Consciousness slapped me awake some time later, and with it came bone-deep pain that made me want to punch myself out cold again.

  “Ow,” I mumbled, the sound garbled by my aching jaw. Even my lips hurt.

  I blinked open my eyes and winced. How could eyelids be sore? Every particle of me felt like Fulvia had beaten me with a sledgehammer for weeks.

  The soft, golden light of the same junction room with the 3 silver doors made my eyeballs hurt. Worried I might be bleeding out, or something, I checked my status. Next to my health bar, which hovered at 5%, and my mana bar which was totally zeroed out, the little graphic of my body was a solid, pulsing red.

  I tried triggering a healing potion, but my menus were still disabled. My mind was starting to wake up finally and I frowned, which hurt a lot. Why hadn’t my natural regeneration kicked in? As a tier-1 human, I regenerated a lot faster than anyone else, and mine was further boosted by 10% per level of Wolf Blood, which had been at level 3.

  Now it was level 5.

  Huh? I scanned my status and it made less sense every second. My Hand-to-hand fighting ability had jumped all the way from level 6 to level 9, while my Mana Sense and Mana Manipulation abilities were flashing slowly. I’d never seen that effect before.

  I was too tired to worry about it, and mentally waved my status screen away. Even that made my mind hurt. Ow. Now I knew how my emoji 50-punches trap had felt to that follower of Abbie’s.

  Somewhere behind my head, Fulvia said, “Welcome back. Good fight, by the way.”

  I tried to laugh, but then tried crying from the screaming in my chest. Neither attempt worked. Fulvia flitted into view overhead. I willed my arms to reach up and wring her pretty neck, but they laughed at me.

  "Just so you know, you hadn’t finished integrating Nexus energy. You’d barely started. At the rate you were progressing, it would have taken months to get to your first evolution."

  “You don’t have months,” Cyrus added, his voice close to my ear like he was sitting at my hospital bed. If only he’d take physical form so I could shove my fist down his throat.

  All I managed to say was, “Ugh.”

  “Exactly. Glad you remember our chat. Hence the need to bring in an expert.” His voice shifted to a perfect imitation of Indigo Montoya from The Princess Bride. “We needed to speed things up.”

  Fulvia gave me a thumbs up. “Assuming you don’t suffer any permanent damage, you should be good in a couple days.”

  “Days?” I managed to almost make that single word understandable. What had Cyrus done to me?

  “Not for moving, of course. You’ll begin healing again within half an hour,” Cyrus assured me. “Just don’t use any mana for a couple days.”

  “How?” I grunted. Was he insane?

  “Any challenge can be an opportunity for fantastic growth if you have the right attitude,” Cyrus chided. “And to clarify, your passive abilities will still work normally, but do not use active abilities like Spellseer’s Gaze, which draws from mana. Also, no spells, including Soul Feed, although your other utility spells are okay.”

  “Are you trying to get me killed?”

  “Moping does not suit you, Lucas. You’re more creative than that. I’ll give you a couple hints to help you regain your usual optimism. First, when your Magical Resistance captures 30% of incoming magical attacks, that power does not flow into your mana pool, but builds as a separate charge that will all be used to magnify your next spell.”

  I perked up. “So I could use that charge to trigger a spell?”

  “That’s still dangerous,” Fulvia warned.

  “You could use it to trigger something simple, like a power tied to one of your titles, or one tied to a piece of gear,” Cyrus added.

  “I don’t have any gear-based spells. How about scrolls?”

  “No,” Fulvia said instantly.

  I tried to calm my growing panic. I needed powers to survive. It sounded like I could use things like my Indomitable aura, but nothing else?

  Cyrus added, “You could also use that charge to trigger Sapper Charge, although that particular spell could be triggered another way. I’m sure you would have soon noticed, but it has a synergy that you can leverage with Spell Weaver. It allows you to cast Sapper Charge by having it consume a full mana potion instead of drawing from your personal mana.”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “Really? Thanks for the tip.” It wasn’t much, but between those two options, it was better than another punch in the face from Fulvia. Did that mean other spells could be triggered that way too?

  As if reading my thoughts, Cyrus said, “No other spells for 48 hours.”

  “Didn’t you nearly kill me enough just now?” My anger returned and it helped me push through the pain so I could speak.

  “His brain’s probably not back to full speed yet,” Fulvia commented clinically.

  “Of course not. You cracked my skull in how many places?”

  “Five.”

  No wonder my brain hurt so much.

  Cyrus said, “You’re forgetting the bigger picture, Lucas. Like I explained earlier, you need to progress faster. A lot faster.”

  “You never said progress meant beating me to within an inch of my life and blocking all my spells.”

  “Do you always look at the world through such a negative lens?”

  I growled, fighting back my anger. Cursing him out while I was still mostly dead would be stupid. I tried to shove my sluggish thoughts into gear and understand.

  “How will this help me get stronger?”

  “Now that’s a better question,” Cyrus cheered.

  His false friendliness didn’t fool me. Not only had he just arranged for Fulvia to beat me to within an inch of my life, but he was setting me up for something. The clues he’d dropped suggested his goals might get him into trouble, which could be very fatal for me.

  He also seemed to have a deadline in mind. Sure, he blamed the rush on some kind of heightened scrutiny once we hit stage 3, but at the moment, I feared I’d never escape stage 2. Two full days of no spells could easily kill me.

  Fulvia interrupted my thoughts. “I wasn’t just beating you mostly to death, Lucas, although that was so therapeutic for me, by the way. Thanks. I’d needed that for so long.”

  “Getting distracted,” Cyrus said.

  “Sorry.” She flashed a glowing smile. “Your mana channels were unfit for higher-level mana manipulation.”

  “My spells worked just fine.” I tried to sit up, but barely twitched, and my health dropped to 3%. Patience was not the reaction I wanted to make, but I bit my tongue. Hard.

  Fulvia flitted lower. “That’s the problem. When you first integrate with magic, the system pushes the instinctive understanding of how to use mana and any spells you gain directly into your mind. It only gives you the most basic level of control, though.”

  “Not good enough for your destiny,” Cyrus said.

  Back to that vague destiny talk. I ignored the hint. Fulvia seemed to be getting to an important point, and I didn’t want to interrupt her sharing actual information I needed.

  She continued. “Basic spells draw upon basic mana. No surprise. Basic mana is general and untuned. It is easy to use for even baby humans. At your starting level, your mana pools draw upon any type of mana to refill itself. It naturally downgrades any tuned mana to basic mana, which your basic spells can then cast. The system is brilliantly simple, but very inefficient.”

  With an effort, I managed to croak out more hoarse whispers. “Okay, let’s pretend I understand what you mean by all that. Why did you have to beat me mostly to death?” Therapy was usually something I encouraged people to do, but not death therapy when I was the subject.

  “Over time as you progressed in Mana Sense and Mana Manipulation, you would have naturally adjusted your mana channels to higher-level configurations. The first major evolution is advancing your class to the point you have to choose an attunement for your mana. Once you attune your class, you can tune your mana pool. There are pros and cons to the process, but the important bit is that the process takes a very long time.”

  “Which you don’t have,” Cyrus interjected.

  “So . . .” I prodded.

  “So my specialty is mana manipulation. I won’t get into exactly what I do, but I’m a certified master of the highest-level of mana manipulation. There are expensive treatments available to speed up the process of updating channels to help them advance, but they’re not available to newly-integrated contestants like you. I stumbled upon an alternative approach. It got me into trouble.”

  Cyrus laughed. “Indeed it did. I do not believe there’s ever been a mana manipulation master of your caliber who also enjoyed unsanctioned fighting. At least, none of them ever accidentally combined both talents.”

  She shrugged. “They say trauma can unlock advancement. Worked for me.”

  “And nearly killed your opponent.”

  Fulvia shrugged. “He knew the risks, and he got paid.” Returning to the main conversation, she added, “I found that combining my mana abilities with enough force, I can disrupt another’s existing mana channels. That part was not a unique find, but I pushed it one step further and discovered that moments of extreme trauma leave the soul open to minor exterior manipulations of mana channels.”

  “So you used that beating to rewire my mana channels?” Those had to be the mana veins I’d felt thrashing around.

  “Exactly.”

  “Why not ask me to allow you to mess with them? I would have said yes.”

  “Doesn’t work that way. You would have instinctively pulled your mana channels back into their old configuration. I had to beat that old system out of you and totally focus your instincts on survival. Only then could I rewire your configuration permanently.”

  At one level it made sense, but I still hurt too much to ever admit it had been a good idea. I was nearly dead. Back on earth, and even in the first few days on this planet, I would have been too busy screaming to understand a word she was saying.

  I still felt the pain. Waves of overwhelming agony washed through me like storm surge. Somehow I was able to separate my mind from it, though. It was just pain, and with magical healing, it no longer affected me like it had. The magical healing hadn’t started yet, but it would.

  Maybe the fact that I could ignore the pain should bother me, but maybe it was saving my life.

  Fulvia flitted a bit higher, one hand raised to her tiny chin, a thoughtful expression on her so very punchable cute face. “You know, there is a way you could get your channels firmed up faster.”

  “How?” I asked immediately.

  “What are you getting at?” Cyrus interjected suspiciously.

  “The time delay is mostly to wait for his old channels to fade from his body. Until they’re gone, the risk of the new channels still snapping back into old pathways is high. Hence the need to avoid using mana. Trying spells and reverting channels would break things since the new channels are far more advanced and won’t fit in the old pathways. If we could get rid of the old pathways sooner . . .”

  “No,” Cyrus said instantly, even as I tried to parse her intent. “He can’t handle that level of trauma so soon.”

  “What are you talking about? If you try beating me up again, I will die.” As much as I welcomed the idea of getting my channels back sooner, I would not agree to getting pummeled to death.

  Fulvia sighed. “I suppose you’re right. Wouldn’t save enough time to be worth the extra risk.”

  “Good.” At least this time she accepted my decision.