Before Integration by the Origin, it is rare for worlds to have use of more than one of the three forces. The most we know of is two forces. Is it the Origin that makes usage of all three at once possible or is it possible to do so without Integration? - A discussion of scholars in the renowned Arcadia Institute.

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[Name: Marcus Cole ("Marc")

Tier: Tier 0

Age: 20

Race: Human

Attributes:

- Physique [T0] - Level 2(0%)

- Psyche [T0] - Level 2(0%)

- Arcana [T0] - Level 3(0%)

Forces:

- Lifeforce {Rank 0}

- Spirit {Rank 0}

- Ether {Rank 0}

Essence: 10,610 points.

Talents:

-Voidsight

-Ice Shaper

-(0/10,000 Essence)

Perks:

-Essence Absorption: Allows you to absorb Essence from defeated foes and use it to fuel evolution.

-Talents: Seeds of Possibility that warp reality, infused into the Soul. Talents are bestowed by the Origin to inhabitants of the Endless Realms.

-Omnilingualism: Gain the ability to understand and communicate in all languages.

-Voidsoul: You have been touched by the Void and have survived the energies of Akasha. Your soul has taken a part of the void into it.

-Origin Physique: You have a physical body crafted by the Origin.]

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Right now, what Marc needed was a way to find food and water.

For food, he could eat some of the creatures he'd seen but he didn't have fire and he wasn't hungry enough to eat them raw. Yet. He hadn't found plants at all, not to talk of fruiting trees.

For water... He made an ice cube and left it in his hand, waiting for the sun to melt it. It did melt but into streams of cold air, rather than water. Trying to make it melt into water with his will just made it dematerialize repeatedly.

He reached out for the moisture in the air, trying to force it to bend to his will and become ice. The air felt slightly colder but that might have been his imagination. He could feel that it was possible to do convert the moisture in the air to ice but the same feeling told him it wasn't possible for him right now.

That was probably because he wasn't skilled enough with Ice Shaper. Or maybe the ability really was only limited to creating and shaping ice. He doubted it, though. His instincts told him he could develop his abilities as he wished from their starting points. He just wasn't proficient enough yet.

He couldn't create water with his ability yet. Therefore, he needed an alternate source of water. He remembered reading somewhere that nomads dug into the sand for water but that wasn't feasible right now. He didn't know how far into the sand he'd need to dig and even if he did, he had no tools, unless he was willing to use his Ice Shaping for that, which could easily drain him of energy.

So, he needed to find a oasis.

Marc knew as much about oases as the average person, which was not very much. He knew people could be fooled by mirages into seeing oases where there were none. He knew that oases were the primary sources of water in the desert and that animals usually gathered around them.

However, he didn't know how to find one and could only hope to luck into one.

The only thing he was capable of doing now was improving his survivability.

He could improve his Physique so he would be less affected by the desert conditions. He could improve his Arcana and see if that helped him to increase his control of Ice, maybe enough to gather environmental moisture for his use. After all, Arcana probably meant magic. He could buy another Talent Selection and hope it gave him options that could help him.

He didn't know which he should do. Buying a Talent Selection that might or might not give him good options would take nearly all his Essence points and he was sure 610 points weren't enough for a high increase in attributes as he was now. However, increasing his Attributes with more than that would also remove the option of buying a Trait Selection.

Marc grit his teeth and spent 10 points on Physique. There was no noticeable change. He continued dumping points until another 30 points made the percentage counter ticked up by 1%. So, it would take 4000 points to get to Physique Level 3.

For a moment, he regretted using his free attribute levels before raising them as high as he could with Essence points.

'This isn't the time for recriminations. If I hadn't used those levels, I might not have survived the worm or the other creatures,' he chided himself.

"Let me see. System, do I get new Trait options when I buy new selections or are the previous options still there?"

[Trait Options Refresh Every 168 Hours.]

So, the Trait Options he would get were those from when he'd been in the Void, if not much time had passed since he had been in the Void. There would likely be a new one to replace Ice Shaper but he wasn't going to count on it being a Trait that would help him right now.

He dumped 3960 points in Physique, 40 points at a time, and felt his body changing as he did. It felt refreshing for his body to evolve like this, like taking a cold drink after strenuous exercise but multiplied a hundred times. His body felt stronger, tougher. The hunger and thirst he'd been feeling faded away slightly. The sun's heat felt slightly less urgent.

Most importantly though was the new energy he felt coursing through him. It wasn't new, per se. It had always been there from the moment he woke up on the desert but hadn't been as noticeable it was now.

Now, it thrummed and sang in his veins and arteries, moving with every beat of his heart through every part of his body. He knew instinctively that he could reach in and and manipulate it, use it to work magic within his body. The energy gave him the feeling of life - of creation -, of fresh air and spring, of newly germinated seedlings, of a baby just born. It gave him the sensation of infinite potential in his body.

'I feel so fucking poetic right now,' Marc thought with a grin.

A flex of his will made it run through his body slightly faster. His heart beat harder and every aspect of his body felt augmented just a touch.

He could guess that this was Lifeforce, the first force in the System screen.

He sent some of the energy into his legs and jumped high up, sand blasting away from where he'd lifted off. When he touched down, he barely felt the landing. He'd only exhausted a little of his lifeforce and in the next few seconds, it was replenished, every breath and heartbeat of his renewing it.

A grin came to Marc's face. Augmenting his body like that felt awesome.

He turned his attention to Ether. He was guessing this was what allowed him to use Ice Shaper.

He sat on the sand, and crossed his legs into a meditative posture like he'd seen on the internet and TV. He reached for the energy within his body but refrained from touching lifeforce. Closing his eyes didn't seem to help much. Neither did creating an ice cube. Instinctively, he activated Voidsight.

The world around him transformed instantly. He saw evershifting flows and streams of energy weave through the environment around him. Brown energy sat in the sand and azure waves shifted with the wind. There was an ever present reddish-gold glow that emanated from the sun. There were others but they were less prominent, although no less plentiful. It felt like standing in a rainbow sea with streams of energy moving continuously in mysterious currents.

Ether. This was Ether. It was magnificent.

He turned his sight to his body and saw a misty, bright crimson energy running through his body. It looked, felt distinctly different from the environmental energy. This was his lifeforce. The flow felt... weak compared to the environmental energy around him.

There was another energy flow present within him, consisting of ether that continued to stick to his body as the greater flow passed through him. Most of the energy just exited his body like it wasn't there but a good amount stayed in it. It was mostly colored azure and redgold but while within his body, it gradually started transforming. The color didn't change but it felt like the energy was becoming his, becoming part of him rather than part of the environment.

He mentally grasped the energy and ran it through his body. It also slightly augmented his body but not like lifeforce did. It also didn't have nearly as much effect as lifeforce.

Ether had an entirely different feel to it. He could feel that ether wanted to be used outside of his body, to run free and shape reality rather than be confined within him.

He pictured a fire starting and felt his ether latch on to the image in his mind. It felt hard and unbearably slow, but the force started to respond to his will.

Suddenly, a warning from the System came to him. It didn't disrupt his mental state but slid into his mind like he'd always had the knowledge.

He suddenly knew that ether entering into his body for the first time slowly bound itself to him. Attempting to use ether before it was fully bound was dangerous and liable to go out of control. The same went for unbound ether in the surroundings. The ether had a rudimentary will of its own that would try to propagate itself.

Marc instantly stopped his attempt. He hadn't felt like he was losing control of the unbound ether but he didn't want to risk it. From the System's information package, he knew the transformed ether in his body was his bound ether. The unbound ether had only been a bit more unwieldy to his will, not like the struggle the System described.

Still, better safe than sorry.

He stopped trying to manipulate ether and instead focused on understanding the energy in a bid to increase his control over it.

The energy didn't seem to be truly present in the physical realm like lifeforce was, feeling somehow separate from the world despite its presence in it. It felt like it was partly in the physical realm and partly on another plane of existence.

His body along with his lifeforce kept the physical part of ether anchored within his body but didn't, couldn't fully restrict it. His mind seemed to also hold the spiritual part of ether but it wasn't a conscious effort, more like a subconscious hidden process.

The other restricting force in his body was a somewhat blurry outline of himself. The outline - it looked like a blurry upright shadow of himself - felt like it was both within him and outside of him at the same time.

He let his grasp on his ether slip away as his focus went to the shadowy aura.

The aura felt like... He couldn't really describe in words what it felt like. It seemed like an extension of his mind at first but that didn't fully encompass what it was. It was more like a reflection of himself.

'Is this spirit?' he thought, feeling increasingly sure that his guess was right.

His spirit was like a secondary, shadowy body made out of thoughts, emotions and somehow, substantial nothingness that existed in the same space as his actual body, just in a different plane.

Marc felt a sudden flash of insight.

It felt like the bridge connecting his soul and body, linking thoughts to action, consciousness to life and mind to brain.

A pang of hunger from his stomach interrupted his introspection and he opened his eyes.

He grimaced at the emptiness of his stomach and dryness of his mouth. He deactivated Voidsight and raised a hand to his aching head, which calmed down immediately after deactivating Voidsight. He felt tired and even more hungry.

Lifeforce seemed to sustain him somewhat and ameliorate his need for food and water but it didn't actually eliminate it.

He stood up or rather, tried to. His legs felt sore and cramped from sitting cross-legged for...

"Wait, how long did I spend sitting here?" Marc thought as he looked at his only method of tracking time, the sun. It had just started descending from its peak so it meant he'd spent at least an hour.

An hour where any creature could have come along and eaten him. He shuddered. Best not do any meditation unless he was in a safe place.

He had utterly ignored his surroundings as evidenced by the distant sound he could now make out. It sounded like a large crowd marching through the desert.

After massaging his legs, he stood up and peered in the direction it had come from. He could see a group of people - some of them looked strangely green and short from a distance - walking parallel to the dune he was on.

They didn't seem to see Marc, probably because of his sand colored clothes and light brown skin and Marc considered whether he should try to attract their attention.

He decided otherwise. He didn't know if the natives of this world were hostile and he felt slightly uneasy about the green-looking ones, who were both leading and tailing the group.

It would be best to follow them from a distance. They seemed to know where they were going and a group like that should have food and water or at least know where to find it. Thankfully, it wouldn't be hard to do so. They were leaving a large dust cloud trailing after them.

First, though, he needed to fully prepare himself.

Marc turned his attention to his status. As expected, Physique was at Level 3. Weirdly, Psyche and Arcana had increased. The actual levels hadn't increased but the percentage counters had gone up, Arcana by 5% and Psyche by 20%.

"So, meditation does increase my attributes, especially Psyche. That makes sense," Marc mused. "That's one hell of an increase, though. This should mean I can increase Physique by exercising. That sounds useful."

The meditation, not the exercising. Marc had always tried exercising back on Earth but would always abandon it after a few days, only to start again when it once more caught his fancy. He was reasonably sure that habit wasn't going to change any time soon. He intended to be a sorcerer, not a warrior.

Checking the Essence Points counter informed him he had 6,610 points left to spend. A bit over 6,000 points probably wasn't going to get him to the next level of Physique or Arcana so he placed 3,200 points into Spirit to bring it up to Level 3 and closed his eyes as his mind was seemingly cleansed.

His thoughts felt clearer and his perception greater. He could see better, hear further and clearer, feel more. His reflexes felt faster and he could almost imagine his neurons firing faster than before. His control of his body considerably improved as did his control over ether and lifeforce. His spirit also felt more noticeable to him.

Moving around felt more natural than ever to him, his spirit synced more closely with his body, his thought process resonating better with his actions.

"So cool," he muttered under his breath before shaking his head.

He didn't have time to experiment with what spirit could do. He still needed to follow the distant moving group. It was a good thing they weren't moving very fast.

He started making his way down the dune, whistling a random tune.

[Essence Points: 3,410 points.

Physique - [T0] - Level 3(0%)

Psyche - [T0] - Level 3(0%)

Arcana - [T0] - Level 3(5%)].