“AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!”

The stone violently shattered with a loud bang and Feng felt the remaining mana flood into his system, the foreign mana rampaging through his entire body and slowly making its way throughout as he screamed in agony.

Warning

*ERROR*Abnormal mana intake detected. Administrators alerted.

His body spasming uncontrollably on the ground, Feng barely noticed the window popup followed by the bright light and sudden appearance of the familiar-looking female administrator.

She took a single look at Feng’s convulsing body and scanned the area, noticing the remnants of the stone before speaking.

“Goddamnit. Did you just try to cultivate a pure monster mana core without appropriate rituals and protections… The feedback systems are unable to deal with this kind of sudden injection of mana. Trigger system override – increase system drain and emergency manual ejection in three.”

Feng felt a sudden weakness as mana poured out of his body uncontrollably, the foreign mana leaving alongside it and the pain gradually decreased but continued for the three long seconds.

Blinking open his eyes, James still felt the aftershock of the pain continuing in his body only to slowly fade to occasional sharp jolts as the pod released its hold on him…

But a dull throbbing ache in his head overpowered that feeling and his muscles still trembled as he shakily moved over to the kitchen to grab a glass of water.

*CRACK* *CRRWWNNNGGG*

To his shock, the glass shattered into tiny splinters as he gripped it… James stared at the glass shards with an uncomprehending look and more precisely at his hands and the almost pristine condition of it with only a few faint red lines marking it.

‘What on earth.’

Shaking it off as an adrenaline surge and luck that he was unharmed, James carefully swept up the mess before retrieving a hard plastic cup to drink from instead.

Deciding that he really needed to sleep off the dull throbbing pain in his skull and the phantom pains still wrecking his body, James collapsed into his bed.

“James? You alright?”

“Nggh…”

James opened his eyes a crack and squinted to make out the blurry outline of Leena before wearily rubbing his eyes.

“Leena? Shouldn’t you be at work? I thought you can only come over in two days’ time?”

James yawned as he questioned her with his mind still foggy from sleep.

“It HAS been two days! I came over to check on you after work and you were sleeping soundly and refused to budge… that was nearly five hours ago.”

He started slightly as the usually calm Leena raised her voice ad exclaimed in response to his question.

“Huh? But… when I went to sleep it was only 3am? … I slept for more than twenty hours?”

James leaped up and stared at his clock only to see it blink 11.42pm back at him, before wincing as his sudden movement sent light jolts of pain through his body again which was caught by a worried-looking Leena.

“What happened? You never sleep that long! Did you fall sick or injure yourself somehow?”

James looked at her for a moment as he recollected the memory of immense pain and shuddered involuntarily.

“I… was experimenting in Ascension and I screwed up. It was terrible… The pain was like every single bone in my body was being crushed and my whole body was being twisted and grinded. Worst of all, somehow all the pain bypassed the neural limiters and pain threshold cap set in the system. I could feel everything… Then- an admin came? I’m not sure at that point but somehow she ejected me from the system and the pain was lessened but still continued to a much smaller degree even when I was back…”

James paused and stammered as he slowly explained what happened to Leena, and she could clearly tell that James was far from his usual collected and confident self. Sensing his vulnerability, Leena gently folded him into a hug in response without a word and slowly rubbed his back, providing whatever support she could.

It took some time for James to regain his composure and went about cleaning himself up. After a refreshing shower, he stepped out of the bathroom to the enticing aroma of Leena’s home-cooking and his stomach rumbled reminding him that he has yet to eat in more than a day…

Quickly grabbing a plate, James grimaced as his hand overshot the plate and grazed the table instead. His movements has all been oddly off since he woke up and he had to devote extra attention and care to perform even simple motions as though his muscles are oddly... more responsive as his small actions often become overly large or strong.

As the pair settled down to eat their late supper, Leena finally broached the topic on her mind and spoke.

“Dear… do you want to visit the doctor to get a check-up? Maybe we should also call the company and ensure that your pod is not malfunctioning.”

James wolfing down his food, quickly shook his head out of pure habit of avoiding doctors and merely said.

“I’m fine now… It’s probably just a bug that wasn’t found before, but I’ll check in with the company to be safe.”

Leena reached over and placed her dainty hand over James’ arm and looked at him intensely, “If you are sure… But please, please make sure you are safe alright?”

Feeling the care and love written all over her expression, James’ visage softened and he gave her a gentle smile.

“Don’t worry dear, I will do a check with Apex to make sure everything is working fine alright? After all, I want to make sure it’s perfectly safe for you as well! Your own Ascension system should be arriving by tomorrow right?”

Leena nodded eagerly though her enthusiasm was dampened by her worry for James.

“Yeah! I took leave for till weekend for the launch and to play with you!”

“So do you have any plans for what sort of character build you want in game? Warrior as usual? Or maybe a spell-caster this time?”

James drew his girlfriend into a conversation about Ascension and distracted her from his problem successfully with Leena soon animatedly discussing the possibilities with James.

James awoke to some banging noises and sounds of heavy objects being moved around in his house as well as the familiar warmth of Leena being absent from beside him. Quickly throwing on a t-shirt, he walked out of the room to check on what was happening

“Huh?”

James looked confused as he saw Leena watching over an Apex representative setting up another capsule next to his current system.

Alerted to his presence, Leena turned around and looked sheepish for a moment before sliding up to James and kissing him before she spoke.

“Good morning sleepyhead! Uh… This is well, I thought it would be nice to play together and you said I can come over anytime anyway didn’t you? … and well my rented place doesn’t really have enough space for the pod… Please say it’s ok?”

Quirking an eyebrow at her, James looked hard at her for a moment before melting under her puppy-dog eyes.

“Sure, I’m fine with it. A little heads-up will be nice next time though?”

Leena smiled sweetly and replied, “You mean like when you forgot to inform me about you getting on the priority list and getting bought out of your job?”

James winced and hastily placated her. “I mean it’s completely fine. Don’t worry about it!”

He hurriedly changed the topic and added.

“Anyway, Apex replied and apparently I found an untested bug in the system, they mentioned they will be adding in safeguards to prevent any such repeat incidents so everything should be fine. Though they did mention that there might be some damage done to my character due to the bug which they tried their best to mitigate.”

Leena looked worried for a moment before responding. “Well, I guess if they say it’s safe… Why don’t you go in first and check up on your character before coming over to meet me at the town square? I’ll probably take a while more since I have to wait for the installation to finish and go through character creation as well.”

James nodded and slipped away to enter the pod though his heart started beating faster with trepidation as the lid slowly closed over him…

Within a single blink, Feng opened his eyes to the same room he was in earlier and gingerly checked his body for any injuries or pains.

After assuring himself that he is fine, Feng looked around and noticed Alicia resting on the table with books scattered around her.

Deciding not to awaken her yet, Feng clicked on the flashing notifications and triggered them to unleash a long list of windows.

Congratulations! Your efforts manipulating mana has earned you:

+2 Intelligence

+1 Wisdom

+6 Willpower

Mana Control has leveled up to Novice 7

Mana Absorption has leveled up to Intermediate 1 Mana Core Absorption Ritual: Partial Success

Administrator Special Note: Due to your insufficient skill level and innovative but crude methods, your attempt at absorbing mana from the monster core has backfired despite your success as your body is not ready for the influx of mana. Administrative override to purge the excess mana from your system to prevent backlash to your real body has resulted in loss of your stats and levels.

You have lost:

-24 Levels & all stat points from these levels

-10 Intelligence

-10 Wisdom

-10 Dexterity

-10 Agility

-10 Endurance

-10 Strength

-10 Constitution

You have gained:

[Tough Skin] Trait

[???] Trait

+20 Strength

+20 Constitution Trait Obtained: Tough Skin

(Passive)

+10 Constitution

+25% Resistance to physical damage Trait Obtained: ???

(Passive)

+2000 Mana

Unknown Effects

Looking at the screens, Feng’s expression darkened and he swore loudly.

“WHAT THE F***! I LOST HOW MANY LEVELS?!?”

“Huh? Wha? … FENG! YOU ARE OKAY! What happened? We heard an explosion sound and rushed over but you disappeared… How come you were gone so suddenly and for nearly two days?”

Alicia awakened by Feng’s loud swearing, after a moment of disorientation quickly jumped up and sprang at him and grabbed hold of him in a hug while launching a barrage of questions.

“Uh… Yea, maybe you can let me go and I can tell you what happened? Where is Rania? ”

Feng looked around with his arms raised awkwardly around the girl as the rather pretty girl pressed herself against him as he replied.

“Huh? OH!”

Alicia blushed as she realized the position she was in and hurriedly backed away. Ducking her head and letting her fringe cover her face, she spoke in a much more subdued fashion.

“Um, Rania thought you got kidnapped again and left the city to try to hunt down the kidnappers… I think she met up with Head Trader Steele and heard something about tracking down the Red Cloaks before she left.”

Feng swore again as he realized the misunderstanding that must have ensued and his inability to catch up with Rania as he had to meet up with Leena.

“Damn. Could you take a message to Kuron and let him know that it wasn’t a kidnapping but a mana experiment gone wrong and see if he can inform Rania? I was basically sent back to my world due to the experiment screwing up and took some time to recover before I came back.”

Alicia nodded and departed immediately, aware of the urgency of the matter and the possible trouble Rania might be getting into due to the misunderstanding.

After her departure, Feng scanned the room to see if he could recover anything else from the incident. His eyes quickly moved past the large burn mark and came to rest upon the bits of the monster core that were carefully gathered by someone and placed in a pile on the table.

Moving over to the monster core fragments, Feng carefully inspected them with his senses and could feel no sign of mana within the fragments, with them being as inert as a common pebble.

‘Damn it. Man… Seems like I wasted a valuable resource, if the partial success got me all these traits along with so many penalties, a complete success would probably have given me a lot more without the downsides to boot…’

Sighing at the experiment gone bad, Feng was once again reminded of Shadow’s advice and how things went south due to him jumping in too quickly without forethought…

Feng shrugged away the thoughts and decided to continue moving ahead, after the experiment wasn’t a complete failure, the physical resistance is a significant boon for sure. Gathering his things and checking through his equipment, Feng then left the library and headed towards the town square to wait for Leena’s character to appear.

Feng reached the square in no time and looked around for any signs of her in vain before smacking his head in realization.

‘Time moves twice as quickly in Athal, meaning the installation probably took longer than I estimated and she is probably still in character creation at the moment.’

Sitting himself down in a patch of grass at the corner the square, Feng decided to not waste time waiting and fell into a meditative state trying to examine the damage done to his mana and improve his skills manipulating it.

The mana contained within his body was definitely lessened by a large amount but besides the mana streams flowing through his body, there was a very slight brown mist of mana pervading throughout his body. Following the brown mana with his sense, Feng was eventually led to a tiny core of dense green and brown mana around his stomach area. Concentrating further, Feng tried to nudge the core to circulate mana only for it to refuse to budge even the slightest bit…

“Woahhh…”

“Dang!”

Feng was snapped out of his meditative state as the usually quiet town square increased in noise. Feng opened his eyes to check out what the commotion was about and gasped as he saw the reason.

“Good Lord!”