Author’s note: So I’m in a good mood today, so I feel like this chapter will be somewhat better than the others. Give me your opinions and advice please! Also, I might switch the schedule from every Monday to somewhere around Monday. So expect chapters somewhere around Monday.

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2nd Journey – 4th day

“I need a journal or something to write in. Just talking to myself is getting boring as hell.” Azad said, frustrated at his hopeless situation.

“Stuck in the middle of butt fuck nowhere, with no indication of which way civilization is, and no way to pass the time by jacking off. The gods must hate me, or more specifically, George must hate me.” Azad grumbled.

Azad looked down at his still burnt hand and played with an idea in his head. If what he was planning on doing worked, he would be able to practice magic without any permanent harm.

“Please work!” Azad pleaded as he began pouring mana into his hand and imagined it healing. As he did this he began to feel extreme pain, but not enough for him to cry out.

“Shit this hurts!” But that didn’t stop him from doing so anyways. The pain was caused by his hand shedding the burnt skin and flesh, and rapidly regenerating new skin and flesh. Watching it was frightening and a bit sickening, but Azad wanted to make sure he didn’t fuck it up by not paying attention again.

“It’s actually working! I’m like Jesus or something!” Azad was esthetic and nearly cried tears of joy. He could jack- I mean; he could use his right hand again!

“Now that I have this cheat method, let’s test all the tropes of magic!” Azad screamed this as he began pouring his mana into his right arm muscles.

Azad began to feel strength well up in his arm as he poured more and more mana into it. When he felt he had enough, he stopped pouring mana and flexed his arm.

*CRACK* *SNAP* *CRUNCH*

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!”

The sounds heard previously were all the bones in Azad’s right arm crumbling. Azad had only reinforced his muscles, and not his bones. His bones were crushed by the amount of force his muscles squeezed them with.

“FUCK EVERYTHING! WHAT DID I DO TO DESERVE THIS! FUCKING HEAL! HEAL DAMNIT!” Azad began to pour more mana into his arm and heal the bones. This action caused his arm to begin rattling as the bone fragments were rearranged back into place and reconnect to each other, causing another wave of sanity breaking pain.

“Next time *pant* reinforce everything. *pant* No exceptions! Always everything!” Azad vowed to stop being carless and over excited. He would take magic very seriously from now on. At least until he later learns of a certain growth spell, and attempts to use it on a particularly sensitive part of his body. But until then he would be very careful.

“Now that that is over with, let’s just keep walking and I’ll just try again later, but not with body reinforcement. Regular magic for now, control before anything!”

These were the words last uttered by Azad before he blacked out once again.

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2nd Journey – 5th day

Azad woke up to a pounding headache and a feeling of weakness.

“I really need to stop doing things like that. One of these times something is gonna eat me while I’m out.”

Azad reflected on his actions and decided to at least try to pass out in a less dangerous place.

“Right, why did I pass out this time? Was it because I used to much mana….?”

Azad jerked himself up into a sitting position and began checking his mana reserves.

“I guess I did.”

What Azad saw was his nearly empty reserves of mana. He had one tenth of it left.

“Better pay attention next time. I don’t want to find out what happens when I run out completely. Well now that that’s been figured out, how do I get my mana back? Should I try meditating to absorb it or something? Let’s try that.”

Azad closed his eyes and tried to sense his surroundings for mana. He found it quickly, as he had already learned how when he tried finding his own mana. But when he tried to will it to merge with his mana reservoir, he found himself unable to move the ambient mana, as Azad decided to call it.

“How do I do this? Let’s try and pull it in with my own mana.”

Azad began the delicate process of trying to tug at the ambient mana with his own, failing most of the time. Though when he did manage to succeed, he only managed to slightly pull the mana closer to himself.

“Let’s try a different approach. What do some of the stories do? Funneling was one of the methods said to be used, let’s try that!”

Azad began another delicate process of trying to suck the ambient mana into himself, instead of pulling it in. At first he didn’t know what to do and just winged it by forming a funnel shape with his mana, leading into his mana reserves. Needless to say, this didn’t work and he decided to try and spin his mana funnel to suck the mana in.

This worked for whatever reason and ambient mana started to slowly drift into his reserves. Azad did this until his reserves were almost full, but then he noticed that he couldn’t control the mana he had sucked in.

“Why can’t I use it? Do I need to do something first? OH! Don’t some of the stories say you need to like, rotate it or something? What was it…?”

Azad considered what it was, but in the end he couldn’t remember.

“Let’s just rotate it and see what happens!”

Azad began to use what little mana he could control to start spinning the ambient mana in his reserves. He did this until he felt the mana spin on its own and began to use less force to push it. Only enough to have it continue spinning.

This went on for at least 5 hours. Over the course of these 5 hours the ambient mana within his reserves began to come under his control. Azad didn’t know how it worked and didn’t really feel like trying to figure it out, he just wanted to get to some form of civilization.

“OKAY! Now that that’s through with, let’s keep moving before it gets dark!”

And with this, Azad began walking once again.