World Filter

“Guys we need a first aid kit, see if you can find one.”

Donny had anchored the boat a little ways from shore. They wanted to move but first, they had to deal with Daphne’s injury. So the engine was turned off and Mark got to work. The night was on its way and with only a few minutes of light left Mark wanted to get to work.

Now, normally boats should have a first aid kit onboard. Unfortunately, whoever owned this boat before was woefully unprepared because even after searching the whole vessel. They couldn't find it.

‘This is bad, she's getting weaker by the second.’ Mark thought.

Every idea he could come up with required something they didn't have. Forcing himself to calm down he tried to go over what they had at hand. The problem was in the entire boat all there was, was a fishing rod, flare gun, one life jacket, and a bottle of champagne. Mark wanted to curse the previous owner, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. The boat had saved their lives. Not to mention he felt a sudden chill when he thought of the fate of everyone on that beach.

‘No, not now, Daphne wasn't out of danger yet ’ he could have a breakdown later.

Mark clenched his fists. A dull throbbing ache made itself known. Opening his fist he looked down at his palm. There was a slash running diagonally up his hand from the beam. The blood dried somewhat but he could tell that it was deep.

As he sat there looking at the wound, he noticed the energy in his body, writhing below the surface as if trying to get out through the break in his skin.

Wait, no, the energy was trying to get to the wound. Interest peaked, Mark tried to get the energy to move, helping it along.

The moment he applied his will to it. The energy in his chest began to move. Down along his left bicep, through his wrist, and into his palm. Joining with the energy that rested below his skin.

His palm began to heat up and itch slightly. Mark watched as the wound began to visibly close itself and within seconds the wound sealed itself up.

He let out a jagged breath as he felt the energy moving back to his chest. He felt drained. Mark stared at his palm in wonder.

He just did something that all his years of study told him was impossible. Had he really just healed his wound? A PING drew his attention away from his hand. The system! He thought, pulling up the blue boxes he saw he had a whole lot of flashing notifications.

Congratulations on being the first to cleanse a Corrupt Oridinator in your sector

Reward - exp points quadrupled for the next 7 days.

1x Corrupted Oridinator cleansed(1 + Sector reward: x4)

1/1

Level up!

+2 Prana, +2 Resistance

Spell acquired: Passive Regeneration(Self)

Congratulations on being the first to acquire a spell in your sector

Reward - 10 points towards Primary path.

So he’d leveled up. Looking at the number under his level he came to the conclusion that it must be the number of kills he’s required to get to the next level up and now with this Sector reward it was giving him four times the kills. So didn't he only require one more kill to level up again?

On top of that, he got a reward for getting a spell?

He looked down at his stat block

Name: Mark Young (22 - M)

Level: 2

Next level: 3/4

Stats:

Resistance Aura Mana Prana

10(+4) 0 9 27 (+14)

Unspent stat points - 20

Corruption value: 0.04%

Spells: Passive Regeneration(Self)

'Well I should probably take everything the system is willing to give me,' he thought

With the sudden increase going into his Prana he felt a change in his chest. After healing his wound he felt tired like he had expended some of himself. Now however he felt that the pool of energy in his chest had grown.

Finally confirming that this feeling in his chest truly was Prana he felt a sense of peace, he had made the right choice. He quickly looked at his stats.

“Okay, so ten points per level, that seems really high. Though I'm not gonna complain ”

he thought.

It was disturbing that his corruption value went up, but not what mattered right now. He needed to know if he could use this energy on other people. Mark moved towards Daphne. Sitting beside her he placed his hand above the wound and called to the energy. Moving it from his chest and towards his palm. He quickly found that calling it, not demanding it worked better. It wanted to move to where he needed it. Being forceful with the energy didn't help to make it move any faster. So he allowed it to move at its own pace and as if detecting his anxiousness, it began to move much faster. To the point where, when it got to his hand it slammed into his palm halting there. It hurt but quickly faded. He panicked, the energy wouldn't move beyond his skin.

He could feel a small amount escaping but not enough to make a difference.

Moving his hand closer to the wound he felt like a little more was getting through. So finally he lay his hand gently on the wound.

The difference was immediate. At the moment of contact, the energy flowed flawlessly from Mark into the wound. He didn't notice it at first but it quickly became apparent.

The Prana was just going into the wound and healing whatever it came into contact with. It was directionless. So Mark started to guide it toward the different areas. To the muscle, repairing and reconnecting them. To the skin, sealing each layer of the dermis. To the Bone, to mending and reinforcing. By this point, he could feel that with his help the wound was closing at a much faster rate. However, he had a problem. Daphne’s body was too drained and tired. It needed a lot of energy to replace the blood she had lost and Mark was already almost out.

He pulled up his menu and willed 15 of his unspent skill points into his Prana. He felt a burst of energy within his chest.

Which he then immediately sent toward Daphne. The wound closed completely and it felt like he replaced a good portion of her blood by the time he ran out of Prana. The entire process took a couple of breaths. Daphne had fallen unconscious at some point during that.

Mark felt drained completely, he hadn't felt this tired since his last all-nighter while cramming for one of his benchmark tests.

He fell back and rested against the side of the boat. Grace was staring at Daphne’s wound or lack thereof. She looked up at Mark and back down at Daphne.

“Did you just?...” she left the question hanging in the air.

“Yeah, I picked Prana, seems like it can heal” Mark nodded tiredly. ”She’ll be out for a little while still, I couldn't fix everything”

Donny looked up from Daphne.

“You gonna be good Mark? You look like shit ” Donny’s face was set in a grimace.

“Yeah, man I just overdid it is all, but on the bright side I'm pretty sure she’ll be okay” Mark tried to smile to show that he was fine.

Donny and Grace exchanged a look but Mark was just too tired to care.

“Ima just take a little naa..p” Mark felt like someone had glued bricks to his eyelids. He just couldn't escape the siren call of sleep. The last thing he saw was the concerned looks on their faces.

***

Mark slowly came to consciousness, it was cold, damp, and dark. It didn't help that he was only wearing some swimming trunks and a thin t-shirt. He looked around not fully understanding what he was seeing. There were two pale lights floating in front of him. Illuminating two faces that seemed to bob to the sound of lapping water. It took Mark a moment to realize that it was Donny and Grace sitting on their phones.

They were surrounded by absolute darkness, the nearest light being somewhere on the shore.

The events of the previous hours came back to him.

‘They were cold and wet because they were out on the ocean at night, hiding from whatever creatures wer-’ Mark killed the thought.

The system had called them Ordinators, but to Mark, they were zombies. So to stop confusing himself he'd just call them that. Either way, their arrival had thoroughly fucked up his day. However, if this was to be their new reality then so be it. Mark was not going to panic, he was going to sort out his shit and deal.

If the police or army came then he would happily rely on them. He just wasn't holding his breath.

His parents had passed away in a car accident three years ago, and though he missed them deeply, he was relieved to know they were now in a better place with the big man upstairs, far away from the disasters of this new world.

Mark had no one to rush off to, no responsibilities bar one. Survive. He didn't know what everyone would want to do now but he made a promise to himself. They were all going to survive this.

He slowly sat up. The movement on the small raft didn't go unnoticed. Looking up Grace flicked her phone flashlight on.

“Sorry,” she said when she saw Mark.

“How long was I out?” he asked while squinting through the light.

Seeing Mark awake Donny smiled

“Yo my dude, we thought you were gonna buy an early subscription to the big sleep, man. Oh and about five hours, I think. You should check your feeds, it's messed up out there.”

Marked looked for Daphne

“How is she?”

Grace was the one to answer him.

“As far as we can tell she’s alright, but you’d know better than us”

Mark made his way over to Daphne by the light of the torch. He did his checks and was happy to see she was doing well. Hopefully, she should recover in a couple of hours. Faster still if he could use more prana.

He felt for the energy in his chest, surprisingly it had recovered fully. After some thought, Mark placed his hand on Daphne’s head and sent some of the energy there.

The concussion had long since gone but he thought he’d better just be safe. Directing the energy to help her recover her lost blood. Color rapidly returned to her face.

“Mark! Stop that!” Donny growled.

Mark opened his eyes and shot Donny a confused look.

“Dude, last time you healed her you knocked yourself out, so calm down, and let's just talk for a moment. We need a plan.”

Mark froze, had he been about to fall unconscious again? Checking his energy told him that he had spent a good 30%of his Prana in that short time.

“Mmm… okay, maybe you're right, Um so as I said I picked Prana. What did you guys pick?” Slightly embarrassed, Mark tried to direct the conversion away from himself.

Donny still looked annoyed but with a sigh chose to take the offered topic change.

“I chose Aura, from what I found online it makes me stronger, faster, and more resilient.”

“Wait, online?” Mark was shocked.

“Yeah, you've been out for some time now and people are posting with explanations of all the stats they found, I took Mana by the way,” Grace said.

Mark took out his phone and started looking at his socials. They were right, people were already giving breakdowns for what each stat did and some were even talking about the perfect stat combination and distribution.

So it looked like each stat doubled as both an energy source and defense. For example, Aura made one stronger, and capable of superhuman feats. but also made their body harder to wound and recover faster. Mark thought back to the beach. That beam. Mark had not been able to lift it even slightly, but the moment Donny came over it had moved.

Mana allowed the users to accomplish some pretty amazing feats. Mark saw a clip of some guy gliding while shooting small chunks of rock exploding heads wherever he went. Apparently, Mana also stopped mental influences from affecting the mind, so illusions, mind control, mental attacks, and more. Which sounded about par for the course. Trust the moment humans are given any kind of power they would immediately use it to control others.

Prana had very little information on it, people were confused about it. Those that took it were posting that it was useless and the most they had been able to see was a slight increase in the speed they would regenerate. They weren't even sure what it could be used for actively.

Mark immediately knew that was bullshit, so he created a post stating that Prana could be used to heal others and that all they need to do is push their energy into someone else.

The post got downvoted so quickly, with many comments smearing the post, telling him where he could ‘Push his energy’.

Mark shrugged, sure it was the internet so a certain amount of nastiness was expected. However he was still confused as to why so many people responded like that, but at the end of the day, he didn't actually give a shit if they chose to listen or not.

The final attribute was widely seen as the ‘Vanilla’ stat. People had worked out that every 3 points in the stat gave you the equivalent defenses of one point in all three of the attributes. It was synergistic working to cover the weaknesses you had by following other paths.

For example, a Mana user was strong against mental attacks but had the body of a normal human. This made them very squishy for lack of a better term. So they compensated with the Resistance attribute. Which made their body tougher, mentally stronger, and regen faster. Another thing it seemed to do was to up the user's perception and reaction times. Allowing Mana users to keep up with the speed of Aura users or at least with their reaction times.

Mark made a note not to let that stat lag behind, because while someone could just pop a point or two into Aura if they needed more defense. He couldn't, he was locked off from the attribute completely.

Mark looked up from his phone, to see both Donny and Grace were acting weird. Neither was looking at their phones; they were both just sitting there, eyes closed and breathing. He was about to ask them what they were doing when he saw Daphne move and groan.

She was waking up.