by James Hunter
“Attention,” she called out, her voice clipped, her words precise. “Welcome to Mana Manipulation and Mana Coalescence. As most of you know, this is perhaps the single most important class you will ever take, and that is because it will teach you the fundamentals and core philosophy behind controlling your magical potential. You see, the truth is, everyone in the room—even those who have never cast a single spell in their lives—have access to what we call a Mana pool and Mana channels. The Mana pool is the seat of your power, the well of energy that drives the very forces of creation.
“Think of your Mana pool as a vast reservoir, while your Mana channels are the minor tributaries which branch off from that reservoir. Those tributaries carry the power out and away from your center so that it may be used in practical ways—a farmer irrigating her crops, someone washing dishes in a house far away, a child fetching water for a bath. So it is with you. But this vast reservoir of power can be dangerous to those who do not understand its proper use.”
“If one of you,” her gaze seemed to linger on Sam, “were to cast a spell without directing that rush of power through the appropriate channels, it could cause great damage. Everything from exhaustion to pain to fits of severe nausea. In some ways, it would be like the reservoir flooding its banks, all of that water rushing around without anywhere to go, destroying anything in its path indiscriminately.
“Fortunately for you lot, I can teach you the proper way to both access your Mana pool and how to safely direct that energy, which will broaden your Mana channels over time, allowing you to do far more with magic than most of the unwashed masses could ever dream possible. I could walk you through more of the history and theory revolving around Mana manipulation, but frankly, I have found the single best way to learn is through a hands-on guided meditation, of which I am a Master. First, I want all of you to close your eyes and locate your Mana pool deep within your center.”
Sam did as he was instructed, pressing his eyes shut tightly and delving deeply inside himself, searching out the rolling mass of power which burned and shifted like a kaleidoscope inside him. As he drew closer to that energy, the shifting colors and blurring lines began to take form, resolving into a chaotic bundle of blues and whites which churned like a hurricane about to make landfall. Sam just stared at the image in his mind’s eye, awed by the power of this magic. Somewhere, a voice cut through his focus, though it sounded muffled and hazy, as though he was hearing it through hundreds of feet of water.
“Good,” Mage Akora said, “I see a handful of you have found it, but the rest are having some difficulty. Please, all of you, open yourself and allow me to guide you.”
As she finished speaking, a prompt appeared, which Sam accepted with only half a thought, still fixated on the sight of all that power burbling and swirling inside his chest.
Mage Akora used skill ‘Guided Meditation’ on you! Accept? Yes / No
Time seemed to slide by at half speed, but finally, Mage Akora spoke again, “Excellent, there now. All of you have managed to locate your Mana Pool, but that is only the first step. What you will need to do now—and what you must practice every single day—is condensing your Mana pool while cycling it through your spell channels. As you watch your energy, I want each of you to envision that ball of arcane energy shrinking, condensing, forcing it down and back in onto itself. Forge it into an orb that spins like a top, twirling, twirling, twirling. You need only to envision it… impose your will… and it will be so.”
Sam licked his lips, a fine sheen of perspiration building on his forehead, then followed her instructions. Slowly and diligently, Sam reached his thoughts toward the ball of gale-force winds. Immediately, the bundle of chaotic, formless energy responded, the edges smoothing, the sides rounding into something that more closely resembled a sphere. Oh my god, it’s working, he thought with a surge of pride and excitement. Spurred on by his minute success, he pushed even harder, working the energy like a lump of clay, rolling, pushing, and pressing it between the palms of mental-hands until it was a perfectly round ball, like a marble containing a blizzard within.
With that done, he began to rotate the ball, urging it to spin even as he bore down, pressing the energy back into itself so the ball shrank in size. After what felt like years of concerted effort, the ball finally stopped compressing. It was roughly half the size it’d been before, and now, no matter how much pressure Sam applied, the energy wouldn’t budge so much as a millimeter. A thunderous headache began into throb in his brain, hot agony curling around the sides of his skull like ram’s horns.
Being trained by a Master of a craft has greatly increased your speed of comprehension!
Skill gained: Coalescence (Beginner 0). You have taken the first steps on the path of the mind! By collecting your Mana in an orderly form, you will be able to pack more Mana into a single usage with far greater effect. +1% spell efficiency and +2% Mana regeneration per skill level. Wisdom +1. Increase your wisdom to coalesce your Mana to a higher degree. (Maximum 50% spell efficiency.)
As this is your first time gaining spell efficiency, here is a short explanation. Spell efficiency allows you to lessen the amount of Mana cost of any action that requires Mana by packing Mana into the spell more densely. Spell efficiency, therefore, is a different way to say ‘decreased Mana cost’.
“Very good,” the teacher droned from a million miles away, “but that was only the first step of two. Learning to shape and condense your Mana pool, without learning to channel it naturally, is a recipe for disaster. Some of you may have problems with this next part, but never fear—that is the reason this class is a month-long endeavor. More time to build your Mana pool and perfect your core.”
“In this next exercise, you are going to carefully grasp some of your Mana and pull it oh-so-gently away from the pool, but be sure to keep it attached. Your Mana should be a bit like a string. Once you have a thread of energy, start pulling it along the tunnels. Just walk and pull. Walk and pull. The more Mana you bring along on each pass, the better your overall bonus will be in the end.”
So far, her advice had been sound, so Sam followed suit, reaching out with nimble mental fingers and grasping a hair-fine strand of power, stretching it out like playdoh until he had a strand as thick as his pinky finger. He found the exercise surprisingly easy, even though Mage Akora had indicated that it might be a somewhat difficult process, but then so far, all of his magical abilities had been easy to use, almost second nature, which he thought probably had something to do with his Instinctual Casting ability. Maybe it didn’t just affect spells but every aspect related to spellcasting.
If so, that meant he might-well have a significant advantage over some of the other spell-slingers running around Eternium.
With the strand of energy in hand, he set out to stretch that burning energy along his Mana channels. He felt as though he were trekking through a dark cave system filled with a thousand twists, turns, and dead ends, but floating before him was a soft ball of white light like an ethereal Will-O-Wisp, guiding him through the dark tangles of an overgrown forest. Somehow, he knew that the little ball of light was actually Mage Akora, and though Sam had no idea where he was going, she seemed to be traversing the passages of his mind with frightening ease and familiarity.
The whole while, the tether of Mana followed after him like a lost puppy. Twist after twist, turn after turn, more than a few switchbacks—which completely threw off his sense of direction—then finally, the ball of light rounded a corner, and Sam found himself staring at the ball of Mana he’d left behind a few minutes ago.
“No, you are not lost,” Mage Akora whispered into his mind, though Sam couldn’t tell if her voice came from outside his body or inside his head. The noise echoed in stereo, making him suspect the answer might’ve been both. “We are back to where we’ve begun, but you’ll notice there is a thin strand of Mana jutting off from the far side of your Mana pool. We have successfully navigated your prime channel, and it is time to reconnect to the source, c
ompleting the loop. Now, finish the process.”
With a thought, Sam slid forward and directed the tether of Mana in his hand to connect with the pool. As soon as the glowing blue thread made contact with the sphere, his Mana began to pulse and thrum in time with the rock-steady beating of his heart.
Being trained by a Master of a craft has greatly increased your speed of comprehension!
Skill gained: Mana manipulation (Beginner 0). Where others are content to throw unseemly amounts of power into a spell—swiftly fueling their own destruction—you use a lighter touch. -30% Mana. +1% Mana and +1% spell efficiency per skill level. (Maximum 25% efficiency). Intelligence +1.
Sam read and reread the message, confusion quickly mounting as he did some rough math in his head. Yep, the numbers checked out—minus thirty percent Mana definitely seemed like a bad thing, not a good thing.
“Wait a minute.” He opened his eyes. He wobbled in his seat for a heartbeat as the world reeled around him. He was light-headed, woozy, and exhausted to his core. Pun not intended. He shook away the fog in his brain and pressed on. “This doesn’t make any sense. According to the last update, Mana manipulation, I’ve actually lost a bunch of Mana. Like… a lot. I thought this was supposed to help make me better at magic and increase my overall Mana pool.”
The professor offered him a crooked smile and a shake of her head, a mischievous gleam in her eyes. “Such is the ignorance of the young and untrained. You must not have taken the recommended Mage’s College Overview Primer, young man. If you had, you would know full-well that you won’t start increasing your overall Mana pool size until you obtain Student Rank, and if you should somehow make it to the Sage level, this skill can actually bolster your pool by seventy percent. You should feel privileged, however. You’ll notice that you’ve jumped all the way past the Novice Stage and directly into the Beginner ranks—just one of the many perks of having a Master such as myself educate you.”
“This class will continue for the next four weeks,” she continued, now speaking to everyone, “where I will be running you through a variety of techniques and exercises, all designed to drain your Mana, compress your Mana pool, and simultaneously stretch your channels. Assuming you all show up and pay attention to my instruction, I fully expect all of you to be at least Apprentice rank zero, which is no small feat. That also means you will have two channels open, which should be quite useful as you complete your other courses. Now, if there are no further questions?”
Her hard gaze said in no uncertain terms that there had better not be any more questions. “Then class is dismissed.”
Chapter Nine
By the time Sam was finished with classes, registration, and all the other administrative red tape of his first day at the College, he felt as wrung out as an old dishtowel. Which was crazy because he hadn’t really done all that much in the grand scheme of things—he hadn’t killed any mobs, stormed any castles, or saved any damsels in distress. Technically, he’d finished the Baby Steps Quest, earning himself upgraded Neophyte’s Robes and an extra one-hundred experience, but that wasn’t anything to write home about.
Sure, he’d walked around the city for a while and done a little magic, but a typical day on the Berkley campus was far more strenuous than this had been. He wasn’t even close to leveling up yet. He’d gained a whopping five hundred experience points so far, which put him about halfway to level two. So, pretty much nothing there to account for his exhaustion. Sam reckoned it had something to do with the testing prior to spawning. Well, that and his time with Mage Akora. Although the class had been little more than a guided meditation session, compressing his core and widening his channels had been taxing.
The sun had set into the horizon a few hours back, and though Sam wanted to head back out into town—go explore a little more, maybe meet a few more travelers and find someplace to crash—he decided against it. He had a big morning coming up, and an unfortunately early one at that. At seven A.M. he had an appointment before the College bigwigs to sign ‘The Accords’ and become an officially licensed Mage. Yay! Another one-hundred gold gone in the blink of an eye. Once he was done with that, he had a pair of classes back-to-back at noon and two—Mage Shield and Basics of Offensive Spell Casters—which had both cost a pretty penny as well.
Thankfully, he could afford the hefty price tag. Once he signed The Accords and completed a few more classes, he’d finally be able to get out on his own for a while. He planned to do some questing and play the game the way he wanted too. So far, the College was basically a train wreck, but it would all pay off in the long run. Sam was sure of it.
So, instead of heading back into the city and finding a proper inn, he metaphorically bit the bullet and decided to stay on the college grounds. The cost of the room was steep, one gold a night, but he figured he was paying for the convenience of not having to trek all the way across the city every day. Plus, this was something he’d more or less expected. On-campus housing was always a racket, so why would this be any different? He smiled as he rounded a corner and found his room straight ahead: a plain wooden door with an odd glyph gouged into the wood.
Home sweet home. Sam fished a small stone about the size of a quarter from his pocket. The stone itself was perfectly smooth, tar-black, polished to a bright sheen, and worked with a burning symbol that mirrored the glyph on the door. He held the rock up, pressing it against the ward-locked room; there was a *click* as some mechanism gave way, and the door swung inward on silent hinges.
Like much of the rest of the college, the room’s interior was rather… unimpressive was probably too mild a word. Underwhelming? Lackluster? Hard to put his finger on it exactly. But one word he could most definitely decide upon was small. The room was about the size of a storage closet and even more claustrophobic than his dorm had been.
There was a cot—not a twin bed but an honest to god camping cot—on a weathered wooden frame, topped by a thin canvas mattress and a green woolen blanket. There wasn’t even a pillow. Beside the bed was a compact wooden nightstand with a brass oil lamp, a chipped porcelain bowl, and a pitcher of water. Clearly, the College was putting its best foot forward to impress the new recruits.
Sam rolled his eyes and sighed, feeling even more defeated than he had during his time in the jungle being relentlessly pursued by a man-eating slug the size of a minivan. That had been worse by far, of course, but then the test was supposed to be awful. This though? This was supposed to be the fun, cool part of the game. So far, Sam was wildly indifferent. If this was the tutorial for all spellcasters, this game was going to tank for sure.
“No,” he muttered to himself, shaking off his disgruntlement. “No point in whining about things. Maybe I can’t change my circumstances, but I can change my attitude about it! Chin up, ol’ chap, it’s going to get better! Besides, I just need to sleep here, not live here.”
With that settled, he unloaded his few meager possessions, splashed a little water onto his face from the pitcher. Lukewarm, he felt silly to have expected anything different. Sam collapsed onto the intentionally comfortless cot, thinking about how backpacking in Europe might have been the way to go after all. Since there was no pillow, he balled up his starter robes and jammed them under his head. Sam expected to have a hard time drifting off, what with the ‘mattress’ feeling like concrete, but he hadn’t closed his eyes for more than a moment before it was time to wake up. He couldn’t remember falling asleep, nor did he recall tossing and turning even once in the night. Out like a light.
When Sam sat up and swung his legs out over the edge of the bed, he expected to get hit with some kind of Well Rested bonus, but he actually felt terrible—like someone had beat him about the head and shoulders with a baseball bat. That didn’t seem even remotely right. Ugh. If he wanted to get a bite to eat before signing The Accords and starting his day, he really needed to get moving. So, even though he felt sore and sleepy, he hauled himself from the painfully thin mattress, geared up, and slipped out of the room.
&n
bsp; His stomach let out a gurgle of sharp hunger, so he stopped by the College cafeteria. Sam picked up a bowl of tasteless gruel which did nothing for his tongue but filled the hole gnawing through his center. Although, upon further reflection, Sam decided it was a distinct possibility that the food was actually excellent and that it was just his terrible perception at work again.
Either way, in no possible set of circumstances could it have been called an enjoyable breakfast. He scarfed the food down as quickly as possible, grimacing the whole time. He then dropped the bowl off with the kitchen staff and wound his way through the strange and twisted hallways, working his way toward the rendezvous spot with Octavius. Navigating the hallways was a tricky bit of business, as he’d come to find out.
For one, the hallways all looked strikingly similar—no art to set them apart, no landmarks to help him get his bearing—and two, thanks to something called ‘spatial magic’, the laws of physics didn’t hold true in this place. Corridors didn’t connect in a way that made logical sense, and space literally folded in on itself. This had the effect of making the interior of the College a hundred times larger than the exterior would suggest, but to the discerning eye, there was a set of runes worked into each archway or doorframe, which acted as rudimentary instructions—assuming the traveler knew how to decipher them.
Guess who didn't have a discerning eye. Lousy low perception… the runic database was quite massive, and most of it was incomprehensible to Sam, but Octavius had carefully pointed out a number of different symbols—including one for the grand entrance hall, which was where they were to meet.
The symbol was an oblong circle, intersected by a variety of odd lines—like bike spokes—with a crescent-shaped mark jutting out from the top of one spoke. Sam turned left four times, then doubled back, retracing his steps by taking four rights. In theory, he should’ve arrived back by the cafeteria, but instead, he found himself standing in a circular chamber with high, vaulted ceilings and fluted pillars arranged in a circle.
