*…. …. …. Chirp chirp …. …. ….*

“Ahaha.. I feel so stupid, no way that was gonna work was it.. I could literally hear the imaginary crickets chirping.. What am I doing wrong??”(Kiefer)

After his first attempt at magic failed, Kiefer felt so stupid he actually started laughing out loudly. He dropped the stick he was using as a makeshift wand and decided to tackle the problem from another angle, all the time listening to the low rumble of the nearby waterfall.

He was an astro-particle physicist, and he was well versed in all the properties of subatomic particles. Thinking and analyzing was his forte and his livelihood back on earth, so why not here too. He stood up, stark naked and his little brother dangling free and loose, and started pacing along the river.

He felt the air in his lungs, the sun on his body, the rocks below his feet and the occasional spray of water from the waterfall. “Over a million neutrinos pass through my body every second, coming from space. What if mana was just another subatomic particle unique to this planet?” He thought and began focusing his concentration on his body and its surroundings.

Kiefer stood still for a long time, eyes closed and mind concentrating. He had this hazy feeling within his body, but could not pinpoint the source of it. It was foreign, yet not discomforting. He felt it seeping out of his body and radiating outwards dispersing in the air, while occasionally being reabsorbed when he came in contact with the water.

Upon further concentration, Kiefer realized something. It’s not that these haze like particles were dispersing and disappearing. They were being converted into a different form once they left his body, while his body was actively converting the surrounding particles into the hazy form that he had become familiar with.

These so called ‘mana particles’ were constantly everywhere in different concentrations, in different forms, as if vibrating in different frequencies to differentiate their origin.

Kiefer tried testing various hypothesis immediately. First, He tried to control his own mana particles (from now it will just be refered to as mana), willing it to move as he see fit. He could gather the mana in any part in his body and move it outside up to a metre away. Beyond that, his mana concentration was too low to be manipulated and begins converting into mana in the air.

Too absorbed into this newfound discovery, Kiefer forgot everything the Balancer had warned him and proceeded on with his experiments. He started by limiting his mana leakage, and immediately willed his mana to stay within his body hoping to accumulate the total amount of mana in him.

From there, he discovered that his body does not naturally generate mana, but instead needs to spend mana to convert surrounding mana into his own. However, because the concentration of mana in the air was so low, the conversion rate was similarly low. He realized that he had to release his own mana to convert the mana in the air at a rate of 1 : 1.1. This meant that he had to spend 10 particles to convert 11 into his own, with a net gain of 1.

Trying out the conversion sequence from nearby resources, he moved from air, to rocks to trees and finally to the lake water. Everything had a unique mana type, with mana differing slightly even between 2 trees of the same species. He discovered that living things had significantly higher mana concentration and hence better conversion rates than non-living things.

The exception being the lake water. It had by far the highest concentration of mana that he had felt and he could tell that it was different from the water in his wooden bottle. “Hmm, looks like that geezer was telling the truth after all. There must be something inside the lake powerful enough to release this much mana into the water.” Kiefer chuckled to himself.

He decided to test his limit next, collecting water from the lake in his bottle while limiting his own mana leakage, then converting the mana in the bottle back at his shelter at a whopping rate of 1 : 9. With each passing bottle, he could feel the haze inside his body getting thinker and denser. As it did, he could feel his mind getting clearer and body becoming more refreshed.

However, while converting the 4th bottle of water, he was overcome with a sudden onset of intense headache, followed by the all so familiar THROB reverberating through his body. “Oh shit, not this again,” Kiefer cursed, knowing too well that he had pushed too far past his limit. “Gotta…. watch out… next ti –“

Kiefer collapsed inside his small shelter and fell unconscious again.

*Kathunk!*

Kiefer was rudely awakened by one of the wooden beams of his shelter falling on his head. “Ow.. what the hell..” Kiefer groaned as he opened his eyes slowly, his head still slurring from the mana overload earlier that day. However, what he saw surprised him even more – In the darkness of the night, 3 red eyes looking at him while its mouth constantly chewing what used to be part of his shelter.

[[ Rabbit’s POV ]]

*Night 1*

“Thirsty. Lake Water.”

“Weird human in lake. Poor human. Shearwood scary.”

“Run. Before Shearwood come”

*Night 2*

“Thirsty. Lake water.”

“Weird Short tree. Tasty”

“Yummy.” *Munch Munch*

“Human inside tree?? Scary. Run!”

[[End of Rabbit POV]]

Kiefer was hungry and mad. Mad that the rabbit had destroyed what took him hours to build. Mad that he was selfishly thrown into this bizarre new world. Mad that he was naked. Mad that he was hungry. And all he could think of right now was how to cook the rabbit that was inside his decrepit shelter.

On impulse, Kiefer extended his hand trying to catch the creature, but something unexpected happened. As the creature turned around to run away, Kiefer could almost visualize a hazy silver claw extending from his outstretched arm grabbing the rabbit creature and crushing its neck.

“What just happened?” Kiefer asked himself. “Could my mana actually be manipulated to manifest physical properties?”

Sitting next to a campfire roasting the rabbit meat, Kiefer took a bite out of his first meal, staring into the 2 moons and contemplating the possible applications of mana to help him survive.

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I'll most probably be uploading another one tonight in about 8 hours or so, so look forward to it.