Kapitel 18: A Sad God I — Ambrosya

It was late in the evening when I made it back home. I laboriously lugged around two large bags of goods that I would eat over the course of the week.

Every single product was brimming with mana when viewed through Mana Vision.

I had already eaten the ones I could eat on my way home, filling up my stomach to the brim. I was fuller than full. The berries and the fruits I bought had all been consumed over the hours I had been walking.

Spending 27G on food was such a good investment. I could already feel myself growing. Now, I just had to meditate to stabilize my growth and make it permanent.

Thus, here I was, sitting in Caelum's cramp home, with a wall of segregated trash on one side, and an altar to the goddess Alliyaha on the other. I could see the night sky through my window, with one of Emerallia's thirteen moons shining through it, illuminating my face with moonlight.

This was such a unique environment for meditation.

I totally had the image that the first place I would be meditating in would be a zen garden, with a mana spring nearby and an enchanted grove. Not in a stinky bachelor's home.

Especially with the knowledge I had of this world, I had so many nice options. But I chose here.

"May the gods be damned by these circumstances," I cursed as I realised how I could've been in a much better place had I worded my wish better.

Anyways, it was time to get to work.

With my body and soul combined by Body-Spirit Merging, I felt the lively mana of Emerallia around me. My Lesser Human status synergised with my merged body and spirit, blessing me with a grand affinity to mana.

Every part of me was thus very sensitive to mana. From my blood to my bones, from my spirit to my psyche, everything. Mana was drawn to me, and I to it.

I closed my eyes and focused.

The sensations that came with perceiving mana filled me. Physical mana was like a tangible weight that I could feel pressing onto my skin and flowing through my veins. Spiritual mana was a nagging sensation of a vague presence in the air and inside my soul.

The sensations piled upon me as I basked in the feeling of absorbing mana. Streams and streams of the resource flowed into my body like there was no tomorrow.

The mana from the air combined with the mana from the food I had eaten and created a sort of reaction. This reaction was influenced by will, tempering the different parts of my body and supplementing my abilities.

I should have been sleeping, but this was a better substitute. I had to develop the discipline to meditate instead of sleep.

The strongest people in this world were in a constant state of meditation, even if they were moving around and fighting. They were constantly getting stronger, even if each increment was minuscule.

If I could do even a fraction of such a practice, then my growth would advance by leaps and bounds. Though it would be tiring at first as my body would still be in the process of adapting.

It should take a week or two for me to make the initial adjustment from sleep to meditation.

During that time, I would be sleep deprived and very incoherent. But, just like everything else I was doing, it was an investment.

...

Time passed like this.

When I was not meditating, I was eating. When I wasn't eating, I was meditating.

I did nothing else. Boredom? What was that? This feeling of clawing at the life energy of the world itself and using it for my own purposes was exquisite.

After all, with every use of Mana, Emerallia died a little.

But... no one in the world knew that. No one at all—and that included other intelligent races.

Hours turned to days as I stayed faithful to my routine. I kept to it for seven days straight. I was literally baptised by mana and blessed with its graces.

On the eighth day, I finally stopped. I had to make the necessary preparations to evolve myself back into a Human.

That, and simply eating nutritious food and meditating wasn't quite sufficient. I had reached a threshold for how much I gained from it.

I needed more.

I had to venture out to retrieve the resources I needed. But doing so with this body was dangerous. I lacked the strength to fight even the weakest of beings in this world. I was at the bottom of the barrel.

Yet it was integral that I did it in this state. It was through experiencing life in this fragile form would the essence of reality be engraved onto my skin and bones. Everything that I did in this state would reflect my path in the future.

It was akin to babies and children being susceptible to any foreign influences. Or how a person's childhood largely defined what they would become in the future.

Thus, I left the comfort of my home, cloaked in flowing cloth. It was early morning, and the sun had yet to appear beyond the horizon. The air was fresh and the mana was calm. Behind me, where the Luster Mountain loomed, the storm clouds had dissipated.

The beasts there had determined a victor.

I walked deep into the Great Plains, trudging past the farms and heading further south. I followed the empty road at first before eventually moving away from it. I navigated the area through landmarks that I detailed in my writing.

I walked for a few hours until I arrived at a patch of trees.

"It should be around here..." I muttered as I fell to my knees and began searching the ground for any anomalies.

I searched for almost an hour.

"If only I made it more f*cking obvious and simply said that nobody realised that it was there, my life wouldn't be this hard."

I guess this was karma for all the characters that I killed off and forced into suffering no matter what.

When my frustration reached its peak, I found it.

"FINALLY!" I roared.

By my feet was a small golden bead embedded into the stone. It shimmered in the sparse sunlight that passed through the canopy of leaves.

This little bead was a path to wealth.