It was about 5 in the morning when the feeling of sleep hit Ashford like a freight train. He had been reminiscing about his past while Mairi was sleeping on the nearby couch. Looking over at her, his stomach started growling loudly. Chuckling embarrassedly, he looked over to the open door. Getting up, he decided that he would work on some type of breakfast.

Walking over into the kitchen, he looked into the large pantry. He saw a good few options, however, the one thing that he was craving right now was a decent breakfast. Pancakes, bacon, eggs, and sausages sounded exquisite to him right about then. Looking into the pantry, he noticed that all he needed was milk, eggs, bacon, and sausages and he could make a good breakfast.

Using his mana to conjure a slice of bacon, he used one of the pans and his own heating skills to quickly cook it up. Gingerly taking it out of the pan, he slowly bit into the crispy, crunchy, exquisite bacon. Flavor flooded his mouth as the juices exploded into his mouth. When creating the slice, he had piled on numerous images and feelings of juicy bacon, and what he got back was the best bacon he had ever tasted. Looking at his mana bar, he found that he’d used 3 mana just for that slice of bacon.

Trying to create bacon without any knowledge or feeling into it this time yielded a limp, fast-food type of bacon with little to no flavor. What changed, however, was the mana cost. The cost had gone down to just 1 mana for that slice of bacon. Realizing that imbuing feelings and experiences into the food seemed to enhance the flavor, but also enhance the taste. He spent 120 of his mana to create a full breakfast for each of the people living in his estate at that time. The eggs cost him just 2 mana surprisingly enough. He’d thought that eggs, which was essentially an unborn baby bird, would’ve cost more. When he really thought about it though, it was likely that he couldn’t create life. Curious, he tried creating a baby chick, only to come up with a mangled piece of flesh. Staring at horror, he realized that he may be able to create matter, he couldn’t create life. He sure as hell wasn’t going to try to play god anymore.

Bringing the plates of food along with glasses of water to each of the places on the table, he went to get the others up. They would all have to get up early from now on to make sure all duties were taken care of. Going to Everett and Rhetta’s room first, he found that each of them was already up and talking.

After notifying them about the breakfast, he continued on to the twins’ rooms. Looking in, he could see the two of them sleeping fitfully on the two beds that he had created for them. Walking in between the two bed, he kneeled down to gently shake the two kids awake. Both of them upon being woken up shot up and stared at Ashford as if they’d seen a ghost.

“What? What’s wrong?” Ashford asked worriedly.

“A-As-Ashford! Oh god,” the boy on the right cried out before sobbing into Ashford’s side.

The other boy hadn’t said anything, he just clung onto Ashford’s side for a few minutes before their sobbing subsided.

“Hey, hey, I’m here. Don’t worry, I’m here to protect you,” Ashford said soothingly. The two boys had likely both had nightmares as this was the night after they had almost died.

“Whatever happened, it was just a dream. You hear me? Just. A. Dream. I’m here to protect you.” Ashford asserted.

“Bu-but what if the monsters come back?” The first boy sobbed out.

“Then I will be here. I won’t ever leave you. Got it?” Ashford responded.

“What happened in your nightmare?” Ashford asked.

“Well, it was before you saved us. We were out on the drive and Mom and Dad was arguing. Something about where Quinn and I were going. And then--” the first boy started.

“And then the monsters came! Jack and I were in the far back seat of the van. Grandma and Papa were in the middle seats. The monsters came and took Mom and Dad away from us,” Quinn said before devolving into tears.

“And then we heard it. The wolves tearing into them,” the boy named Jack sobbed out.

“Well, you don’t need to worry anymore. I’m here to protect you from the big, bad monsters.” Ashford comforted him. He started wondering how the two boys had the same dream. He’d heard of twins having a supernatural connection, but never to that effect. Look at the two in Mana View, he sensed something extremely bizarre. It was almost as if there was a literal connection between the two. Not a connection made of mana, but a connection made of the same aura he saw around everyone who had unlocked their special resources.

“Quinn, Jack I have something extremely important to ask you. You cannot lie to me. If you lie, I won’t be able to protect you. If I weren’t able to protect you, the monsters would come to take you away.” Ashford said, cringing at the manipulation. He hated doing this to the kids as he saw their faces pale, but he knew it was necessary.

“Have you seen any screens, like something from video games, pop up in your view? Do you see a light blue dot in the left corner of your vision?” Ashford asked gravely.

After both of them looked up, they recoiled in sync before nodding their heads.

“I need you to come follow me. We need to write down what you were reading,” Ashford said to the two 13-year-old boys. After getting up and making sure they were following him, he walked up to the Library before creating several pieces of paper and a pencil for each of them. Having them write down what they saw, he looked at the status screens.

Link Created!

Psychic Link created between Jack Tuffy and Quinn Tuffy!

Psychic Link

A psychic link between two creatures is created from an intimate bond between the two. It is activated by latent potential for the Psychic.

Combine Mental Grades

Share Mental Pool

Share Emotions

Share Thoughts

Share Dreams

Status Screen

Name:

Quinn Tuffy

Level:

1

Class:

Psychic

Titles:

None

Experience:

0

EXP to LVL UP:

100

Health:

8

Psi:

30

Statistics

INT:

F-5

AGI:

H-5

WIS:

F-1

DEX:

H-2

PSY:

F-3

STR:

H-1

CHA:

G-2

VIT:

H-4

Titles +

Skills +

Spells +

Status Screen

Name:

Jack Tuffy

Level:

1

Class:

Psychic

Titles:

None

Experience:

0

EXP to LVL UP:

100

Health:

2

Psi:

30

Statistics

INT:

F-5

AGI:

H-3

WIS:

F-1

DEX:

H-4

PSY:

F-3

STR:

H-2

CHA:

G-3

VIT:

H-1

Titles +

Skills +

Spells +

The two screens revealed a considerable amount of information. By viewing the children’s sheets, he now knew that there were grades below G, but adults did not hold these grades, at least not typically. Another interesting thing was that there was at the very least one more type of energy possible. At the time, he knew that there was Mana, Qi, Chakra, and Psi as potential energies.

Psi and PSY likely had to do with psychic powers, and those often canonically manifested in poor ways during puberty. Seeing as how the potential was likely exacerbated by the changes in the world, they would need to learn how to control their powers. Sitting them both down, Ashford began talking, “Have either of you read comic books?” Seeing both raise their hands, he continued, “Well, have you ever heard of psychic powers, controlling objects with your mind? You have? Well, it seems that that’s what let you have the same dream. There’s also a connection between your minds. I’m hoping that you can expand on this connection. You’ve played internet games, right? Well, when you are playing, information is being sent down the cords, right?”

It seemed that the twins could keep up with their increased intelligence due to the link.

“Well, what happens when you widen those cords? You increase the amount of stuff able to be done, right? Well, that’s the basis behind that connection of yours. Right now, subconscious thoughts and dreams are able to move across that connection of yours. We want to create a better connection between the two of you. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could talk to your brother without anyone else hearing you?” After seeing the two nod their heads emphatically, he continued, “Well, if that’s the case I want you to practice your powers. Imagine how cool it would be to be able to protect your grandma and papa. I need you to practice this.”

“But… how do we do that Uncle Ashford?” Quinn asked.

After recovering from his shock at what Quinn called him, he said, “Well, you would use your imagination. Have you ever played princess and dragon, cops and robbers, or even Cowboys and Indians? Well, just use that vivid imagination of yours to imagine this cord. Your powers should guide you.”

After several hours of instructing them, it seemed they both found it, as both of their faces screwed up in concentration at the same exact moment. Slowly, their faces morphed into pain and terror. Shaking the two, he started panicking. He didn’t want to hurt the twins. After a moment, they broke out of their trance. They both looked up at him before looking at each other in sync. They stared at each other before saying at the same time, “What? How are you saying that?” They held their hands up at the same time, mimicking each other’s movements before Ashford broke up the moment.

“You need to learn to block the other’s subconscious thoughts out. You don’t want to lose your sense of self, right?” Ashford asked.

“Sense of self? What’s that?” the two asked in sync once again.

“Imagine what happens when you die. Your thoughts stop and you float in nothingness forever. You need to put up a filter.” Ashford said urgently. It took them a few moments, but they finally fell out of sync. They looked at each other and Quinn put up his right hand, while Jack just stared at him. Letting out a deep breath, Ashford sagged back into his chair in relief.

Ashford woke the other four up without any difficulty and they went up to eat their breakfast.

After a bit of small chit-chat, the two kids had finished, and so Ashford started talking seriously.

“You four listen up. Right now, we need other people to help protect us. If something happens to me, god forbid, there is no one else to help. I am going to tutor Mairi and Sachi. Canton, Amanda, before I start, I want to talk to you two alone,” Ashford declared to the group. After the four of them had gotten up, he looked to Everett and Rhetta.

“I need to tell you something. It’s something about Jack and Quinn.” Ashford said with a grave tone.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” they said with grave expressions.

“This morning, I went to wake them up after you two and found them both having a nightmare. I was able to comfort them, but then I noticed a link. Your two boys… they have psychic potential. What that means is that they can influence the world around us with their minds, and something happened during the… incident yesterday,” they held grave expressions at the mention, “There’s now a link between the two. I don’t know to what extent this will change them, but I do know that their intelligences are enhancing each other’s and that they can communicate with their minds,” they once again held a worried expression at this, “They share dreams, emotions, thoughts and they might be able to share even more. I have given them the basics, but I need you two to help them. You need to use the computers to look for more information. I don’t have the time, but you said it yourself. You two are too decrepit to do what the other four and I are going to do. What you can do, is protect your babies by helping them figure out their power. I need you to guide them.” Ashford told them unblinkingly. He needed them to help their grandsons.

After a moment of measuring Ashford’s statement, they both agreed. After finishing that, Ashford got up. He broke down the plates and remnants of the breakfast and absorbed the leftover mana. He’d learned how to do this when creating the lifeless bacon.

He hadn’t wanted to take another bite of it, and feeling complete control over those molecules, he broke the down back into basic mana. Something interesting, though, was the lack of control of the consumed food. As soon as the matter was consumed by the others, he found his control cut off. He would have to confirm later, but he guessed that he no longer had any control over the matter at all. Disregarding all of this, he got back up and continued down the stairs and out of the door. Quickly jogging up the steps once more, he looked out. Looking at the edge of the woods just past his walls, he could see several small predators sizing up the new addition to their neck of the woods.

He sat there, admiring the beauty of nature for a time before finally hopping up. He continued down the stairs, and into the house once more. Walking up the stairs and into the library, he looked around. He saw that his five recruits were working on their control as they each sat in meditation on the chairs. He also noticed Everett on the computer, likely looking up vital information. He walked over to Canton and said to him, “So, I see that you’re practicing. How is it going?”

“Fairly well. I’ve finally created my core, also known as a dantian. If I had to guess, where before I could run a mile in somewhere around 7 and a half minutes, now I could do it at 6 and a half while empowering myself with the Qi. I was talking to Mairi, and apparently, she’s gotten a good hang of her control. It seems that Qi is better at enhancing physical traits as while her gains from empowering with mana were somewhere between 100-1000%, mine is a flat 700%. I believe I can get this even higher, but it will take some time. I’m also able to lift around 400 pounds easily where before I was at somewhere around 60 pounds before.” Canton declared happily. It seemed that his special energy resonated with his wishes.

“So, what about you, Amanda? Becca? How has your work with Chakra gone?” Ashford inquired.

“I’ve not made much progress…” Becca responded shamefully.

“Well, I’ve made leaps and bounds, if I do say so myself. I am able to heal wounds, I believe. I’ve been trying to use the energy for other purposes, but haven’t gotten lucky in that regard yet.” Amanda said proudly.

“Nice, Amanda! Becca, it’s okay. You will get it eventually, just don’t give up!” Ashford said.

“How about you Mairi, I heard you figured out Mana Empowerment. And you, Sachi?” Ashford asked, oblivious.

“How about me? What the hell man, you said you would help us, and then you just disappear!” Mairi spouted out frustratedly.

With his eyes wide as saucers, it took a moment before Ashford realized what she was talking about. Upon realizing, a loud smack resounded within the room as he facepalmed himself. He’d totally forgotten about his commitment to helping them learn and even what he was going to say to the others.

“I’m sorry. That’s my bad. How about we start that tutoring? There’s no point in telling the others what I was going to say before.” Ashford said apologetically. They each walked over to the other end of the library when Ashford used 50 mana to create a chalkboard, chalk and a rag along with a bottle of water. After setting everything up, he used the rest of his mana to create two sturdy desks in front of the board. When the both of them sat down, he started instructing them on what he had learned in the past few days.

It took him several hours before Sachi grasped the basis of what he was trying to teach while Mairi got it practically instantly. He started teaching the more complicated principles involving interactions between the different types of mana and Sachi quickly shot ahead in understanding. It seemed that Mairi was having a hard time distinguishing the two as it seemed to her that the distinction was very close.

Her sense seemed to be more inclined to magic involving wild rather than personal. That meant that the best fighting style for her might be a hybrid style, attacking with melee magical attacks. Either a spellsword or a brawler involving elemental attacks. Finishing with his musings, he tells Sachi that he will instruct her later and starts focusing on Mairi.

“There are several principles of Mana control that will not matter to you at this moment. I believe that your control and sense is more geared towards closer up attacking,” Ashford said to Mairi.

“What does that mean?” Mairi asked curiously.

“Well, that means that your mana control and mana sense, I believe, have a harder time distinguishing between what I call personal mana and wild mana. This matters because controlling mana at a range is much easier with personal mana, likely cause of the connection you have to that mana,” Ashford told Mairi.

“So, what does that exactly mean?” Mairi asked cautiously.

“It means that your magical feats will be limited to the area around 4 yards from you, otherwise you will have too much difficulty controlling the mana. I want you to get up every morning and start exercising. We will see about finding some type of martial art for you to practice. The hope is that we can find someone, save them, and then have them instruct you. For now, keep up with your practice and think of ways you can use at your range that will help your offense or defense.” Ashford instructed.

Ashford looked around the room to find Sachi sitting in meditation. He walked over and said, “So, Sachi… Are you ready to learn how to do magic?” with a magnanimous grin on his face.

They walked out of the house and continued out towards the gate. He opened the gate enough to get them through, and led her further on. He found a wide-open space and used mana to burn down the surrounding vegetation to their roots. After finishing this, he led Sachi into the ring. Sitting down in the center, he started to lead her in a meditation session.

After a few minutes, it was obvious that Sachi was deep in a trance, and he changed his mantra. Telling her to feel her own mana, delve her sense into her own body and feel the sensations, understand the way the mana interacts within her body. It took several hours, but he led her into exuding this mana and manipulating it farther and farther away from herself.

Deciding that the easiest type of element she could use was fire, he led her in creating a basic fireball. It was noon by the time she was able to create fire. By that point, he could tell they were both hungry by the constant grumbling surrounding the small clearing. After getting up, they headed back towards the house.

They had a simple lunch from the food reserves from before and talked about their progress. Canton had gotten to the point where he was able to execute ‘techniques,’ as he called them from the books on the server. He said that he’d advanced a realm, whatever that meant. Amanda had also been hard at work. Apparently, she needed a subject for practice, so she recruited Canton to injure himself and she would heal the injury.

It was apparently a success, as it seemed that compared to his earlier healing, the healing with chakra was much better as it didn’t cause pain and it was additionally much quicker. She practiced manipulating her chakra after she’d healed Canton’s wound and she said she was getting much more confident in her control.

Moving over to Mairi, he checked up on her. He was worried, as her situation was something that he hadn’t expected. He thought that the new dynamic would be as simple as chakra users healing, qi users fighting in melee, and mana users being the artillery behind the front lines. Mairi’s situation blew that theory out of the water.

Mairi had started working out but had been able to get Amanda to help her. Using her chakra, Amanda was able to heal the micro tears in Mairi’s muscles, allowing her to build up muscles without dealing with the lactic acid from the workout. She predicted that within the next month, she would get considerably more fit while exploiting the usefulness of Amanda as a chakra user.

Becca, on the other hand, had made leaps and bounds with Qi control. Along with Mairi’s predicament, it seemed that for some reason, Becca’s control was catered more towards the external use of the Qi, leading to a fighter closer to a mage than to the stereotypical melee cultivator. He wasn’t able to help Becca, but it seemed that she was able to use the different types of qi identified by the emotions, to create certain elements and effects with the Qi.

She’d been able to construct a simple dart of Qi in her first afternoon of working with the substance. He looked forward to her further innovations. Looking around the library, Ashford took in the sight of his little squad of supernatural soldiers. He planned on great things. One thing they were lacking, however, was equipment. In classic fantasy novels, there were many cases of a mystical ‘enchanter’ creating items that helped the wielder control their own natural power, and often enhanced that power.

He figured that if they needed gear, the best way for them to get it, was for him to exploit his creation. He decided that he would work on gear for himself first. He grabbed all of his available mana and tried to use it to create a staff. What came out was the saddest staff he had ever witnessed.

What was produced was a 3-foot tall balsa wood staff. Its body was crooked, causing inherent problems with structural integrity. When he looked at the notifications from the system, they seemed to show the worth of the staff.

Pitiful Staff of the Novice Creator

-50% Mana Control

+5% Mana Efficiency

1-2 Blunt Damage

Its short description wasn’t preceded by any other type of notification, seemingly not giving him the skill to correspond with the creation. He realized that he needed to do more than just imagine a staff and insert a measly 133 mana points into it. The first thing he needed to know was the base language for enchanters; runes. He researched for a short time before coming across a short article about Elder Futhark runes. They seemed to have both a magical meaning and a literal meaning. Grinning at his luck, he started searching further.

It took him several hours before he felt he had a decent base for his theory behind item creation. His idea was, that the runes were what made an item magical. Disregarding any type of sentient weapon, most enchanted weapons could theoretically be made using these runes. He created a short stick of straight holly wood. He drew outlines in the core of the wand with mana, leaving the outside pristine. He then pumped as much mana as he could into these outlines. He’d essentially spelled out a phrase saying ‘Enhance Mana Flow’ using Elder Futhark. Looking at the information screen, he saw something intriguing.

Lesser Wand of the Novice Enchanter

Enchanted: Enhance Mana Flow

Time Remaining: 8 hrs

+25% Mana Control

+15% Mana Efficiency

While the wand seemed to enhance the mana control and efficiency considerably, it also had a time limit. He looked with his mana sense on the inside and saw that slowly, the mana was being leaked away from the runes. It seemed that for whatever reason, the holly wasn’t able to retain the mana. When he thought about it, he realized that it was possible that some other type of material could hold the mana better. He could theoretically use his control to create a handle around a core, using the smaller core for the wand or staff. He knew that he’d need to figure something else out for other weapons or armor, but for the moment, he had a plan of action. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to just create a genuine core, and so he got ready. He was going hunting.