slowly disappeared, but with it, everything went black, and yet again I returned to my small world of darkness, where I rested for another night.
*Magic Perception leveled up to Lv 3*
*Calm Mind leveled up to Lv 3*
*Calm Mind leveled up to Lv 4*