New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live

While the elevator was bringing David back down, Alexander was standing in his living room, looking at his hand. He wasn’t looking at the surface, but more at what was happening inside it.

He could feel something flowing inside his body that hadn’t been there previously. And when he focused on it, he could sense the small particles again.

This time they were clearer, and he noticed there were also some floating around him in the living room. He took a few minutes to observe their movements.

He could tell this time what they were, like something had unlocked in his mind. He tried controlling it with his mind as he did inside New Eden, but nothing happened.

The mana wasn’t reacting to his silent orders, as it did in New Eden, and he guessed that was pretty normal. After all, this was a novelty to him in this world.

He remembered Violette was still waiting for him to tell her it was ok to leave her room, so he stopped experimenting. Alex walked upstairs, before knocking softly on her door.

“Violette. It’s me. You can come out now.”

After waiting for a few seconds, he heard the door unlock, and it slowly opened. Violette’s scared face was on the other side.

“Are you ok?” she asked Alex.

“Of course. Are you?” Alex responded, crouching to look her in the eyes.

Violette could see the red marks on his neck, even though they were already fading, and was worried that the scary man had been here to attack him.

Alex saw where she was looking and smiled at her softly.

“Don’t worry about those. That man and I disagreed on something and he thought he could rough me up. But I sent him home with a souvenir of his own.”

The grin on Alexander’s lips reassured Violette enough to leave the room. She hugged Alex, and he hugged her back.

“I had a bad feeling a few minutes ago, like something bad was happening.”

Alexander frowned at her words. He understood that David’s grip was unnatural once he saw the mana particles himself.

But if Violette had a bad feeling as it happened, that meant she might also have felt the mana. He kept Violette in his arms as he got up, eliciting a small scream of surprise from the girl.

“I have something I want to show you.”

Violette nodded.

Alexander walked into his room. He focused his senses, and this time he clearly saw the point from where the particles were coming.

It was like there was a small hole right in front of his pod that the particles were leaking in from. They slowly floated away from the pod, filling the room and traversing the walls of the other rooms.

As he walked into the room, Violette started frowning.

‘So she feels it…’

“Are you alright, Violette?”

“I’m ok… But this feeling. It’s… strange.”

“Strange how?”

“Like I have felt this before…”

Alex smiled and nodded. Even he was finding it strange to see mana particles.

This wasn’t something that should be normal in the real world. From all the hints and bribes of information David had given him up to now, he guessed it might happen sometime in the future.

But he hadn’t thought he would see it in his own penthouse. Was this a good or bad augur for the future?

He had yet to find out.

For now, the only logical course of action was to use this new resource at their disposal.

“I want you to focus on this feeling. This isn’t something you are new to.”

Violette looked at him with questioning eyes.

“You feel like it’s familiar because it is. Think of it like you are inside the game.”

“But we aren’t inside New Eden…” Violette said, frowning.

“Just try it, Violette.”

Violette looked at him for a few seconds, her frown deepening, before closing her eyes. Alexander felt her body relaxing in his arms as her focus went completely to her senses.

Her frown relaxed a bit as she started concentrating before it came back.

Alexander was still focusing his eyes, doing his best to sense the surrounding mana. He could see it reacting to whatever Violette was doing.

“This feeling… This is mana!” Violette exclaimed.

She opened her eyes, looking at Alexander in a bewildered manner.

“Was this always here?!”

“I don’t think so. If it was, I don’t think we were ready to sense it yet.”

“But if there is mana in this world, doesn’t that mean we should be able to do magic?”

“We might, in due time. But before we go that far, there is something else we should discuss.”

Violette’s head tilted at his statement.

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He explained what little he knew of the situation, Violette frequently interrupting him to ask questions. He answered all her queries to the best of his abilities, trying to paint the glum picture David had painted him.

Even if Violette was still a child, he didn’t think hiding this from her was a good idea. Now that they could both sense mana, maybe they could use it to train preemptively for the future to come.

He could hardly think of a lie to tell her so he could make her train her mind and body with mana, instead of just trying to learn how to use magic. So telling the truth felt like the better alternative.

Their discussion took hours, since the young girl kept asking questions, but once they were done, she became eerily silent. Alexander let her think, since pushing her at this point could have adverse effects.

After a few minutes of occasional frowning, and various other facial expressions, Violette finally looked back at Alex.

“Why are we keeping this a secret? Shouldn’t we tell everyone that they need to play New Eden?”

“David told me it was better not to tell them for now. He said he has a plan to get more people in when the time comes.”

“Can we trust him?”

“I’m still thinking about that myself. For now, I trust his words.”

Violette frowned again. She decided to trust Alex over trusting David and promised she would keep quiet.

They then agreed on finding a way to train in using mana together. Alexander knew full well his earlier exploit had been purely instinctual and reactionary.

They needed to practice until they could do this on demand. It would be a long journey.