Aura gave Cale as succinct an explanation on how to drain mana as possible. Cale repeated it aloud. That was the end of it. Or the beginning. The deciding moment.

  No second chances.

  No do-overs.

  If he failed, he would die. And not pleasantly. Being ripped apart by a murderbot was not a life-goal of his.

  Cale exhaled. Resolved. He couldn’t quite push the fear down. But he could work through it.

  “You have trace amounts of naturally accumulated mana inside you,” Aura said. “I am going to use it.”

  Cale didn’t understand or care what any of that meant. He nodded and waited to see how his fate would play out.

  The shimmering barrier around him flickered—then vanished.

  The murderbot raised its head.

  It didn’t think or hesitate. It lunged immediately.

  Cale was already moving. His body responded like it had been waiting for this. Faster reflexes. Sharper senses. He saw it coming—saw the way its shoulders shifted before the strike, the slight pivot of its frame.

  He juked left, pivoted hard, and kicked off the ground. The boost of power Aura had given him sent him skidding back just in time for the razor-edged limb to carve through the space where his ribs had been.

  It moved again, pressing the attack relentlessly.

  Cale wove through the next two strikes, barely an inch to spare. Sparks flew as claws screeched across the stone.

  “Thanks,” Cale muttered, chest rising and falling.

  “Good one!” Aura chirped. “But augmenting your mental capabilities and senses costs mana, and frankly, we do not have a lot of it. You need to execute the plan.”

  Cale grunted. No more playing defense.

  The thing reoriented, head snapping toward him, red optics gleaming. Calculating. Adjusting.

  Cale rushed the severed clawed arm. He scooped it up without breaking stride, spinning it once in his grip. It had felt heavy before. Now it was a weapon he could wield. He dodged backwards an overhead slash from the murderbot and hoisted the murderbot arm on his shoulder like a police baton.

  “Can you augment my strength?”

  “Most definitely,” Aura said. “But these are the last dregs of mana we have. You need to drain it.”

  Then I can’t afford to waste this.

  The murderbot lunged.

  Cale’s legs coiled with power. He met its charge head-on.

  A flicker of movement. A flash of metal. The murderbot lunged. Cale dodged sideways and pivoted on his foot. He twisted his upper body and swung the severed arm like a bat.

  The impact crashed like thunder, echoing off the walls of the dark chamber.

  The murderbot’s snout-like head whipped sideways from the blow, metal crumpling on impact. Its body staggered and slammed into the ground with a satisfying explosion of sparks. But it wasn’t enough to end the threat. The murderbot was already getting up.

  Cale moved without hesitation. Driven by fear, adrenaline and a ravenous, greedy will to survive. The mana augmenting his body didn’t hurt either.

  He vaulted over its flailing body, slammed a foot onto its still-attached arm, and drove the clawed limb he held against its throat.

  The thing screeched and thrashed.

  Cale held on for dear life.

  The reinforced strength Aura had given him was fading fast. His limbs trembled from the strain. The machine’s servos whined, its metal body twisting beneath him like a trapped animal. Cale needed to act now.

  He focused.

  He traced the energy pulsing through him—the last dregs of mana in his muscles. Then, he pushed his awareness outward. A sixth sense spread from his body.

  He felt it.

  A core.

  Deep inside the murderbot’s chest.

  Not mechanical. Something else. Magic? A dense and vibrant blue orb. A raw battery of power thrummed inside the machine’s frame.

  Cale reached for it with the sixth sense.

  And yanked.

  The effect was instant.

  The murderbot spasmed violently. Its limbs twitched, metal plating locking up. A harsh, digitized screech tore from its speakers as its strength drained away. It’s movements slowed and the red lens on its snout flickered rapidly.

  Cale inhaled power.

  It burned. Fierce. Chaotic. Overwhelming.

  His head spun. His heart slammed in his chest like it wanted out. His muscles lapsed for just an instant. The murderbot fought for space, And Cale tried to take it. His legs screamed with a lactic agony.

  Cale gritted his teeth. He forced himself to hold on. The pain was exquisite.

  “You are out of mana!” Aura said urgently. “Hold you fool!”

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Holding on to his life, fighting the aggressive surge of mana inside him, Cale drew in more, despite his mind screaming at him. His physical body was a wracked bundle of agonized nerves. He could not hold on for much longer. The pain was mounting to eye-watering levels. But Cale squeezed and felt like his biceps were going to snap like twigs.

  The red optics of the machine flickered weakly.

  Then—dimmed.

  The machine body went limp.

  Silence.

  Cale gasped. His limbs shook violently. His muscles felt like they were going to tear apart from the inside. The mana he had drained fought him like a rabid wolf. Cale fell on his knees and tried to breathe.

  “Quickly now,” Aura said, calm and clinical despite everything. “You need to cultivate this mana before it burns a hole in you. I can discharge it if it gets to be too much, but it’s better if you absorb it.”

  Cale forced his breath steady.

  Right. He wasn’t done yet.

  “How do I— gah— How do I do that?” Cale asked between labored breaths. Sweat was beading on his forehead at an alarming rate as he fell from atop the murderbot. He struggled to get back up.

  “Don’t try to get up, you fool. Sit down. Not like that, Cross-legged. Good. Now put your hands on your lap. Exhale. Inhale. Slowly now. Don’t try to subdue the Mana. If you try to force it down, it will only hurt you. Invite it to settle with you. Calm it. Breathe rhythmically. Deeply now. In…. Out…”

  Cale listened to Aura’s instructions. Every instinct he had wanted to force the energy down, or just vomit it out. But he resolved to listen and endure. So he breathed. It took a while, but slowly the Mana started to calm down. What was a boiling and bubbling lightning in a bottle, struggling like a violent tiger, was starting to slowly cool down.

  “Good. Just so. You’re a natural. What you are doing is attuning the Mana. It was attuned to the murderbot, and you had no resonance with it. In a word, you were incompatible with the Mana.

  “Uhhuh,” Cale said during an exhale. Focusing on attuning the Mana and listening was straining him. “How do I get control of it?”

  “You need to breathe with it. It is not attuned to you. You need to harmonize yourself with it. Attune yourself and the mana to the same frequency. Then it is yours to use.”

  “Right,” Cale muttered. “Magic breathing. Got it.”

  “It is not—” Aura started in an indignant splutter. Then she hummed thoughtfully. “No, yes. That— That is an apt description.”

  Cale worked with the mana. It was a roiling thundercloud inside him, but soon enough he managed to get it to circle around his solar plexus in a singular mass. It was purely gaseous, like an explosive cloud. But the more Cale worked with it, breathed with it, the more ‘solid’ the gas seemed to transform. Soon enough the exploding mass was circling around his solar plexus slowly.

  Oh, it was still fighting, but now Cale understood what was required of him.

  “This is actually something very advanced you’re doing. I assumed I would have to discharge at least 80% of the Mana you absorbed. You’ve got most of it under control. Considering you have no cultivation experience, this is quite astounding.”

  “Is it because of you?”

  “No,” Aura said. “I only facilitate. I have a lot of functions, many of which are still unknown to me, but I can not attune Mana for you. I can discharge it to protect you, but I can not manipulate it for you.”

  “Feels good to be good at something,” Cale said and allowed himself a proud smile.

  “Now, let us see if you are equally apt at cultivating the Mana!” Aura said, a giddy excitement overflowing in her voice.

  Slowly, Cale opened his eyes and wiped his sweaty hands on the white jumpsuit he was wearing. He leaned back against his straightened hands. The Mana that was now swirling inside of him in a slow and steady circular motion stirred, like a sudden wave in a still water, but Cale focused on it and breathed it under his control again.

  “Now we get to the fun part!” Aura announced gleefully. “You have attuned mana inside you. Now you can improve yourself. We start from the bottom of cultivation. Recompositioning your body. We can infuse your muscle-, joint-, fascial-, and skeletal tissue with it to make you more durable and strong. It will basically increase your physical capabilities to superhuman levels.”

  “Yeah?” Cale said. “I like that. I want a murderbot-proof skin.”

  “That will take quite a bit of Mana and Cultivation to go along with it. But eventually yes. There is a lot of technical knowledge to this, much of which I am trying to dig up from my database as we go, but I’ll give you the quick and dirty of it to get us going.”

  “You don’t strike me as the quick and dirty type,” Cale said and chuckled. “More like the prim and proper type.”

  Aura definitely huffed in Cale’s mind. “I’ll have you know I am a dignified and ancient magical superintelligence. I’ll be prim and I’ll be dirty when and where I please!”

  “Alright, alright,” Cale said. “Just give me the cliffnotes.”

  “The cliff-what?”

  “The uhh, quick and dirty version, o’ wise one.”

  “Ha,” she said, immensely pleased with herself. “I like that. The basics are fairly simple. You only need to infuse your body with the power you have tamed. You should be able to absorb the mana into your body. But before you can do that, we need to establish your mana pool. It is a one time process. Your first breakthrough. Once you do that, it will grow along your cultivation.”

  “What should I do to create a mana pool?”

  “What a wonderful question! I am so happy you are listening. What you need to do is clear your mind and get back into an optimal cultivation position.”

  Cale sat up straight again in a cross-legged position. He straightened his back, closed his eyes and rested his hands on his lap. There was an eagerness building up inside of him. He was accruing power. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to do once he got out of this tomb, but he wanted to be as ready and able to do that once the opportunity arose.

  “Alright. What next?”

  “Cultivation is a very visual art. Or at least that is what we will start with. If you happen to not be a visual person, we’ll create workarounds. Now, I want you to picture the Mana within you that you managed to attune. It should be swirling inside you, yes, I can measure it, there it is. I want you to start slowly condensing it. Let it swirl into a tighter and tighter ball and keep compressing it until you feel something… solid.”

  It was difficult. There was no pain, no strain, but it required absolute focus. Cale zoned in as best as he could, but sometimes a stray thought would invade the process. What if another murderbot came? Who was he? Could he trust Aura?

  Every time a question like this arose, his control of the Mana slipped and a small amount of it burst out of the condensed space he was trying to create. The Mana inside of him felt like a liquid and a gas at the same time. Aura provided a rhythm for him to breathe and told him when to slow down and when to speed up. As the process got further, he needed less and less instruction. It was very intuitive. It felt like Cale was made for this. Hell, for all he knew, he could be. But that didn’t stop him from enjoying the process. The unadulterated process of accruing power.

  After a good while he felt it. He was packing the Mana into his solar plexus into as dense a ball as he could. Then he felt something flash cold and then hot inside of him, The hotness dissipated, but a warmth spread into his extremities, and his skin flushed. Hot sweat was dripping off his damp hair on his hands. Cale breathed and sank into the feeling, pressing his consciousness on the balled up Mana.

  It solidified.

  He could feel it. A tiny blue bead in his abdomen. It had a space inside of it. Most of the Mana was still swirling around it. Cale concentrated and pulled into the space inside the bead. The Mana around the core swirled and sucked into the space, filling him with energy.

  In a moment of excitement he exploded on his feet.

  “Yes!” Cale pumped a fist in the air! “I did it!”

  “You did!” Aura cheered, eager to join his joy. “You managed to create your mana pool!”

  Cale smiled. His first victory. It felt good. It felt right.

  Not only did he defeat a deadly murderbot, but he also overcame himself. He stayed in the struggle, and that was an empowering feeling.

  That victory gave him respite from all the confusion, all the fear, all the loneliness, that he felt. He knew for damn sure, that there was at least one thing that was going his way. And he wanted more. A dark greed flickered inside of him.

  Cale leaned into it. It pushed away the fear. The greed was bold and pushed him forward. The greed had kept him alive. The greed was good.

  “Let’s find more murderbots,” Cale said and wiped blood off the side of his mouth. “I’m getting a taste for this.”