3. First OP book
Then Dante's body plummeted to the ground like a rag doll.
...
"Argh... do I need to collapse every day from now on?"
Dante said while picking himself up.
He looked up and down, checking his body for any bruises. After a while, without seeing any bruises, he proceeded to the big mirror beside his bed, looking at his reflection, expecting some difference only to see none.
"Where, where is the buff body? The awesome muscles? How about the body reformation?"
Dante almost cried because of the harsh reality he needed to face.
'What a dumb power-up,' he thought while looking again at his reflection.
*Ding....
Status:
Name: Dante Hooman
Abilities:
Reality Manipulation
Locked()
Locked()
Locked()
Locked()
Status: Healthy
Dante almost had a heart attack after a futuristic system window popped up in his face, suddenly appearing in his mind.
Calming his heart, he checked the window by pressing some of the words like Reality Manipulation, then a new screen popped up.
*Ding
Reality Manipulation:
-Able to manipulate the laws of reality.
-Able to bestow Code to any object.
-Able to change objects to anything.
-Cannot bestow Code to living beings.
-Cannot create anything without a target.
-User must know about the object he wants to manipulate.
Dante was flabbergasted. Just reading the text almost sent him ascending to heaven from shock.
An overpowering ability every novelist and nerd dreams of: imagine being able to change realities just by waving your hand.
You want candy? Poof, here have a bite. You want money? Here, have a million. Though you need to explain to the authorities where you got the money.
But the only small downside is he needs to study everything to make use of this ability to the fullest.
Excited about the new prospect in his life, he walked toward his desk before picking up a small note of colored paper with some squiggles written on it.
Dante then tried to focus his mind or maybe his guts, as he called it.
It kept telling him to use this ability; he needed an object to change its properties.
It's not like any abilities shown in the Chinese novels where the MC just spams almost all skills without any energy used.
Reality Manipulation doesn't mean Dante can create anything out of nothingness. Maybe if he manages to study the atoms and composition of the space and air around him, he could, but having abilities like this doesn't mean complete control, and Dante realized this.
You can't just write code without the language.
Dante grumbled.
"A paper is made of wood, but I don't know its composition and what its atoms look like, so how the freak am I gonna change it?"
"Hmnnn.. how about I just change its texture?"
With these new discoveries, Dante reached out in his head and then plucked one strand of hair.
Using his hair as the energy source, which had enough energy to power a whole universe—an overkill if you think of it—but without anyone to teach him, he needed to improvise.
Dante tapped the paper with his hair on top of it, using all of his thinking capabilities to the fullest.
...
Michelle, a black-haired girl with a tomboyish look, was going toward her brother's house.
Her hair was tied into a ponytail and she wore a black cap.
Michelle hadn't seen her brother in a few months. She felt sorry for her brother but also angry.
"What kind of brother doesn't contact his sister just because of work? Can he just send a text to let us know he's alive?"
Michelle stomped her feet inside the cab, expressing her frustration.
"Miss, we have arrived," the driver said before stopping at a small wide roadside.
"Thank you, and here, keep the change,"
Michelle said, handing the money to the cab driver.
With a big stride, she walked toward a small house with a messy small backyard before looking at the small mailbox at the entrance, full of mails from her.
"Cannot even bother to read my mails, eh?" Michelle said with anger.
She opened the door with the spare keys, but what greeted her was a messy house that looked like it had been ransacked by thieves, with her brother in a seat eating cookies with a book in his hand.
A mountain of books, maybe a hundred or thousands.
'Who the freak would read books in this messy house? Does he want to show off that he reads more books than cleaning the house?' Michelle thought.
"Oh hey, Sis, what you doing here? And sorry about the mess, I don't have the time to clean up,"
"You, you piece of... Arghhh,"
Michelle picked up a book before throwing it at her brother.
'So he really wants to show off...'
"Eat this, you twerp!"
...
It's been four months since Dante started practicing using his ability, Reality Manipulation.
He already knows the ups and downs of this ability.
He can change the laws, or what he called 'code,' of an object and then alter it to another code.
For example, if a knife has the code 'rusty,' he can change it to anything he wants.
He can change its code "rusty" to "hot."
The knife's outer appearance might not change, but its properties have. If you look at the knife, you can see it's rusty, but you have the feeling that it's not, but it is hot.
Now, you can have a rusty-appearing knife that can roast your hand if touched.
At first, Dante kept feeling disoriented because of the illusion of those objects he managed to successfully change.
Imagine seeing a rock but your mind keeps telling you it's gold, and it keeps repeating.
Just your brain overloading might have already killed you.
Thanks to his immunity toward his abilities, he managed to keep his mind intact.
As for the effect of his abilities on normal people, they're just slightly confused before their brain forgets about it.
'Being ignorant is a blessing,' Dante thought.
After three months of tirelessly training his abilities, he managed to unlock his second ability.
...
Eye of Akashic Records:
-Store laws in your right eye
-Transfer the stored law using your left eye
- Able to analyze the stored code.
-Law stored: 10/10
*hot, cold, rusty, heavy, weight, white, iron, rotten, dead, sharp*
...
It may not sound like much, but it made Dante's work thousands of times easier.
He just needed to pick up any broken object before usurping all of its codes. Currently, he can only store a maximum of 10 codes before his right eye iris would turn slightly red because of the strain while his left eye is still brown.
Without this ability, he might be able to manipulate reality, but first he must know about the composition and properties of an object.
Dante then needed to impart this knowledge into an object and then use his hair to materialize or realize the codes he wants to impart into the object.
But now, with his second ability, it is like riding a plane just to go into a park—an overkill.
But what is life without the easy path and hard part?
Dante still remembers his first successful object he managed to modify: a book with the title 'The Little Shark,' a book in disguise as a nursery book.
A childless book filled with unimaginable horror.
A magic book, as Dante called it.
A normal book:
* Durable
-1000/1000
*temperature resistant
- 1000°C
- -200°C
*weightless
-Upon touch with living
*Heavy
-50 kg
* Reading
- Upon touch
- 5 minutes touch
- Instant read
*Content
- How to use umbra
- Principle of Umbra
- How to Absorb Umbra
But what fascinated Dante was that this book managed to burn almost half of the hair he used to experiment with; its energy consumption is terribly large for a small book.
The *Content property was the culprit; it has very large energy consumption because of the code inside it.
- How to use umbra
- Principle of Umbra
- How to Absorb Umbra
As for how he knows umbra, Dante managed to remember and catch a glimpse of it while he was knocked out on the day he received the system.
Umbra, one of the common mystical energies found in any universes, is an energy that comes from the emotions of any living being.
Even plants produce this energy, but not as bountifully as intelligent creatures like humans that are complicated.
Umbra energy is grey in color, but its shade changes depending on the emotion of the creature. It is dark in shade when the creature is experiencing negative emotions like envy or anger while a light shade of grey in the other.
The *Content properties or code's energy usage is low doesn't mean its content is low.
The sub-code Dante added can alter the reality of Earth if it manages to get out of his house.
Imagine someone being able to steal it and master all those contents.
As for it outside appearance in doesn't appear any mysterious, it look like just an ordinary thin nursery book full of colorful drawing of shark.
...
*1 strand of hair = 1 universe worth of energy