Alan's vision blackened with the intensity of the drawback. Shock and agony and delirium concentrated inside of him. His body spasmed and he struggled on the cold, wet ground with the sound of thunder rumbling through the tunnels. He realized he was screaming — a harsh, animal noise. The very physical shock sent his body tumbling back towards the door, splashing along with the streams of water that ran urgently downwards across the cave floor.

He had somewhat prepared for this, but the immediate shock of it all threatened to overwhelm his senses. His reality faded in and out, yet the pain remained, unstoppable. The hunger was overpowering. It staggered his mind. The exhaustion threatened to sweep him away. He was ravenous. He was a mindless will to live.

His heart beat once. Twice.

With an effort of will, he used everything he had and reached through the pain, reached with his good arm into the pouch he had taken from a dead guard ages ago. He pulled out the lizard meat and eggs he had saved, shoving it into his mouth, barely chewing before he swallowed. He almost choked in his haste.

Alan ate as waves of pain pierced him. Sharp and dull, persistent and eternal. It was the agony of bone being snapped in two. It was the shock of being stabbed through by a rusted blade. It was an endless burning of a fire, eating at him from within. It was unending HUNGER.

Every nerve signaled torture. Still, he ate and quickly ran out of the meat that he had saved in his pouch. What had been several pounds of raw food was gone in an instant.

It had not been enough.

He struggled against the cold wet floor, screaming. It had always been a gamble. He concentrated his will and flashed out [Sense] in a desperate attempt at... at something.. Through the waves of fire and pain, he noticed a body laying not far from where he had collapsed. A dead lizard? Alan attempted to reach out just as a soul-crushing avalanche of agony crashed down upon him. His grip on consciousness slipped...

Blood. Pain. Hunger.

Alan gasped. He was chewing on something. His jaw ached. Reality faded once more into darkness...

Where was he?

[Sense] was a bubble around him streaked with his anguish. There was a lizard moving nearby. He staggered and the world spun in an excruciating blur... [Vital Strike] activated and met with something. The stab of an opposing knife tore through the dead flesh of his broken arm. The pain was nothing compared to the waves of dark black hurt that spread out inside of him. He collapsed forward onto his victim and bit down hard, teeth sinking into flesh, the scent of blood. He fell...

He coughed, choking on gore and sinew. What was he doing? He felt an intense pain in his abdomen. Alan continued to chew. A deep hunger inside of him. He drifted in and out. His jaw moved. Chewing chewing. He clung to life by desire and fear and willpower.

An eternity passed.

Surrounded by brilliant red darkness, coated in the taste of guts and blood, Alan chewed.

Alan woke up, choking. A sudden exhale created bubbles in the congealed blood around him. He gasped, jolting upright, which caused an intense shock to run down his back. The feeling momentarily disabled him and he collapsed back to the hard ground. In his surprise, he swallowed something chewy and rancid that had been in his mouth. He could [Sense] the mutilated corpse of a lizard shaman next to him.

He breathed in deeply. An intense silence stretched out around him.

Still alive.

Alan shuddered unable to move for a brief moment.

He was still alive.

The moments after his drawback hit came back to him slowly in a disorienting blur. He had not been all together cognisant during that time and it took him a while to come back to himself.

After a while, he flashed [Sense] around himself to gather his bearings. The gnawed on remains of two lizardmen lay littered and broken around him. It was a mess of blood and bone piled behind the massive door. Alan noted absentmindedly that the door was shut now.

He had a vague recollection of finding the first body collapsed on the ground nearby. A shaman who had succumbed to wounds from the battle earlier as it tried to escape. He somewhat remembered attacking a second lizard as it came through the door. The pain and hunger made things harder to recall.

Whatever he had done it had clearly been violent and messy. The reptile bodies were hardly recognizable. It seemed as if some insatiable beast had eaten them alive and spat out the remains. Even the bones were gnawed and broken.

But there was still strands of flesh left. Still bone marrow. Still rough scales in the mutilated pile of gore.

And Alan was still weak, still hungry.

Alan crawled over and used his good hand to leverage himself closer to the mutilated corpses. The head of one of the lizards was still somewhat intact. There was a faint light in the tunnels, and as Alan got closer he looked into dead eyes staring out of a half-eaten face. He imagined the blank stare judging and condemning him.

He coughed once and moved his face downwards. He couldn't stop here. He bit down and tore at the remains. The meat of the flesh was tough and leathery and rancid all at once. His jaw hurt, but that was nothing.

[Sustain]. It was not the most elegant Skill, but it was effective.

His SP worked differently now thanks to [Sustain]. It didn't help him recover any damage he had already taken, but when it was not empty it prevented him from taking injury.

Sustain (passive/active): Level 5. Multiplier: Vitality. *73/100 till next level.

You have gained a unique class of SP (stamina points). You have immunity to hunger, thirst, exhaustion, and damage through SP. You can instantly convert SP directly into MP at a rate of 10SP to 1MP.

Low-level poisons and negative status effects resulting from consumption do not affect you.

Attribute multipliers (SP: Vitality * 15). SP regenerates at a 0.2/second ratio normally and 3/second when sleeping. Diet and your current physical state affect regeneration rates. SP regeneration through eating and consumption of nutrients is multiple times more effective. Eating food you have killed yourself regenerates SP at the highest rate.

Which meant as long as he kept eating, his SP would try to regenerate, and his body would have something else to carry the burden of pain and exhaustion and distress. As he continued to consume the lizard remains, his SP did not rise above 0 but with each swallow, he felt a brief jolt of respite. Or he thought he did, the feeling was so small that it might just be imagined, but he was still alive so he must not be entirely wrong.

Since gaining the Skill, Alan always saved some emergency food in his largest pouch. If he was ever in danger, it gave him something to replenish his potentially life-saving SP. This time he had waited until his drawback hit, hoping that the sustenance would give him a chance. He had suspected it wouldn't be enough, but even still he had either overestimated his Skill or underestimated the drawback. He had needed more. A lot more.

So he continued to eat the remains of the lizards. Due to the nature of his Skill, his stomach would not fill until his SP maxed out. In his current situation he worried that if he stopped eating, or if he ran out of food, he might not make it. As far as he could tell, [Sustain] was the crutch on which his life rested and Alan's willpower latched on fiercely to the gruesome thread of life available to him.

So he ate. And ate. The gore ran down his lips. Bone cracked as he bit down through the hardness. Scales cut the inside of his tongue. Eyeballs squished unpleasantly in his mouth. Nothing was off limits. If it was even remotely edible [Sustain] seemed to let him digest it.

Bite. Chew. Bite. Chew.

There was nothing left of the bodies at this point. Alan checked his pouch and his Status. What must have been three hundred pounds of meat had still not managed to take his SP past zero. It was a new record for him.

But he was not about to fall over dead. An improvement.

Alan stared at his broken mess of an arm. It barely hurt compared to what he had just been through. Still, it bothered him more than he knew it should. There were healing Skills out there that could fix it, but they were incredibly rare and prohibitively expensive since such Skills always came at a significant cost to the caster. Something like healing his arm would cost a small fortune, and that was assuming he could find someone who even had such a Skill.

Nothing for it.

Alan picked himself up slowly. He tried to keep his mind blank as he walked up through the tunnels. There was too much to think on, too much happening. He just had to keep going a bit longer. There was no more food here. Thunder still boomed in the distance, and the noise and flashes of light grew more intense as he staggered forwards. He felt the hint of a breeze against his skin and paused briefly. At least he had made it to the surface. He could taste the air. Feel the wind.

He had considered trying to wait out the storm. But Mana-storms could last for months, and he could not [Sense] anything that might serve as food in the cave tunnels. He needed to make his attempt while he still had even a modicum of energy.

The tunnel seemed to go on longer than he had imagined, but eventually he crested a rise and stared out into the world. Outside. It was his first glimpse of the surface in almost two years. It was staggering.

Awe filled him.

An unimaginable storm raged in the vast and open landscape.

Massive dark clouds spun violently in the air. Lightning seemed to fall like a waterfall in places, and multiple vortexes of hail and wind and energy reached through the sky, leaving gouges in the earth where they passed. Ice and rain slammed into Alan standing at the cusp of the small cave entrance, cleansing him.

It was beautiful. Alan felt tears fall silently from his eyes.

Alan watched the power of nature decimate the earth and shake the heavens. Thunder roared in his ears, overpowering the cacophony of wind and rain that already threatened to confound his senses.

An enormous flash lit up the sky. Brighter than the sun, it outlined the landscape in an instant of illumination. It was remarkable and gone just as quickly as it had appeared, plunging the world into a dark maelstrom once more.

A silent moment. Then it happened. Thunder ROARED through the atmosphere, tearing the very air apart. It was an impossible sound. An unstoppable and all-encompassing impact crashed through the atmosphere. It filled his being, reverberating his soul. It SHOOK existence.

The unimaginable force behind the thunder blew away his small thoughts, insignificant in the face of whatever force could fill the world with such massive might. It was the sound of pure and unrelenting POWER. Something colossal, something beyond his existence. Pure and unstoppable. To Alan, it sounded like God.

It was energy. It was light. It was the void.

Alan was stripped bare. Nothing else could exist in response to such a thing. His soul was blown away and cleansed. There was only the absolute weight of the storm and sound. The voice of the universe.

Existence seemed to bend. Possibilities shifted in the rumbling vibrations.

He had felt something similar before.

Alan smiled and took a single step out into the Mana-expanse, expanding [Sense] and his own mana perception as he did so. The ice and rain had already drenched him by the time he took his second step.

The Mana-expanse. It was a threat that only the Territory barriers could guard against. It was deadly in part because of the monstrous creatures that called it home. But it was the Mana-storms that were the true danger. They were unpredictable and unstoppable. A supreme force of nature that uncaringly crushed anything in its path.

Not only were the elements out of control, but these storms caused the mana in the atmosphere to churn wildly. Dense, almost visible patches of mana swirled and streamed over the land and sky. The human mind could not stand being encompassed by such dense mana for very long. If caught in such a patch, a person would quickly pass out, and then die soon after.

It was suicide, but Alan was beyond any choice. He began walking into the storm towards a repeating flash of light to his left. The signal had not been hard to find. The lighthouse of Boulder. The beacon in the storm. And it was so so close. It seemed like he had barely moved at all in his two years underground.

The capital city of Boulder was located on the edge of the Territory border, and like all border cities, a lighthouse was manned at all times so that any travelers between Territories had something to look for if they were ever caught in a storm. Of course, such travelers usually had Mana-guides to protect them, but here he was. Alan adjusted his direction as the lighthouse flashed again in the distance.

He chuckled. He was relying on his sight to move forwards. Seeing! His laugh was swallowed by the pounding of the storm around him, but that did not stop him. He laughed as he stumbled through hail and wind and rain. He extended his mana out around himself in a vain attempt to avoid the denser swaths of mana swirling in the storm.

He had not gone far. [Sense] gave him precious little warning. A patch of mana passed through him briefly, and he felt his consciousness threaten to collapse. He paused in his trek and held on, shutting his eyes against the feeling of swelling in his skull. And then it passed.

Alan continued forward against the violent wind. The rain felt sharp as it pelted against his skin. He was so close. Almost there. The lighthouse blazed nearby.

One step, then the next. A minute passed in the cold, harsh environment. He did his best to avoid areas where he could [Sense] mana was clustering. Lightning flashed around him. In every direction, the horizon seemed to stretch endlessly.

He had saved the last of the meat and ate as he walked. His SP was still zero, but he had no doubts that [Sustain] was pretty much the only thing powering him at this point. He chewed constantly. He did not stop eating. Never full. His Skill fueled his body, staving off the exhaustion that threatened to destroy him. Bloody and wet and cold, he chewed on the flesh of the lizards from below the earth. He walked, a speck of nothing inside the overwhelming force that was the Mana-storm.

Suddenly a distinct moving light appeared up ahead in front of him. Alan tried to lift his head up to get a better view but quickly abandoned that as the harsh wind cut at his face.

The moment had been enough. In a brief outline of lightning, he saw it. Two figures were approaching him. His heart sped up. Without thinking, his legs moved faster.

"...Down!!" he heard the faint call of one of them in the distance.

He couldn't make out what they were saying just yet so Alan kept walking, if he stopped he might never get up.

The figures were close, Alan peeked up and saw a large man with a scarred face and full beard running towards him. A person! A real person. Was he shouting something? After so much, after everything, it was a person. He was no longer alone. He had really done it!!

A violent patch of mana burst up suddenly, out of nowhere. The density of it hit hard, slamming into his mind. Alan stopped in his tracks and focused his attention away from the approaching men and simply tried to not fall unconscious. He waited for the patch of mana to pass.

Except it did not pass by as quickly as the others had. The pressure kept on coming, on and on. Alan collapsed, his mind seemed fuzzy and full. Breathing was difficult and strange.

He moved all of his own mana inwards in a desperate attempt to guard his mind. With [Sense] he focused his internal mana in an area around his head. Perhaps he could defend himself in some way? But the dense mana of the storm kept on coming, ignoring his feeble attempts. He could [Sense] it but not stop it as it smothered him. He grabbed at his head.

He thought he heard voices. He felt something grab him. A firm hand on his shoulder.

The pressure eased up somewhat, but his mind still reeled with the onslaught. He opened his eyes, disoriented. There was the face of a man screaming next to him. The man's face was close. Alan could smell something acidic on his breath. He was shouting something. What was he saying?

Sound crashed in and out. He finally let go. Something was shoved in his mouth. He swallowed whatever it was without thinking. Eating was his specialty after all. The man was saying something. His mind struggled to make sense of his surroundings.

"Catch it!" Suddenly sound crashed into him again. "In your mind!" The voice screamed over the thunder and torrential downpour. "A net! Imagine a net, catch it and move it!!"

A net? What was the man saying? Alan couldn't see anymore. Were his eyes closed? He wanted to look at the face of the man. It felt good to see another person. But he couldn't see. Why not? At least he could hear again. The voice of another person.

"Follow the flow! Focus on the pressure points! Imagine a net and move it!! Don't guard, flow!!"

What was the man saying? Guard? Flow? Why not?

He realized he still had his internal mana tensed up in his mind. Why had he done that? The dense and violent mana of the atmosphere no longer assaulted him like before, but it seemed like something was still stuck. The pressure remained in his mind.

Flow?

He relaxed his mana. A net? He stopped fighting and reshaped his essence around his mind. Suddenly something shifted.

You Have Been Granted the Skill "Mana Manipulation" Level 1. Do you wish to accept?

Sure.

It became a bit easier to push against the onslaught.

He moved the flow around his perception. He floated with it in a dream. His cognizance, his will, guided and was guided by the stream. Around and around.

The pressure around his mind eased, and tension flowed out of him perceptibly. With his tension went his awareness. He felt strong hands under him, holding him.

The last thing he remembered was hearing deep voices shout against the wind above him.

"...insane... fucking... no idea... came from..."

"...weak... definitely shifted... goes to the guild..."

Darkness.