My regeneration was slow for mana because of the mana-starved status effect, and my recovery rate was ten times slower than if I hadn't drained my entire pool during my first spell. I expected a headache or decreased health when overexerting mana, but it was not like draining physical stats. The best way I could describe it was that whatever had tethered my soul to my body was weakened when I overexerted. Dia said nothing, but I could feel her tugging me to keep me centered. If I had gotten mana-starved without her here, I wonder if I would be an ethereal spirit wandering around the dungeon until my three days were up.
I had nothing better to do, so I lay practising mana manipulation. Having the practice downloaded into my brain matrix style was one thing, but it was another to feel out my pathways. Spirits were mana, so it was much easier for them to wield magic. I had to force it through channels and could feel it slowing down depending on where I was pushing it. Dia constantly got frustrated and gave up trying to give me instructions, because "you just got to feel it" wasn't enough of an answer for me. Still, I was making progress with pure mana manipulation. Master Prospector was a physical class so that the system wouldn't give me any spells. Acquiring skills/spells outside intervals of the standard 10 levels was rare, my danger sense was an oddity. You still had a chance to develop skills without them being a gift from the system, but you need an innate talent for them, and sometimes years of practice before anything concrete materializes.
I felt the flow and began shaping my mana in various shapes; Triangles were easy, but anything with more than three sides grew increasingly complex, and when I tried to add a third dimension, I would constantly lose the spell. I wanted to increase my mana pool, but Dia told me that the only way to do it was to use it and recover continually. If I had chosen the Magi class, I would naturally have a bigger mana pool at each level. I still dropped my unassigned stat points in an even spread to avoid neglecting one area. My charisma was lacking, and I figured I should get that up to snuff in case I ever had to sweet-talk my way out of a situation. On day two, I got an idea to create mana strings and try to use them to pull things towards me. If I couldn't move, I would at least be able to search my immediate area. The hardest part about the strings is that they were thin, but if I made them thick enough to pull something with some heft, I wouldn't be able to extend them far enough to grab most of the things near the edges of my room. I began to braid the strings together, making a mana rope. The durability I gained was outstanding. However, I lost the ability to snake it under things. I began stretching it and thinning the mana towards the tip, which solved the issue of being unable to shimmy it underneath stuff.
On day three, I started to feel dizzy every couple of minutes. My lips were chapped, and my skin felt tight. I was dehydrated. I needed to drink something, or I would die on this platform.
I saw the corpse of the Abyss wolf lying about five feet from me; it was too heavy to drag using the Mana rope. But it was the only sustenance close to me. The headaches and dizziness from dehydration made me lose my mana more than once. Just then, I got a brilliant idea: what if instead of using the mana rope to pull things to me, I made the rope inside my body and used it to move? It wasn't easy to wrap my head around it. I could feel the rope stretching out my mana channels, an agonizing feeling, but I was desperate. I could finally fill my body with mana rope, but moving was unnatural. I had to start small by willing my arms to fold on my chest. The hardest part of the ordeal was dragging my hips up so my knees would slide and I could inchworm to the carcus. The freezing, jagged stone floor scraped at my skin, eroding the first layer of skin, leaving the front of my body carpeted with burns. It took me two hours of sliding on the ground with about fifteen breaks in between before I reached the body. I forced my head to lie in the black blood. It was a weird sensation, like I was in control of my body, but with all of my mana manipulation training, it felt more akin to grabbing someone else's body and forcing them to do it. In a way, that's what I was doing, but it was still weird. For example, your breathing is automatic until someone mentions it, and then you must inhale and exhale manually.
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I began to lap up the blood from the dismembered canine. I wish I could say I was disgusted with the taste, but I was delighted after almost four days without anything to drink. It was honestly the best feeling in the world. The sticky liquid that tasted of pennies went down like a fine wine.
"Dane, I know we are dying and all, but you are absolutely repulsive." Dia chimmed in while I drank my fill.
The following day, I woke up and could finally stretch. I quickly learned that it was a mistake because though I had pretty literally feasted on the blood of my enemy, I was still dehydrated and began to cramp in every single muscle that I inadvertently flexed out of habit.
After coaxing my muscles out of their flexed, aching state with Mana rope massages, I stood up. I gathered the mushrooms I had picked for my makeshift torch and noticed they were entirely dry and felt more like wood than a dried mushroom. I used my skill to identify them. Mushrooms of Langourous Intent: This bioluminescent fungus contains a potent neurotoxin that causes a paralytic effect when picked. The effect will remain until the spores are exhausted and the bioluminescence fades.
It looks like I won't need to worry about getting paralyzed again. My stomach ached with hunger. I tried to bite down on the mushrooms, but my efforts were only met with a chipped tooth. I looked at the wolf corpse beside me, but I could already see maggots and insects picking apart the beast. I couldn't eat that raw; I would probably just be heaving whatever I consumed back out.
I began to look around the cave to see if there was any quartz I could use as a striker to try and ignite the mushrooms, so I could at least cook one of the less maggoty areas of the wolf. I found what I was looking for, though it wouldn't spark like flint, you had to use what you could get. Adapt and overcome, as my father always told me. I tried to spark the mushrooms with my pickaxe head and the quartz, but couldn't get the woodlike shroom to ignite. I then started to rip out all the fur from the beast and used that as a makeshift fire starter. After several strikes, the fur caught flame, and with a couple of heavy blows, I was able to get a good fire going.
The wolf meat tasted acrid, like something that would poison you. But, I had to regain my strength, so I greedily ate my fill. The best meal I've had since the apocalypse started.
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