Theo woke with a start, his brain taking a second to catch up to where he was and what had happened. His mind finally returned to clarity as he quickly looked around half expecting a yellow flower to be moments away from attacking him.

  When he didn’t discover any threats he let his body relax. He was sore, his legs hurt and his arms still ached slightly from his skill usage. But beyond that he felt fantastic. He couldn’t remember the last time he had slept so well, and even the depressing grey from the world outside did little to put a damper on that.

  The powder that had made a surprisingly soft resting spot puffed up into the air as he stood, taking a few moments to go through a half forgotten stretching routine he had learned from his doctor. The worst of the soreness started to leave his body as he collected his things and stepped out into the world beyond.

  Theo had no way to know how much time had passed, and he found himself wishing that he had found his phone. Even without a way to charge it, the battery would have lasted for quite awhile if he put it into emergency mode, and he honestly really just wanted to listen to some music for a bit. It had always calmed him down. Even with the excitement he felt there was still the undercurrent of jittery anxiety that came from expecting some kind of fight.

  Even if he could avoid most of the creatures he came across, he had decided yesterday that he would hunt them anyway. He had no idea what kind of trial he would be facing if he managed to clear the blight. But he figured getting as strong as he could before then was his best bet at leaving this place. The System had clearly stated a goal for him, and he didn’t want to imagine what living in this place without any other human contact would be like. Sure he was an introvert, but he liked people. In small doses.

  Making a careful search around the area, he climbed the fallen tree he had slept under. The strength from his tier up made the task almost trivial as he once again examined the direction he was heading.

  The living tree was closer now, but he guessed he would have to stop and rest at least a few more times before he reached it.

  Testing the limits of his strength, he jumped down from the lower point of the tree to collect his bag. If he had done this pre-integration, his knees would have ached from the ten foot drop. But after landing in a low crouch he hardly felt any strain at all.

  ‘This rocks.’ He thought to himself as he began walking.

  Over the next few hours he killed more creatures, from more of the primates he had seen earlier to even a snake as long as a car, it seemed everything living here had been infested with the yellow flowers. While one of them wasn’t much of a threat with his tried and true strategy of wasting its ranged attacks and a quick [strike] once he was close enough. The density of creatures was gradually increasing.

  The previous “day” he had seen a total of four of the monsters, but by the time he had begun looking for another spot to rest, he had killed over twice that many. The bottom of his bag had begun to fill up with marbles of various sizes. The largest of which had come from that snake, also wind aspected. It was about the size of the final joint of his thumb.

  He wasn’t sure he should be collecting all of these. But his inner goblin hated the idea of leaving something valuable behind. He refused to believe that he was the only person in this world and wanted something to show for his efforts besides his own personal strength.

  He was taking it slow, not pushing himself as hard as he could, but reason urged him to not exhaust himself. Especially now that there were more monsters lurking about.

  When he settled down for the second time he decided to try and do something else he had read about in his books.

  With careful focus, Theo reached into the same place that [strike] was. Theo then tried to reach out to the mana around him. Sticking with familiar terminology he tried to manipulate the strange energy, at first he didn’t succeed. But without anything else to do he kept trying, when he turned his focus inwards he eventually managed to seize control of a small portion of the mana inside of himself and he grinned from ear to ear.

  [Skill gained: Internal Mana Manipulation]

  This was what he had been aiming for, though he wondered if the System had named the skill based on his understanding. Or did everyone else call it mana too? It made him wonder if the stories he had read were based in truth in some way. Derived from other, older stories like one long game of telephone. Or was there some other explanation? There were too many coincidences to ignore the fact that parts of all the fiction he had read were real. Or at least as real to him as he could perceive.

  Was the System stealing from humanity’s fiction? Or was there some forgotten trend that had been buried under innumerable stories? He didn’t know, but the questions bothered him.

  What about language? He sure as hell hoped he would be able to communicate with something intelligent without having to learn an entirely new language. He was smart, but that sounded more than a little daunting.

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  Realizing he had gotten distracted from his previous task with his musings, he once again took control of some of the mana inside of him. Moving it around his body was easier than expected, and unlike [strike] there didn’t seem to be a loss of energy as he practiced the skill.

  Magic. Real magic. Even as useless as it was now, Theo knew that he could figure out what he could do with it eventually. Theo had always been a hands-on learner. Finding tasks like wiggling his ears and crossing his eyes easy as soon as he felt the proper muscles to move. This was much the same. His control quickly improved and while he could only hold a little bit of the energy at a time, manipulating it inside of him grew easier and easier with each attempt.

  Thinking about how the skill [strike] worked, he tried to push the mana’s metaphysical weight into his hand. The energy seeped into it before sponging out and back into his body as soon as his focus lapsed.

  Continuing with his tests, he repeated the process before grabbing a chunk of soft wood in his and squeezing.

  The wood crunched and Theo found himself holding a compressed piece of wood as dust and flakes landed in his lap.

  “Yeah!” He shouted as he read the System message as it popped up.

  [Skill gained: Lesser Body Enhancement]

  Grabbing another piece of wood, he crushed it normally this time. It also broke apart, but required much more exertion on his part, and what was left wasn’t nearly as finely compressed compared to when he had used the skill.

  The energy he had used to gain the skill didn’t come back however, seemingly having been expended to enhance his strength. Once again, like [strike], using this skill would drain him. But he felt with practice and patience he would be able to get even more use out of this than his other skill.

  The only problem was the amount of focus it required to use on his part, even with the skill gain feeling like another limb had been grafted onto his soul like [strike], he wasn’t sure if it actually had made it easier to use. More like the System recognizing that he could do it. He realized that he had probably unconsciously used mana with one of his attacks and it was only so easy because the system had brought his attention to what he had done.

  With his testing done, he decided to take some time to practice with his new skills. [Strike] was easy enough to use. But [lesser body enhancement] still required too much focus to use quickly.

  He spent what must have been a few hours moving mana around his body while walking around the base of a nearby tree. It was tedious, but he found he enjoyed the process. Magic was just too cool for Theo to grow quickly bored of it. Once he had managed to maintain his control over the mana inside of him., he turned his focus to applying [lesser body enhancement] to his movements.

  Pushing the small amount of mana he could currently control into both of his legs let Theo jump an inhuman distance from a stand still. It wasn’t like he would be jumping over buildings in a single bound anytime soon. But with more practice, he was able to use it to simply walk faster. His footsteps carried him further as he focused on using small amounts of his mana. If he wasn’t careful he would expend the energy he had pushed into his step in one go, and send himself tumbling forward as his other leg failed to move at the same speed.

  Another use he discovered was that he could double up on [strike] and [lesser body enhancement]. His arms a blur as his makeshift spear buried itself halfway up the blade into the hardwood of his target tree. Not all of it was rotten and the stuff that wasn’t was truly dense wood.

  Feeling accomplished. He let himself have a little extra food from his dwindling supply. Using the mana was tiring, but the more he used it the easier it got.

  After breaking for lunch he continued on his way, taking a more meandering path as he looked for monsters to hunt.

  Theo wiped the sweat from his face, he had just finished off another flower. This time attached to another one of those weird beavers. His tier up had improved his reflexes and that stacked on top of his ability to move faster with his body enhancement skill, it had become almost laughably easy to rush the monsters before the flower had so much as turned to face him.

  He had no idea how fast he was moving. But if he was probably breaking some kind of record as far as sports went. He stretched with a groan. It kind of felt like a game to him, he remembered the hours he would spend on various MMO’s just grinding low level monsters because it fulfilled his power fantasy and he found simple satisfaction in watching his experience bar slowly climb up. And with each monster he vanquished here, he could feel himself growing in much the same way. He wondered where the next threshold was, if the first tier up had given him such a drastic improvement to his physical capabilities. What would the next do for him?

  Theo hadn’t yet gained another skill. He had tried throwing rocks at one of the creatures while pushing mana into it, but the energy refused to leave his hand and into the rocks he had thrown. He tried to replicate [strike] with his throws but he was clearly not doing something right. So after that failure he had focused on what he had. Figuring that skills would come to him or they wouldn’t and wasting time chasing them without a clear idea was just a waste of effort for the moment.

  Moving quietly he continued his hunting. Eventually he came upon another one of the primates he had seen, this one however was twice as large. Looking a fair bit healthier than the ones he had fought before.

  Its grey-green fur that covered its entire body except for its hands and face. It shared the same glassy-eyed look as the infested monsters, but it moved around more nimbly as it went from tree to tree scratching at the bark for a few moments before moving to the next.

  Theo was unsure of what it was doing, but he could see the tell tale lump on its back from where a flower had nested inside of it.

  Perhaps he was feeling a little high on his own success so far, Theo decided to try and take it down.