Draft: 50 Mana Manipulation

50 Mana Manipulation

You’ve gained Skill Mana Manipulation [Common]!

Mana Manipulation [Common]:Mana is a natural occurring force in the System unified multiverse. You have taken your first step on your path to manipulate it. Level 1.

Would you like to integrate Skill Mana Manipulation [Common]?

You’ve gained Skill Mana Manipulation [Common] Level 1!

Your Skill Mana Manipulation [Common] has increased to Level 2!

Your Skill Mana Manipulation [Common] has increased to Level 3!

You have gained 3 points in stat Willpower!

Your Class Pure Castor has reached Level 10! Stats allocated.

Would you like to start your Skill Selection process now?

Well, that was one way to wake up. Releasing the drowsiness from her eyes, James held off on the last System notification. She was too overwhelmed by the forest around her. Once again, it had been transformed. Not as much as the first time she had experienced with mana, she doubted anything could top that experience, but it was different all the same.

With the forest being pale reflection of the weird dream-world she had been in, James quickly looked down to make sure she still existed in the real world. After all, she had started out translucent and ended up fading away. Thankfully, if the condition of her grubby fingernails was anything to go by, she definitely still existed, if in a bit of a dirty state.

She had changed, though. The mana she had stuck onto herself was still there, though now she could feel it itching at her skin, a bit like static electricity that wouldn’t go away. Her head still swimming, James glanced back at the cursed cabin. She didn’t know what to make of it.

So far away from her, she couldn’t see the mana in it, and at least no beige or grey was coming at her now. Still, she reused to let go of the weird mana coverings she had worked so hard to create for herself. She would return to her tree house and offload the adopted mana there.

Maybe once she felt safe again, she’d be able to think about doing some Skill Selection. At the moment she simply couldn’t be sure that the process wouldn’t leave her open to attack. Though her head felt clear, and she wasn’t physically tired after sleeping for however long she had spent in that weird world of colorful mana, she was mentally exhausted.

It was comparable to how she would feel after a long multiple-choice test. The questions themselves weren’t necessarily the hardest, but the the stress and repetitiveness of it all would certainly take a toll. James’s personal ‘post-test syndrome’ was falling asleep soon after. And she couldn’t let herself fall asleep in the area again lest she have an even harder time returning to the real world.

James really wasn’t sure her falling asleep after her exit from the cabin was of her own volition in the first place. While it would certainly fit her old pattern, she didn’t feel near as mentally drained then as she did now. And even now she was excessively cautious.

She just had to get away, whatever mind-altering business was going on in that cabin, she wanted nothing to do with it.

Well, at least until she felt a bit more confidence with dealing with it. Without falling asleep under whatever influence that was. If there was mind control in the Tutorial, it was bound to appear in the real world too. And she would need to be ready for it. She was going at it alone.

And while James was certainly more cognitively present at the moment than after her weird cabin escapade, she was certainly not focused. If she were she might have picked up on a number of things, all of which were interesting to note. Foremost, the mana on her skin was getting increasingly agitated the further she got from the original place where she had woken up and presumably acquired it in her sleep.

Secondly, while the trees still lacked any serious amount of mana, she could now suddenly perceive a small, almost imperceptible amount of deep green mana embedded within their trunk. It was much more prominent in the older trees while the younger ones sometimes didn’t have it altogether. Or at least didn’t have enough for her to see it even now with a boost to her senses. Then there were the trees that died, their mana wasn’t concentrated and instead was slowly leaking out, almost evaporating. Or maybe they were still alive and simply not thriving. It wasn’t like James had any experience with plants.

If James ever put any thought into plant life, she would have noted how many more advantages the plants got compared to the animals in the Tutorial. They basically had no setbacks while the comparatively higher mana in the atmosphere let them grow faster and stronger. And all of this without any serious challenges or drawbacks. Well, other than being a plant. James probably wouldn’t have made the tradeoff, for all that it would have left her alone, presumably for eternities.

The third thing James should have noticed, and that she certainly would soon, was the number of goblins that she picked up along her path. Their eyesight had apparently magically improved, as they were able to perceive her from far away and follow her along her leisurely pace. Their teeth occasionally bared and making hissing sounds.

But James was in a world of her own. And the increasing amount of mana signatures assaulting her senses didn’t register.