Jack was feeling particularly hungry one day and decided to have fish for breakfast, as he believed he had lost some weight recently. While using the goblin meat to catch fish, he found that many of them were attracted to the meat, the bothersome part was that they were all around the same size. However, he eventually managed to catch a big fish, which, although not significantly larger than his other catches, took about the same amount of time to catch. Since he was fishing in a stream, it made sense that most of the fish would swim his way, unlike in a pond where the variety of fish would be more limited. As he was removing the fish's intestines, a screen suddenly appeared in front of him.
[ Skill Butcher acquired ]
Jack immediately used appraisal to see what it said
[ Appraisal: Butcher ]
[ Description: butcher helps butcher up animal carcasses easier. + 1 strength for 1 minute ]
Jack activated his butcher skill and felt a weird sensation throughout his whole buddy. He checked his stats to check what difference there was.
[ Status ]
[ Name: Jack Roman ]
[ Race: Human ]
[ Level 1 ]
[ Exp 16.8 /100 ]
[ Health 99/100 ]
[ Strength: 12 ] ( + 1)
[ Speed: 10 ]
[ Stamina:10 ]
[ mana:11/17 ]
[ unassigned points: 5 ]
[ skill: Appraisal lvl 10, accuracy lvl 10, Crafting lvl 5, spear mastery lvl 1, butcher lvl 1 ]
"Huh, so it takes 6 mana per minute of use" After a minute his strength went back down.
After finishing the task of removing the fish's organs, Jack went to start a fire and cook the fish. "I miss my mom's cooking," he said aloud, trying to joke with himself and cheer up from the feeling of loneliness that had been gnawing at him since he realized he wouldn't be able to see his family anytime soon.
As he finished his meal and took care of his needs, Jack returned to practicing magic. He focused on manipulating mana from his hand, attempting to keep it together instead of letting it dissipate. Although his initial attempts were unsuccessful, he persevered and kept trying, using the task of practicing magic to keep his mind occupied and distracted from his feelings of isolation.
[ Mana manipulation acquired ]
[ Appraisal: Mana manipulation ]
[ Description: Mana manipulation helps with manipulating the mana inside the world. ]
Jack dismissed the screen, sat down, and wanted to figure out how to recover mana. He had a feeling that it was going to be pretty similar to getting more mana in his body. First, he tried to use the same method but it didn't work. After some failed attempts Jack tried to get mana and pass it to the place in his stomach. Apart from the mana that was circulating his body, there was also an empty space that was around his stomach. After doing it multiple times and checking his status he confirmed that it indeed worked that way. When he filled his mana halfway to its maximum a screen appeared in front of him.
[ Mana recovery acquired ]
After Jack finished recovering his mana, it was already time for him to sleep. Therefore, he searched for some fruit to eat before going to bed. The following day, he began his training early in the morning and then attended to his other needs before attempting to use his mana.
Once he was done with everything else he started trying once more. This time he was more successful, this time around since he started to visualize the mana differently compared to before. He leveled up mana manipulation one time before he ran out of mana. Once that was done Jack kept himself busy by doing other things plus some more physical exercise since he was sitting down for a long time. Later he would spend the remaining time trying to get more mana since it kept running out very easily.
After one more week of this, Jack finally started losing it. He was getting bored, and he did become focused on what he was doing but there was so much time during the time. He didn't have to go to school or work. He wasn't forced to do anything which he thought was good but there was so much time. During his free time, he didn't know what to do apart from exploring the place which he had done previously. " I need my phone, what am I supposed to do? I want to read. When did I ever think that being isekaid was such a good thing? I need technology I need it."
Jack had gone more than the first week without it bothering him since he had his imagination with him and he was pretty excited after being isekaid. He normally didn't talk to a lot of people, just his family and 2 friends. So not talking to anyone didn't bother him as much. That's what he thought, his parents always told him not to whine all the time, so he lasted some time without complaining but he also had his limits. He was still a teenager, he was still a human being he needed interactions with other people that was just how they were. Even talking to one or two people helped a lot more than he thought.
Jack tried not to dwell on the past since it just made him even sadder and he believed he might have cried. 'Dad always said crying is for a bitch or for something truly sentimental.' He decided to meditate since that would calm him down. " I do feel calmer but it's the same thing sitting down. Why do most things require me to sit down?" Since it was day, Jack walked to the beach took off his clothes, and jumped in. There might have been some dangers but his gut didn't tell him anything. Jack didn't know how much time he spent in the water but when he came out he felt relaxed and refreshed. When he got tired he would get out and then go back in the water.
Despite trying to escape from his thoughts, the beach only served as a reminder of Jack's brother, who had been the closest person to him. After drying himself off, Jack proceeded to have a meal. However, with most of the memories of his brother now pushed aside, he attempted to meditate once again. This time, the practice proved to be much more beneficial than his previous attempts.
After solving that Jack had another problem his diet.
[ Status ]
[ Name: Jack Roman ]
[ Race: Human ]
[ Level 1 ]
[ Exp 16.8 /100 ]
[ Health 98/100 ]
[ Strength: 11 ]
[ Speed: 10 ]
[ Stamina:10 ]
[ mana:105/105 ]
[ unassigned points: 5 ]
[ skill: Appraisal lvl 15, accuracy lvl 11, Crafting lvl 5, spear mastery lvl 3, butcher lvl 2, mana manipulation lvl 7, mana recovery lvl 5 ]
He was pretty sure he was suffering from malnutrition. He was not injured physically and he slept until his body told him to wake up. He did feel a little tired but that was probably the lack of nutrition in his body needed or something similar. His health was also going down, and he planned to try to find a solution the next day.
He went to sleep and woke up a little before the sun was right above him.
…
Jack was now able to maintain the mana in a ball shape so he felt he was ready to manipulate an element. He felt dirt would be the easiest thing to manipulate, he felt that the way to do it was to inject the mana into the dirt and try to manipulate that. He grabbed a little bit of dirt and injected some mana into the dirt on his hand, like always it didn't work on the first try. He threw most of the dirt he had picked up and left very little on his hand, when he injected the mana into the dirt he tried to move the dirt and it worked. It felt weird moving mana that was not inside his body.
He didn't know exactly how it worked but he didn't care as long as he could do it. Since he had a lot of mana he kept adding more mana. It seemed that there was no limit to how much he carried as long as he had enough mana. After a certain amount of mana is used it would increase exponentially making it not effective. His head also started to hurt a little since he was forcing himself. Once he injected mana into it, it barely required any to keep a connection with it. When he had to move it, it did take some more mana to do it.
When he tried to take back his mana he couldn't. He had raw mana which he had taken out and tried to pull back into himself, but it did not work. Jack didn't know if it was because it was too much mana or if there had to be another method for absorbing mana. Jack gave up on the idea and decided to just do it the normal way.
He wanted to move on to the next element but since he didn't get a skill for it. He kept playing with the dirt until he got one.
[ Dirt manipulation acquired ]
He felt lucky since he manipulated very little dirt and his mana was very low at the moment. He also had a big headache at the end of it.