3 Situational Assesment

As I stared into the darkness, I must admit to a feeling of anticipation and excitement while waiting for my stats window to appear. Unfortunately, waiting is all that happened, other than the stone above dropping some water on my cheek...Wait!

I let out a gasp as I remembered why this body didn't bleed to death in the story, the Gods Tear, or whatever it was called!

If I recall, this thing was a crystalline stone that accumulated mana for a long time until it was saturated, and then started leaking an extremely potent healing elixer, which the plot armor of a protagonist ensured would end up directly under. This gem was over 90% of the reason Hajime survived even a week down here in canon, and now it was all mine!

I chortled a bit to myself as I casually wiped the elixer off my cheek and into my fairly parched mouth, thinking waste not and all, when I suddenly furrowed my brow in confusion at the odd message that popped up in front of me

Energy reserves at 1/20. Host energy generation insufficient for full system operation.

After being thrown for a loop, I slowly began parsing through all the info those two little sentences had implied. And that was a lot when I considered things.

First, I do have a system, and my wimpy mana regen is a double A battery trying to start a car. second, that there is some kind of storage for energy, and it has a maximum. Which, begs the question, what happens when it's full? Does the system turn all the way on, or is the energy storage like a cellphone's battery and supports the system untill it runs out. And lastly, the Gods Tear Elixer (henceforth known simply as elixer)seems to add any excess energy left over from the healing process directly into storage. hmm, so I could directly use elixer as an energy source for the system, if I was willing to waste my limited healing resources on a system of so far dubious worth.

'oh crap, the elixer! " I blurted out, eyes widening despite the uselessness of the act. I has suddenly realized that if the elixer was dripping, it was being wasted to evaporation. I swiftly rummaged through the body's memories and found what I was looking for.

what was I looking for you ask? Same thing every nerd wants, i.e. MAGIC! It was actually an odd sensation accessing those memories, as they felt like any other memory and I still didn't know what they contained.best analogy my befuddled brain could come up with would be a book that someone with photographic memory skimmed into their head archive without actually reading it. while the raw Information was there, I still had yet to truly grok it. Running through the memories seemed to help properly assimilate the data, meaning that I went from munchkin to mage in nothing flat!

Well, not a mage I amended, but at least a magic user I thought as I allowed my mana to flow as directed into the formation for transmutation while visualizing the desired effect; in this case a stone jug like those cartoon moonshiners use situated under a straw-like tube I molded out of the crevice. As I worked, I noticed that I was getting a sensation where my magical energy interacted with the stone I was working on.

Intrigued, my mana spread out from where I was working at my mental prodding, giving me feedback in the form of a rough mental map of the surrounding minerals my power touched. This in turn allowed me to sense the cavity with the Tear and efficiently create a mirror finished stone straw to drain any excess elixer into the aforementioned jug.

While I was at it, I decided I could use some elbow room, and carved myself some room to sit up comfortably.

All this mana useage forcibly reminded me of the one ill the elixer can't fix: hunger. An ache in my middle that I had been pushing to the back of my mind in the rush of acclimating made one thing clear to me. While the elixer could heal bodily damage and add a large amount of energy to the system, it still required materials to work with.

I had to find food in a place where every lifeforms is composed of horrendously mana infused flesh that will rip my poor body apart slowly if eaten. Good thing I know the elixer can rebuild me as it happens.

Sigh, this is gonna Suuuuck!