Jaylin was one of the few immortals that survived the destruction of the Heavens.

Immortals were simply another species. They lived upon a mana rich plane known to many as the heavens. A long while ago, it exploded in a, totally unexpected, catastrophe. The mana within the heavens scattered everywhere, and with that, killed all the poor bastards who lived there. Except Jaylin. 
Jaylin was currently not in the mood to reminisce about the past. As a collector, he did not enjoy losing his possessions. Sitting up, Jaylin held up a hand and a glowing blue magic circle lit up in the air. The loud grinding sound of stone against stone echoed through the empty cave as the ‘door’ to the chamber slid open.

Magic. Supernatural actions powered by mana. While there where different types of magic, the most common type was a spell. This was technically what Jaylin was currently using.

Spells are divided into seven different grades, or strengths.

S, A, B, C, D, F.

As the difficulty of casting different spells differs depending on what kind it is, the seven grades are more of a subjective leveling system.
For example, a C-grade wind spell would be marginally easier to cast and control than a C-grade flame spell.
What Jaylin just cast was a movement spell. Although Jaylin was not currently aware of this, The movement spell wasn’t very popular nowadays. It required an in depth knowledge of the weight and possible friction of the object being moved, so much so that it took far too long to cast.

Mana needed perfect instructions in order to function, if it didn’t have this, it was more than likely to misfire. Mana has a long-standing grudge against everything. If perfect directions are not applied, the mana will most definitely not take initiative to conduct the spell properly, and even try to hurt the magician in the process.

Jaylin was the only exception to this. He didn’t have to give the mana perfect instructions. As long as he had the slightest intention of doing something with his mana, the mana would execute it to its best ability. 
Most would think this incredible. The many different types of spells allowed for an incredibly versatile set of skills, their only hindrance being their casting difficulty. If one were to clear this away, your abilities could stretch as far as your imagination. There was no need to cast or learn spells, you just had to tell the mana what to do.

Mana was like a trained dog. It followed only the instructions it knew, and humankind had to spend ages discovering and learning to utilize these directions. For Jaylin, however, mana was like a dog that liked him so much it would do whatever he wanted. His powers are limitless. 

Unfortunately, Jaylin is not one of the most creative people. Using the dog analogy once more, you could say that mana was his completely obedient dog and Jaylin was the almost entirely incapable owner who hardly made his dog do anything. The mana's incredible power is wasted in his hands.

As if that massive waste of potential wasn't enough, mana also had the tendency to gather to Jaylin. Gather into his mana storage, to be specific.

The mana storage was a personal container that one can gather mana into. The only mana you can use is the mana is your storage, so many magicians view large mana storage as a top priority. The size of your mana storage was strongly dependent on luck, but it could be expanded slowly. If you keep it filled to the brim, it will gradually stretch.

Magicians who have small mana storage usually resort to mana crystals and mana potions to regenerate faster. But mana potions are expensive, and mana crystals can’t be bought with money alone. Not to mention, mana that has been turned into an alternate state of matter will eventually scatter back into invisible particles after a while. It wasn’t efficient to keep them for very long.

As an immortal, Jaylin's natural mana storage was quite large, as most immortals were born with that kind of thing. A lot of immortals see it as a hindrance, really. Even casting the smallest spell could result in catastrophic damage if all the mana in their mana storage lost control and misfired. 

Not to mention the certain spells, curses and seals that required the entirety of your mana to cast, no matter how large your mana storage may be. The time it took to amass that amount of mana was incredible, and extremely troublesome.

But of course, Jaylin, goddamned luckiest bastard in existence, has never had this issue. Mana just kinda...gravitates to his mana storage. Like it never had a place to be, just fuckin' floats on over. 

Unfortunately, this wasn’t always a good thing. If Jaylin let his mana stretch past the limits of his storage, he would explode. Much like the heavens did. When he lived in the heavens, he could scatter his mana into the plane and the ever expanding heavens wouldn’t suffer harm from it. In the mortal realm scattering his mana would most likely lead to the world blowing up too.

As this was not the result he wanted, he had to come up with another plan. This plan? His loyal sword Exilis. He could give Exilis as much mana as the sword could take, and Exilis would waste it for him. Exilis was a possessed object. A human soul within an inanimate object. As a result, Exilis could use a lot of spells that didn’t really do anything harmful, such as temporarily making a human body, giving himself better sight, hearing, a louder voice, so on and so forth. Unfortunately, *cough* loyal sword *cough* Exilis is quite stingy. Like any other possessed object, Exilis need a constant flow of mana to keep himself alive. Exilis would never allow the slightest chance of his death. He often refuses to use mana on anything petty or useless to avoid wasting any. Exilis didn’t trust Jaylin to give him more mana after he wasted it for him, and so, he refused to do it.

After the refusal to render aid on Exilis’ behalf, Jaylin was left with a continuously filling mana storage, nowhere to get rid of it, and his impending doom.

So Jaylin put himself in a vegetative state. As a vegetable, mana wouldn’t gather within him, and even without his constant control, the mana currently in his storage would keep him unconscious after he instructed it to do so. And then he would ‘sleep’. For centuries.

Once the mana keeping him asleep ran out, he would wake up rejuvenated, and with a newly empty mana storage. For the sake of efficiency, he would start the ‘sleeping’ procedure once his mana storage was half full. The time he would sleep would only be as long as it took to deplete half of his whole mana storage, which is probably a few centuries.

For reasons unknown, Jaylin only slept after his mana storage was 3/4 full this time. He slept for much longer than expected. And now literally everything was gone.

Still sitting, Jaylin peered out of the chamber he’d been sleeping in. The chamber was behind the treasure room, or in other words, the whole cave. The treasure room was different from the last time he saw it. The entrance to the cave was open. A bright ray of light shined in, illuminating the dark cave as small particles of dust danced within it’s brightened space. 

After not seeing the sun for so long, most anyone would be happy to finally catch a glimpse of it. However, the soft looking young man’s face was heavily tinged with annoyance.
He felt the uncomfortable feeling of violation one would experience after being robbed.

Rubbing his furrowed brow, Jaylin sighed heavily. His treasures were all gone now. Collecting things was probably his only normal hobby. It was one of the only things he could do more than once without getting bored. Plus he had a lot of cool stuff. Weapons, armor, jewelry, Pine cones, and a cool vase. Although that last one wasn’t his. He stole it from some king and in return gave him some rain during a drought. Unfortunately the storm turned into a massive hurricane and destroyed the town.

But that wasn’t important. All of his stuff was gone. He’d been growing his collection since before the heavens self-destruct, and losing it all so abruptly was quite jarring. Even Exilis was kidnapped. While a bit of silence for once wasn’t that unpleasant, Exilis was still part of his collection. Not to mention they had a soul contract.

Jaylin couldn’t use any other weapons. He doubted he would meet someone he would need to use a weapon on, but it was still nice to have one.

Just as Jaylin was going to stand up, he heard a group of footsteps running from outside the cave. He paused his movement and glanced at the cave’s entrance, where a young boy and girl stared at him. They murmured to each other dazedly, clearly shocked to see someone in the cave.

“B-brother isn’t this cave abandoned...?”

The little boy she called brother nodded slowly before he continued. “And-and that second cave wasn’t there last time.”

The two weren’t quite scared, Jaylin had a harmless air to him, but it was still startling to see a strange youth sitting in the lotus position in a dark cave. The two awoke from their daze and dashed off fearfully. There was only so much a harmless air could do for you.

Jaylin stared as they ran off, thinking about their unfamiliar clothing. He sighed softly.

It seemed a lot had changed.

Maple-Leaf

The protagonist in this story is ridiculously overpowered (if you can't tell already.) and you definitely won't like this if you want to watch him struggle for power. If you decide to leave, thanks for giving this story a shot! :>