You have acquired 5 new skills!

[Inventory]

You can use a personal inventory. Size depends on the number of skills you own and their relative power.

[Create Item: FFF-rank]

You can consume mana to turn an [Object] into an [Item]. The rarity of the [Item] is dictated by the quality of the user’s craftsmanship, the user’s intent, the quality, nature, and history of ingredients used, and the rank of [Create Item].

[Mana Core: FFF-rank]

You possess a core that stores mana.

[Magic Sight: FFF-rank]

You can perceive magic.

[Mana Manipulation: FFF-rank]

You can manipulate mana.

Congratulations!

You have completed the [Rookie] class!

Class Completion Reward: [Class Selection]

Classes available: [Beginner Brawler] [Rookie Survivalist]

I carefully listened to the voice ringing inside my head, noting everything it told me.

Suddenly, I felt my body change. It was like a missing part of me was slotted back into place. The environment around me lit up with the incredibly faint sensation of… something filling the air. The direction of the misty wastelands felt as clear as a beacon in my senses, a glowing mass of pure wickedness and rot.

Then, I felt something else. At the very center of my being, a flickering blue dot appeared. It felt ephemeral, almost as if a light gust of wind would snuff it out. From that minuscule fleck, a stream of thin strands of energy flowed out, coursing through my entire body.

Some of the strings coiled through my limbs, looping aimlessly before trailing back to the spot in the center, while others traveled to the tips of my fingers, the soles of my feet, and my eyes.

My attention shifted to another new sensation I felt. There was a void. An empty space interposed with my existence, and as easily as I could move my fingers, I felt that I could place objects into that space and pull them out.

But all of these sensations were overshadowed completely as I suddenly realized something. The core in the center of my being was connected to one more thing—my soul, where I felt the presence of powers awakening like roosters as the sun appeared on the horizon. I could finally use my skills.

I took a moment to reorient myself and take a look around me. There was nothing around me. As soon as I confirmed my safety, I willed the status menu to appear in my mind again, looking at the “active skills” section.

Active skills:

[Energy Absorption] [Resurrect] [Summon Elemental] [Oath of Loyalty] [Create Item: FFF-rank] [Mana Manipulation: FFF-rank] [Inventory]

Immense excitement bubbled in my mind as I wondered what to try out. I preferred taking life from the least to the most, starting small and finishing big. So, I went to the most straightforward ability on the list—[Mana Manipulation].

The image of myself as a child hiding behind my bed and straining myself until I turned red flashed in my mind. As a kid, pretty much every single time I watched a movie where the characters used supernatural powers, I would hide in my room and try to replicate what I saw.

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I wanted so much more than I had… but I had so much more than I would.

It was a bittersweet memory.

I stared at the palm of my hand. Rather than strain myself, I focused on what felt like a limb attached to my soul. The imaginary body part responded to my will, and I witnessed a tiny bit of blue mist floating out of my hand.

Just as I willed it to try and form something out of it, I felt my vision blurring as the mist vanished.

Huh?

I nearly passed out from the sudden sense of fatigue I felt. It took me a few minutes to regain myself, and I noticed something once I did. The shining dot in my soul appeared dim and muted.

Did I spend all my mana doing that?

I could instinctively feel that I had overburdened my core. It was akin to muscle failure, but the proximity and the profound connection between the core and my soul made it directly impact my spirit, dazing me.

It was strange that something I didn’t even have a few minutes ago suddenly mattered so much.

The realization that I had run out of mana made me instantly switch my perception to another skill waiting for its turn, one that I could feel didn’t need any mana to activate—[Energy Absorption].

I focused, and this time, I felt a pretty strange response. It seemed that my previous idle musing about the nature of this skill held more weight than I initially thought. For the lack of a better term, this ability had several different “modes” I could swap between.

There didn’t seem to be a set number, but rather, it was more like I could choose what type of energy I wanted to absorb. The first thing that came to mind was raising my hand at the sun and focusing on the light reaching my palm.

Instantly, I felt the light being absorbed and transformed into mana. But it wasn’t really going anywhere. And the effect was so weak I could barely sense it. Next, I swapped my target to heat. The effect became slightly more noticeable, and I could feel a coldness against my palm as the surrounding air rapidly cooled down.

I tried touching a blade of grass while using the ability. It froze as soon as I activated the skill, causing a sheen of condensation to freeze over the plant’s surface. Whoa. I marveled at it. Seeing my mere touch freeze something like that… It almost made me squeal in excitement.

Finally, I swapped my target to ambient mana. To my surprise, the response was weaker than that of siphoning heat but slightly stronger than absorbing light.

The energy I had absorbed seemed to have turned into mana, but that mana was just aimlessly coursing through my body. I tried forcing it to the point in my center, but it simply refused to go there.

But I could manipulate it. I instinctively felt I could use this energy as a substitute for mana if I ever ran out. There was a limit to how much I could contain inside my body, and it seemed to be roughly the same as the quantity of mana in my core. Which really didn’t seem to be a lot.

In any case, it had given me some fuel to keep experimenting.

As my mind shifted to [Create Item], I was taken aback. I hadn’t realized it until that point, but the degree to which I intuitively understood how to use these skills was a bit unusual. It didn’t stand out much with [Energy Absorbtion] and [Mana Manipulation] because… well… those skills were relatively intuitive.

But [Create Item] was different. It was jarring. I felt like a rather complex understanding of foreign principles was slapped directly into my mind. Yet it fit so perfectly that I barely even noticed. From the moment I acquired this skill, my very understanding of what it meant to create something had mutated.

I tore off a branch from a nearby tree. It was just a wooden stick, an ordinary [Object]. Then, with a tiny burst of mana that was floating freely through my body, it went from a wooden stick… to a [Wooden Stick].

[Wooden Stick: Common]

A stick of wood.

Now, when I held the item, I could feel its properties and even see a brief description. Granted, nothing about the stick had changed. But I felt that it wouldn’t take much to achieve that.

I reached for another branch and tore off another stick. This time, I used [Energy Absorbtion] to siphon as much energy from it as possible. I felt that just making it cold wouldn’t be enough. I needed something special. I required that chemical X.

So I kept siphoning. I had no idea how cold I could make the stick, but there didn’t seem to be a limit. As long as there was thermal energy to be absorbed, I could keep going—until I no longer could.

A grin appeared on my face. Now, a cold stick might not be anything special… But a stick that was at almost absolute zero?

[Frozen Wooden Stick: Uncommon]