The hobgoblin with a spear cos over and bangs his spear on the cell bars, probably in an attempt to get us to be quiet. He leaves after rrick and I shut up.
Hmm, might as well get so more mana practice in while I have nothing to do.
I sit back down in a crisscross position at the back of my cell and enter ditation once again.
It’s much easier to feel my mana now that my body is acting like a big reservoir for it instead of absorbing every little bit coming from my heart. I keep watching the waves of mana join the rest, slowly getting bigger and bigger while I try anything to interact with it. Nothing works. The only use I have found for mana is [Space Control], so I wait for my mana to fill up enough to activate it for longer, hopefully.
I watch my mana regenerate for about thirty minutes before I decide it’s enough to test out [Space Control] again. I try to pay attention to how it actually ‘uses’ the mana stored in my body, hoping to replicate that myself.
I activate [Space Control], and once again it drains every last bit of mana from as it fills my head with an acute awareness of my surroundings. I focus intently on the activation, trying to glean any secrets about mana or skills that could help escape this camp. But when the skill activates, it just ‘takes’ the mana. It’s hard to understand what it did. I’ll need more tests to get this down. At least I’m getting used to it just dumping a bunch of info into my head.
So that’s what I do. I watch my mana fill up for about half an hour before I dump all of it into [Space Control]. I use [Mana Sense] to watch the mana every ti I activate [Space Control], and after nearly three hours I finally understand a little bit of how my mana moves. I can see how the skill siphons it from all over my body in a specific pattern that I try to replicate.
I let the mana in my body fill up again, going over in my mind how to replicate what the skill did. After another thirty minutes I feel I am ready to ‘manually’ activate this skill by feeding mana into it, as opposed to letting it take all that it wants.
I take a deep breath, slling the foulness and stench of the goblin camp before I begin my next mana experint.
I ‘push’ my mana into the skill, trying to replicate what I saw earlier, and it mostly works. The area revealed to is jumbled and confusing and only around five feet around , but it works.
[You have leveled up a passive skill]
[Mana Sense] lvl 3
[You have leveled up an active skill]
[Space Control] lvl 2
[You have gained a new active skill]
[Mana Shaping] lvl 1
[Mana Shaping]? A new skill? Is this what rrick ant when he said you don’t need a skill to do what a skill does? Did I ‘force’ myself to unlock [Mana Shaping] because I did what the skill does without actually having the skill? Hmm, if that hobgoblin wasn’t eyeing us like his next al, I would ask rrick.
Now my practice changes. Instead of just watching my mana regenerate, I try to use my new skill to move it a little bit.
I start small, just trying to move the mana in my left pointer finger back into my palm. When I activate [Mana Shaping], it feels completely different than [Space Control]. My new skill ‘consus’ no mana, but instead it feels like I reach out with a phantom ‘limb’ toward the mana in my body, granting a control over it I did not have earlier.
Using a decent amount of concentration, I manage to move the mana, keeping it in place for as long as I can. After I feel that I have a good hold on the mana in my palm, I gather all the mana from my fingers and hold that in place too. I manage to get the mana in my left arm all the way up to my elbow before I lose control and it all goes rushing back down my arm, putting my body at an equilibrium.
[You have leveled up an active skill]
[Mana Shaping] lvl 2
I turn my attention back to [Space Control], and feed mana into it like before. It’s much easier now that I have a new skill that grants better control over mana. But this 'manual' thod of skill activation requires much more concentration than a ‘normal’ activation while also taking less mana. I manage to control the skill to show a five-foot radius around , instead of using the mana to get as big an area as possible.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to for the genuine story.
I manage to keep the skill active for a few seconds this ti, and it feels much better than before—no headache for starters. The area around that it reveals I start to call my “spatial sense,” and I am able to keep it in a bubble at a five-foot radius from my chest.
I can also feel what I believe to be space itself all around while [Space Control] is active. It perates everything and gives the feeling of a fabric stretched taut in three dinsions. It is a strange sensation, and it leaves just as the skill runs out of mana.
[You have leveled up an active skill]
[Space Control] lvl 3
A cold splash of water on my head and chest shocks back to reality.
My head turns to look around in a panic, causing my shoulder wound to flare in pain at the sudden movent.
A small goblin is standing outside my cell with a wooden bucket and ladle, and it looks like he has a small smile on his face.
That’s the first ti I've seen anything other than anger, or maybe viciousness, in one of their eyes.
It reaches toward with another ladle full of water, this ti handing it to . I take it and drink, as the water looks clean and slls fine.
I hand the ladle back to the goblin, and he goes to the next cell, rrick’s cell. The goblin looks like it wants to splash him as well, but doesn’t for so reason. It bangs the ladle on the poles to get his attention and then hands him a ladle full of water, which he drinks.
The goblin continues on to the next cell, but when it goes to throw water on Stella, rrick gives it a nacing glare, and it once again decides to behave itself and hands her the water. The unconscious and injured elderly woman in the last cell gets nothing, as the goblin leaves after Stella. She looks much better than I expected. Her clothes are bloody, but there are no visible wounds on her, and she has a determined look on her face.
After the rude interruption, I go back to practice but focus on [Mana Sense] and [Mana Shaping] for now, as I want to have a reserve of mana in case I need it for sothing. I manage to get much better at controlling my mana by continuing the sa exercise from earlier. I try to pull as much mana from my arm into my chest as possible and hold it there for as long as I can.
I am able to get both mana-related skills to level four over a few hours before I decide to test [Space Control] again, this ti with a much bigger mana reserve to work with after waiting a few hours.
[Space Control] has to do more than just give spatial senses, right? I can feel what I think is space around . I should try to do sothing with that. It could be my first steps toward teleportation or sothing actually useful for escaping here. How cool would that be, to just teleport away?
I sit down on the cold floor of my cell and put my hands out in front of , like I’m holding an invisible soccer ball. I feed mana into [Space Control] using my newly leveled [Mana Shaping] to get a more accurate and precise control. I use the skill to create a bubble of spatial senses only in the area between my hands, ignoring all of my surroundings to save on mana costs.
I push more mana into the skill with the intention of ‘shrinking’ a small amount of space in between my palms, or sothing similar. I don’t really know what I’m doing, but it feels like sothing that I should be able to do with [Space Control], so I continue.
Sweat beads on my forehead as I concentrate, willing the space between my palms to get smaller. It doesn’t want to listen. But my skill is called [Space Control], not [Space Suggestion], so I feed the rest of the mana into the skill while concentrating harder. Right before my mana runs dry, I feel it.
For a split second, space warps. I feel a small orb of space get slightly smaller, and just as fast, it fixes itself before my spatial senses turn off from lack of mana being fed into the skill. I feel the skill level up yet again, today.
I sit in my cell, breathing hard and sweating, a huge smile on my face as the sun starts to set after a day full of mana practice.
I don’t even care that it did nothing, or so little it might as well be nothing. That was my first use of magic to actually affect my surroundings, and I know it’s just the beginning of what’s to co. Especially if what rrick said is true. I might be here a while before I can get back ho, if I don’t die first.
“What the hell was that?” I hear the ever jovial man from the cell next door say, exasperated.
I look over at him, grin still on my face, as I say, “I finally managed to use my skill for sothing. I unlocked it from a [Quest] this morning and have been practicing all day.”
His eyes go wide as he hears this. “Harlot’s tits, man. You spend all day looking like you are going to shit yourself, and then you go ahead and create a spatial distortion! And you got a spatial manipulation skill from a [Quest]? What the hell did it have you do?”
“It was just to survive for an entire day. And the skill is [Space Control].”
His eyes bulge even more, and he takes a few seconds to calm himself down before speaking again. “A [Control] skill! You initiates are even more blessed than... than anything! It took almost five years to get a high-tier manipulation skill for my primary affinity, and the [System] just hands you [Space Control]."
I just shrug, unable to be unhappy at the mont. “It seems fair to . I was just abducted here with no explanation and expected to survive. It makes sense they would at least give good tools.”
rrick puts his hand to his chin in a contemplative gesture. “That actually makes sense. But it still pisses off that I had to work so hard for a lesser skill.” He grumbles while looking at the floor. “Anyway, it’s getting dark. You should sleep and regenerate mana for tomorrow. You will need it, probably.”
“What does that an? It's pretty ominous to say things like that without an explanation.”
He never gave an explanation.
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