Mike felt the Dark mana vanished from his attunement sense, replaced by something new. Arcane mana was everywhere. He flicked on his Mana sight as he remembered what the skill description had said about the Arcane mana being filtered out before he could understand what it was.

The whole of his vision deepened, it was the only word he could think of to describe it. The Darkness that was already almost impenetrable became as dark as the mana it contained, the grass and fallen leaves littering the ground around him became deep green and brown in turn. Even in the darkness, the last flickering embers that remained in the fire pit burned orange and the ashes surrounding them became a landscape of grayscale.

He pivoted where he stood, looking up and around at the forest from this new perspective. The rays of moonlight poking through the trees were deeper, the dim glittering of the golden leaves in the darkness was more visible.

As he got used to the change he noticed that he couldn’t see further or in more detail, everything just looked different, but he couldn’t see the Arcane mana. He furrowed his brow and focused, spreading his attunement sense out again as he had let it drop in his surprise at the change to his Mana Sight.

The Arcane mana was still there, or at least this new type of mana was, he tried to get the same kind of impressions from it that he got from Light and Dark mana but he felt nothing,

He couldn’t describe it, it felt like the same kind of energy as the other mana types, but it didn’t give him those vague sensory cues that let him know how to use it.

He focused harder and he felt a pulse from nearby. Turning to face it, he ended up facing where Crosse was sleeping. As he looked at the sleeping man, trying not to feel like a creep, he saw that there was something different about the Arcane mana around him.

He carefully took a few steps around the fire pit closer to him, wanting to see if he could tell the difference. After only making it halfway through, he got a notification.

You have unlocked the Skill:

Governing Stats

Mastery

Max Mastery

Description

Stealth

AGI

PER

Amateur

Novice

Stealth is the act of moving surreptitiously and silently to avoid notice, it is about being aware of your surroundings and moving through them while disturbing as little as possible.

Well, that would come in handy. If he wasn't wrong, it was also his second skill that was 'related to wilderness survival', so he only needed one more and he would complete that Quest.

For now, he was focused on something else though, he took another careful step towards Crosse and felt his posture change.

His knees bent and he felt all of his weight settle on one leg. As he made the step he felt his weight settle down on the outer edge of his foot before he pressed down on the ball of his foot. The disorienting feeling of not being in complete control of his own body caught him off guard.

It wasn’t uncomfortable per se, just disorienting, he couldn’t say he liked the feeling much, but he also understood that the AI would likely prefer that he didn’t like it more. As if he didn’t want his body moving on its own then that was only further incentive to learn how to do these things himself, thus progressing the Skills.

After taking a few more steps guided by the skill, he also noticed his eyes focusing down towards the ground as he moved, allowing him to avoid stepping on the sparse few large leaves that were there. Weren’t those leaves made of metal? How did the decay like that? A question for after the sun came up.

He reached within a few metres of Crosse, the man now fully enveloped by his Attunement sense. Mike felt pulses of mana coming from inside Crosse, they were faint but plentiful. Mike tried to focus on them to understand what was happening but he had an Idea.

The AI had said that EXP was Arcane mana, naturally absorbed by his body and given aspects by his soul, these aspects improved him, they were his stats. The AI had also said that all creatures in this realm naturally do this from birth. So it made sense that Humans did it as well.

Mike focused his Attunement in on Crosse, trying to use Arcane Logic to sense how much Arcane Mana was actually inside him. His arcane Logic started to Process but hit a wall. Mike paused then tried to devote his thoughts to actually understanding the process of the calculation, focusing his Mana sight on Crosse as well.

The calculations were trying to work out how much mana was contained within Crosse's body, but it reached a certain point and then stopped, and Mike realised what was wrong. There was too much, the Skill description had said that he could sense accurately to the hundreds, meaning no more than a thousand, and Mike was seeing why now.

The Skill didn’t have the processing power to do all of the necessary calculations, so it was getting overwhelmed and stopping. That was also one of the reasons why it didn’t give him more specific readings on the amount of mana he was controlling or sensing because in order to get that more specific reading, it would need to do more work, but it didn’t have the ability.

So to get more specific or larger reading he needed to do some of the calculations himself, in his head, fast enough for him to be able to put it into the skill and let it use the values he worked out to do the more detailed stuff later itself.

So he plunged his awareness into the workings of the skill, trying to catch the parts of earlier parts of the calculations that he could help with. He lowered his body as quietly as possible to the ground until he was sitting on the ground about two metres from Crosses prone form.

He hoped that the man didn’t wake up. If he did and found Mike sitting and watching him instead of the dark and potentially deadly forest around them, Mike imagined he would be upset.

Now sitting, Mike managed to catch those earliest portions of the calculations. The volume of the Arcane mana in Crosse's body and its density. Mike couldn’t understand the later portions yet, but if he could work this out himself then he may be able to get an understanding of how it was used.

As he started to crunch the numbers he understood why the AI had trouble; mana wasn’t physical, it didn’t have mass, volume or density. It took up space, kind of, but it could compress itself incredibly, like any form of energy could. It was like trying to calculate the water content of a cloud by sight.

The Skill had some methods though, it was using calculations made by the AI to measure the potency of a specific density of mana. It was tapped into his Attunement and Control to tiny degrees, feeling the way the mana around him reacted to it and using that reaction to estimate its current density. Then it was comparing that density to that of the current specific focus of his Attunement sense or Control.

For volume, it simply had to use the physical volume of the space that the mana was occupying. He felt it tapping into portions of itself that had static numbers for the density of air, flesh, blood, bone, wood, metal. It was using these and measurements it had obtained of Crosse passively through his perception, though those weren’t 100% accurate either.

If this one skill was using so many of his stats to function, why had it only listed two stats as its ‘Governing Stats,’ Intelligence and Wisdom? He could see why the higher his intelligence the better the skill would function because it was using his memory and processing power to do these maths and get the data it needed for input.

He wondered if his Wisdom stat was what made his revelation about Dark mana possible. The other times he had made spells it was because the AI had given him enough hints to work out the answer, using the Minor Illusion and Sensory Illusion spells as ways to communicate to him that those mana types could be used that way.

After doing the crunching Mike was able to feel the Skill take his results and add them into its further calculations. It did its job much faster than he had, the advantages of being a magical construct.

After thinking that, Mike realised something. He could sense his Skill. It was made of Arcane mana, it was like a spell that was seamlessly integrated into the process of his thoughts. He focused his attunement sense on his head, trying to sense the arcane mana that it contained. He sensed the portion of that mana that was active right now as the Skill returned the answer to the amount of arcane mana that Crosse had inside of him.

More than 2700 and less than 3000 Arcane mana was contained in Crosse's body. As the Skill returned that result he felt that active cluster of Arcane mana in his head change. It shed two tiny pieces of itself, letting one dissolve into arcane mana and run deeper into his mind. He felt the other zip away from his sense to elsewhere in his body. He paid attention to the first, following it as it shifted shape and purpose as it melded into another gathering of arcane mana, also in his head.

He started to speak, wanting to see his status window. Before he could, he felt a packet of Arcane mana zip into his head from somewhere else in his body, it joined that pool of arcane mana that the first had melded with but remained distinct from it, giving him an impression that no Arcane mana had so far. It seemed to pulse with a purpose that said ‘Mental’.

Then he heard the ding of a notification.

Congratulations!

Your Wizard Class has Levelled up!

You have gained 1 distributable Mental Stat and 1 distributable Magic Stat.

Spoiler: Status Window

Name

Mike Sven

Age

22

Sex

Male

Height

180cm

Weight

58.2kg

Wizard Level

2

Wizard EXP

0%

Average Level

3

Physical Statistics

0

Level

3

Exp

95%

Strength (STR)

10

Endurance (END)

10

Agility (AGI)

10

Dexterity (DEX)

10

Mental Statistics

1

Level

2

Exp

50%

Intelligence (INT)

15

Wisdom (WIS)

11

Perception (PER)

11

Willpower (WIL)

10

Magic Statistics

1

Level

4

Exp

35%

Affinity (AFI)

16

Attunement (ATU)

11

Control (CON)

11

Resistance (RES)

6

General Points

0

He read the screen noticing that not only had his Wizard Class gained a level but he had gained mental EXP as well. So that was how Skills gave him EXP, they were spells of very dense Arcane mana that interfaced with him seamlessly, and that allowed them to transfer the part of the mana that he had comprehended in levelling up the Skill into EXP.

In a sense, his Skills levelling up made them weaker but it made him stronger. Mike wished he had levelled up his Mental aspect just now, or that he had followed that other little bit of arcane mana as it zipped away. He wanted to see what it was like for one of his aspects to level up.

Thinking that, he flicked his eyes to his Status window, he was only five per cent from levelling up his Physical aspect. He remembered that he had only had ninety per cent EXP the last time he saw his Status, gaining a skill given him EXP as well then? What was a Physical Skill that he could easily unlock?

That was easy, Mike looked to Crosse and then stood up as quietly as he could, putting his hand to the ground and hopping his feet up under him. He then used the foreign reflexes granted by the Stealth Skill to make the distance. Sadly the Skill didn’t level up.

He paid attention to what happened to the illusory Status window as he grew distant from it, though after he was three metres away from it, it simply dissolved as it did when he dismissed it. He hadn’t been paying enough attention to notice that before.

Once he was a good distance from Crosse he turned to face their camp. Well, the fire pit and Crosse, it was hardly a camp. Then he made a similar pose to what knife fighting had taught him and punched with one fist forward into empty air.

You have unlocked the Skill:

Governing Stats

Mastery

Max Mastery

Description

Unarmed Combat

STR

END

Amateur

Novice

The Unarmed Combat skill Teaches you how to use your body as a weapon, and how to defend yourself while Unarmed. At amateur levels it will teach you how to stand, block and take a hit, only attacking when certain of landing a hit.

Physical aspect Level up!

You have gained 2 Distributable Physical Stats.

Physical Statistics

2

Level

4

Exp

15%

Strength (STR)

10

(+/-)

Endurance (END)

10

(+/-)

Agility (AGI)

10

(+/-)

Dexterity (DEX)

10

(+/-)

He heard the faint ding of the expected notification but was focusing on his Attunement sense. He tried to sense the arcane mana in his body. He didn’t know where his physical skills were stored but the AI had told him to touch the tattoo to the chest over the heart to gain Physical EXP from the Plunder system.

So he focused his Attunement sense on his heart and sensed the pool of Arcane mana already there, in less than a second he felt a pulse of Arcane mana move down his spine, and pause behind his heart. It moved forward and melded into that pool in his heart. Then the whole pool shifted, it formed together into four separate portions.

Three of them pulsed with intent, something similar to the impressions that he had gotten from mana in the past. One gave him the distinct impression of strength, one speed, and the last toughness. The Three pulsing packets of mana seemed as if they were about to dissipate outwards, but Mike felt something he didn’t expect. his whole spine let off a flash of Arcane magic, similar to what he had felt from his skill.

In response the three packets changed, the Impressions he got from them changed. Two of them changed to give him the impression of ‘Physical’ while the third was drawn towards his spine and melded into the spell that had activated there. Leaving the two ‘Physical’ Bundles behind. The last part of the four seemed to still just be Arcane mana leftover from the transformation of the pool into the three packets.

After this process was finished Mike just stood for a moment trying to process. Ok, so he had unlocked Physical Combat, which had sent that pulse of Arcane mana into his heart. That had started the level up, which had been the transformation of his EXP, the mana, into those three magic packets that felt like spells that would grant him stats.

But then a spell on his spine had interacted with those three packets, taking one of them for itself, and making the other two into different kinds of spells. He looked at the Notification. It had made them into distributable stat points, like the ones he had gained for levelling up his class, or all of the stat points he had gained in the past.

They had been stat points before, but not the kind that he could spend, they would have automatically merged with the aspect that they had originally resonated with. The AI had interfered with that process though, or at least a spell that the AI had left behind had. Now he had two stat points that he could put into whichever of the four physical stats he wanted.

What had it done with that extra point then? Did that mean that he was getting one fewer stat points per level than everyone else? Mike was mystified.

He had learned a lot about what Arcane mana and Magic was, but he had been left with more questions. He supposed it was called Arcane mana for a reason.