Three days. Sam waited for her turn to enter the dungeon portal. A grown man in full plated armor had just escorted three teenagers inside, most likely leveling a newer guild group. They were all decked out in decent low-level gear with the typical make-up of a mage, tank, and ranged damage dealer. The only thing missing was a healer, but those were rare enough that few groups had a dedicated one. Healers were assigned on an as needed basis between the various groups.

Three days. She adjusted her pack, keeping it on her back rather than laying it against a wall. She checked her mace at her hip and fussed with her belt. The corner she stood in was the furthest away from both the street and the portal building. There was only one person she wanted to speak to and he was nowhere to be found.

Three days. Her mind repeated the words over and over again. She tried not to think about it, as there was absolutely nothing she could do about it. About any of it. She had been to every single person that Alec had made even the slightest contact with when they were together. No one had seen him. Even his master was at a loss. He knew Alec wasn’t the type to cut and run, not like his last apprentice. The old man had told her to be patient, that if he was well he would show up. She knew that to be true, which was the problem. The only reason he wouldn’t show up was if he wasn’t well or able. He had to have been hurt, or kidnapped, or… something.

Three days. She had gone after the only people who had a reason to want him hurt. Kevin had simply scoffed at her and walked away. She approached Jacob in a much different way, in an alley after he had left the tavern. Two black eyes, a smashed nose, and several likely cracked ribs later told her that he knew nothing as well. She would have bet her parents farm that those two would know something, anything. She even went to Tenneson’s shop, on the off chance that he had seen or heard something. He let her know that Alec had made some purchases that day, but everything was fine with him when he left.

Three days. The guild group exited the portal, the tank’s gear was busted and his shield arm hung lose at his side. Their escort was bleeding from several cuts across his face and favored his left leg. The other two were dirty and looked like they had been through hell but weren’t hurt as far as she could tell. They stumbled away after their escort and the next team passed. The new group sneered at the former, making comments under their breath. The former team just hung their heads in shame as they passed.

Three days. She adjusted her armor, again, checked her mace at her side, and fussed with her belt. She brought together the five silver need to dive the dungeon for those above level five. When she bought the ticket, she had brought out only one silver coin to pay, but the attendant’s gaze went through her for a second before he coughed politely. He glanced at the coin and back to her, the look letting her know that he had just used an identification skill on her. She wondered if all the clerks that worked this window had an identification skill or trait. She paid the five silver, not embarrassed in the least that she had been caught. It was worth a shot. She needed as much money as she could get her hands on if she were to delve as often as she planned.

Three days. Another half hour of waiting and it was finally her turn. She adjusted her armor, checked her mace, and fussed with her belt as she stepped into the portal. If she couldn’t do anything now, then she simply needed to get strong enough to do it in the future. She drew her mace and began farming.

-----

Restart complete.

Blockages removed.

Syncing with host system.

Sync halted at 20%.

Host body is not compatible with full sync.

Higher Mana density required.

Alec awoke on a hard stone slab in a dark corner. His head had gone from splitting in half to simply being randomly stabbed with small knives. Overall, it was an improvement, just not one he could see himself ever being thankful for. His eyes took longer to get used to the light of the room than he was used to, and his body was sluggish as he managed to stand. He took a second to get his balance as he read over the messages he had been getting.

“Blockages? Where? What the hell is going on? And why does my head feel like two dogs are fighting over a steak?” He yelled at the disembodied voice.

“ It’s awake, very good… I think. Really didn’t think it would survive that . Human! I knew you would wake up! So, it seems there were some minor issues with getting you access to the town command console. Nothing major, and everything seems to have worked out perfectly. Except for the bomb in your head, but there’s no reason for you to learn about that.” The voice explained.

“Bomb in my head!?!” Alec erupted. “Listen here you insane ghost, get whatever you put in my head out NOW!”

“ How did he learn about that so quickly? I may have underestimated this human’s intelligence. Uhhh, about that. When you attempted to sync with the town’s system, it ran into several issues. The mana passageways in your head were tampered with, minimizing the amount of mana that could pass through at any given point. This is strange in and of itself due to the low mana requirements that the town’s system needs. The system ran several diagnostics and decided that flushing your pathways was the least dangerous way to fix the issue. Unfortunately, this required the system to use mana from the town supply to flood your brain to clear the blockages. You may have felt a small burning while this happened. Everything was going well until part of your brain started leaking. A failing of the organic parts you humans use. I’ll never understand why you stick to them myself. At this point, the town’s mana was almost at a critical level, so the system deemed more extreme measures necessary. You have to understand, you were dying, I was… erm, the system was dying, EVERYONE WAS DYING!” The voice began to get unintelligible.

“CALM DOWN!” Alec yelled at the increasingly hysterical being. “First, explain what ‘more extreme measures’ means.” Alec knew he wouldn’t like what the thing had to say. Thus far, he understood that he had some sort of… blockage, that the town had tried to fix. This led to the massive headache as the town used its mana to flood his channels in an attempt to unblock them by force. This led to something in his brain bursting, leaving him bleeding and dying. What he wanted to know was what happened next, and what the bomb in his head was. Hopefully it was something he just get rid of. It took a few moments to calm the voice down enough to get it to start speaking again.

“In order for us to survive, we need mana. We used more on you than expected and fell too close to terminal levels. At that point, the town would have started cannibalizing itself to survive. That doesn’t buy as much time as you’d think, and all systems would have failed within a matter of days. Permanently.” Its voice grave as it explained. “You, on the other hand, had mana, but needed your blood flowing inside your blood vessels instead of pouring into your head and making it all bloaty and swollen. Seriously, it was gross. I don’t know how you organics can even stand to have blood. It’s so weird. With all of this happening and very few options we could take where we both survived, we decided to… erm… upgrade… you.” It got quiet as it continued to explain, forcing Alec to take a second to make sure he heard what he thought he had heard.

“Upgrade me?” He quickly pulled up his status, worried about what he was going to see.

Name : Alec Montaine

Age : 16

Level : 1

Experience : 0/200

Condition : Perfect

Health : 80/80

Health Regen : 3.75/min

Mana : 30

Mana Regen : 1.875/min

Physical

Strength : 5

Endurance : 5

Perception : 5

Agility : 5

Constitution : 5

Mental

Magic : 5

Intelligence : 5

Wisdom : 5

Fortitude : 5

Willpower : 5

Attribute Points available : 5

Traits :

Enhance : Spend experience points to modify the properties of an object or entity targeted by the user. May not be used on self. Object must be under the ownership of the user. Sentient beings must give their consent. Non-sentient beings must be under the control of the user.

Cost: Variable Experience Points

Extract: Break down experience into its component parts. Doing this allows you to isolate the mana portion of experience points and use it for yourself.

Current Rate: 1 experience point = 3 mana

Skills : None

Alec read through his character sheet as the pain in his head increased, this time from the pressure building within him rather than whatever the system did.

“Level one! Why am I level one!?!” He screamed at the entity. “I have no experience points, and my skills are gone. What did you do!?!” This at least explained why he felt weaker, and why it took so long for his eyes to adjust. He was at level zero stats.

“I told you we had no choice. When you were scanned, we received all of your information. Your trait allows you to use your experience as fuel to modify different things. We simply cut a step off of that process and used the mana to complete your healing. It took a massive amount of mana. When we reset you to species default, your experience and skills would have just evaporated into the atmosphere. We used your new trait to turn them into usable mana. By the way, what in the ever-loving name of the Architect was that mess? Your growth was inhibited by nearly forty percent, I’ve only ever seen that done to slaves, and only the particularly violent ones.”

So, his experience and skills were gone. He looked back over his sheet, this time looking for things that were added, instead of what was taken away. First, he focused on the fact that he was at level one instead of zero. This made sense, as that was the level his system was unlocked fully. He then noticed he had five points to spend rather than three, as he did the first time around. That would tie in with him receiving forty percent more points with the default system. That would end up making him almost twice as powerful as anyone his level if he focused his build. The last thing he saw was his new trait. He was glad that it was added to his list, rather than overwriting his first one. It was called extract, and it allowed him to turn his experience points directly into mana. He could see that being extremely powerful, depending on how it worked. If he could use it while channeling a skill, he could theoretically use the skill until he ran out of experience points. He would have to experiment with it. At later levels he would have hundreds of thousands of experience points, making him a true monster down the road. He just had to survive to get there. He knew he shouldn’t be so accepting of this whole ordeal but frankly, he was tired, hungry, and unable to do anything about it. He was alive and that was good enough, for now.

“Ok, I understand all of that. I’m not happy about any of this as one of those skills was rare and I had to take a big risk to get it. I have no idea why my system was like that, but as far as I know, everyone gets three points per level to distribute wherever they want. This added trait is also pretty powerful, so that takes the sting out of a lot of this. Now, two things, what the hell did you mean by bomb, and where can I get a sandwich.”

“Well, your mana channels were tiny, and I mean tiny. When the system attempted to clear the blockages, your channels ruptured. Now, I am not going to go into an anatomy lesson on the weaknesses of organic beings such as yourself. Strange creatures. Suffice to say that that your blood vessels and your mana vessels essentially overlap one another. One being injured normally leads to the other being injured as well. To fix this, we wove your vessels within a sheath of mana, creating several pseudo-vessels. Right now, you’re being held together by magic. This will heal in time, but the weave is controlled by the system. You are currently unable to fully sync with the system, which is now partially, um… inside you? If you don’t strengthen your mana channels enough to handle the mana necessary, it will fail and the weave will simply deconstruct.”

“And deconstruct means I die.” Alec sighed

“Painfully.” The voice added.

“Thanks for that. So how do I strengthen my mana channels, and how long do I have?” He asked, worried that it wasn’t long.

“There’s no way to accurately predict how long you have. As long as you continually strengthen your channels, you should be fine. Meditation and mana cycling will help you widen and strengthen them, just like running and physical exertion will strengthen your heart and lungs, along with all your veins and arteries. Another way would be to increase your mana pool. This will give you a more mana to circulate, though you will have to stay away from the vessels in your head until you are fully healed. The last thing you need to do is rupture them again.”

Alec listened as the voice explained. He was only slightly familiar with the terms it was using thanks to the detailed lore book he had studied every day since becoming an apprentice.

“I’m not the one who ruptured them in the first place, thank you very much. What about my other stats, would any of them be helpful?” Alec began wondering if this was as simple as leveling up.

“Meh, not really. I mean, they would help, but not help help, you know what I mean.” Alec had no idea what the thing meant. “But once you learn meditate and mana cycling and level them up a bit, you should see a vast difference in your mana handling capabilities.”

“Wait, back up. Do you have skill shards for them?” If that was true, this might not be as bad as he thought.

“What? No. Why would we need shards for these skills? A toddler of your species could learn them, given enough time. Though given enough time a toddler becomes you. Hah! Organics…” The voice began to chuckle at itself.

“Ok, I feel like one of us is missing something. In order to learn a skill, any skill, a skill shard is needed. There is no other way.” Alec explained slowly and carefully.

“That’s nonsense. If that were true, how would you learn anything besides what monsters and dungeons drop? That would be madness. You would have basically no healers, and those you did have would be limited to the simplest spells. Although…” The voice took a second before responding again. “This can’t be right. According to the information we got from your initial scan, the blockages may have done more than just inhibit your growth. It is possible, though unlikely, that they prohibited your skill development as well. But you said it is this way for everyone? I don’t envy what that means for your species.”

“I’m going to choose to ignore what that means for the moment, this is all getting to be too much. If the blockages caused this and they are gone, that means I should be able to, what, learn a skill by practicing it?” This would be too good to be true. Alec pictured himself learning every skill he could imagine, shooting lightning from the tips of his fingers, flying through the sky, maybe even breathing underwater. Before he could get too deep in thought, the voice burst his burgeoning bubble.

“Within reason. Most skills have prerequisites you have to meet before learning them. You can’t just learn regeneration, for example. You would need an extremely high amount of health regen for that. Most skills are like this, but there are plenty that you just need to practice at enough to learn them. Meditate is easy enough, you simply get into what position is comfortable for your species, slow your breathing, and focus on the flow of mana throughout your body. Wow, that’s a lot. You sure you don’t want to just shed your body and trap your spirit in a crystal like me? It’s sooo much less complicated.”

Choosing to ignore yet another bombshell that he didn’t have time to delve into, Alec sat on the floor with his back against the bed, it wasn’t optimal, but it would do. He did his best to get comfortable and slow his breathing. It took a few moments, but he began to relax. His anxiety and irritation began to slowly melt away as he focused on simply breathing in and then breathing out. At a certain point, he remembered that he needed to focus on the flow of mana within his body. Choosing to stay away from his head, as he didn’t want to commit accidental suicide, he chose to focus on his chest. More specifically, he chose the area in which his heart rested. He focused on what his heart felt like with each beat. What it was pushing out and pulling in. The rhythmic tattoo that was slow, steady, and unstopping. He tried to picture the blood as it entered and exited in an eternal journey. He focused on what mana had looked like when he had seen it in action and tried to picture it following along with the blood, travelling into one side and out the other. It took several tries, more than he would like to admit, before he started to see blue specs shooting in and out of his heart in his minds eye.

You have learned the skill Meditation.

Alec’s eyes shot opened as the notification swam into view. This was big. If he could learn skills through practice… The consequences were too big to even think about at the moment. At least, until he got his sandwich.