Chapter 28

Aftermath and power-ups

I didn't pass out for a week this time. Progress! I was actually only out till the following day. Well, there were a few other times I woke up, but only briefly each time. The first time was from the pain when Janet picked me up and carried me Back to the walls. I think she had still been in I'm so strong mode and hadn't really considered my comfort when getting me to the infirmary. The second time was when they actually started working on me, and that really hurt before they had given me some of our valued anesthetic, and then I was out again. Let's just say I was in a bad way. Okay, I was fucked up. Breathing hurt, and it felt like my body was broken everywhere. I didn't literally think every single bone in my body was broken. That would have just been ridiculous.

No, it just felt like I was broken. I was surprised I got so fucked up. I couldn't even move my arm. Then I realized it was missing, and that made me laugh, which fucking hurt a lot, so I cried, which also fucking hurt a lot. Like I said, I was fucked up. Apparently, a lot of people were really fucked up. Fast self-healing was incredible till you were brought back from the brink of death, and you had half your body frayed like pork belly. I could see that being utilized in horrible ways. I thought about what the Doc had said she would do to those men who had mutilated those poor people and shivered, which fucking hurt, oww.

That was now a terrifying concept, and I didn't think I could go that far. I just ended bad people. Then they were gone, and that's what mattered to me. I guess they could have suffered more, but those assholes were dead now and couldn't hurt anyone else. That was the important part. I moved on from thinking about that, and my thoughts drifted through random topics as I went in and out of consciousness for the next four days.

I was so bored! I mean fuck! I was so bored. Most people were back on their feet by now, except for a few who got the worst of it, but I was so bored just sitting in my bed resting all the time. Yesterday, I could still barely put weight on my left leg, but my arm was almost back, and most of my skin didn't look like deep-fried pork belly anymore, which was great. I was just hoping that today's checkup would clear me to leave my room. I was out for four days but had been sitting in bed resting up for three days now, and I was so fucking bored. Okay, the last time I complained, I swear I just needed out. Janet had come to visit me yesterday. She had just been released from bed rest herself and was allowed by Dr. Bowden to walk around for part of the day.

Janet had given me shit for getting so fucked up, but in the end, she cried on my shoulder. She also punched me in the face, which fucking actually hurt, but she told me to get better soon and gave me a kiss before she left. I had a couple of other visitors, mainly Beth, Brianna, and Tilly. Tilly actually stopped by a couple of times, and when Beth tried to stop her from coming to visit, saying that I needed my rest. I told Beth it was fine. I needed it, and Tilly's little stories about her day-to-day life in the village were calming. Most of my time when I was laid up and conscious was spent looking at my stat sheet. There had been a few changes that helped my state of mind.

Travis Mullins

Level: 21

Race: Human

Class: Path of the Pole Arm

Experience needed to next Level: 86,320/96,600 XP till next Level.

Stat points per level up: +3 free

Titles:

Lucky Bastard: (+2 to luck)

Explorer: 1 (+3 to all stats)

Settlement Defense level (3): (Plus 7 to all stats)

Cold Hands: (plus 10 to luck)

Gluten for Punishment: (plus 15 points to con)

Stand Tall: (all stats plus 5)

First in world to:

Complete a dungeon run: (+8 to all stats)

First Settlement Defiance: (+5% to all stats )

Sector leader. You are among the top million newly

integrated life forms in your sector of the Milkyway galaxy to achieve a level two

class: (+50 to all stats, extra +10 first on your planet)

War Bounces:

War Machine: +8 to all stats for the next 90 days. (90) days left

Blood drenched: +15 to all stats for the next 90 days. (90) days left

Follow Me (2): 30% boost toward the influence my words had on others for the

next 90 days. (90) days remaining

Resistances:

Element of Fire: 11%

Element of Corruption: 15%

Element of Lighting 2%

Stats:

Strength: *157 WB: (+23)

Dexterity: *158 WB (+23)

Intelligence: *136 WB (+23)

Wisdom: *137 (WB (+23)

Constitution: *152 WB (+23)

Luck: *130 WB (+23)

* = modified

(+) = Amount modified by

Class Sheet

Path of the pole Arm

Level 2:

Plus two stat points to Strength each level up.

Plus three stat points to Dexterity each level up.

Step Lightly:

When activated, it gives you the ability to move up to ten feet so fast that it may appear as if you have teleported to people with a dexterity of less than twenty-five and an intelligence of less than twenty. Anyone with a dexterity over twenty-five and an intelligence over twenty will see you move, but you will move at 300% of your normal movement speed. Step Lightly, coasting fifty Mana and twenty stamina to activate.

Pinpoint:

Pinpoint:

Pinpoint increases your accuracy by 125%. This ability can be activated at the cost of ten Mana and five stamina per second, allowing you to land critical hits more often and deal more damage with each strike.

Quick Strike:

When activated, Quick Strick at the cost of one hundred Mana energizes your arms into almost a seizure-type state. This causes you to strike out with your polearm many times in rapid succession.

Spear Shadow:

When activated, Spear Shadow conjures a mana shadow over your weapon. This mana shadow will then extend past your weapon at a distance, dependent on the amount of Mana you have invested into the ability, with a minimum range of five feet and an undefined maximum range. This ability is truly what you make it. At an initial cost of eighty Mana, this ability can be augmented, and the distance the Mana shadow travels is determined at a ratio of ten Mana and five stamina per foot.

After my first reaction of Holly fucking shit! That's amazing. There were so many stat points! So many! My second thought was, wow, there was a lot to unpack here. I had started feeling like there was something off with the situation. If I really had these insane stats, why wasn't I healing up faster? I had to talk to Dr. Bowden at our next appointment, and she told me what she figured was happening. She said that The Master, when it had sliced my neck open and dug its finger into my throat, had released a tone of corruption into my body. If Janet hadn't killed The Master when she had, my body would have eventually fallen behind in healing, and I would have died. On the bright side, I had a fuck tone of resistance to corruption now. I could always use more of that resistance to corruption, not corruption. That shit sucked.

My stat sheet was so pretty, though. I mean, wow, just, wow. That first-in-world title was fucking amazing I mean, wow, really, but that lighting resistance, when did I get that? I also wondered if Janet was a sector leader. I bet she was. We must have been the strongest humans on earth. That was a wild thing to realize. My new ability would also be a tremendous help in battle. If it was what I thought it was from the description, I could now launch a large magic Mana version of my spear that would superimpose itself over my spear strike and then extend out further the more Mana and stamina I infused into the ability. With a base cost of 80 Mana and the cost to extend the attack only costing ten Mana and five stamina per foot, it was affordable as well.

The ability even had a cool name, too. Well, at least I thought so. I got my usual stat points for my level-ups and split my points between intelligence and wisdom, while the other points I could touch went into Strength and dexterity, respectively. I haven't even talked about my other new titles. I had one called Cold Hands that gave me an amazing plus ten points to luck. The notification said it had to do with constantly throwing myself at impossible odds and coming out on top. Luck-based titles seem to have a lot to do with almost dying or surviving something you shouldn't have. I was glad I got the title, but I hoped I would get another for a while.

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I got another title called Gluten for Punishment. That one was obvious. I got It become I got so fucked up in the battle, and there were probably a few other contributing factors, but I was just going to go with my first theory. It couldn't be related to the fact that I kept hurting myself with different things to build my resistance. The title was called Stand Tall. The notification said I got the title for being a focal point for my people during the battle, "A true leader for your people, a symbol to stand and rally behind." Whatever that meant. Then there were my war bonuses. The bonuses I got before all renewed, and I even got a new one called Blood-Drenched, which gave me 15 points to all stats for the next ninety days. More stats were more stats, and I would never turn my nose up at a good thing, even if it was only temporary.

I had been so lost in my thoughts that I was only pulled out by the sound of my door opening. It was Dr. Bowden here for my checkup. It only took about ten minutes for Dr. Bowden to declare me fit to return to light duties. She told me to take it easy for the next couple of days and then reiterated that part. She was really trying to drill it into my head that I needed to recover. I just didn't need to be on bed rest, and moving around was supposed to help now, so I was so fucking stoked. I hugged Dr. Bowden and almost broke her. I said I was sorry so many times after that, and she said it was fine, but I could still see her holding her arm when she left. I felt bad about that.

I really needed to get a handle on my, well fuck, my new body, basically. Fucking stats. For the rest of the day, I definitely took it easy and spent the day mainly with Janet, just relaxing and hanging out with friends. I had some fun at the cafeteria. I found out I had like fucking superhuman reflexes now. I only found this out after I accidentally knocked my fork off the table and caught it casually before it even came close to hitting the ground. When I realized what I had done, I spent the next hour placing things on tables where people would inevitably knock the item off, and then I would catch it super-fast when they did. It was incredibly enjoyable.

Janet eventually told me to grow up and cut that shit out. So, I didn't it like ten more times, then stopped, Janet was pissed at me, but she got over it later that night. We both had insane stats and yep, Janet was a sector leader, just as I thought. Now, if we thought sex with stats was good back then, sex with our new level of stats was out of this world. Talk about stamina, fuck that was a great night. We took it easy the first day I was out of bed, but after that, the gloves were off, so to speak. We got many um…. "earthquakes," Yeah, earthquakes for some reason the next week, and I had no idea why.

On my second day out of bed, I was introduced to the teens and their leader, Dean. They had been the group that had helped us out versus The Master. Dean was one of the teens, a 19-year-old kid named Tim's dad. Actually, Dad and Son were big DND nerds and went LARPing per-integration all the time, they said. So, they figured out the leveling system pretty quickly when the integration hit. They had hooked up with many of Tim's LARPing friends and were trying to learn how to not just survive but rise to the challenge of this new world. Dean was a pretty cool guy, too. I could see people thinking he was annoying, but I love his attitude. He was super positive, laughed a lot, and loudly.

Dean liked to throw in a random fake old English word into a sentence here and there. I thought it was hilarious. I genuinely think he was loving the integration on some level. His kid was nice, too, but quiet. I guess his dad was so crazy and loud that the kid was more of the quiet introvert type. Tim was still a nice kid, for sure. Dean and I got along well. He had been the owner-operator of a small game and trading card store and had grown up on DnD and rugby. He was kind of a rugby nut as well, and I knew absolutely fucking nothing about rugby.

I played soccer as a kid and did some DnD before I started talking to girls, got some friends, and discovered drugs, like a good boy. Today, Dean and I had been talking about the pros and cons of using five-man teams like in DnD. What it came down to was that, yes, he was right when it came to forest combat and small-scale engagements. When you got to the level of large battles, however, tactics had to change, and larger divisions of fighters would have to be formed. That required different training, and that is where we had been stuck for the past hour.

I really like Janet and Beth, but since it had been only the three of us for so long, I had been exposed to an overload of feminine energy. Even when we finally had other people around, I still spent most of my time with them or training. With the master finally dealt with and no immediate threat lurking on the horizon, it was nice to take some time and just kick it with a friend.

Dean and I had got stupid drunk one night, and I mean, we drank a ridiculous amount of liquor. I bet Dean that he couldn't move me an inch with a punch. He laughed and told me that I was on. Dean punched me right in the face, right between the eyes. My head jerked back, but my feet didn't move an inch. He looked confused for a moment, then out of nowhere, he had hit me in the face again, in the same fucking spot. I was a little surprised but still didn't let my feet move. I was feeling pretty smug at that point, and Dean had just looked at his first, then my face, then his first again, all the while looking totally confused. That night ended when Dean said he could eat a punch from me and be fine. Let's just say that Beth was pissed off at me for a week, and I almost killed Dean. We didn't do that again… in front of Beth.

It had been ten days since I had been let off bed rest, and Janet, Dean, and I were just chilling out smoking a joint in the sun. It was a beautiful day, and it was nice to just relax a bit. We had been busy training the fighters of the village and were in council meetings each day discussing one thing or the other. We hadn't had much time to just relax in a while. Hell, honestly, it felt like I hadn't genuinely relaxed since the integration hit us. Maybe it was the hash oil brownies I had made that were really strong. Pre-integration, these brownies would have got me blitzed for days.

It seemed like, at least with weed and alcohol, you could reach similar levels of intoxication as pre-integration. It just took a considerable amount to do so. It could have been the weed, or maybe I was just in a great mindset right now. My high was just right, and I was warm and cozy from laying in the sun with a nice breeze blowing across my face, but I had the idea to try playing with my Mana. I wanted to see if I could form a ball of Mana in my hand. I thought it would probably be super cool if I could pull it off, but every time I tried to solidify the Mana outside of my body, it would just slip away like sand slipping through my fingers.

I just couldn't hold it together outside my body. I tried this for a while, and after getting no results other than the fact that I was indeed able to push the Mana into my hand if very slowly, I decided I would have to switch up my method and try something new. This time, I was going to push as much Mana as I could fit into my hand, then try to push it free all at once, and maybe, just maybe, I could play with a ball of Mana. That would be pretty cool, right… fuck it, I was definitely giving it a shot. What was the worst that could happen? Well, I guess I could blow up my hand. Oh, that would definitely be bad, but honestly fuck it. I'm just going to see what happens. Yolo right?

I started the process of filling my hand with Mana. It was a long and slow process, but I didn't have shit to do, and I was super high, so this was the plan for the next little while, at least. Dean was asleep or close to it, and Janet was reading a book, well, trying to read a book. I was pretty sure she had read that page twice now and was starting to pass out. Everyone was doing their own thing, and I was working away at filling my hand with Mana. Then something changed. My hand was close to full. I could feel it. I really don't know how to describe it. I guess you could say it felt like it was filling with unused kinetic potential. It was like my hand felt the urge to move, to release. It was like I had drunk twenty espressos, and only my hand felt the caffeine. Even though my hand was now starting to twitch uncontrollably, I kept feeding Mana into my hand. I wanted to give myself what I thought would be my best shot at succeeding.

Not too long later, my hand started to hurt. Next, a pinging sensation started dancing through my hand, and I knew it was time to stop adding Mana. Even after I stopped, however, the pain was still there, and it felt like it was getting worse. I was starting to freak out and could only think to follow my instinct. The Mana in my hand needed to be released. My hand was basically screaming at me. I couldn't pull the Mana back into my body fast enough to feel relief. The only thing I could think to do was hit something now. I jumped out of my chair, took three large steps forward, and slammed my fist into the ground.

As my fist hit the ground, the asphalt rippled and cracked beneath me as a load boom filled the air. I was kind of shocked at what I had just done, and I guess so were Dean and Janet because only a few moments after my little accident, I heard Janet's voice from behind me,

"What the fuck was that? Travis, what did you do?" I turned around to find Janet and Dean both on their feet, looking at me in a mix of confusion, shock, and annoyance. Well, it was more Janet who looked annoyed. Dean looked like he had been woken from a dead sleep and was still trying to get his bearings. Janet was waiting for an answer, so I explained what happened. When I was done, Dean looked thoughtful, and Janet looked hungry. I bet Janet would ask me to teach her… oh, and there it is.

"Teach me! I want to learn the Mana thing, come on." I told her I would give it my best shot, but no garnets.

Then I asked Dead if he wanted in. At that, Dean let out a huge belly laugh. Janet and I just looked at him. He stopped laughing only to say,

"You guys are fucking crazy, you know that? But dam, I love it. I knew there was a reason I liked you two. Come on, let's go play around with powers well outside our understanding. What could possibly go wrong? Then he slapped me on the back, gave Janet a wink, and then he was laughing again, this time with head back and hands on hips. We all were laughing after that, and we went off to find Beth and a place to practice.

We ended up with a larger group than we originally planned. I had thought it would be just Janet, Beth, Dean, and myself, but once Devin, Trish, Tess, and Frank figured out what we were trying to do, they wanted in. It turned into an impromptu party, and we spent the time drinking and playing cards but also doing the thing we were all there to learn. How to consciously move our Mana around in our bodies. In the beginning, everyone was excited about trying to learn something new. Still, after realizing how hard it was to actually accomplish, people started peeling away to play cards and drink. By two a.m., it was just Janet, Dean, and me still going at it.

Moving my Mana still felt difficult, and it wasn't getting easier throughout the evening. It felt like I was trying to pull a milkshake through a straw, but it was just a bit too frozen still. It was infuriating, to say the least. I just wanted it to move how I wanted. Janet and Dean had more luck than the others, but they struggled more than I was. They had been going at it with such fervor, but it was getting late, and around three am, we lost Dean. An hour later, I lost Janet to sleep, and it was just me. People were passed out all over my apartment. On the floor, on the couches, Janet and Trish had even passed out in my bed, so unless I wanted to join them, I wouldn't really have a place to sleep unless I slept in the chair I was sitting in. That really helped me make the decision to just push through till morning.

I was getting a little tired from the continuous effort of trying to push my Mana around, but it wasn't enough to make me stop, so I kept going until the sun came up. The next morning, well, it was more like noon. We all grabbed a late breakfast as a group, and then everyone went off to take care of their varying responsibility. It really seemed like many members of the group thought that learning to move your Mana around was cool but not practical, at least not at the moment, and I saw the night as a fun time spent with friends rather than a night of intense training. It was understandable, but I was serious about figuring this out. If for no other reason than I had decided to do this, and I wasn't going to lose to my own body, that was for fucking sure.

For the next week and a half, I spent every moment awake practicing circulating my Mana. It was difficult at first to keep it up, and it took a few days to continually move my Mana for the entire day, but by the end of the first week, I was getting faster at it, and it was getting easier to do. I was at the point now where I could keep it up all day without stopping, and it was becoming more and more of a subconscious act. About ten days into my training, I had been circulating my Mana like usual when my attention slipped. I accidentally cycled more Mana into one of my feet than intended. When I did, as my foot pushed off the ground, a burst of power was released from my foot, causing me to shoot forward a good fifteen feet.

I stopped immediately after I moved, shocked at what I had just done. I tried doing it on purpose a few times with mixed results. I couldn't do it every time I tried yet, but it felt like I was close. I solely focused on my new discovery for a few days after that. I finally got to the point where I could do it on purpose until I ran out of Mana. It was much less efficient than just using my ability step lightly over and over, but it was worth the effort to learn how to do so. The day I finally got it down was the day I got a notification.

Congratulations! You have unlocked the ability, Mana Manipulation. As you have taught yourself this ability, you have gained an additional ten percent to Mana Manipulation efficiency through understanding this ability at a deeper level.

The ability gave me ten percent (plus the other ten percent for self-learning the ability) for a total of twenty percent efficiency in Mana Manipulation. I also gained a title.

Congratulation! You are one of the first one hundred people on your planet to manually teach yourself an ability! Plus, five percent to all stats.

That was fucking sweet, and when I tried "manipulating" my Mana, it was a lot easier to do. I mean, wow. It felt as if the Mana in my body had gone from moving through a small straw to one of those straws you drink boba with, and my Mana itself was no longer a frozen milkshake but one at the perfect temperature for drinking. It felt amazing after taking so much effort before. I had better controls and speed now. I just let my Mana circulate for a while, basking in the ease of it. I had to brag, I mean share, yeah, that's right, share my findings with the council. Not brag, never brag. Okay, I was for sure going to brag. There was no way I wasn't.