[Tomato][Ripe][Edible] [Mana: 13][Weight: 50 g][Age: 5days] This was the problem with inspection; it had few functions and barely told anything new.

In this case, it was almost useless. He could see that the red tomato was ripe. He could guess its weight by holding it in his hand. It was big enough to cook a meal. The tomato's color told him it was healthy. The only thing ‘Inspection’ revealed was its mana content.

Thirteen was a number he had never observed in the carrots. Mana in them had never reached double digits, and that was for the whole carrot, including its stem. Mannat couldn't believe the tomato held 13 points of mana for digestion. Moreover, there were six of them plump, ripe, red, and juicy delicious fruits hanging on the plant. “So what do you want me to do?” Mannat said looking over his shoulder.

The Witch stood right behind him, in front of the hut. He hadn’t entered the garden because the tomatoes were growing by the fence. She wasn’t there to observe and make fun of him, but to teach him the art of picking tomatoes. It sounds absurd, but it was the truth and Mannat took her very seriously. Her behavior had taken a 90-degree shift since he received the job. She hadn’t stopped being sarcastic though. “Pull one for the sake of doing it. That way you will know what not to do.”

Mannat didn’t hesitate. He was not afraid of failure. Grabbing the juicy, but hard-to-the-touch tomato, he clipped it from the branch. Nothing happened… to the plant, that is. The tomato started shrinking at a visible rate. It was like a balloon deflating because of a puncture. Only, the tomato released mana instead of air. The tomato slowly lost its ravishing red color and turned into a grey ball the size of an egg. That’s when Mannat let it go. It fell to the ground spewing heaps of mana particles. They were invisible to the naked eye, but he could sense them in the air. They fluttered about in the air for some time, before losing their liveliness and becoming one with nature.

The tomato continued shrinking.

It kept rotting until it was pea-sized, and then exploded with some fanfare. Mannat peered at the Witch and found her staring back at him, holding a smug smile.

“That is what will happen if you cut any vegetables or fruits from the plant in that garden.” She said. “All the plants you see are like that.”

Mannat broke another tomato in the name of confirming her words. He picked one from a neighboring plant and it met the same gray, rotten end as its predecessor. His lips twitched in annoyance. No wonder the Witch hadn’t allowed him to enter the garden before he got the job.

“Had your fun? Now, should I tell you what you need to do to pick a vegetable, or do you want to play for a while longer?”

“Please,” Mannat said standing up and dusting his hands.

His legs grew weak when the Witch came over to his side, casually grabbed a tomato, and broke it from the branch. Mannat sensed a minute amount of mana around the tomato when she was breaking it. Yet, it didn’t show the same reaction as the one he had picked. The tomato in her hand was still pulpy, juicy, and tender-looking. She gave it to Mannat who looked it over and around, but couldn’t figure out anything.

“What did you do?” He asked in bewilderment. The pitch of his voice let bare his surprise and awe.

The Witch answered. “I shocked the mana inside the tomato and forced it to crystallize.”

Her words made as much sense to Mannat as words like oxymorons do. She could have kept quiet and he would have remained a few neurons healthier. Mannat didn’t know what to say. He was a complete beginner in using mana. What did he know about shocking mana to crystallize it? He had already tried ‘mana strike’ skill once, and the results had been less than satisfactory. The so-called experiment had not ended well for the carrot. He could guess the emotions that would appear on the Witch’s face if he used the skill in front of her. He wasn’t interested in seeing them. Mannat remembered she could read his mana signature. She could read his mind or at least confirm his thoughts. He was horrified. His face lost all color.

Thankfully, she wasn’t paying attention to him. He sighed in relief. He made a mental note to practice meditation when he was with the Witch to calm his mana. Only, the problem remained unsolved; he still didn’t know what the Witch had done to the tomato and how to repeat it.

“Do I have to use ‘mana strike’?”

“You can also use your brain if you want.” Mannat ignored her sarcasm. He was beginning to filter her sentences.

“But it’s an explosive skill. I tried it--” He was about to let out the secret! He hid his mouth behind a hand, causing the Witch to let out a short-but-cruel chuckle.

“I know all about your play, kid.” She said. “Don’t think you can hide things from me. I was expecting your actions, the result, and your disappointment. Many people have tried to become magicians over the years. As for apprentices -- They are a dime a dozen. In short, they are worthless. Talented or not, anyone can become an apprentice by the age of thirty. However, there has never been a proper magician below their middle sixties. Practicing to become a magician is not a hobby; it is a lifetime of dedication, treachery, pain, and hunger.”

Mannat shook his head in dismay. “I can’t wait sixty years to revive my mother!” “Then start practicing, fool.” She slapped his head. “Not everyone has a germinated flower in their backyard to ferry them across the river of time.” Mannat peered past her. The magical tree was unrecognizable in the daytime. There was no other tree around with pink flowers. It looked different, but nowhere near the splendor, it displayed after the sunset. The Witch was right. He also had to admit that not everyone had a Witch ready to help them with her jar of condiments and pickles, either.

“How difficult is it to become a magician?” Mannat asked. He was clenching his fist hard enough for the veins to bulge and grow visible.

“One of the requirements is to have 50 points in wisdom and one hundred points in intelligence.” The Witch said.

That was all it took for Mannat’s roaring heart to calm down. He opened his fists and exhaled a loud; his mood had deflated. The Witch continued. “You don’t have to go that far. You only need to work on your set of tools to save your mother. For now, she’s stable and you have time.”

“What do I have to do?”

The witch raised her head, so the whole garden was in her sight. “Each one of these plump vegetables holds a certain amount of mana. You can ‘inspect’ them to check the exact amount. Breaking or cutting them from the branch will allow their mana to escape. You need to shock the mana inside the vegetable so it crystallizes.”

“That’s where ‘mana strike’ comes in, but I can’t control the force.” Mannat interrupted. His eyes opened wide. He was done for.

However, the Witch didn’t get angry at him. She nodded and continued where she’d left off. Mannat found her behavior very difficult to accept. He was conditioned to expect groin punches and ear-biting from her.

Facing her with his old memories was definitely challenging in their own respect. Unfortunately, he couldn’t do anything other than keeping his mouth shut and ears open and listen to her. He would have a much better time if he could silence his thoughts. They were the real culprit trying to-- The Witch was wrapping up her thoughts when he heard her.

“You will practice your mana strike on the vegetables. I don’t want you to turn them into manure, but learn to control the force and the amount of mana expulsed from your body. The amount will decrease as the skill levels, but the force won’t; it will increase instead. Unless you learn to control the force behind the strike, the skill will have only one application. Which is?” The witch said and grew silent, staring at him with her big yellow eyes in deformed anticipation.

She was definitely teaching him. The pause made him sure of it. His father used to do the same thing while he was learning forging to check if he was listening.

“Breaking things,” Mannat replied causing the Witch to cackle. She shouldn’t have. Mannat dropped his head in response. His heart was palpitating inside his chest. Perhaps, he should have told her one of those days how scary her laughter was. “Go then, do your thing. Start with something like an eggplant. They will have enough mana force to resist your strike. You would have been able to sense the changes happening inside it had you maxed your mana sense.” Mannat’s lips twitched. She had deliberately touched his bleeding wound. “It’s really unfortunate.” She sarcastically added at the end to scratch open the wound a little more. Mannat let out a groan. It was once again the bloody, hateful mana sense! The skill and its bottleneck were really really starting to annoy him. Just how could a bloody tier one skill be so important? It made no sense. A genius wouldn’t be perturbed by something like it. They would be flying away ahead of the pack, while those like him took a rest to save stamina. Mannat entered the garden and went past the tomatoes to stop in front of the eggplant. Dark purple and twice the size of his clenched fist, the eggplants looked delicious on the plant. There were six plants and a single plant had a maximum of five purple eggs hanging from it. There were 25 of them in total. He wasn’t much worried about wasting them and having to wait for weeks for them to grow naturally. In a way, the tree was his greatest teacher. If only it could teach him mana sense too. That would be perfect. The Witch cried from the side. “Are you waiting for me to turn into dust, kid? I’m telling you, it’s not going to happen anytime soon. So clench your butt, squat down, and do what you need to do. Stop wasting time you butthead!” Working with her was tiring. Mannat sat in front of the eggplant and followed the procedure. He placed his hand on the eggplant then focused. He didn’t know what would happen. Last time, his ‘mana strike’ had blasted the poor carrot into smithereens. Would it pour into the eggplant this time?

He gave the skill his permission, said the magical words, and the mana inside his body started moving. Once again, a wave of pressure built inside his chest and slowly crawled toward his heart. From there it sped up --as if pumped up by the organ-- and entered the arms. His veins bulged and muscles contracted as the mana flowed through them. It was too much; he felt like his heart would burst if it continued beating so hard in his chest. The mana gathered at his palm. It was going to shoot off and destroy the eggplant if he didn’t do anything. He had to stop it. He focused on disrupting the gathering of mana at his palm and let it disperse. It happened more smoothly. He would even go on to say it happened effortlessly. The mana stopped gathering at his palm. It gushed into the eggplant like an unstoppable torrent. It tried to flow, but Mannat sensed some pressure at his palm at the point of contact.

The mana inside the eggplant reacted to the invasion of his mana, repelling some of it. The two different Mana flows had an invisible collision. His mana was had a stronger force and quantity and won the race.

Meaning, the eggplant exploded right in front of Mannat’s face. The tomato and the eggplant might have reached the same result, but the process was different. The tomato had leaked mana. There was a clash of two opposing mana forces inside the eggplant, resulting in an explosion. Although the result wasn’t optimum, there was progress. Performing a task following verbal instructions is never easy, but Mannat was still surprised at the calmness and integrity with which he executed the commands. He wiped his face on the shirt’s sleeve to clear the muck and got to his feet. “What happens to the mana after it crystallizes?” He asked the emptiness because the Witch was long gone. He powerlessly shook his head and started working with another eggplant. Well, he decided to be meticulous this time. There would be no errors. He only had one more shot left before he ran out of mana. What a great way to practice an Intelligence-based skill. No wonder people were only getting older while making no progress in the job. He actually wondered how the rest of the world --or the few interested in becoming magicians-- practiced mana control. Not everyone had mana-fueled tomatoes growing in their garden, after all. I guess the job would interest more people if there was an easy way to use mana. Especially so if they didn't need to control it. A device that could absorb mana and perform desired functions would be perfect. Mannat urgently stopped his cart of thoughts. It was bumbling into an unknown direction and taking him too far away from reality. It was neither the time nor the place for losing himself in thoughts. He needed to focus on the eggplant in front of him. It was the result of his newest second-tier skill, ‘computing’. It had turned a small spark of thought into a fire. Thankfully, he managed to pull back before the fire could burn him.

A bead of salty dew slid down Mannat’s forehead as he woke from the trance. Some time had elapsed since he inspected the second eggplant. Now he had another skill he couldn’t trust. Smiling bitterly, he finally looked at the message floating in front of his eye for who knows how long. The message said nothing different. The eggplant was healthy and ripe. It was ten days old and held 35 points of mana inside its body. He went on with his practice. The result was the same burst of eggplant matter on his face and the bitter stink of it in his nose. This was it for his mana strike practice. He stood up after cleaning the eggplant off him and entered the other garden. There, he picked a few carrots and cooked himself a meal. He didn’t forget to use the tomato that the Witch had given him.

He cut it into pieces, added it to the stew, and seasoned the pot with salt and pepper. The steaming stew was extra delicious and warm. It was not warm like hot tea, but his stomach felt warm and heavy after he had eaten. It remained that way for quite a while and Mannat felt energetic afterward. He grew a blush on his face and springs in his feet. He wondered if there was something wrong with him. He had done nothing different to the stew, other than adding a tomato to it. There was no need to panic. The Witch hadn’t poisoned him. It didn’t take long for the warmth to fade way into dullness, and then he stopped feeling so free and courageous. Mannat made a mental note of it and stopped thinking about it. He washed up with chilling cold water and went to study the war in detail. He had finally found mentions of the war in another book titled ‘History and war’. It was about time he learned the reason behind the war that shook the whole world.