Days passed in a low-level grind of training, hunting, and agony. Mason was careful to keep his food supplies stocked, especially before undergoing a particularly heavy bout of mana sickness, but the already bland food had become increasingly distasteful. Soon, he knew, he would have to use his newfound strength and strike out. He couldn’t stay here forever, eating raw nuts, poisonous berries, roots, flowers, and tough, stringy, flavorless meat.

He looked at his status screen from habit, and saw considerable rises on each of the characteristics, growing to the point where he had survived an ambush from two cats and managed to take on their prey of imp-squirrels immediately after.

Mason Nevels:

Magical Hopeful

Level 3 (28FP)

Health: 16/38 (1.5/hr)

Mana: 0/20 (0.1/hr)

Mana (Mardun): 0/20

Stamina: 12/34 (1.8/min)

Strength: 3 (+3)

Agility: 3 (+2)

Intelligence: 3 (+4)

Willpower: 4 (+2)

Vitality: 5 (+1)

Endurance: 5 (+2)

Creativity: 3 (+4)

Active Skills: Focus (9), Mana Vampirism (6), Analyze (5), Life Drain (5), Recovery (6), Sneak (5)

Passive Skills: Equip (5), Staff Specialization (7), Dagger Specialization (7)

Mana Arts: Mana Sight (4), Mana Manipulation (1)

Frequent use of Analyze on both his opponents and his own stats had revealed the truth. These stats told a greater story about his own improvements over himself rather than providing a clear comparison to other creatures. He was growing stronger, and quickly, owed both to the strenuous activities of combat and mana wielding, as well as the influence of the Focus Points. But how would he know how he really ranked when he was comparing himself to squirrels and cats?

Mason had considered disabling the status screen altogether, to focus on the sheer development of his strength by hand, but for now it served a purpose. He could see where he needed to improve, and keep track of his advancements.

What was important was that he could now fight several of the cats at once. That mana sickness lasted for a few dozen minutes, instead of hours, and only debuffed his stamina rather than draining it dry.

The single point in mana manipulation, and the tenth of a point of mana regeneration- those were what he was most proud of.

The skeleton he had been draining had almost entirely turned to dust. He held off on absorbing its pelvis, its sternum, and its skull- all pieces his Mana Sight told him were heavy in mana. He could hold mana for a time now, even cast life drain several times without collapsing, but it still burned to keep it inside, and he was barely able to release the mana into the air, let alone control it.

He sat in front of his campsite at daybreak, Focus and Analyze both turned inwards, and waited to feel that single bit of mana start to form within him. It started slowly, a warmth just behind his navel, and he could almost see it forming within him, swirling and rolling, trying to find a sort of synergy with his body.

This small amount of mana didn’t hurt him horribly, not at first. If he left it there to grow, the warmth would turn into a burn. The day before he had managed to hold half a point of his own mana before having to turn it loose to prevent the pain from crippling him. That had been five hours spent with mana in his system, and for that he felt accomplished.

He had gotten the impression that his natural mana hurt him less than the Mardun mana, which was a comfort. Optimistically, Mason assumed he would be able to hold onto a healthy store of it within the next several days, and could only hope that from that point on he would be able to train up mana manipulation and some actual spellcasting.

Today though, he was ready for something new. The cats and squirrel-imps weren’t enough of a challenge. The hardest part of fighting the cats was that they were fast, but they lacked any sort of tactics, they didn’t do a whole lot of damage unless they were over-sized, and they died fairly easily. He had guessed from his Analyze that they had less than ten health.

With the remaining bones secured in his packs, and a healthy store of food and water as well, he set off upstream from the river, to a strange location he had noticed days earlier.

He had been hunting cats further away than before, having hunted their numbers down a fair bit in the preceding days, when he had seen a strange clearing with a large, smooth stone, and signs of digging all over. There were tracks leading further away, too, and it was these he now hoped to follow. It was possible he would be setting himself up for unnecessary danger, but his progress was stagnating where he was, and some risks were meant to be taken.

Once he arrived at the clearing, he flashed into Focus mode and took account of the area. The digging had definitely continued since he had last been here, but it didn’t look like anyone had been there that day. Flipping on his mana vision, he gave the area another glance.

The clearing was loaded with mana, to the point that he was surprised he hadn’t noticed it before. Looking at his stats screen, he saw that his mana regeneration was up to .14 a minute. No wonder someone was digging here, he thought. This was a place of power.

He squatted down at a particularly strong point of mana and shifted his hands through the soil. Tiny crystals, not unlike quartz, glimmered there beneath him. They were no larger than grains of sand mixed in with the soil, but as an experiment he rubbed the whole mixture against the gem of his staff.

He grit his teeth as he absorbed a point of mana, and let the dirt fall to the ground. He took several deep breaths, then released the mana gently from the pores of his body. There was a good chance that he’d pay for the mana sickness he had just risked, and he could see his stamina dropping slowly.

Mason moved to sit in the middle of the wide stone platform in the center of the clearing, crossing his legs and breathing to activate Recovery. His senses were sharper now than they had ever been, and with Focus active he felt confident that if anything approached, he’d hear it before it entered the clearing.

His confidence, however, was vastly misplaced. His mana sickness had just worn off when he heard a shifting a few feet from him. His eyes flashed open rapidly and his hand squeezed tightly to his staff in his left hand, while his other hand darted to his knife.

Mason saw tall, living shadows all around him. He shifted to Mana Vision almost instantly, but the result nearly blinded him, even as he noticed his system indicating it had levelled up again.

When he dropped mana sight, and looked closely with Focus instead, he realized these were not shadows, but three of the darkest people he had ever seen. They were slightly taller and better built than most humans he had seen, even the young looking one and the feminine looking one. But as he looked up at them, his attention was captured by the rich violet color of each of their eyes.

He was afraid to move, but so too were these strange, oil-black people. They blinked and it was merely the shift from that purple to the black of their eyelids.

Suddenly, then, Mason felt a wave of fire through his body as these beings stared on, and he felt oddly stupid for not running immediately. He had seen so much mana inside of these beings, and now they were casting a spell on him, and his feeble body was going to die.

Mason was alive, but the total agony of every cell in his body rejecting mana at once left him considering whether that was a good thing or not.

Twenty-five points of mana were coursing through his body, and he felt hot tears on his face as he screamed. “Stop, please. Oh God, please stop. Stop. I can’t handle it. STOP!” he shouted over and over again, each word feeling simultaneously difficult to form but also a great release.

He could hear movement around him, but could hardly focus enough to see what was happening, and undoubtedly couldn’t Focus with how low his stamina was. So instead he cried and screamed and suffered for what felt like ages.

And then finally the world cooled down, the pain turned from a raging inferno to a dull throb, and he fell back asleep.

When he woke this time, he felt more drained than he ever had, and his Mana Sickness had another hour and a half on the timer. His stamina was 0, unsurprisingly, and his health was down to ten.

A shadow, no, a dark person stood above him, waiting patiently. It showed no sign that it could tell he was awake.

Mason’s mind flittered between how to respond. Should he scream indignantly about the attack? Act contrite and beg for mercy? Even if he felt connected to his past life and his old personality- what was there in his memories that could tell him how to respond in such a moment? As he pondered wearily, the shadow walked away and began to fiddle with what looked like a fireplace and a pot.

A kitchen.

The thought of food drove all uncertainty from his mind. His stomach gurgled audibly and the shadow turned to him then, looking hesitant underneath its dark cloak.

“Please,” Mason begged, “Food. I’m so hungry.”

The figure gasped, and the familiar action gave Mason a strange sense of comfort. At least this wasn’t a monster. Then it spoke, in a voice somehow both gravelly and feminine, and while it was using words Mason could understand as English, he instinctively knew it was not speaking English. “You- you’re awake? Are you well?”

The question did nothing for Mason’s comprehension, and he didn’t expect that this figure would sound so concerned. “I’m alive, but please, I’m extremely hungry. My body feels like I had lava poured through it. That spell you or your people cast on me was the most agonizing thing I’ve ever experienced.”

The shadow responded by immediately scooping a ladle of soup into a wooden bowl, and holding it at Mason’s side. As Mason sat up, the shadow responded, “I’m not sure what you mean. They cast no spell, they were merely trying to see you. You are invisible to us, and when we cast our vision across you, you scream.

“I thought you were wounded, but when I tried to heal you, your screams only grew louder. You screamed when I tried to understand what was happening to you as well. My son thought you were a demon, sent to terrorize or blind us, and claimed we should kill you. But we have never seen one of your kind before, and I insisted we not start a war if another race had been brought to this plane.”

Mason wasn’t sure what to make of this, but he eyed the concoction of soup in front of him hungrily. He wasn’t sure why she was still holding it, until he considered what she had said. She couldn’t see him.

Mason reached out and put a hand under the bowl, using his other hand to touch the shadow’s hand gently. She released the bowl with a start, then dipped her head as if embarrassed by her action.

“Why can’t you see me?” Mason asked quietly, before putting his hand over the soup to test how warm it was.

“Because you’re mana-less like a stone. And you scream when we try to use Mana Sight on you. We really didn’t mean any harm, we just… we saw the bones, we saw the staff, but you were just a pinprick of light. We had never seen someone with such control over their mana, to keep it so small and hidden.”

“So you tried to cast a wave of mana at me to get an idea of what I was, and I absorbed it like a sponge because that’s what I do now.” Mason turned on Mana Sight for a brief second, recoiling from the overextension of his empty stamina, and again was blinded looking at the shadow, but when he looked down at his soup, he saw that it was barely glowing at all. He could eat this, and the pain would probably be worth the nutrition.

He gobbled it down and saw the shadow turn from him. “I can… see the soup moving within you. It’s disconcerting.”

Mason looked up at this, “Oh yeah? You can see the mana in the soup, but not flowing through my body. That would be pretty weird,” He considered what she must be seeing, even as he took another bite. “Wait, have you never seen anything without mana in it before?”

“There have been some creatures in this plane that we had to cast Mana upon to see, but where we’re from, life cannot exist without it. We draw our strength from the land, which generates mana readily. This land is… sparse. We are forced to mine mana from deep down in order to feed.”

Mason felt the mana sitting hot in his stomach, and channeled Mana Vampirism to pull it through his body. It tingled, but stung less than he was used to, even though it was worth a full point of mana.

“Can you see me now?” He asked.

“Yes, you are… dim,” She said quietly, looking as uncomfortable as he felt.

They stared at one another for a moment, and then the door to the small cabin was slammed open, rattling some charms that were hung above the doorway.

“The little mana-less beast is awake, and yet he doesn’t scream? Why can I see it, Shaywise? Did your healing finally work?”

“No,” my friendly shadow spoke to the angrier voice in the doorway. “I left him alone, and he recovered. He is not like us. He does not like mana.”

“Doesn’t like mana?” The angry shadow shot a stern look his way, and Mason could feel the disdain rolling off him even through his hood. “He must be a demon. The undead have no place here.”

“It’s not like that for me, but I’m learning to use mana! I’m not a demon. I’m human. We feed on the sun! Well… we eat plants, and they feed on the sun,” Mason protested, having set down the bowl and standing unsteadily. He was forced to lean back against the table he had woken up on for balance.

Both of the shadows stared at him with a revolution of expressions as they tried to make sense of it. Then the bigger, angrier shadow sat down against the door and put a hand to his head. He looked surprisingly innocent like that, and Mason put out of his mind any thought of getting revenge for the torment he had endured earlier.

Nobody knew what was going on here, not really.

“We will not kill you, demon. It was not my son’s intent to cause you harm at all. You are welcome under our roof until you recover. Consider this as our apology.” The shadow’s face screwed up, “Unless you sunborn live under the sky? We do not like the energy of the sun. It burns our skin and weakens us.”

Mason laughed, “No, no. Too much sun hurts me as well. And most mana hurts me, too. I guess I’m just a bit fragile.” When the man didn’t respond, he added, “I appreciate your letting me in your home. My name is Mason. I take it the lovely Shaywise is your wife?”

The man looked up now, and moved slowly toward Mason, inspecting him. “Yes, she is my… wife, as I understand the word. She shares my mana, and we can focus spells as one. I am Treyjol, Demon. Our son, who is hidden nearby, is Shayjol.”

Mason considered this, and then nodded. “Are there… more of your people?” Treyjol nodded solemnly. “Are they nearby?”

Treyjol shook his head, but Shaywise answered. “We were sent to this area to try to find a new source of mana for our people to rely on.”

Mason sighed in relief, “I can’t say I’m upset to hear they’re far away. Where I’m from, anything that can speak and think looks like me. We have animals, but nothing very smart. It’s a pleasure to meet your family. I mean, on Earth it would be a world-changing discovery to meet sentient life, but since I’m clearly not there anymore it’s just kind of a shock.”

Shaywise and Treyjol looked at one another, “You’re no less strange to us, honestly. How you live without mana is a miracle. But tell us, how far are your people, and are they all as timid as you, or should we fear an attack from them as well?”

“For right now… it’s only me here. I’m the only human.”