I had died, and my soul was released from my body. I was now in soul-form, my body still lay on the ground somewhere most likely getting vandalized by boars.

Suddenly a blue text box appeared in front of me, a notification from the game.

You are one of the first 100 players to die in Dreamscape, as a reward you are given +1 favor! Better luck next time!

I’m not sure, but I think the game just rewarded me for sucking. The stat for favor was shrouded in mystery, Vice Inc. only told the public that it’s something that you want. Sounds vague and unhelpful if you ask me.

I pulled up my status menu, because I had been curious to see what had happened when I died at lvl 1.

[Gray Rain]

[Undead][Sorcerer]

Lvl: 1

Attack: 1-3

Defense: 10

Health: 163

Mana: 0

Favor: 1

I saw a curious green square at the top corner of my vision, after trying to look at it for a moment some text appeared.

New Hope Village Buff: Players below level 10 that stay within the New Hope Village starting area will not lose equipment or items upon death but will still lose a level.

A buff is a temporary beneficial status gained in a video game.

The respawn point for my soul was in a graveyard right next to the old stone building that I had originally come from. The world was a gray version of what it had been when I was still in my body. I looked at the ground and saw a red arrow pointing off to the northeast; it must be where my body was.

“Clock,” I whispered. Instantly a clock appeared in front of me. It showed 12:09 AM (00:18). The game had released at midnight and it was 12:09 in the real world, because of the time ratio I had been playing Dreamscape for 18 minutes.

I followed the arrow and I was soon standing in front of my body.

Do you want to resurrect?

“Yes.” A brilliant beam of light surged through me and vibrant colors came crashing back into the world. I was at 50% health and 0 mana. Darn, I was really hoping that my dying would have somehow fixed the issue with my mana.

Suddenly an NPC appeared beside me.

Lvl ??? Grand Sorcerer

She reached over and grabbed my arm. Intricate arcane runes appeared on the ground below us, moments later everything vanished.

I suddenly reappeared in the worst sort of prison. It was filled with an incalculable amount of suffering and despair. The walls were lined with the ravings of mad men and women.

I was in a library.

A swift ‘smacking’ sound was heard and I felt an intense pain on my hand.

2!

I immediately turned to the source of the pain, to discover that Kelun the Teacher had popped me with a ruler.

“Sit down,” she commanded. I looked around and saw that there was a row of 10 desks position in front of a chalkboard.

Lord, kill me now.

I hesitantly sat down near the middle while noticing that there were no other players. She gestured to the empty room and asked, “Does anyone know why they died?”

I looked around once more and confirmed that I was the only one there. I said nothing. She waited for about 10 seconds and then continued, “Well, since no one knows I’ll tell you, it’s because you are weak.”

Ouch, that hurt my pride. I couldn’t resist raising my hand. She pointed at me, “Yes?” she question.

“Not to be rude,” I continued, ”But the reason I died is because I can’t cast spells.” She looked at me inquisitively and pulled out a piece of paper.

She scanned it and then paused, “Ah yes, Mr. Gray Rain. Well you seem to be mistaken.”

“How so?” I rebutted.

“You are a sorcerer, are you not?”

“I am.”

“Then you should be able to cast spells, simple as that.”

“Ah yes, but I am undead, so I can’t manipulate mana.” I said triumphantly.

“Hmm, then your journey will be more difficult than most. But you can still cast spells.” She said definitively.

“How!” I stood up with excitement. She hesitated, her body slightly fidgeting as if she wanted to tell me the answer, but the computer’s artificial intelligence was preventing her.

“Only time will tell.” She said. I sat down with a heavy sigh. My chance at freedom was immediately foiled. But, this interaction once again fueled my idea that there must be a way for me to manipulate mana. She had even said that I could cast spells!

“Now, for your punishment,” she said sternly, causing me to stare up in disbelief. “Since you can not lose a level because you are only at level 1, you must stay in this library for 2 hours. Hopefully some of the knowledge here will help you grow stronger.”

My jaw dropped, 2 hours was so long! I was only able to play in game for 12 hours a day (6 hours in the real world), but I would be losing 2 of them to a stupid library. The worst part, I didn’t even like reading, I barely tolerated it.

Kelun the Teacher flipped over a sand dial and immediately walked out of the room. I turned around and looked at the walls of books with even greater displeasure, this was going to suck.

The room was set up as a long oval, with books around the perimeter. They sat in nice shelves that stacked on top of each other for at least 30 feet high. If I had to approximate, there were at least 100,000 books in here.

I begrudgingly walked over to a shelf and glanced at a few titles:

‘Over and Back Yonder - A Knight’s Tale’

‘Why You should Always Boil Your Water’

‘Carpentry and The Secrets of Rocking Chairs’

My God, this is literally the worst.

I said, “Clock” and a clock appeared revealing 12:15 (00:30). Yup, my imprisonment is going to be the worst.

In a normal computer game, I could chat with some of my friends or my brother, but Dreamscape only allowed a player to chat with players they met in the game. This wouldn’t prevent friends from meeting up eventually, because they could always coordinate in the real world where to meet up.

I had an idea “Library Catalog,” I held my breath in anticipation. Instantly a Giant list appeared in front of me in a message icon. Glorious day! Maybe all hope wasn’t lost.

I clicked the search bar and a keyboard appeared on the messaging window. How about, “Mana manipulation for the Undead,” I hit enter. 0 out of 103145 results found. I guess that wording was a little too ambitious.

Ok, I’ll try, “Mana, Undead,” using these two as the keywords should result in something. 0 out of 103145 results found. Figures that it wouldn’t be that easy.

I type in, “Mana,” and hit enter. 10429 results out of 103145 found. That was definitely too many.

I then keyed in, “Undead,” resulting in 3128 out of 103145 found, still too many. I sat there a moment and pondered from what angle I should try to approach it from.

In the end I chose to look up stuff on mana because it would be more interesting than novels on rotting corpses.

After a couple of minutes I chose, “Fundamentals of Mana Vol. 1,” It was a part of a 9-volume set. After clicking on the name of the book in the search bar, I saw a book from the corner of my eye begin to light up. It then very delicately was removed from the shelf and slowly hovered toward me. It landed with a gentle thud in my hands.

Although this wasn’t what I had been looking for, technically I just performed “magic”. Even though one could argue that the library was the one that performed the magic, I’m just going to say that I did it. One small step for man, one giant leap for… me, I guess.

The cover was a soft brown made from rugged leather. The title had a tint of purple while the name of the author was in black. Wait a second, the author was listed as Malfin Thorncloud, is this the same person as Malfin the Wise? Hmm, maybe I will have to ask him the next time I see him.

I glanced through the book, it was 238 pages, but there were a lot of pictures and diagrams. I decided I might as well start from page one.

“The practice of mana manipulation is one that has been studied and practiced by many different types of people for many generations. While the essence of mana in and of itself is not something…”

Reading was something that bored me to tears in life, so instead of hiding from it or trying to ignore it, I attacked it head on. When I was 12 years old, I begged my parents for speed reading lessons. They thought I was joking, and I can’t blame them. What 12 year old in their right mind wanted to learn how to speed read? Well I’ll tell you, a child that hates spending their time reading.

It started with a tutor and progressed to videos, forums, and the occasional workshop. For the last 7 years it was a skill that I had put a great amount of effort into. The result, I could easily read about 3 times faster than people normally read while still retaining almost all of the information.

I read and read and read and read. I checked my clock and it was 12:55 (01:50), I still had 40 minutes left. I was on page 140 and had learned some interesting things.

First, mana exists in all living things, but not all things can harness mana.

Second, the first humanoids to harness the power of mana were an extinct race of elves known as the elder elves. It references Vol. 9 of the Fundamentals of Mana for more information on elder elves- maybe some other time.

Finally, mana can be stored in certain crystals. This last part interested me the most, because it was a potential solution to my problem.

One of the things that perplexed me the most was that someone in real life had written this book. In order for this book to exist in the game, some random person had spent time to make up this concept and write it, in the real world...Talk about dedication to the gaming community!

I continued reading and time passed lazily. I was on page 231 out of 238 when the vial of sand made a pinging sound. I checked my clock, and sure enough it was 1:15 (02:30).

I stood up and began stretching and then glanced down at the unfinished book. Although I hated reading, I hated not finishing something even more.

I sat back down and resolved myself to finish the last 7 pages. After 5 more minutes, I finished. I closed the book and a notification appeared in front of me.

You have gained insight to the workings of mana. Mana is an important source of power for your class. You gain +2 Intellect.

Hey that was a nice surprise. I closed out of it and another notification popped up.

Congratulations, you are the first person to finish a book in Dreamscape. You gain +3 Intellect and +2 Favor.

Sweet! I guess all of my time wasn’t wasted. Well, except that I still can’t use mana and therefore intellect is useless to me; but one step at a time.

Besides, I had a new goal: to figure out how to get crystals that could store mana so that I could finally start casting spells!