Mason sat between a pile of small nuts and berries that he had scavenged from some bushes about a half an hour’s walk from his campsite. He had found small quantities of edible-looking foods scattered fairly broadly, but this was the first area that seemed to have a wealth of food- something that would be critical for him in the long run.

He took one of the large nuts and cracked its shell against a tree, pulling the meat out of the shell and setting the two parts next to each other. He then shredded the meat and the shell into smaller pieces and piled those pieces up on the edge of the dagger he had found.

One deep breath later, he was Focused, and with a forced blink he had activated Analyze.

Tree Nut: Edible. Nutrients can be extracted by simmering in a soup for more efficient consumption.

He repeated the process with the berries.

Strange Berry: Slightly edible. High in nutrition, but with traces of poison. Do not consume in high quantities.

He sighed, realizing he was likely stuck to eating nothing but these nuts for the next while. He gathered the berries nonetheless in a separate pouch, but resolved to only eat a few a day for variety.

The likelihood that this forest was a veritable wealth of foodstuffs was high, but Mason had never had to rely on gathering before this to feed himself. In a few days, he assumed, he’d have analyzed enough leaves, roots, twigs, or bugs that he’d be able to make some sort of nutritional meals, but for now he was trying to play it safe. The last thing he needed was to be poisoned to death.

Along those lines, the mushrooms he had found while exploring were kept specially wrapped in some scrap cloth he had found in the satchels. Mushrooms were almost always dangerous.

After munching down a handful of nuts, Mason finally stood up and strapped on his bags, deciding that tracking a path back to his campsite would be better than exploring any further before he was more familiar with the area. As he turned to head back though, a flash of motion caught his eye.

He fell to the ground out of fear, and when he landed on his butt he saw another flash right in front of him. Where did these quick reactions come from? Mason wondered as he scrambled to his feet and took off at a dead sprint.

There were footsteps just behind him, the pounding and padding of something much larger than the imp-squirrels.

He dared a look backwards, and balked when he saw a large cat chasing after him.

It was only a little larger than a housecat, but with a fair amount of girth to it, which he assumed explained the reason he hadn’t been chased down already. It must eat the imp-squirrels, he guessed.

But there was no way Mason could run faster than it for long, especially not after analyzing his way through his stamina. He let the bags fall from his shoulders to lighten his load, then swung his staff wide around, catching the feline in its midsection while it lunged.

His strike only knocked it a little off balance, so it still collided with him, knocking the wind from his chest but thankfully causing no other wounds.

The cat skulked away a few steps and turned, prowling back and forth, waiting for a sign of weakness. It must have missed the look of consternation on Mason’s face. As his staff made contact, Mana Vampirism had activated instantly, and this time he could feel the power as it surged into his staff.

Focus activated on its own, or perhaps out of instinct, and Mason tried to fight the mana from flowing into his body. For a second it worked, but then ultimately his stamina ran out, and pain flooded his system.

Now he definitely couldn’t run, and the mana sickness would sink in soon enough to drain his body of what little strength he had gained from those nuts. He bared his teeth and brandished his staff even as the cat continued to pace.

“Come here you little fuck, I think you’re dinner,” he growled, making slow slashing movements with the staff. When the cat made no move back, he took a step forward and swept at its legs.

The cat didn’t even have to dodge. It lunged instead, and Mason had to drop back to offset its attack, then shove with his staff to knock the cat off of him before its claws could do more damage than its initial few scratches.

Before it could get up, he swept out with his staff again, but this time he forced it to release its mana, activating the Life Drain ability he had used on the imps.

As the mana left his body, the fatigue hit immediately, but the energy that returned to him from the life-drain gave him a little strength. Mason dropped the staff and pulled the knife, watching the cat’s movements slow. Either this cat was weaker than he thought, or that staff had some serious power to it.

There was luck to that, because Mason knew he didn’t have the strength within himself to survive. Not yet. But he had the will to fight, nonetheless. He dived at the cat with the knife, and it tore at his face, chest, forearms and anything else it could reach while he struggled awkwardly to get the knife close.

In a spurt of blood, Mason lodged the knife in the cat’s neck and he pulled the two apart, standing, panting, watching the blood fall from the objects in both his hands.

The gravity of the moment sank in much deeper than it had when he had fought off the rodents the night before.

He cleaned the blade of his knife to prevent it from rusting further, but ignored the rest of the gore. With the cat in one hand, his staff in another, and bags on his back, he made his way back to the camp.

Bloodlust: 1/15

Starving to death had been put off, and despite the stress of being in an unknown world with strange rules, that simple fact let Mason relax. He had stripped and washed himself when he made it back to camp, using a rounded rock as a shallow basin for dirty water.

Ripping apart the meat from the cat had been a nightmare of a job, his rusty knife barely suited for stabbing, and not at all optimal for shredding. Somehow though, he had gotten a few strips of meat speared and roasting over the fire.

He flipped back into his status screen to check the notifications from the fight.

Skills: Equip (5), Focus (5), Analyze (2), Mana Vampirism (2), Life Drain (2), Staff Specialization (3), Recovery (1), Dagger Specialization (1)

He had a new skill for his ‘dagger,’ and had gained a point in focus and Life Drain from the fight.

Most notably, there was another notification for Focus that he felt sure had appeared after using Mana Vampirism.

You are in the process of unlocking two special Focus abilities. Level up Focus one more time to unlock the first.

He was curious about what that meant, but in the meantime, with his belly full, he sat quietly again hoping to activate Recovery. Thoughts flitted through his mind- he needed an axe, and a pot for the fire- but he felt his body calming, and the mana sickness slowly passing. If that fight had gone on any longer, he was certain he would have been crawling back to camp, not limping slowly.

An hour later he woke up from his sitting nap. He was tired, in a deep, bone-aching way, but his stamina was back, so he could continue trying to make sense of what was going on around him.

He looked at his stat screen and was curious to see what would happen if he analyzed his stat screen further.

With a deep breath, he Focused and Analyzed his stat page.

A new page showed up, organized much more nicely.

Active Skills: Focus (5), Analyze (2), Mana Vampirism (2), Life Drain (2), Recovery (1)

Passive Skills: Equip (5), Staff Specialization (3), Dagger Specialization (1)

Right, that seems straightforward enough. Mason then looked to see that his stamina had dropped 4 points from his use of Analyze, but its skill had since gone up to three. Since his bar was still full, he decided to take advantage of the opportunity and used it again on his stat screen.

Strength: Produce Sheer Physical Force

Agility: Control the Speed and Accuracy of Motion

Intelligence: Learn, Retain, and Utilize Knowledge and Spells

Willpower: Resist Discouragement and Empower Spells and Actions

Endurance: Push Further Under Heavy Loads and Strenuous Activity

Vitality: Prevent and Endure Physical Harm

Creativity: Generate Solutions and Ideas

The descriptions of the stats weren’t extremely surprising, but they were enough for Mason to get a grasp of what was at hand. Looking at his full spread again, he saw that a few of his stats had actually increased, closer to what the bonuses should have added up to.

Health: 16/25 (1/hr)

Mana: 0/20 (0/hr)

Mana (Mardun): 0/20

Stamina: 12/25 (1.1/min)

Strength: 2 (+3)

Agility: 2 (+3)

Intelligence: 2 (+5)

Willpower: 1 (+4)

Vitality: 3 (+2)

Endurance: 2 (+3)

Creativity: 3 (+4)

These numbers still seemed low, but any advantage over the basic human stat set seemed valuable. Hopefully it would only take a few days to get those full stat advantages, and then he would have to find a way to increase them further…

On a whim, he cast Analyze again on these reduced stats. His focus went up a level, and a notification flashed, but he read the results of the Analyze first.

Stats are temporarily reduced to prevent overloading your body. Each stat will raise to its full value slowly over time (Estimated: Six Months, Five Days) but will speed up significantly with the presence of mana and the usage of skills related to those attributes. Focus Points represent the benefits earned in The Trials.

So something here is trying to strengthen me. Well, that’s not the worst thing that could happen when trapped in an unknown world. But six months is too long, I have to speed that up.

Focus has levelled up high enough to unlock a Focus Ability. Perform a triggering action to unlock.

It was irritating that he had to distinguish between both Focus Points, and a Focus Skill, but he presumed that the two might be related. Furthermore, Mason didn’t know what a triggering action was, but he could remember what had caused the special ability to trigger in the first place. He went over toward the tree-line to where he had left the remains, and willing himself against his disgust, he picked up on of the bones again.

Staring closely at it and taking a breath, he activated Focus and Analyze once more, bringing his stamina down to uncomfortably low levels.

Nothing happened at first- so he held the skills active until his stamina was drained. He felt something like a switch inside of him, and looking over his status screen to figure out what happened, he saw that his endurance had risen a point, and his stamina maximum had also risen. There were four points remaining in his stamina bar even after he had drained it with his last effort.

So he gave it a shot, casting Analyze and Focus once again. A burst of blue light filled his vision as something changed in his eyes, and then for a brief moment while his stamina drained, he could see fine blue lines throughout the bone much more clearly than after his previous attempts.

Congratulations! Focus has unlocked the hidden ability, Mana Sight.

Mana Sight (Focus): Improve your ability to see the magical nature of objects and creatures in this world. This is the first step to unlocking your race’s hidden talents and uncovering the true strength necessary to survive.

As focus wore off, the blue spiderwebbed lines faded from the bones, but he could picture them in his memory.

So whoever this was had mana all the way in his bones. I can’t imagine how painful that must have been for him. Or maybe I’m just being an idiot, maybe it’s only humans who can’t really use it?

I think what I learned about skills though is the most important. Using a skill, and forcing it to a breaking point, makes it stronger. But using it in a more interesting way changes it somehow. I’m going to have to do a lot of experimentation, I think.

The day was only halfway over, but Mason was forced to use recovery again to bring back his stamina. He received an extra point in it, and felt his relaxation deepen slightly, and best yet, by the time his stamina was back, he’d received three health back- a considerable improvement for the passing of only ten minutes or so.

Deciding between exploring further and improving his campgrounds, he decided that making sure he could survive here took precedence. Using his rusty dagger, Mason began to cut down all of the tall grasses and bushes nearby, piling the softer grasses in his tent, and the jagged, brambly bushes just under the tree-line.

As he moved between locations, he tried to bounce and jog, moving as much as possible in hopes of strengthening his body. He gathered all the sticks and twigs he could and formed bundles and piles of those for heavier bits of firewood, then finally he started collecting light-colored stones, forming a wide ring around his campsite that he hoped would give him some distance and vision measurements even when it got dark.

They were small improvements, mostly improving his ability to see anything coming toward him, as well as making the campsite feel more officially cared for, but they helped. His stamina was still nearly full after all of it as well, and he was pleased with the discovery that small chores did little to drain it. However, his rush to accomplish everything quickly had unlocked one of his agility points as well. Either way, since he didn’t plan to go hunting, he had some stamina to play with.

He sat on the edge of his firepit and stared at his rusty knife, taking a breath to activate his skills.

Rusty Dagger (1): This dagger has no special effects, but is easy to use for unskilled persons. If restored, it could see minor damage improvements.

That analyze had only cost him three stamina, and Mason assumed this must be because it didn’t really require much insight to discover.

So he held his staff out, and triggered his skills again. Twelve stamina vanished instantly from his bar, but he could see the blue light running up and down the staff, pooling in the large gem at the top. Mana Sight must have activated on its own in the presence of so much.

Staff of Mardun (??): This magical staff is a legendary weapon from the temple of (???). You’ve identified two of its abilities so far, with at least two more remaining to be discovered. The Staff of Mardun has powerful abilities to steal energies from the world around it, and imbues its owner with a portion of that strength, if they can wield it.

Without the challenge bonus he had received when he had accidentally discovered this item- the ability to equip it unconditionally- Mason didn’t believe there was a chance he could wield it. He considered his recent fights, and decided he wasn’t sure if he honestly could wield it anyways.

Mason noticed that one of his intelligence Focus Points had shifted into his actual stats from that last usage, a benefit that he was eager to rely on. He turned to his makeshift tent and used up the rest of the stamina bar with Analyze.

Feeling almost dumb, he realized he had missed several easy improvements to its design, and immediately set to work restructuring the tent, supplementing broken or inefficient pieces with some of the tree limbs he had collected.

With a few hours to spare before the sun went down, Mason decided to run laps around his territory, draining his stamina slowly and then letting it refill. It was slow progress, but he saw an additional point on his stamina bar.

Exhausted from his exercise, and marvelling at the improvements he had managed to make earlier, he slid into the tent and appreciated the extra space, and the additional comfort of the makeshift grass padding he had made for himself.

The baby-steps he had taken in the past day or two were small, but he was grateful for the luck he had. This staff might be just enough to keep him alive, if it didn’t destroy him in the process. This campsite had just enough supplies for him to manage to survive, and he was growing stronger, even if slowly.

Tomorrow, though, he knew he’d be back to hunting for food.