“Uhm… How should I say it… Well, never mind. I mean, I have no idea how it normally works.” said Orion, trying to hide his reaction. At least he knew now that they weren’t checking him on that anymore, but they still probably noticed his surprise. It’s quite possible that his attempt to sweep things under the rug will also be read, but at least it clearly suggested that he didn’t want to share anything.

  “I understand. Anyway, we’re done with the contract stuff, so while it’s not official yet, welcome to the team.” said Merian. His bags under his eyes and encouraging smile did not go well together.

  At that, Albia stood from her chair and stretched herself, spreading her huge wings in the process.

  “Then my work here is done. I wish you good luck on your journey as an adventurer.” she said, heading for the exit.

  “Thank you, really.” Orion said. After all, she ended up wasting some of her time on him, and then when he was most stressed, she helped him relax. And finally, she didn’t stick her beak into his matters trying to inquire if he’d seen the System notification.

  “And thank you for your help, Albi.” added Merian, then headed for Orion. “All right, mate. You made a commitment to a few things, and we made a commitment to help you. Should we get you a plan, or do you already have something in mind?”

  “To be honest, I have a few things I’d like to take care of first. But if you don’t mind; taking advantage of the fact that you know I’m from a newly integrated universe, I’d like to be able to occasionally ask you some discreet questions… without revealing to everyone how uninformed I am.”

  “The problem is that I won’t always be available. I would recommend that we pass this information on to Mayra. She’s also obligated to keep secrets, so all I have to do is let her know.”

  After considering a few additional matters, mainly where and to whom he should report, it was decided that Mayra would be his primary preceptor until he formally joined. Orion was also instructed not to hesitate to ask other members of the Guild, even if it was a team he already knew. Merian said that if it would make him a better adventurer, then everyone should be willing to answer and in doing so, everyone would benefit.

  Orion, on the one hand, wanted to open up a little bit and ask if there were any skills known here similar to his Consumption, but ultimately decided not to do so. Asking an organization official if the organization is trustworthy was not the most reasonable source of information. If he were to ask anyone that question, Zaiah would probably be the only person he’d have almost no problem sharing it with right now. Orion still remembered the panic that came with realizing that the crystal could kill him at any moment and a dozen mixed feelings when he ended up just helping him.

  “If, after all, you have any business with me, go ahead, but as I mentioned, for reasons I won’t reveal, I’m not always available at this facility. When you’re done with your business, get in touch with Mayra and she’ll prepare a preliminary training plan for you. Or you can arrange for a group that you know to take care of it if that’s more convenient for you.” said Merian, standing up. Then he added, blinking. “Oh, and come by the Guild tomorrow.”

  Orion still wasn’t sure why the words were translated this way, but almost automatically he understood the word ‘tomorrow’ as the next active cycle, even though to him it was almost two days. Anyway, he thanked Merian for his work and they left the room. Then they had a few words with Mayra, who also wished him good luck.

  After saying goodbye, with a strange sense of excitement, he walked out of the building. The fact that he signed the contract made him feel like he was doing something he should. But now it was time to call attention to the elephant in the room.

  [Quest – Join the Adventurers Guild and contribute to solving the problem of demonic invasion.

  Time to complete: 599 cycles + 9:87:33.

  Reward: A unique opportunity to serve as an early envoy of the Adventurers Guild on a selected planet in the newly integrated universe.

  Penalty for non-performance: None.

  Accept the quest? Y/N]

  The System has definitely planned the moment to give him the quest. It happened exactly when he committed to joining. So technically, if he didn’t care about anything and wanted to live a quiet life here, he probably never would have gotten that notification.

  Would he get it if he decided to gain strength without joining the Guild? When Egill told him the history of this world, he mentioned that some of the first people to come here were scouts, traders and adventurers, and since he would not be one of them in this scenario, maybe he could come back to his world at a later date.

  In any case, the System still didn’t force him to do anything, it just encouraged him with a reward, which somehow happened to be very important to him. Although before he was kidnapped, it was enough for him to know that his family was healthy; and besides, he didn’t intentionally initiate contact, a lot has changed since then. Whether it was because he was told for a year that everyone despised him or because of the constant stress that someone in his family would share his fate, the reason, although not truly significant, still puzzled him.

  He should probably be a little frightened of how one man, let alone a level one, could help eliminate such a global problem that this world has been dealing with for hundreds of years. The thing is, both discoveries and civilization itself were based largely on what one individual invented and then refined by others.

  After all, it wasn’t the effort of the crowd that created the first wheel. It was a one-man initiative.

  Of course, people often had different kinds of support, but he was not denied it either. Needless to say, from the moment he got here, he wondered why this particular place. Now he had an answer. Instead, the question should be, why him? Apart from the obvious reason that he could not return, the System apparently judged that he would be somehow qualified for the job; otherwise he would most likely not have been given the assignment.

  As to the choice before him, the matter, though of great importance, was rather simple. Additional opportunity and no penalty for failure. That’s all he needed to know. He didn’t have to think hard to know that he was already determined to accept the quest, but he wouldn’t be himself if he didn’t think about it for at least fourteen weeks. Alright, alright. He was tempted to accept it now, but he wanted at least to calm this weird excitement. It was supposed to be a conscious choice, not one dictated by emotions.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  “Oh, look. There’s a goddamn savior of the world. You want to play a hero? You’d get a real job and raise a family instead of drifting with your head in the clouds.” A voice reached him, interrupted by the sound of a cigarette. “It’s time for you to get serious, you hear me? Stop bothering people with your stupid ideas and do something useful. I didn’t raise a bloody slacker who just thinks about where to bite more than he can chew!”

  Orion approached the nearby statue and, after hesitating for a moment, answered.

  “And helping with a global problem isn’t something useful? Besides, I didn’t make this up myself, I was given this quest.”

  “Stop mouthing off, you brat! Do I need to remind you how it ended when you thot you were smart? How did you cry in the corners because something didn’t work out for you? Maybe we can reminisce and laugh together about how you were trembling with a snotty nose because people are sooo bad, huh?“

  The voice recounted his failures and embarrassing moments while still living with his parents. Orion, listening patiently, headed for the park. There’s nothing more grounding than dear mother, isn’t there? Well, like Eyharnis said, he should learn to enjoy the little things, so he should get something positive out of it. It finally felt a little bit like home.

  He shook his head and after a sigh accepted the quest. Then, after a moment’s walk in silence began to giggle.

  When he got to the park and found a comfortable spot for himself, he pulled out the familiar cube. Clearing his mind of all unnecessary thoughts, he began collecting mana around the sternum to then direct it into and then out of his hand. This time, however, the attempt failed and the object did not respond at all.

  From his previous training, he theorized that in mana control, the ability to instantly subdue emotions, as well as overall mood, may be essential. Even if you could be angry or sad about something, if you wanted to control your mana, you would have to be able to let go of it at some point, because otherwise you wouldn’t be able to focus on controlling your intention, or it would be saturated by those feelings.

  Apparently, his ability to control his emotions wasn’t as good as he thought.

  Before resuming the process of feeding the cube, he decided to completely silence. So he was breathing slowly, just thinking about how his own energy was circulating inside him. Just as he had done before, now he moved it from head to foot, through the arms and the torso, then repeating the pattern. Paradoxically, the energy that required calmness to control, somehow circulating through the body, was calming.

  Eventually, he decided to try to improve the process a little bit. He began to encourage the mana that circled in him to gather more and more. In doing so, he decided to go back to what he knew about mana and his own body and after a while, an idea came to him.

  If he understood it correctly, the core would take the neutral mana from the environment and then miraculously convert it into personal mana. Zaiah, explaining to him the complexity of mana, clearly said that all possible questions can be reduced to the level of aspects and their correlation. So he should be able to deduce, or at least hypothesize, how the core actually worked.

  While attending a lesson some time ago, he listened as the teacher briefly explained how stats worked. It was much more connected than he expected, and just having a certain amount of strength didn’t mean that he was going to be able to move a rock or not. The correlations between the stats were actually a little bit like the organism itself.

  A good example here was the use of strength, but in a continuous manner. For example, if he wanted to move a stone, he’d naturally use the strength stat, but vitality and endurance would also be involved. However, if he were to move it again, the arrangement of significant statistics would change. In such a case, by determining whether muscles can withstand the strain, endurance and vitality stats would be much more important than strength itself. However, if he were to enhance his body with mana, the intelligence stat would be added to the equation. Other stats also contributed to this process, to a noticeable or imperceptible extent.

  And although he still couldn’t connect it properly, the intelligence stat apparently also accounted for the amount of mana held in the core. If he were guessing now, he’d say that intelligence also had a passive function, which regulates aspects of the absorbed neutral mana so that it matches the personal mana and then holds that energy as a resource. On the other hand, intelligence itself could then be a resource that is required to sustain a given pool.

  Aside from stats, Orion imagined how an alien but idle force was flowing into his core and then visualized what might be happening inside. As explained to him, the core, although it should theoretically look like a simple spatial object, to mana was actually a gateway to the soul. There, a wisp of energy fell into an ocean that was actually the essence of himself, only to be dominated by all aspects of that essence.

  Now, by controlling the mana, Orion was trying to move energy that had already been released from his core and was passively held in his body. Once again, to visualize this for a better understanding, if he moved the energy inside him, the core would spit out more to offset the deficiency. If he understood Zaiah correctly, he might even have access to energy that is actively working to sustain his body, but he’s been warned not to yet. This did not mean, however, that he could not try to extract more from the core than it naturally spit out.

  Then for a few hours, instead of gathering the mana from his body, he tried to get the core to release a controlled dose from the inside. He kept catching himself trying to treat the core like a regular organ from which he could release energy if he squeezed hard enough. At some point, instead of approaching the issue logically, he decided to imagine how the process might work.

  The soul, as a vessel for essence. Deep in him. Deeper than organs like the heart or lungs. In a different plane. But where?

  No effect.

  The soul, as a place in a sub-dimension, connected to him through the core. Theoretically unreachable for anyone else, but it was he who was the owner. Owner of what exactly?

  No effect.

  Forgetting to move his energy, he focused on his imagination, creating different scenarios in his mind. Time had long since ceased to matter, and the bodily variation of the subtle hunger was nothing compared to the hunger of the soul, making it almost imperceptible except for the noisy belly.

  The soul, as the meaning of himself. A collection of what he is and what he’s been through. The previous scenarios didn’t have to be wrong, but he wouldn’t have to locate the soul itself or try to interact with it.

  Just like you force yourself to do something you don’t want to do, or when you set a goal in life, you engage parts of yourself to pursue that goal. It was so simple yet so abstract.

  Once again he caught himself trying to metaphorize this part for understanding when it was only harmful. Just as you don’t attempt to locate the place in your brain where the thought originates, you don’t have to locate the soul to release the energy.

  It was his own soul, his own energy, his own core and his own body. Yes, intention alone wasn’t enough, because it’s not enough to want to move your hand to move your hand.

  You just need to do it. Just like that.

  Orion created an intention and then began to act on it. From the core a wave of mana was released and he immediately saw the blue bar in the upper left corner of his vision shrink. The sensation of mana was specific. On the one hand, he felt that he was draining real energy and would need time to naturally make up for the loss. On the other hand, it was like controlling a whole new organ, or maybe something between an organ and a sense.

  To see how much energy he could release, he decided to gather it with his free hand without releasing it. He realized that he could stretch this state a little bit and increase the throughput of the mana released from the core, but he instinctively knew that it would come at the expense of stretching the core itself.

  Mana gathered in his left hand began to make him feel strange pressure. Tension that eventually became uncomfortable, like something telling him to scratch his bare arm bones. The veins on his hands became swollen and his skin turned purple.

  The accumulated energy, guided by a random imagination that was generated when he panicked, worked accordingly. With a disgusting squelch and the sound of broken bones, his hand cracked like an egg thrown against a wall.

  “Damn.”

  awesome! ??