New World Day 11

My sleep proved to be long and deep after the ordeal with the mosquitoes. I should have been worried about them getting to me from the vents, but I had been so hurt and tired that the worries just fell away. It was 5:00 AM on the 11th day of the New World when I woke from my stupor. Not a single mosquito attacked me in my sleep, and when I opened my eyes, I was delighted to find that my vision was back to normal. On the other hand, my burns were still there, but even they felt much better than before. I felt well enough that I decided to start cleaning up the bedroom some. The bedroom was lit only by the light from the electronic clock. The lantern had run out of power sometime during my sleep, and the clock provided too little light to room. I had to light a bunch of candles to illuminate the room despite my current misgivings about fire. There were black streaks from the smoke across the ceiling, and the stairwell was just a massive mess. I took a few small hand towels that I didn’t mind destroying and got to work wiping everything down. I used the bleach based shower cleaner from the bathroom shower to loosen the stains up before scrubbing them with the towels. By 7:00 AM I managed to clean up the streaks in the main bedroom to a respectable degree. The stairwell was still a stained wreck, but it was at least a sanitized wreck now.

The strong smell of smoke that had still lingered in the room had now been replaced by the overpowering stench of bleach. The smell was so strong it was stinging my eyes and causing tears to well up in the corner of my eyes. I might have been a bit overzealous in my cleaning considering the current lack of ventilation. I didn’t want to take a risk of mosquitoes coming into the bedroom so I was forced to just bear with it. I turned to recording my recent experiences in my journals in order to take my mind off of the smell. It had been a couple of days since I had had the chance to put pen to page, and there was a lot I was eager to write down. Writing things down helped me sort through things and organize my thoughts, and I had a lot to organize. In particular, I was thinking of the visions I saw before I hurt my eyes, and the strange mists and streams of light towards the end of my effort to put out the fires.

I recorded everything I could remember about all of the colors, shapes, and patterns I saw in the vision experiment that messed up my eyes. I didn’t know quite what any of it meant or represented, but I hoped it would be useful to someone in the future. I did have a theory about the mists and streams that I had saw in the stairwell, but it would take time to really prove anything. Provided of course that I didn’t learn a skill somewhere along the way that would cause the System to spell things out for me. For now though, I was going with the theory that the red streams represented fire mana, the green mist was the lingering life mana from the wood that emerged as the fire burnt the wood, and the black mist that came about after the fire mana burnt the life mana was death mana which would explain why my body was so instinctively afraid of it. If I was correct in my theory, I wondered if the mana looked that way for everyone or if it changed its appearance based on the perceptions of the individual observing it. Shrugging to myself, I wrote down my observations and questions and decided to pursue that avenue of inquiry in the future when I met other people.

It was 10 AM when I finished recording everything in my journal about both my experiences and my updated skills and titles. Now that I wasn’t concentrating on my journals, my body began to protest and demand food and water. I had eaten and drank very little over the past few days due to a variety of circumstances. I was leery of removing the towels and letting in any blood mosquitoes, as I had named them, but I wasn’t going to be able to go on too much longer without water. I decided that it would be a good idea to try and clear the workshop area of any mosquitoes so that I could at least reach my supply of food and water. I struggled to my feet and walked over to the bathroom where I had put down the lighter and WD-40. I hoped I wouldn’t need to use it too much, but better to be safe than sorry. I kept the two of them in my left hand and put the roll of duct tape on my right wrist again before I limped over to the door to the workshop. I shifted some candles to near the door so that I would have enough light to see what I was doing in the workshop before I turned my attention to the door. I started out by removing one corner of the towel from the doorway and waiting to see if any blood mosquitoes came flying through. After waiting 10 minutes without an intruder, I peeled off the tape from the upper half of the door and waited another 10 minutes. Still no blood mosquitoes came through the cracks, and so, I proceeded to remove the entire towel and pull out the towel at the bottom of the door.

I transferred the WD-40 to my right hand, took a moment to build up my courage before I opened the door, and stepped through to face the swarm I feared lay beyond. The sight that greeted me was not what I expected though. When no blood mosquitoes came through the cracks, I had hoped that they had moved on, but as it turned out that hope hadn’t gone far enough. Scattered around the entire workshop were little red corpses of the swarm. They were all laying on the ground and shelves stiff as a board with their legs sticking up in the air. I was sure that they were dead, but I wasn’t going to take any chances with them. The first thing I did was take a candle and head over to the door to the garage where I taped the towel I had removed from the bedroom door to that door. Then I proceeded to collect and stomp on every single one of the little bastards before dumping them all into plastic garbage bag. Now that I was assured of my safety from the swarm, I walked back to my food and water supply and drank 8 bottles of water and ate a half dozen packs of cheese crackers and double that in granola bars. A loud burp echoed through the concrete hallways after I finished with my modest feast. Ahhhh… That really hit the spot.

What to do now? My burns were still pretty painful, but the pain was within the range that I could handle. Putting in some work with my footwork skills would be a pretty good idea to pass the time. It was 1:00 PM by the time I took my sweat soaked mummified self back to the bathroom along with a bottle of water where I removed all of the gauze and wiped my entire body down with some soap and a wet towel. It was not a pleasant experience washing the burns, but it needed to be done. I didn’t want to just assume that my resistance skills would prevent all possible infections. It would be just my luck to fall sick with some crazy new magic based disease.

Once I finished washing, I put on a new pair of jeans and yet another white under shirt. I was getting to be damn thankful that we had kept so many spare pieces of clothing here at the house. I was going through them at a rapid pace. I had just a dozen more pairs of jeans and about twice that in shirts. I kept the scraps from my destroyed wardrobe in case I met someone in the future who could patch them or use pieces of them to make new clothes. As I surveyed my collection of clothes, I thought that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to rummage through my deceased neighbor’s houses for any clothes that might fit me or could be used for material for new clothing in the future. I wasn’t happy about the thought of robbing the dead, but I hoped that they would understand and appreciate the dire circumstances that I found myself in.

After I finished clothing myself and making plans to acquire new clothing in the immediate future, I decided it was time to work on my mana veins. Before I started the new work, I walked over to the bed and laid down in it for the first time in days. I suspected that this work was going to take quite a while, and I wanted to be in the position to fall asleep right away when I finished. I had finished both the main mana veins and the secondary mana veins in the past few days. Now I planned to work on what I was calling the mana capillaries that would more effectively deliver mana to my physical body. Before I started the training, I made sure to put out all of the candles. I didn’t want to start another fire by accident while I was concentrating on my spiritual world.

The first few hours proved frustrating as I had a hard time fine-tuning the size of the mana capillaries. Too small and not enough mana would flow through them as I circulated my mana, but too big and I found that I lost so much mana to them that it was hard to complete more than a few full circuits around my mana veins. It wasn’t until around midnight that I finally managed to create a mana capillary that I was satisfied with. Once I had the size down, it was a simple albeit tedious matter to create the rest of the mana capillaries that I felt that I needed. I first created mana capillaries that stretched through all of my organs. Despite the near ruinous first vision experiment, I had yet to give up on creating a mana sight skill and took special care with the mana capillaries that I connected with the area corresponding to my eyes. After I connected mana capillaries with my eyes and all of my internal organs, I then turned my attention to creating them for the muscles through my chest, then my neck and head, followed by my arms and legs, and finished things up with my finger and toes. I was concerned at first that I wouldn’t have the mana to continue my experiments, but my ability to regenerate mana had reached a high enough point to sustain my experiments without issue due to the smaller size of the capillaries.

I spent all night completing over a hundred mana capillaries before I finished everything up. Once I finished, I knew that I needed to test things out. I started my tests by circulating my mana slowly through my first two sets of mana veins. The mana capillaries quickly filled to the brim when I circulated my mana slowly and there were so many of them that two full circuits were all that I could manage. I only had to wait around six minutes for my mana lake to refill. At that point, I started the second test where I circulated the mana at a moderate speed. The mana didn’t rush down the mana capillaries quite as much at this pace, but I still only managed four circuits before it all slipped into my body. Six minutes later, I started the third test where I circulated everything at a high speed. The high speed worked the best so far, and it reached six circuits before I ran out of mana again. For the final test, I sent my mana rushing through the mana veins at the maximum speed that I could manage. Eight circuits later my mana was exhausted and I was left to ponder over what was the best way to handle things. The higher the speed the longer my mana lasted, but I wasn’t sure how much mana it would take to properly enhance my body. If it took a large amount of mana than it might be best to go at a slow or moderate speed to more quickly start up the mana enhancement, but if it didn’t take a lot of mana then the highest speed would be the best choice. In the end, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to come up with a proper answer until I learned to control the enhancement of my body. After all, just passively filling your body up with mana couldn’t really be considered a true enhancement. I found myself yawning from the all nighter I had pulled and decided that those experiments could wait until tomorrow afternoon.

Endurance increased by 1!

Strength increased by 1!

Speed increased by 2!

Spirit increased by 2!

Lesser Mana Wielder (UC) ***** evolved into Greater Mana Wielder ® *****

Basic Spirit Regeneration (Passive) (B) * leveled up!

Basic Spirit Regeneration (Passive) (B) * evolved into Minor Spirit Regen (Passive) © *

Minor Spirit Regeneration (Passive) © * leveled up!

Minor Regen (Passive) © * leveled up!

Minor Regen (Passive) © * leveled up!

Minor Mana Control © * leveled up!

Lesser Mana Vein (Passive) (UC) ***** evolved into Greater Mana Vein (Passive) ® *****

Basic Disease Resist (B) * leveled up!

Basic Parasite Resist (B) * leveled up!

Basic Poison Resist (B) * leveled up!

Pain Control (B) *** leveled up!

Basic Close Combat Footwork (Active) (B) * leveled up!

Basic Close Combat Footwork (Active) (B) * leveled up!

Basic Ranged Combat Footwork (Active) (B) * leveled up!

Basic Ranged Combat Footwork (Active) (B) * leveled up!

Name: Jason Silver

Job Name: N/A

LVL: 7 84%

Job LVL: N/A 0%

Job Points:

N/A

N/A

N/A

Titles:

Survivor (B) LVL 7 73%

Fool (B) LVL 7 90%

Swarm Killer (B) LVL 8 55%

Beast Killer (B) LVL 8 48%

Risk Taker (B) LVL 5 97%

Repeated Risk Taker ( C ) LVL 6 14%

Compassionate Fool ( C ) LVL 1 78%

Curious Fool ( C ) LVL 3 71%

Stupid Fool ( C ) LVL 4 81%

Extremely Stubborn Fool ( C ) LVL 2 97%

Greater Mana Wielder ® LVL N/A

Title Points:

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*

**

*

*

*

*

*

*

**

*****

70

Stats:

HP:

MP:

Mana Regen:

Endurance:

Strength:

Speed:

Spirit

Bonus Points:

67/130

8/46

12 per min (-2.75)

14

10

11

8

24

Status Effects:

Regen, Spirit Regen, Disease Resist, Parasite Resist,

Poison Resist, Minor Burns x30

Skills:

Basic Axe Mastery (B) LVL 7 56%

Basic Gun Mastery (B) LVL 4 78%

Minor Regen (Passive) ( C ) LVL 7 34%

Minor Spirit Regen (Passive) ( C ) LVL 2 40%

Basic Disease Resist (Passive) (B) LVL 8 76%

Basic Parasite Resist (Passive) (B) LVL 8 73%

Basic Poison Resist (Passive) (B) LVL 7 97%

Minor Mana Control ( C ) LVL 5 56%

Greater Mana Vein (Passive) ( R ) LVL 1 0%

Flexible Mana Lake (Passive) (B) LVL 1 0%

Pain Control (B) LVL 3 61%

Basic Close Combat Footwork (Active) (B) LVL 3 44%

Basic Ranged Combat Footwork (Active) (B) LVL 3 59%

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*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*****

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*