NOVEL WEB Chapter 11: The First Night
Ryoshu was a strange person; since childhood, he had been fascinated by watching fire burn because it looked magical to him. Perhaps that was also why he enjoyed watching fireworks during New Year's Eve celebrations.
'But next, I need to change its properties to make it more flammable.'
This was much harder than what Ryoshu had just accomplished because now he had to directly affect the way Mana works.
Typically, pure Mana has no special properties, except that it's invisible and can exist in multiple states simultaneously: liquid, solid, gas, yet not actually being any of these three states. Therefore, Mana is a resource that is both concrete and abstract, so not everyone can use it skillfully. And it would be even more difficult for someone like Ryoshu, who had just arrived in this world and only heard the concept without having a deep understanding of it.
But not giving up, Ryoshu continued to make Mana rub against itself and gradually increased the speed to create friction. However, because his ability to control Mana was so poor, the results didn't look very promising.
Sweat dripped from his forehead like a waterfall. Moreover, his hoodie was hot and uncomfortable, so instead of helping, it absorbed his sweat, making Ryoshu's entire body wet like a drowned rat.
"Well, I've failed again." - Ryoshu was completely exhausted, so he lay flat on the ground while his body tried to absorb more Mana. Through the painful training process, he had managed to concentrate Mana on his fingertip for about 10 seconds.
[Skill "Mana Concentration" upgraded to level II!]
Ryoshu nodded, seemingly quite satisfied with this progress.
'Well, although it took quite some time, at least I'm still heading in the right direction.'
"System, show me my Mana potential."
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[Mana] (F-)
Description: This is the first time you can sense the Mana streams surrounding you, despite having been exposed to them for nearly twenty years. Although it's quite late, everything has to start from zero!
-Mana Concentration (Level I → II)
Increases 5 → 7.5% efficiency of your Mana concentration ability.
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"An additional 2.5%... that much?" - Ryoshu said in a rather sarcastic tone, but he knew better than anyone that even 1% could completely change the outcome of a battle.
Since Ryoshu could currently only maintain it for about ten seconds, he couldn't feel the change. But later, if he could maintain it for 30 minutes, this passive ability would help him keep it for at least 2 more minutes.
And this skill was only at level II, so its effect was still quite poor, but later it could go up to 50 or even 100%. Just thinking about that made him feel much more encouraged.
"Come on, me, finish this and then I can go to sleep!"
Ryoshu sat up to continue, but this time with much more vitality.
----0w0----
The sky was getting darker; it must be around midnight now. But there was still a diligent cockroach trying every minute, every second, not to be crushed by its swarm.
That cockroach was deep in thought, recalling the feeling of being burned earlier and trying to transform mana so it could self-ignite.
After a while, deep within the cockroach, a ring began to form and rotate around a white ball of Mana. The ring was created due to its good habits from its past life and helped transform the pure Mana streams, changing them to a brilliant bright red in just a moment. This was perhaps its most successful transformation.
[Congratulations on creating your "First Mana Circle." Keep trying to create more Mana Circles!]
[Acquired skill "Mana Transformation" (Level I)]
The system's sound made the cockroach jump up.
"Excellent, I've finally got this skill!"
With this skill, he could easily change the properties of Mana according to his wishes. Ryoshu immediately tried again. The pure Mana stream concentrated on his blackened palm that had been burned, and after a moment, it gradually transformed from the familiar white-blue color to orange-yellow.
Ryoshu held it a bit longer, then tried it on the candle that had gone out earlier. And contrary to what he expected, the candle lit up.
The flame burned weakly but was extremely persistent and full of the desire to live.
[Acquired Potential "Magic" (F-)]
"LET'S GO!!!!"
[Potential "Mana" (F-) automatically merged into a branch of Potential "Magic" (F-), causing Potential "Magic" to rise to rank F!]
[You have learned the first step of "Fire Magic" (Apprentice)!]
Finally, Ryoshu had unlocked a new skill. This gave him additional motivation to eagerly try creating another flame on his finger and try to maintain it. Now he could transform it quite quickly and neatly without having to go through each step.
Contrary to his expectations, it only lasted about 4 seconds before returning to pure Mana, far inferior to his current Mana concentration ability.
"I wonder where I went wrong?"
Ryoshu searched online to learn more and wrote notes for future reference:
"Most effective Mana transformation process:
Step 1: Extract natural Mana from the Mana core through the Mana channels in the body. Note: The rougher and more disorganized the Mana channels, the less effective.
Step 2: Convert pure Mana into other types by imagination.
Note: Will change the properties of Mana particles so they have the properties of a specific element according to your wishes.
Step 3: Continue transforming and maintaining that Mana flow."
It turned out that all three of Ryoshu's steps were extremely inefficient, which was why it was so poor.
He blamed his poor Mana Storage ability. So when he transformed Mana, the transformed Mana flow not only consumed more mana than normal but also couldn't last long.
Ryoshu looked at the clock and saw it read 01:23. He stretched, and his spine made continuous cracking sounds. Hearing the sound, Ryoshu tried even harder to stretch his body.
'I've probably been sitting longer than I should have...'
Looking around and seeing the pitch-black surroundings, he felt quite creepy thinking about being the only one in a vast forest without even a hint of human presence.
"Alright... that's enough for today. Tomorrow I'll stabilize my Mana Core."
Ryoshu was quite proud of what he had achieved on his first day in this Virtual Reality world. Tears flowed from his eyes as he unconsciously yawned widely.
'Now I have to take care of other things... before I can go to sleep.'
The moonlight in this world was certainly much brighter compared to real life, so Ryoshu could still see quite easily, but with additional candlelight, he would see even more clearly.
"I've used up almost all the candles. Save a little for taking a bath." - Looking at the number of candles in his bag, he abandoned that idea.
But before he could go bathe, Ryoshu remembered he needed to make a tent for sleeping later.
'But before that, shouldn't I prepare a sleeping place first?'
"Yes, and this is Survival with Amemiya Ryoshu. Yes, what are we doing today? That's right, we will learn how to survive, and I am the cameraman and survival expert - Amemiya Ryoshu." - He started rambling to fight the overwhelming sleepiness after staying up and working hard all day.
First, Ryoshu took out a couple of sets of clothes from his space ring:
"Oh, what do we have here? That's right, those are clothes! If you can't find anything to tie things together and have extra clothes, don't hesitate to tear off a part of them. The human body can't withstand extreme cold for too long, so think about survival before thinking about your ego!"
Then he began tearing them into large fabric pieces. Ryoshu threw half on the ground and temporarily stored the other half in his storage.
"Next, you'll need to build the spine of the tent with wooden sticks that are roughly the same size."
Ryoshu pointed to the pile of large branches he had just found earlier, as if performing for a camera, perhaps a habit from his previous career as a streamer.
"To build a tent, first, you need a very sturdy center pole and," Ryoshu said while demonstrating with actions. Then he used all his strength and stuck it firmly into the ground. But since his Strength stat was only 6 units, Ryoshu had to repeatedly stab it down to loosen the soil. "There, stick it deep into the ground like this. Huff huff"
Ryoshu paused briefly to catch his breath after that exercise. Then he suddenly stood up again and got back to work.
"Next, take more long and sturdy wooden sticks and prop them against each other to form the shape of a tent, just big enough to lie comfortably inside."
But that stage was quite difficult as they kept collapsing, frustrating Ryoshu. Despite his frustration, when he thought about lying on this dirty ground tonight, his hands unconsciously continued working.
"You'll need to try repeatedly until these damned branches stop falling down."
It took a while to fix them in place, and once that was done, Ryoshu took the torn fabric pieces and tied the ends of the wooden sticks to secure them together.
"Now that the hardest part is done, it's time to make the floor. First, add plenty of leaves and spread them evenly throughout your room."
He took the pile of leaves he had gathered while cleaning earlier and threw them inside. Then Ryoshu brought out another batch of clothes and threw them on top of the leaves.
"Throwing clothes on top will make it less dirty for the mattress you plan to add for a comfortable bed."
And to complete that mixed "cake," he spread a bed sheet he had saved until now as the cherry on the top. When finished, Ryoshu pretended to wipe sweat from his brow. But since there was actually sweat on his forehead from the previous exercise, his hand inadvertently got dirtier.
Ignoring the unpleasant stickiness on his body, he sighed and then said quite proudly:
"I'd make a pretty good commentator, wouldn't I?! If I had switched to making this kind of content before, I might have become famous. Or I could even have become a real survival expert. Haha."
Looking at his accomplishment for a moment longer, Ryoshu unconsciously yawned again while his eyes occasionally closed by themselves.
"This is good enough. Although I'm quite sleepy, I still need to take a quick bath. I can't be this dirty and lie on this clean, beautiful bed sheet."
----0w0----
'Luckily, the map ratio in the PC game version is quite similar to the virtual reality version, so it only took a few minutes to get here.' - Ryoshu was bare-chested under the open sky and gathering dry wood on his way back to the campsite.
At his home for the next week, Ryoshu dropped the pile of dry wood in the middle of the circle he had marked with some nearby rocks. He had chosen a spot near a boulder to turn it into a seat.
He was planning to make a campfire to warm his body a bit. And this was precisely why Ryoshu had to desperately learn Fire Magic as quickly as possible.
Ryoshu began to feel so cold that his body wouldn't stop shaking. The forest temperature had been dropping steadily since the moon rose. To make matters worse, his freshly washed shirt wasn't dry yet, so Ryoshu had to sit shivering with no shirt on. He quickly tore a piece of paper from the pages he had already written on, then repeated the processes from earlier.
Pop.
A small flame appeared on the tip of his trembling, cold index finger.
'This feels a bit easier than before, doesn't it?'
Ryoshu held the paper close, and when it caught fire, he quickly threw it into the pile of dry wood. At first, he thought it had gone out, so he was about to tear another page to light again when suddenly some of the wood at the bottom began to catch, then spread to the dry wood above and grew larger.
"Much warmer now. Nomadic life is quite interesting, so I should probably try it for a whole month sometime." - Ryoshu thought as he threw more dry wood into the flickering fire.
Next, Ryoshu put his shirt up on a second boulder nearby. That was the guest seat, according to him. Then he took out the notebook that he proudly called his diary.
'I'll use this notebook to write down important things in the future to avoid forgetting, although that's difficult since I now have the Super Memory Innate talent...'
Despite thinking that, Ryoshu instinctively took out a pen and wrote furiously in it. Occasionally while taking notes, he would spend some time looking at the surroundings without thinking much about anything.
After a while, he heard his somewhat round belly growl. Ryoshu thought he couldn't satisfy its demands yet, so he could only sigh.
Instead, he assessed his body. Having seen his body while bathing, Ryoshu recalled feeling quite disappointed:
'This is the most ordinary human body I've ever seen in my life... neither too fat nor too thin... Before, I remember I had a beer belly that looked quite terrible.'
Ryoshu pinched his belly and found it quite loose.
'Looks pretty funny, but I guess I'll have to start going to the gym soon.'
He took notes for a while longer while waiting for his black hoodie to dry, occasionally touching around the shirt to see if it was still wet. If any part was still wet, he would turn that specific part closer to the fire to dry it.
Finally, after about five minutes of sleepy waiting, the shirt dried as expected. Having waited too long, Ryoshu hurriedly put away all his belongings into the ring and then didn't forget to extinguish the fire. The last thing he wanted to experience was the feeling of being burned alive.
'Better safe than sorry. Time to sleep! I'm so sleepy my eyes are almost closed.'
Ryoshu crawled into the tent he had worked so hard to build. Next, he took out a pillow from the storage room shaped like a very convenient ring. Ryoshu then sprawled out on the "bed" and enjoyed the feeling of warm blankets and soft bedding.
"Perhaps because it's the first day, I still feel quite unfamiliar with... everything... literally."
Ryoshu still couldn't believe that he would have to play the Virtual Reality version of Rainfall Disorder, a game for which he had mixed feelings of love and hate, with his very life.
"Wait, that sounds like some Light Novel with a black-sword swordsman, doesn't it...? It's just that I don't know what will happen when I die... and... I'm all alone in this world." - Ryoshu said, feeling strangely empty.
'This game saved me during my most difficult time, but... it also took everything away from me afterward. Money, possessions... those two aren't that different... but it also took away my girlfriend... But if I look on the bright side, I might be able to meet the main characters I love?'
Ryoshu felt quite excited thinking about the character he had come to love from the bottom of his heart, and he couldn't wait to talk to them, especially after seeing how much the AI had improved. Particularly after talking with the blacksmith Enomoto.
Thinking about his crush in this game also made him feel more excited and eager for the moment when he could meet her directly in this Virtual Reality version. In the past, he had perhaps been one of the biggest fanboys of Katia, the one he liked most in this game.
'Now I feel like a child. Nervous about meeting a crush... Come on, I'm 22 years old, not a 7th grader! For god sake.'
Ryoshu quickly dismissed those silly thoughts. But the body of an adolescent like him now was still very sensitive, so unconsciously, something else arose.
Ryoshu couldn't help but feel embarrassed by his improper thoughts, so he smashed his face into the pillow and tried to cover himself completely with the blanket to quickly fall asleep. Since entering this world, somehow he felt like he was gradually forgetting his ex-girlfriend.