God Of Blackfield (bowling)

"Young Master!" A voice cried out.

Some rich hotshot was being greeted by his servants as he prepared to leave.

"Welcome to Blackfield Bowling Kane, you're gonna love it I swear!" Joan squealed excitedly.

"Riveting," Kane muttered, dead inside.

"Oh come on, it's not that bad. Do you know how to bowl, Kane?" Cassy moved towards him.

Kane nodded, "I've never gone bowling, but I guarantee I'm going to dominate."

"Uh-huh, sorry to burst your bubble son-in-law, but I was a bowling legend back in my heyday," She smirked.

They got out of the car and made their way into the building, Kane making sure to constantly release and absorb mana for practice.

His goal was to increase his capacity enough to use it for something other than the warm fuzzies and body-building.

There weren't a lot of people in the building, thanks to Joan choosing to do this painfully early.

Winding through some large halls and into the main lobby, Joan led them to the front counter to buy bowling shoes.

For whatever reason, she tried haggling for them.

"Alright kids, we're in the third lane."

"This way Kane," Cassy grabbed his hand and pulled him along.

For the first time in ages, doing this was necessary, since Kane had no way of knowing what side the numbering started on.

Maybe if he had longer to build up his mana, he could use his 'scanner' and spot them like that, but his current range wasn't even close.

"Which bowling ball do you want?" Cass asked.

"Hell if I know, you pick one."

Cass smirked menacingly, "I'll pick the really girly one for ya."

Kane gasped, "You wouldn't!"

"You'll never know if I did or not, have fun 'husband.'"

Cassy and Joan decided Kane would go first.

Kane had no experience bowling, and he couldn't see. His senses still weren't good enough to pick up on some small, stationary, pins several yards away from him.

He could generally tell what he was supposed to be doing from listening to the pins clatter in other lanes.

Kane poured mana into his ears and began clicking his tongue, picking up a minute difference in sound from the gutters of the lane.

Now that he knew the parameters of the lane, he could-

"Ah..."

His arms were still really sore, Kane just pathetically dropped the ball and watched it slowly roll into the gutter. Much to the amusement of Joan.

"Move aside kid," She said cockily.

Just a mere moment after stepping up to the lane, she'd casually pulled off a strike.

Kane gave a thumbs down, "This isn't fair and you know it."

Meanwhile, Cassy was just laughing her ass off in the back.

Until Joan called her over, that is.

Kane was a little more focused on healing his arms than he was listening to them bicker.

It still took him several full cycles of mana to completely heal a part of his body, he couldn't wrap his head around this sort of ability now being a part of him.

But he supposed using these sorts of powers in Ember all week has helped take away a bit of the strangeness.

Cassy took her shot, knocking down only 3 pins before immediately freezing.

"Are you sure you're my daughter?" Joan asked with a raised eyebrow.

"I think you'd know the answer to that one mom, or was my birthday not the only thing you forgot."

"That shut her up quick," Kane laughed, really hoping that wouldn't bite him in the ass.

Grabbing the ball, he prepared to make his next... roll? Kane wasn't too sure about bowling terminology.

In the span of two minutes, Kane had cycled mana into healing his arms 3 times.

They still hurt a little, but he was pretty confident they could handle bowling.

Kane added the mana he had left into his senses and stretched them out, letting them merge with the tiny amount of space he could currently utilize.

He couldn't see the pins, but at least he could physically see the beginning of the lane.

Kane gave it his best shot, keeping everything lined up.

This time, he hit 8 pins.

"Nice!" Cassy enthusiastically cheered him on.

Kane gave Cassy a high five and ignored Joan as she began talking about how she's still better.

----------

The game ended with Joan being in an unfortunate 1st place, she'd managed to pull a strike off every single round, being crowned by the staff as the 'God of Blackfield.'

After that, she left us in the car and told us to "get physical with each other" while she went to grab some water.

"Well, Kane, you ready to 'get physical?'" Cass asked with a smirk.

Kane pulled off an eye-less wink, "Always."

Joan was very disappointed to see the two kids thumb wrestling when she got back.

She'd won the bowling match, but felt like she was losing something else.

-------------

Kane finally arrived at his empty apartment, his dad had already left for his job.

Apparently, he'd been swamped with work on new government satellites capable of detecting and tracking some top-secret particle.

Finally feeling hunger set in, Kane made himself a quick sandwich and sat down to listen to some old movies.

After spending the last 4 hours cycling mana, not only were all of his sore parts finally back to normal, but the process was about 10x more efficient.

He could hold far more at once, absorb it much quicker, control it more precisely, and make it flow through his body as if it were blood instead of cottage cheese.

But there was something that still greatly unsettled him.

It was something the green golem had said, "You will not survive the next one."

He clearly meant the painful experiences that gave him mana, not another solar flare.

But he was an NPC, the developers had to program all of this, which means he didn't just suffer random side-effects.

The entire process was intentional, not to mention highly unethical and clearly being kept a secret.

"I made the right choice not leaving a review," Kane sighed.

He would hope to god the government wasn't tracking him, and just quietly live out his life while enjoying the benefits of mana.

Kane spent the rest of his day meditating, improving his capabilities and even his body as he forced the energy to hold still once more, using his mana to slowly repair the aftermath.

He felt a lot stronger, he'd basically just gained the benefits of two full-body workouts in only 24 hours. He could feel his bones becoming denser, his mind and senses were even slightly sharper.

You'd think sitting there not really doing anything for almost 11 hours straight would be boring, but Kane already had a great attention span, and could obsessively dedicate himself to anything he deemed fun.

And to him, improving his mana bit by bit was the most fun thing he could be doing right now.

Although he was a little concerned at the lack of channels around the left side of his chest, it didn't seem to affect him that much, as they still circled around the area and reached all of his limbs and organs.

"House Master, what time is it?"

"10:13. pm. Kane."

"Thanks buddy!" Kane yelled while rushing outside.

He forgot to grab his coat, but mana seemed to keep his body at a neutral temperature as long as he had it active, so he just continued onwards.

Now that it was dark and the field was empty, it was time he tried using it for attacks.

Kane walked up to a tree and listened for other people, confirming there was no one around, he began experimenting.

He bunched all of the mana up at his fingertips, and poked the tree as hard as he could.

Kane could feel his hand slide into the tree as it silently created a large crack.

"Holy-!!"

Kane was amazed, he already knew mana strengthened him, but this was way beyond what he'd considered. He was basically superhuman just from a day of practice.

Of course, the amount of mana leakage increased substantially when he actually hit something while clad in it.

It appeared he wouldn't be able to just endlessly slash at things with his fingers.

Feeling around the now extremely dense wood from where his fingers were, he thought of something.

'I wonder if condensing mana would do anything?'

He absorbed more ambient energy and let it all flow to his fingertips, this time, forcing the space the mana occupies to become smaller and smaller.

His fingers were essentially buzzing with raw power.

As he swung his hand towards the tree, something interesting happened.

The condensed mana pooled out of the skin, now in a physical form, the quick forward motion of his hand causing it to propel itself off of the uncondensed mana pushing against it. He shot a small projectile of pure mana out of his hand.

Half of the tree's base blew off with a sharp 'crack,' the projectile had taken all of Kane's mana and a lot of concentration.

It was a large field, and everyone was far away and inside their homes, he could only hope no one noticed.

He once again finished letting his mana replenished, this time moving to a boulder instead of a tree. As much as this was a field, it was also a public park with lots of decorations.

Using mana numbed pain to a degree, and Kane was confident it also healed injuries, with this in mind, he pulled mana over to his fist and struck the rock.

A small dent was made as Kane shook his hand in light pain. This time, Kane covered it in condensed mana, careful to pull away any un-condensed energy that might launch it out of his skin.

Striking the rock with a condensed fist blew a sizeable chunk right off of it, this time the pain was a lot worse, as he had almost no mana left in him to numb it.

While cursing in pain, Kane noted that most of the skin on his knuckles was completely gone, and a bone was touching open air.

While breathing roughly, Kane pulled mana back into him and sent it all to his fist. Turns out he was right about the healing factor, as layers of hardened muscle grew back over the bone and some skin was restored.

He had to use 3 more cycles of mana on his hand before it was back to normal. What once would've cost a few thousand arels and several stitches, could now be fixed in a little over a minute.

This time, Kane tried recreating the bullet, but with a fist. The result was just a larger, slower version of the bullet, it didn't penetrate very deeply into the rock, but it had a much wider surface area.

Testing something, Kane put a small plant over his finger and fired, the plant was obliterated in the process.

"Yeah, no power-kicks with shoes on," Kane clicked his tongue.

Kane had 3 more things he wanted to test.

First, he once more let his mind touch the subspace as he poured mana into it. Then focusing on slipping himself into it, at first nothing happened, but as soon as he covered every inch of his body in mana...

He teleported.

"YES!!" Kane yelled a lot louder than he meant to.

It was only around 2 feet, but he undeniably teleported, this was one of the happiest moments in Kane's life.

Replenishing his energy, he focused on a small branch sitting on the ground.

This time, instead of slipping himself into subspace, he focused on pulling the stick in.

After a bit of experimentation, he found that pouring mana outwards towards the edge of the subspace while pulling his mana inwards from the center of it created a kind of suction, pulling the stick into the void.

Instantaneously, it popped into his hand.

Calming his nerves, he thought about recreating Black Hole.

The entire concept was simply too complex for him, after a bit of thinking, his loose train of thought decided on reversing the process of Aport.

Pushing mana into the center of the subspace, while pulling mana out from the edges, he focused on pushing the looping point of the energy further out.

It was a success, for a few seconds, a tiny suction could be felt from a few feet away, as the stick was yanked towards it. The tip of it being shredded before the hole abruptly closed.

Kane couldn't use Anchor though.

He'd already learned the process back in Ember, but his current dilemma was not having even remotely enough mana.

Unlike Black Hole, where you can save on mana costs by just making it smaller and weaker, there is no way to skim out on Anchor. You either have enough to create a teleportation link, or you don't.

"Oh well, not like I'd need it right now anyway... in fact, I technically don't need any of this at all."

Unfortunately for Kane, because his blindness was a genetic issue, mana didn't consider his lack of eyes to be a missing part of the body, so nothing happened when he sent it there.

Just as Kane was turning around to leave, a drunk man with a knife wobbled out, "H-heyy, you destroying the park k-kiddd, somebody's got-ta teach you a lesson!"

It was a little scary to know this guy was just wandering around with a knife, so Kane made sure to take care of that.

Of course, suddenly having powers didn't make him confident in going against a knife-wielding nut, so he just Aported the knife and ran away. Much to the drunkard's disbelief.

'Crap, why'd I do that? Hopefully, he'll forget about this by tomorrow, not like anyone would believe him anyway... except maybe the government or whoever worked on Ember, but I doubt he'd even believe what he saw when he sobers up.'

After a bit of deliberation, Kane decided it was okay to let it go, deciding to just be more careful in the future.