* * *
Joe woke in the morning, stretching in the perfect peace of enough sleep and the perfect awakening that cos from slowly drifting and just becoming aware, the mont between sleep and awake lost in the perfect transition. Just, sohow, being awake and ready to face the day but not knowing how long you've been awake.
Joe allowed himself to just rest in the mont, letting ti slip by until the perfect mont to rouse struck him. He felt a full body stretch hit him and he took in a deep breath before letting it out slowly and standing. Now.
It was the perfect ti, and he sat up and looked around the room, then suddenly had to stifle a giggle when he noticed Garnedell and Zilnek crashed on Zilenk's bed. They looked like they had fallen asleep in the middle of a conversation, Zilnek with his head on his pillow and Garnedell laid out at the foot of the bed, both their legs and feet thrust to the other side of the bed, draping across each other randomly. Zilnek's foot was actually in Garnedell's face and Zilnek was spooning Garnedell's leg. Joe took several deep breaths to calm himself, then tore his head away and moved away to the corner of the room behind the door. Ti to practice my mana stuff.
Joe sat down and once again began his mana release practice, his mind settling on what he needed and prepared to push hard when he suddenly stopped in shock as he watched mana flow from him smoothly, perfectly, and as easily as thinking about it. That's… that easy? It can't be that easy, right? Why am I?
Joe didn't fight too much with the sudden gift and quickly closed his eyes, sensing his body and what was happening. He started and stopped the process several tis until finally he felt a strange twinge; an odd muscle group or so kind of conscious control he'd never noticed before deep in his torso just behind, or in front? Where is it? Joe couldn't quite place it, but could only recognize it as being around his heart. It was centered on his heart sohow, but just as he knew it was centered on his heart, he also knew that it wasn't his heart. It was sothing else.
He began once again accepting and releasing the mana continuously and soon was able to easily feel that 'thing' that was allowing him to do such. It's so… easy. He opened his eyes and watched the results, each tremor resulting in a fresh wave of mana or its cessation. Whatever had happened, he'd learned it pretty quickly and easily, which Joe found rather surprising.
For the first ti in his mana practice, it wasn't physical exhaustion that ended his practice but actually running out of mana as it emptied out. Joe verified by flipping open his status and saw his mana at zero, but rapidly refilling. Joe watched his mana regenerating for a few monts, counting and thinking carefully before having found the timing. Huh… about five minutes to get my mana back, I guess. Well, that gives ti. Joe decided to use the five minutes to take a look at his new job as he'd not taken a look at it yesterday, completely distracted.
Status
Blessings
Current Job
Available Jobs
Current Skills
All Skills
Log
Joe McConnell
Status
Physical Resistances
Magical Resistances
HP
29.00
Physical:
Wind
14.5
SP
29.00
Piercing
0.00
Water
14.5
MP
145.00
Crushing
0.00
Earth
14.5
Attack
29.00
Slashing
0.00
Fire
14.5
Defense
29.00
Ice
14.5
Magic
116.00
Gravity
14.5
Magic Defense
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232.00
Magnetic
14.5
Strength
29.00
Light
14.5
Dexterity
29.00
Mana-ologist
29
Space
14.5
Agility
29.00
Spirit
14.5
Speed
29.00
ntal
14.5
Endurance
29.00
Sound
14.5
IQ
348.00
Electricity
14.5
Wisdom
232.00
Will
203.00
Learning
145.00
Luck
0.00
As expected, most of the gains were in magic and ntal stats, so he wasn't too excited by that since he'd already beat his minimum by quite a bit for all of them. In fact, his ntal stats were getting down right ridiculous and he wondered if the system had interpreted and labeled the 'IQ' stat correctly. Wasn't IQ exponential? Or maybe … what is it when you multiply by ten each ti… Joe couldn't quite rember, but he definitely knew that the IQ ranges were not simply linear. The most people averaged within a couple dozen points of a hundred. He couldn't rember but it was sothing ridiculous like ninety percent. Every five or ten IQ points up or down the scale dropped the numbers incredibly till IQs over one hundred forty were so rare that they were less than one percent of a population. He only knew this because of research relating to his own IQ. If he rembered his random internet surfing correctly, he would need sothing approaching trillions upon trillions up trillions of people for him to even have a chance to exist in a population. Even then, he felt a bit certain that he was missing a significant population of people and that he was underestimating just how intelligent an IQ of a thousand, which he had now, would be.
I don't think this word ans what you think it ans! Joe chuckled before glancing at the rest of his stats and really only happy with what resistances he got, which were pretty significant. In any case, nothing seed exciting and he swapped out to his available skills page and saw two new skills, one of which very much explained his current circumstances: mana assistance and mana point assistance. For the first ti in a long ti, he found that he needed to actually delve into what these skills ant.
What is mana assistance?
Mana assistance: A tool to allow the control of mana to release or restrain and applying various effects.
Oh! Well… that explains a lot. Joe focused back on his mana releasing practice and grinned. Cool… but not very useful. I guess nice to help? But… why when I can just learn and do it myself? And anyway, it's obvious that it allows to control and release, but what are the 'various' effects? Oh well, maybe magus theorist can … wait, this is a scholarly job, so educational theorist? Anyway, next, I guess.
What is mana point assistance?
Mana point assistance: A tool to allow the control of mana points to release, restrain, develop mana points and to apply various effects.
Alright, you know what? Soone's freakin' lazy! Who's copying and pasting the explanations! This is just stupid! The thing is useless! Why do they even have the system when no one can read and even if you can read, it tells us useless crap!
Joe sighed and took a look at his status again and found his mana only a point or two from… oops, max now! Joe laughed and went back to playing with his mana, releasing it out in waves and spent as much of his focus more on what he was doing than whatever it was the skill was doing. It seed that skills weren't required, but helped quite a bit, giving an automatic ability. I wonder what the skill levels an, then.
In any case, Joe spent most of his effort on trying to understand what his body was doing. When the mana ran out, he wondered what to do next, when he realized he had another skill he could ss with. Mana points… but I don't have any yet, right? According to what Garnedell said.
With a lack of mana, Joe decided he might as well try and use the mana point skill to see what would happen. But, he then realized that he had no idea what to do. He floundered for a bit trying figure out what to do. Right, well, I had no idea what to do with the mana either, but the skill made it… automatic?
Right… mana points. I shouldn't have any but I want them dancing right in front of my nos…
Joe blinked in surprise when he found dozens of points dancing in front of his nose, moving easily to his will doing exactly what he wanted. He smiled a bit, watching the small points dancing in front of his eyes. Ok… um… should I tell … maybe not. But… Garnedell could help, at least? Yeah… He then made them wheel around his body, spiraling up and down from toes to head and back down again. He spent quite a bit of ti with his mana points, wondering how much control he had over the points both as a group and individually. He was able to work with them as a group, simply enough, willing them to go where he wanted.
When he started trying to separate them and think of them individually, he was able to send them each on their own orbit or individual path where he willed. It wasn't difficult to have them spinning in pretty crazy eccentric orbits around just about anything he wanted. He soon had an almost perfect representation of a sphere outlined by the very rapid revolutions of his points revolving on shifting planes all perpendicular to each other. Once he had the pattern set, the points moved exactly to his will quite easily and didn't need to be thought of again.
After successfully making a poor sphere, he went on to make other shapes, his most successful being a triangular based pyramid with each point used to describe the periter of one of the upright triangles and the base triangle outlined by each triangle's base. It was with the pyramid that Joe learned the points pretty much didn't have any form of montum or mass. Or both? The points hit each corner of the triangle and took the hundred twenty degree angle turn with absolute precision. The point never even ca to a stop, imdiately taking each corner without any drop in speed. It was such a strange thing to see that Joe almost didn't believe his eyes, expectations demanding the things to at least curve a bit to make the turn.
When he thought that, he noticed the points suddenly began gaining so form of montum and mass as they began sliding around the curves, the points of the triangles losing their sharpness. Huh… so very much influenced even by my thoughts, despite what I intended. Joe imdiately set the points back on their original paths, resetting his expectations. The triangles imdiately regained their perfect shape and Joe let the pyramid outline play in front of him for a few more monts before ending the pyramid and deciding to try sothing a bit more daunting.
Joe set to work making a simple cartoon flower with most points making the petals, others making the stem, and only a couple making the typical two leave pattern below the flower. He found himself struggling quite a bit more than he expected to, already having succeeded in half a dozen different three dinsional shapes using all the points in different ways. What's going on? Why is it so… hard? The points froze in place and began fading as his thoughts turned away from them. He spent a bit of ti pondering it before deciding to break it up into parts. He had the points make the stem very easily, with the leaves proving almost as easy as well. But when he tried to get the flower petals set, he found it a struggle to get going. He'd ended up having to close his eyes and struggling to force the image into his mind into utter clarity, detailing exactly what he wanted the points doing. It took him a half dozen tries before he finally got the points following the pattern he wanted and it was with this that he realized he needed the pattern to be Euclidean. If the pattern he created in his mind failed to match actual reality, his point would fail to follow what he had intended.
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