A New World, An Immersive Game Experience

Eldrian didn't wish to argue, and even if he wanted he couldn't. Suddenly, all the players received a system notification as time slowed down and they were kicked out of ANW.

[A technical issue has come up, please be patient while we attempt to resolve it.]

Most players hadn't even been able to read the notification before finding themselves staring at their headsets. Wondering what just happened and jumping onto the forum and failing to find an explanation from the developers.

...

A few minutes before the system kicked all players from ANW, Amnur and all other legends within an empire's distance (a few ten thousand kilometers) turned to look at the source of a rather small explosion. Yet, the magical essence it released shocked them all.

Amnur ignored everything and tried to move towards the source, but, like all the other legends they were stopped by the AI. Placed into a bubbled and unable to escape as the strongest among them felt the time dilation appearing.

'What did the elf do!?' Amnur thought before his thoughts were forced to a stop, not believing that anyone else could cause such a commotion and even more shocked that it had happened precisely as he stopped observing the elf so closely.

With the assassin dealt with, Amnur had thought he could spend a few days to greet his descendants and get to know the new lords of Ganalin. That seemed to have made him miss a historical moment.

...

"What's going on!" Joren shouted, yet no one in the room had an answer. The entire server had suddenly blocked them out, almost as if they had been hacked.

Nervously, Flavia stood up from her seat and looked around. "Look at what Eldrian did," She said, pulling up the recording which they kept separate from the game servers precisely since they didn't trust the AI.  Knowing that if the AI chose to stop the game and block all feed, they were powerless.

All that they could do was threaten and follow up their threats, but that didn't help as they would still be in the dark about things.

Everyone rushed to watch what had happened there, unable to accept that a player could have caused such a commotion. To cause the AI to suddenly and forcibly stop the game despite the agreement between the devs and AI.

A similar scene of chaos was happening on each floor of the ANW department (the building where Eldrian stays). With each group responsible for their own area of the game asking what had happened and why they had received no warning.

...

Eldrian woke not knowing what his actions had caused, he naturally thought it might be something to do with the information he had shared with Joren and that they had found a method to limit the danger to players. Thus they implemented an immediate update without forewarning.

As such he stood up, stretched, and headed out for a walk, taking his phone with and browsing the forum.

'Wait, why is there no post from the devs?' He questioned, and as he did one popped up simply stating that one of the servers failed and that it is being addressed.

'What? There is just 1 server...' This confused Eldrian even more but he decided to not bother about it for now. Since there was no mention of how long it was going to take and the fact that the tourney was also postponed (as this affected the arena's too), Eldrian decided to go for a run to clear his mind and go through what he had learned.

'It is still a bit hazy, but I am starting to get it.' Eldrian concluded after half an hour, taking a seat under his favorite tree and starting to meditate. For the first time, this was not just him gaining peace and tranquility.

Instead, as he meditated he could feel his surroundings. Hear the soft whisper of the winds, feel the essence of the grass and the rustle of the leaves around him. He could sense his position, and when someone neared him he immediately sensed them.

Opening his eyes, Eldrian smiled at Constantin who asked if he could take a seat next to him.

"Sure," Nodding and patting the ground, Eldrian asked, "Are you looking for me?"

Constantin nodded, "We think what you did scared the AI."

"What? Why?"

"We have no idea. Care to share what you did?"

"Sure, I simply realized what mana is," Eldrian replied.

"And what is it?"

"It is everything," Eldrian replied, confusing the older man next to him.

"Sorry?"

"Let me ask you, what is energy?"

Constantin took a few minutes to think of the simplest and best reply he could muster. "It is the ability to work, to do something."

"And mass, is mass energy or not?"

"No, it isn't that simple."

"Sure, it isn't. But when it comes down to it, what is mass?"

Constantin didn't know the answer to this. He could counter it that it was the amount of matter, that it was how an object and the matter it was made out of affect space-time. However, what did that mean? When it came down to it didn't that mean that mass was energy in a certain form affecting certain properties of the physical world.

The simplest example was one of a ball being able to pull down a net due to gravity. Did that not show that mass had energy, at least in some manner. Even if it was just the most basic potential energy.

There was no need to even go into the mass-energy equivalence. This was already enough to argue that mass had energy at the very least, if not that it was energy.

Sure, this wasn't really correct or scientific. But Constantin realized what Eldrian was getting at.

"So, if mass is energy in a certain state, then what is mana?" Constantin naturally knew the mass-energy equivalence. But as he had said, it wasn't as simple as saying mass was energy.

"Energy in a free state."

Constantin didn't get what Eldrian was saying, and after thinking for a moment Eldrian refreshed his question.

"If heat is how active matter is, and cold is the absence of its activeness. Then what is heat?" Eldrian naturally didn't have much of an understanding of these topics, heck, he hadn't even finished his first semester of college and that wasn't even in the field of physics. He was pulling at the little he had learned in high school.

Constantin thought about it for a moment and realized where Eldrian was coming from as someone without a higher education in the field. He clearly wasn't looking for the answer that it was the kinetic energy transfer between particles. He had already touched upon it by saying it was how active the matter was. With that taken from him, Constantin had no other answers.

"I don't know, care to share?"

"Sure. You can say heat is the amount of energy added to the mass." Eldrian said, confusing Constantin as he had no idea where Eldrian was trying to lead him.

"Can you please just say the main point so these dots you are trying to plant make sense?"

Nodding Eldrian said, "Mana is like this. It is an energy you can freely add to a system. To either add heat or remove it. In fact, mana can even add or remove matter. It isn't heat nor matter, but it can become either or both."