The World Cataclysm

Chapter 28: Mana Sensing

'Dammit, it was too real!'

Early in the morning, Dave had woken with beads of sweat on his forehead, gasping desperately for air like he was drowning several moments ago. His dream just felt too real for him that he even thought he never had his Regression.

Sighing hardly, never did he imagined that he will repeat his 5 years of hell in one dream. It was the same as riding a roller coaster yet understanding that it was your imagination before you even sat on it.

His dream had only made him remember of his uselessness in his past life, only further convincing him to not waste his second chance. He didn't have an interesting backstory in his past life nor he had any fabulous interactions with other Enhancers nor he had any vendetta coming with him from the past life.

He literally was just a nobody in his past life! And a world never was kind to such people.

For now, he just wanted to become strong enough to survive future ordeals since, as he had remembered, their city would turn into the place of madness.

Their city, Newdale, was one of the most populated places in Federation, so a lot of dangers lurked in the city. Even Dave had previously heard about it only from rumours, yet now he wanted to see it himself...Well, he doubted he had any options to choose.

With a simple goal in his mind, he cast aside other disturbing thoughts and entered a meditative state. Immediately sensing differences between meditation with 2 points in spirit and 5 points in spirit, a smile bloomed on his face.

He felt mana more clearly and sensed how more clusters of mana were drifting towards him than before. Indeed, with a higher spirit stat, mana absorption was much more effective. If mana absorption was imagined as a whirlpool surrounding his body, then spirit stat defined how large was a whirlpool, while an increase in intelligence increased its suction force.

Both stats gave similar effects yet there was a reason why he was increasing his spirit before intelligence. Intelligence stat was about the brain matter, yet at the same time, it increased the quality of a person's soul. Spirit, on the other hand, increased the size of a soul and provided Enhancer with more soul power to use. Soul power was more like a mental strength or willpower and was easy to increase with meditation than an intelligence.

He wasn't in much of a need for intelligence since he didn't have any skills to apply it and it would be harder to obtain points for spirit stat with higher intelligence. Higher the quality of a soul, harder it would be to increase it.

After 2 hours of meditation, he felt himself much better because it did have calming effects on the mind. Then, he moved to the next step or precisely, to the next skill he wanted to learn. However, before it, he wanted to check his progress.

[David Murckly

Level: 5

Class: None

Survival coins: 214

Mana: 10/10

Strength: 16

Agility: 12

Stamina: 11

Intelligence: 11

Spirit: 5 (+1)

Free points: 0

Innate ability: Regression

Skills: Elementary Cooking (LVL 2), Gaming (LVL 8), Mathematics (LVL 7), Leadership (LVL 1), Meditation (LVL 3), Flash Step (LVL 1), Mana Application (LVL 3), Mana Threads (LVL 3), Mana Barrier (LVL 2), Mana Enhancement (LVL 2), Reinforced Breathing (LVL 2), Swordsmanship (LVL 5), Battle Focus (LVL 4)]

'2 points increase in mana just in 2 hours! Nice to have high spirit! Also, I had reached 5 points in spirit and already have intelligence high enough to learn a new skill. Ahhh, surely, learning it would be much trickier than other skills.'

He wanted to learn a skill called Mana Sensing which he had previously learnt with a help of the System. It was his first and an extremely convenient skill for scouting and detection, which he had bought from the military with his contribution points, a skill with a lower range for detection than Brian's Life Pulse yet still important for him if he wanted to go hunting solo again.

If he had learnt it before he had gone hunting solo, he would have easily detected a mutated dog before it even attacked, allowing him to make preliminary plans.

He spread his senses all over his room and with a higher spirit stat, started sensing changes in the mana surrounding him. He immersed himself in the feeling of connecting with mana, how it washed over his body and swept over his room, but it was much harder than he had imagined.

It was like sensing air turbulence and deducing your surrounding solely by it, which was hard by itself. Moreover, his affinity with mana was too low to clearly sense mana surrounding him, making it even more difficult to learn Mana Sensing.

One thing to say about learning skills with a help of the System was that it ignored any other restrictions and helped to reach the instinctual state of learning it. In that way, skills would be just something like a hunch; you knew how to use it on an instinctual level but was ignorant of the process, making the use of a skill unnatural. It needed a long time to get adapted to such a feeling.

Normally, ordinary survivors would have never been able to learn Mana Sensing with their own efforts, not because it was impossible but due to poor mana affinity and a bizarre way of learning it, since no one would be able to replicate the notion of spreading your senses outwards, yet Dave had already experienced it before, so he was able to get a grasp of it after half an hour.

Perhaps, not clearly as in his past life, but he had sensed blurry shapes of objects in his room. It wasn't perfect but he was confident that he would get better in it.

[You have learnt Mana Sensing (LVL 1).]

[Regression is reacting towards your skill.]

[Your affinity with mana is too low to further increase its level.]

'Well, I think it's good enough. Several items to increase my mana affinity and training should solve my problem.'

He had also an option to wait till his mana affinity reached the needed level since he was still adapting to mana, yet it would take too much time, so he had discarded it. Usually, people had varied mana affinities based on internal processes with Awakeners having higher mana affinities than others.

Truly, some people are blessed!

Adding training Mana Sensing in his daily routine, he tried to expand his senses further, outside of his room. After several tries, his senses were able to penetrate the wall, moving further a corridor, he had sensed someone sitting in the kitchen.

Due to the distance, his senses had become more blurry, making it hard to identify a person, but he guessed that it was Rebecca, who usually woke up earlier than others. Already mentally tired from Mana Sensing, he decided to catch a breath and have his own breakfast before others. He still was hiding from others that he was injured yesterday.

Leaving his room, he was moving to greet Rebecca, planning to grab some cans of food and bottles of water, but he noticed that she was pondering about something with deeply furrowed eyebrows.

"What are you thinking so hard early in the morning?"

Flustered by his question and noticing Dave in the kitchen, she said not to worry about her, so he just shrugged it off.

"Ehm...So how are you feeling today?" Rebecca clearly looked concerned about him.

"I'm feeling better today, so don't worry about it!"

'Well, it is still painful to move, but I can cope with it.'

Saying one thing and thinking another one, he grabbed his share of food and started gulping it down. He needed nutrients to restore his body and was immersed in eating, so he ignored an intense stare which Rebecca was giving to him.

"When do you think would we be able to meet our close ones? Are they alive? Can we venture outside the city?"

Bombarded by her questions, Dave decided to keep his silence since he couldn't assure her completely. He couldn't tell her that it was better to imagine others as dead or not to have high hopes for it.

Finally, when she stopped asking him questions, he decided to drop his question.

"Who is it? Family? Best friend? Or someone else? We are all in the same boat."

With his words, Dave sighed hardly reminiscing his past life.

When she heard him sighing, Rebecca couldn't help but think about it.

'Why does it seems that he already has deep scars in his heart?'

Rebecca was already close to crying as tears can be seen in her eyes, yet she tried to calm herself. Even though she had watery eyes and wasn't in a mood to speak freely, she still shared with him her circumstances.

"My parents had died several years ago, leaving me with my brother William to look after. Due to the university attendance, he lived in the dormitory of his high school before everything had happened, so I'm worried about him."

Hearing her story, Dave thought everyone had something to say about their close ones and Rebecca wasn't an exception. Only one thing seemed strange about it; a name William was oddly familiar to him.

'William..William...William...Will!'

Recalling a certain name from his past life, he was surprised to hear it now. However, he thought that it might be any other person with the same name since William was quite common in their city, so he decided to ask more about him.

"Rebecca, can you tell me your surname again?"

"What is it for? My surname is Bright. Rebecca Bright."

Caught off guard by Dave's sudden question, she still answered him.

Hearing her surname, he also found it quite familiar.

'Yep, it's definitely him! Young top-Enhancer of the future, William Bright, going with a title Slaughterer!'