Trystan breathes a sigh of relief as he finally manages to cast Mana Shield again. The annoying, and very dangerous mosquito bites finally stop as he does so. His health, hovering around 3 hp remaining by the time he gets his protective shield up and running. He sits, with his eyes open, wondering how he was going to do this. What kind of mistake did he make with his choice? Ki, he could understand, he had the knowledge needed to raise his understanding, his skill, and its level almost immediately. He could have doubled down on his knowledge rather than go off to a new thing. But no, he saw Merlin, saw him actually damage the Hikarin General, and had decided that that obviously was the way to go. So stupid.

Continuing his meditation he calms his mind more, taking a mental step back and thinking. He had noticed that some of the energy was the same. Maybe he could try and apply some similar concepts, from Ki Cultivation to Mana manipulation, or at least some of those concepts to the spells he had learned. The initial spells didn’t seem too different from the Ki abilities, the primary difference being that it relied on externally directed energy, not internal. First things first, he needed a much better mana regeneration, he couldn’t afford to run low on mana during any fight, maybe he could experiment with Meditation, get it to work all the time, or work stronger, anything could help him here.

Keeping the deep breathing in and out he tries to start to stand, and immediately his internal balance is broken and the meditation effects go away. For the next hour this is his life, rinse and repeat, trying to get a hold of understanding how exactly Meditation was impacting his mana regeneration, why it was helping him, and how he can understand it most effectively. Meditate, stand, lose meditation, over and over again. There was something about the mental balance that was missing, it couldn’t be a purely physical thing now, could it. It was sort of like cultivating for Ki, you could, with skill, learn to cultivate with every step that you took, turn the motion into internal energy. This method of cultivation was tough, but worth it as it increased the amount of time that could be spent cultivating. Maybe he could apply a version of that here.

The balance was the key, finding the mental balance while not physically balanced. Wait, no, that wasn’t it, finding the Balance mentally and keeping it in tune with the body, that would. Trystan finds his meditative state once again, and stands slowly, not listening to his heartbeat or the meditation, but keeping his mental balance in tune with the world around him as he stood. The sitting position was to reduce the number of changes, it helped make meditation easier, but yes, it could be done at any time. He smiles as he is rewarded with a system message as his meditation is maintained even as he stands up and takes a step forward.

Congratulations!

Meditation is now understood to the Apprentice level.

100 Bonus Points have been awarded as a Tower First.

+1 Willpower

+1 Wisdom

Trystan blinks a few times, he’d never heard of the Tower Firsts before. But maybe that was the point, who knows how many firsts were gained and lost by that first wave of volunteers into the Tower. He had thought that he would be an expert on the Tower, but how much did he actually not know, because it was lost by those Firsts. This time though he was one of them, and he would make sure that he didn’t fall. Shaking his head he brings up his Meditation ability.

Meditation - Apprentice

A method of balancing one’s mind and body with the world around them. Entering a state of meditation increases mana regeneration rates.

Description: Meditation increases Mana Regeneration rates by 100%

Apprentice Effect: May maintain Meditation while moving, Combat may still break Meditation.

Trystan whistles softly, “Very nice.” Then he notices a few flashing boxes in the corner of his eye, System boxes that he had pushed to the side during combat. An increase to Strength and Endurance due to exertion and damage that he had taken, that would definitely help out.

Looking around he walks over to the fallen ‘bodies’ of the animals he had killed. The System granted a small inventory, that was another thing he had forgotten, he hadn’t picked up an inventory bag, or the smaller ring, instead he used his non-System backpack to pick up the loot drops from the Hawks and the Alligator. They wouldn’t be worth much, but trade items, and crafting items would be good to be stocked up on later, they would help not only with the other players but eventually he would start looking at crafting himself, maybe tie it in with his mana usage in order to increase his capabilities.

He nods slightly as he gets to that thought and thinks to himself, ‘I need to increase my skill levels, and quickly if doing so gives points and stats then so much the better. There’s no way I’ll be able to keep up with some of the others if I don’t get myself moving, and this place, well it may just end up being a blessing in disguise.’

Trystan smiles, if there were ever a perfect place to farm for skills and points, this would be it. It would stress his body and his mind, allowing him to quickly increase his stats, and skill levels. Constant pressure, constant damage, constant usage of the skills, it would be dangerous as all hell, but hopefully worth it.

Trystan calls up a new Mana Shield, this time feeling it as he casts it, feeling it as he summons up the layer of mana surrounding him. As he pulls up the energy he tries to see if he can’t see the tie between the meditation, the energy, and balance of the world and the energy being supplied into the shield itself. He does all of this as he starts his walking through the muck again. Allowing the bugs to bite him while attempting to keep an eye out for anything a bit more dangerous.

As time and refreshes pass he starts to gain a glimpse as to the interaction between the energy being supplied and how it was actually stopping the damage. Much the way that the Mana Bolts have some physical form, the Mana Shield was altering the world to provide a slight buffer, a resistance against effects that would be causing damage to him. He is rewarded with another ding as the system gives him a notice, but he doesn’t even stop to look at that, there was something about that thought process, the understanding. What if the first two spells really were tied together with one another more than he had thought. Mana bolt might be physical, but more energy-based, Mana shield was potentially more of an energy nullification, two sides of the same coin. He spots a bird in the distance activates Mana Shield and then begins to spin up a Mana Bolt, wrapping in more and more energy, he can see the air around his hand steaming but the Mana Shield seemed to be keeping the Damage from overflowing onto him, pouring more and more energy into it, he could feel the Mana Shield about to break when he let loose the massive streak of energy at the bird. The bird explodes into a spray of feathers and blood before disintegrating into loot to be picked up later. A flood of system notices fill his vision as he smiles, it was different than Ki, but not by too much, he could use his former knowledge to increase his new skills, and that meant he might actually be able to succeed.

Congratulations!

Mana Shield is now understood to the Apprentice level.

100 Bonus Points have been awarded as a Tower First.

+1 Willpower

+1 Intelligence

Congratulations!

Mana Bolt is now understood to the Apprentice level.

100 Bonus Points have been awarded as a Tower First.

+1 Intellect

+1 Wisdom

Quickly checking both abilities he sees that both abilities now take twice the amount of mana, but also provide twice the effect that they did before. It meant that he was going to really have to look into how to increase his mana capacity soon, especially if he wanted to be able to use his mana on long fights. Looking at the other system alerts he sees that his intuition and drive to succeed had some positive and negative results. He had actually lost half of his life during that last second as the Mana Shield failed, but in return, he also gained a few points in Endurance, Willpower, and Intelligence.

Trystan shakes his head slightly, again and again, he sees how much faster he could actually move forward with the knowledge that he had available to him, even if he didn’t know everything. He spares a moment's thought for his family, hoping that they too are doing okay, that they were able to use the guide that was written to help themselves get stronger faster as well.

Trystan maintaining the meditation starts walking towards the fallen bird, picking up its loot as well and putting it in his backpack before getting a gauge from the Sun again as to what direction to head towards. He could farm the swamp for points as he moved towards Opiales now. No one was known to have increased abilities past Initiate level on the First Floor last time. No one learned about that until far later in the Tower, and almost no one ever had cause to come back down to this floor, there was just nothing in here of importance. But maybe, maybe that’s why humanity had had so much trouble, we never took the time to try and actually learn everything on the few safe floors we had, instead we had to rush forward, always forward, and in the end, we rushed right into our own destruction.

Trystan straightens his back out and flashes out a bolt towards the snout of an alligator heading his way, he is rewarded with a reduced, but significant amount of damage flashing in his vision. Smiling he powers up another mana bolt, keeping it down low enough to not cause himself direct damage and smiles as he sees the points start flowing in. In the end, it wouldn’t matter how many points he acquired, capping out on points was capping out, but the knowledge and experience using the ability would help him in the future.

Continuing to trudge through the much for he follows the guidance of the sun to direct himself hopefully towards Opiales, spending a few moments to kill any animal or creature he comes across as he does so. He stops for a moment when he sees a towering spider the size of a bear and goes quickly, and silently, around that area, no need to mess with a thing that would likely kill him easily, but the smaller things, the things he could try and one shot with a powered-up bolt, those would fall under his assault.

By the time he reaches the edge of the Swamp, he finds his back absolutely packed with loot dropping and another five hundred points in his pool definitely wouldn’t hurt him when he went in to purchase all of the initial equipment and support abilities that he had completely forgotten about. Trystan smiles and pulls up his status as he steps onto dry land for the first time all day.

Name

Trystan Hunter

Race

Human

Age

18

Tier

None

New Points

0

Banked Points

6500

Stats

Abilities

Strength

11

Mana Manipulation (Initiate)

Agility

10

Mana Affinity*

Endurance

14

Meditation (Apprentice)

Intelligence

14

Enhanced Mana Regeneration

Wisdom

12

Enhanced Mana Pool

Charisma

10

Mana Bolt (Apprentice)

Willpower

15

Mana Shield (Apprentice)

Luck

--

Derived Traits

Equipment

Mana

218

Copper Sword

Mana Regeneration

4.2

Copper Chain Shirt

Spell Power

18.1

HP

140

HP Regen.

2.5