{Orbs are rare alchemy creations created by conquerors or higher-level alchemists. Specific skills, rare ingredients, and several artifacts are required to create one orb. Based on ingredients used during creation, the storage capacity, quality, quantity, and requirements for storage changes. The highest quality orbs can store meat for decades. As it never loses the aroma, it's tender and juicy...}

Tetsu’s cravings for meat took over his intent during the end. As he understood the gist of it, he tried one old experiment.

First, he accepts, then summons and transfers the entire smoke from the orb into his many charcoal pieces. This took a few hours as the orb would disappear once it released all of its smoke. Trail and errors later, Tetsu drains ninety percent of the smoke within, replacing the rest with his mana.

“Mana orb.” He clutches and breaks the orb, recovering less mana than what he stored.

Also, only an orb not meant for anything specific can store anything. Lucky for him, his skill just gave him a normal orb that could store anything.

“How does it create smoke, then?” Tetsu scratches his chin. “System fuckery?” He concludes.

Once burnt, the wood gains smoke affinity and can store smoke, but when alive, you can’t store smoke as it is incompatible.

The same goes for inanimate or animate objects. If you have or learn fire affinity, water becomes impossible to learn. There are ways to bypass this, but you have to be ready for some major consequences. The least among them is neither your fire nor water attacks can reach their maximum potential.

“Least my ass. That’s ridiculous. What’s the mid or maximum backlash?” Tetsu yells out, getting confused stares from the baby Rhino.

His inner sage ignores him as always, wanting him to figure life out on his own. He was an excellent teacher like that.

Checking his mana orb, he notices how inferior his make-believe project of charcoal is. One orb of smoke held more smoke than his forty charcoal pebbles. He can burn the entire branch

Also, no skill. He expected the system to upgrade his current orb or give him a new skill, but nothing. It didn’t even offer him more orbs.

“Is it because I cheated?” Tetsu looks at the smoke orb. “Hack a hack and piss off the hacker?” Laughs Tetsu.

His laughs fade once he comprehends his own joke. “Sorry.” He bows to his screen. “Please don’t make the game harder than it already is...”

“Weird apology.” Grunts the baby Rhino. “Weird! But still... I accept.”

So far, the incubation grounds have been the biggest hack Tetsu has come across. Once the timer starts, his time here will truly begin.

Earth is under metamorphosis, introducing humankind to mana and dooming itself in the process. From conquering the world, humans would raise and conquer the darn universe or multiverse.

“Multiverse is a possibility.”

If Tetsu wanted to win or survive, he had to pick a powerful group that could protect him. He didn’t even entertain the idea of him being the protector. It’s not that he wouldn’t work his ass off, he just didn’t entertain a grand plan. With many more imaginary pressures already pressing down on him, he saw no reason to add one more.

In this grand plan of standing on his own two feet, the first step was to: ‘Run the fuck away.’

Speed and distraction held the presidency. Next came knowledge and defending for one’s honor.

That’s why he created a smoke bomb. The distraction part was done. He needed speed to actually put distance between his hunter and himself.

His speed kept increasing, but the increase was so minuscule Tetsu didn’t register any change.

“What if I get hit during my escape?”

A very real and definite possibility. Seeing how he couldn’t escape those slow-ass ladybugs and now how the rhino ran faster than him at level three.

“Yeah!” Tetsu shakes his head.

He did not mention his laughable stamina levels, how fatigue grows faster while injured, and how fast beats grow. Tetsu was certain he would have to tank attacks as he fled.

“Can humanity survive or am I the only one that’s this weak?”

His entire being leaned on the latter.

With his smoke orb and echo vault clutched between his both hands, he knew what to do next.

“Health orbs.”

‘Easier said than done,’ his inner sage smirks.

“Well, at least I am on the right path,” Tetsu smirks back. “Before that.” Tetsu checks his hands.

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With way too many charcoal shards and his two important skills turned orbs, his hands were tied down. One misstep or slip and they will cover him in smoke and mana.

“Never wanted pockets so bad.” He chuckles and places all the charcoal shards in his hair.

His head was a true mess of curls, easily holding the charcoal in place. “Who said hair is a weakness during a fight? Try smoking hair!”

A system message pops up, offering him the quick-release hair skill. He can now shed his hair with ease but had to wait for it to grow back.

“Geez! I was joking.” He throws the skill into the skills tomb folder. “Also, offer stuff I am busting my ass to create.” He points to the orbs.

Consider the tutorial an oven. It’s a confined space, like a certain hyperbolic time chamber. You can stay here for a certain time and never return. Until you reside here, everything is easier to grasp. Health increases and adapts to new changes fast.

Like that experiment where diseases and amputation were done over a child inside the womb. Unethical and disturbing, yes, but the babies who passed the test became the first mutants. They were more immune to diseases and showed visibly improved stats.

“Look at me…” Tetsu tries to count the number of days he’s been here and fails. He grunts, makes up a number, and rolls with it for the dialogue. “Been here for two weeks and I am already breaking stuff down into stats.”

Anyhow, the mutant babies run longer, recover faster, and have higher brain functionality than others. Disregarding the thousands of failed subjects, who... well... preferred to die than to live with the pain. The scientific project is still one of the greatest breakthroughs for mankind.

How big?

Well... From extinction to another chance of survival and dominance, kinda big.

The tutorial or incubation grounds took out all the bad and introduced even more good. The only drawback is the massive difference between your emergence and the three lives.

Tetsu suspected mana to have a huge role in making this stupid incubation period possible.

Tetsu sits with his legs crossed and concentrates on the atmospheric mana. Like sitting in a fireplace and absorbing the heat produced from the fire, Tetsu felt the mana press down on him.

Even back on earth, he wondered how his palm picked up heat energy and transferred it to his entire body. Lucky for him, the pressure and intensity here were ten times greater. Mana became a clearer concept, which he was confident to grasp before the tutorial ended.

The problem came with his vitality. Mana can be an overpowered entity, but he still depends on his shell or his vitality force to stay alive. The three pillars of power are codependent on each other. Mana being the new or system-enforced concept, Tetsu understood, or at the least felt its presence.

Vital energy, on the other hand, has been a part of him since birth. He and Kile read and experimented with many researchers on this subject but were never anywhere close to understanding the power.

Why did Tetsu get back to his old research now?

Because he wanted to store some vital or health and reuse them for fast recovery.

The incubation grounds restored his health pool in no time. Which, in turn, magically healed him and his broken bones. Regardless of whether it would regrow an arm? He needed a test subject for that—preferably a human.

A hunch dwelled in his gut: this environment built by the system had an intent or force that manipulated different energies. If he can separate vital energy from the other energies, maybe he can study vitality.

“Sure... Become stronger than the system while you’re at it.” He kicks himself mentally.

Moving onto a better plan, he attacked the weakest creature around.

Himself.

One cut after another, he made several lacerations on his forehand, all the while wondering if the system woke his inner masochist. Once he got used to the pain, he increased the depth and length of his wounds. “All hail masochism.” He jokes and then assures the baby rhino he knows what he is doing.

He didn’t.

Several attempts later and the system healing him time after time, he waits for his fatigue to reduce before repeating the process.

Turns out healing increases fatigue levels. Who would’ve guessed?

The fat baby rhino sure did and judged the stupid human.

A pulse ran through his body, causing something to refocus its energy elsewhere. Tetsu couldn’t see, hear, or even feel this energy until it reached the wound. Once the energy reached the wound, the environment, his improved shell, and his heightened senses helped him pick up on a tiny itch that was his vital energy.

In the next round, he ignores the pain and focuses solely on the injured part. He discovered the vital energy knew and always healed a critical injury first.

So, with his entire focus on the deepest part of his injury, he senses his vital energy magically appears. It stood around the wound for a while before dragging resources from deep within his own body. Which made him formulate a theory that vital energy stays and drags energy from the shell.

It’s a shell or body-based energy that as a rather simple rule to retain its form. It wasn’t something out there in the environment, but something in the environment helps in powering the vital force. Like the sun, helping trees grow.

His inner sage even gave him a huge thumbs-up, proving his hunch.

Many recoveries later, Tetsu still couldn’t locate, control, or direct his vital energy. It did what it did and left soon after. No buts, no cuts, no coconuts.

“This was a waste of time.” Tetsu frowns over losing yet another day to dead ends.

“I need a win and a huge win at that,” Tetsu yells, getting up from meditation. “One more failure will hurt my grit.” He looks at the baby rhino, tapping its feet in anger. His voice turns to a squeak as he realizes he kept Rhino waiting for too long. ‘A minor victory should help keep up my morale.’ He nods to himself.

Rhino tilts his wobbly head, pointing ahead. Tetsu looks past it and jumps up with joy. This time remembering not to scream.

The baby rhino went from, what’s this nuisance, to, oh! He’s just a dumb human, too. There’s no way he can be this dumb, okay? He proves me wrong again and again and again, to being worried, and in the end caring for the human.

She only cared enough to show him back to the place he longed for.

“Stomp away and don’t bother me anymore.” She flares. Tiny red bubbles formed around her face.

As usual, Tetsu ignores the comical but now fat Rhino’s intentions and carries her away with his skill tag along.

“Great to see you, bud.” Tetsu pats the tree. “Now I got a safe house... Where are those darn quests?”

Games be life if there ain’t any quests in them, and Tetsu was ninety percent sure he was indeed in a game.

He looks behind the tree and finds some elephant grass accompanying the tiny grasslings. “A scary stupid fucking game.” He grits his teeth hard enough for them to crack.

He plans to leave after this ungodly sight but stops as he spots the baby rhino’s eyes lingering over its previous body.

“That’s right! You can claim your body back, can’t you?”

Rhino turns at him with its puppy eyes, which makes him laugh and get choked by its jelly bottom.

“No system quests? Make your own.” Tetsu marks his next target.

Self-appointed quest: Retrieve the fake body of a friend whom you first eat, then experiment on, while facing scary-ass long grass.

Time: all the time in the world. Cost: several lives.

Reward: a smudge of satisfaction.

With a cheeky smile and a not-so-sure thumbs-up, Tetsu got to work.

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