STATUS

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  Name: Jack Davies

  Race: Human

  Age: 33

  Origin: Earth

  Modification Level: Tier 1

  Shards Consumed: 0

  Shards Required: ??

  BODY ENHANCEMENTS

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  Capacity: Tier 1

  Flow: Tier 1

  FREQUENCIES

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  Mana: Life

  Prime: ??Amplification??

  TRAITS

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  Prismatic Sensitivity: Tier 1

  SKILLS:

  —--------------------------------

  Mana Sense (Internal): Tier 0

  Jack shook his head as the disorientating information flooded his mind. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, maybe some sort of AR overlay or something similar. Instead he felt like there was a stream of information there in his head, almost like a memory he could focus on and recall his status information. He scanned through the new memory and felt … a little underwhelmed. He had been expecting … more?. There was a distinct lack of numbers, where was his strength stat? Where was his intelligence? He was a smart guy, it had to be high right?

  No, what his interface memory told him was pretty basic and mostly things he already knew. Monty and Turrel had told him about the modification Tier he achieved, being surprised by him getting it without absorbing a shard. Which was also something that showed up on his status, along with his age and some question marks on what he assumed was a number of shards needed to reach the next tier. His body seemed to have a Tier 1 capacity and flow, which he assumed was to do with the modification that burned in his pathways and enhanced his bones.

  He noticed his [Prismatic Sensitivity] was a trait which also sat at Tier 1. He was a little sad as he brought up the section on frequencies, he had hoped to see a list of many more from the second half of the test that he hadn't been through yet. He was a little confused by the ?? around his [Amplification] Prime frequency, it seemed a bit strange but the way Monty and Turrel had reacted, maybe it was some sort of mutation or modified version?

  Obviously he had no skills, well other than [Mana Sense] which seemed to have an internal caveat on it and was sitting at Tier 0, nothing special there. He looked up to Monty who was smirking at him but had remained quiet the entire time.

  “So what do you think? Anything interesting? Actually no, don't worry about that for now. Do you have any Sense skills listed?” Monty asked, waving himself off halfway through asking.

  “Umm yeah It says I have mana sense but it has like Internal next to it. I feel like it means it's limited? Only Tier 0 though.”

  “Ohhh that's actually pretty good. Skills work a little differently to your body and most traits, those will almost always be linked to or limited by your overall modification Tier. Skills are independent of that but are based on your experience or usage of them. Sense skills are pretty hard to activate but you did pick things up pretty quickly. It might help you watch what I am doing next. Turrel can give you a run down of the interface stuff, which to be fair he probably already did but likely hid it in the middle of a lecture about the Origin.” Monty said as he stretched.

  “I will run through two skills that I think are the most important for you to learn. Not because they are a foundational building block or because they are easy to learn. Purely because these are going to be the most useful to you personally with your amplification.” Monty motioned for Jack to sit in the chair in the corner and walked through the shimmer into the larger part of the room. On the other side he waited for Jack to sit in the chair and then tapped on something that was on his side of the divide and suddenly Jack heard his voice in his ears.

  “Ok, while you are in the chair you should be able to hear me in here. The chair will try to help amplify some of the mana frequencies I use so you can try to feel or watch them closer. First I am going to show you my Shockwave skill. You have seen it before and at the start it will be the most important for you to learn. It gives you a way to vent mana and it should give you a basic attack.”

  Monty stopped talking and walked towards the center of the room. Once he was there he held up his hand and made a strange circular motion with it. Jack then started to feel a vibration from his chair, focused on it and realised it was moving similar to the frequency of Life mana. He realised that Monty had likely motioned for something to begin filling the room with Life mana so he could begin. Monty seemed to wait for a second, slowly pulling in some of the mana, as he did Jack could feel something from the chair but he couldn't work out what it was. Not letting it distract him, instead he tried to watch the way Monty moved his body and simply observe.

  Monty stepped forward in a very deliberate action and threw a slow punch, ending with a pose looking like a martial arts master from an old kungfu movie. He then retracted that movement and stood tall with a straight back. Then as if he was demonstrating the correct technique he repeated the movements a second, third ,and fourth time.

  On the fifth Jack felt something different. As Monty started his motion of stepping forward and pulling his fist back, the chair began to react. He didn't see how but he knew Monty had activated his skill and was moving mana through his pathways.

  As the foot hit the ground, his hips shifted. His torso began to pivot and his arm raced forward, as Monty was doing this Jack could feel something moving in the vibrations, as it collected together and consolidated. Then in one explosive movement, this one not slow like the others but just as deliberate. Monty’s arm shot forward and with it the mana seemed to move as well. His body snapped at the end as his fist reached the end of the motion. Then Jack heard as much as saw the skill activate. The rush of mana reached the end of his body and with nowhere to go it seemed to just build. Until bang, there was a mini explosion that seemed to center around Monty's fist, there was a visible distortion in the air as if something physical was expelled from his body and crashed into the wall.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  “How much of that did you catch?” Monty asked as he glanced over in Jack's direction.

  Jack took a second to think about it and it was either as simple as he thought - obviously not to do but in theory. Or he had missed something important which was likely the case. He would probably need to see if a few more times to know.

  “Honestly I have no idea, probably going to need you to beat up the air a bit more so I can work it out” Jack said as he leaned back in the chair to get comfortable.

  He watched Monty make the same slow deliberate movements ending in a shockwave ten more times he left the room and approached Jack, he didn’t even look tired.

  “Alright enough watching, now you try based on what you think you saw or felt. I am a big believer that it is more important for you to work some things out on your own than me just telling you how to do it or how it works. I will watch and after you have tried at least twenty times I will give you my thoughts. Sound good?”

  Jack nodded as he stood and walked over to shimmer and taking a breath and bracing himself as he slowly reached towards it, he stepped into the larger room. As soon as he was in the other section he could feel the life mana in the air. His body started to absorb some of the mana in the room without him doing anything and he stood still as he tried to slow his breathing and follow the flow. He could feel the mana start to circulate in his body and when it approached his heart, it was pulled through and amplified. Only by a small amount he thought, then it fed back into his system and the vortex was completed and continued to circulate, slowly growing despite his body purging some of the unused mana.

  As he walked to the center of the room he tried to take a similar stance to Monty. He had no experience with martial arts of any kind and could count on one hand the number of times he had even hit a boxing bag. Still he did his best to remember the slow deliberate actions Monty had made. Stepping through each one slowly as he observed the mana in his system while he moved.

  He thought moving his body would affect mana in his system. He was wrong, if just continued to flow and slowly build, without anything attached to his pathway or him drawing in a large amount he didn't feel like he would reach capacity for a long time at this pace. While he could observe the mana in his system fairly well, moving it at his will seemed to be beyond him at the moment. He tried to use his mind to will it to move toward his arms but had no luck.

  He continued the motion with his body as he thought, moving through and making a below average strike. It was all just his body moving at the moment. No mana moved, he could feel his pathways leading to his hands. He just couldn't work out how to get anything there. He tried to pull or push on his mana heart with his mana sense, but only succeeded in sending a slight pulse away from his heart. It raced down his pathways and was either purged or reabsorbed, only a tiny amount but he had felt it as it moved.

  Jack spent the next ten minutes repeating the movements with his body as he tried everything he could to direct a pulse of mana after he squeezed his heart. His trial and error led him to his last test, he was trying to trace the path he wanted the mana to follow in his mind as he tried to pulse his mana. He had some success already but he lost his way or traced the wrong path, they intersected and swirled almost constantly. This time he skipped some of the earlier paths, he started tracing about halfway through the path he wanted. He squeezed and the mana flowed out he lost two thirds of it to different paths but a large burst followed toward where he was tracing along his mana sense. This was the most he had managed to consolidate in one go, he could feel a slight heat as it flowed through his body. He traced the path he wanted to his palm, but took a wrong turn at one point and ended at a point on his wrist.

  He completed the motion with his body but his timing and aim with the mana was off, instead of it bursting from his hand. The mana seemed to reach the end of the path and simply rebounded, heading back towards his mana heart. The mana in his system had built and would need to be released soon. He was starting to feel his body temperature rise. He wanted to try again before calling Monty to help. As he closed his eyes he thought back to the brief flashes he remembers when Monty demonstrated. The mana didn't just get to the extremity and leave his body. It seemed as if there was a building pressure, the mana in his examples simply rebounded and flowed back, but it seemed to hold for a moment when Monty did it.

  He had no idea how he could do that, but in his practice so far he had been able to feel or trace with his mana sense, when he did so the mana wanted to flow to that spot. Maybe he could pinch or hold where he was aiming and hope it would draw toward that location. He traced the path in his mind one more time, then he sent a pulse of mana out. He started tracing, again starting further away and getting about a third of the pulsed mana to go where he wanted. He traced the line, avoiding his mistake from last time and ending up at the middle of his palm. Instead of letting go of his mana sense he held on, as if he was trying to pinch the area in the middle of his palm.

  The mana flowed through his system, as he held on the mana sped up a little bit and moved towards it. He felt it running down his forearm and across his wrist as he pulled his hand back and stomped his foot down.

  The mana that had flowed away from his palm hit his extremities and bounced back, instead of heading towards his vortex. It raced towards the spot he was pinching. The rest was just arriving in his palm, it tried to rebound but kept being pulled back, as more and more mana arrived he could feel a heat building in his palm.

  He formed a fist, turned his shoulders and tried to time his arm shooting forward to the rush of heat heading towards his palm. The pulsed mana flowed forward as Jack moved his body forward as well, collecting and trying to converge on the spot he was holding.

  When Monty demonstrated there was a sense of compressing before the shockwave was ejected. That wasn't happening for Jack, instead it just felt like his arm was filling with Mana that kept trying to push towards his hand but couldn't move past the mana already there. His arm felt warm. He finished the motion and thrust his fist forward.

  Nothing happened to the mana inside his body. He knew it was stupid but he thought that maybe more mana might help push it through to compress, like running the tap to try to flush out a blocked pipe. He sent another pulse of mana out.

  In the corner of his eye, if Jack was paying attention he would have seen Monty stand up and head towards the entrance. He was instead too focused on what was happening inside his body.

  It didn't work the way he had expected, there was no building of pressure. All he felt was a heat that was spreading as the mana backed up, being pulled away from the vortex his trait had produced more mana to make up for the amount it had sent away and he felt he was near capacity.

  Jack was a smart guy but sometimes smart people do dumb things. The second pulse was dumb, the third well that was really dumb the fourth was also really really dumb. His whole body felt like it was burning, he didn’t know what to do, he just wanted all of the mana to go to the same spot not line up. He could picture it in his mind, he just couldn’t work out how to do it. If he could hold his mana sense in two places maybe he could mould it together like clay, but he had to keep it pinched to draw the mana to that spot.

  He tried to get a second ‘Hand’ to use with his mana sense but couldn't work out how, he knew he was running out of time before Monty would help or he would deal with his own consequences. He kept trying and eventually he could manage a very light touch. Using that light touch, he traced the pathways toward his palm again. As he did so the mana started to move and push into his palm, like air filling a balloon. He repeated this a few more times slowly stroking the pathways with his second touch until the collected mana in his palm started to feel dangerous.

  He saw Monty behind him, watching curiously and decided to trust him. Jack let go of his mana sense and thrust his fist out again. As he did the mana that had been compressed all rushed outwards at the same time, pushing against each other just like it had on its way to his palm, now it wouldn't let the mana that was against the walls of his pathways move back as it was being constantly pushed forward.

  His palm felt sore, and he swore he could hear a sizzle as the heat rose. Then it felt like the pressure had suddenly been released. The mana seemed to be forced through his skin and out into the world causing ripples to burst out into the world. Unfortunately for Jack, he wasn't able to direct the shockwave quite the same as Monty. As the shockwave erupted from Jack's hand, it was shot upward with speed and he felt something crack in his shoulder and wrist. He was lifted off his feet and flung backwards as his arm spun over his head pulling him with it as he crashed into the wall behind him.

  “Haha I did it!” Jack smiled at Monty.