I woke up and ate an apple even though I didn't feel hungry. "I really haven't felt much hunger since coming to this weird place. Hope I'm not getting sick or anything" I finished the apple and decided to continue experimenting with the mana. I had been able to make a ball of mana so logically I would want to try and lob it at something. I checked out of the windows for any signs of something murdererous lurking and when I saw that there was nothing I breathed a sigh of relief. Everyday you are alive is a miracle in this damn place.

I wanted to check my status page again since it had been a while so I opened it up while I finished munching on the apple.

Name Dane Carter Current Potential 4001 Race Soul Body [Human Type] Soul Cores Remaining 5/6 2 hours 25 minutes till next core regenerated Level 3 [30% exp until next level] Health 900/900 Mana 200/200 Other Menus Available Titles,Skills, Attributes

"When did I level up? Must've killed more skeletons than I thought I did." I also noticed the fact that there was a timer saying when my next soul core regenerated. "That's good. My core's will be back at max in 2 and a half hours." It was still a bid weird to get around the fact that in 2 hours and 25 minutes I would literally grow an extra life but I'll get over it. I chucked the apple core into my inventory and opened a description of the Rift Portal skill again to get a refresher on what it did.

Rift Portal: A skill to create portals at predetermined locations. The amount of locations a user can save is determined by the level of the skill. Saving a location and activating the portal consumes mana. Current Save slots 0/2

I finished reading the decription and decided that I might as well save my location here since this was going to become my home for the time being. I tried to weild mana like before but it was damn difficult to use. It felt like trying to pour syrup out of a bottle. It took time and effort to get enough out to be of any use. I was slowly getting better as I used mana but it wasn't a very large difference. After several minutes of gathering mana and preventing a massive explosion from occuring, I finally managed to create the blue water like portal. It appeared in front of me and was slightly taller than me. I didn't get any notification so I tried to think of saving this as my home to portal to. Instantly after doing that I got a notification.

Rift Portal Save Slot used! Current location has been saved My Home! Save slots used: 1/2

"So it saved as whatever I was thinking of at the time huh? Gotta be careful or I'll end up saving a location as 'Damn Hellhole!' or something dumb like that. Anyways back to experimenting with mana." I finished walking out of the inn and got outside. I saw that the skeletons were still standing there guarding the inn so I gave them a salute and walked off to my practice grounds, laughing at the absurdity of the situation. To my surprise the skeletons saluted back, scaring the ever living crap out of me.

I sped up my pace, looking behind me the entire way. "What the frick? Those things actually saluted me back. Alright, not going to think about it. Time to become a wizard Dane. Lets do this." I started using mana again and tried to focus it into a ball shape like I had yesterday, only this time without shoving my entire mana pool into it. I was successful after a few failed attempts. Making a small ball of mana the size of a tennis ball. The next step was trying send it flying like in video games. My first attempt ended up with the blueish white ball of mana slowly peeling off of my hand and plopping onto the ground followed by an unsatisfying Bloop as it splatted onto the ground. "This is going to be harder than I thought."

I kept working on it but was met with limited success. I had tried to chuck it but the thing stuck to my hand like glue. I had tried to make it smaller but that was practically impossible for me. The mana would scatter all over the place after a few seconds of it forming. I had spend around 12 minutes of just trying different solutions when I felt like I a headache coming on. "Great, just great! First all this failure and now a headache!" I tried to make another mana ball but I got a notification saying I had 0 mana and was suffering from the backlash of using it all, aka the headache. "Oh piss off you damn blue nightmare." I waved the notification away, feeling thoroughly irritated at myself wasting time and getting nowhere.

I sat down on the side of the practice yard and ate an apple when I felt something odd. I felt like there was something nearby as weird and crazy as that sounds. It was like I had a radar in my head. I turned around and saw nothing there. I felt like a crazy person but then the small blip on my radar in my head moved a bit. It seemed to be behind a large rock. I pulled out my bone dagger and held it tightly as I crept up on where this feeling was coming from. I jumped out from behind the rock holding my bone dagger and saw a...rabbit? "Wait...why's the rabbit have a god damn horn? WTF?" I got a notification right after asking that question to no one.

Being Appraised! Horned Rabbit: Horned Rabbits are very weak ⏃☍⎎⏃⌇⟟⎅. They usually eat grass and ⋔⋏⏚⎐⎎ and are docile ⎎⍀⏁⊬. They are cowards but ⎅⍀⏁ have ⊬⋔⋏⏚⎐ and horns that can be sold or used for ⟊⏃⎅⌇⏃⌇ ⎅⋏⟊⌇⋏⎅☍ ⌇⎅⟊⏃⌇⎅ ☍⋏☍⋏☍ ⊬⊑⎍⋏ ⎅⍙⟒⎅⌇ ⏚⎐⟊⎅☊⟊⋏⟊.

The appraisal wasn't the most useful with all of those weird symbols I couldn't understand but I understood enough to know that the thing in front of me was a Horned Rabbit. I just hope that appraisal gets rid of those symbols the higher it's level gets. The rabbit noticed me and stared at me and my bone dagger. It then slowly walked over to me. "You look cute when I get a good loo-" Shink. "AAgh you go damn piece of-"Shink. I screamed in pain again and hobbled backwards while holding my leg in pain. The son of a gun had just stabbed my leg with its horn! "Docile creature my ass! The thing just attacked me! Screw you ya damn notification system. You got my leg stabbed!"

I kept complaining as I hobbled backwards staring at the creature. I swear I saw a smirk in that grubby little face of its but I'm probably hallucinating. "Why you little piece of shit. Imma tear you a new one. C'mere you!" I proceeded to spend longer than I care to admit chasing the infernal creature around with my bleeding leg. It healed up quickly so I barely noticed the pain apart from the initial stab and just chased the thing with a burning hatred. Every time I got close to catching it the thing would hop onto some ledge I couldn't reach or somewhere else and look at me with its damn face. I swear I saw the thing smirk at me every time.

After I had gotten fed up with the thing I lost control of myself in anger and wildly pumped mana into a mana ball while I thought about sending this flying at the rabbit and blowing the thing to kingdom come. The ball of mana surprisingly flew forwards using mana as a sort of fuel to fly forwards. The ball of mana flew straight at a rapid pace, slamming right next to where the rabbit was. The horned rabbit hopped away but the ball of mana blew up, causing the thing to go flying while crying out in pain. The horned rabbit slammed into a wall horn first and hung there limply while bleeding. I huffed out a breath and calmed myself down. I had just used mana to make a projectile and wanted to try and replicate it.

I calmed down enough and started to think about what I had done. I had made a mana ball and thought about sending it flying forwards and blowing up, so I tried to do that exactly. I made a ball of mana and then thought about sending it flying forwards really fast and blowing up afterwards. I pumped a small stream of mana into the ball while thinking about this, which made it harder to control but I managed to keep it from going nuclear on me. The ball of mana then flew forwards without me doing anything and flew forwards. It struck a nearby wall and blew up, sending some clumps of dirt flying into the air but otherwise not doing any damage to the wall.

I was pretty excited about this, since I finally had a ranged attack. "Hell yeah! Booya! Finally, all of this damn boring practice paid off. Oh frick, there aren't any skele's nearby from that noise are there?" I looked around in a sudden panic but relaxed after I saw nothing. The weird radar feeling came back as well and I felt nothing from it other than a weak signal from the dying rabbit hanging from the wall. I was surprised when I got a notification.

Danger Sense has become Level 2!