New System, Who Dis?

Wednesday, April 3rd, 2069

“You said that you’d be better after a night’s sleep,” Smegma accused, as I attempted to glare at him through blurry, crusted eyes.

We’d stayed up far too late last night with Smegma attempting to teach me how to infuse Mana into the Demonic Vault Skill. The slight narrowing of my already squinted eyes didn’t seem to affect the rude little Imp, and so I gave up and blinked.

“Why did you decide that six AM was a good time to wake me up?” I countered, my voice filled with as much whispered heat as I could muster this early in the morning.

“Your body had released all the hormones required for your biological wellbeing and repaired any damaged or cenessent cells. Additionally, you were at peak energy efficiency,” Smegma answered and I blinked, not having expected such clear biological terms as a response. I truly had thought the Demon was just being a little shit.

“Well, first of all, let’s get one thing straight; It’s not me that’s the shitty student here—it’s you who’s a shitty teacher. How am I supposed to ‘feel’ the magic when I don’t know what it feels like?! It’s like saying ‘just see the color Demonic Red’. How do you expect me to sense something I’ve never experienced before simply by telling me to do it?”

“You’ll know it once you find it. As for Demonic Red, only the most profound of our race ever found it,,” Smegma said, his voice sounding sagely.

“Really?” I asked, wondering if I had somehow accidentally guessed a color from the Demon’s world.

“No, that’s the stupidest name for a color ever, plus why do you Humans have different names for all these colors? That’s green, and that’s a light green with some blue. Husking moronic race.”

I wanted nothing more than to punt him out my window.

With a growl, I tried to search inside myself as instructed. I had tried meditation once before in my life, and this felt a lot like that. Similar to when I’d dabbled in meditation, my thoughts raced around in my head—most of them accusatory and belittling.

I will admit that this process was better than the meditation, but that was only because the racing thoughts included somewhat helpful suggestions, probably thanks in large part to my new Mental Fortitude Skill…

Still, it isn’t very helpful when the thoughts were directing you toward a feeling you had when your Mana was forcibly taken from you, reminding you of the risk of husking and simultaneously highlighting how calm and rationally I could examine that experience.

It felt like I had a car. That car worked fine and I had maintained it with oil changes, fed it gas when it was sucking fumes and generally knew the ins and outs of the vehicle like a best friend. Sure, the car was older, like the family’s Ford Escort or maybe even my mom’s rust bucket, but it worked and I was used to it. Then out of the blue I went out to my driveway, got into that car and discovered that all the parts had been replaced with that of a Formula one race car. The exterior looked the same, but everything under the hood wasn’t.

It was as if this ‘car’ was mocking how terrible my old one was just with its presence. I couldn’t even feel weirded out by the change, thanks to the engine and premium fuel chugging along—taking me to my destination while cruising over a smooth road that should be pockmarked or at least covered in occasional speed bumps.

Even when I thought of the risk of the Mana Theft, my anger wasn’t because of Morgan Hallsbrad and his actions in particular. No, my frustration was due to my own failing. Despite the instructions of Smegma and my own internal direction, I couldn’t latch onto my Mana Pool. I knew it was there, my body could intrinsically feel its presence, and Smegma was even able to direct me to its location inside of me, but I felt like a toddler trying to catch air.

My ‘hands’ swiped through the space feeling resistance but phasing right through it. I tried waving my mental awareness back and forth through the area and felt the Mana Pool like thick smoke—present but ephemeral.

Frustrated, I tried flicking it like I would an object with my index finger. As though a church bell began ringing from a few feet away, I felt my body vibrate. I did it again, and again, enjoying the strange sensation because it felt like progress. After the tenth to twentieth flick, I opened my eyes in frustration.

While the mental poking was getting a new response, it wasn’t advancing me toward my goal.

“How the husk am I supposed to supply you with Mana when I can’t access my Pool?” I complain-asked. Somehow, I was more frustrated now that I found something new about the strange well of power inside of me, but it turned into another failure.

“I’m starting to question the intelligence of your entire race. It looked like you were causing ripples there in the Mana. So, you were close. Try creating a conduit between the two areas where your Skills and your Mana reside. Honestly, if this is the best you ‘humans’ can do, your race is doomed.”

I gave Smegma a withering side-eye—trying to convey my disdain for his race of ‘bat-Demons’ in turn. His dark eyes simply regarded me, before letting out a loud fart. The staring contest continued, and eventually my brain’s insistence to move on won—and so I blinked and shook myself.

Okay! I let my ‘supercar’ of a brain guide my thoughts.

This wasn’t his first time speaking about the topic of impending doom. Each time he did it sounded like he was forecasting the inevitable. Like he was a history teacher claiming that everything always repeated itself. Cataloging it as a question to ask him later, I returned to mentally ‘ringing the bell’ that was my Mana Pool.

“A conduit,” I whispered to myself. “So, like electrical wires, piping or…” I faded off as I attempted to visualize the examples I was naming. Then a simpler example struck me. “A straw!” I emphasized, and as if the area of my Mana Pool was a KapiSun I jabbed the sharpened end of my mental straw into it.

Instantly I got a reaction, but not the one I was expecting. My mental hands holding the stray felt the tip pass into the layer of ephemeral Mana. However, a building resistance grew, and I frowned. It felt like I was fighting a marshmallow. Suddenly that counter force buckled and then popped, like a membrane of a balloon. Thankfully, something that felt like a piece of rubber sealed around the circular straw. But a straw has a hole at the other end, and I quickly realized that the contents of my Mana Pool were under some sort of pressure. I felt the Mana from my Pool rush down the interior and spill out the other side, flooding my body with energy. For a moment it felt good, right until that euphoria morphed into nausea. Mentally, I plugged the end of the straw with a ‘thumb’ as I fumbled somewhat drunkenly to find the place where I intrinsically knew my Skill for Summoning the Demonic Vault resided.

I finally located the tiny area that seemed to resonate with the feeling of the Skill I was searching for. The straw’s end with my mental finger plugging it passed through a slight resistance at the location, my mind was telling me the Skill was located, multiple times, but it was such a small area that the straw moved into and out of it again in mere fractions of inches. he nausea and energy shakes my body was going through slowly calmed down and that helped me guide the mental straw to the right spot.

It wasn’t simply that the rampant, spilled energy disappeared, but that Demonic Vault or something else seemed to slowly suck the energy moving through my body into itself. Finally, my ‘thumb’ found the spot and released the second end of the straw.

It fixed itself in place, and I watched as two stars seemed to blink into existence behind my closed eyelids. On closer inspection, however, one appeared to be a galaxy with about eight blue dots circling around it. Then there was a hollow tube that led from the edge of the galaxy to a red blinking, growing sun in the distance. It reminded me of the sun and stars that had been pulled from Morgan Hallsbrad, collapsed and then were seemingly transferred into me—somehow. Still, I only had a galaxy of small dots and a distant sun—so, it wasn’t exactly the same. Once I examined them both thoroughly, I opened my eyes.

Smegma was flapping his wings and looking at his three taloned hands. I wondered why he was so still and quiet after my success, and then I saw it. The wrinkles that made him look like one of those hairless skin-cats, Sphinx’s I think, were slowly firming themselves. It was like watching a filter move through a Swiftgram picture but in this case Smegma started to look more healthily terrifying with each blink of my eyes.

I shuddered as I watched the gremlin grow a foot taller and as well as taking on the appearance of a verifiable killing machine. I hoped he was still unable to interact with much of the physical plane, and if not—well, my body might be in for a rude shredding. That definitely wouldn’t be a fun way to die…

“That’s it?!” Smegma shouted, once the ‘transformation’ ended.

He was clearly upset, verging on angry, and my eyebrow raised unbidden in question. Smegma stared at me before closing his eyes. I felt a presence in the space I had just exited and closed my eyes to watch what was happening. The red star sent a strand of ‘hair’ down the straw toward the Galaxy. The red string attempted to enter my Mana Pool but that very membrane I punctured earlier with the sharpened straw’s end seemed to somehow exist inside the straw as well. It rebuffed the hair-thin red strand back toward the Sun.

“Hey, you said you can’t connect to my Mana,” I accused.

With a growl Smegma asked, “I’m not taking Mana you moron. Just trying to figure out why I look like this. How large is your Mana Pool?”

“Umm. Ten points, assuming that bastard told the truth back in the alleyway,” I responded with the number that Morgan Hallsbrad seemed surprised about.

I was still watching as the red strand attempted to find a way past the membrane to the Galaxy of blue stars behind it. A ninth star popped into place, and I realized that my Mana Pool was also reabsorbing some of the spilled Mana in my body. The star's reappearance also indicated that the blue, far smaller, suns circling around the black void in this Galaxy were points of Mana.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Smegma complained. “Are you mentally blocking me from examining your Pool?”

I opened my eyes to find Smegma still standing on my bed with his eyes closed. I didn’t think I was blocking him but then again, I wasn’t sure why he wanted to examine my Pool. I didn’t quite believe his reason and felt it was far more like that he was trying to take it for himself, like Morgan had!

I raised a skeptical eyebrow toward the Demon. “You just watched me flail around to establish a link that you yourself said was so easy that you started questioning the intelligence and survivability of my entire race and yet now you think I have enough control over whatever this is to actively manipulate it and ‘block you’? So which one is it, smarty pants? Am I too dumb to breathe or so amazing that I’m somehow better at this than you are?”

With a growl, his eyes shot open, and he flinched to discover me staring at him. His frustration seemed to drain from his face, and he began tapping a talon on his sharp teeth. A gesture I’d come to recognize as him thinking.

“No, you’re definitely right that on the scale you mentioned, you’re much closer to ‘too dumb to breathe’ than the other end of the spectrum. There’s no way you can be blocking me from a simple examination while not concentrating on doing so. Still, it can’t be a higher ranked Skill than Demonic Vault with just ten points of Mana. You sure about the ten points?”

“Well, not really. The Shop seemed surprised and said something about ‘ten points, that’s it’, or something like that when he connected to it.”

More talon on tooth tapping followed. After a few seconds Smegma threw his hands above his head. “Well, I guess I’m stuck like this,” he gestured at himself, “until you die! Husk it. Send a drop of Mana across and I’ll display the windows.”

The exclamation surprised me for a second before I remembered the straw and the whole point of connecting the two Skills. I mentally shot one of the glowing stars down the straw and saw a red screen pop up in front of Smegma. “What in the husk is this?” Smegma shouted. “These are all the F and E ranked trash!”

“What?” I asked dumbly. “That doesn’t make any sense.” I distinctly remembered the Mental Fortitude Skill being ranked A on the weird message window as well as the Recovery Skill being ranked C. “Show me!”

His tiny fists clenched into balls and his face scrunched up, but he did wave a hand, which seemed to force the screen to rush to a place in front of me.

When I realized that I couldn’t read it and why, I rolled my eyes and said, “Can you flip it around?”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. This is total bullshit anyway,” Smegma complained even as he complied.

Demonic Vault 1.0

Crendalar Five – Abyss Sect’s Wares

Consumables

Weapons

Armor

Miscellaneous

Currency: 2 mC (Mana Coins)

The first thing I noticed was that it was obvious he hadn’t been talking about my Skill ranks earlier. I was hoping that he’d found a way to show me some sort of Video Game recap page on myself. One that I could examine. The second thing I saw was that I had two ‘coins’ which was unexpected.

I looked away from the screen to Smegma and asked, “Do I just provide Mana to the Skill to build up currency?”

“Like it matters. It will take you forever to get anything good with only ten Mana. Plus, all the good shit that I’ve been training to sell isn’t even there! I’ve spent a good portion of my husking life preparing for this!” Smegma answered, well—complained was more like it.

I felt slightly bad for him, but couldn’t find too much empathy for the little shit. I had been dreaming of being a Hunter my whole life but Awakened with a single Skill, and it was not only the most common, but the lowest ranked Skill at that… Between the two of us I think I had it worse.

I realized he kind of gave me an answer and so started mentally clicking into the options, starting with Skills. I instantly discovered why Smegma was upset. The list of Skills were things I didn’t even know could exist. Things like Aid, Alarm, Alter, Animal Messenger, Arcane Armor, and Augury were listed. I clicked into a few that seemed interesting and grew even more discouraged when I saw the price.

Aid Skill Card

Low-F-Rank

Aid (1) Evolvable

Magically apply first aid to an injured individual. This Skill will remove some status ailments such as bleeding or burning. It will also aid in recovery of the injured person, increasing their rate of healing by 1%.

Cost: 1,000,000 mC

Not only were the effects lackluster, but the cost was astronomical. Another issue popped into my head, and I turned away from the screen to look at Smegma.

“Is there a limit to how many Skills a person can have?” I asked reluctantly, recalling the conversation about Cannibals. I didn’t really want to know the answer if there was a limit but needed to.

“There is and it’s based on Soul and Magic Capacity. So, a wastrel like you will probably only be able to have ten.”

“Hey!” I complained and saw Smegma’s face scrunch up slightly. He didn’t apologize for his derogatory choice of words to describe me though, and I frowned. I asked my next question instead of dwelling on it. “What does the number one beside the Skill mean?”

“Skill level. You can level up a Skill the more you use it. Something like Aid will just have its healing rate increase as it levels, until you can Evolve it.”

“Evolve it?” I asked, immediately excited. Didn’t that mean my Mana Pool would grow the more I used it?

“Evolution is a very complicated process. Skills Evolve based on the use and desired direction of use of the owner of the Skill. For example, Aid can become First Aid, Minor Heal or even something like Bind.”

“Okay,” I answered, trying to understand how a ‘healing’ Skill could become Bind. Then it struck me. The bandage tying could possibly be used to tie someone up, I supposed. That seemed like a good enough deduction for now, so I asked the much more pressing question. “Doesn’t that mean my Mana Pool can grow?”

With a sigh, Smegma manipulated the screen in front of me.

Mana Pool Skill Card

Mana Pool (1) Evolveable

Will create a well of Mana inside of the owner. This well can be used to power Skills and Spells. Only one Mana Pool can exist inside an individual. The Mana Pool’s ranking determines its size and it cannot grow.

Recharge rate increased by 1%.

F rank – random assignment of 1-10 Mana – 2,000,000 mC

Low-E rank – random assignment of 11-50 Mana – 20,000,000 mC

I sighed. But then realized that just because this Skill description didn’t seem to allow the Pool to grow didn’t mean I couldn’t Evolve the Skill to grow. I was pretty sure some famous Swiftgrammers showed that they had grown their Mana capacity. “So what if I Evolve the Skill?”

“Sure, but if you really have an F-rank Skill to begin with then it will be difficult to grow. Plus, it will be limited in Evolutions. Not to mention the difficulty involved in coming across a method to Evolve the Skill.”

While Smegma’s words were discouraging, they didn’t completely remove the small bud of hope that seemed to be growing in my chest. Plus with the Demonic Vault, couldn’t I just replace my low rank Pool for a higher one?

“So, can I buy a higher-grade card and replace the one I have?” I asked.

“Yes, but you’ll lose the levels in the Skill you have. Plus, how’s a dumb-dumb like you going to get twenty million Mana Coins?”

“Even a dummy like me knows there has to be another way to increase my coins. Right?”

With a scoff, Smegma gestured around the room. “I’ve already told you. Mana Crystals! Do you have a Mana Crystal safe I wasn’t able to find?”

“Nope, but I might know where to get some.”

Of course, I was thinking about my father’s Mining job. I’d helped part-time over the summer and carted out bags of mined Crystal Shards. Surely, I could sneak one or two, right?

As it always seemed to happen, it was then I saw the man who loaded the bags in a new light. He’d marked each Bag of Holding with a number and the porter, which I had previously worked with, would double-check at the truck with a scale that I dropped the bag onto. So, then I would have to be a Miner to pocket a few? There was no chance of becoming a loader, those people were paid extremely well and often friends of the owner.

“You know where there’s an unattended Portal?” Smegma asked, sounding excited for the first time.

“No. I was just thinking I could get hired as a Miner and sneak a few crystals to The Shop,” I responded.

Smegma went back to tapping a talon on his tooth. Then the screen in front of me changed.

Miscellaneous Professions Gear

Miner’s Pick (1)

Low-F-Rank

Durability: Unlimited

Damage: 1-3 (x100% to Mineable minerals)

This Miner’s pick will use the Mana run-off the Crystals to repair and strengthen itself, making it unbreakable. It will also store excess Mana to intermittently create a Mana Crystal of appropriate rank.

Current progress to Mana Crystal: 0 of 1,000 Mana

Cost: 10,000 mC

“Why is this so much cheaper?” I asked, having read over the description with growing excitement.

“Because it’s a Miner’s Pick?!” Smegma said incredulously, like that was answer enough. I supposed it was. I guessed that Demon’s looked down on professions like Miners as well. I continued to scan through the Miscellaneous section and discovered numerous other Profession Tools. Skinning Knives, Alchemy Lab, Engineering Toolbox, and Tailoring Kit being a few among them. What I discovered was that certain tools were vastly more expensive than others. Like the Enchanter’s Kit or an Alchemy Lab.

“Do the prices on these reflect how large the physical size of the purchase is?” I asked, staring at the multiple million-coin price tag on the Lab and Kit.

“Somewhat for the Lab, sure. But nope on the Kit. Do you not have Potions and Enchanted Jewelry and Gear on this world?” Smegma asked. I gave him a look that questioned his intelligence, and he got the message. “Well then you know how expensive those things are. Thus, the price tag, idiot.”

I ran a hand over my patchy stubble. “Who sets the prices?”

“My sect did, obviously.”

A smile came over my face. So, the prices were based off what the Abyss Sect thought was valuable. Since they likely had far more experience with the value of magical and perhaps even mundane materials than Earth, they were probably pretty accurate. However, that disconnect could be exploited if I discovered instances of things on Earth that were relatively common or easily accessible—hopefully both, and that the Abyss Sect valued highly.

“Can I sell items for Mana Coins or credit?” I asked.

“Yes, but we’ll only give you about half the value,” Smegma answered.

I nodded in understanding and started scanning the lists of weapons, armor, Skills, miscellaneous and consumables. As I searched, I funneled the remaining eight points of Mana to the Skill. A new star popped up about ten minutes later and I sent it across too, arriving at Eleven Mana Coins. This would be a good test to see how fast my Mana regenerated as well.

As I combed through The Shop, I began cataloging items I found interesting, trying to arrive at what my first goal should be. Right this moment, I was leaning toward an E-ranked Mana Pool Card, but to make the necessary twenty million Mana Coins, I would need a Miner’s Pick and to join my father on a job.

Could I convince him to bring me with him? It would be tough. He was the prime factor in me attending University because he didn’t want his son to be a Miner like him or god-forbid a low ranked Hunter with a gun against the threats out there with powerful Skills. My mother, who worked as a secretary for the same company as him, wanted me to attend school as well, but with a bit less vehemence. So, the real question was how do I convince my father?

I realized then that my supercar analogy from earlier wasn’t accurate. It wasn’t like my intelligence had increased. More like the engine was a more efficient model. Something like a hybrid or maybe even a Mana Crystal converter. I was able to think logically without much distraction, but that didn’t make it so I could solve problems I couldn’t before.

Or in this instance—the insurmountable problem of a way to convince my father to join him in the Portal mines… I looked at Smegma pleadingly and he shook his head derisively. Under his breath the Demon muttered, “All the guile of a husking Mirror Fish, this one.”