The door. It wasn't just heavy wood; it was a monolith. An unscalable fortress wall separating here – freezing, stinking, rat-infested here – from there. Wherever there was. Probably warm. Definitely smelling better than wet stone, rotting garbage, and my own unwashed, miniature self. The sheer size of it mocked my pathetic stick-figure arms. Knocking felt less like a request and more like a beetle tapping on a tank.
But the hunger… gods, the hunger. It wasn't just an ache anymore; it was a sentient beast gnawing on my spine, hollowing me out from the inside. It drowned out the bone-deep cold, the filth caking my skin, the terrifying alienness of my own reflection in that grimy puddle. Gold hair like tarnished brass? Emerald eyes that looked like they belonged on some forest spirit, not a starving alley rat? Aesthetic flourishes, my non-existent arse. More like cosmic trolling. Right now, though, vanity was a luxury buried deep under layers of primal need. Food.
Gathering every shred of strength in this frail, trembling husk, I lifted a fist. It felt like lifting a boulder. Thump. The sound was pathetically small, swallowed instantly by the damp alley air. Thump. Thump. I kept at it, a desperate, rhythmic plea against the weathered oak. My knuckles stung. My arm shook. My breath hitched, coming in shallow, painful gasps that fogged weakly in the frigid air. The cold wasn't just biting; it was leaching the very will to move. But the hunger was stronger. It was the only thing keeping me upright.
Please. Someone. Anything.
Silence. Just the distant, indifferent clang of the blacksmith, the skittering of unseen claws nearby. The crushing weight of abandonment pressed down. Maybe no one was home. Maybe they just didn't care. Maybe this was it – shivering out my pathetic second life in this miserable gutter before it even began.
Then, a sound. From beyond the door. The heavy scrape of a bolt being drawn back. My heart, a frantic bird trapped in a too-small cage, hammered against my ribs. Hope, fragile and stupid, surged. Yes!
The door creaked open, not wide, just enough for a sliver of warmer, smoky air to escape – carrying the faint, torturous scent of something edible – and for a face to appear. A man. Middle-aged, maybe? Lines etched deep around tired eyes, skin weathered and ruddy. He looked down, his gaze sweeping over me: the oversized, filthy tunic hanging off skeletal shoulders, the bare, grimy legs, the tangled mess of unnatural gold hair, the startling green eyes wide with a mixture of fear and desperate hope.
His expression didn't soften. It hardened. A flicker of something – annoyance? Pity? Disgust? – crossed his features before settling into weary resignation. He didn't say a word. Just looked at me for a long, awful moment that stretched into eternity in the alley's chill. Then, slowly, deliberately, he shook his head. No.
The door started to close.
"No! Wait!" The plea tore from my raw throat, hoarse and desperate. It sounded like a wounded animal, not words.
He paused. Just for a second. His eyes met mine again, that unsettling green against his tired brown. Then, without a word, he closed the door. The solid thunk of the bolt sliding back into place echoed like a death knell.
The fragile hope shattered, leaving behind a void colder than the alley. I slumped against the rough stone wall, the tiny spark of warmth from the opened door snuffed out instantly. Tears pricked at my eyes, hot and humiliating, but the cold froze them before they could fall. Stupid. So stupid to hope. What did I expect? A welcome wagon for the malnourished, alien-looking orphan?
I was just turning, the sheer effort making my head swim, ready to crawl back to whatever dubious shelter I'd found earlier, when the bolt scraped again. My head whipped around so fast spots danced in my vision.
The door opened a crack, just wide enough for an arm to thrust through. In a rough, work-worn hand was a thick slice of coarse brown bread. It wasn't steaming, wasn't adorned with butter or jam. It was plain, dense, probably a day old. It was also the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.
"Here," the man's voice was gruff, devoid of warmth. "Now go. Don't come back beggin'. Find the poorhouse down by the river gate."
The bread landed in my outstretched, trembling hands. It had weight. Substance. Realness. Before I could even stammer a thank you, the door slammed shut. The bolt thudded home. Final.
I stared at the bread. Shock warred with the ravenous hunger. They hadn't welcomed me. They'd paid me off. A single slice to buy my absence. The message was clear: You are trouble. You are unwanted. Go away.
The hunger won. My tiny fingers, clumsy with cold, tore into the bread. It was dry, slightly stale, tasting of grain and earth. It was ambrosia. I shoved it into my mouth, barely chewing, the rough texture scraping my throat but filling the gnawing void in my gut with blessed, solid warmth. I devoured it in seconds, licking every crumb from my palms, the lingering taste a bittersweet reminder of rejection served on rye.
Go away. Right. To where? The river gate poorhouse? Sounded cheery. But this alley, this specific patch of frozen misery behind the indifferent door, felt marginally less terrifying than wandering unknown streets in this fragile body. At least I knew the rats here. Sort of.
Stumbling on numb feet, I retreated deeper into the alley's gloom, away from the door's accusing presence. I found my previous nest – a shallow depression behind a pile of discarded, rotted timber and some moldering sacks, partially shielded from the worst of the wind whistling down the canyon of buildings. It stank of mildew and damp earth, but it was marginally less exposed. I burrowed under a relatively intact sack, pulling my bony knees to my chest, trying to trap any lingering warmth the bread had provided. The coarse fabric scratched my skin, but it was better than nothing.
Alone again. Truly alone. The silence pressed in, broken only by the wind's mournful whistle and the ever-present skittering. My mind, the only thing that felt remotely mine, raced. Schrift 'G'. The freaking Gamer ability. My brilliant loophole. Why hadn't it worked? I'd practically screamed Status! Menu! Activate! into the void of my own consciousness. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Just the hollow ache of hunger and the terrifying fragility of my existence.
The answer, when it came, was infuriatingly simple. Mana. This was Dicathen, the world of TBATE. Power here came from mana cores, not reishi. Quincy powers absorbed spiritual particles… but this world ran on a different operating system. My Quincy physiology was supposedly "tweaked" to manifest through mana… but I had no mana core. No core, no fuel. No fuel, no Schrift. No fancy Gamer interface. Just… me. Starving, freezing, powerless me in a child's body.
Oh, you magnificent cosmic bastard, I thought, a wave of furious sarcasm momentarily warming me more than the sack. 'Tweaked Quincy'. More like 'Quincy-shaped paperweight until further notice'. The entity's amused laughter echoed in my memory, feeling distinctly less funny now.
Right. No cheat code. No instant win button. Just the hard way. Like Arthur Leywin. Like every other poor schmuck in this world who wanted power and didn't have a dragon grandpa or reincarnation knowledge from the get-go. Form a mana core. From scratch. While starving and freezing to death in an alley. Fantastic.
I remembered the descriptions from the novel. Gathering the ambient mana – the "shards of light" Arthur visualized – pulling them in, compressing them, forging that central point of power within the body. It sounded mystical. Poetic. Right now, it sounded like my only lifeline.
Closing my eyes against the grimy reality of the alley, I tried to shut out the cold, the stench, the gnawing emptiness in my belly that the bread had only temporarily silenced. Easier said than done. My body screamed its complaints. But I focused. Inward. Searching for those shards of light.
At first, nothing. Just darkness. The internal echo of the void I'd escaped. The cold seeped deeper. My empty stomach staged a revolt. Doubt crept in. Maybe I can't. Maybe I'm too weak. Maybe this body isn't capable…
Then… a flicker. Not light, not exactly. A sensation. A faint, almost imperceptible pull. Like a tiny magnet buried deep in my gut, sensing iron filings scattered on the wind. It was weak, erratic, but it was there. Mana. Ambient energy. It felt… cold. Like the air in the alley. Sharp. Unforgiving. But it was energy. Potential.
Gritting my teeth – a surprisingly difficult task with how they wanted to chatter – I focused on that pull. Come here. Come to me. I imagined it not as gathering light, but as gathering the cold itself, the sharpness of the wind, the latent energy humming in the very stones beneath me. I visualized it as tiny, glittering motes of frost, drawn towards the center of my being, deep below my navel.
It was agonizingly slow. Like trying to herd drunken fireflies with a teaspoon. My concentration shattered constantly – a rat scurried too close, a gust of wind cut through my sack shelter like a knife, the relentless hunger pangs intensified. Each time, I had to claw my focus back, grasping for that faint magnetic pull, trying to coax another mote, another sliver of that frigid energy inward.
Sweat beaded on my forehead despite the cold, a clammy testament to the sheer mental effort. My limbs trembled not just from cold now, but from exhaustion. Hours crawled by. The grey light filtering down from above dimmed further as true night descended, bringing an even deeper, more penetrating cold. The alley became a realm of shadows and whispers, real and imagined.
But slowly, infinitesimally, something happened. The scattered motes I'd painstakingly gathered didn't just vanish when my focus broke. Some lingered. Hovering in that conceptual space deep within me. Not a core. Not even close. More like… dust motes suspended in a sunbeam. But they were there. Mine. A foundation.
The effort, however, was crippling. It felt like running a marathon while simultaneously solving complex equations in my head. And it burned energy. Energy I didn't have. The gnawing hunger, momentarily quieted by the bread, roared back with a vengeance, sharper, more insistent than before. It felt like my new, pitifully gathered mana was feeding directly off my physical reserves. Great. Magic-induced starvation. Just what I needed.
Utterly spent, physically and mentally, I slumped deeper under the sack. The cold was winning. The gathered motes of mana felt insignificant against the vast emptiness consuming me. Unconsciousness, a dark and welcoming tide, pulled me under before I could even think of trying to gather more.
---
Waking up was like being dragged backwards through gravel. Every muscle screamed. My throat was parched. The cold had seeped into my bones, making movement a monumental effort. Grey light, marginally brighter than the night before, filtered down. Morning. Maybe.
And the hunger… it was back, a constant, grinding companion. Worse, because yesterday I'd known food. Now I only knew its absence.
The memory of the bread, the rejection, the instruction to go away… it warred with the desperate need in my gut. The man had said not to come back. But he'd also given bread. What were the chances he'd do it again? What were the chances of finding food anywhere else in this state?
Spite warred with survival instinct. Survival won. Barely.
It took an age to crawl out from my meager shelter. My legs felt like overcooked noodles. The walk back to the imposing door felt longer, colder. The knock, when it came, was even weaker than yesterday. I slumped against the cold wood, shivering violently, too exhausted to stand.
Silence. Longer this time. Doubt, colder than the alley, seeped in. Maybe they wouldn't answer. Maybe yesterday was a one-time pity offering.
Then, the bolt. The door cracked open. The same tired face peered down. Same weary resignation. Same slow head shake. The door started to close.
Desperation lent a sliver of strength to my voice. "Please…" It was barely a whisper.
He paused. Looked at me. Really looked. At the shaking, the unnatural pallor beneath the grime, the desperation in the too-bright green eyes. A sigh, heavy with the weight of the world, escaped him. The door closed.
I slumped, the last bit of hope dying. Then, the bolt scraped again. The arm. This time, not just bread. A small, slightly chipped clay bowl, steaming faintly. Inside, a thin, greyish gruel. And another slice of the coarse bread balanced on the rim.
"Take it," the gruff voice commanded. "Eat. Then go. Down to the river gate. They take waifs there." The bowl was thrust into my hands. Warmth seeped into my frozen fingers, almost painful. The door slammed shut before I could react.
Gruel. It looked like dishwater with lumps. It smelled faintly of turnips and something unidentifiable. It was glorious. I devoured it, scalding my tongue in my haste, using the bread to scoop up every last drop. Warmth spread through my core, a fragile counterpoint to the pervasive cold. Strength, infinitesimal but real, seeped back into my limbs.
Go to the river gate. The instruction echoed. But the gruel and bread had bought me time. Precious time. And the alley, with its dubious shelter, was known territory. Venturing out into a strange city, weak and looking like a miniature, underfed elf? That sounded like a quick way to end up in a slaver's cart or a beast's belly.
Decision made. I'd stay. For now. And I'd work.
Back in my nest, bowl licked clean, I closed my eyes again. The process was marginally easier this time. Finding that internal pull, sensing the ambient mana – still cold, sharp, like winter air given form. It still felt like trying to catch smoke, but I had a slightly better sense of it now. The lingering motes from yesterday were still there, faint anchors. I focused, pulling in new motes, willing them towards that central point, compressing them, trying to make them stick, to build upon that foundation.
The hunger returned faster this time, sharper, as if the mana gathering accelerated my metabolism. It was a vicious cycle: gather mana, burn energy, get hungrier, weaken, struggle to gather more. But I persisted. Hunger and cold were my tutors, harsh and unrelenting. My only escape was inward, towards that nascent point of power.
I fell asleep again, exhausted, the gathered mana fractionally denser, but the emptiness in my stomach a yawning chasm.
---
Days blurred into a grueling cycle defined by cold, hunger, and the relentless, exhausting focus on gathering mana. My world shrank to the grimy alley, the imposing door, and the dark space behind my eyelids where I chased glittering motes of frost.
Every evening, as the light faded and the cold deepened to a knife's edge, I would drag myself to the door. My knocks grew slightly less feeble as my core formation progressed, but the routine remained the same. The pause. The weary face. The head shake. The closing door. The agonizing wait. Then, the scrape of the bolt, the thrust of an arm with sustenance – sometimes just bread, sometimes bread and gruel, once even a small, withered apple that tasted like heaven. Always accompanied by the gruff command: "Go to the river gate." Always met with my silent, stubborn presence the next dusk.
A strange, unspoken understanding developed. They wouldn't let me in. They wouldn't acknowledge me beyond the necessary transaction. But they fed me. Reliably. It wasn't kindness; it felt more like paying a toll to keep misfortune from their doorstep. A breadcrumb bribe for peace. I took it. Gratefully, resentfully, but I took it. It was survival.
The food, consistent if meager, began its work. The terrifying skeletal sharpness softened, just a little. My arms and legs, while still thin, lost that horrifying fragility. A faint flush, almost invisible beneath the perpetual alley grime, touched my cheeks sometimes. The unnatural pallor receded. I still looked like a strong breeze would carry me off, and the gold hair and green eyes remained jarringly alien, but I no longer looked like a corpse waiting to happen.
My mana core formation became my obsession, my religion. During the day, huddled in whatever meager patch of weak sunlight managed to penetrate the alley, I gathered. At night, shivering under my sack, I gathered. In the brief moments after receiving food, before the hunger roared back, I gathered. The process was still brutally taxing. Every mote pulled in felt like lifting a mental weight. Compressing them, forcing them to coalesce, was like trying to squeeze stone. The mental fatigue was crushing, often leading to headaches that pulsed behind my eyes. And the hunger… it was a constant companion, a roaring beast temporarily silenced by the evening's offering, only to awaken with renewed fury as my mana work burned through the calories.
But I was making progress. Tangible progress. That initial dusting of motes had become a swirling, dense cloud deep within my center. It wasn't a core yet, not solid, but it had mass. It had presence. It hummed with a faint, icy energy. I could feel it now, even when not actively gathering – a cold, compact knot of potential power.
The strangest thing was the nagging sense of familiarity. Not with the TBATE method specifically, but with the process itself. The focused intent, the visualization, the sheer mental discipline required to shape raw energy… it felt known. Like a half-remembered skill. Was it a bleed-over from my fragmented past life? From the countless hours spent grinding in games, focusing on intricate strategies? Or something else, something buried deeper? I couldn't grasp it, but the echo was there, a ghostly hand guiding mine, making the impossible task feel merely… arduous.
The days grew shorter, the nights longer and colder. Frost began to etch intricate patterns on the cobblestones in the mornings. The wind carried a sharper bite, whispering of the winter storm clouds gathering on the horizon. My sack shelter became woefully inadequate. I started pilfering discarded scraps of cloth, stuffing them inside my tunic, layering for warmth. My breath plumed thickly in the air constantly. The rats grew bolder, less afraid of my shivering form.
And still, I gathered mana. The swirling cloud within me grew denser, colder, sharper. The effort required to add to it increased exponentially. It felt like trying to compress a glacier. But I pushed. Hunger and cold were my whips. The promise of power, of survival, my only carrot.
---
It happened on a night when the cold was so intense it felt like the air itself was freezing solid in my lungs. Ice glazed the alley walls. I was huddled deep under my nest of sacks and rags, shaking uncontrollably, my focus frayed to breaking point by the sheer effort of clinging to consciousness. The evening's gruel felt like a distant memory, its warmth long gone. I was gathering mana on autopilot, a desperate, last-ditch effort to generate some internal heat, any at all.
I pulled in the ambient energy. It felt like drawing in shards of ice, sharp and unforgiving. I fed them into the swirling maelstrom at my center. It resisted. It was dense, almost solid now, radiating a profound, bone-deep cold that mirrored the external freeze. Adding more felt like trying to cram snow into a tightly packed snowball. It wouldn't go. It pushed back.
No. Not now. Not after all this. A surge of stubborn fury, born of pure desperation, cut through the haze of cold and exhaustion. I needed this. I refused to freeze to death inches away from the power that could save me.
With a mental roar that echoed only in the confines of my skull, I forced it. I visualized not just adding snow, but hammering it. Compressing the entire swirling mass with every ounce of will, every shred of lingering strength, every spark of defiance against the cold and the void and the cosmic bastard who'd dropped me here.
CRACK.
Not a sound, but a sensation. A profound, internal shift. Like tectonic plates grinding into place. The resistance vanished. The swirling, chaotic cloud of icy motes… collapsed. Inwards. Downwards. Into a single, infinitesimal point.
And then… ignition.
A point of pure, cold light flared into existence deep within my core. Not warm. Not comforting. It burned with the intense, focused cold of a glacier's heart, of a star forged from ice. It was small, impossibly dense, radiating a palpable aura of power that thrummed through my entire being. The chaotic energy was gone, replaced by a single, stable, intensely cold star.
My eyes snapped open, startlingly green in the near-total darkness of the alley. I wasn't shivering anymore. Not from cold, anyway. Adrenaline, pure and potent, surged through me, momentarily banishing exhaustion and hunger.
I had done it. A Dark Stage Mana Core. The absolute foundation of power in this world. It hummed within me, a tiny, frozen sun, a wellspring of potential.
I lay there, breathing raggedly, staring up at the narrow strip of night sky visible between the leaning buildings. Stars glittered, cold and distant, mirroring the cold fire now burning within my own center. A slow, weary, but utterly triumphant grin spread across my grimy face, unseen in the dark.
As this happened translucent holographic green text appeared before me,making my palpable excitement greater.
[Schrift "G" has activated,gamer system is now online]
[You have gained the following for the activation of the Schrif "G"
1)starter pack(placed in invantory)
2)Two Transcendent rank traits cards(placed in invantory)
3)awaking of two random elements with their deviants]
Looking at the rewards i instantly opened opened my Status window,my heart racing.
[Name:none(input)
Race:Quincy
Age:3
Level:0
Class:none
Trait(s):Primogenitor(origin/sealed),unique physiology(mystical),rencarnator(Legendary)hard worker(Uncommon),
Mana core:black stage
Affinity(s):earth,wind,sound,gravity,Emitter(healer)
Stat(s):(exapand)
Skill(s):(expand)
Invantory(exspand)
Quests(exapand)
Shop(exapnad)(sp:0)]
After looking at my status screen i firt gave myself the name Adam leaving my sername then i went into my invantory an clicked open on my starter pack.
[You have open starter pack x1 and gained the following:
1)System points(10,000)
2)Rear skill (appraisal)
3)gold coins (100)
4)Uncommon rank skill (bow-arts)
5)Uncommon rank skill (martial-arts)
6)epic++ rank (equipment card)]
Knowledge flooded my mind as the skils took root,this process was both a unique experience and a learning experience to, me after receiving my rewards,i focused and my mind once more and drew mana to myself as i did I began visualization of a ball of dirt soon the visualized ball appered within my palm.
As i did this a smile appered on my face not due to the act of performing magic, though such a thing was still amazing in my eyes it was the fact i was able to form a spell purly from mana from the environment.
[End of chapter]
Extra information
[Stats
Strength:12
Constitution:16
Agility:20
Intelligence:25
Magic:11
Luck:63
Prestige:
free status points:0]
Note:baseline states for a normal human adult man is 10.
[Unique physiology:
Effect 1:every 10 levels all stats increse by 50
Effect 2:growth +240%
Effect 3:???(locked)
Effect 4:???(Locked)
Effect 5:???(locked)]
[Reincarnator:
Effect 1:Luck +60
Effect 2:growth +50%]
[Hard worker:Effect growth +10%]