Chapter 453: One of us

Passive Skill: Mana Pulse Circulation (Low Arcane)

The user's mana pathways are not only enhanced but supercharged with pulsating mana, passively optimizing all their physiological functions. This results in vastly increased stamina, increased energy reserves, and near instantaneous healing of minor to moderate injuries. The effects increase with more mana, and the constant high-speed circulation of mana through the brain grants enhanced cognitive clarity.

Passive Skill: Mana Veil (Low Arcane)

The user becomes nearly imperceptible to all forms of magical and physical detection, making them almost impossible to locate by normal or supernatural means. The veil not only blurs their outline but also distorts light and sound to the point of making the user appear invisible to the naked eye. Incoming attacks are not only distorted but are also partially redirected or nullified, and disrupting their mana flow becomes an almost futile effort.

Passive Skill: Mana-Fortified Mind (Low Arcane)

The user's mind becomes an impenetrable fortress, fortified by impossibly complex mana weaves. This passive grants immense resistance to all forms of mental attacks, including illusions, mind control, and psychic attacks. Additionally, the passive allows the user's mind to endure the immense strain of using powerful skills and traits.

Passive Skill: Thermal Rebirth Matrix (Low Arcane)

The Thermal Rebirth Matrix allows one to absorb and convert ambient and internal heat at an exceptional rate. The user can regenerate from grievous injuries, including regrowing entire limbs and organs, almost within moments. This process also cleanses the body of any poisons or harmful substances. The user now possesses high resistance to all but the most extreme flame and heat-based attacks, making them virtually impervious to most forms of thermal damage.

Passive Skill: Mana Sculptor (Low Arcane)

The user becomes a Mana Sculptor capable of shaping mana into intricate and versatile constructs. These constructs maintain exceptional durability and adaptability while gaining enhanced precision and refinement. The user can now create more complex forms to serve a wider variety of purposes. These constructs often possess special properties like self-repair and operate with improved efficiency and stability, allowing for longer-lasting creations without additional mana expenditure.

These are the passives I’m seriously considering.

One that grants minor mana-based healing, body strengthening, and a bit of overall improvement.

Another that grants mana-based mind protection and likely slight improvement to cognitive abilities.

And then there’s the healing passive based on thermal energy and the Mana Sculptor thingy that I really liked the look of.

The dark horse here is mana

veil

, honestly, the part about distorting the trajectory of incoming attacks interests me, and then there’s the part where it promises to help me hide my mana, which I can only think will become more and more important as I grow stronger.

Overall, any of these passives could give me a huge boost. Though the descriptions are about as simple as ever.

With a few changes, one might even cause one to mistake them for epic passives, but the term 'arcane' in their name speaks volumes. You could easily have a passive with 'rare' in the name and damn near the same description, yet the difference would be immense.

Even so, I can only ever bring myself to think of them as learning tools offered by the system. Sure, it’s a goddamn arcane passive, and I’m quite sure that means there can’t be many people that have one.

Getting it before level 300 could also improve my selection of Primary classes when I get my next upgrade. And given a few months or years, I may even learn to emulate the passive’s effects on my own. Perhaps I could even turn it into a more active healing skill, right? Right?

They’re all low arcane, so I could always just wait until I can afford something in the range of mid arcane, but I bet if I did and got to mid arcane, I would just convince myself to wait for something in the range of upper arcane.

These are tough times indeed. I truly have the mother of all first world problems: too many good passives to pick from.

“Biscuit, I’m frustrated and I can’t decide,” I groan, laying back against the rocky ground.

The cute corgi leaves the pile of items that he was selling. It’s interesting to note that it’s the first time I’ve seen him interact with the system this way. Well, he has been able to use the Community from the beginning, so it’s not too big of a surprise, but some functions still seem to be locked on his end, I think.

His cold nose boops its way into my ear, and I hear him sniffling for a moment before he moves a bit and licks my temple.

He lays down next to me, resting his chin against my neck while I lift my hand, mindlessly stroking his back. I can feel his warm breath against the bottom of my chin, and it tickles, and I let it be.

And for a while, I rest, just like that.

“So, how is the group?” I ask, finally broaching the topic with the others.

“Not well after the Mana Desert,” Dennis replies, his tone solemn, while his brother remains silent. Though I can imagine him silently nodding along.

“Sophie took Izzy and left the group after getting into a fight with Tess,” Aaron eventually confirms.

“I see.”

“You don’t seem surprised at all,” Dennis says, though he looks surprised himself.

This time I decide to ignore it and shrug, but gently, to avoid interrupting Biscuit’s rest.

“Believe it or not I think about these things, little twerp. And if you’re worried about it, don’t be. You may not have noticed, but Tess can be a bit naive at times and sometimes she pushes things too far. She's still a good person though, and Sophie knows that.”

“They could always just solve it with a bikini clad mud fight,” Aaron suggests, sighing alongside me.

Right now, I'd love to see the glare Lily’s surely sending his way, but I can't interrupt our future Absolute's rest to look.

“How is Min-Jae?” I poke and receive the silence I expected in return.

“They tried to apologize, but he told them to—now how did it go?— ‘eat shit,’” Lily responds in the twins place.

"You know, Kim can be really stubborn when he wants to," Aaron grumbles.

"Those orbs he shot at us really hurt," Dennis adds.

As the sky grows darker, I create a larger thermal orb and reduce the light being produced.

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Just for fun, I turn it into a cube the size of both my fists put together. I play with it a bit longer until I create a change in the thermal energy within. The light shifts and fluctuates in a similar way to how a campfire would.

With just a bit more work, even the heat it radiates changes, radiating just as flames would. Sometimes the heat hits one place stronger than the other. I tried to come up with a way to add sound effects with kinetic energy, though I’ve failed so far.

Standing up with Biscuit in my arms, I create a manabloc chair for each of us, seated around the huge boulder.

As they sit in the chairs, I concentrate a bit more and make them a touch more flexible so they deform them slightly in response to the weight. Then I fix them in place, each chair perfectly shaped to the position they’re in.

“Manabloc chair, is that what you called it?” Aaron asks, giggling quietly, but I can tell his heart isn’t in it.

As Biscuit drifts off to sleep, I form a mana arm to reach out and grab a blanket and gently drape it over him, allowing his head to peek out. Then, I begin petting him softly.

Biscuit occasionally twitches and lets out a series of soft barks in his sleep, but gradually relaxes as I keep running my hand over him.

An hour passes in silence, and it's strangely comfortable to just sit here after two weeks of crafting and training.

The steady rise and fall of his breathing becomes the only sound I hear, and for the first time in a while, I let myself relax, enjoying this quiet break from the recent madness.

I carefully break the silence, looking at the corgi in my arms, “When Biscuit was just a small pup, his owner’s granddaughter would leave him out in the wind, snow, and rain, without food or water. And she would record videos of her “saving” him, probably with titles like

Saving a cute corgi from the rain and bathing him in warm water.

Bringing a cute corgi in from the snow and giving him a warm spot by the fire. Finding a hungry corgi outside and feeding him.

The last was her favorite and she often left him to starve. I think she kept making new accounts, posting the videos, in the vain hope the videos would go viral, and kickstart her ‘career’ by bringing her an audience.” I state, nearly spitting the words as they come.

After gently booping Biscuit’s nose I look at Lily and the twins, who seem to have been stunned into silence.

“She never got her viral break, and so she kept trying until she got bored, and gave Biscuit to her grandparents, who she lived with—and who must have known what she has done.”

I pause for a moment to calm myself down, and only when I stop feeling like I want to punch someone, do I rest my hand back on Biscuit’s head.

“Being a simple pup and a normal dog, Biscuit never understood. He shared some of the images and feelings he had back then, so I know a bit about what happened.” My eyes meet Lily’s. “He was always happy when she pulled him from the rain and snow when she fed him after starving him. He loved her. Just how silly is that.”

No one says anything for a while, and I increase the output of my thermal cube, the light flickering across the nighttime scenery.

“Aaron and I come from a very wealthy family,” Dennis says, the first to break the silence. He and his brother exchange a series of messages through their link before he continues, “And by wealthy, I mean tens of millions. At least we were, you could say.”

There’s a smile on his face as he continues, stumbling over his words for a moment as his shyness gets the better of him, “Our parents died when we were younger than Isabella, and our family’s passed us around ever since. Grandpa wasn’t that bad, and we spent a few nice years with him. Then he died, and we got sent to our uncle and then to our aunt.”

Aaron joins in, “She always hated our parents but didn’t mind taking us in. You know, it meant she could take a bite of all that money they left us after all.”

“Her and everyone else who got the chance. Father’s old friends, distant family members, the state, the city, our accountants—they all made sure enough got lost along the way.”

“We never saw a cent. There’s still some locked away in secure accounts, but most of it’s gone now.”

“Auntie took care of it.” Dennis smiles even wider. “She also liked to show us how she despised her ‘whore’ sister’s brats,” he reaches over his shoulder and taps his back, “We have plenty of scars to prove it. Of course, nothing too visible, we wouldn’t want people to start asking and take us away.”

“Us and the money.”

“And the money,” Dennis confirms.

Aaron leans back, eyes distant, as if recalling memories he’d rather keep buried.

There’s a shared understanding between the twins, the kind that can only come from years of unspoken pain, but they don't linger on it for long.

The casual way they speak about their past almost makes it sound normal like they've long since accepted the unfairness of it all.

It’s clear they’ve grown accustomed to brushing off the pain with forced smiles and empty gestures, but the quiet tension tells a different story.

Then we turn to Lily, hearing a soft sobbing coming from her corner, as she wipes her eyes with her sleeves. "I didn’t know," she mumbles. "I didn’t know any of that."

“It’s not like we go around telling people,” Dennis says, a gentle smirk on his lips, his blue eyes glinting in the light from my cube.

“We mostly kept it to ourselves,” Aaron adds. “It’s not exactly easy to talk about.”

Dennis looks at his brother. “But we always had each other, no matter what happened. I hate that creep sometimes, but hey, we’re still in this together.”

“Dennis is a dick, but hey, at least I can do some evil things and blame it on him.” Aaron nods seriously and turns to Lily. “So what about you? Everyone here seems at least a little messed up. Particularly Tess with everything she’s done, Kim mentioned something in his own past, poor Biscuit—and I bet Nat also has a thing or two, at least looking at the way he and his sister fight.”

With curiosity, I watch as Lily hesitates, but the twins wait together with me.

She starts softly, “It wasn’t until I got older that I realized my father and I were poor. He was hardly ever home, there was never much in the way of food, and our apartment was either freezing cold or unbearably hot. I couldn’t leave because it wasn’t safe outside. For years, my only friend was Grumpy, my cat.”

I increase the warmth from my cube, and we sit quietly, soaking it in for a moment.

“They eventually took me from my father and placed me with a new family, they even let me keep Grumpy, I haven’t seen my dad in years. The people I’m with now are kind enough sure, there’s always food, and I’m not cold anymore. But over time, the way they treat me has changed. I wasn’t behaving the way they wanted. ‘They’d always ask, “Why don’t you smile more, Lily?”.’ ‘Why are you so quiet, Lily?’ ‘Why doesn’t your father ever visit, Lily?’ ‘Why, why, why, why, why.’”

She swallows hard, her voice catching, but then she smiles as she looks from the twins to me.

“When I get back to Earth, I hope Grumpy is still alive. He’ll be old, but cats like him can live for 20 years. I know it! I’ll make him immortal, I’ll make him young again, and then we’ll be together just like before.”

For the last time, she wipes her eyes, “I know it’s childish, but it’s something to hope for. So tell me, Aaron, am I messed up too?”

“You’re totally messed up, Lily. A fitting member of group 4,” Aaron confirms with a nod.

Slowly, the conversation shifts to other topics, and I notice they deliberately avoid asking about my past.

It’s more comfortable that way, and I feel a quiet sense of relief, so I let it slide.

Then something cold pokes my left hand, the pale one.

I look down and my eyes meet Biscuit’s.

He doesn’t say anything, but he keeps poking me.

Firmly. Gently.

My conversation with Tess back in the caves under the Mana Desert comes to my mind.

The silence stretches on, but no one pushes me to speak.

“My father was a drunkard who beat my mother and sister, who always protected me, despite the fact that it only ever got her extra beatings.”

All conversation stops, but I don’t look up, fixing my gaze on Biscuit. And he stares back at me.

A gentle little soul with a terrible past, just like the rest of us.

“I tried to kill him one day, but I couldn’t go through with it. I still remembered how he was when I was younger. Our visit to the zoo, when he bought us the tastiest ice cream I ever had. All the times he carried me on his shoulders when my legs hurt from walking. A perfect sunny day in the park. That time he and Mom danced in the kitchen when we moved into a new home—they were both so beautiful then. I still remember all the times he put Vic and me to bed and gently kissed our foreheads.”

Another cold-feeling prods my hand.

“My sister killed him in the end. Because I couldn’t and because he would’ve killed our mom eventually. Ever since then, she’s been in prison, and I was decried as the brother of a murderer.”

Biscuit licks my arm, and I ruffle his head, lifting my head up. “Tell me am I as messed up as the rest of you?”

“You are truly messed up indeed,” Dennis confirms, nodding along with me.

“Terribly messed up,” Lily whispers quietly, her big eyes on me.

“Just like the rest of us,” Aaron says. “Another fitting member of group 4.”

(Food!)

I look down at him and feel myself smile, "You as well, Biscuit. You’re one of us too."