There had been a single thought in his mind: Walk into the puddle. But the system notification brought another thought, a more interesting one.

You have found a path to the Origin.

All of a sudden, all the information he knew about his class appeared in his mind. It was a class about chasing the origin, whatever that meant. And now he had apparently found a pathway to that very origin. This piqued his interest further and so he investigated the link between himself and Jen in more detail.

Around him, unbeknownst to him, was ongoing a battle. Berry, Johnny and Keiko were struggling to hold off the five clothed false-humans. In fact, they were getting dominated and would be dead in a few seconds.

Roars filled the clearing, splattered blood tainting it.

Jen shivered as she cast spells against the clothed false-humans. If she had a few zombies at the ready, such a force of enemies wouldn’t have had an effect on her. But she didn’t, and worse still, she had just wasted half her total mana on pacifying Stanis.

The trees swayed in the furious winds. The cold air had dropped ever since the group had arrived at the jungle and was now a chilling freeze. There was no rain pelting down on the world but the scene was miserable nevertheless. Blood, roars and fear, a lot of fear.

Stanis was now just a few metres from the ditch filled with darkness. The deeper he went into the link, the more marvellous it seemed. But sadly, some unknown force inside of him pushed him away from the marvellousness of the link and instead towards one of the simplest parts of the link.

It was essentially his gateway to the link. The link itself was a road that went two ways. On his side was a gateway with two entrances: one was open with mana passing through it, the other was closed without a single hint of it ever being opened. He prodded at the closed gate with his touch. It reacted back violently and he felt a hurtful sting travel his head.

Perhaps it was curiosity but he felt an intense desire to open the closed gate. And to add to this, there was a desperate voice deep inside of his mind saying that this gate needed to be opened now. Thus, he braced himself and touched the gate again, only to be forced back all the same.

Lost for ideas, and not very intent on harming himself, he searched for different options. But no matter where he looked in his mind, he couldn’t find any answers. The only one he found was to forcefully open the gate with mana: crude and dangerous, but workable, perhaps.

So, he went at the gate again, this time, however, with a greater load of mana behind his touch. To his surprise, the gate didn’t even budge under his touch, his recklessness only serving to harm his mind with greater intensity. He screamed in his mind and retreated, now fearful of the gate.

But then a system notification popped up.

A new class skill discovered.

Mana connection: the ability to connect one being to another

His mind found the new skill lacking in both power and grandness, but the quiet voice, which had grown quite annoying by now, urged him to use the skill immediately. Lost for actions anyway, his mind followed and used the skill on the connection to Jen.

There is already a connection here.

As before, his mind felt defeated as he read the notification. But then as he looked at the link itself, his hope regrew and blossomed. The gate that had looked immovable was now lit up and gentler. Excited, he pushed the gate and it opened under his touch.

The voice told him to flow mana down his gate and to close the other one that went from Jen to him. He hesitated, after all, he had an order to follow. It was then that the rising voice told him to look at his surroundings. Stanis opened his eyes and saw that he was already in the puddle, his knees-down now hidden under the opaque, thick liquid.

Satisfied that he had completed his order, and lost at the fact that there were no more orders, his mind decided to listen to the quiet voice in his mind, after all, what harm could it do?

He flowed mana down his gate to Jen and closed the other. The second he closed the one that came from Jen, his mind shook and he collapsed. The voice that had been whispering advice usurped the throne and came back into power. Stanis was back to being himself.

He immediately looked down and saw that the water was now waist-height. Jen had noticed the link between them breaking but didn’t attack him as she saw he was already immobilised. Her puddles were incredibly sticky and there was no way he could get out when it was continuously pulling him in deeper.

Stanis gritted his teeth and thought back to his original purpose. He had only a few seconds to kill Jen. Looking across the clearing, he noticed how Johnny had been killed, and how Berry was in the process of being butchered. Keiko had seen her teammates fall and thus had made a run for it. However, she seemed to be out of luck as she had been struck across her right foot seconds later, leaving her to limp now.

If everything went right, everyone here, including Jen, should be dead in less than a minute. Stanis knew he would die, he had known that from the start, whether he killed Jen or not. But he wasn’t certain about Jen, after all, she could kill the clothed zombies one by one and zombify them. Even though the possibility was low of her leaving the jungle alive, even the slightest possibility was too high for Stanis to accept.

The darkness was now up to his wrists. He knew he couldn’t use any of his skills, none of them would come in very handy here. He doubted he could even escape the darkness. Ignoring the sinking feeling of being drowned in his heart, he focused his whole energy into finding a method to damn Jen.

The first thought that came to mind was their connection. He had been able to fight back even when his personal gate hadn’t been open, meaning that you could send mana across any pathway that was open. But he hadn’t been able to give out orders; he didn’t know whether this was something to do with Jen’s class or if it was to do with the links themselves.

Stanis was certain that opening his own gateway had had some kind of effect, and most likely had opened up new possibilities as well. But the desperation of his situation proved that this was not the time to discover them. Instead, he went to what he knew and flooded his pathway to Jen with malicious mana.

His head was now sinking into the darkness and so he couldn’t move it to see what effect it had. However, from the initial, short scream he heard, he knew he was onto something.

Knowing that he was going to die in a second anyway, he used up the rest of his mana to flood her once more. He would never know the result of this as the tip of his head submerged at this moment. A few seconds later, his hand shot out and he pulled himself out of the puddle.

There was a blank look in his eyes as he looked around. To the side, he saw his master being chased down by two clothed false-humans and so sprinted towards her. But before he could help her, another clothed false-human barrelled into him and wrestled him to the ground. It then bent his arms around his back and kneeled on him. It forced him to watch his master fighting desperately against 4 clothed humans. Her mana-shield was slowly chipped at but she managed to get two down in this time.

The two who were downed fell into darkness puddles of their own. This should have been enough to turn-around the fight but instead, his master stood still and solemn. She was out of mana; she had wasted it all on breaking Stanis’s will and attacks.

The remaining two clothed-false humans showed no mercy and immediately struck her down, only stopping once she was shredded to pieces. At this, Stanis felt his own heartbeat stop as well.

He had died…