Shayjol and Mason stalked together after their prey. It was fifty yards off, but Mana Sight made it obvious to both of them where it stood. Compared to the cats, this thing was a true monster. It was wide and tall, with the shape and temperament of a boar, but the mana inside of it burned fiercely into a mohawk of flames, which Mason couldn’t help but consider unbearably cool.

They had agreed to hunt together for a few motivating reasons; the family needed more food and mana with Mason around, both races were curious about the abilities of the other, and Mason needed one more kill to finish off his Bloodlust challenge.

“Stay back here, Demon, or my parents will flay me for letting you get trampled or burnt. They seem to like their new mana-less pet,” Shayjol spat, still uncertain what to make of the man who could walk around darker than the dead.

Mason wasn’t truly invisible, not now. From the heinous amount of mana he had endured yesterday, to consuming several meals full of it, his Mana Tolerance had grown tremendously, with three skill points to reflect it. He was now generating seven tenths of a point of mana an hour, too, which, though trivial to his new friends, was considerable considering how his last week had been going.

He was sitting on two points of mana in his body, and it felt only like a dull tingle, which was convenient to allow his hunting partner to see him, even if he appeared like a ghost.

Mason’s dagger had been replaced with a more suitable knife, serrated on one edge and an extra inch longer. He was excited to put it to good use, though he envied the short sword the family had suggested he might be able to use later when they trusted him more.

“Shayjol, that boar might be a veritable mana feast, but when I get the kill, you better bet I’m not going to let you have any of it. I’m sure your parents would be disappointed that you got out-hunted by a squishy thing like me.”

They both continued to move closer, spreading out to flank the beast while it nibbled unaware on some magically infused bushes.

Mason didn’t know if he had the strength to really do a number on this beast, but he felt confident that Shayjol’s spells would make it easier.

They edged closer, and Shayjol made a motion to ensure Mason was ready. When he saw Mason’s dark hood bob, Shayjol released a spell which pulled the boar towards him with great force, and sent the intervening leaves and bushes flying up into the air as well.

The boar instinctively tried to turn and flee from the attack, but Mason was there, launching out from behind a tree to stab twice in the boar’s side. It squealed and stamped as the spell ended and blood seeped from its side, but by the time it had turned and charged, Mason had ducked back behind a tree. He chuckled as he gained a point in sneak and dagger mastery.

In the dark, with two dark and unadorned cloaks on, both of the boys were hardly visible. Mason even had the advantage of being hard to detect on a magical front as well. The boar sensed Shayjol though, and turned to charge at him instead.

Mason was right behind it, swinging his staff like a baseball bat and striking it fiercely in the rump. It staggered, but almost unnoticeably, and Shayjol was forced to launch a blast of force to repel the boar as he dived out of the way and sprinted to safety.

Mason was charged up now, the Mardun Mana still tingling and burning much more than what he could generate on his own. He saw in his mind’s eye that he had pulled ten points of mana from the beast, far more than he had ever seen from the cats. Triggering Focus, and then Mana Manipulation, he managed to keep most of that mana stored safely in the staff, and endured through sheer willpower the burn of the mana that snuck past his control.

The boar turned and looked right at Mason, enraged now by so many successful attacks. Despite the wounds on its side, it seemed in a sturdy condition, and it charged quickly this time.

Mason barely had time to react, feeling a strike from one of the boar’s tusks even as he dodged to the side. His health was still comfortably in the green, so he rolled as he hit the ground, and shouted a cheer as he saw Shayjol drop from a tree right next to the boar, bringing his axe down hard and cutting through the flames on top.

While it roared and stamped about that attack, Mason slashed forward with his staff, releasing all of his mana in a life drain. He felt a considerable amount of power rush back at him, and the wound from the tusk immediately began stitching back together.

“Demon we call you, but you’re more of a phantom! I cannot see you once you use your magic, so be cautious,” Shayjol warned.

Mason counted on being hard to detect, and assumed this boar relied heavily on mana sense, as any reasonable magical beast would. He swept to the side and stabbed repeatedly into the boar’s side, then ducked back again and into the trees, sweeping around the side of the battlefield.

Before he had gotten back into striking range, he saw Shayjol swing his axe twice, cleaving off the beast’s head. Mana Sight showed Mason that a large portion of the mana was held in its blood, and he watched interestedly as Shayjol bound the wound to keep it in, tying up the corpse to be carried on his strong back.

15/15.

That night the family gathered in their small cabin and dined on fireboar, a delicacy the Shays claimed had been one of the few benefits of coming to this plane. They had put off explaining what they knew of this world, and Mason didn’t push the subject. He wasn’t sure he was really ready to find out what he was in for, gathering from what little he had heard that his experience so far had been remarkably peaceful.

They chatted about the hunt, and Shayjol even begrudgingly admitted that Mason was quick, far quicker than he had expected. Mason smiled appreciatively, taking the compliment in stride. He assumed it was because of the mana that his body was growing accustomed to.

Every one of his stats had converted a Focus Point in the past few days of work and mana absorption, and though he was concerned about the lack of excess FP, he was relishing in the improvements of the raw stats.

As the conversation lulled, Mason took the initiative to push for a new subject. “What were you all in your past life? Before you came to this plane?” He asked, hoping this wouldn’t be too touchy.

The three looked at one another, and then all looked down, faces screwed up in confusion. “It is hard to recall our past lives. The longer one is on this plane, the less relevant the past feels,” explained Shaywise. “I was actually a nurse at our local hospital. Treyjol was an actor in the local theater. He was… quite good,” she smiled, her memories slowly trickling back to her.

“It’s too bad you wouldn’t recognize any of his impressions,” Shayjol added with a surprising amount of cheer considering how gruff he had been with Mason throughout the day, “My friends would always ask him to perform them. I bet his Senlant is still a riot, even if you hadn’t seen any of his movies.”

Mason looked confused for a moment, but as his mind wrapped around the concept of these people having a world not unlike his own, he began to laugh from embarassment, “I feel bad, I honestly expected that you came from a world very similar to this one. Y’know, living in small cabins and the like. In my world we have a great many stories, we love to talk about when people lived in small villages and fought bravely against the dangers of the wild.

“In my era though, I lived in an apartment building in the city, on the tenth floor of a twenty floor building. I didn’t even know my neighbors, and the scariest thing I’ve ever fought was a goose in the park that wanted my sandwich.” Mason explained.

Treyjol laughed at this, “I also assumed you came from a primitive world. We also have our stories, they were what helped us gather our people in this world and survive. Our buildings were rarely quite twenty stories though, but our cities were expansive. We created sources of mana that powered high-speed transportation over miles, and we didn’t have to hunt. My takings from the theater were enough for us to order food delivered to our home every night,” Treyjol patted his wide belly.

“The race we first encountered is a primitive race, though,” Shayjol added quietly. “When they first appeared, they were well armed, each and every one of them. All of their magic was tailored to fighting, and they would have wiped us out if they weren’t distracted fighting the monster hordes. It’s mostly safe and peaceful around here, south of the Roving Band’s passageways. But further north the monsters are thicker, filled with swarms of goblins with mana-conjured weapons, beasts of every nature who can bend the elements to their will, and dangerous lairs and dens ripped from other worlds.”

His parents were quiet, but neither of them stopped his explanation.

“The worst threats are from the primitive race we called the Corrosion, and they are destructive monsters. Six arms, with spells that make mine pale in comparison and half a dozen techniques to spit or spray acid to ruin a battlefield or your home. The shortest of them is a foot taller than any of us. If they hadn’t appeared further north, where the monsters are thick, or if they had any ability to work together as a large group, our people would not have survived.”

Mason contemplated this and the sullen expressions on his friends’ faces. He had been luckier than he’d known, appearing in such an unsettled area. “What do you call your people? And why haven’t you settled south, where I came from? Where it’s safe?”

“The Corrosi call us the Darkest Night, and that is a fine enough name for who we are now. We are at home in the darkness amongst the deep mana, but we have not yet found the strength to move our people underground. We barely can find enough mana to stay strong, let alone grow stronger,” Treyjol spoke forcefully about his people, bitterness mixed with pride.

Mason was curious about the Corrosi and the threat they really represented. It also meant that humans weren’t the only victims of this strange world, but compared to six-armed acid-spitting monsters, he wasn’t sure they would stand a chance.

If there were more humans coming here soon, how strong would he have to become to protect them?

In the middle of the night, long after the Darkest family had gone to sleep, Mason snuck out of their cabin and found a quiet place a hundred yards off where the sloping valley began to rise up into a cliff before the mountains. He flicked on Mana Sight and could see what had lured the family here; faint glimmers of blue and purple deep in the stone that indicated mana could be mined here eventually.

But Mason had his own source of mana to rely on for his strengthening, and he reached into his pack to pull out the sternum of the corpse he had found at his campsite. Holding it tightly between his two hands, he felt how odd it was that he had to think long and hard to see anything strange about using the corpse this way. Faint memories of his aunt’s funeral trickled into his mind, and he remembered how sad he had been at her passing.

“You have to remember Mason, everything is survivable except the one thing that isn’t. So if you suffer, you suffer. If you’re healthy, if things are easy, that’s all well and good. Those are the times to take full advantage of, to accomplish great things and enjoy yourself. But when you’re suffering and things get hard, well, remember, you won’t die from it, and if you do it won’t matter. So you might as well continue to work hard even then, so that when things get better, you’ll have everything you need.”

She had lived her talk too, which is why Mason remembered her so fondly. The cancer took four years to kill her, two months of that was spent in hospice, and even while it ate away at her body she kept showing up to her job. She always played host for the family gatherings, and she kept living until she absolutely couldn’t.

Even though Mason knew her death had been agonizing back then, it was the same sort of intellectual understanding that one had while thinking about a war thousands of years back. Sure, it must be sad. But he couldn’t feel it now.

What he could feel was the mana absorbing into his body through his hands, and the fierce burning sensation that always came from too much. His jaw clamped shut immediately, and he felt the muscles in the back of his neck and down his back clenching too. He took a deep breath and activated Focus, then triggered Recovery and tried to relax, loosening those muscles and letting the mana become part of his body.

Then he triggered Mana Manipulation and tried to pull the mana to his core, where he often saw it sit in the Darkest Night family. It resisted his pull, but his willpower was growing, and as mana found its way to its core it began to circulate in a way that felt… not comfortable, but correct.

His stamina was depleting fast, and he felt the mana growing volatile within him, but he held it steady, watching points tick off of his ample health.

Through a surge of will, Mason stood to his feet, glanced in the distance, and drew his new dagger. Forcing the mana from the swirling pool inside of him to that dagger, he made a large, sweeping, slashing motion with the knife, watching as a crescent launched from its tip and slashed heavily into a tree five yards off.

He exhaled heavily and sat back on his rear, staring at the charred gash in the tree that he had made, and laughed manically, collapsing back into the dirt and grass and trying to push off the first wave of Mana Sickness.

Congratulations, you’ve unlocked your first mana art: Mana Blade.

Mana Blade: Unleash a wave of pure mana as a destructive force. Intelligence increases the sharpness of the wave. Willpower increases your control over the attack.

Mana Sight has levelled up (1): 6

Mana Manipulation has levelled up (2): 3

Mana Tolerance has levelled up (5): 8