You have slain Gray Variant Cavern Scorpion LV7

You have leveled up 1 → 4

Your stats have increased:

Health: 20 → 60

Mana: 10 → 50

Power: 1 → 4

Endurance: 3 → 7

Speed: 3 → 8

Intelligence: 4 → 10

Spirit: 3 → 5

You have 8 unassigned stat points.

I get another notification. It’s a victory, but somehow I don’t feel like celebrating it.

I check my health.

Health: 3/60

I’m still living… I’m still living! A wave of relief surges through me, knocking me down to the ground. Or maybe that was because of the blood loss. A pool of purple blood forms where I am. Looks like Shade Beast physiology differs from humans in more than just outward appearance.

I can feel my head getting hazy. Will I pass out here? I can’t think straight.

An image of my parents flashes through my head. I shiver at the thought.

I still see them – the eyes of my mother, three days before she killed me.

I let out a big sigh. I let the exhaustion and blood loss take over me, pushing me to pass out and sleep. I’m to done with this whole situation to start thinking about my past life now.

That’s it. When I wake up, I will be as I was before when I came into this hell. I will go back to normal Aaron. I just need a little bit of sleep.

-----

I wake up from my sleep, still feeling tired. Hard, stone rock doesn’t make for a very good bed at all, but I’ll have to make do with what I have.

My stomach growls, urging me to find something to eat. Oh, that’s nice. This body can growl at least.

I look at the pool of purple blood I slept in. My blood. It’s a strange look, to have a purple substance come out of your wounds instead of regular, red blood.

Nevertheless, I approach one of the bats. It’s strange. I thought I would feel a little more repulsed at the thought of eating one of these things raw, but I don’t feel any aversion at all. Maybe it has something to do with my class.

I kneel down next to the bat and hold it up to I could bite of pieces of it. I notice that when I open my mouth, I don’t have any teeth. I notice that I don’t really have lips either – the mouth parts open in a zigzag line, pointy enough to tear off pieces, but not fit for chewing food.

Maybe I swallow food whole? I hold up the corpse to my mouth and try to bite off a piece. I simulate chewing reflexively, but with no teeth, I’m not really doing much but moving it around. I try to swallow…

I can’t actually swallow.

I try and force the morsel of meat to go down my throat, but I end up nearly choking myself. I cough the food out of my mouth, panting.

Yea, that’s not right at all. A frown appears on my face. How will I eat now?

I can feel the instinct guiding me though. I can feel that I can do something with my hand, I just have to… I just try to…

A strange popping noise happens, like the sound a bubbling mud would make.

I can see that my hand has turned into some kinda weird… swirly vortex-y thingy. Magic?

By instinct, I touch the carcass with my vortex-y hand and the meat begins to disintegrate while strange particles emanate from it. The particles flow into my vortex hand and a strange taste sensation fills me. The meat is pretty mediocre, but not at all disgusting.

I mean compared to the lavish meals I had in my last life, the taste is wholly inadequate, but unlike those meals, this just feels so… filling.

A smile appears on my face as I happily engorge myself onto the bat carcass – a gruesome sight indeed. I could only do this because of my Shade Beast physiology. It feels wondrous.

Maybe life here isn’t so bad… Sure it’s pretty brutal, but that’s just nature isn’t it?

I don’t know how someone like me looks when they smile, especially when their lips part in a zigzag like mine. I sure was doing a lot of it right now though, compared to my past life.

Surviving here just felt so rewarding. Like, I had to actually work for this. That might’ve been what I was missing this whole time. Just maybe.

It feels so great to actually get out there and just do stuff. I have to improve myself. My past is exactly that, something that happened a while ago right?

Why should I let something that happened so long ago affect me right now? I’m in a different world in a different life! I should be happy and dancing at such a monumental opportunity!

You’re only saying this until you meet another scorpion that wasn’t as weakened as the one you just fought.

Maybe, but you know what? That’s completely fine.

You haven’t changed at all. You let your past burden you and try to hide it. You become usele-

Okay, Maybe I do let my past burden me. Maybe I will continue to stupidly face battles I could only win by luck. But everyone has flaws, Shade Beast or not. This hole in the ground that I’m in brought out the very worst in me, but I know that I am better than this. I won’t let my past affect who I am now. Alicia and Barry... – those are just names to me now. Strangers in another world. They can’t do anything to me here.

... I already know; This problem is within myself.

But I think that I can accept that.

I’m fine the way I am.

Yea, I like the sound of that.

And so I sat there, happily munching on the bat carcass, savoring the flavor for who knows how long.

And I was happy, for the first time in a long, long while.

-----

Name: Aaron Leum

Class: Juvenile Shade Beast

Level: 4

Health: 56/60

Magic: 50/50

Power: 4

Endurance: 7

Speed: 8

Intelligence: 10

Spirit: 5

Skills: Camouflage LV2, Identify LV2

You have 8 unassigned stat points.

I am surrounded by a bunch of skeletons. And also one empty exoskeleton. This body sure can hold a lot of food.

It looks like my stats have increased by a bunch. I take a moment to reflect on my self.

I do actually feel that something has changed within me. Not like I feel super powerful or something. Just that I feel more capable and healthy.

I’m not really sure how these numbers increase or in what pattern, but I think I could go along with this.

Those unassigned stat points, however, are what’s really catching my attention.

Distribute unassigned points? Y/N

I agree and I can see another panel pop up in front of me. They’re about what you would’ve expected from something as game-like as this whole character sheet deal. It looks like each point is worth either two in a regular stat, five in mana, and ten in health. I think about what I should spend my points on.

After a moment of careful deliberation, I dismiss the stat panel away from my view, alongside all of the other notifications except for my status panel. I don’t really know what I need right now in my stat department, besides everything. I don’t even fully understand what each stat represents. I’ll save those stats for a rainy day maybe, or when I have a more complete understanding of my stats. The intelligence and spirit stats does spark some curiosity in me. Are my intellectual capabilities based upon the stat value? Or are the values a representation of how capable I am? I wonder if doing something like sprinting would increase my speed, or if exercising would increase my power.

An interesting thought, I could try and test that later. What I really want to know now is what the deal with that Magic: 50/50 on my status. This world has already shown that it can do some pretty ridiculous things so far, but I haven’t actually seen anything use magic, besides my weird vortex hand that I’m still not sure what that was.

So I experiment then: How can I use magic?

Well, how does anyone use magic? Do I just think of a fire and it appears? I hold out my hand and imagine a fire popping up. Nothing. What if I say something out loud?

“Fire.” Nope.

“Flame.”

“Burn.”

“Conflagrate.”

Nope, nope, and nope. So just saying it out loud isn’t working. I sit down on the floor and focus. Maybe I have to somehow gain awareness of mana around me. This cave has high concentrations of mana according to my identify skill, so maybe that could help expedite the process.

I sit down, close my eyes, and try to focus. It’s strangely relaxing, having such a quiet, peaceful moment of serenity after that intense battle back then. I actually feel like I should do this more often. Just bask in the nothingness.

But that’s not what I’m here for. I need to focus, and figure out what's the deal with this magic. What is it like in novels? They say that it’s in the air right? I try to focus on what I’m feeling, just trying to see if I notice any foreign thing touching me.

And I actually do feel something there. It feels smooth, slick – flowing gracefully on my skin. It feels so familiar too. Is this what mana truly is?

I open my eyes, facing directly at where I felt that strange sensation.

It was just the blood dripping down on my leg.

Oh.

Well, that was kind of disappointing.

After that little mishap, I continue to closing my eyes and trying to focus on what mana is. I stay in that position for a little while, patiently waiting for the feel of mana.

It doesn’t feel like anything is happening. Maybe I’m just looking in the wrong place? The only thing I felt was the still air around me. What else do people describe mana like? Maybe the mana is inside of me, and I have to direct my attention to myself and – oh. There is something there. I can’t believe I hadn’t noticed it earlier. It’s faint, but if I focus then I can see that this strange energy is present in every part of my body, with its concentration lessening as it extends to my appendages.

It isn’t something that can be casually felt; You have to be consciously looking for it to even notice it’s presence, but it’s not hard to find at all if you concentrate. I try and will it to move, and it budges. I try to push it in different directions, and the mana moves in strange ways. It flows by its own set of rules, unlike anything I have ever witnessed before. The sight of it is mesmerizing, a beautiful display of the grandness and elegance of the universe. I focus on what it feels like, and I can feel that it holds power in the strangest way I could ever imagine. This is it, this is truly magic. I hold out my hand and will the magic inside me to flow into my palm and to emit light. A ball forms on top of my palm, emitting a dim light. If I focus, I can see the mana, but only faintly.

I have an idea. I cease sending mana into my spell and push the mana into my eyes. I can feel my mana being slowly absorbed into them, but it takes every ounce of mana I have in my body to keep sending mana into them. I thought that a higher concentration of mana around my eyes would help my vision like it does in shows, but it seems to have worked out a little differently. My vision starts to dim as I keep the mana flowing to my eyes, my body having some sort of interaction with the mana I send directly into it. I think the reason why this hadn’t happened before was because, instead of mana being around and permeating through it, I am making a conscious effort to send the mana into my eyes. It gets absorbed naturally, and my vision gets even darker as the process starts to fundamentally change my eyes.

I keep sending mana into it, hoping this doesn’t leave me permanently blind. Finally though, after bearing the uncomfortably itchy sensation withing my eyes, My vision brightens and I get a notification.

You have gained Mana Sight LV1

You have increased your intelligence by 1

I can see it, the Magic. It’s not as if my vision has changed very much, but I can see the mana inside of me, without having to concentrate on it. I can’t see directly the intricacies of how mana flows within me though, unlike when I was focusing, only that it’s there.

The second notification also answered another question of mine then. When I obtained that extra stat value, I felt something within me change. It seems that my capabilities are dependent on whatever value my stat holds. I just need to increase it either by leveling up or by other methods like exercising.

I could increase my stats without having to level up. That’s a revelation that makes surviving in this cavern seem more plausible.

Back to my Mana Sight, which I gained through my own efforts. Looks like you get these things by working for it. I cast the light ball spell again, and this time I can clearly see how the mana moves. The picture isn’t as clear as when I looked at the mana through focusing on myself, but that’ll only increase as the level rises I presume.

I see it now: The mana flows from my body to the outside. As it does so, the mana rapidly dissipates, losing intensity quickly. It seems that the reason why my ball of light is so dim is because the method I’m using is inefficient. The mana changes from “energy state” to another until it finally reaches light. It’s a little complex for someone like me, but I think I understand it. It’s almost similar to how energy changes from one state to another, while still being energy. The sun emits electromagnetic energy, which turns into thermal energy when it hits us, or chemical energy when it hits plants through photosynthesis. It’s a beautiful transition, flowing so naturally. I only desire to experiment more with this new energy, and how many ways this energy could be applied. I also notice that not only is mana lost through dissipation, but it also loses energy when it converts from one state to another. I wonder how it transforms. Maybe once I can get a clearer view of the blurry image Mana Sight gives me, I will find out.

Immediately, I can think of one optimization I could do to this system. I concentrate the flow of mana into my hand and will it to emit light. Nothing happens.

Oh, of course, light can’t penetrate flesh. I can definitely feel my hand heating up though. I change the destination of the mana to cover my hand and then will it to emit light. The light is brighter this time; It loses less efficiency by traveling less distance through open space.

Interesting.

You have increased your intelligence by 1.