Unlike the first time he woke up in this foreign bed, he felt refreshed. The increase in vitality and constitution made a huge difference. He didn’t know how long he slept but his dreams were quite esoteric and abstract. ‘It’s most likely because I spent so much time in my soul palace yesterday.’ He stretched his body and rubbed his eyes. Once again his eyes were assailed with the overzealous, golden light of the system. Which reminded him of a cell phone with the brightness turned all the way up.
“I wish there was dark mode on this thing.” He said and focused on the new notification from the system.
Veric raised his eyebrows and realised that something was definitely not right. “Wasn’t this always blank? What is going on?”
After a few seconds of utter confusion, Veric replied “Hello? I can’t hear you. But I can see what you are writing. Who are you?”
‘Is this the child whose body I reincarnated into?’ He thought and pinched himself in order to check whether he was still dreaming.
“I am…” The question was very difficult to answer. He had memories of both Veric and Thomas while occupying the body of the former. The mind of the latter on the other hand was definitely dominant. He had many more years of complete memories as Thomas. In addition as Veric, he had only access to veric’s thoughts and experiences but didn’t have the access to his emotions. That is why it was easy for him to separate from Veric on a more fundamental level.
“I am the ship of Theseus.” he mumbled once he had the opportunity to somewhat process his predicament.
“I am sorry. I mean I am Veric and yet not Veric. I… It’s hard to explain. I think I was reincarnated into your body after you died.”
After a moment of awkward silence followed by the realisation that he had just told a child that they died, Veric took a deep breath and asked. “Are you ok?”
It was very hard to gauge what was Veric’s mental state because his words were purely in text form “I am sorry I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”
He didn’t know how to answer that question. He felt guilty like he owed Veric something. “I feel like I took this life from you.”
The screen disappeared, however, after a few moments of silence the screen reappeared.
The revelation that old Veric is capable of looking through his memories made him feel somewhat violated which made him even more uncomfortable considering he looked through old Veric’s.
“Is there anything you would like me to do?”
“Would you like me to bring you back to life?” he asked knowing about the existence of necromancy. He wanted to explore all magic, maybe even dabble in that forbidden art.
“I promise I will.” He replied instantly. It didn’t feel like talking to a child, it felt like talking to a machine.
“Will you pass on soon?” He asked, hoping that the boy would move on.
“Are you capable of influencing other titles or skills?”
“What type of information?” He asked immediately, intrigued by the idea of mana containing information. While ignoring the potential privacy violations.
“I would like to perform an experiment if you don’t mind.”
Veric jumped off the bed and walked over to a glass of water he hovered his hand over the rim and released a gentle stream of mana into the water. The water was resisting the mana at first but over time the mana started to permeate the liquid. The glass seemed even more resilient to absorbing mana than water. The process was slow but in a few minutes water became infused with mana.
Once the process of infusing water with mana was completed Veric took hold of the mana again and started to pull it back towards himself. It was a lot easier to pull out mana from water than to push it inside. Once all of it was out he absorbed the mana back into his core.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“Can you see some information from the mana?”
“Could you try and give me as much information about the water as you can?”
“Take your time.”
‘Hmm, this is interesting. Both the behaviour of mana and Kinslayer. Mana seems to be unperturbed by physical matter while it is in the ambient form however once it is absorbed by my core and processed it seems to have a hard time penetrating denser objects, when I was casting the [Gentle Mana Push] spell and it took some time for the mana to leave my body, I assumed that it was due to [Minor Mana Manipulation] being low level but it was oddly similar to when water is resisting mana. I wonder if that is why it takes so long for it to travel through my body? And also do certain materials block the flow of mana entirely?’ He thought and walked over to the wardrobe.
It was quite early in the morning and he didn’t expect Dara to come in for at least an hour, giving him some time to experiment with both mana and Kinsalyer. He started to get dressed while thinking about the consequences of his discovery.
“It is quite strange indeed. When I was casting the spell with the scroll, the spell seemed to ignore me, it didn’t freeze me at all. I have assumed that the mana that belongs to me will not hurt me. However, this might not be the case. If the flow of mana is somewhat impeded by my body it means it interacts with my body. So if I learn a dangerous spell it might hurt me too. I should be more cautious with spells in the future.”
Veric finished getting dressed into simple brown linen clothing fitting a poor merchant at best more than a son of a baron. However Veric didn’t mind it, he was never a fashionista in either previous or this life. The notification from Kinslayer appeared seconds later.
“This is absolutely amazing. Does that mean you can only display the information I am capable of understanding?”
“You sound very robotic.” ‘It’s creeping me out.’ He finished in his head hoping that Kinslayer doesn’t have access to his thoughts.
“Are you sure it feels quite reductive and inconsiderate? why do you want to help me?”
“Very well. I shall treat you like a program if that is what you prefer. Can you read my thoughts?”
“I am sorry for calling you creepy.”He said with honest remorse.
After a moment of silence, Veric asked. “What would you like me to call you? Would you like me to keep calling you Veric? Calling you Kinslayer doesn’t seem appropriate”
Veric raised his eyebrows at the doom and gloom. ‘What would be a fitting name? Skynet? No, a bit too pessimistic, also I don’t want him to get any bad ideas. Colossus? It was the first large scale electronic computer. He did want me to treat him like a computer after all. However, I don’t think it fits him. What about Prometheus? In the Greek religion, he was the supreme trickster and the titan of fire. Responsible for creating humanity. The meaning of the name fits as well considering he will help me with understanding this world better “the Forethinker”.’
“I shall call you Prometheus from now on.”
“You could at least tell me whether you like it or not?”
“Wow, I get it. Sarcasm cuts deeper than a sword, you know? Are you trying to tell me that you don’t care?”
“Ok, so from now on you shall be called Prometheus.” He said while trying to regain some dignity. ‘Even though Prometheus doesn’t have emotions or feel anything he sure does have a personality. But it might just be me being stupid. Trying to treat a computer like a human being.’
“Let’s do some more testing shall we?” Veric said. Prometheus did not reply.
Veric brought his hands together and started to release mana from each hand very slowly, he didn’t want to repeat the [Mild Mana Vortex] instead, he wanted the mana to slowly move past itself in order to study it. The mana coalesced and separated into two clouds. He then reabsorbed the two halves and asked.
“Could you analyse mana itself?”
“Why not. Please give me more detail.”
“I see what you mean. But when I collided with mana yesterday mana reacted quite violently creating [Mild Mana Vortex]. So mana has to interact with itself.”
“Incorrect? That’s it? Will you not give me an answer if you know it?”
Veric rolled his eyes and closed them. He knew that there was no point arguing with a computer. ‘They are even more heartless than bureaucrats.’ He thought and relived all of the instances when his code would not run properly even when there were no bugs. He shivered slightly thinking back to those morbid days as an undergraduate student triple-checking 12 thousand lines of code for hours.
He shook his head and started thinking back to every instance he used mana. ‘Mana seems to be acting like a fluid. However, it is not matter but energy personified. Like a physical representation of energy. That is how it felt while inside of my soul palace. When I pushed paper around it was flying around the room and when I infused water with it mana seemed to stick to it. When I was compressing it and my hands started shaking I have accidentally created a Vortex. But if it doesn’t interact with itself then why would it explode in such a fashion. It behaved so much as a gas… Wait a second. I am really stupid.’
“The mana created [Mild Mana Vortex] because what I was compressing was not mana but air. The air attached itself to mana and it was air interacting with itself. Once the pressure was great enough and my control over mana lessensed it exploded while gaining rotational force from my hands shaking.” ‘ I can not believe I forgot about the existence of air.’
“Based on this information. Could we assume that you could compress an infinite amount of mana into an infinitesimal space? A bit like energy did before the big bang. Could my world be mana based like this world?”
“You are right I should not focus on the past but on the present. Let’s continue testing then.”
Veric closed his eyes again and released the mana from his mana core and started to circulate it around his body. The process was slow and laborious, the mana was clearly moving very slowly inside of his body. After a while, he re-absorbed the mana. “Could you give me as much information about my body as possible?”
“So why does it move so slowly when I push it through my body?”
“Hmmm, so what is the second one.”
‘Prometheus sounds more like an emotionless version of me than a computer. Which would make sense.’ Veric though while agreeing with Prometheus.
Veric wanted to continue testing. However, he heard a knock on the door.
