Mid Evening - Early Summer : Arlington, Virginia | East Coast Uates

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  "Okay, so I want you to close your eyes and focus." Speaking softly from the area behind the gss, Lori pressed several buttons before the faint hum filling the room vanished and everything around me went silent. "To start, you o find your reserve, where your body stores all its mana. To do that, you just o hum. You should feel a sphere in your head, chest, or stomach faintly resonating."

  -So they call it a reserve here...- Also known as a mana core, it was something every being with mana had, a physical, hollow sphere of crystallized mana used to store mana like a huge battery. -But I don’t o hum to feel mine...- Feeling a faint, stant vibration in my abdomen, I respond quickly. "Alright. What ?"

  "T..That was fast… Uh… Now try to focus on it.” She responded as if flustered. “After some time, you should feel something vaguely simir to a muscle or sphere you manipute around it." She paused to give me a moment to focus.

  -So that's what I was trolling back at the mana facility...- "Does it have a name?"

  "K..Kind of?" She hesitantly tinued. "It doesn't really have a on name, but mages call it the mana yer. It's generally what's responsible for how much mana is naturally emitted from your reserve as aura, and is partially responsible for how easy your mana is to pull out."

  "And I assume you trol it by flexing it?" I tilted my head slightly and spoke without certainty.

  "Yes! It seems like you're already a bit familiar, but just to tih formality, its effectiveness depends greatly on several factors, like the actual thiess of the reserve's shell, how much mana you have, and because you aren't relying on the System, your mental capacity. So, don't be disced if your trol of it is bad for now."

  -Huh?- "What do you mean by, ’my mental capacity because I'm not using the System’?"

  "Although this theory isn’t too publicly known, when skills are activated through the System, they mostly use the System's putational power, meaning, since you aren't using a skill, all the putation needed for it will have to e from your brain..."

  -Is that so?- sidering I had already trolled it when I was at the mana monit facility, I was more than fident when I let out a deep breath. -It hurt before but it should be manageable...- "Hooh..." -All I o do is flex it really hard...-

  Anticipating what I was doing, Lori went silent and focused on the dispy of sensors.

  -Then.. here goes nothing...- *Vwoom* Almost instantly, I could feel the iy of my aura surging through my body lessen.

  "Wow..." Even Lori sounded surprised.

  But at the same time, my stomach twisted, and I felt like my mind was thrown into a blender. "ACK-!" *PAT* Gripping my forehead as an excruciating pain surged through my skull, I grit my teeth. -Holy SHIT!- It was indescribably worse than what I felt at the mana facility.

  "PLEASE BE CAREFUL!" Running out of the room in a panic, Lori pulled out a damp cloth and froze it with magic before hastily pressing it against my head. "DO NOT push yourself like that! That pain is from your brain literally destroying itself! If you push it too far you develop a type of dementia, Alzheimers, o pletely brain dead."

  -Ah...- I got more than a little overzealous. -Was I depending on the system that much before?- "Ugh..." With a groan, I pressed the c into my forehead and looked up at Lori. "What was the effe the sers?" -If it was det, then maybe...-

  “The sensors showed you suppressed nearly forty pert of your aura. That's impressive for your first attempt, but please, don't push yourself that much again.” Her voice was woven with a mix of panid ay.

  "Forty pert, huh..." -That's nowhere near enough even if I could sustain it...- Leaning bad looking up at the ceiling as the rag melted and dripped to the floor, I felt an unfamiliar, flig mix of emotions well in my chest. -Based on how that went.. something tells me I won't be able to direct my aura upwards with my mana yer either...-

  But, I didn't really have an option...

  "How would I go about trolling my aura after it's left my reserve?" As my eyes locked on Lori, my gaze stiffened.

  Although it had been a few hundred years, an old mage friend I knew showed me some cool things he could do with it, so I k ossible.

  But Lori seemed pessimistic. "It's.. quite difficult..."

  L my head, I pulled the damp rag off my head and ha back to her. "How so?"

  Not sure how to respond, she hesitated. "Uh.. well... Using the mana yer uses your subscious.. everything basically happens behind the ses. But trolling your aura is the plete opposite."

  "So you mean it takes scious thought." Seeing her nod, I finally pulled my eyes off her. "Do you have any tips or teiques?"

  "N..no..." She responded immediately. "trolling your aura is something reserved for extremely high-level mages... People like me don't have enough aura to trol."

  "Is that so..." Finally straightening my posture, I let out a heavy breath. "Hooh..." -Then that means I'm on my own...- But for some reason, instead of being nervous, I was oddly excited.

  Quickly closing my eyes, I let out several more long breaths, trying to isote myself from my physical senses before sinking into the depths of thought.

  I o focus.. to feel the energy surging out of my body and filling the air around me like a dense fog in an attempt to grasp at it.

  But, in that moment, when I expected to feel my own energy that filled the room, I found myself staring at an image in my head. It was the area around me, showing Lori kneeling on the hard tile o me while, farther in the darkness, I could feel tless other presences. -Those must be the people outside...-

  It was as if a 3D space had been structed in my mind, where I could see everything within a few meters of me in unbelievable detail, and farther away as a more blurry 'mental estimation' that got blurrier the farther away it was.

  But it was more than enough to generally feel the bounds of my aura. -Two hundred? Maybe two hundred and fifty kilometers?-

  It was indescribably colossal, pletely inparable to evero monsters I had ever faced. -Holy shit... No wonder I couldn't suppress it...- I was essentially trying to trap a tsunami in a snow globe, only to feel downtrodde exploded. -But if pressure is the problem.. if I trolled it away from my body.. then maybe...-

  Slowly beginning to feel the endless sea of mana in the air around me, feeling the tless currents and flows, my thoughts sped up and more details started poputing the space structed in my mind

  Be it motes of dust, bacteria, or even individual particles of air, I could feel every tiny thing around me. "Hooh..." -Okay.. let's try again...- Letting how a heavy breath, I attempted to grab at my own aura about fifteeers off my body, just before it reached the wall of the room, and imagined myself cupping my hands around it, stiffening a part of my aura to create a bowl shape.

  *Vwoom* Almost instantly, a heavy ripple of mana sounded and gravity seemed to increase severalfold.

  But it actually felt alright. "Hooh..." With another heavy breath, I tio fall deeper and deeper into focus, figuring out just how exactly I was trolling the wall of aura before slowly refining it, and fog more and more of my aura upwards. -This.. could be worse...-

  It took every speck of focus I had, but even in the short moments I did it, I could feel myself improving and couldn't help but smile as I finally opened my eyes again. -I almost fot what making progress felt like…-

  Quickly turning toward the gss wall as I released my aura, I got ready to excitedly ask Lori what the ge on the sensors was.

  But.. she was gone... -Huh?- And it wasn’t just her. No o me was even in the building. -What the... How much time passed?- *Vwoop* Opening my System with a fused wave, I went to check the clock, but before I could evehe tab, the grouh me lit up, and an unfathomable heat blew through the room, atomizing everything. *Fsh-BRRRRMMM*

  It was a beam of energy that instantly engulfed the entire building, atomizing everything from the ground to the sky.

  But all it did to me was take the ground out from under my feet.

  *Vwoom* As my expression turned sour, I found myself staring at three presences just outside the beam. -Is Michael already backstabbing me?- *Spsh* Landing in the pool of molteal as the beam died down, my gaze stiffened before one presence vanished, only to instantly reappear behind me.

  *Fwip-CRAAACKKK* Jolting my head to the side, a beam of energy thousands of times hotter than what just ied the building grazed my ear before I spun around, grabbing the red-hot arm on of a humanoid robot, pulled it past me, and sunk my fingers into its head. *ch-Crackle*

  Staring into its glowing blue face, my face washed with anger. "What the fuck are enforcers doing here?"

  *Vrrmm-Tap* Attempting to fight back, it swung its legs up to grapple me, but besides pushing my head up with its knee and ing itself around my arm, all it did iss me off.

  *Crackle* Crushing its metal skull with one hand, I released its arm and grabbed its spine, crushing the mana core in it before ruthlessly ripping it out, spraying blue t everywhere, and crushing its skull, finally dissipating the glow c through its body. *CH*

  It was a System enforcer, a type of robot the System used to enforce system rules outside the responsibility of administrators, such as ‘ing system errors', typically being people who abused certain exploits that popped up from time to time, or deliberately disobeyed ‘system quests’.

  Typically, they were of a much higher level thaarget, and used as assassins tically remove troublesome 'system errors' from worlds they didn't belong. -But these aren't that high level...- *Spsh* Prying its dismantled body off me, I threw it down into the magma at my feet.

  They were both human-sized and human-shaped, being made out of extremely strong mythril and being inanically nimble.

  But while they used to be quite troublesome, that was far from the case now.

  *FWOOSH* Darting up out of the plume of smoke, I instantly pnted a foot in the ground before kig in the chest of another enforcer, sending it zipping through the side of a building before peppering everything else with its metal shrapnel.

  But it created an opening that the other enforcer wasn't going to pass up.

  *WOOSH* Appearing over me, it drove a fist into my face expeg me to catch it as it stuck the bedded in its other arm to the top of my head.

  But it far overestimated itself. *WHAAAMM-CRRACK* Destroying its punch with my elbow, I grabbed its other arm and tur upward, rupturing its hydraulid aiming it at its own head.

  *Crackle-FLASH* The moment it fired, its beam blew through its head, and I took the ce to pull it off its feet, and drive a fist through the mana core tained in a mythril sphere at the base of its spine. *WHAAAAMMM-VWOOM*

  The ey shook from the impact, shattering the ground around me and spreading cracks through the city’s foundation.

  But I was still mad. "Tch..." Reag up and massaging my neck as I threw what was left of the half-melted robot to the ground, I clicked my tongue. *k* -Now where is the st one... It's been too long since I've fought something human-sized...-

  Enforcers always traveled in groups of four, yet the only things around me were people running away or people frozen from shock, awe, or horror. -Is he hiding in the crowd?-

  But as I sed everything around me...

  *Glow* The grouh my foot melted and a bzing beam smmed into my jaw before scattering and slig off the tops of nearby buildings. *BRRRRRRMMM* "Oh you lousy fucker..." Simply ign the unpleasa, I lifted my foot and stomped the ground. *CRRRRAAACKKKK* The ground instantly melted, crushing the enforcer buried underground like a tin at the bottom of the o.

  But he seemed to want to take me with him. "Self-destrug." As its deep, crackly robotic voice met my ears, everything within a few hundred meters was instantly washed with light, the sides of skyscrapers were melted, and the nearby System users threw up barriers in a panic.

  *WOOM* The bst was hotter than the ter of a star, simply erasing everything within a few meters of it and causing my armor to glow red hot.

  But that was it...

  As the heat passed, I was left standing in a pool of waist-deep molten rock, surrounded by a field of debris and fire as t skyscrapers creaked, trying not to colpse. *Creaaaak* -You have to be fug kidding me...-

  Looking up toward the edge of the molten crater, I found dozens of system users, all of which around level four or five hundred, wearing hostile expressions with armor equipped and ons drawn.

  "Don't throw away your lives. Put your ons away..." I spoke irritatedly.

  *Tsss-Blub* But as the sound of boiling water and bubbling rock filled the air, there were a few who either couldn't hear me or simply didn't listen. "HYAH!" Darting at me with everything he had, a level four hundred barbarian dashed across the pool of magma with a heavy hammer in hand before attempting to drive it into my head.

  -Dumbass...- *Pat* Catg the head of the hammer, I instantly jerked it down uhe magma, pulling the man with it before suddenly throwing it back up, impaling him with its handle, and ung him out of the crater. *Zip-BAAANGG*

  It caused the expressions of everyone nearby to instantly ged.

  Casually wiping away a bit of molteal that spshed on my face, I looked back up at the other System users with a cold gaze. “Anyone else?”

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