Iris turned her head to the screen, squinting at the white words dancing across its expanse. Curiosity drove her to watch the words vanish, just as quickly replaced with a simplistic interface. The top of the screen showed the time, 1:41 AM. Five button-bearing boxes emerged across the bottom, thinnest on the right. The screen above seemed bare, and Iris did nothing- until text blinked on the screen.
[“Tap a box for more information]
Iris shrugged, and tried the boxes in order lest curiosity kill her sleep. The first one, [Communication], was almost-equally bare.
[No Gladiators met] it informed her, almost mockingly in the plain-ness of its message. Sighing at the feeling, Iris tapped [Fighting]. Far more information lived in this part of the System, left side displaying arena rankings of people she didn’t know.
Gorkurn Elflash, Olga Hollybane, Vlesdec Zagera, Glim Dikitsk, Chieturnea Jisocus, and the top half of another. Iris slid her finger up the screen, and many more names scrolled past. Swiping quickly to the side changed the division, from beginner to lightweight to manaweight. Iris didn’t stay too long on names that meant nothing to her, instead observing the right side of the screen marked [Schedule]. It was far more pertinent to her, top words causing her heart to flutter.
[Placement match: 9 AM. (all new gladiators)]
That was seven hours away, when it took her closer to ten to even think to go from entering bed to fighting shape. The rest of the schedule was marked with times but otherwise blank, likely as she had no division yet. Iris knew she had to get the best division she could. Her pay, her respect, her quality of life, would be set into motion in not even a third of a day.
With more purpose, Iris tapped [Mana]. On the left, a massive white circle took up half the screen. As important as it looked, it displayed no information, only [Core not formed]. On the right, an outline of a human body. Most of this body was blacked off, save for a perfect circle in the center of its chest, and some less clean spots at the hands. It appeared to be wearing grey gloves, tiniest bits of red comprising the outlines. A bar in the middle conveyed some of the same information: almost all blank, a segment of grey, and a silver of red.
“Fire mana...” Iris whispered, remembering her accidental absorption on the ship and fight against the canine. “And sharpness mana?”
The system was cagey. It did not respond to her voice, leaving her to wonder what the grey was.
The [Skills] panel was almost just as unflattering, displaying a single table of dull-red and text of white.
Iris had heard of this sort of grading before. F stood for at the very least failure, those plusses or minuses doing little to draw her mind away form the letter itself. Iris turned her attention back to the names, finding them all familiar. Mages were far from pyromancers, so unless this was the starting package of skills, these were the concepts she picked up from skimming Kyrra’s tome. Iris had definitely projected fire in the tar wolf fight in the monster-wright’s pit, but mana charring?
Iris sat up to stop the desire to sleep from creeping in, cycling her arms in movement. She leaned her back against the wall near her pillow, having to lean forward again to recover her new manual and find a comfortable position to read it.
Mana basics
It read, in messy, squiggling scrawl. Iris felt that same sense of supernatural focus as she read over the text. With a much more relaxed time limit, she could drink this knowledge as if it was locked up in a small keg of her own, rather than anything she had to share. Her mind felt itself begin to fill like parched earth under a pour of water, any sort of headache replaced with a pleasant sensation and a rush of power.
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Right as Iris finished the first page, detailing how mana was the lifeblood of the world, the page lost all coherence. It disconnected from the rough twine binding with a gentle ripping noise, falling onto Iris’s leg and breaking into a pile of fine dust under its own weight. Iris had drunk the knowledge from the first page in a dozen minutes or so, and was ready for more. The desire for knowledge and the power it brought eclipsed hunger, eclipsed fatigue, and was making its way to block out her desire for connection.
Ramblings on mana attraction comprised the next few pages, but between the lines, all she read was the importance of inner calm. And Iris was having none of it. She valued action over thought, movement over stillness, gladiatorial fighting over guard duty-
When a single thought cut in.
One must be still, so that they may act. Act too much, and you will be stilled by the world.
Iris felt a restraint in her mind snap, knowledge and mana beginning to flow in equal measure. She closed her eyes, cutting out any glowing distraction. The room was oddly quiet despite the gladiatorial nature- where Iris expected to hear the sounds of walking, fighting, partying, and dealing, she heard only the excited beat of her own heart.
“I’m going to have to slow that.” Iris thought, taking another look at techniques and finding a pattern of breathing. It was simple in concept and simpler in execution. 4 heartbeats inhaling, four holding full, four exhaling, and 4 holding empty. It had no need to count seconds, and would become easier the calmer she was, ramping itself into utility. Iris let her arms hang free and tried again, her cardio-adapted breath shaking just to still this long. Iris was not patient, but if anything she was persistent. After several attempts, she found a rhythm and held it.
Another restraint came loose. Iris’s heart slowed, letting her feel a subsiding coldness in her hands. She felt the mana within herself pulse, focusing on the parts that not even hours ago drank the essence of fire. A sense movement swept around her hands, making her above all else think of sand swept by a tide. And deposited for her own use. Iris felt a sense of fullness, and checked her slate. The mana bar in the center had filled with grey, and if Iris wasn’t mistaken: the bit of red on the bottom had grown to twice its size. This was likely enough to play with, but a lack of numbers made it difficult to tell what would last through a fight.
“Only one way to find out," Iris said to no one. She turned off the bed and stood, stance as wide as reasonable in this thin room. There had to be a better place to practice, but this was the one she had. Iris focused on her fingertips again, drawing her arm back and slashing forward with an open claw. While Iris expected a feeling of sharpness, all she felt was the rush of air between her fingers. Unwilling to let that be the end of her tests, Iris tried again. She made her first slash, then while drawing back from it twisted her torso. Her other arm jabbed forward in a gutpunch of a strike, followed up by a long overhead slash meant for the eyes of any. As her upper hand crested its journey to an invisible enemy, something in her fingertips roared to life. She felt a drain from her hand, saw a similar drain in that mana bar, and heard her claw of a hand whistle through the final foot of air in front of her before digging into the wooden side of her bed.
Iris almost shouted in celebration. She drew back and released a few more test slashes, rhythmically demolishing the chest of an imagined foe. With every forward slash, lines of light grey appeared at her fingernails, and Iris longed to see them in action again. Six quick swipes later, she found her supply of grey drained, bar emptied save for that sliver of red. This move was nothing flashy, but her ticket to power.
Iris sat back on her bed, progressing through the manual to calm herself down. She was too hopped up on the high of power to gather mana again, so looked to the stabilizing words of the paper and ink. The next page fell to the ground, giving way to one on mana infusion.
Mana fills every container it is willed to. What it cannot fill further, it works to refine.
Iris had no items to infuse. Her clothing was damaged, and easier to replace than repair- especially if she wowed the audience. She skipped that chapter, and went forward- to flesh reinforcement.
Flesh acts as both conduit and container for mana. Mana follows desires, channeled through the flesh to strike out and stand its ground. Yet flesh clings to moving mana, absorbing and integrating it to grow in strength.
This had explained her desires. Iris learned how to reinforce her fingers and temporarily sharpen their ends into clawed points before she even knew that’s what she was doing. Iris set the manual down and tried to stabilize her mind again, to cut out all distractions, when one rumbled from inside. Fighting made one hungry, and Iris guessed that mana channeling counted. She sighed, stuffed her manual in her pocket, and left to find a meal.
Only to turn out of her room and bump into someone clad in black.
