About then, I realized that I realized that I hadn’t healed my leg. I’d been limping around, even turning cartwheels, but I’d been able to ignore the pain. I’m pretty focused when I’m concentrating on something; however, that focus was wearing off and with it my immunity to the pain that was going on in my ankle/foot. I sat down in front of the Teepee and started to meditate again. This time I paid attention to the energies that I’d discovered in a different way, not simply observing them, but actually trying to do something with them.

The Qi seemed relatively easy to manipulate. While I concentrated on it, it was able to feel the pathways that it had either created or discovered in my body. I was able to sense its movement. Rather than a tightly focused stream, it seemed more like water moving through a sponge. Not rapid, but slow and persistent. I tried to focus on the hole in my ankle and attract the Qi there, but it didn’t seem to want to move out of the paths that it was flowing through. I was able to succeed a little bit and I was able to feel the hole becoming slightly smaller, the band of bruising maybe becoming a little lighter, a little smaller. Of course, right about then, I got a notice,

“Congratulations! In another five years, you may be onto something. You’ve discovered, Qi Healing. For every 1 point of Qi invested, you can heal 1 point of damage in 1 second. This is an internal skill, meaning you can only use it on yourself. As you get better, the amount healed, the cost and the amount of time required may go down. OK, it will, but we’re not telling you how much. …

Would you like to name this ability?

At that point, I stopped and thought about what that message meant. For one, it meant that I was probably going to be a healer.

Not bad in a world about to have no electricity, it sounded like. Hard to refrigerate medicines, X-Rays, all the stuff that modern, at least, western medicine depends on. But for another, it meant that I had to figure out how to use my magic to heal. I mean come on, 50% bonus to healing spells?

“Jade Lotus Touch,” I said, realizing full well that I’d just pissed off about three billion chinese people, but what the heck, I love my Xianxia & Xuanhuan web novels.

Jade Lotus Touch??? OK, that’s what We’ll call it.

So, I sat back and tried to think about mana, spells, how they’d work, all the mechanics of what it’d mean to be a magic user in the new world. I had an advantage, I knew mana existed, I could even see it when I was meditating. What I wanted now was four things:

I wanted the skill to Identify stuff. I kind of had that now with the game interface, but I wanted more and greater detail. Plus, I’m sure the way I’ve seen so far of how the Collective works, there will be plenty of poisons, curses, traps, tricks, and whatnot that knowing how to dodge or avoid them would really come in handy, maybe even save my life. I wanted to be able to cast healing spells. I figure there’s gonna be a lot of diabetics that need them quickly. Plus if I could heal bad backs, long term injuries, things like that, I’d have to say that both my ability to survive and my utility to others would go up. During an apocalypse, be friends with the healers. I also wanted a force bolt, a magic missile, a fireball, a lightning bolt, something offensive. Yep, I wanted to get up in their face with a world of pain, only from a distance. One thing I learned from the slime was pain sucks and it looks like the new world has brought pain up front and center. If I could kill them before they reached me, I’d be very happy. And finally, I wanted some kind of shield, an anti-magic force field that would prevent them from zapping me or even hitting me with a rock or an arrow. In short, since I don’t have a tank standing in front of me, I want something that will keep them off me while I’m casting. Although to be fair, I’m kind of a badass. Remember that “couple of black belts” I got, well, I’m sure that those real-world skills will translate to new-world skills soon enough. Ok, I’m hoping that it’d translate to some new-world skills soon.

Ok, back to business. I started meditating again, this time concentrating on the mana that I could feel around my heart or head or in my Anahata or Ajna chakras. I studied Asian philosophers remember? After a few minutes, I could feel the energy. I thought about spells, about how to cast them and decided that I’d start the way I wanted to finish. In other words, I was going to try to leave out the verbal component, “by the pricking of my thumbs” and just go with movement and will. I didn’t want to have to shout out the names of the spells or the spells themselves in combat, but, now that I think about it, it might be cool. Anyway, I tried to pool the mana I could sense in my hands. After a few minutes, I could see it glowing around my palms and fingers. Almost like a ghostly light, a mild fog. I then placed my hands carefully around the broken band of skin and over the hole in my ankle. Almost like a faith healer, I tightened up my palms and thought “Heal.” I felt the mana almost moving, almost doing what I asked it to do, but then it stopped. I tried again, this time trying to focus my whole attention span, my whole being onto the broken band of skin, trying to merge the faint cloud of mana into the wound and, once again, I felt the mana almost start to work, almost leave my hands, and then subside. Just as it started to merge back into my hands, I couldn’t stand it anymore and shouted, “Heal!”

It worked. Darn it! Looks like there’s at least three components of a magic spell: will or mental imaging, physical actions or gestures, and finally, a spoken component. As if to prove it, just then I got another blue screen message.

Wahoo! Naruto, here you come! It’s just the beginning! Congratulations, you’ve learned the life spell, “Light Heal. For 10 mana points, you can heal 15 points of damage. If you shake a tambourine, you might even do better. No cool down. Cast till you pass out! You heal yourself 15 damage.

Oh, and before we forget, you’ve gained the elemental attribute Life Magic. It means that you can cast all spells in the life elemental school of magic. Of course, you first have to either invent or discover them, but a boy’s gotta start somewhere doesn’t he?

And as I was reading it, I felt my eyes going blurry, my head felt heavy and vaguely felt myself lying down, and then everything went black.

I came to lying on the floor with yet another blue screen message in front of my vision.

Learnin’ by doin’ … and ya ain’t doin’ much! Congratulations! You’re officially the first person to faint from mana exhaustion. We’re a little bit amazed by this one since you guys aren’t even supposed to have access to mana yet, but that facts don’t lie. Anyway, we had to dig deep to come up with this one.

Unsteady At The Helm – You’ve discovered the basics of the new magical economy, spending more than you’ve got takes a toll on you. If only your former government had figured that out! Because you spent more mana than you had (well, almost more) you went into mana debt and fainted. It normally lowers your health at a rate of 2 hit points for every mana point spent, but, just for you and just because you gain the following abilities: Mana Debt paid on a 1:1 ratio to health/mana and you recover mana at a rate 10% faster than normal. No mana debt recovery penalty. By the way, normally you’d stay unconscious until your mana recovers to at least 10 points, lucky you, picks back up at 1.

Wow! I thought. That last part was a serious blow to my dreams of being a badass wizard. If in the middle of a battle, I overspent my mana that meant I was out for the count. I didn’t like the idea of laying there unconscious while the baddies were still up. Wizard burgers anyone? I’d probably never wake up in time. I’m sure that anyone that I was fighting would make sure to take me out while I was obligingly lying there. I sure as heck would if the shoe were on the other foot. Kill the healers and the mages first! I looked at the clock and it said that about 12 minutes had gone past. That meant I had a mana recovery rate of almost .8 mana points a minute. Which kind of sucked! I’m hoping that when I get my stats, they’re higher than whatever the Collective is using to calculate my current recovery rate at. Speaking of the Collective, I glanced at the timer again to see how much time remained. Just about twenty-seven minutes left. I needed to do something quickly before I couldn’t do it anymore.

I pulled out my cell phone and dialed my mom.