Mindful of her limited light duration, Jen pulled up her status page. Compared to what she remembered her stats were far higher than they had been. Knowing she had been able to adjust her skill notifications, Jen tried to mentally adjust her status page, moving sections around, converting regeneration rates into percentages and altering the time period they were calculating over, before reverting her changes and requesting a comparison to her initial status.

Jen Byrnes

Bringer of the Apocalypse Physical Status: Sore Mental Status: Weary Endurance: 4(2) Constitution: 4(2) Strength: 3(1) Health: 46/53 (+4.8 / Hour) Reaction: 6(4) Resilience: 15(5) Dexterity: 5(3) Stamina: 20/60 (+4 / Minute) Willpower: 16(4) Composure: 19(3) Intelligence: 21(5) Mana: 2/161 (+10.5 / Hour)

Almost all of her stats had doubled, and her resource pools and regeneration rates were massively improved. The fact that she was missing health and was described as ‘sore’ was worrying but understandable considering the ordeal that she had just undergone, but the section that truly caught her attention was her mental status.

Weary. Seeing it described so bluntly was a bit of a shock, but Jen really couldn’t argue with that description. She was trapped by herself in a cave under who knows how many tons of rock with no way out and her only resources were the ones she managed to make for herself. She had no timeouts, no breaks from this reality. While it did propel her forwards, letting her accomplish things she would have thought impossible a week ago, it also weighed on her. Sooner or later she would need to take a break. Her position was still precarious, but she now had a steady supply of food, water, light, and hope for the future. A way to truly relax would come soon enough.

Satisfied with her stats, Jen turned her attention to her Skills screen. A bit of effort had them organized by category and level, turning a wall of sheer text into something far easier to understand.

Skill List Name Level Description Resistance Poison Resistance 13 Reduces the effects of various poisons and toxins Pain Resistance 11 Reduces the sensory impact of pain Enhancement Listen 17 Improve your sense of hearing by focusing Echolocation 14 Determine details of your surroundings using sound waves Determination 11 Ignore pain, hunger, and other distractions in pursuit of a goal Chronos' Heart 7 Your perception of time is tied to your heartbeat Low Light Vision 5 Improves your low light vision Patience 4 Stabilize your mental state while waiting for an opportunity Taste Testing 3 Improves your sense of taste Self Improvement 1 Excess regeneration improves resource pool size Improvement Skills Singing 6 Improves your singing ability Ribbon Dancing 4 Improves your ribbon dancing ability Navigation 5 Improves your navigation ability Yoga 2 Improves your Yoga technique Identify 3 Allows you to identify objects Dancing 2 Improves your dancing ability Farming 1 Improves your farming ability Swimming 1 Improves your swimming ability Crafting 1 Improves your crafting ability Combat Whip Mastery 1 Increases your combat capability with a whip Fist Fighting Mastery 1 Increases your combat capability with your fists Mana Based Mana Control 6 Increases your ability to control mana both internally and externally Mana Manipulation 12 Your mana moves underneath your will Meditation 12 Align your body, mind, and soul. Relieves mental stress and improves mana regeneration by 12% Devouring Void 1 By focusing while extremely low on mana, you can absorb mana from your surroundings. Spells Plant Growth 2 3 Mana. Accelerate the rate at which a plant develops, forcing weeks of growth to occur within moments. Mana Bolt 3 20 Mana. Fires a magical bolt of pure force at a target, dealing damage upon impact Stone Shaping 4 10 Mana / 1 Min. Coat your hands with Earth Magic, allowing you to reshape and mold solid stone.

It was somewhat impressive just how many skills Jen had managed to pick up, and while some would likely stay at 1st level for a while, others would be useful tools for earning more Plot Points. She did have more than enough paths to complete.

Plot Paths - 20 Plot Points Available Completed Underdark Dweller (0/15)

Hibernation (0/20)

Thaumovore (0/27)

Novice Spellcaster (28/40) Introductory Path (5/5)

Fungal Arts (18/18)

Magic Mastery (20/20)

Path of Patience (60/60)

As she looked over her options, Jen mused that her situation might be considered unusual. It wasn’t like she had access to anyone else to compare herself with, but the difficulty and oddness of her paths seemed to hint that they were usually in short supply, rewards for extraordinary achievements. Even Novice Spellcaster, which only relied on having 15 in each mental stat to unlock, would still be a challenge for most, given there was no way to reach those stat totals without some other achievements.

Furthermore, there seemed to be a snowballing effect, where every path completed made it easier to unlock and complete related paths. Magic Mastery she had earned on her own, but it was thanks to the Mana Control Skill that it provided that she was able to create a Lesser Myconid and unlock the Fungal Arts path, and thanks the stat points from both paths that she qualified for the Novice Spellcaster path, not to mention giving her the capability of absorbing Mana and earning the Thaumovore path. She could imagine a weightlifter equivalent, where each feat of strength would earn new skills and stats to push the physical limits even further.

Of course, the same cycle could be started with the benefits of skills as well, with increased capabilities to bring the realm of the superhuman into reach, it would just take much longer. All that was theoretical, since Jen doubted she would run into any other people until she made her way back to the surface. Shaking her head, she began putting points into the Novice Spellcaster path.

Congratulations! You have learned Stone Skin Lvl 1.

Stone Skin: Cover yourself with a thin layer of rock armor that prevents damage

Congratulations! You have learned Earth Spike Lvl 1.

Earth Spike: Target a location to cause a sharp spike to rapidly form out of the ground.

While Jen didn’t have the energy at the moment to try them out, both seemed reasonable enough. Combined with Stone Shaping, she now had offensive, defensive, and utility spells for earth magic. None of them were the ‘dig a tunnel to the surface’ spell that she was really hoping for, but they still gave her more tools to work with going forwards. She was more than a little disappointed that she hadn’t received any stat points for the path, but considering it had been unlocked by having a large amount of stats, it somewhat made sense that it wasn’t an area the path would improve on.

With the Novice Spellcaster path complete, Jen now had the choice of which Path she wanted to put the rest of her hard-earned points into. All three of her remaining options raised concerns. Hibernation was the most obvious, with her sleeping for over 36 hours a worrisome fluke, and not one she was ready to support. While she hadn’t seen any truly worrisome skills yet, the key word in that sentence was yet. She didn’t want to find herself with a skill that doubled her regeneration while asleep but made it impossible to wake her up before 10 hours had passed. And that was only one of a handful of worrisome skill concepts that she had already thought of.

Thaumovore had a similar problem. While it was less likely to be immediately debilitating, Jen still wasn’t sure it was a direction of growth she wanted to encourage. While it was the most probable of her three paths to improve her mental stats, there was no guarantee. She would have gladly bet money on Novice Spellcaster raising her attributes, and while Thaumovore was similarly magically linked, it was now clear that some paths focus was on the skills that they gave. What really decided the issue for Jen was the fact that her only source of other mana to consume was ambient mana. There were no other people, or monsters, or random spells down here, and if Thaumovore was related to eating those types of mana it wouldn’t help her very much.

That left Underdark Dweller as the remaining option. Jen did consider holding off, saving up her points in hopes of earning another more interesting path, but she ultimately decided against it. Paths led to more paths, so any investment in Underdark Dweller would reasonably pay for itself eventually. She was a little concerned with the Dweller part of the title, not wanting to stay underground permanently, but without a digging spell it would take her a long time to reach the surface, time that she would in fact be dwelling in the dark. The final argument was that it was a short path, only fifteen points, and she already had ten.

Mind made up, she invested her ten points, earning two points each of Endurance, Reaction, and Dexterity, at 3, 6, and 9, respectively. The stats made sense for a stealthy survivor, and Jen stood up to test out her new capabilities. The yoga routines she knew were easier than before, her body smoothly stretching and contorting into the various poses. She could feel her sore muscles relaxing as she transitioned from one pose to the next, the acrid ache of the poison slowly being replaced with the warm exhaustion of a good workout.

Feeling much improved, Jen turned her attention inwards. When performing her tests to absorb ambient mana, she had realized that Meditation was a skill that activated outside of her control, helping her achieve a more relaxed state than she would otherwise be capable of. While the skill was useful, the idea of being guided, no, manipulated like that was somewhat unsettling. However, If Jen could manage to turn on and off the assistance herself, activating it only when she intended, she would be far more comfortable with the System’s influence. Meditation was hardly the only Skill she had that affected her actions. Singing, Ribbon Dancing, and her combat skills were other areas where the system would now nudge her actions, supposedly as improvements but without any insight into why.

It wasn’t that Jen thought the System was evil and out to kill her. It was just that she knew it was indifferent. Most people wouldn’t have that perspective, but most people didn’t find themselves trapped in a cave with no way out. What difference does it make to the System if a particular skill has a negative effect on its wielder? The audience is still entertained and there are plenty more humans to watch struggle. It was a game with rules that Jen was still trying to figure out. Learning what exactly Skills do and how to control them was just part of the game.

While most of Jen’s Skills were completely passive, Meditation had the additional effect of improving her mana regeneration. It was only a twelve percent increase, but hopefully the difference would be large enough to notice as Jen worked her way through various methods of activating and deactivating her skill. At some point she’d have enough mana to try out her new skills.

Jen smiled. For once she didn't expect to experience any pain at all while experimenting, except she might have just jinxed herself, tapping her knuckles twice against a mushroom in her pouch for lack of wood, Jen sighed and began to Meditate. The fugue state came easily, and Jen did her best to memorize what her Mana Pool looked like, paying special attention to the currents as they moved around her body. Once she felt she knew as much as possible, she slowly began to move, increasing her activity bit by bit until Meditation was cancelled itself. A virtual shudder ran through her system as her mana all underwent a minute readjustment before continuing on its way.

Once it had settled down, Jen began to look for differences, areas where the flow or depth of mana were notably different, and once she was satisfied she had found the most obvious ones she began to deepen her breathing again.

It took Jen a couple minutes to realize that she had somehow missed the transition, and she jerked herself out, confirming that there was an obvious shudder as everything slowed down. However, it seemed as if the process of entering Meditation slowly changed her mana system, gradually building up until she had reached that 12% improvement. The consolation prize was the potential of being able to use Mana Manipulation to replicate the improvements. If the improvement provided by Meditation was solely due to the changes in mana flow, and not due to some underlying factor, such as improvements to whatever mana generation system that she actually possessed. Even if it were a product of some other effect, manually assisting it along could still help by creating a more favorable environment. If her mana generators didn’t have to push her mana around themselves, they could spend more energy on creating mana. At least, that was a potential justification. The true worst-case scenario is that Jen would become more familiar with her mana system and get some practice in using Mana Manipulation for finesse work.

With those conclusions put aside for the moment, Jen once again watched as her body fell into a meditative state. Her slowly rising mana levels complicated the issue, but by focusing on just one channel the entire time she felt like she had a slightly better idea of what was happening. Then it was time to break Meditation to start the process over, and Jen did so again and again, sometimes watching the same spot multiple times to try and understand how it changed as her body filled up with mana, other times moving from location to location to better understand just how the location and physical properties of a channel affected the flow. More than once she wondered if mana followed the fundamentals of fluid mechanics, but that was a branch of physics and engineering that she hadn’t been interested in.

After thirty some tries, Jen put her Meditation attempts on hold. While she was learning a lot about her Mana Pool, she hadn’t gotten any closer to her original goal of controlling Meditation. She still was unable to tell when the skill activated and was unable to break out of it without movement.

While Jen waited for some inspiration on how else to test Meditation, she began to use Mana Manipulation. She now had a fairly good idea of how her body’s mana moved around; turbulent and smooth, fast and slow, thick and thin. What she didn’t have was a good idea of how Mana Manipulation affected those flows, until now having been focused on large scale effects, moving as much mana as possible to her hands, or away from her lungs. It felt strange to try and use a light touch, to be more focused on the ripples throughout her system than the effort she was putting in to make those ripples, but it was informative at the same time. While large scale movements benefitted from both Mana Manipulation and Mana Control, at some undetermined point Mana Control no longer applied. Jen only had half her usual toolset, but that just meant she had to learn how to use it more effectively. Her first attempts were drastic changes, blocking or changing her mana flows in ways far beyond the subtle influence of Meditation. Each attempt was a little bit softer, a little bit subtler, until Jen felt like she was nudging her mana around instead of hammering it into place. She still had a long way to go until she was in complete control, but it had been four hours by Chrono’s Heart, and she was beginning to feel a certain mental strain from working too hard.

Those hours had given Jen the mana she needed to test out her new spells, and she easily fed mana into a mushroom cap, setting it aglow while leaving her hands free to cast spells She noted that Yoga and Meditation skill increases would allow her to finish the Underdark Dweller Path, but she did want to get a handle on her new spells before she was distracted by something else.

Stone Skin was straightforward; an initial investment of mana to create plates of armor out of thin air that covered Jen’s torso and limbs. Her hands and head were left uncovered, which was probably for the best considering the movement restriction the armor provided. The spell had an active link to her mana pool, and Jen could feel it pulling small amounts of mana to reshape around her joints as she moved, and she could force more mana down the link to thicken the plates, even as the weight became even more encumbering. After fifteen minutes with no sign of decay, Jen pulled on the link instead, which snapped and then seemed to cascade across the armor as it faded back into ethereality.

Earth Spike was a different spell. When Jen spoke the name, she could feel the mana being pulled up into her hand, but it just stayed there until Jen pointed in front of her. Once she had designated a location, she could feel the mana rush forwards, and a moment later the ground was pulled into a point which rapidly shot upwards, leaving a concentric dip in the ground around the new spike. The spike seemed stable enough and while Jen didn’t need the spell for combat, she was sure it would come in handy for building various structures. It was a pricey spell though, burning through 30 points of mana and leaving her with almost nothing left. More testing would have to wait until later.

Now satisfied, Jen acknowledged the skill notifications.

Meditation has gained 3 Levels and is now Lvl 15.

Yoga has gained 2 Levels and is now Lvl 4.

Mana Manipulation has gained 4 Levels and is now Lvl 16

Stone Skin has gained 1 Level and is now Lvl 2.

Earth Spike has gained 1 Level and is now Lvl 2.

Chronos’ Heart has gained 1 Level and is now Lvl 8.

With the surplus of points from a successful evening of practice, Jen completed the Underdark Dweller Path, earning her 2 free points and a new skill.

Infrared Vision.