With my meditation skill and the title ‘First Initiate’, it took me about two minutes to recover each amber mana, for a grand total of forty-two minutes to fully recharge my current amount of amber mana. I then promptly used the mana to further heal my battered and bruised body, until the mana was depleted, only to get back into meditation to regain it yet gain.

I kept on going until my head was throbbing from exhaustion, and I needed a break. Most of my wounds had been healed, but I still had minor bruises, scrapes, and burns all over that stung fiercely at any wrong move. But compared to a few hours earlier, it was like night and day.

Feeling much more optimistic about my chances for survival, I took an inventory of what I was working with while waiting for my amber mana to recover. Nine light crystals that seemed to be on their last leg, some string, a short rope, a mostly empty gourd, some partially chewed bat meat, and some… mittens?

Really?

Why the fuck had I packed those?

In my defense, I had been exhausted and under quite a bit of stress… but still.

I had to chuckle a bit at the absurdity of it, but it was not the end of the world. If need be, I might be able to stitch something together with the string, the burlap sack, and the mittens to get myself a sort of mini blanket. Sleeping on the bare ground was neither comfortable nor particularly conducive to a fast recovery.

Or perhaps clothes? Running around bare-chested in a dungeon, with pants barely holding together, was not how I had envisioned this sort of thing to go. Which reminded me yet again how amazing it was that I could run around at all. The recovery of my body was nothing short of miraculous. Lifting up my arm, I admired the faint trace of muscles visible underneath the flabby skin. Lots of flabby skin.

What the hell?

Had I lost that much weight?

Come to think, my arms did look a tad skinny. Same as my legs. And after sitting for all those years, I had developed, much to my chagrin, a nice little belly pouch. And within a day, it was all gone. How was that even possible? Had I seriously burned that much, by fighting and running around? Hard to believe…

Unless… the only thing that really made sense was that healing took energy from the body. Which was kind of reasonable. Or perhaps the fast recovery of my body used up all the body reserves… a type of healing as well, so if one was a reason, the other probably was too.

Which got me to think about what mana actually was… was it energy? Did it exist as particles or waves, or both? Or perhaps it was some tech thing, like nanorobots? Or some type of unknown matter?

Right then, I wished it was food.

Just thinking about all the fat I had lost made me suddenly realize how ravenous I was. And that tiny bit of bat roast I had left was not going to cut it. And if mana wasn’t going to provide any sustenance, I was in deep shit. I mean, I could start eating goblins, perhaps, but that was way down my list of potential proteins. Despite all their savagery and primitiveness, they were too human-like for that to sit well with me.

If anything, perhaps some shadow cat filet… or sautéed mushrooms? Were they even edible?

Fuck, all I could think about was food.

Quickly, I ate the pitiful remains of the bat skewer and partially quenched my thirst from water droplets falling down where the ceiling had caved in. The water tasted slightly muddy, but beggars can’t be choosers.

I was still hungry and thirsty, but at least I could focus on my next steps rather than daydream about food. Obviously, I needed to find more food, and clean water would be nice too. That had to happen within the next few hours, ideally, but at most by the end of the next day. In principle, my body could handle some more fasting, but with the constant danger I was exposed to, and the recovery process of my body, I’d feel much better with a bit more of a cushion in terms of energy.

Which made me think of those available characteristic points… I had spent one during the fight against the cat, and it had been a disaster. With a shudder, I thought back at my predicament at the time…

It certainly had had a drastic impact on my body, and I immediately had felt stronger, but also… drained. Which made me believe that the ‘system’ took a fair portion of the resources for improving my body out of the reserves of my body.

That was definitely important to keep in mind, and also implied that I could not willy-nilly dump points into arbitrary stats without proper fat reserves and a safe place.

A sudden stray thought crossed my mind. What if I pumped my vitality by four points? Would I die because my body would use up too much of its current scarce energy supply? That would be kind of ironic.

Back to business.

To get food, I needed to… well, I did not really know what I needed to do. Hunt for grubs? I did notice a few pale worms burrowing through the earth rampart from the cave-in. So in a pinch, I could try those. Supposedly worms and grubs are quite nutritious, I had read somewhere. But then again, a friend of mine had been an ardent believer in the extreme survival stuff and tried to eat some raw worms on one of our camping trips. It did not go down well.

Classical case of the mind being willing, but the body weak – it all came up again within seconds, including the cereal bars and chocolate he had indulged in before. But that was the difference. Another day or two and I might be on survival mode, and then my body might override any disgust or gag reflex I might have.

Not that I really wanted to try.

So stealing from the goblins again seemed the obvious solution. To do that, I needed to figure out where to go and how to deal with them without getting cut to pieces and barbecued.

So stealth seemed the way to go. For which I needed to get a better handle on my black mana. At the very least, I wanted to understand some of the limitations of what I had been doing and whether I could improve things somehow.

But before that, it was time to finally incorporate all that free-floating mana into my mana cycle. And just maybe I could then create my own fireballs and roast me some goblins… not for food, but for, hmm, fun? Or revenge? Or… well, whatever the reason, I liked the idea.

Grinning in anticipation at the thought of massive spheres of fire shooting down gloomy hallways, I got into a meditative state and began to feed the free-floating black mana into my cycle, giving me a substantial boost. I then turned to the red and green mana but immediately hit a snag. How was I supposed to include that in the mana cycle? Could I combine it with the other mana? Unlikely to work, given my past experiments.

But worth a shot. Maybe red and green mana were different for some unspecified reasons. Eagerly, I pushed and prodded the red and green mana, but could not even get it to budge in any direction.

It felt… alien. Well, alien might even be too much. It felt like… a faint fog or mist, visible but not substantial enough for me to get a hold of.

So what now? Create some type of net to capture it? I had done something like that before, after all, even though for a different purpose. I spend a few minutes creating a dome of silvery strings around one of the little globes of red mana drifting around my body aimlessly and then started to tighten it up. Slowly, the silver mana contracted, but instead of compressing the red mana and someone incorporating it into my body, which is what I had hoped for, the silver mana seemed to combine with the red mana and… absorb it?

What was going on?

As the process continued, the silver mana cycling in my body slowly diminished, as did the red mana that was floating around.

Cursing, I stopped the process to reconsider what I was doing.

Clearly, silver mana behaved differently then it had when I had woven it together with the black and amber mana – instead of forming a beautiful helix structure with none of the manas diminished, all I got now was less of red mana and less of silver mana. So was this because the mana I was trying to incorporate was red and it followed different rules?

With some apprehension, I tried the same process with the green mana and got the exact same result. Which meant that either there was something peculiar about mana coming from goblins, or there was something about this free-floating mana that was different from the black and amber mana that had infested my body. My hunch was that it was the latter. Something about the mana being part of my body, changing the very substance of my flesh to align with its nature must have created a core, or somehow enable me to manipulate the mana and thus forge a core – I was a bit fuzzy about the details, but it fit my experience so far.

So the red and green mana was useless then? I refused to believe that. There had to be a way to either create a core or to somehow use the mana differently. Otherwise, this felt… just wrong. But perhaps that was me being biased by roleplaying games and fantasy books where things somehow always had meaning and worked out.

At least, I had accidentally stumbled across one further property of silver mana… I could use it to absorb other mana at a ratio of roughly one to one, it seemed. I did not have a direct measure of the relative quantities, because red and green mana came in diffuse clouds… but based on the numbers in my stats sheet, it was about equivalent. While at first glance that property did not seem particularly useful, I could see how this might be utilized as a sort of counterspell if my control of silver mana got to the point that I could shoot it out of my body. Or perhaps something to diffuse a magical rune or dispel a curse… if such a thing existed.

Happy about having at least learned something useful about silver mana, I turned to some further experimentation with my black mana. I already knew that the black mana was dealing with shadows. That, of course, was something difficult to wrap my head around, because shadows do not have substance. So, it was hard to really visualize it. But I figured that shadows are merely the partial absence of light, and thus to create shadows, I had to fill a space with black mana and imagine it removing the light that came into the area. At least some of it. Because if I absorbed all the light, it would be darkness, not shadows.

Taking out a few of the crystals, which by then only barely provided any light, I moved the black mana to the skin of my arm. To test my theory about the importance of a detailed understanding of the exact process with which the mana was supposed to cause the desired effect, I now imagined the shadow mana to absorb light particles as they approached my skin. Not quite like a black hole that would trap the light using gravity, but more like a sponge that would simply absorb and bind the light.

At first, nothing happened, apart from a slight rippling effect close to my skin. After several more attempts and lots of minute adjustments, I could see the effect of my new image. When I had previously flooded my skin with black mana it had darkened somewhat, but it had been more like a dark grey perhaps. Now, my skin almost became pitch black. Basically, I could only see my arm because of the absence of any light. In some sense, my arm had become invisible.

Obviously, this would only truly be useful in very dark conditions, because only then would an area of a complete absence of light not raise any suspicion. Another concern was that this type of spell seemed to drain my mana at a prodigious rate. As the dark particles soaked up the light, they appeared to lose darkness and needed to be replenished, which required a constant flow of additional mana. Much more so than Shadow Skin. Perhaps that was because I went beyond the nature of shadows?

But either way, I wouldn’t say ‘no’ to a new spell. It might come in handy.

Satisfied, for the time being, with my progress with the black mana, I turned my attention back to the silver mana. So I could absorb mana that was not part of my mana cycle… But what else? There had to be something more that I could do with silver mana! Was it a matter of image? Perhaps part of the problem was that I didn’t really know what silver mana was good for and therefore had no definite vision in mind. I mean, all I knew was that silver mana was somehow connected to synergy. Given the ability of silver mana to coexist with other manas and enabling me to integrate those other types into my body, it stood to reason that it should allow me to use various manas together.

So it was time to give it a shot.

I gently coaxed black mana toward my hand, covering the skin with black mana. Then, I pulled amber mana forward, trying to add it to the mix, but immediately, the two manas repulsed each other – the more I pushed, the more powerful the opposing force.

But then I added silver mana into the mix, drawing a coat of it to serve as a sort of buffer between the two mana types, and suddenly, the amber mana, that just seconds before had been bucking violently against the force of my will, gently, almost tamely, moved into a position right adjacent to the silver and black mana.

Proud of my accomplishment, I relaxed for a moment and admired the structure I had created. Truth be told, it was nothing fancy, just three thin layers of the three types of mana, but it was the first time I had managed to, kind of, interact them outside of the mana cycle.

But… the mana just sat there and, figuratively, twiddled its thumbs. Was I supposed to push it somehow? There had to be some effect from this, right?

I tried various configurations of mana, including different types of structure, but nothing seemed to make a difference.

If the past was any indication, I probably needed to provide some intent, some image to what I was doing. But what would a combination of amber and black mana do? Hidden healing? Soothing darkness? Frankly, those sounded ridiculous.

After a few more attempts, I gave up on the issue for the time being. I still had to figure out how to get out of this… building? Cave? Dungeon? Whatever it was.

And I needed food.

Right on cue, my stomach started growling.

Before going off in search of some chow, I decided to check out my stats once more to see if I could gain any more insights.

Name

Daniel Hollander

Rank

Initiate 1

Title:

Mental Bastion; First Initiate; Army of One; Against the Mighty

Strength:

8.4

Intuitive Reasoning:

14

Mana

Free

Current

Potential

Agility:

6

Complex Reasoning:

17

Silver

0

5

10

Speed:

5

Emotional Intelligence:

9

Black

0

55 [+40]

55 [+40]

Dexterity:

5

Perception:

13

Amber

0

1

21 [+11]

Endurance:

8 [+1]

Spatial Awareness:

21

Green

6

0

0

Vitality:

8.4

Willpower:

21

Red

36

0

0

Available characteristic points: 4

Spells

Mana Vision

Level 9

Twilight Vision

Level 1

Minor Healing

Level 7 [+4]

Shadow Skin

Level 2

Shadow Sense

Level 1

Midnight Skin

Level 1 [+1]

Available spell points: 0

Skills

Mental Ward

Level 5

Mental Fortitude

Level 7

Multitasking

Level 2

Internal Mana Manipulation

Level 3 [+1]

Meditation

Level 2 [+1]

External Mana Manipulation

Level 1

Sword Fighting

Level 10

Available skill points: 0

There were no dramatic changes anywhere. In fact, given my meteoric rise in physical attributes earlier, the pace of change now was almost sluggish.

And the worst part… I was still level 1.

What the fuck?

I had hoped that incorporating the free-floating black mana into my mana cycle would elevate me to a different level. But that, obviously, had not panned out.

So was leveling a thing? Just to make sure that I had read this right, I took another look at the title Against the Mighty.

Title: Against the Mighty

Defeating a higher leveled foe is possible. But overcoming one that is more than thirty levels higher is a feat worthy of being remembered. Fortune favors the bold, the heroes, the underdogs that succeed against all the odds. As a reward, your strength is increased by twenty percent.

And there it was. Black on white. Or rather black on blue. Levels existed. Of course, it might just be that different creatures and human beings came in different levels, and I just happened to have drawn the short straw and ended up on the lowest rung of the badass-ladder.

But that seemed unlikely.

Therefore… what? Maybe it was not mana after all that mattered. But that flew into the face of my intuition. Unless it was skills that mattered. But no. That made no sense. I had made huge strides with those as well. Or… perhaps it was the minimum amount of mana in any particular color. In which case silver mana was the bottleneck at 10… unless green mana counted, but my hunch was that it would not.

Fuck. Too many unknowns.

But if silver mana was indeed the holdup, then I was screwed. So far, nothing I had seen around here gave any silver mana, so unless there was a process of transforming green or red mana into silver mana, I was doomed to be stuck at level 1.

Shrugging my shoulders, I decided to worry about it later.

I had more urgent things to deal with.

Just to be on the safe side, I decided to meditate a bit more and replenish the rest of my mana before taking off scavenging for food. It wouldn’t do to get into another life-or-death struggle without the ability to heal myself in a pinch. I had come far, and the additional hour of meditation was not going to make a big difference time-wise but might just be the difference between death and survival.

Less than forty minutes later, I had fully replenished my amber and silver mana and was ready to go exploring.

I needed either food or, even better, an exit to the surface. I was getting sick and tired of the dark, and it was getting lonely down here. Goblins did not count as a good company, and neither did murderous shadow kitties.

Thinking about Lake Placid, I again realized how bizarre it was that there was a ruin in a cave-system underneath the Adirondack mountains. The goblins I could explain with some type of random mutation due to the mana infusion, but what about a system of tiled underground corridors, complete with rooms, a kitchen, a ballroom, statues, and chandeliers with magical light sources?

The only reasonable explanation was that the ‘transfer’ by the system did not only fit different areas horizontally together but also vertically, at least in one layer. Like a giant fucking 3D puzzle.

To what purpose? How?

Big questions, but probably not overly relevant for my survival right now. Perhaps smarter people than me in Lake Placid had figured something out by now.

Fuck.

Annie.

I had not thought about her since I had been dumped into the cave. Thinking of her face, with the freckles on her cute little nose and her warm, brown eyes made me smile. She was such a cool lady.

So, wait, now that I was not in a wheelchair any longer, would she perhaps go out with me? Shit, that would be kind of weird, though… I mean, she had taken care of me for the last three years or so. Had cleaned my body, wiped off the drool from my face, fed me, scolded me, laughed at and with me…

Still.

If I just kissed her, would she like reciprocate? Melt into my arms? Riding off into the sunset, holding hands?

Yeah, right. Sometimes I am a fucking moron. Kiss a girl just like that? I was just as likely to get a slap on the face. Well, not just as likely, almost certainly.

Regardless of whether I had a chance with her, I first had to get my ass out of here in one piece. Time to move.