Fred was still Struggling with the overdose of mana and exp. He was able to go through his list of skills but couldn’t find anything to help. He could see his hp bar dropping, and his stamina started dropping too, in an attempt to help him recover, the only thing that wasn’t going down was his MP.

‘Wait that’s it, maybe that could help’, Fred had never got any skill to use MP for and the closest one he had was his newly acquired mana sense, ‘maybe if I try manipulating my mana, I can fight back.’ He tried moving his mana but couldn’t see what was happening to it. ‘Wait maybe if I activate Mana sense,’ as soon as he thought about it, he felt like he had teleported somewhere else, he felt like it was the summer with a strong heatwave and the room had a very dark red glow to it, with it getting lighter in colour and more vivid as he moved his eyes towards the pot. He also noticed his nose and mouth could taste a spicy flavour, but he also felt a cool sensation coming from within his brain. He focused on it, and the surroundings seemed to have dropped a few degrees. Is this my mana pool? He tried all sorts of ways to move it until he finally felt a nudge, he repeated his action to give it a nudge, and again and again, trying to nudge it with greater force each time.

He felt like he was doing this forever, and then suddenly

New skill acquired

Rank

Description/Requirements

Exp

Level

Mana manipulator

(Gain +10 points in Int and Wis from discovering skill)

Basic – Mana skill

Allows the user the ability to manipulate mana, this skill is required to use any skill with the rank magic

Unlock requirements: successful attempts to manipulate your mana pool

1/100

1/50

(Gain +2 points in Int per level)

Mana Meditation

(Gain +10 points in Int and Wis from discovering skill)

Basic – Mana skill

Allows you to gain familiarity with your mana, gives an efficiency bonus of +10% to all mana skills and +5% to all magic skills

Unlock requirements: to focus and attempt to play with one’s mana core

1/100

1/50

(Gain +2 points in Wis per level)

‘Great, amazing, this is what I’ve been after. Wait, am I not going to exasperate the situation by gaining exp through using these skills?’ Fred checked his health bar and saw it had just ticked under the 50% point. ‘Well here goes nothing’

Fred tried to manipulate his mana around his body, and to his joy, it seems his mana was fighting back against the dark red glow, and he could feel a cool sensation where his mana was winning ground

*Warning* your body is under stress from exposure to a high condensation of mana and excessive gain of exp. -6hp

-6hp

-6hp

-6hp

-6hp

*Warning* your body is under stress from exposure to a high condensation of mana and excessive gain of exp. -7hp

-7hp

-7hp

‘Crap it’s getting worse,’ as he manipulated his mana, he was gaining more proficiency and levels with the skill, this allowed faster control, and at this time managed to take the ground of 4/5ths of his body when he noticed his Mana pool had dropped to 50%

But when he checked his hp drop it had changed to -6ph for the past couple of seconds,

And then it switched back to -5hp and then -4hp, as he completely took over his body, he could feel his mobility was returning, albeit slowly.

At this point, he could try and rescue Jessica, but that would probably just end up in a temporary solution, so instead, he crawled the 2 meters to the cauldron and decided to fight it at its core. He rose and put his hand into it, he needed to get as close as possible because he would just be wasting energy doing it from a distance, but this started scolding his hands. “ahhhhhh” ‘no I cannot lose concentration now,’ Fred Gritted his teeth and started manipulating his mana in the pot.

20 seconds went by at first with no change, but he didn’t have any other options, the fiery red mana had saturated a good portion of the Dungeon, he would barely be able to walk out on his own, but he was not willing to leave Jessica to die, 30 more seconds went with no result, Fred was on his last 10%, his hand numb from the pain. Then suddenly all of the red mana in the room and got sucked into the cauldron. And Fred felt freezing, he stopped his mana circulation and slumped to the ground exhausted. His mana spent, his Stamina spent, and his Health was on its last dregs.

A few hours later he woke up to the sound of Jessica string, “welcome back to the land of the living”

“Hmm… what happened here?” Jessica looked around the room, and then at Fred, “Fred, your arm is blistered.”

“Na, just a flesh wound, nothing to worry about, how are you feeling?”

“I have a massive headache, and… what happened here, my health’s at 25%”

‘Judging on the fact she had a few hours to heal, I cut it quite short.’ Fred had only recovered about 10% of his stamina from resting, and all that went into recovering, he wouldn’t get any more stamina this way and now needed food. He lost quite a bit of normal exp as well for overexerting his stamina as well, today was not a good day. The two helped each other up and slowly walked out of the dungeon and headed towards the dining hall.

Steven had met them as they walked through the hall, “what happened here, why do you two look so rough”

“Hi, Steven, can you ask the cook to prepare us some food in the dining room, and then I’ll be able to answer,” Fred said groggily, Steven was quite a strong man and therefore just picked the two up and took them to the dining room. “Come on, you look like you won’t make it if you walked there yourself,”

“thanks’, Steven”, “thank you”, the two said.

The two chowed down on the freshly prepared sandwiches, Steven had applied some ointment to Fred’s hand, but he knew that most of the healing would come from his natural recovery.

“So, are you ready to talk?”

Fred hesitated at first but decided to confess. “We were making wine in the basement, but we didn’t have enough fruit to fill the cauldron, so I filled it with water, but then I didn’t think the yeast had enough sugar to turn the water into alcohol, so I went to find some,”

“Sugar? What’s that, and why do you need it for Alcohol, they don’t use sugar at the brewery in town.”

“According to my book on herblore, the yeast eats sugar and turns it into alcohol, usually fruits and hops have enough natural sugar that we don’t have to add more, but I diluted my wine with water.”

“But I help with getting Groceries for the castle, we have never brought sugar.”

“It was in Doctor Johan’s Pantry; it had a spicy flavour to it, but it was sugar.”

“Erm, that’s not sugar,”

“It’s not? It tastes like sugar though”

“It’s fire spice, that was for your mother, fire attuned users can breathe in a handful of the powder, when breathed in it gives a 50% boost to fire skills at rank high, with diminishing effects for higher ranks for 3 hours.”

‘Breaths in is this magical cocaine, why do they call it a spice then,’

“You can add a bit of it to food and it will increase your attunement with fire. How much did you put in?”

“Well, at first I was only pouring in a bit of it from the bag.” Fred felt hesitant with the rest already Steven had mentioned only using a bit of it and its effects at that size seemed… magical.

“Yes,”

“Well, the bag bent in the middle, and about a half fell in.”

Steven looked like he was going to have a heart attack.

“And then what happened”

“Well, I got the skill mana sense,”

“Me too,” Jessica sounded a bit cheery about that, maybe she was just trying to hold on to the positives to help her to stop thinking about the bad parts.

However, Steven had a gloomy expression “You would normally only get mana sense during your ascension as you need to be exposed to mana levels stronger than your body can withstand to get it.”

‘Huh, has Jessica not ascended, she’s 8 already, I’m only 1 level, I know I’m fast but I’m half her age. I’ll have to ask her another time’

“And how did you survive such an encounter?”

“Well, I Thought I would fight fire with fire, or in this case Mana with Mana.”

“You have the mana manipulation?”

“I got it during the incident, at the time I didn’t have another option and I could only try nudging my mana, with mana sense on it was the only cool place in the room,”

“You got lucky then”

“But, Steven, the one thing I don’t get is, with mana sense turned on at the time, I noticed it filled almost the whole room, and yet it seemed no one noticed it outside.”

“Well, they wouldn’t, or more precisely couldn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“What do you think a dungeon is for?”

“Housing bad people?”

“To be more accurate, dangerous people, people with the ability to cast spells. The dungeon and to a further extent, the castle is built with mana-resistant stones.”

“Mana-resistant stones?”

“Well, for a more accurate description, they are compressed stones, most builders have the stone manipulator skill, with this they can compress the stones, this was discovered to do two things, first, it has a higher resistance to physical attacks than normal stones, but secondly greatly reduces mana damage, and can prevent excess mana from passing through. The door has similar properties as well.”

‘Man, I Thought it was going to be like a magical rock or something,’ “what about the windows? plus I can sense mana in this room”

“The bars on the windows are inscribed, they first prevent mana from escaping, but not just that, if an inmate tries to brute force it, they rattle extremely loudly, alerting the guards. And as for these rooms”, Steven pointed to a spot on the wall where Fred saw what looked like a brick air vent. “Mana filters, it lets mana up to a certain threshold pass through,”

“Does it have a rune on them to prevent excess?”

“don’t need to, it’s a natural chokepoint.”

Once Fred and Jessica had rested up a bit, they headed back down to see what mess they have made, this time Steven came along, he also had gotten the barrel and brought it down with him.

Although he was thankful, he survived the ordeal, Fred, just hoped the alcohol hadn’t boiled away. Jessica was scared to go down there but Fred convinced her that if she didn’t face her fears as soon as possible, it can have lasting long-term damages, While Steven agreed with the remark, he was sceptical about how Fred could have such insight, but then it sounded like something George would say as a pep talk during practice.

Fred got to the cauldron and dipped his finger in it, drawing it back to taste it. To his surprise, it still had a strong alcohol flavour, and it was very nicely spiced, the smell in the room was already aromatic, and Steven was impressed, he too sampled the content, he could tell it wasn’t ready and probably needed to ferment for a month, but it was going to be a nice wine.

Steven helped the kids, pour it into the barrel, then clamped the lid shut and wheeled it to a corner to ferment.

___

Fred had waited until his mother’s birthday; he had gotten her a present in case the wine was no good but decided to give it to her anyway in the morning and then he could show her the wine in the evening. He heard that guests were coming round but didn’t take much notice.

Over the 3 months, Fred exercised his mana manipulation getting it to level 25, although the level gain was much slower than when he first used it on that day, he managed to get it to level 12 in one go. When he talked about it with Steven he said, people, evolve more under pressure and that’s why you had such a sudden growth.

He managed to find 6 large glass bottles with cork stoppers and with Steven filled up all of them. As he headed for the party room, he suddenly got excited, excited to show off to his mother. He kept having these bouts of childishness since he came to this world, and he didn’t know if it was a good thing or not, was his bond with his mother an imprint of her son’s body onto his mind, or was this genuinely how he felt. His maid tried to stop him at the door so he can act presentable towards the guests as a noble should, but Fred’s excitement made him ignore all reason.

___

Over the next 5 months, Fred had continued to practice his three mana skills, his control over the 3 improved greatly, he found out he could use his mana manipulation to coat his finger and then extend out about 2cm, this mana could be wielded into a blade, and Fred was able to use it like a scalpel, and his first operation was to peel the skin off of a grape.

He also found out he could change the element from neutral if he held a crystal in an elemental affinity, this allowed him to create fire blades, which surprisingly didn’t hurt, however, the heat of the objects he touched with it sure did hurt if he was not careful. He was able to hold two small metal sticks and wrap his mana around them, when he held a lightning crystal in his mouth, he created 2 electrodes that would spark if they got too close. He could even spot weld small pieces of metal together, although at his level he probably wouldn’t be able to do anything bigger.

He had found a few rats one time in his dungeon, and after catching one, he decided to run some experiments on it, first he looked at the rat with mana sense, but all he saw was the outline of the rat with a light blue fog slowly flowing in a spiral, a bit like a galaxy. The light blue colour was an indicator of the neutral element. Then he decided to hold a fire crystal and it looked like thermal imagery of the rat with mana sense, this was an amazing discovery for Fred. Although he couldn’t find a use for it this instant. Then he tried the water crystal, there was what looked like a lot of squiggly lines, Fred could just make it out to be the blood vessels, Fred had another Idea, he placed the crystal between his teeth to hold it and picked up his probes and prodded the rodent with them, quite close to where the squiggly lines, he lost focus of the rat as images started to appear in his mind then, the culminated into a 3d model of all of the veins and arteries of the blood vessels with a beating heart in the middle, it was amazing, he could tell the blood pressure, the heart rate, he could spot infections and clots, fat build-ups and all sorts. He tried to see if he could manipulate the liquids and so he attempted to slow down the blood at first, which worked to his surprise. And then everything went black.

___

A few days later, Fred had come too. He found himself in his bed with Jessica sleeping on a chair next to him, with her head resting on the bed. ‘What am I going to do with you.’ His stirring caused Jessica to wake up. “Young master, you are finally awake?”

“What happened?”

“Steven went to check up on you in the dungeon 5 days ago, he found you unconscious leaning over your workbench with a rat in a cage next to you. Since then, you have been in bed with a fever,”

‘Why does this feel familiar?’

“Did you do something excessive again, young master, like when you did that maths problem?”

‘Ah, that was it.”

“Hold on let me check my log”

Log

3 days ago,

You have gained the Surgery skill (+)

3 days ago,

You have gained the bioengineering skill (+)

3 days ago,

You have gained the biology skill (+)

3 days ago,

Forced level up of biology to stabilize Bioengineering skill and surgery skill (+)

3 days ago,

*warning* You have passed out and gained the status fever (+)

He focused on the warning

*warning* your body has succumbed to stress caused by the build-up of the following:

Pushing the limits of 3 skills at once. Gaining a high-level skill with no foundational support. Gaining an advanced level skill with no foundational support. Forced level up of foundational skill to support advanced skills causing excessive exp gain

‘Holy crap, what have I done this time.’

He then went on to check his new skills

New Skills acquired

Rank

Description/Requirements

exp

Level

Surgeon

(Gain +10 Int and Wis for discovering a new skill)

High – healing,

biological

The ability to operate on a biological organism.

Increases efficiency to skills with a rank of healing, necromancy, curses, buffs (physical), de-buffs (physical), body modifications

Unlock requirements: The study of anatomy,

Application of surgery.

1/400

On level up, 10% of exp required is converted to general exp

3/50

Gain +20 Int and Wis per level

Bio-engineering

(Gain +10 Int and Wis for discovering a new skill)

Advanced, - body modification,

biological

The ability to manipulate a biological organism’s foundational structure

Increase efficiency to skills with rank metamorphism

Unlock requirements: attempt to manipulate the bodily function of a biological organism.

1/800

On level up, 10% of exp required is converted to general exp

4/50

Gain +30 Int and Wis per level

Biology

(Gain +10 Int and Wis for discovering a new skill)

General

biological

The study of biological material

Is the foundation of all skills with the biological rank

Gains efficiency in all skills with the rank biological

Unlock Requirements recognize a pattern between two biological organisms and form a hypothesis

Forced unlock to stabilise the user

900/51200

10/200

Gain +1 Int and Wis per level