Ren woke to the sound of clanging pots and someone yelling about spoiled onions. Sunlight filtered through the narrow slit of a pantry window, casting dusty beams across sacks of grain and shelves of pickled… something.
He sat up slowly, his body aching from the flour-sack bed and last night’s marathon in the kitchen. But the moment he opened his eyes, that blue screen from before flickered once more.
[Daily Buff Active: Minor Mana Attunement (from Meal: Smoked Riverboar w/ Loamleaf)]
+1 Mana Recovery/hour (Remaining Duration: 3h)
“Huh.” He rubbed his eyes and stretched. “So I’m literally running on my own cooking. That’s… actually kind of awesome.”
He slipped out of the pantry and made a beeline for the back door of the tavern. Outside was a small courtyard where they dumped kitchen scraps, stacked firewood, and—most importantly—kept a prep table under a canvas tarp.
Ren grabbed a knife, a few random scraps from the pantry (half an onion, a cragroot, some dried mossy herb he hadn’t touched yet), and set them down. No one was around. Perfect.
“Okay,” he muttered. “Let’s figure out how this works.”
He placed the onion in front of him and activated his [Flavor Sense I] skill—mentally reaching out like he had yesterday.
A faint shimmer tingled at the edge of his mind, and a ghost of information surfaced:
Onion (Local variety – Sharp Bulb)
Flavor: Pungent, Sharp, Watery
Mana Affinity: None (Neutral)
Okay. Easy enough. It was like tasting the air around the ingredient, but with no smell or flavor—just impressions. He could “feel” the bite, the sharpness, and how plain it was in terms of mana.
Next: the cragroot.
Cragroot (Earth-root subtype)
Flavor: Starchy, Sweet-Undertone, Chalky
Mana Affinity: Earth (Weak)
Still clear, though slightly more complex. There was a faint earthy pulse to it, like he could imagine the weight of it on his tongue even without eating it.
But then he picked up the dried mossy herb.
This one was tricky.
At first, nothing happened. Then something flickered—a bitter flash of taste and a strange tingling sensation behind his eyes.
[Flavor Sense I] unable to fully identify – Unknown Compound Detected
Warning: Mana Interference present. Identification threshold exceeded.
Ren recoiled a little. “Whoa. Okay. So it’s got limits.”
Apparently, [Flavor Sense I] worked best with common or weakly magical ingredients. If something had a high mana density—or an unfamiliar compound—it threw static into the signal. He could sense something was there, but couldn’t parse it.
“Higher-level analysis requires skill upgrade or external identification methods.”
He sighed. “Right. Need a magic microscope or something.”
Still, it was good to know. He grabbed a pinch of the mossy herb and pocketed it. Later, he might find someone who could tell him what it was.
Ren held his hand out over the cragroot, squinting hard. “Okay. Time to try mana.”
He had no spellbook. No wand. No training. But something inside him told him it was possible to interact with ingredients using mana. After all, the system said his food was infused with it.
He focused. Tried to imagine the mana in his body moving to his fingertips, flowing through his palm into the root. Visualizing it like blood flowing through his veins.
Nothing happened.
He furrowed his brow and tried again—this time focusing on the root. Willing it to do something. Maybe heat up. Pulse. Infuse.
Still nothing.
Then—just for a second—he felt it. A flicker of heat in his fingertips, like holding his hand near a kettle just starting to boil.
The cragroot twitched. Just slightly. And then a thin trail of smoke rose from it.
“Wait, no—!”
Fwump.
A small puff of ash. Cragroot roasted into a charred crisp.
Ren coughed, waving the smoke away, but grinned.
“Okay. That’s progress.”
It wasn’t elegant. It wasn’t even usable. But he had managed to push mana, however clumsily, into an ingredient.
And now he knew three things:
- [Flavor Sense I] had range but not depth.
- Strong mana ingredients could overload it.
- Mana infusion was possible—but barely under his control.
He sat back on the bench, looking up at the sky.
“This is gonna take a lot of burning things, huh.”
A familiar voice startled him.
“You talking to vegetables again, new guy?”
He turned to see the tavern boy—lean, soot-faced, and smirking—leaning in the doorway with a stack of firewood.
Ren held up the scorched cragroot. “I think I just invented the world’s worst baked potato.”
“Did you try to cook with your hands?”
Ren looked up from the scorched cragroot, blinking smoke out of his eyes. Across the courtyard, Maela stood with a broom in one hand, a glare sharp enough to dice vegetables in the other.
“I was experimenting,” he said, straightening guiltily. “Controlled test. Very scientific.”
She walked over, eyes sweeping the mess—burnt scraps, a warped prep board, and what looked like the faint outline of a handprint scorched into the wood.
Maela crouched and picked up the half-burnt root, sniffing it. Then she looked at Ren. “You been trained in mana control?”
He hesitated. “Not exactly.”
“Uh-huh.”
She stood, brushing her hands on her apron, giving him a long, thoughtful stare.
“Where’d you say you were from again?”
Ren managed a sheepish smile. “Far east.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Real far, I’d guess.”
There was a beat of silence.
Then Maela sighed, muttered something under her breath, and shoved the broom into his hands. “Sweep. And while you’re at it, listen.”
She grabbed a mug off the prep shelf and filled it from a nearby barrel. “Mana’s not some mystery. It’s breath, warmth, motion. Kids around here learn the basics before they can hold a spoon.”
She handed him the mug. “Hold that steady. Now focus. You’ve got a mana pool inside you—probably bigger than most, judging by the mess you just made—but if you don’t learn to guide it, you’ll keep lighting vegetables on fire.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Ren frowned and gripped the mug. “Okay… how do I guide it?”
“Start below your navel. That’s your center. Imagine warmth there—then move it. Chest, arm, hand, fingers. Gently. Like pouring tea.”
He took a breath. Focused.
Nothing.
He pushed again. Slower this time. He imagined the warmth like a coil of heat unwinding in his gut, crawling up through his chest and toward his hand.
Plip.
The water in the mug rippled.
Barely. But enough.
Ren’s eyes widened. “I did it.”
Maela gave a grunt. “You twitched it. That’s something.”
She studied him again. “No mana tattoos. No academy marks. Your posture’s wrong for a city mage, and your grip’s wrong for a soldier.”
He opened his mouth.
She cut him off. “Don’t bother lying. I’ve seen weird ones come through before. You’ve got the look—lost, curious, and too clever for your own good.”
Ren offered a weak smile. “Is that good or bad?”
“Depends how many things you blow up before lunch,” she said, turning toward the kitchen.
She paused in the doorway.
“Farin, the alchemist, might be able to help you figure out what you are. Or at least keep you from poisoning anyone.”
Ren perked up. “He’s open to teaching?”
Maela snorted. “Farin’s open to everything. He once tried to make a potion out of pickled frog eggs and hair oil.”
“…Did it work?”
“He still won’t talk about it.”
_________
By the time the kitchen closed and Ren had scrubbed his last pot, the sun was dipping behind the rooftops. He packed up a small pouch with the mossy herb, a smoked tuber, and a half-charred cragroot, tucked it into his belt, and headed into town.
He kept thinking about that moment the water rippled—how real it had felt, how close he’d been to something.
Mana wasn’t just magic—it was a tool. A flavor. A force.
And he was going to learn how to wield it.
___________
By the time Ren reached the edge of the town’s main square, the sky had dipped into deep amber, the light catching on the brass fittings of vendor carts and the crooked chimneys of half-built shops.
The place was alive.
Stalls buzzed with customers, construction crews shouted orders in three different dialects, and wagons full of stone and lumber rolled past like a slow, noisy parade. The town didn’t look like it was built for this much traffic—half the buildings looked newly added, and others were still in the middle of going up, wooden scaffolding leaning like ribs against raw stone.
Ren paused at a corner bakery. A kid ran past him with a roll in one hand and a dagger in the other, laughing as he ducked between a pair of mercenaries in matching red cloaks.
He raised an eyebrow. “This place feels more like a frontier than a town.”
He wasn’t wrong. The air was full of motion. Urgency. As if something big had kicked the place into overdrive and everyone was scrambling to cash in before it passed.
Farin’s shop sat at the edge of what locals jokingly called “Alchemist Alley”—a cluttered little side street full of potion-makers, charm-sellers, and weird-smelling buildings that probably violated a dozen fire codes, if fire codes existed here.
The shop itself looked like someone had tried to build a wizard tower, gotten bored halfway up, and decided to just stick a bunch of iron chimneys on top instead. The door was wide open, and a faint purplish smoke drifted out from within.
Ren approached slowly.
He wasn’t sure what he expected from a back-alley alchemist in a town like this. Some crazy old man? A half-melted elf with goggles?
Instead, he got… Farin.
Mid-30s, robes stained with something vaguely teal, glasses perched on the tip of his nose, and a vibe somewhere between eccentric genius and high-functioning madman.
Farin looked up from a bubbling alembic and blinked. “You’re the one who scorched a cragroot this morning, yeah?”
Ren blinked. “…How did you—”
“I have ears everywhere. And kitchen staff who gossip.” Farin grinned and waved him inside. “Come on. You’ve got questions, and I’m bored.”
_________
Inside, the shop was chaos. Bottles, scrolls, jars full of twitching ingredients. A chalkboard covered in scribbles that looked part alchemy, part grocery list.
Ren stepped over a basket of bones and cleared his throat. “So, uh… Maela said you might help me with mana control.”
Farin nodded absently, flipping through a stack of notes. “She also said you’re weird. And she’s rarely wrong.”
Ren shifted uneasily.
Farin didn’t look up. “You’re not from here.”
Ren hesitated. “I mean… technically, no. But—”
“Not here-here. I mean you’re an Outsider.”
The words landed like a dropped pot.
Ren froze. “What makes you say that?”
Farin finally looked up, eyes sharp behind the lenses. “You’ve got good instincts, bad form, and not a single mark of the local schools or traditions. You treated mana like a foreign object. And you didn’t flinch at the word ‘Outsider,’ which means it’s familiar. So either you’re a deep-region tribal raised by squirrels, or…”
He trailed off, smirking.
Ren sighed. “Yeah. Outsider.”
___________
He told Farin everything. Or, at least, everything he knew.
The incident at the restaurant. The kitchen. The divine voice. Waking up on the hill. The strange, instinctive knowledge of flavor. The sense that he was supposed to be here, but without a guidebook.
Farin listened in silence, scribbling notes with a pen that smelled faintly of mint and sulfur.
When Ren finished, Farin leaned back and whistled. “Well, that explains the dream-state mana imprinting.”
“…The what now?”
“Flavor Sense. It’s not a normal skill. But it is quite similar to a skill the system occasionally grants to Outsiders - Mana Sense, this seems to be a super specialised version of it, Specialised skills usually only occur when they imprint on something strongly during their transfer. Cooking must be your core.”
Ren blinked. “I imprinted on food?”
“You’d be amazed how many don’t survive the transfer. But the ones who do… they get weird skills.” Farin scratched his chin. “So. You’re new, alive, and curious. That’s rare. And dangerous.”
Ren glanced around. “Is being an Outsider a secret I should keep?”
Farin’s smile was thin. “Depends who you tell. Some people will worship you. Others will want to dissect you. Most won’t care unless you make too much noise.”
“Cool. No pressure.”
Ren gestured toward the window. “So what’s with the town? It’s… kind of exploding.”
Farin perked up. “Ah! Now that is why everything’s suddenly five times more expensive.”
He stood and pulled down a crude map from the wall—hand-drawn, with scratchy marks and glowing ink.
“A dungeon was found about five kilometers east. Buried under some old ruin. Active, scalable, and loaded with mana-rich cores.”
Ren leaned closer. “That sounds… important.”
“It is. The nobles are arguing over rights. The Adventurer’s Guild already set up shop. And this sleepy market town? Now it’s the last stop before the dungeon entrance. Everything’s booming. Housing, supplies, contracts.”
Ren whistled. “Is it safe?”
Farin gave him a look. “It’s a dungeon.”
“Right.”
“But…” Farin leaned in, eyes glinting. “Dungeons have rare ingredients. Ones that resonate with mana. And if you’re experimenting with flavor and infusion? That’s where you’ll find the good stuff.”
“Huh might interesting to check out later.”
Farin clapped his hands. “Good. We’re on the same page. Now, let’s see how broken your foundation is.”
Ren gave him a look. “You make it sound like I’m a collapsing house.”
“You are,” Farin said cheerfully. “But that’s okay. I like rebuilding from scratch.”
He swept aside a stack of potion bottles and cleared a spot on a low wooden bench. Then he motioned for Ren to sit.
“First lesson: feel your mana. Not just use it. Feel it. Know where it sits. Know how it moves.”
Ren sat, cross-legged. “I kind of did that earlier. When Maela was—”
Farin cut him off with a raised finger. “Yes, yes, you stirred your soup. Now let’s teach you to taste it.”
He dropped a smooth, rounded stone into Ren’s hand. It was warm to the touch, like it had been sitting in the sun too long.
“This is a conductor stone. It doesn’t do anything, but it responds when you push mana into it. Think of it like… training wheels. Focus on the heat behind your navel. Guide it to your chest. Down your arm. Into your palm. Into the stone.”
Ren closed his eyes. He could feel it again—that flickering warmth, like a lazy campfire in the pit of his gut. He tried to move it.
Push too hard, and it flared out wildly.
Too soft, and it just sat there.
It was like trying to pour soup from a full bowl without spilling a drop, while blindfolded, and also the soup was on fire.
“…This is harder than it looks.”
“Of course it is,” Farin said. “It’s the difference between breathing and whistling. You’ve had mana your whole life. You just never noticed.”
Ren gritted his teeth. Tried again. Slower this time. He could feel it rising—a gentle thread of warmth, like honey climbing his chest, sliding down his arm…
Plink.
The stone pulsed faintly. Barely noticeable, but there.
Farin’s eyes lit up. “There we go! Now again. But slower. Hold the flow. Shape it. Control.”
_________
They kept at it for over an hour. Farin didn’t let up.
Sometimes Ren lost the thread entirely and had to start over. Sometimes the mana sparked in his fingertips and made his hand go numb. Once, the stone sizzled and Farin had to flick it into a bucket of water.
By the end, sweat ran down Ren’s neck and his arms felt like he’d been carrying sacks of flour all day.
But… he did it.
He felt the mana.
He moved it.
He controlled it.
For real.
Farin finally gave a satisfied grunt. “Better than most first-timers- though first-timers are usually toddlers but at least you’re not hopeless.”
Ren gave him a tired smile. “Thanks. I think.”
“Now,” Farin said, already rifling through a stack of odd-smelling herbs, “next time we try mixing that mana with flavor. Actual controlled infusion.”
“Already?”
“Of course. You want to be a chef, don’t you? Then you have to learn how to stir mana like you stir a pot. It has to become second nature.”
He glanced at Ren, a little more serious now.
“You’re not a mage. You’re not a soldier. You’re something else. If you want to survive in this world—and do something new—you’re going to need a foundation stronger than instinct.”
Ren nodded slowly.
He was exhausted. His arm hurt. His head buzzed.
But deep in his chest, that quiet flame of mana still glowed.
Alive. Ready.
He could work with this.