Both of Matt’s eyes had what looked like a thick white veil covering them completely. He couldn’t even see their physical form from how thick the veil was, just faintly sense that they were there. His mana was typically blue, giving its surroundings a bluish hue, but this was different, not only in color but in consistency as well. It felt more solid than mana, like hardened epoxy.

  Trying to control it hadn’t worked either, and neither had trying to push it out with his own. His mana simply stayed in place, as if a wall blocked its path. Trying to have his mana crush or suffocate it had also yielded no results. The white blanket was immutable, no matter what he tried.

  With a sigh, Matt dispelled his mana and tried thinking about the sequence of events that preceded what had happened. Things had seemed normal up until the mana explosion, that was when shit hit the fan. Not the explosion itself, but what followed, him casting [Sense Mana] to get an idea of the damage done without giving away his position, to the skill shattering when coming in contact with the explosion, forcing him to open his eyes where a splitting headache hit him and his vision turned white.

  The mana orb didn’t seem like the cause, he had fired enough so far, and the one he had used against the wolves, while more powerful, was the exact same.

  Which meant the problem was either the explosion itself, his [Sense Mana] coming in contact with it, or it was the alpha wolf’s doing. It using a skill, spell or an ability of some kind wasn’t out of the question and, unfortunately, his lacking knowledge meant even if it did, it was unlikely for Matt to know why or how. What he knew from his fight with the alpha was that the wolf had some form of magic blocking ability, but whether it worked the same way as the scorpion’s or not, and how it factored in at all was anybody’s guess at this point.

  There was a lot he didn’t know and many questions that needed answers, and the more time went on, the more questions he had, and the fewer answers he was getting.

  It was a thin line he was threading between intuition and blissful ignorance, a line that was getting dangerously close to snapping.

  Matt sighed, the only thing he could do was to soldier on. He’d play it safe when he could, but it was unlikely he’d stop taking risks or fucking things up, and that was something he was gonna have to accept and learn to live with its consequences.

  Closing his eyes, he dove back into his soul. It was time to put his idea to the test.

  Matt had wondered why none of his healing skills–even the full heal from his earring–had been able to fix his sight. If it was damaged, then a skill should heal it, right?

  Except they weren’t. Both eyes were perfectly healthy, they were just… entombed, bringing him to the conclusion that it was a soul related injury rather than a physical one, and his skills weren’t effective for soul damage.

  According to Tara, his soul should be stronger and more resilient, but resilient didn’t mean impervious. A more resilient tree was still just a tree, and a chainsaw would cut through it just as well as any other one, just with a bit more exertion.

  However, from where he stood, nothing seemed inherently wrong with his soul, other than the obvious, the veil surrounding his eyes and the desolate spot in his chest that was utterly black with no mana in it whatsoever.

  But… was that a soul injury, or a mana related one?

  Either way, all he needed was a skill that could deal with either. If his soul was injured, then he could push a skill towards healing soul damage, and if it was mana related, then towards… mana ailments?

  Sounds about right. The question was, which one of his skills had a higher likelihood of succeeding?

  [Repair] (uncommon 1)

  To some, mending is not enough, fixing is the ultimate goal, a goal you now pursue. Why heal only the living when you could repair everything in your pursuit to repair the irreparable, fix the unfixable, and treat the untreatable. (Costs 5x more time and 10x more mana to repair the inanimate.) (Effect increased with spirit and willpower.)

  The description implied [Repair] could… well, repair virtually anything as long as he had a starting point or a direction. Screwing around might end up making things worse than they already were, so a method to the madness was ideal, if slightly optimistic.

  He sighed, hoping he really wouldn’t end up fucking anything else up.

  [Revitalize] (common 4)

  Health is not the only limitation in battle, running out of resources could be just as detrimental. A mage is limited by their mana and a warrior by their stamina. As a mender, you have the tools necessary to make sure that resources are never in short supply. Imbue energy into a target, replenishing resources, giving it a second lease on life. (Effect increased with spirit and willpower.)

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  [Revitalize]’s description, on the other hand, was fairly straightforward, recovering resources, and his earlier tests with it proved it could be used on non-living targets with a bit of brute-force and mana control as long as there was a resource it could restore.

  His plan for its evolution had been faster resource regeneration as well as the ability to recover any target without his active input.

  But… what if he could reverse it? Making it drain resources instead of simply restoring them.

  The ability to restore mana and stamina was powerful, if not straight out broken, and for it to recover more mana than it used up was ludicrous and made absolutely no sense to Matt. It defied the first law of thermodynamics: the conservation of energy. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed; it can only change form, yet here he was, using mana to create more mana. It was a can of worms he really didn’t want to open, because limited understanding was almost always more dangerous than none, but one couldn’t help being curious, could they?

  Feeling like he might be on to something, he started casting [Revitalize] before diving to his soul. He had never seen the effects the skill had on his mana core and pathways before and now felt like the perfect time to get a clear idea of how it worked.

  The first thing that greeted him upon laying eyes on his mana core was a very thin layer of pulsating mana covering it, allowing more of the resource to flow out of the core than normal. He wasn’t sure if it was stimulating or assisting it, but it appeared it wasn’t as simple as him just ‘creating energy’ out of nowhere. Did that mean physics still applied, or was there more to it?

  What it meant for his current predicament though was that he wasn’t creating energy, so he couldn’t simply reverse the process since reversing it would make his core produce less mana instead of more, which sounded awful in almost every single scenario he could imagine.

  There were definitely ways around it, but the result would most likely be the same: it would turn the ability into the more targeted offensive kind and wouldn’t solve the current issue at hand.

  “[Repair] it is,” he whispered, his voice coming out hoarse and unrecognizable to his own ears.

  He got up and coughed a few times into his hand.

  “La la la,” he tried once more. “Still ways off, but at least not corpse-like. A downside of having no one to talk to, I guess,” he muttered, the weight of the words feeling heavier than ever before as Izzy and Jackson came to mind.

  “Well, can’t have them say I’m the slacker in the group.” A smile dawned on his face as he got back to work, excited to hopefully not be blind the next time they met.

  Focusing in on his eyes once more, he asked the obvious question: how to make something you didn’t understand and knew nothing about do as you wanted?

  The answer was, you actually didn’t, not unless you were delusional.

  Something else did exist though… a practice tried and tested throughout the ages, throwing mud at the wall until something stuck, then taking it from there.

  Was it risky and stupid?

  Probably, but so was driving, yet that never seemed to stop anyone. Risky, that is. Stupid was a different argument that he wasn’t ready to get into just yet.

  There were some ideas he had wanted to test out but was hesitant out of fear of fucking up, but with his back against the wall, there was no better time to dive in headfirst than now.

  Starting simple, he cast [Repair] while touching his forehead to see if there was a response of any kind. The skill activated as his health wasn’t at a 100% thanks to his gloves’ constant drain. Unsurprisingly, nothing happened to his eyes, since, to the skill, they were perfectly fine.

  Next, he tried flooding the skill with mana in an attempt to elicit a response, but once more, the skill just… didn’t care. From its perspective, there was nothing physically wrong, which was what it looked for, meaning there was nothing to heal.

  Moving on to a more… forceful approach, he tried forcing mana through his fingertips–the skill’s activation point where the laser-like mana beams appeared from.

  This time, something did happen. Pain happened. His fingertips, unable to withstand whatever he had done, burst in a display of gore and agony, damaging his forehead and eyes in the process.

  “Son of a–” he cried, clutching his damaged hand before recasting [Repair]. The mana beams appeared from his ruined fingers, causing them to swiftly regrow, the scene, undoubtedly, as unnerving as ever.

  Pain was part of the process and not entirely unexpected, didn’t mean it was any less agonizing though.

  He touched his forehead, focusing in on his eyes to see if repairing them, now that they had sustained some damage, changed anything. It didn’t. His healing ability simply restored them to a pristine condition, with the white veil still intact and covering them. Expected, but disappointing nonetheless.

  An hour went by with Matt trying whatever idea came to mind, and failing spectacularly every time.

  “Gaaaah. What the fuck man. This is something that needs repairing, so just repair it!” he yelled at his wrist in a sorry attempt to bully the skill into doing what he wanted, before dropping to the ground, lying flat on his back, arms spread wide. “And of course, there must be a potion out there that could heal whatever this is right up,” he sighed in complaint.

  It was frustrating. He was starting to feel inept and powerless. Both feelings he never hoped to experience again. He raised his hand to the sky, tightening his grip. There was something he hadn’t tried yet, something Tara had specifically warned him against. [Repair]’s skill engraving.

  Was messing with it after he’d been warned in no uncertain terms not to, smart?

  No, definitely not. But Matt won’t be messing with it, just… exploring, yeah, all brilliant discoveries were the result of explorations after all. Yes, sometimes bad things did happen, but good things also happened, and quite often, he might add, and those were odds he was fine with.

  It could end in disaster, but was there anything more disastrous than being blind in an apocalypse?

  Probably, but that wouldn’t stop him though from attempting to restore his sight, and if in the process one of his skills attained the ability to deal with the problem once and for all, then it was worth the risk.

  He wouldn’t push it though. He wasn’t that desperate yet, so if the situation turned ugly, he’d change course. But he couldn’t just ignore a potential solution out of fear.

  With his mind made up, he dove back into his soul. It was time to regain his sight.