Broken Anomaly

All the survivors that were in the gym had woken up early. The tension that filled their bodies had prevented them from getting any more sleep. The cause of this tension was the ever-decreasing time of the safe zone they were currently in. At some point during the middle of the day, the timer would finally run out and they would be defenseless. As time went by and the sun started to rise, they noticed that no monsters were approaching. Not knowing where the monsters were added to their nervousness.

What if they were just waiting for the right opportunity to strike? What if they came back stronger? What if they come back with bigger monsters? What about the big monster over at the administration building?

A multitude of questions that didn’t help ease them poured out from the survivors, with many more questions following. Some wallowed in the despair that was rising from within, falling ever deeper into it. While others refused to give up or surrender to an emotion, one of the people who was currently doing their best for what was to come was Tony.

Before the world changed, Tony had been studying business administration so that he could run his family business when it came time for his father to retire. The important part here was the family business, it was a woodshop. It was important because the only material they currently had access to was wood. Yesterday after Marcus had said that he got experience from crafting and that piece of information got spread around, others had an idea about what to do. However, most of these newly motived survivors lacked any practical knowledge regarding how to go about it. That wasn’t the case for Tony. He asked to borrow Marcus’s axe and went looking for a suitable tree, both in quality and size, the axe was small and couldn’t be used to cut down one of the big trees.

Tony had worked throughout the night with a small group that decided to follow him. After he had cut down the first tree, he borrowed Stella’s knife to start working it, it was a crude knife, but he showed a level of woodworking that offset the poor working conditions. While he worked the wood, the others went and looked for more trees to cut down. When they had more than enough wood to work with, they ran into a problem, they only had one knife, an axe and various scissors. Tony handed the knife to someone else, grabbed a pair of scissors and broke it apart, he then continued his work, and the others followed his lead.

By the time the others had woken up, Tony and his group had made 15 rough looking spears and were still making more. They had developed a variety of skills while they worked, from Forestry to find the right trees, to Woodworking for working with wood and some even developed combat skills like Axe mastery.

Stella walked towards Tony while taking glances at the rest of his group. “Did you work throughout the night?”

He lifted his head, took a quick look around, and said, “I guess I did. Yeah.”

“Get any skills?”

“A couple."

“Good. Are you making more spears?”

“No. These are spikes, we’ll put them near the entrance in case we need to retreat. We’ll also put them around the building, if we have time.”

“Ok,” Stella said, looking around a bit more before she left.

Stella entered a room on the second floor and sat near Marcus, who was currently disassembling his previous creations and making new ones. It seemed that he had reached a level that allowed him to make better versions of what he had already made. Stella looked at her hand and a fireball appeared, it shifted slowly, not burning her hand in any way.

This wasn’t actually a skill, with the extra skill point she got from clearing the dungeon, she had decided to get the Mana sense skill. She still wanted to get magic, but it still hadn’t appeared on her available skills list. She hoped that with Mana sense, she could level up Mana manipulation more efficiently and arrive at magic faster.

She had been quite skillful when it came to manipulating mana, and with Mana sense, the skill reached level 4 in a single sitting. She then tried to create a fireball, emulating the flame from a matchstick. She was successful, to the point where she even got a title for it.

Magic pioneer (A): You have begun to pave your way without guidance, in a world without magic. Each spell you develop grants you enhanced mana recovery and increases your mana capacity.

When she got the title, she was ecstatic, only to find out that the spell wasn’t finished. She found this out in a pretty simple manner, she opened her status window and checked her spells category, it hadn’t changed. That meant that what she had developed was enough for the System to consider it a magic spell but not enough to list it as such. Was there a difference? Was it encouragement?

Stella had no trouble accepting that the spell was incomplete, she knew it was. The fireball currently had two problems that made it an incomplete spell. First, the fireball was too small and second, she could not get it to leave her hand. She had tried to both physically throw it and to will it forward, neither worked.

She believed she had found the cause of the flame’s limited size, it was the mana in her body. The fireball would be formed with the mana that reached her hand first, any mana that came after would only prolong the life of the flame. She needed to deliver a large amount of mana into the area she designated, in this case her hand, but the mana was to spread out throughout her body, so it would arrive at different intervals.

“Magicians have a core,” Marcus said without stopping what he was doing.

“Huh?”

“They gather mana in a core or circles around their hearts. Pick and make.”

“How would—”

“Figure it out.”

Stella got up from her seat and left, only to come back and tell Marcus one more thing. “Love you.”

Marcus didn’t respond, he too was far too immersed in his own path. The couple separated, both hoping to surprise the other in a couple hours.

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Alex had woken up before anyone else and had helped Tony’s group with carrying the tree logs back into the safe zone. After he was done helping with the trees, he went to the big tree he had been using as a punching bag and began to train like usual.

His training didn’t last long, as he saw something unusual, it was a single barghest that had completely ignored him. The tree that Alex used to train was behind the building, he didn’t want the noise from his constant punching to interfere with anyone’s sleep. Even at night, when the barghest avoided the safe zone, they would still attack people that came too close to them, and Alex was right in front of it. The barghest continued walking towards where the parking lot was, which was in front of the administration building and beside the gym, or at least was.

Alex decided to follow the barghest in a semi-hidden manner, the barghest refused to acknowledge him regardless of how much noise he made and soon he started to simply walk behind it. As he approached the parking lot, he started to hear various growls and sounds of fighting, he decided to hide once again. Once he made it to the edge, where the trees ended, he saw what seemed to be hundreds of barghest, all gathered in the parking lot. Some of the barghest were on top of cars, others inside and some were even biting them, tearing them bit by bit. However, the barghest and their great numbers weren’t what had his attention, no, what had his attention was the giant beast that was in the middle of all of it. It looked like the beast that was currently blocking the way to the administration building, except it was clearly leaner and had a long mane.

The beast turned its head and looked directly at Alex, and he swore that it grinned at him. Alex felt fear welling up from within, but before it could grab hold of him, he turned around and ran. He ran but not because of fear, but because he needed to warn everybody about the barghest and more importantly, about the beast.

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After the pain from the headache had subsided, Eric cleared the dungeon and restarted the dungeon once more. Having located what he called the “core”, he focused on it, keeping a close eye on what occurred when he killed a spider. After clearing the gallery, neither he nor his skill gained any insight into what the core did or how it was doing it. He shifted his focus to something else. He had made a clear distinction between the mana he used for skills and the mana that was entering his core, confirming that the mana inside his core changed once inside. If the mana is experience, than what are stat points? he thought to himself.

He once again cleared an area in the cafeteria and sat down with his legs crossed. He had reached level 8 and now had 10 free stat points, enough to at least get an idea about what happened when he spent one.

He focused his new Mana insight skill on the core. He then opened his status window and allocated a point toward strength. A very small amount of energy escaped the core and shot upwards, slightly to the right. It was too fast for him to follow it accurately, so instead he expanded his perception area, risking the possibility of not being able to detect the energy and focused it on his entire chest and put another stat point into strength. This time he could clearly detect how the energy shot somewhere into his upper right chest, disappearing afterward.

Eric now focused all his Mana insight into his upper right chest. He was determined to find out how the system strengthened them, one way or another. After putting three more stat points into strength, he had found it. A small speck of energy that was inside of him. He spent two more points and realized that the energy didn’t stay there, the energy got stronger, but most of the energy was spread out, though he didn’t know where.

“Shit, its cultivation, isn’t it?” He said to himself, losing his concentration. “I wanted something more magical, cultivation isn’t magical,” he said letting out a small sigh. “Better than nothing I guess.”

Eric was a little disappointed from finding out that the System didn’t have more game like elements and instead seemed to just streamline a natural strengthening process. After a brief moment of sulking, he returned to his investigation.

“What were those called? Nodes? Points or something?” Eric asked himself, once again thinking about web novels. “I’ll go with nodes. If I have one energy node for strength, I must have at least nine more for the other stats. Intelligence and perception should be somewhere in my head. Charisma in my throat, maybe? One must be near my heart, because of course. I wonder where the others are.”

Eric spent some time trying to find the energy nodes he guessed were in his head and was unsuccessful. The energy nodes were far too small at their current stage for them to be found without even having a general idea. He spent a stat point on perception. He felt the energy dissipate somewhere behind his eye sockets. He condensed his perception area as much as he could and still couldn’t find it. He spent another point and like a beacon, it shone. He engulfed the energy node with his perception.

Mana insight has reached level 2

He came back to reality. Having confirmed that since two stats had energy nodes, it probably meant that all the stats had energy nodes. Now what he needed to know was how the energy was transformed.

“The System is probably the one doing the energy conversion. I can’t tell how to make the converted energy just by looking at the—No, wait. The System hasn’t changed my body, not that I know of. So those nodes must be there from before, the same thing must be true for the core. Then what is it that the System does? It has to do something. I know it does. No, before that, why do we have those nodes? Our world didn’t have mana, the System itself said that it introduced it into our world. Did we have mana at some point?”

Before Eric could spiral deeper into a mountain of questions that he couldn’t answer, he stopped himself. He instead started to think through the whole process of getting experience and gaining stat points.

“You kill the monster, absorb the mana, it goes to the core, the mana changes and then it goes to an energy node. If I’m right, the core and the energy nodes are processes that happen naturally. That only leaves killing the monster and absorbing the mana, I kill the monster, so that only leaves absorbing the mana.”

Eric came to one conclusion, he needed to be able to move mana more efficiently. At his current level, he could move mana but it was like moving a balloon without being able to grab it. Even if he pushed it forcefully, it would stop shortly. His mana manipulation skill was forcefully evolved and it didn’t seem like it reached max level before becoming a part of Mana insight, he now needed to learn how to use it correctly. He needed to grab mana and pull it to where he desired.

He got comfortable and crossed his legs. As he closed his eyes, he activated Mana insight and focused on a particular strand of mana in front of him. Manipulating the mana was difficult, it was like he could only interact with it through his fist, he needed to open his hand, he needed to be able to use his fingers. Time passed slowly as he practiced his skill. It was straining but slowly he was able to turn what was a fist into two fingers. It was crude and he had to be slow, or the mana would escape his grasp. He firmly grasped the mana strand he had been using to train the entire time. He didn’t know how much mana it was, but he was ready to go to the next step. He started to clumsily direct the mana toward his core.

The mana approached his core slowly and as soon as it touched it, he felt a painful sensation originating from his core, until it covered his entire body. Something was wrong, he didn’t know what it was, but something was severely wrong. Did I miss something? What did I miss? A million thoughts rushed through his head, many of them been the same thought over and over, none of them coherent. The mana that had entered his core escaped and started to spread to each of his energy nodes, increasing the pain even further. He fell forward, the mana forcing every energy node to be active, keeping him awake.

He momentarily became aware of his core and every energy node. He felt his core straining to expand, and every energy node struggling to process and contain the energy within them. He wanted to scream but his body was incapable of responding. He felt blood pooling in his mouth and felt something come out of his eyes, nose and ears. He even felt liquid running through his skin. Luckily for Eric, even his lungs weren’t capable of functioning properly, so he eventually passed out, due to lack of oxygen.

Congratulations! You have broken out of the tutorial guidance.

Welcome Breaker.

You have earned the title: Breaker

Warning! Your core contains too much energy!