It was time to review the mana affinities he had acquired and see what they entailed. This was the most interesting part for Ikky, given his lack of combat expertise or the difficulties that it entailed as he had been able to verify by the wounds and suffering of the previous phase, playing a mage, or a mage warrior was more to his liking. If magic really was like in other games, having control over it would give him overwhelming power that would make up for the rest of the deficiencies in his advancement.
Metal Affinity*Secondary*: The player can sense the mana of metals; this allows him to absorb the mana in his body and detect its presence and nature. Metal Mana Core Construction: 1/100
Gem Affinity (Secondary): The player can sense the mana of gems; this allows him to absorb the mana in his body and detect its presence and nature. Gem Mana Core Build: 1/100
Blood Affinity (Secondary): The player can sense mana from blood; this allows them to absorb mana into their body and detect its quality and nature. Blood Mana Core Build: 1/100
Spirit Affinity (Secondary): The player can sense mana coming from spiritual entities; this allows them to absorb mana into their body and detect its presence and nature. Spirit Mana Core Build: 1/100
What was mana used for? How was magic activated? What was a mana core? Why was it listed in the background next to the affinity name?
"Data, please explain more about mana, affinities, and mana cores."
"Dear player, I cannot reveal much of the information at this stage, but I will try to give you some basic notions about magic.
Mana is the energy that exists in all things, in the different elements and in nature, it is the source of magic, even of life in this world. Mana cores are internal organs in the body of the inhabitants of this world and those that allow living beings to manipulate these energies. Mana cores gain power over time, but they have a natural limit in their growth without absorbing external mana essences, the cores can only increase up to five times their initial level, but to form a mana core, the being has to be related or sensitive to these energies beforehand. Only then can a basic or higher level mana core be formed.
There are 14 main cores: fire and ice, earth and water, lightning and air, life and death, space and time, light and darkness, will and psyche.
The number of cores is unknown. secondary ones that exist, although the most common in Athair are Nature, Shadows, Metal, Spirit, Blood, Wind, Dreams, affinity to gems and destiny and other strange ones have been forgotten when the races that were related to them transcended or disappeared.
Some races like elves and others replace some of those fourteen energies in their organism with other secondary ones that are more compatible with the nature of their race"
Ikky was reflecting on those brief explanations, the comparison with an organ, like a lung or a heart was something that surprised him, reflecting on the way of exposing the energies as a set of seven dualities Ikky remembered some theories that had always seemed absurd to him in certain beliefs such as that of kundalini, and others derived from yoga and Buddhist or Hindu meditation.
"Can you tell me more, Data?"
"The explanation about mana has reached this point, I am not authorized to give more information during the tutorial."
"Why is there an affinity for spiritual mana and a separate section of spirit in my statistics?"
"The affinity for spiritual mana implies sensitivity to the energy possessed by spiritual entities; The Spirit section is unlocked after belief, service and faith in the great universal concepts, good, evil,
life, death, etc... as well as faith in ancient gods or specific entities that remain in Athair and allows indirect use of the powers of said concepts, gods or entities. The rest of the information is locked during the tutorial.
Although he had not given him practical information, Data had not been able to avoid giving him a lot of information about the lore of the game, in that world he knew that there were dwarves, elves and even gods. It is not that it was very useful information but deep down he was glad that in that world where they were supposed to go there were more races and it was a classic fantasy world like the ones he was already familiar with.
"What is Qi, Data?"
"Ki is the internal energy that living beings have; it can transcend the body itself, but the Qi of other beings cannot be affected by the user itself, unlike mana. It is not unlocked until you pass the tutorial, because in the land of dreams, not being a real land, the body cannot feel its own Qi or the one around it."
It is not that it was an open book, but this information would have to suffice for now. The curious thing at the end is that he had unlocked secondary mana affinities, rare according to that explanation, and that one of them had also disappeared from the game world itself: the affinity to the mana of the gems. He did not know what use it would have in the future but it was something to be proud of, according to his calculations he should be the only one who had been able to complete the ritual at the end of the second phase, so those energies were something that he had exclusively for the moment.
Another detail that the intelligent player did not overlook was that he had referred to the tutorial as the land of dreams, there was even a dream energy. It was something curious, a rarity that had not existed in any of the games he had played in his life.
Well, although that tutorial was rather bland and typical in terms of its content, an arena, a dungeon, giant rats, goblins, the scriptwriters seemed not to be so stupid and at least showed some creativity.