Mike felt the shift immediately as he closed the window, all of his senses suddenly dimmed and he felt like he couldn’t move even if he wanted too, then it was over, everything was back to normal. Well kind of, ever since Light magic had been enabled he had been able to feel the light mana at the edge of his senses, likely his Attunement sense being attuned by the skill to help him use Light Magic. Now he couldn’t feel it, there was something different at the edge of his senses now, it wasn’t nearly as omnipresent as the previous feeling had been.

The room was still relatively well lit by the Light orb that he had cast upon waking up, though it was dimming. That was good to know, that his spells persisted past his ability to cast spells of their element. A thought occurred to him that probably should have occurred to him sooner, he looked at the help panel, also still there despite his inability to cast Light Magic, “Why don’t I have a mana bar? Or a health bar? Or any bars at all?”

You may have noticed that you lack the titular ‘Resource bars’ often used in RPG games, this may seem odd considering how the AI has done its best to recreate the experience of an RPG for your interfaces with it. This is intentional, the AI felt that it was not prudent to include these bars in a real-world environment especially the Health bar.

The AI concluded that having Resource bars would make you see their contents as resources to be spent in order to achieve goals, this is a poor way to view your Health and Stamina, if you are careful and smart you should be trying at all costs to avoid losing any of either, and although quantifying them for you to view would be within the AI’s capabilities, it concluded that doing so would lead you to unnecessarily risk yourself, simply because you weren’t ‘out of Health’.

This is not how the human body works and thinking so would be Dangerous.

This though, is not why you do not have a mana bar. You do not have a mana bar simply because your body does not contain any mana that can be used to cast spells. This is because you are human and is why most in the mortal realm believe that humans are incapable of casting spells at all. All of the variations of Elves have mana that exists in their blood, Dark mana for Dark Elves and Light mana for High Elves, this mana exists within the mortal realm and is connected directly to their soul, as all of the body is, allowing them to use it to cast spells of those elements.

This means that there is no resource for it to measure. You will need to work around this deficit or find a way to change it, for now, you can use the tattoo to access the mana that exists between the Realms.

More info in Skill: Mana sight.

After that brief but informative distraction, he turned his attention back to his attunement sense. He looked to the corners of his cell where he could see the pools of Dark gathered as if compacted there by the Light mana that he could still see filling the room.

He could feel it now, the pooled Darkness, it felt empty and hollow, but also beneath really noticing, like one ignored the non-illuminated parts of a room, mostly because there was nothing there of interest. He shuffled to the end of his stone slab of a bed and looked at the corner directly across from him its end. The Dark mana was there, but it felt entirely different to how he sensed the Light mana.

Light mana had felt like thinking about the scientific facts he knew about what light was, about light rays, reflections and colour. But Dark mana didn’t feel like any of that, in fact, the difference was so blatant that it might as well be an intentional absence. Absence… That’s what Darkness was, wasn’t it? On Earth all darkness was considered to be was the absence of light, merely a spot that light rays didn’t reach in great enough intensity to illuminate. That was different here. The Dark mana existed but seemed to be giving him an almost intentionally opposite feeling to the Light mana.

Were they opposites then, were his senses trying to communicate that to him? That Dark mana and light mana were opposites? He wasn’t sure. What sort of spell could he cast with Dark mana then? Didn’t he unlock one when Ishare had cast it on him? “Spells,” he said into the air.

In both the descriptions for Dark magic and Light Magic, the AI had mentioned illusions, he could see how Light magic could be related to illusions, the bending of light to create images was a common enough trope for illusion magic on Earth, but that isn’t what he had done when creating Illusions. He had been affecting the Light mana, not the physical light, even now the illusions that existed, although they appeared physical were mere just mana, what had the AI called them? Magical Phenomenon.

So Illusions worked differently in this world than what popular fiction would have him believe, they were just blobs of mana given shape, the AI was certainly better at them than he was, its windows were more complex than any illusion he had managed to create.

What it had said about Dark mana Illusions, “Illusions of Pain and other physical sensations,” he quoted from memory.

That sounded familiar, he remembered feeling that pain whenever he thought the word “game” right after he woke up, it had worn off but it wasn’t the kind of experience you forget, which was almost certainly deliberate. “Help Screen, how did the tattoo cause me to feel pain without harming me right after I woke up,” He asked the window as it appeared.

The pain you experienced from the Tattoo on your right arm was not real, it was Simulated with Magic, The AI concluded that if you were not given immediate negative reinforcement, you would continue to treat this experience as a Game or at the very least with less seriousness than was warranted. To achieve this, a built-in function of the tattoo designed to deliver notifications while using the illusory windows would give away the tattoos true nature and capabilities, casting the spell Sensory Illusion, to make you experience illusory pain from the tattoo upon thinking of the world as a game or thinking about risking your life in some way due to that assumption. 

After he finished reading, Mike wondered whether he was meant to read this message earlier, it seemed to explain some things that some of the other windows already had. It made sense that the AI had built in the answers to his situation in the answers to multiple of the predicted questions he may ask, as it couldn’t know what he would ask the Help screen upon waking, no matter how well it understood him.

The answer he was looking for was in there though, just like the AI had dropped the Minor Illusion spell name in its explanation for the windows, it had dropped the spell name here too, Sensory Illusion. The tattoo had been made using Dark magic and Light magic at its core, as it had been made by the High elves in collaboration with Ishare. Even if whatever the AI had become was completely different, it made sense that it had access to those two mana types to cast spells.

So it had used the Light mana to cast flashy eye-catching Illusions that informed him of his situation in a way he could understand. While it used the Dark mana to cast circumspect and subtle Illusions that only he could feel to notify him while it was hiding.

That felt intentional like the AI was trying to guide him to think about Light magic and Dark Magic in two specific ways.

As he thought he heard the telltale ding of a notification.

Mental aspect Level up!

You have gained 2 Distributable Mental Stats.

Well, It seemed the AI approved of his use of logic, well no, from what it had told him the levelling up happened when he stretched his abilities to their limits. He didn’t know what the actual process of granting him stats involved, he would wait to spend these for now.

Back to his original objective. Dark Magic was much subtler than light magic it seemed, so simply forcing it to become something that he understood it to already represent as he had with light magic, he felt like he should give it an objective and see how it responded.

He reached out from the end of his bed, putting the tips of his fingers in the compacted Dark mana in the corner of the room, thinking of some kind of phrase that would help him focus his control and once again focused on his terrible understanding of Latin, “Sensulae Illusion,” he said, trying to make it a request this time, instead of a grandiose command. A request to make him feel something on his fingertips.

He felt the Dark mana shift, what he now understood to be it shifting into the mortal realm, and his fingertips suddenly felt cold, like his hand was touching ice instead of empty air, he jerked his hand back but the sensation remained. Ding.

You have discovered the spell:

Sensory Illusion

Mike shook his fingers willing the cold feeling to go away as he had the windows when he didn’t want them, this time it worked, the cold feeling fading away. With it gone his fingers didn’t feel any different. No stiffness or cramping from the cold they had just experienced, on the other hand, Mike thought he understood what his Willpower of seven meant for him a little better, the second the unpleasant feeling had started he could only think about making it stop.

Not dwelling on that, he looked to the new notification, a small smile starting to form, looks like he should talk to Ishare again.