Awareness of the rest of my body and the spiderlings residing in it was great, but it didn’t solve my problem.

So… shoot the bugs! That seemed the obvious choice.

As I had practiced before, I formed a bullet out of my silver mana and then blasted it with as much explosive force as I could muster against the dark spheres of energy. Alas, the effect was underwhelming. All it did was push the tiny black orb a little bit back, which seemed to disperse all the kinetic energy I had been able to impart onto the bullet. A wedge or drill bit turned out similarly ineffective because the spiderlings just shifted slightly to the side or back– it was like trying to impale a dumpling in a watery soup using a fork… unless you got the dumpling to the edge of the bowl, there was no way you could get the fork to stick.

At least, trying to impale the little freaks had agitated them – it felt as if they were starting to move around a helluva bit more. Or perhaps that was just my imagination… I hoped it was. Fucking spiders.

And why did their mana churn around like crazy?

Was that a feature of being a spider? Or was that normal for mana? My silver mana did nothing of that sort… it just sat there, doing diddly-squat.

So what now? Laying around and admiring the view was not going to get me anywhere, and neither was shooting the spiders, as it had turned out.

Time to play around with my mana, and see if I could do anything else with it. A good starting point was to try and make it rotate just like the spiders seemed to be doing. I was clutching at straws and was well aware of it, but I was out of ideas on what else to try. And the clock was ticking.

Exerting mental pressure, I pushed mana from my chest area into the shoulder, hoping it would cause the mana there to move elsewhere and thus start some sort of chain reaction. Contrary to my hope, the mana in my shoulder just sat there and didn’t move one jota. All that happened was that the mana accumulated and then slowly dispersed in all directions, including back toward my chest.

Which meant that I had to do this the hard way – all the mana in my body had to be moved simultaneously. Easier said than done, though.

It took me a few attempts to spread my awareness across my whole body and not only push the mana everywhere but also give it some direction. And then it took some more frustrating and lengthy trial and error to figure out that the mana had to follow some type of path in my body - basically it had to go in a giant figure eight, with the heart forming the fulcrum of the cycle. But trying to get the whole thing to work all simultaneously was challenging, to say the least.

After several failed attempts, panic started to set in again. How much time did I have left? Was it minutes? Or was it measured in hours or days? The uncertainty was nerve-wracking.

I clenched my jaw and grabbed the silver mana in a mental iron fist, spreading my concentration evenly throughout my body. It was like juggling with five balls, one of which was of a different size. Exceedingly hard. But there was no choice. Even though I didn’t know if this would help me at all, it was the only possible path forward I could see.

So I pushed, and struggled, and fought.

Whenever my concentration slipped, I would lose control of a part of the mana. Some of it would naturally gravitate back into the figure eight, but some other I had to collect, while not losing control of the rest. Eventually, I could feel that some type of rotation was starting to set in. I had to ‘cajole’ the rest of the mana to move along, but the process became more natural. And eventually, it became a self-perpetuating movement that went through all of my body, seemingly reaching every cell.

The rotation became faster and faster, and I could feel my body temperature rise swiftly. At first, it was only uncomfortably warm, but then it began to be painful as if there were tiny flames all inside of me. Within moments, an excruciating cutting pain set in – like small shards of glass tearing through my body, slowly skinning me from the inside.

And then it hit me! I could feel pain in my lower body!

Despite the agony, I first started to chuckle and then laugh out loud, before I passed out.

--------------------------------------------------------

I woke up, covered in a cold sweat, shivering, and with the worst headache I had ever had. But I couldn’t help myself; I had to smile - I could feel the wet t-shirt cling to my body, the pain of numerous bruises, the itch of the sweat-soaked shorts against my inner thigh… for the first time in four years, I felt something below my neck.

…

That itch was quite annoying, though.

Funny, how one forgets those little details.

Shit, I really needed to scratch there, and no one was here to help. Perhaps feeling the rest of my body was not all that it was made out to be. Unless… hesitantly I tried to move my arm.

It twitched!

“Fuck yeah!” I shouted into the dark, cackling like a maniac.

Not the smartest thing to do, perhaps, with, likely, all kinds of creepy things crawling around in this cave. But to hell with that. I needed to get it out.

I was still weak as a kitten and had mostly forgotten how to control my muscles, but I could work on that.

And then I remembered the spiderlings.

I was still in a shitload of trouble. But my chances had definitely improved. Was the change somehow reflected in the status sheet as well? I remembered seeing some blue screens popping up in my brain, but at the time, I had been busy and had just mentally waved them away. Suddenly curious, I called up my character sheet.

Name

Daniel Hollander

Rank

Initiate 1

Titles:

Mental Bastion, First Initiate

Strength:

1 [+1]

Intuitive Reasoning:

14

Mana

Agility:

3 [+3]

Complex Reasoning:

17

Silver

10/10

Speed:

1 [+1]

Emotional Intelligence:

9

Dexterity:

3 [+3]

Perception:

13

Endurance:

1

Spatial Awareness:

21

Vitality:

7 [+2]

Willpower:

21 [+1]

Available characteristic points: 5

Spells

Mana Vision

Level 2 [+1]

Available spell points: 5

Skills

Mental Ward

Level 1

Mental Fortitude

Level 1

Multitasking

Level 2 [+1]

Internal Mana Manipulation

Level 1 [+1]

Meditation

Level 1 [+1]

Available skill points: 0

Holy shit.

That was a lot of changes, especially to the physical stats. I was still pathetically low in all of them, but something was better than nothing.

Apparently, I also had somehow ranked up from Unranked to Initiate 1. I was not sure how the ranking worked and hence how much of an increase or change this really implied – something I had to keep an eye on, because I needed to get stronger quickly.

If the rank was even connected to getting more powerful… I had to be careful treating my gaming and roleplaying knowledge as the new reality.

There was also another title out of a sudden. I remembered getting the Mental Bastion title, but never really had figured out if it had any effect. Was it just like a name? Or did it have any real impact? Curious, I focused on ‘Mental Bastion’ and a blue box popped up in my vision.

Title: Mental Bastion

You are the first ever to resist the mental chaos of the Netherworld. As a reward, your ability to withstand mental intrusions is double of what the score of the respective skill or spell otherwise indicates.

Holy moly. Sweet stuff. Apparently, titles were the real deal. Not that doubling the mental resistance from a low level, as indicated by level 1 for Metal Ward and Mental Fortitude, would rock the world… but for later levels it might be a huge deal, especially if level progression was increasing non-linearly in difficulty.

Now eager, I dismissed the blue box and focused on ‘First Initiate.’ Instantly, another blue box popped up in my vision.

Title: First Initiate

You are the first in this pocket dimension to have cycled your mana, which marks you for future greatness. As a reward, your mana recovery rate has doubled.

That was freaking insane! A doubling of my mana recovery rate? Hell yeah, I will take that! Not that I had any idea at this point in how far mana recovery was a bottleneck or not, because I only had ONE FUCKING SPELL!

Whatever. It was a free bonus, and it sounded like it might be huge if I lucked out and got more spells down the road.

And what about those available characteristic points? That was new as well and perhaps tied to me leveling up. At least that would make sense. So… could I dump points in whatever characteristic I wanted to raise? That sounded too good to be true.

I was seriously tempted just to do that but then decided to check out the rest of the stats first to see if I could gain any more insights.

Both Mana Vision, a spell, as well as Multitasking, a skill, had leveled up in addition to a one-point increase in willpower, and Internal Mana Manipulation and Meditation were two new skills. While those changes weren’t dramatic per se, it did indicate a couple of important factors to consider.

First, maybe willpower had increased due to my leveling, but then the question was why all the physical stats had gone up and only one of the mental stats. That meant that it was more likely that breaking through the barrier and getting the mana cycle going had somehow fixed the nerve damage I had suffered four years ago, which explained the increase in physical stats. And because it had taken an inordinate amount of willpower to get there, willpower had leveled up as well.

Which fit nicely with the increase in Mana Vision and Multitasking - I had relied heavily on both of those abilities to achieve my goal, and, therefore, they had leveled up.

If all of my reasoning was correct, then there was one more little tidbit to consider… I didn’t feel as if I had gained an addition in level and then been granted improved understanding of mana vision and multitasking. No, it was more that I had practiced those things, had learned by trial and error to figure things out and that then was reflected in the increased stats. So there was no cheat for increased understanding available by just repetitively doing stuff over and over. I actively had to try and understand things and improve.

Unless… speculatively, I eyed those spell points.

I activated mana vision and took in my surrounding. A soft silver glow covered my body, apart from the ugly black-swirling cloud in my arm. I could also make out a faint trace of energy around me, in the air, and even the stones, that formed a sort of current that allowed me to perceive my surrounding in a weird way, a bit like infrared vision, perhaps, just related to mana instead.

And then I mentally added a point into mana vision.

Immediately, a deeper understanding of the spell and how it worked flooded my brain. The feeling was bizarre, and unlike anything, I had ever experienced. The closest was probably those ‘Eureka’ moments when going for a walk, or rather being pushed for a walk, while my subconscious was puzzling over a tough math problem – the sudden insight out of nowhere.

And the effect was noticeable - the radius of my vision extended from about four feet to six feet and the details I could perceive increased from rough shapes to a more nuanced awareness of physical features.

This was huge!

Assuming this applied to other spells as well, having those spell points available would allow for an exponential increase in utility and power without hundreds of hours of training.

Perhaps even more critical right now… if I could get rid of the spiderlings in my body, I now actually had a chance of getting out of here. It was pitch black in the cavern apart from that one source of light high overhead, so even if I now was able to move, a freaking miracle by itself, I would have had no idea where to go - spelunking without light was not high on my list of things to do.

But now things were different – Mana Vision gave me the ability to perceive my surrounding to a limited degree. And if I could further upgrade that skill… I might actually have a shot.

Turning to the characteristic points, I hesitated. While it was tempting to just dump them into the physical attributes that I needed right now, like endurance, strength, perhaps even speed, I was hesitant to do that. If training was the key to increase stats, then it stood to reason that at a lower starting point, the gains would be rapid. If so, then spending points right now seemed like a huge waste of future potential.

‘Focus on your priorities, Daniel’ I chided myself. If I couldn’t get rid of the spiders, it was a moot point to think about future potential.

Postponing further thoughts about an optimal leveling path, I focused my mana vision on my body once more and settled into the state of tranquility that had allowed me to see inside of my own body and manipulate mana.

Reaching that state of introspection was still hard to do, but with practice came proficiency. Or something like that.

Eventually, I succeeded in seeing the mana streams inside of my own body. And it was a sight of beauty. Whereas before there had been little pockets of diffuse silver clouds of mana distributed all over my body, now the mana flowed steadily throughout my body in a figure eight cycles, with the fulcrum at my steadily beating heart. The silver mana looked like one of those images of a creek where the photographer leaves the lens open for an extended period, and the water appears like a band of silver, fluffy cotton balls.

It was not all smooth, though, far from it. There were imperfections, such as jagged pieces, parts where the mana was seeping out of the cycle and slowly diffused into the body, and areas with a sort of whirlpool-like currents.

And then there was the black churning mass that was the spiderlings.