The explosion rocked through my body, rupturing my eardrums, bursting my lungs, tearing me limb from limb, tearing my sinews from themselves. By the time anyone outside heard, I was nothing but gore and viscera. Lucky me, I lost conciousness in a mere moment, the blast rendering me little more than red debris upon contact with my body.

Many others died that day. I probably would have remembered them, if I had known they were about to be killed.

Unfortunately, life is not terribly fond of providing convenient “dead end” signs.

But soon after, I felt something. Something like falling. Everything was black. I could feel… something. Something on my skin. Pushing and pulling upon it's surface. My skin pushed and pulled in turn. Newtonian thermodynamics. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

I tried to move around. I stretched out my hand, as if underwater. The currents shifted, and I felt the end of one of my fingertips get carried off. Alarming. I tried to feel around for any way to block the current. No dice.

Panicking from the loss of an extremety, I flailed wildly. In doing so, I felt a small pulse from within myself. Latching onto this, I tried to do it intentionally. It worked.

{sysmessage}

[Mana Manipulation (lv1)] acquired!

{/sysmessage}

A small text field popped up on the left-hand edge of my vision. I tried to reach out with the strange material. It appeared as a sparkling white tendril in the abyssal dark.

{sysmessage}

[Mana Sight (lv1)] acquired

{/sysmessage}

I ignored this, simply attempting to do something, anything to stop the currents. The tendril latched on to something in the inky blackness. I pulled.

{sysmessage}

[Telekinesis (lv1)] acquired!

[Stygian Construction (lv1)] acquired!

{/sysmessage}

I now had a slab of the black material, somehow able to see it. I repeated this process, until I had a simple, cramped, pitch-black box, gaining another level in Stygian Construction meanwhile. Thankfully, completing it's construction had somehow instantaneously drained it of the water-esque fluid.

That left the question of what I was going to do. In an empty box, barely able to fit me, without any food or drink, surrounded utterly by what seemed to be some form of acid. So, I thought logically. Or rationally. I could never tell the difference. Either way, it was clear that the situation I was in was not one found in my prior reality; one could not typically see text in one's vision, nor manipulate mysterious amorphous masses with one's mind, and it tended to be that fluids remained within enclosed structures, not instantaneously vacate them. Additionally, I was almost certainly not alive, at least not continuously from the last time I was. That explosion should have reduced any hope of my surviving to functionally nil.

So what did that leave me?

A) This is all a dying hallucination, conjured by my brain while my body breaks down. Inoperable.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

B) I have somehow been resurrected into a strange world, presumably a digital one, given the text logs. Unlikely; my brains should be smeared across a wall somewhere, if they haven't been evaporated, and no backups have been made.

C) This is the afterlife. Also unlikely; life after death has never been proven in any way beyond technicalities about revivals.

So basically, we've gotten nowhere. Whatever it is, though, I'll just have to go onwards.

I attempt to move my luminous tendril outside of the confines of my box. It only passes through when I am directly touching the wall. Interesting, and good to know.

I again wait for the tendril to gain leverage, then wrench the slab of black free, adding to my little structure. Another, and I gain a level in Telekinesis.

With this added level, I feel my tendril gain strength and agility. Interesting. With this added power of my telekinesis, I continue out my box until it is a total of eight times it's original volume. I then decided to do something about furniture. As good as having more breathing room is, that doesn't really help much when you've not got anything to do. So, I took some time off of expansion, and instead decided to furnish.

Unfortunately, I did not know how to take out a smaller slab of darkness. This was a major issue. My solution? Try and cut down a larger slab.

First, I pulled yet another panel of abyss from the outside. Then, I tried to pull it through the wall. I'll be the first to admit this was not my most thought out idea (though still not quite my least thought out, that was made at another time). Thankfully, the sheet made it through unscathed, probably through the same sorcery that let that shadow liquid out. Next, I tried to thin down my telekinesis arm to a sharp point. I had not tested this either, simply working off of guesstimates and luck. Not that reliable, but it seems I'm good at guesstimating. Finally, I cut out the black into the shape of a table and four legs.

{sysmessage}

[Mana Manipulation (lv2)] acquired!

[Mana Blade (lv1)] acquired!

[Carpentry (lv1)] acquired!

{/sysmessage}

With a rather large amount of creatively using telekinesis and a bit of elbow grease, I was able to make what could probably pass for a table.

Now for a chair or two.

That took about as long as you'd expect an amateur (see: literally just started) carpenter making a chair from an unfamiliar material in an unlit room using only one limb would, and with about the same amount of waste material to boot. At least Mana Blade leveled up. Luckily, I could just dump the waste off into the abyss and it would be dissolved. Like I almost was! How time flies when you're havving fun. It feels like I was nearly being disintegrated days ago, when in reality it's only been hours. Anyways, I've probably got to make myself a bed. I'm sleepy!