Spending my retirement in a game

chapter 17

Eisen sat down on his bed and grabbed the book to train mana manipulation with out of his new Backpack, which he then leaned against his nightstand.

Flipping open the book, he skipped forward to chapter four, which concentrated on how to control mana when it is outside one's body. He already figured out how to compress it inside of his body and push it out through his skin to let it float over his palm, as well as layer it at the front of his Hammer.

And he managed to somewhat control the mana outside of his body as well, when he let it somewhat beat in the rhythm of his heartbeat. But this time around, he was supposed to do something else with his mana. The basic excersize in the book basically just told him to change the shape of the sphere later. At first maybe change it into a cube, but at some point also more complicated shapes like general items one had laying around.

Eisen started out with the basics, slowly compressing it down and then moving it to his hand to push it slowly through the skin on his palm. When he felt the slight stinging, he opened his eyes and looked at the sphere on top of his hand. Right now it really was only a rough sphere shape, something one might expect to see when a bright light shines outward from a single point to create the illusion of a bigger sphere, and Eisen knew that a lot more mana than necessary was lost every single second.

So the first thing he wanted to do was change that. He knew that there was something 'solid' in the core of the sphere, so he only had to copy the feeling of the weird solid energy and replicate it throughout the whole sphere.

Little by little, the core grew and the shine shrank as Eisen imagined the energy growing harder, round and flat like a glass bead.

Eisen slowly used his left hand to touch the solid sphere of mana, and immediately felt how cold it was to his touch, but the more he felt it, the more the cold felt like heat, and the heat felt like the cold. It was a curious and unknown feeling to Eisen, but the more he felt it the more he wanted to feel it.

He began to try and change its shape slowly, but it just wouldn't turn into the cube that Eisen wanted. There were only six small, flat surfaces that formed along the sphere, but not enough to actually call it a cube, or even have it be recognized as such by a third person.

More and more, Eisen tried to refine the shape, but hit a counter-stop at some point. No matter what he tried, it wouldn't change anymore. So to at least level his Mana Manipulation skill up a bit, he began changing the shape from the mock-cube into the sphere and back, repeating this cycle continuosly until...

[Mana Manipulation reached Level 100 in Rank 0, upgrading to Rank 1]

[It is now easier to manipulate the shape of Mana]

[Due to Ranking-up your Mana Manipulation Skill, you gained +1 INT and +1 WIS]

Immediately Eisen felt a Major difference to before. The mana that could not be turned into a cube no matter how much he tried, took on the form he willed it to as if poured into a mold.

"That's more like it!" Eisen laughed out loud and looked at the cube. He held out his left hand and slowly touched the tip of his index finger against the corner of the mana-cube. Seeing that it was surprisingly sharp, but still gave in to his touch, he smiled and continued reading on further. However, even before he could finish the first page, he read the warning that from then on it would only be useful with a Rank of 2 or higher in Mana Manipulation, since the rest of the book had to do about manipulation of element infused mana, and this was only unlocked when one reached rank 2.

Thus, Eisen chose to rather train his Mana Manipulation ability for the time being.

Since what he did last night even gave him extra Wisdom, Eisen decided to continue on this train of thought. He only somewhat knew what a human heart looked like, since he could guess it from seeing animal hearts on the rare occasions that he cooked it in the past. However, since he wanted to take this chance and copy the shape of his heart as detailed as possible, he tried out something new.