For the first time in history, a being strode toward depleting his vital energy. He neither had reserves of health pool nor the wish to die. A simple experiment invaded his consciousness and Tetsu strives to determine its exact values.
Math is an interesting subject. For the people who love numbers, it breaks down to one and zeros. Kile is the best example of who would be classified as a math wizard. Not to be a racist, but Tetsu doubts his inheritance for this part. It was an Indian who invented the zero, after all.
Tetsu belonged to the next batch of people who would rather throw a ball than calculate its trajectory. Seriously, throw the ball a few times and let your muscle memory do the rest. The same goes for launching a rocket. Launch it a dozen times and you will probably reach the moon before you burn through all your resources.
When Kile challenged and lost against Tetsu, the credentials of this horrendous technique were boosted to crazy new heights.
Tetsu’s toy rocket flew and exploded, killing all his Lego passengers, but he still made a rocket fly before Kile figured out the math.
Until Tetsu remembers, they had placed the challenge on whose rocket would reach the skies first and his rocket crossed the finish line before exploding. This fake boost of confidence made Tetsu ignore math, for which he suffered now.
His health fell below ten points for the umpteenth time today. Yet he still had problems calculating his percentage boosts.
The experiment was simple for a simple-minded, foolish person.
Tetsu depleted his health pool and then tested his regeneration rates with the rune active. He tried to focus on health, mana, and stamina, but too many numbers made it complicated. Concentrating on his health was the easiest by far, so he started with his health pool.
First under normal circumstances, then after high fatigue levels, low fatigue levels, and in the end, under serene meditation.
The last technique proved the fastest for obvious reasons, while the high fatigue level yielded the lowest percentage.
If Kile had been in his place, he would’ve gotten the exact numbers after his first experiment. One would have to be a foolish masochist if they plan on seconds. Negative points meant death and any other number under these circumstances meant suicide. Tetsu crossed this level and now soared to new heights.
Mental tasks of counting time, being vigilant of his surroundings, and his health points didn’t consume any health or mana. But the constant activation of the rune consumed a lot of Mana.
Also, the act of converting different affinities into his unique mana signature made mana consumption tricky. All these factors raised his fatigue even during serene meditation. Fatigue hampered his concentration, resulting in depleting the mana pool. It did reduce slower though and this helped prove one other theory Tetsu fiddled with.
Several hours of training later, he calculated his gains. Four percent faster recovery on health and eight percent depletion rate on mana.
When his health got full, Tetsu concentrated on gathering only pure mana. Based on the weight and his weird gut sense, he tugged on pure mana in the atmosphere, replenishing his unique mana signature. Now he could replenish his mana pool one percent faster as he still had to use mana to keep the rune active and consume the mana.
“Progress.” Tetsu smiles.
One percent made no sense to him, either. He couldn’t calculate the difference so his gut placed a random number based on what felt right.
Emerged in the experiment, Tetsu forgot about his surroundings and shifted his focus to the stats menu. Before the transparent projection obstructed his vision, but he soon got used to it and even used it as a cooling glass from time to time.
When Tetsu slips into serene meditation, he forgets about the screen or his surroundings. RJ took advantage of the latter and ate the rest of his rations, while the first forced Tetsu to restart his experiment.
One drained his life in the present and the other was a surprise for the future.
RJ threw a pebble at Tetsu. Once it hit and fell without making him mad, she would make her move.
No reaction meant time for action. RJ caught Tetsu daydreaming many times. It took a while for her to realise that the human was even more vulnerable during this state. Sometimes he would be lost for hours and sometimes for days.
“A weak human with a bigger weakness. That poor thing,” RJ thinks.
This was also the best time to take advantage of him. There was no warning before he slipped out or into this trance, so she always tested with a pebble, to be sure. At the least, the human trying to figure out the many bumps was entertaining.
Yeah, she also used him as target practice to kill time.
Poor Tetsu would never come to solve his mystery bumps. Even now, as he was being used as target practice, Tetsu dwelled deeper into his status, noticing the ‘Regen’ stat grow by a point.
Regen: 12...! 14.
“Wait! What? Stats don’t grow with levels?” Tetsu scrolls through his status menu. “Damn, makes sense I guess? Wait. Should I improve my stats to get to level two?”
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This made a lot of sense. One has to train to fight. You can’t just wait for the match to begin and then hope to win. Maybe if you planned to get your ass whooped.
“Why didn’t I think of this sooner?”
For some reason, Tetsu assumed mana would magically solve his problems, or a level or two would instantly strengthen him. Not for once did he consider a character in the game to actually train and get stronger.
“Stupid training montages.” He blames the cine industry.
Tetsu had two skills that helped increase the mana pressure around him. More pressure meant more being able to sense mana. Not to mention his new rune also helped him recuperate faster. This meant he finally could go back to his experiments.
“What does Regen do again?” He uses the rune info over the system screen.
{Regen quantifies the ability of a true source to regain its lost resources. The greater the number, the faster one recovers health, mana, stamina, and from their backlash.}
“Fuck me! Do I have to do the math all over again?” Tetsu gives up on math for good.
This new world didn’t need math. He made it this far without it, and he sure as hell didn’t want it down the line.
“First and foremost, comes health training montage.”
Back to the basics. Tetsu wanted to control his vital energy first. Mana might be the key to the universe, but one has to stay alive to grow in that department.
Tetsu still held back from using the biggest hack; free points. They were too precious and Tetsu was glad he held off until now.
With a mental command, Tetsu scoops up all his free points.
“No!” Tetsu’s inner sage warns him.
Tetsu froze up. He assumed the voice came from deep within him like a telepathic message. But the sage tugged on his intuition, warning him about something not being right.
Conflicted by how the system changes one’s perception, Tetsu found a way to separate his thoughts from those of the superimposed system’s sage.
One was utterly stupid and the other way too wise.
“Ah! My inner sage speaks.” Tetsu strokes his imaginary beard. “You’ve been way too quiet that I assumed you died. If the system sent you to help me or change me.” Tetsu winks as if he knew the secret the system and sage shared. “Shouldn’t you spill out more information?”
Tetsu threatens to drop all the free points into Regen, but this time around, the sage doesn’t warn him.
“Okay, okay! You win.” Tetsu dismisses his screen. “Back to a boring training montage.”
Tetsu collects all the experiments focused on vital energy and exercises around the pile while all his senses focus on finding the vital energy.
His sole focus was to find the most concentrated source within his body. Then used it as a reference to locate the environment’s vital force, from which he would drag upon.
Once the source is located, the next process will reveal itself.
Tetsu cuts himself, trying to locate its origin, yet until the energy reached the wound, he wasn’t able to sense a wisp of vital force.
“Common, where are you hiding?”
Tetsu pushed himself farther than ever, pushing every cell to the point of exhaustion.
The body or shell moved with the help of vital force. It’s like the fuel required to run our engine.
Science grew over and above our imagination. We created both an artificial womb and sperm, yet never figured out how to infuse them with a soul. AKA a source that can pump vital energy through our body.
They transferred limbs and organs from a healthy human into an artificial human, with no results. No matter the resources poured or man-hours wasted, scientists weren’t able to find the hidden source within the body.
The closest we came was by removing both the womb and sperm from another being and incubating them in a ridiculously expensive pod. Research says it’s much safer and has a higher possibility of giving birth to an intellectual child. But we all know it’s a load of crap.
A mother with a book can do more.
It’s impossible to find the right woman and a bigger if that she agrees to bear your child, but that’s a ‘you’ problem. For Tetsu had but one goal to find his vital force, and all his research proved was the obvious.
Life simply had to come from life.
That is how humans failed to create artificial humans. We never understood our vital energy. Ironic, as we were born and live because of it.
Scientists tried and failed to create, recreate, or transfer one’s vital force to another.
Tetsu now tried to overcome the same barrier that Kile and the other brilliant scientists back on Earth never could.
Overconfidence was never Tetsu’s virtue, but he had something none of them had during their experiments.
Mana.
The mysterious power that planted itself between our mental and vital forces, allowing us access to unprecedented potential.
Tetsu pushed his body above and beyond until his mana and stamina depleted. With a constant eye on his status screen, Tetsu pushes himself further, until he breaks.
“More!”
Tetsu stops running around and jogs at a single spot. The constant vital force being consumed from his surroundings helped Tetsu work out for longer.
He ignores his stamina growth and concentrates on his health pool.
True to his hypothesis, vital energy worked like fuel, helping him push far beyond his usual limits. But once the fatigue level rises, the vital force shifts its attention toward the backlash. With less fuel to consume, the body slows down to a halt.
These setbacks were already calculated for as Tetsu increases the intake of vital energy.
“Need more energy.”
Tetsu breaks an orb, covering himself in smoke. “Devour.” He forces his abilities to speed up, shifting to consume mana instead.
The smoke orb containing even more mana than smoke replenishes Tetsu’s mana pool.
“Another theory confirmed.” Tetsu smiles and picks up the speed.
More fuel entered his body as he forced the rune to devour more. While mana in his surroundings was his own, it took little to no effort to consume it back into his body.
Shifting back to consuming vital energy and his mana, Tetsu noticed the fatigue levels drop as mana helped the rune and the rune helped devour more vital force.
Tetsu still wasn’t done, however. He noted down his fatigue and mana levels, before pushing even harder.
The balance was tricky at first, but this was far from his first trial. Tetsu never kept track of the number of trails. He only concentrated on the slightest improvements during every attempt and he has come very far since his initial trial.
After a minute, his mana pool stopped halfway and started to deplete again, while his fatigue stopped falling and rose.
“Consumed more this time.” Tetsu readied his ultimate weapon.
The idea of running forever made Tetsu’s mind spin. He was pretty sure there would come a point where fatigue or the backlash would outweigh the vital energy. Both the sage and his current stats proved this point.
Fatigue rose faster than ever while his health and mana took a swan dive.
Tetsu couldn’t help but smile at his doom. One step into his grave, Tetsu breaks his vault.
A gust of his pure mana bursts out. Tetsu buckles down and covers the orb with his entire body, with his mouth wide open. He pushes the rune to the next level as he concentrates on devouring every bit of mana that exited the vault.
The vault disperses an invisible flood of mana. All of it weaved into existence by Tetsu’s intent and his signature mana.
The rune ‘Devour’ glows with a golden tint. Dark viscous liquid accumulates around Tetsu’s mouth as he swallows it whole. He keeps this up as his mana pool overflows with mana, unable to contain the excessive mana.
“Yes!” He gritted his teeth, smiling.
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