Water splashed my face. A smug looking Mr. Murdock and a muddled Carter looked down on me in the arena. A pounding headache caused me to wince, and my body felt like it had run a marathon.

“Shit… what happened?” I asked.

I remembered everything fine, but my thoughts and actions felt like those of a different person. I had never felt such an energy before. Unfortunately, my thoughts were a bit too… bloodthirsty, for my liking. I rubbed the sides of my head.

Mr. Murdock clucked his tongue and gave a sharp laugh. “What happened he asks!” Shaking his head, he helped me off the ground, and the two men supported my fatigued body. “Somehow, you were able to access your mana and perform two abilities. The last, Enhance, energized your body. Then, you ran out of juice, and passed out for a second before the arena brought you back to full strength.”

I looked over the Enhance ability in detail and not just the blurb I had received right before I passed out.

Ability – Enhance – Beginner, Tier 1

Description – Power, Agility, and Constitution increased by three. Perception of time increased. Overall senses increase. Pain reduction by 10 percent.

Cost – 20 mana every 3 seconds. Requires minor concentration

Cooldown – 1 minute.

No wonder I felt so good. My senses were heightened, and I was twice as strong and fast as I was without the ability. They should call it the Kaioken x 2! “Why did I feel…” my words trailed off as I tried to pinpoint the wording.

“Blood-hungry? Powerful? Single-minded? Focused? Insane?” Mr. Murdock ticked off some examples one after another. “For the people that are able to develop this ability, especially early in their levels, this is common.”

He led us outside the arena, the two girls long gone and nowhere to be found. I couldn’t decide how I felt about the interaction. On one hand, fuck her! Two, that was very close to my first murderous thought in my life, and that didn’t feel particularly good.

“Everyone starts with a score of three” he continued as we sat in the grass, “so this ability, increasing your scores by three, doubled everything for you.” He paused and tapped his head a few times. “It was also the first time your brain received such an influx of mana. It can cause some people to have a power trip, of sorts.”

I scoffed. “Power trip is putting it lightly. I wanted to kill her, for just a few antagonizing sentences.” I thought back to the memories of how I had felt, the emotions I experienced, and felt sick.

“Listen, Vince.” Mr. Murdock snapped me out of my memory. “The first rush of mana does weird things to people, even the good ones.” We stood, and he put a comforting hand on my shoulder. “Being capable of initiating that with no instruction, before your class was even selected, is amazing. You will definitely have a class dedicated to Mana Manipulation, I’m sure of it.” He tried his best to change the subject, which I appreciated.

“How many students have you seen get this ability?” I asked.

“Before their class had been selected?” He paused and gave his signature deep laugh. “In the three hundred years I have been here… never.” He walked toward the other students, and called back over his shoulder. “Grab some weapons boys, weapon training for you two!”

Never… In three hundred years?

As we picked weapons to try, Carter bombarded me with questions. How did I do that? Describe what it felt like? Can you do it again? This was followed by how amazing it looked; how badass I came across. It was the first time Carter showed real enthusiasm and personality, and it caused me to smile. He even picked up a few words from my dialect like “Yup,” and “nope.” The way he said it was like a middle schooler learning to cuss for the first time. He would say the word, then look at me with a “did I do it right?”

I decided to avoid Enhance until I was alone in my room this evening. I wouldn’t use it in combat until I felt that my mind was my own first. Reading Pulse showed that it had a one-minute cooldown, but no damage numbers. Seemed like it was mainly used as a “get off me” ability rather than a damaging one.

Using weapons against Carter was a blow to my ego. He was a certifiable genius in combat… well at least he was compared to me. No matter what weapon we picked, he would beat me repeatedly. Thankfully they were all practice weapons, blunt instruments mimicking their sharper and more dangerous counterparts.

When we sparred in groups, he would usually be the last man standing, or at least in the final two. It was impressive to watch, albeit a bit frustrating. I was average at best in hand to hand combat, and was far below average in using any kind of weaponry.

I earned the skills Shields, Swords, and Polearms. The injection of knowledge was helpful when I picked them up, but I just couldn’t apply it as well as my classmates.

Skills from other RPG games, such as dodge or evade, did not appear. Mr. Murdock explained that these skills didn’t exist in Laria, and if I wanted to dodge something better, put some points into agility and, I quote, “Don’t get hit so much.”

Carter and I bonded over the course of our shared experiences. Although we sparred with some nice people, no one really stuck around. We had achieved an unspoken comfort between us, like an old friend to which you don’t have to speak everything aloud. I was just happy to have someone distract me from my predicament. My thoughts wandered to Earth often, comparing this and that with my experiences from home, which would inevitably make me think of friends, family, and Tiffany. Carter helped keep me focused on learning and fighting.

The “classroom” learning was a mix of different histories, problem solving, combat theory, tactics, and more. I drank up the history and tactics like a college kid on spring break. I was really into history and learning about wars growing up, but add in elven magic and stats? Fuck, I wish all my schooling was as interesting as the ones here.

Problem solving was fairly simple. “How long will a wagon take to reach Johan if it travels x amount of miles in x amount of hours, if the distance between the starting location and Johan was y amount of miles.” What was interesting was Laria’s version of pens. It was a small silver rod, about the size of a regular pen or pencil. However, when I pressed it down on a piece of parchment, ink came out. When I inspected it, Imbued Rod of Ink appeared.

Really need to teach them the word pen… I would rather not say, “Hey could I borrow your Imbued Rod of Ink please?” every time.

Combat theory and forms was a struggle. I think, and this is my hypothesis, that I had not just my old memories, but old muscle memories too. They were not an issue in my problem solving and tactics classes, where I was one of the top students at understanding and answering questions. But moving my body the way I needed to for combat was difficult. I was an athlete growing up, sure, but never did anything that required strict form and discipline over my body. No karate, no dance classes. Unless it was basketball or baseball related —so far, no luck—I had a disadvantage in this regard based upon my previous life.

By the end of day three, I got the courage again to try Enhance.

I sat in my room, sitting cross-legged on the hard wooden floor. I closed my eyes, taking deep breaths. First, I wanted to test something. I had worked on Pulse a few times in class, and had a rough idea of how much mana I needed to use to let out a weak wave of energy. One that would be felt by those nearby as a particularly strong wind gust. It cost 10 mana to produce this exact effect.

As I concentrated on letting out the required mana, the room reverberated slightly with a few pieces of parchment flying off from my desk. I watched my mana bar, counting in my head slowly.

One-One Thousand, Two-One Thousand…

At the end of two, my mana ticked up by 1. My current mana regeneration was around one mana per two seconds. This was drastically different than in combat. Carter had proposed an experiment just before the end of our third day. We initiated a duel in one of the arenas and I focused on Pulse. The mana was released from my body. It took ten seconds for it to tick up by one, so outside of combat was, indeed, 5x faster than when I was in an active fight.

After my little experiment, I determined I could activate Enhance for 15 seconds before needing to stop. I had tooled around my interface with Mr. Murdock earlier, being instructed on how to see active durations of buffs, debuffs, and abilities in preparation for my mock trial run tonight.

I closed my eyes and took a few breaths again. I knew what I needed to do–as weird as it was. Learning the ability had put what I called a “trigger” in my mind to activate the ability. Though I had only casted it once. I knew exactly the button that needed to be pushed, so to speak. So I relaxed as best I could, and thought, Enhance, and pushed the “button.”

The feeling of my mana swirling around my body and being absorbed by my mind, body, and spirit was as exhilarating as it had been the first time.

Yes… this is what I need! I thought to myself like a poorly developed cartoon villain.

Wait. No. Vince, breathe. Relax.

Apparently, I relaxed too much, and the ability ended. The description said “minor” concentration was needed, so trying to lose the feeling completely I guess was not the answer.

A few more trial and errors later, I was able to keep my sense of self—for the most part—for the entire fifteen seconds. I was rewarded.

Enhance, Tier 1 beginner --> Enhance, Tier 3 beginner

Statistic increases unchanged

Composure while under Enhance’s effects has improved by 25 percent.

I was gripped by another out-of-body experience, like when I sparred with Carter. This was my first with skill injection, as I decided to call it. I saw myself fighting the blonde, the one I had lost my cool with originally. I felt the feeling of losing control, and was relieved to experience my body relaxing slightly, and the murderous intent becoming muted. It wasn’t gone, but it seemed manageable enough to obey my will if I thought the fight was over.

A mild headache later, I was back to the present.

I skipped all the way to Tier 3, I thought with wonder to myself. It felt like I had a knack for controlling mana. It just felt right, I guess. Swords and shields felt unruly in my hand, even with Laria’s cheating help. This, however, felt as comfortable as walking.

I took a deep inhale, stretched my back, exhaled, and got back to work.

“Enhance.”

Name - Vince (Level 1)

HP - 100/100

Skills –

Unarmed fighting (Beginner T2)…

Abilities – Enhance

Pulse

Race - Human (Earth)

Mana - 100/100

Power - 3

Agility - 3

Bloodline - Hidden

Buffs - None

Constitution - 3

Mana Manipulation - 3

Class - Processing

Debuffs - None

Exp: 0/100

Traits - None