Samvek was the last to step through the dungeon gate. He sniffed at the air, like literally tilted his head and took a deep breath. “Can you feel that?”

  “Feel or smell? I can definitely smell rotting things. It’s like the meat department at the grocery store lost refrigeration two weeks ago but left the meat out all the same.”

  He stared at me for a second. “Now’s as good a time as any. Sit down.”

  I started to object that we were in a dungeon, that sitting would make me vulnerable, but I’d agreed to have him for a mentor. He seemed to know what he was doing so far, so I sat.

  He snorted at my hesitation, but didn’t say anything for another few seconds. “Meditate. Try to cycle the mana through you. Feel for any auras. Try to get a better understanding of this place. Your Perception can do more than just enhance your eyes and ears.”

  I settled onto the damp ground; the chill seeping through my pants. Around me, the graveyard sprawled in its eerie silence. Closing my eyes, I focused inward, drawing on the mana flowing through my veins. It was a subtle energy, pulsing in time with my heartbeat. I wondered if that was because my attunement was largely to life mana or if it had always been like that. I couldn’t recall.

  The sensation was akin to opening a new sense, one that extended beyond the physical realm. The mana coursed through me, illuminating my inner vision with a faint, ethereal light. I could sense the life force within me, a vibrant contrast to the deathly aura of the dungeon. The distinction had never been as stark as it was now. The energy which pervaded this place was not exactly the opposite of life mana but rather a twisting of that life.

  Gradually, I extended this newfound perception outward. The air around me felt heavy, saturated with ancient magic and the lingering echoes of souls long departed. Each breath I took seemed to draw in the essence of the graveyard, filling me with a profound awareness of the land's history. I could almost taste the sense of loss and depression around me.

  The mist that veiled the distant reaches of the graveyard appeared more tangible now, like a living entity. It shifted subtly, as if concealing secrets and watching over the countless graves. I sensed movements within it, fleeting and elusive, hinting at the presence of the undead. What the connection between the mist and the undead was, I couldn’t say for sure, but there seemed to be some.

  That sent my mind wandering down a rabbit trail as I pondered what affects the mana my body generated had on the world around me. Earth had been mana starved, yet clearly life had existed without it. Therefore, mana couldn’t be essential to life. On the other hand, there was no arguing how much more alive I felt now that I had mana flowing through me. It was like waking up from your entire life and finding out it had only been a dream. The difference was simply that stark.

  Samvek slapped the back of my head. “Focus.”

  I had no idea how he knew that my mind had wandered, but I did as instructed, biting back the retort that was about to slip past my lips. As I focused, I pushed my awareness of the mana downward. Beneath me, the ground held remnants of battles fought long ago. I could feel the vibrations of countless footsteps, the impact of fallen bodies, and the seeping sorrow of unfulfilled destinies. The dungeon itself seemed to mourn, its sorrow resonating with the mana within me.

  As I delved deeper into this meditation, the air around me began to shimmer faintly. Wisps of ghostly energy danced at the edge of my perception, a visual representation of the auras Samvek had mentioned. These spectral tendrils twisted and turned, forming patterns that spoke of ancient magic and hidden powers within the graveyard.

  It was often like this with the system. There was what I could see on the surface. Then, there was what I could sense beneath it. After that, there was always this layer of anticipation or potential, like there was more I couldn’t yet perceive.

  The stillness of the air was deceptive; it was charged with that same potential, like the calm before a storm. I could almost hear the whispers of the undead, their voices a mere murmur on the edge of my consciousness. They spoke of unrest, of battles waged and yet to be fought.

  Opening my eyes slowly, I looked at Samvek. His gaze was intense, watching me with a mix of curiosity and anticipation. “What do you sense?”

  I told him about what I’d been able to perceive. He nodded along. “Fair enough. That’s good for someone at your level. I can tell that you’re still adapting to your new senses. In some ways that works for you since you’ll be more sensitive to the changes but it can also be a disadvantage as you haven’t had time to train your senses.”

  “So, what now?”

  He let out a low, rumbling laugh. “Now? Now we’re just beginning. You’ll be meditating here for the next few hours. I want you to go beyond just senses. I want you to focus on absorbing some of the ambient mana. I’m not telling you to attune to it. You can simply convert it. But I want you to build up your aura and try to leave a mark here.”

  Dora asked, “What about us?”

  Samvek shrugged. “My oath is to my clan mate, but you’re his team. I’d suggest you try to imitate the exercises that I give him.”

  Nevin was busy looking at his notebook but chimed in, “Your instruction has helped so far.”

  Crag didn’t look happy about just sitting down and breathing quietly, as he often called meditation. “What about monsters?”

  “I’ll keep you safe. If there’s anything here I can’t handle, then you four should run in terror.”

  I didn’t groan. I was sure there was a purpose to this. And Samvek had earned enough of my trust for me to keep it up. Leave my mark on this place, huh? I began consciously trying to pull in the ambient mana around me. Cultivation wasn’t really a thing in the multiverse, at least not like those novels I’d read, but our bodies were constantly producing mana in small amounts while drawing in more from the environment. That was why mana regen dropped so precipitously on Earth when I left the area around my portal.

  Samvek added, “You can get extra practice if you use your mana to cast whenever it's full and then simply focus on absorbing more of the ambient mana in.”

  That was a good idea, but then again there was a reason he was the mentor. I quickly cast, Healing Grace even though I had no wounds. Then Boon-Bane and finally Levitation. It was kinda cool to be able to float in the air as I meditated. It made me feel like a small green alien who spoke with an oddly ordered sentence structure.

  Once I emptied half of my mana, which required numerous recasts now, I started focusing on pulling in mana as quickly as possible. In the process, I discovered something new. By allowing my natural regeneration rate to run its course, there was no indication of the type of ambient mana I was absorbing. But when I focused, it came to the forefront of my mind. It was only a small thing, but I felt it lead to something beneath the system. An underpinning knowledge known only to the powerful.

  With the mana here, that new discovery turned out, not to be such a good thing. It felt like I was shoving trash down my throat and, as it soaked into me, I felt dirty on the inside. Undeath was something vile, and I still didn’t really understand what it was. I simply knew that truth down to my core.

  My body continued to convert the mana I absorbed, but when I absorbed it faster, the conversion process took longer, so I got the chance to feel what I was taking in.

  Attune to Undeath Mana?

  The question popped up, and I triggered no immediately. I had no idea how it would affect me. It bothered me that this mana seemed to resonate with my newest partial Bloodbather evolution, but it didn’t boost the Darje evolution any further, so I didn’t let it stop me.

  Yet the longer I spent cycling this dark mana, the more I began to wonder if it would be an appropriate counter-balance to my life mana. I tried to picture myself controlling both death and life. I kept getting crazy mental images of me as a skeleton with an overly amorous succubus as a servant.

  After a while, I decided that if this was death mana, I might have tried to at least partially attune to it. I made a mental note to check with Samvek about whether there were limitations on how many different types of mana I could attune to.

  Then I began to focus in earnest on doing what he’d tasked me with doing. I began trying to push my mana out into the world and actively tried to create a bubble filled with life mana that would stand in contrast to the undeath that permeated the air around me.

  Chapter 10- Understanding

  I lost track of time, which wasn’t hard to do inside a dungeon with no sun or moon. While there was ambient light in the sky, but I had no idea what the source was and it never wavered. So much about dungeons defied physics or my incredibly limited understanding of the system. It was as I had been warned. The laws of nature didn’t always apply when mana was involved.

  Eventually, though, I opened my eyes. The first thing I noticed was how the mist around us had been pushed back. Everything for thirty feet in every direction around me was completely clear of the mist. Interestingly, that didn’t include my friends. They were outside of my area of influence. I put my hand on the ground to stand up since I couldn’t see where they’d gotten to, but then stopped as I felt something strange.

  I looked down to confirm it and sure enough blades of grass, a bright green, stared back at me. Healthy and flourishing in the spot where my hand had been. I thought about that old expression about letting grass grow under you and wondered again just how long I’d been meditating. It felt like an hour or two… maybe… at the max. Yet underneath me and spreading outward were small amounts of vegetation.

  It wasn’t like flowers had suddenly sprung up underneath me, but even a few bits of grass were far more life than I’d seen in the dungeon so far. The only vegetation other than this was a strange black moss that was growing on some of the tombstones.

  I quickly overcame that shock though and jumped to my feet. I heard Samvek’s voice an instant later. “They’re fine. I just moved them because the amount of mana you were putting out was making it hard for them to do the same. That title of yours with the double stats is definitely paying off. I can see why my fa… err… the clan leader was so interested in you.”

  At the same time, he pointed out where my friends were. He’d spread us out. Each of them had cleared a space around them of the mist, although Nevin’s was only showing an eight-foot radius while Dora and Crags were only a couple of feet around their bodies.

  “Why’s mine so much bigger than theirs?”

  “I feel like there’s probably a human mating joke in there somewhere, but if you’re talking about the size of the area they are imprinting on, then that’s because of a combination of factors. Based upon the stats that you shared with us earlier, you have a significantly greater amount of mana than even Nevin does. Add to that the way your mana seems to naturally weaken the undeath mana which permeates this place and you have your answer.”

  “I pointed down to the small amounts of grass poking up out of the ground. How long was I meditating for grass to grow or is that an effect of life mana?”

  He chuckled. “How long do you think you were meditating?”

  Judging from the way he asked the question; I chose to double my actually estimate. “Maybe four hours?”

  “Try twelve.”

  I whistled at that. “Any attacks during that time?”

  “Several, but I took care of it. That isn’t really what you want to ask me though is it?”

  “No, I was offered the opportunity to attune to undeath mana. I was going to ask you if you thought that was something I should do, but honestly the mana felt so vile that I don’t think I could go through with it even if you said it was the greatest thing ever.”

  “Necromancy is a dark art. Many newly inducted worlds have various forms of entertainment which cover stories about necromancers. Sometimes they are presented positively but most of the time rather darkly. There is plenty of speculation about how so many elements of the system can come through in the cultures of non-inducted worlds, but that is a philosophical discussion more suited to my Uncle Iroh. If you ever meet him, just don’t let him get started talking about tea.” Samvek suddenly shuddered, and that sign of emotion struck a chord. It was like I saw him in a whole new light.

  Before, Samvek had been a representative of the system in my mind. Perhaps a resource to be exploited. Maybe the clan would have become more, but in my mind, he was larger than life. The way he moved, the way he spoke, the knowledge he possessed, and the benefits his clan could provide to me—were all motivations to accept his offer. None of it made me see him as a person, though. This, whatever his discomfort about his uncle was, it did a great deal to humanize him, so to speak.

  More questions sprang to my mind. They weren’t the ones I needed to ask him, but I had a sudden momentary pang of guilt. “Are you saying that summoning monsters is an evil act?” My eyes couldn’t help but trail over to where Urg was standing.

  “No, and that isn’t what a necromancer does. What they are doing is closer to the art of creating a golem than summoning. A summoner uses mana to create a connection with another part of the multiverse and then pulls a creature to here from there. It can be evil if the summoner is forcing unwilling beings to serve him, but the proper way of summoning falls into one of three categories.

  “The first is negotiation. A mutual contract with a powerful summon. Typically, favors or agreements are traded in exchange for services rendered to the summoner. The second are designed for non-sapient beings. Such as elementals. Due to their lower mental functions, the summoner must create a basic set of instructions around the instincts and nature of their summoned. A few elementals have been known to gain sapience over time, but most of those summons’ were considered primal forces of nature. Then finally, there are beings like your eidolon. It forms a symbiotic relationship with its summoner and can’t be summoned by anyone else as long as you’re alive.

  “However, necromancy does something different. It calls back the soul of the being who resided in the body and traps it there.” His face was grave as he stared at me. “In turn, I’ve been told the process warps the soul and turns them into undead psychopathic killers. Their soul is there, but for most undead only a portion of their mind. Whether that is a blessing, considering the soul torture, is yet to be known.”

  “So souls are really a thing?” I knew that wasn’t his point, but for someone from Earth with so many different views on the afterlife, it was pretty much as big as finding out that we weren’t alone in the universe.

  “That entirely depends,” he shrugs, “whether our concept of a soul relates, or has any relevance to the myths of your world. I’m hardly an expert on the subject. You should just understand that whatever force is animating undead, it doesn’t want to be there, and it’s hate is twisted to destroy everything that is living.”

  I nodded. “So, undeath mana wouldn’t have been a good thing to attune to, but I realize that I don’t even know what attunement really means. I got something of a crash course in it by this race called the Ceorgi. But it turns out that they essentially were trying to turn me into a mana converter.”

  He nodded. “I haven’t heard of that race, but given the size of the multiverse that isn’t uncommon at all. You’ll find that there are plenty of bad people out there, but just like your friends, there are also good people to be found.

  “As for attunement. It is the process of making your body and to some extent your class core, synchronous with a particular type of mana. Each mana has its own benefits. For example, I’m attuned to lightning mana. It is part of our family’s tradition, and it provides a number of benefits; including, speed as a simple example, although such things take time to manifest.”

  “Is attunement permanent?”

  “That’s… more of a tricky question. The simple answer is no. You can fall out of sync with a mana type by not using it at all. It will probably always have some slight influence on your path even if it’s only a single percent of your attunement. So making good choices first is important.”

  “How many mana types can I be attuned to,” I asked. Now that the questions had started, they were just flowing out of me.

  “I suppose you could attune one percent to a hundred different mana types, but that would be idiotic.”

  “Okay, then let me ask it this way. How many mana types do you suggest that I attune to as my mentor?”

  He gave a low growl, which I took to be approval. “Better question. Two or three if the three synergize very well. You have life which will synergize with just about any type of mana but might not with two different types. So if you are attuned to life and fire, then you would have certain benefits, but if you are attuned to life, fire, and order, that might break down some of the benefits.”

  “What about attuning to death mana as a counter to life? It could be like the weapon to balance life?”

  “There is no such thing as death mana. Dead creatures don’t have mana. Even the ones we’re fighting here are undead rather than dead. Life mana is powerful in many ways, both for healing and for killing. It’s why fire and ice are not necessarily opposites. Both types can be synergized as variations in temperature change.”

  That made a lot of sense as he spoke about it. It also drove home the point that I didn’t know half as much as I thought I did. “What now?”

  “Good. You also know when to stop asking questions. Although, I suppose that was a question. Now is when we start training again. Although I’m going to be making you use your skills in live battle with the hope that we can advance them. I know that basic weapons skills are not high on your priority list, but trust me, it's worth leveling them. Once you get a few skills well beyond fifty, then I’ll consider focusing on your abilities or spells or even aura. Not that I don’t expect you to use those things in battle, so they may see some improvement. For now, though, we’re going to grind.”

  Chapter 11- Grinding