Thinking about the theory that mana might want to move from higher-density areas to lower-density ones gave Nate an idea of how to move the mana around in himself. Arikanvil had said that Nate definitely had mana, and since he was constantly tingling, he figured the mana in him was much lower than the mana around him. So, it kept trying to burrow into him. But what if he tried to force the mana in him into one location? Would it leak out if it was a higher concentration than his surroundings? Looking down at the silver ring on his finger, he resolved to try.
Reaching up into his nook, he grabbed his hoodie and pulled it on before sitting down. It took a moment for him to ignore the feeling of his bare ass on cold stone, but once he had, he began to focus on the feelings inside of him. There was a tingle, just like on his skin. Harder to sense, but definitely there. Pushing and prodding at the feeling, he eventually worked out that it would respond to his thoughts. That confused Nate. Why would it respond to his thoughts? How could the act of thinking influence it? Or was it just his imagination? Either way, he kept pushing at it, slowly building up the feeling in his finger with the silver ring on it. His finger slowly started to feel like it was burning as he pushed at the mana, and Nate got the sense that it wasn’t enough. Instead, he willed the mana from his finger into the ring.
In his mind bloomed a sense of the ring and its dimensions. Multiple thoughts went through Nate's mind immediately. First, he was no longer a poor kid from the suburbs. Nate wasn’t sure what Arikanvil thought was needed to fund a human, but the pile of gold in one corner of the dimensional storage would’ve been enough to buy a house with change to spare back on Earth. He’d have to see how far that would stretch on this planet, but he figured he was pretty well off for the time being.
Beyond that, there was a closed book, likely with details about where his Dead Realm lay. Finally, Nate counted twenty thumb-sized, diamond-shaped gems in a small pile, all glowing with mana. The mana gems glowed in the colours of the rainbow, and he focused on a pale blue one. As he did so, he felt it vanish from his mental perception before appearing in his hand.
Nate had expected it to burn his skin, being concentrated with mana, but whatever the gem was made from seemed to be able to seal the mana inside. Bringing the pale blue gem close to his face, Nate looked over it. Inside, he could barely make out some shapes that he thought might be runes. Was that how it worked? Runes to keep the mana stored? Then how do I get the mana out? It had just been pushing on it mentally when the mana was inside of him. Could it be that simple?
Nate focused on releasing a sliver of mana from the gem, pushing mentally against the mana. After a minute of nothing happening, he brought the gem back up to his eyes and turned it over slowly. It didn’t take long to find what he was after. Two small runes were joined by a line carved into the outside of the gem near one of the tips. Reading them, he found it easy to tell what they did.
The first had a few sigils that amounted to Rebuff and Mana. The second had the sigil of an up and down arrow connected by a line, which Nate could tell meant Both Directions and a sigil that meant Release. So, clearly, the second rune, when activated, would release mana from inside the gem. He realised that the first rune was meant to prevent the second rune from activating due to ambient mana. Nate liked that idea. Seemed basic to him but clever at the same time.
The lines also showed him how he could connect runes and make them interact with each other. Nate focused on the second rune and put his finger near it, trying to mentally pull at the mana around his finger and draw it towards himself. As he did so, the tingling on his finger increased slightly. Moments later, he felt a torrent of mana come out of the Both Directions rune. The rush of mana made him lose his focus, and the gem instantly stopped releasing mana. For a moment, he basked in the joy of figuring out how to work with the mana gem. The moment passed quickly, and he looked back down at the two runes on the mana gem.
That little experiment gave him an idea, and he put the gem down gently before grabbing his pocketknife. Picking up the gem from the stone floor, he moved over to a decently intact piece of vine that was close to the size of his hand. Nate got to work on it, slowly carving the wood until it was flat enough for him to carve a rune into it. Taking his time to recreate the Barrier rune again, Nate made the rune smaller so he could fit two runes on the wood. The rune looked the same as the last Barrier rune he had drawn, and no System message popped up to tell him he’d improved the quality. He was clearly missing something on that front, but it wasn’t really surprising, given the basic materials he was working with.
Nate shrugged and got to work on the second rune. Copying from the rune on the gem that blocked mana from entering the rune, he recreated the lines connecting the two rings as he carved the geometric shapes and tiny sigils into the wood. Nate took his time, and his arm was aching by the time he was finished. As he did so, another System message flickered at the edge of his vision.
Congratulations on creating a Mana Exclusion Rune (Journeyman Quality).Your achievement has been recorded.
Walk your Path. Reach your Goal. Become One with Mana. This story is hosted at g.com.
Nate smiled with pleasure at the acknowledgment, even if the quality was apparently lower. But the achievement wasn’t why he’d created the rune. Holding the mana gem against the barrier rune, Nate focused on the two Mana Exclusion runes. It took some effort to split his focus between the two, but eventually, he got the trick of it and mentally pulled the mana away from them, effectively turning off the Mana Exclusion runes. Two things happened in quick succession.
Mana blasted out of the gem into his Barrier rune, and then, a moment later, his hand and the gem were pushed away from the rune on the wood. That broke his focus, and the mana stopped leaking out of the gem. Nate leaned over the piece of wood, which now looked like it was hovering a thumb length off the stone floor. Poking it gently with his finger, he was stopped the same thumbs length above the wood by an invisible barrier. Exploring it with his hand, he found the wood was surrounded by a perfect invisible sphere. Closing his hand around it, he picked it up, holding onto the barrier as the wood stayed in the centre. It seemed if the barrier was moved, and so was the object inside. To Nate, that seemed like something worth remembering. I wonder how tough this barrier is?
He turned and threw the barrier sphere gently at the wall. Tracking the piece of wood, Nate watched it almost hit the wall and then fall back to the floor, bouncing once before settling, still hovering with the barrier intact. Nate tried again, picking it up and throwing it as hard as possible at the wall. Again, it rebounded off the wall without any sign of damage, bouncing a few more times on the floor this time. The third throw was enough to break the barrier, and Nate found that he could not feel any release of mana. He smiled, though. There had been a few answers to a couple of his questions.
Firstly, it looked like the barrier absorbed some of the force when impacted. It hadn’t bounced nearly as much as Nate had expected it to. It certainly wasn’t like throwing a tennis ball at a wall. Secondly, the impacts had depleted the mana, somehow expending it. The wood was still intact as were the runes.
The problem was the barrier rune he had created using the All-Directions sigil. Nate was guessing, but he thought such sigils could be used to guide the shape of the barrier. The All-Directions sigil was four arrows pointing outwards, evenly distributed with two lines connecting them and intersecting. With a little experimenting, Nate found that if he did a single arrow, he seemed to be able to recognize the meaning. A left arrow meant Left Direction. A right arrow for Right Direction. Seemed straightforward to him. Time to get to work.
Nate found another piece of wood and began creating the Barrier and Mana Exclusion rune again, this time with the Barrier rune shaped sporting a Left Direction sigil. Carving wasn’t something he was heavily experienced in, and doing it constantly started to feel like a workout. Losing track of time, he was covered in sweat by the time he had finished his second attempt at the rune. The lack of a System message was notable to Nate, and he figured the direction sigils weren’t the important part of a Barrier rune, and he was just making minor modifications to its shape, which the System didn’t consider significant.
Activating the new rune with his mana gem, Nate felt the mana get absorbed into the rune. Testing it with his hand, he found there was a barrier projecting out of the left side of the wood. Running his hand over it, he found it was a half sphere in shape, as though the barrier directly projected from the left of the Barrier rune like a hose spraying outwards.
Holding his mana gem against the rune and increasing the amount of mana injected into it, he could feel the barrier grow until it was bigger than his head. As he did so, he felt the wood grow hotter in his hand and, in a panic, threw it into the hallway and ducked behind the statue. A moment later, he heard the sound of another explosion. Rubbing his ringing ears, Nate walked out and looked down at the small indent in the dirt floor in the corridor where the wood had exploded. Small fragments of the piece of vine were all over the corridor. Well, that explained the explosion earlier.
It also gave him an idea. It was time to see about getting some food. He grabbed the mana gem and his pocket knife. He noted the mana gem’s brightness hadn’t decreased significantly due to his experimentation. Tucking them both into the pockets of his hoodie, he set off down the corridor and towards the valley. Pausing at the temple's exit, he took in the area again. It truly was beautiful, he thought. Picturesque is how he would have described it to someone. Taking a moment to scan the valley, Nate couldn’t spot any disturbances in the lake, though he did spot a few of the boars on the other side of the valley, away from the forest below him.
Trekking down into the trees carefully, he quickly found what he was after. A fallen log, a few metres in length, in between a cluster of trees. Nate began painstakingly carving into the log, stripping back the bark till he had wood to work with before carving his Barrier rune into it. He contemplated including a Mana Exclusion rune but decided it didn’t matter much since the goal was to overload the log with mana anyway. He’d just run away if he felt the heat begin to rise. He was getting faster at his rune carving, and after he was happy with the result, he tested them, injecting just a little mana into the Barrier rune from his mana gem. Find the original chapter at novelping(.)com.
It worked perfectly, creating a small hand-width barrier on the side of the log facing away from him. Nate nodded, pleased. His plan was simple enough. He was going to try and lure one of the boars to him, then overload the barrier rune and try to make the fallen log explode. He figured it should work. If the log didn’t explode, he’d have the barrier between the boar and him. If it did work surely that would be enough to kill the boar, right? It wasn’t the best plan, but his stomach was already grumbling, and he was at least confident in running away.
Nate settled in next to the log to wait. The last boar had been able to smell him. Hopefully, the next would too. He knew that the noise of the explosion would either attract more animals or, at least, potentially attract any other predators. But he figured he’d have time to grab the boar, stuff it in his spatial storage, and flee the scene of the crime before that became an issue. He wasn’t sure how long he waited, but eventually, he heard the snuffling sound of a boar approaching. Looking over the top of the log, he could see the creature enter the little copse of trees. Nate focused and began charging the Barrier rune. The heat coming off the wood happened quicker than expected, and he felt the tinge of fear caused by his miscalculation. Jumping up to run, he saw that the boar noticed his presence and squealed loudly as it charged at him. Sprinting in the opposite direction towards one of the trees, he ducked behind it at the last moment before the roar of an explosion almost deafened him, and splinters of wood flew everywhere.
Rubbing his ears for the third time since he’d woken up today, he peeked around the tree. The log was mostly demolished, and the boar was lying off to the side on the grass. Nate smiled, about to cheer, but then he heard a huff from the creature. It slowly climbed back to its feet as Nate stared in horror. The side of the boar was a mess of small cuts, and it looked like the splinters had taken out an eye, but the beast was still raring to go. It shook its head a few times before its remaining red eye focused on him.
His already elevated heart rate spiked, and he immediately started trying to climb the tree. Pulling himself up to the lowest branch, he screamed as he almost fell off the branch when the whole tree rocked. Looking down, he saw the boar backing up for another charge and lunged for the tree trunk, hugging it for all he was worth as the tree shook again from the impact. Glancing down, he realised the tree had started to slant.
The boar was preparing to charge again, and his panicked mind tried to come up with a scenario where this didn’t end up with him as pig food. Pulling out the mana gem and his pocketknife in desperation, he scratched down the side of the gem over both runes as hard as he could with the blade. Nothing happened, his blade not even leaving a sliver of a mark on the gem. Growing desperate, he thought through what he had on hand. His spatial storage device! There were other mana gems in it. Maybe one of those could scratch this mana gem. Reaching out with his mana, he felt the tree shake again and start to lean further. Pulling out a second mana gem, he clung to the tree branch with his legs. He tried to drag the sharp edge of the gem across the mana gem he had already held. This time, he managed to leave a scratch through two of the sigils, messing up the geometric shapes of the runes in the process. Cracks began to form along the inside of the gem, and it instantly started to burn his hand. He held onto it only long enough to throw it at the boar.
Landing at its feet, the boar bent down to sniff the gem before it exploded with such force that the tree finished falling over, tossing him to the ground in the process. Landing on his back, he rolled once before coming to a rest face down on the grass. Scared that the boar was still coming, he tried to get to his feet as quickly as possible. It was slower than he would’ve liked as he was still disoriented from the explosion. Looking over, he could see a crater waist-deep in the ground where the gem had been. He frantically searched for the boar, and as he spotted it across the clearing from him, he felt mana rush into his body in a large wave.
The pressure from the mana burrowing into him didn’t hurt at all, unlike what had happened at the research station. The feeling only lasted a few seconds before fading. Nate shook himself to clear his head from the pain and focused on the carcass of the boar because it was definitely dead this time. The front half of the beast was almost completely gone, and only the back end remained relatively intact.
A flashing System notification at the edge of his vision demanded Nate’s attention, but he couldn’t stay here. Rushing over to the remains of the boar, he placed one of his hands on it. The hair was coarser than he expected, and this close, the smell of offal, burnt meat, and the stench of the pig assaulted his nose. Quickly focusing on his silver ring, he pictured the creature's remains in the dimensional storage. A moment later, it vanished. With that, he broke into an awkward run, his balance a little thrown off from the explosion and his subsequent fall. He headed back to his nook and what he hoped was some semblance of safety. It hadn’t gone as planned, but at least he wouldn’t starve.