A cloudy night sky greets me as I walk across the roof. A cold wind blows causing me to shiver slightly.

I find my spot on the corner of the roof and start pulling mana in. As I do so I feel the senses of my body fade as I become one with the world around me. With the mana floating through the air.

As the mana passes through me I feel as if it’s whispering to me. Trying to get me to listen to it somehow. I focus on those faint ethereal whispers trying to make them more real.

As the moments pass I feel the whispers grow stronger and stronger. I realize that they aren’t whispering any real words but instead it’s more like feelings and ideas.

The murky purple mana passes through the earth, permeating all that’s in the ground. The purple energy doesn't just make up the soil on the surface but also the stones and metal below.

As soon as I grasp this concept the whispers fade back into the either that they came from. Leaving me with a full mana pool and a burning curiosity on how I can make more than just dirt.

I can activate certain symbols by focusing on them, but doing so can cause me pain. I naturally activate a certain few when I make the dirt but that’s not all that the purple mana makes up.

So if the purple mana permeates stones and other minerals from the earth then can I sense the mana? I can sense the mana in the air so maybe I can sense the mana in the ground.

With that logic in mind I head down to the garages where everything from the floor to the ceiling is made of concrete. Once in there I go to the second level to avoid all of the bodies.

I find myself in a dark space with the only light coming from the ever so faint glow of my body. I sit on the ground and focus on the mana around me.

Long moments pass as I try to sense the mana in the ground. However, as time moves on I get a growing suspicion that I’m not doing it right.

Thinking back to it I only noticed the mana in the air after I started to use my Magical Sonar. So maybe I need to use an Earth mana variant of Magical Sonar.

But how can I do that? Any time I push the murky purple mana out of me it instantly forms into dirt.

If the symbols are what controls what the mana becomes then maybe I need them deactivated for me to push out just earth mana.

Grasping onto that idea I focus on the symbols forcing them all to remain dim. Then I start pushing mana through the filter. I instantly feel as if I’m doing something right as I don’t get any form of painful back lash.

However, as soon as I try to push the mana outside of my body it refuses. No matter how hard I try to push it out of me I can’t make it.

Out of annoyance I slam my hand against the ground.

“Fuck why isn’t there a manual to this!” I call out into the darkness.

The moment my hand makes contact with the ground I feel the built up mana in my palm be expelled. It bleeds into the concrete below me pushing further into the ground.

My brain comes to a halt as I realize what I’ve been doing wrong. The ambient mana in the air must be like a pure form of the stuff. Elemental mana is probably made when that pure form interacts with the elements. It’s probably impossible to expel the raw elemental mana into an area without its element.

I shake the thoughts from my head and focus on the mana in the concrete below me. I lift my hand pulling the mana in the ground with it.

The surface of the concrete bulges as I feel the mana drag the stones in the concrete with it. With a little more urging on my part I find that I can manipulate the concrete as if I was manipulating the pure form of mana that I can use.

It’s more sluggish and feels a lot heavier to maneuver but the pure purple mana can be used to control the earthen materials in concrete. I can even rip a chunk of the concrete out of the ground and make it hover in the air.

When I try to fling the mass of concrete it flies through the air and smacks into a wall. However, unlike my blue mana it didn’t zip through the air at almost bullet like speeds. It seemed to only move as fast as if I had physically thrown it.

There goes my idea of making Stone Rifle Rounds and other Earthen variants of my spells. However, I can still make new weapons out of the purple mana.

I experiment more with my control over the concrete when I push pure Earth mana into it. I find that I can give the material basic shapes but I can’t give them much detail.

After a while an idea strikes me. Can I pull the mana in the concrete back into myself? Like I do with spells I don’t intend to fire.

With nothing better to do I push some mana into the ground and pull out a chunk of concrete. I focus on the purple haze inside of the concrete and command it to flow back into me. Surprisingly it obeys.

The purple haze flows back into me causing the concrete to lose its structural integrity and turn to dust.

As the mana passes back into me I see a set of new symbols light up. Not the same ones that naturally light up when I push my mana through the filter.

My heart races in excitement as I try to memorize the symbols. Once the mana is completely back inside of me I command the same symbols to stay alight. Then with a steady breath push mana through the filter.

I flinch instinctively expecting there to be backlash. However, there isn’t any. Above my hand a small chunk of grey material floats.

I expel more mana causing the chunk to grow larger and larger. After a few moments I recall the mana back into me and watch the material crumble to dust.

I repeat the process a few more times, finding that it becomes easier and easier to create the concrete like substance with my mana.

After experimenting with the mana I find that it takes far less mana to manipulate the concrete already existing. On the other hand I have far more control over the concrete that I conjure. Being able to form letters and other fine details in the concrete that I conjure.

After a while of playing with dirt and concrete a blue light appears in my vision.

Quest Complete:

Quest Name:

Difficulty:

Reward:

Vision of the Night

F

Skill: Night Vision

+1 to Perception

The space around me instantly becomes brighter as I feel my eyeballs burn. It’s as if I’ve held them open for way too long and they’ve become dry.

I furiously blink but the sensation doesn’t leave me. I rub and blink and feel my eyes water like crazy.

After a while the sensation fades and I feel as if I just cried for hours. Blinking rapidly causes the lingering sensations of discomfort to fade.

Looking around the dark garage I find that it looks as if I’m in a dim closet instead of the inky blackness that was before. I can definitely make out far more detail than previously.

Curiously I open my Skill List to make sure that it’s the effect of the reward I supposedly got.

Skill List:

Name:

Level:

Proficiency:

Mana Manipulation

2

Apprentice

Channel Purification

2

Novice

Earth Element Control

4

Novice

Night Vision

1

Novice

As I focus on the Night Vision skill a new window pops up in front of me.

Night Vision

You can see in dark or dim places better than normal. As this skill progresses you'll be able to see as well in the dark as you can in the light.

I knew that the quest was going to award me a skill but seeing the skill before me and actually seeing the effect fills me with a sense of satisfaction.

Thinking back to the other quests that I could afford with my current points makes me wonder what their skills do. I assume that the one I have about staying up might make it easier to stay awake. So then what about the scavenging skill?

With nothing better to do I race up to the seventh floor. Once up there I go to the quest board and find the scavenging quest again. All it wants me to do is search fifty bodies for stuff. There’s plenty of bodies down here for me to do that.

I purchase the quests and head to the first floor. Once on the floor I take out a pair of gloves and then get to work searching the bodies.

Just touching them makes me feel gross and part of me wonders about the morality of looting dead people. I know most would say that I should leave the dead alone and that I should be more respectful of them.

But they’re dead. What do they care about? If there’s an after life wouldn’t they be more focused on that then what some dude is doing to their corpse?

At least that's what I like to think. To convince myself that what I’m doing isn’t essentially grave robbing.

I mostly just find wallets and trash while I search the bodies. Some of them have jewelry which at first got me excited. However, after looking at the objects for a while no window pops up. Making me wonder where that raven found the ring on my finger.

My hands grow tired around the thirtieth body but I continue.

I’m forced to ignore the smell as I go through the pile of dead bodies.

Then it finally happens. After finishing looking through the last pocket of a body a window appears in my vision.

Quest Complete:

Quest Name:

Difficulty:

Reward:

Scavenge

E

Skill: Scavenging

+3 to Luck

Pain explodes from the back of my right hand. The black latex glove burns away as a strange symbol is etched into my skin.

I hear a shrieking sound and realize that it’s my own scream. The pain seems to stretch on forever as a white light burns from the back of my right hand.

Then the light fades leaving me breathless, drenched in sweat, and my hand feeling like it’s been burnt.

I focus on the still painful symbol burned into the back of my hand. A large circle covers the back of my hand with a triangle inside of it. In the space from the circle’s edge to the triangle are strange symbols like the ones inside of my mana filters.

The triangle has a circle inside of itself. And in that last circle are two tear drop looking symbols. One points towards my wrist while the other points to my fingers.

As the pain fades I’m left with what looks like a really odd black tattoo on the back of my hand. However, just looking at the symbol I know that there’s something magical about it.

Unsure on what to do with this tattoo I open up my skills list. I focus on the new Scavenging skill at the bottom causing a new window to pop up.

Scavenging

By placing your hand with the Magic Array on a corpse and then supplying that Array with mana you will be able convert the corpse into loot. Loot is dependent on level, luck, and other hidden factors.

I stare at the skill description not fully understanding what it means. However, it gave me clear enough instructions on what to do, far clearer than my other skills.

Granted this skill feels different than the others.

So with the instructions in mind I place my hand onto the corpse at my feet. Then I push mana into the symbol on my hand.

Black mist expels from my hand as if my hand was some kind of smoke bomb. The mist quickly covers the corpse and then starts shrinking. The mist goes from being the size of an adult to child to baby then it vanishes into nothing taking the body with it.

Where the body used to be now sits a pencil. I know the corpse didn’t have a pencil on it before because it was one of the last one that I had searched.

So then does the symbol on my hand convert the corpses into random items? Where’s the logic in that? Where does all that matter go?

However this works I think I figured out what we’re going to do with all of the dead bodies.