Episode 2: Discere

My eyes shot open, the open field of sand we had set up camp in had been littered with craters. A few feet ahead of me Ben stood, his sword in hand and pointed towards me. He was panting and heavily sweating, he lowered his sword and took a breather before sheathing it. “Turns out I couldn't stabilise the mana, you went out of control for a second there. That was dangerous.” I could see a slight orange aura releasing from his body, coating his skin and strengthening it, there was also a faint aura around my own body that before long dissipated into the air. I could now feel it coursing through my body, strengthening it and preventing the water from drowning me. “Ah i'm sorry about that Ben, here.” I walked to him and extended my arm out to him, he huffed a few more times before taking my hand and pulling himself up. “You are a lot stronger than you look. You had me on the ropes there. By the way I never got your name.” The conversation I had with that woman played through my mind again.

“My name is Kurai Kioku. It's nice to meet you Ben.”

“That’s an unusual name but I like it. Nice to meet you too, Kurai.” 

Ben held his hand out and I took it, shaking it and being surprised by his strong grip. “Well then what's next, I can sense mana now. Am I going to learn to slash a monster in half like you did?” He laughed at my question. “Not yet that takes some effort to pull off. For now I'll teach you about the basics of mana and monsters.”

He started walking in the direction of some seaweed and gestured for me to come with him. I followed and he began to speak. “The first thing you should know is what types of mana there are. There's three types, flow, project and support. Flow is the most basic of the three and is required to be able to use the other two types, you flow mana around your body, strengthening it. Project and support are more advanced, they are the basics of every skill. For projection you push the mana flowing through your body outwards to attack, this can be done in multiple ways. But the power of your attack will mainly come from how well you can use flow, being better at using projecting will increase your range and only slightly make your power better-”

We both reached the seaweed and Ben was interrupted by a small piranha like creature that was cut down in an instant. “the last type, support is slightly different. You can use it to heal your own wounds by flowing the mana through damaged areas of your body, it's the most complicated mostly because people don't exactly know how it works. I don't understand it much to that's the only description I can give you. The only other thing I do know is that some advanced healers can heal other people.” He stopped his explanation then unsheathed his sword again. “This infront of us is a seaweed Forest. It is called a zone, zones are areas dominated by a certain effect or species. The seaweed Forest is known for the mana draining seaweed. I'll show you what I mean. I watched as Ben sent mana into his sword then plunged it between the seaweed. A second later the seaweed wrapped around him blade and attempted to suck some of the mana out of it. Ben withdrew his mana before taking his sword away. “ They aren't lethal but I would advise staying away from them if you can.”

“If you aren't able to keep away from them the best thing to do is lower the amount of flow you are using or simply levelling part of the Forest.” I nodded in response. “Anyway that's the basics of mana, now I'm going to try and change the output of your flow.” I watched as the amount of mana flowing through his body changed from a calm steady stream to an entire waterfall, flowing in all directions from out of his body. I felt the mana collide with my body, sending shivers through my spine and making it harder to move. My body felt heavy as if a huge weight had just been placed onto my back without warning. Ben changed his flow back to how it was and I grasped for air, I hadn't even realised that I was holding my breath. I regained my breath after a few seconds, “your output should be quite high from what I saw earlier, try increasing the amount of mana flowing through your body by imagining your heart thumping harder and faster. It won't actually go faster but it's a good way to visualise it.” 

I did as he asked, closing my eyes and focusing on my heartbeat, hoping that I wouldn't be thrown into another dream, surprisingly I wasn't but I wasn't able to increase the mana flowing through my body, every time I attempted to it felt like my mind and heart was straining itself too much. It felt similar to how it would feel when you have run for too long. It was indicating my limit. “Looks like I can't do any more than this Ben, this is it.” Ben looked at me with a puzzled expression. “What do you mean? Your output was much higher earlier.” I shrugged and in response to that he looked up and placed his hand on his chin. “Well it doesn't matter, you will figure it out with time.” I agreed and he nodded, leading me to where the fireplace had been, the wood had been demolished along with the sand under it but there was a faint amount of mana in the air. Ben threw together some more wood from his broken house and set them on fire. It was only now that I realised why the fire had been so strong and lasted within the water, Ben was feeding mana into the fire. The fire served as some sort of replacement for the oxygen while also blocking out all of the surrounding water.

“This is a good way to train how to strengthen your flow and project your mana, I'm simply taking mana from the inside of my fingertips and forcing it out as if it was a liquid, I'm then using my head to control the liquid, picturing were I want it and what I want it to do. For this fire I imagine this liquid is some kind of fuel for it and I'm pouring that fuel over the fire, instead of putting out the fire it will envelop it and strengthen it exactly like I was strengthening myself.” His explanation made a lot of sense to me due to a small amount of knowledge I had. I imagined adding some alcohol to the fire, pressing my hands out and imagining the ‘liquid coming out of my fingertips’ as alcohol and splashing it over the top of the fire. I then imagined the feeling of flow and began circulating the mana around the fire, Ben's mana collided with mine. Ben noticed this as well and withdrew his mana from the fire allowing mine to settle onto it. I was successful in doing so and the flame, though much smaller than Ben's, was kept alive using my mana as a life source. 

Before long a began to notice parts of the mana surrounding the flames was vanishing into the air. I had lost control over it and the flame immediately went out. “Don't look disappointed. That's normal, when you expel mana from your body it will dissipate after a while, the better you are at projection, the longer you will be able to control your mana outside of your body. However it depends heavily on how far you are blasting mana, mana at the edge of your range will deplete much faster than mana closer to you.” I attempted to expand my mana outwards again but Ben stopped me instantly. “If you spend too much mana you won't be able to keep up flow around your own body. You need to rest. It looks like it's almost night time anyway. Why don't we get some sleep.” I nodded as I looked up, what used to be the sky was now a mess of distortions. At night they became pitch black like a massive void, but throughout the day they were a navy blue. Truthfully it was Incredibly hard to tell what the time was down here. There weren't any stars within the sky and there was no sun, just black and blue.

We fell asleep under the pitch black, our mana still surrounding our bodies so that we didn't die. Every now and then I had to wake myself back up again to focus on my mana and make sure my my was half awake, if I didn't I would drown. I woke up feeling as if I hadn't slept at all, there were bags over my eyes and the only thing keeping me awake was the mana surrounding my eyes. I had no energy but the amount of mana in my body felt greater than it was yesterday. I nudged Ben to wake him up, he groaned but then eventually opened his eyes and sat up. “hm? What do you want, kurai?” He didn't seem that tired and I began to wonder if there was a way to keep focused on mana while sleeping. “It feels like I had more mana than before we went to sleep, why?” He rubbed his eyes then jumped to his feet. “Well when you consume mana and it replenishes the amount of mana you have will increase, that is how you increase the strength of flow, it's as if you're working on a muscle, the muscle tears, then rebuilds better than it was before.” 

I immediately wanted to put the new amount of mana I had to the test and Ben set up a fire for me. When the fire was started I eagerly poured my mana onto the flames the same way I had before. The flames burst outwards stronger than yesterday, I felt as if I could stretch out my mana slightly further too. It was as if mana had become another limb for me. The more I trained it the stronger and longer the limb would be, I continued to surround the flames, I lasted slightly longer than before. My mana began to crumble into the atmosphere but I didn't want to give up just yet so I pushed it to the limits, forcing some mana surrounding my body into the flames. I suddenly understood the reason why Ben warned against it. My body suddenly tensed up and my eyes were forced shut, the sound of a fire being extinguished rang through my head and I found myself in that void again.

I was on all fours, a heel planted on my head. The woman from before was sitting In Front of me yet again, sipping from a glass of wine.

“Welcome back Kurai.”

Episode 2 end