Alex was once again greeted by the ceiling of his little house. It'd long since stopped feeling foreign, and he'd begun to feel like it was truly his.
Today would be about consolidation and planning. He had a number of things he'd learned in the past week, but simply had no time to investigate or put into practice. He reached into one of the deer stomachs he had lying around by the floor of his bed, and drew out two marbles, spinning them around in his palm.
He had noticed during his feeding frenzy earlier in the week that they didn't really leak mana all that much, and so he'd left investigating them until now. He could feel the dense mana trapped inside with his senses, and he knew that he could draw out the mana directly, but he remained apprehensive due to the efficiency loss.
'Screw it, if it works for meat, it must also work for this.'
He grabbed the less dense of the two mana cores, that being from the secondary alpha, and proceeded to pop it in his mouth. Fortunately, it was small enough for him to actually swallow, otherwise he'd be in big trouble - he only choked a little bit. Feeling the mana marble travel down to his stomach, he began focusing on the sensation.
The slowly releasing a constant stream of mana, nourishing his body. Feeling a burst of inspiration, Alex decided to see if he could enhance the process of absorption in his stomach. Just as he could draw mana from objects manually outside his body, he figured that having it inside wouldn't inhibit him much.
Doing breathing exercises to calm himself and clear his mind, he lay down on his bed and began doing his best to filter out the world around him, basically entering a state of meditation. Finally, once the only thing he could feel was the overflowing mana inside his body, and that in the air around him, he began enforcing his will upon the foreign mana.
When doing this externally, he only brought the mana inside his body and forgot about it, here he wanted to lay claim to it, make it his own. For lack of any better ideas, he'd pull a stream of mana towards the core of his being. He didn't really know what he was doing, relying purely on instinct and the sensations provided to him.
It felt like he was bringing the mana home, for lack of a better term, and he drew it to a spot near his heart, where he held the mana. After bringing the stream of mana in, and floating it around his heart, he drew more and more mana in, again it just felt right. Over the next 20 minutes, he continued drawing mana from the marble, its size dropping to a third.
He then noted that it had become significantly more difficult to condense the mana and keep it from escaping, it was taking more and more of his willpower, so he stopped trying to pull in more mana, and let digestion do its work.
Soon, holding the mana in place took on an almost painful sensation, the itching reaching deep into his very being. The worst part was that he could not ignore the pain, and think about something else to distract himself. This sensation demanded he observe it, and he could only comply. He continued until he could no longer bear it, at which point, he released the mana, letting it wash over his body like a wave. He felt it explode outwards from his core spreading through every tissue from his head to his toes, bathing every cell in energy.
He opened his system interface, and was met by a rather surprising result.
[Honor System]
[Name: Alex]
[Existence Tier: 1]
[Ability: Water Control]
[Ability points: 1]
[Mana: 254/(220->254)]
[Soul Force: 4342->4441]
[Strength: 10]
[Endurance: 20]
[Dexterity: 15]
[Vitality: 75]
[Resilience: 15]
[Cognition: 15]
[Perception: 25]
[Available stat points: 82]
The mana increase had been somewhat expected, as he had felt that there was quite a bit of mana in the core. The surprising bit was the increase in soul force.
'So since my soul force is my ability to exert my will on the universe, I guess that applies to mana as well?'
'Is this tempering my soul?'
'When I practice using my water control, I'm directly using my soul to exert my will, and I did something similar just now, so I guess it makes sense.'
Alex turned his gaze to the other marble, this one from the primary alpha. He shook his head and turned away - he was mentally exhausted, and felt that he wouldn't be able to hold off against the discomfort as long in his current state.
'Don't want to waste anything.'
He got up off the bed, and headed out into the morning light. The air was crisp and clear, he'd noted that the temperature had started to drop somewhat over the last few days. He seemed less affected by the cold now - perhaps that was his resilience stat coming into play. Not that he was complaining, as he basically only had rags, and the leather he'd tanned from the deer.
He wandered off to the forest to do his morning business, it seemed no amount of magic stats would change his routine. Returning to the river, he decided it was time to investigate the second order of business, that being the relationship between his body and his water control. He'd made good use of the reactive force from his water control during the fight, using it to jump higher, and to get the drop on the secondary alpha.
He pulled up a huge section of water, roughly a barrel's worth, letting it hover above the river. He immediately noticed the change on his body, it having become significantly heavier. He estimated that he'd almost doubled his weight. Shifting the barrel to the side, he noticed his body almost unwillingly shifting in the opposite direction, causing him to stumble.
He'd not noticed the changes prior to his fight, because he'd been completely focused on manipulating currents to catch fish. It seemed shifting currents was a little of a different business, as he wasn't really moving the water directly, just adding some spin and energy.
'So I guess there's no scenario where I use my powers to fly.'
As he was playing around with his big barrel of water, he realized something important. Alex had no idea how his mana consumption actually worked, what was it that caused his mana to be depleted?
He remembered during his fight with the alpha that he'd managed to burn a substantial amount of mana on a single technique, but it hadn't been anything terribly impressive, all things considered.
'What are the important factors?'
'Is it force exerted?'
'Energy?'
'Does the shape of the water matter?'
'The amount?'
'I need to set up experiments.'
Dropping the barrel back into the river, Alex headed into one of the houses, and returned with a metal bucket, he then went and found some vines. He then walked to a tree near where the edge of the clearing met the river, and tied the vine around a low hanging branch of the tree, tying the other end around the bucket.
He then filled the bucket with water all the way to the top. Alex then used his water control to push on the bucket, letting it tilt until it reached around 45 degrees.
'Now for the boring part.'
Alex continued holding the bucket of water, feeling his mana decrease ever so slowly, and counting the number of seconds in his head - it took roughly 180 seconds for his mana to deplete by 5 points.
He then emptied the bucket of half its water, and repeated the procedure, this time it came out to around 360 seconds.
'So the more water I manipulate, the more mana I draw.'
'Looks to be relatively linear. Double the water means double the mana.'
Next, he pushed harder, watching the bucket hit around 25 degrees, roughly double the force. This time, it took around 170 seconds.
'So pushing harder uses more mana.'
Finally, he pulled the water out of the bucket, where he had it hover, moving it up and down nonstop. This time, he only had to control it for 50 seconds before he burned through his 5 mana.
'So water control has pretty straightforward rules, more water, pushing harder, and spending energy all use more mana.'
Starting to feel bored to death, Alex decided it was time to give up on his bucket for the day.
Finally, it was time to address the last point of interest - this weird ability point the system was going on about.
'How do I use my ability point?'
In response, the system popped open a screen which Alex had never seen before.
[Upgrade Abilities - Paths expanding on existing abilities.]
[Divergent Abilities - Abilities available to user, independent of existing abilities.]
'So I can upgrade my water control?'
Willing the upgrade abilities screen to open, he observed a list of potential upgrades.
[Water Vapor Control]
[Ice Control]
[Liquid Water Control]
[Blood Control]
Alex found himself rather confused, didn't he already have control over liquid water? He willed the skill description to open.
[Liquid Water Control - Provides control over water in its liquid state.]
Recalling his current skill, he re-read the description.
[Water Control - Provides control of water, in all forms.]
'Wait, so I had control over water vapor and ice this whole time?'
'It's right there - in all forms.'
'I guess the definition of water is actually quite broad.'
'Are ability investments permanent?'
To his surprise, he actually got an answer from the system, even though he'd mostly been wondering aloud.
"Ability investment is relatively permanent."
"However, user is able to trial abilities, though at drastically reduced force output."
'Ooooohhhh, baby.'
'Show me divergent abilities.'
[Electricity Manipulation]
[Body Strengthening]
[Spear Manipulation]
[Telekinesis]
[Plant Manipulation]
Alex scratched his head, lost in thought. Like a kid in a candy store, there was simply far too much to choose from. I can just trial one, and then switch after I play around with it for a bit.