9 Meditation

Dave woke up with cold sweat on his forehead.

'Damn nightmares!' It wasn't strange to have nightmares on a rare occasion after monsters had appeared in the world. His first mission had left a lasting impression on him since it should have been easier for new recruits. They just needed to kill zombies in a specific area.

But, since the number of zombies had exceeded the information they were given, they were caught by surprise with the appearance of an evolved zombie, not to say the 2nd rank. If they had known about it, they would have asked for a presence of an Enhancer in their group.

It was clearly a fault of scouts, yet they were still held responsible for mission failure instead of scouts since their captain had connections with higher echelon. Already then did Dave understand that his life as a soldier was nothing for higher-ups. He was replaceable for them.

Sighing and wiping his sweat, Dave saw how Brian and Adam were still sleeping and smiled slightly chasing away his dark thoughts. 'I think it is time to find a way to benefit from my Regression. Hmm...Okay, it should make for a small experiment.'

After a brief sleep, Dave felt refreshed and energized. He crossed his legs and sat on the ground, entering a meditative state. What he was trying to do required nothing extraordinary from him. Well, maybe only peace of mind.

Increasing spirit points wasn't the only way to obtain mana. Although it was by far the easiest method to increase his mana pool, he could still rely on a less efficient yet more productive way to increase it. It just required more patience and diligence from him.

Taking a deep breath, Dave tried to empty his mind and make it completely blank. To achieve the state of mental blankness, he focused his thoughts on his body. He tracked how air entered his lungs through the nostrils and left through his mouth.

With every moment, he was able to hear the beating of his heart more clearly. Every beat was clearly resounding in his mind. At the same time, his heartbeat rate started slowing down. Actually, it was strange to feel everything happening in his body: how air entered his lungs, how his heartbeat started slowing down and how the blood flowed through his vessels.

After half an hour of being in such a state, Dave couldn't focus on anything else...as he had entered an odd trans. His heartbeat was so slow that anyone could mistake him for a sleeping person...Of course, if not for his strange sleeping pose.

Entering a semi-conscious state, Dave felt like his mind had slipped from his body. That's when he had sensed them. Like fireflies flying around him, blue orbs of light were surrounding his body. Or they weren't blue? He highly doubted that there was a notion of colours in sensing with the mind.

Nevertheless, he concentrated on one of them and wrapped his mind around the closest orb of light. Touching it with his mind, he felt like he was non-existent before the orb of light as a great power was sealed in it. And that power was kinda pressuring his mind. It felt like it was resisting his will.

Slowly overcoming its futile resistance, he was pulling the orb of light closer to his body. The key point was to be patient enough and not to pull it too abruptly, otherwise the orb of light would try to break off from his control.

When he finally absorbed his first particle of mana, a system notification appeared before his eyes.

[You have learned Meditation (LVL 1)]

[Regression is reacting towards your new skill]

[Meditation (LVL 1) had turned into Meditation (LVL 3)]

Dave was shocked by the consecutive system notifications. He had never thought that his Regression would still hide more surprises for him.

'Can it transfer my experience from past life to the current one to level up my skills?' Dave thought that it was a reasonable idea since his Meditation had levelled up to the level from his previous life. He was sure of it since not long time had passed before he regressed.

In his past life, survivors later had learned that they could attract mana from the surroundings, but most of the people still added free points to spirit stat since it was too difficult to increase mana through such a method.

Dave knew that spirit stat was more about soul power than mana. The increase in mana was just a byproduct of strengthening a soul.

Dave had trained diligently over his past life picking up several tricks to strengthen himself, so he was able to learn meditation, though he spent lots of time learning it.

Meditation, as a skill, wasn't particularly about mana absorption. Even without such a skill, people could still try to absorb mana from their surroundings. However, only a few could actually achieve that. To absorb mana from the surroundings, people must have an affinity to mana. However, it was just that most of the people had no mana affinity, even the slightest. It also included Dave.

But still, even without having a mana affinity, Dave was able to absorb it from his surroundings. It was all thanks to Meditation skill or the principle of entering a semi-conscious state lying behind the skill.

Every person enters such a semi-conscious state at least once a day, but only a few could possibly understand what state he was talking about. Nevertheless, seeing dreams was also a part of being in a semi-conscious state. Because of such a state, humans see vivid dreams which are hard to replay when awake.

Dave was able to simulate such a state as in dreaming by slowing down his heartbeat and emptying his mind. As less blood flowed to his brain, he could enter a semi-conscious state, where it was possible to experience a notion of expanding his mind outside of his body. In such a way, he was able to use such a state for his benefit. Entering a semi-conscious state, he was able to expand and sharpen his senses to feel mana around him even without any mana affinity.

Although it looked simple at the first glance, Dave spent a lot of time to grasp a feeling of emptying his mind, not to say about slowing down his heartbeat. It was difficult to learn things when you don't understand what was required from you. So Dave wasted several months learning Meditation skill.

'If I can transfer skills from my past, then...' Still excited from his discovery, he decided to leave his meditative state and try another skill from his past life.

He paced his breathing to force his heart to pump the blood faster through the blood vessels. It was the complete opposite to when he tried to slow down his heartbeat to enter a meditative state.

As his heart beat faster than before, his body started heating up. Dave felt more vigorous and less sluggish than before. However, right when he got to the last moment, he felt a sharp pain in his heart as it was pierced by a knife or was going to explode.

Gasping for air, Dave convulsed on the floor, his hands on his heart. Clenching his teeth, Dave tried to bear with the pain. It felt like all his body was being shredded as his heart was going to explode.

Fortunately, after several minutes, the pain was decreasing gradually as he was able to stand up a short while later.

'It seems that I should wait a bit until I have enough stamina.' Dave groaned painfully as he thought till that point. He was ready for the backlash right from the beginning. Usually, to learn the skill he wanted to acquire, people should have a stronger build and higher stamina.

However, he hoped that his Regression would help him with learning it, lowering the needed requirements to learn it. It seemed he was too expectant of his ability. However, it was good to learn the limits of his Regression. Its ability to transfer his experience to his next life was already good enough for him.

'It means that I can't overcome the basic requirements to learn the skill.' Making conclusions in his head, Dave started planning on how to use his innate ability. Then, finding that his other skills had requirement he had yet to fulfil, Dave decided to meditate until the duo woke up.

Now, he couldn't help but notice that he entered a meditative state slightly faster than before. At the same time, he absorbed blue particles of light slightly faster than a full 10 minutes. The time had gone down to eight and half minutes.

As he was immersed in his meditation, time flew by. At some point, Brian and Adam woke up from their slumber.

The first thing they noticed after waking up was Dave who sat cross-legged. It was hard not to see a person who was sitting strangely on the floor as though he was a monk.

"Dave, what are you doing?" When Brian saw how Dave was meditating, he couldn't help but exclaim surprisedly. Both he and Adam were surprised to see Dave waking up earlier than them, not to say, meditating next to the wall.

Having caught their movements, Dave had already left his meditative state.

"I just think that there should be a way to increase mana without adding points into the spirit. That's when I recalled web novels about cultivation and mages. I think there's no harm in trying, so I'm trying to absorb mana from the surroundings." Dave tried to explain himself.

Brian seemed to be in a daze understanding what Dave meant, while Adam looked like he got a general gist of what he wanted to say.

"Are you talking about those stories you read on rare occasions? Though I'm not into it, should I also try it?" Adam was the first one to propose it. However, he didn't know much about it since he had never read web novels in his life.

When Adam proposed to join him, Brian chipped in since, compared to Adam, he was more knowledgeable in that aspect. Moreover, both of them had nothing to do in any way.

"Adam, if you want it, you can try absorbing mana. But don't get your hopes too high. I haven't achieved much in it either. It's harder than you can imagine. As for you Brian, I want you to work on your innate ability." Dave didn't have high hopes that Adam would achieve that, but it was better than doing nothing.

As for Brian, their survival depended on his Life Pulse. The faster he learns how to control the range of his innate ability, the more chances they will have to survive.

"But I already tried it before. I have no idea how to do it." Brian tried to retort his words, but Dave was unwavering.

"Don't be too hasty. At first, you may try to direct your Life Pulse in one direction. It is your ability and only you know how to use it. I won't be much of a help." Dave was sincere here. Even though he knew that it was possible to control an innate ability, he never had one in his past life. Hence, the help he could provide was limited.

Occasionally sharing his insights with them, Dave wanted to plan their next step. But at first, he wanted to check how much mana he had gathered.

'Status'

[David Murckly

Level: 3

Class: None

Survival coins: 12

Mana: 5/5

Strength: 16

Agility: 10

Stamina: 9

Intelligence: 11

Spirit: 0

Free points: 0

Innate ability: Regression

Skills: Elementary Cooking (LVL 2), Gaming (LVL 8), Mathematics (LVL 7), Leadership (LVL 1), Meditation (LVL 3)]

'I had increased my mana by 5 points in just 5 hours which would have taken me a day worth of time if not for Regression. However, the higher it goes, the harder it will be to increase my mana pool in the future'

As Dave thought, his Regression was amazing. Not only it had sent him back in time, but it was also able to transfer his experience from his past to this life.

People couldn't just level up their skills even if they had enough understanding of it. It levelled up depending on two factors.

The first factor was understanding of the skill to move it to the next level. For example, a person can't have a higher level of Math if a user didn't have knowledge corresponding to the next level.

The second factor depended on how often it was used. The more often you use it, the more adept you will become in it and the faster it will level up. Dave had abundant knowledge about his skills, yet his record of using them was rewinded. That's where his Regression comes to play. It helps him to restore his record of using his skills to their initial value.