Versatile: Alternate World

Returning to the real world without warning is something else. I didn't know that being kicked out from the game due to the maintenance occurring would be something like that. I stood up from the bed and stretched my body. Since the game will take 48 hours worth of time to conduct the emergency maintenance, it would have been a good time to take a break from the game.

However, who would be able to properly relax in this kind of weather like this and with the temperature invading your room and are almost ready to invade your body if you don't get vigilant?

With the game under maintenance, everyone would be already out of their room and should be staying underneath the kotatsu. For me, it wasn't the case and I have a suspicion about what the cold feeling is like. I returned to my bed and sit in a cross-legged position. Once I feel comfortable with how I am positioned in my bed, I channel the mana in my body and let it spread out from my veins to my nerves, basically, everywhere in my body.

The rush of mana in my body flows smoothly in my body. It helped a lot that I trained my body to handle loads of mana in one go. Without training my body for that, this amount of load is enough to make me drown from having too much mana flowing in the body.

Once the mana has already spread out fully to my body, the next thing I did is to absorb the mana in the surroundings. Since the location of my house is favored for the amount of mana circling around the whole place, it is a good place to practice mana control. When I started absorbing the mana on the surroundings, the pang of cold started to spread out in my body and the temperature of my body rapidly dropped.

To quickly stop the cold from spreading from my body, I circulate the mana that is currently spread out in my body and use it to circulate again in my whole body, sweeping the new mana that I absorbed and blending with the old mana currently present in my body. Once the circulation was done, I sighed in relief from what happened.

"As expected, this cold weather is not something that is due to natural causes. It is more similar to how a mana storm in Alternate World works."

Mana Storm is a calamity that occurs in Luminos, the Continent in the Sky and it is exclusive on that continent as well. In short, Mana Storm is a storm that is not caused by normal means but caused by the wild flow of the mana in the surroundings. Depending on how severe the wild flow of mana is, it would either cause the Mana Storm to occur in different forms.

Although I don't believe this was a mana storm, it has similar functions as the mana that is currently surrounding the place is not supposed to be cold. Only the mana in mana storms adapts to what kind of storm they are in. If it was a blizzard, the mana you felt is cold and chill. If it was a Magma Storm, the mana is hot.

Perhaps the mana I felt when I was waiting for anyone to open the door earlier was not just my imagination but a real deal of how the mana is getting wild.

There is one thing that puzzles me if this was a mana storm though. Compared to what is happening all around the world, Mana Storm is located only in one place and wouldn't occur all around the continent of Luminos which is why it is easy to ignore or avoid the Mana Storm if it occurred. However, the current temperature drop and the winter-like weather are happening all over the world which doesn't make sense much to me.

After a bit of racking my brains on coming up with an explanation, I decided to give up on it for now and decided to know whether I can think of a way to lessen the situation or find out the main cause of it. Even if I am located in Japan, if I use the mana to trace it, I can easily find the main cause of the trouble somewhere around the world without going there directly. I may not be powerful enough to solve it while I am here, but I can at least identify whether things will be very bad or not if I leave it alone.

Once my mana has properly settled down, I focused my whole consciousness and made sure that I am not uncomfortable in any way. Fully prepared, I released the mana in my body and made it blend with the mana in the surroundings. Not only that but I also attached a small part of my consciousness to the mana I blend into the surrounding mana.

This method is something that shouldn't be imitated or done by someone who doesn't know what he is doing. One wrong move and the consciousness you attached to the mana will be lost and you will never be complete again as that piece of consciousness will be lost in the swirl of mana. There is not a bad part to losing your consciousness but you will feel a sudden loss of something important to you, like memories and other abilities. So unless you really know what you are doing, making this move gives a big gamble.

I am not afraid of what I am doing so this is not something worth getting much fuss about. Also, if things go south, I can easily retrieve my consciousness without a problem too, allowing me to use this to properly learn the situation.

With a bit of my consciousness detached from me, I allowed it to flow around the mana. Compared to the past timeline that I did this thing, the stream of mana in the current situation is much different than the stream of mana in the past timeline. Just like how things are happening in the real world, the stream of mana is also slowly freezing. It isn't a good thing as it will make moving around the stream of mana hard. Because of this, I decided to increase the mana load that I attached to my consciousness. Increasing the mana load, also allowed me to increase the heat of my current situation.

It allowed me to properly move around the stream of mana without getting stuck. With everything completed, the small voyage begins.

...

Exploring the mana of the surroundings, I find the mana around the house not that chaotic but the surrounding areas are mixed of chaotic and calm. It's quite overwhelming if you are not used to it and getting caught up in storms will be really easy if you don't pay attention.

I let the flow of mana do its work and carry me. Most of the time, the current came from the strongest area where mana congregates a lot. I thought it was located very far from my current location but I realized that something was not right with the situation, not too far from my mansion.

Something seems to be disturbing the flow as it is keeping on releasing the cold mana and sucking the normal mana that normally exists. I pinpointed the main coordinates on where it was located and quickly retrieve the consciousness I attached and reattached it to my body. Once the consciousness in my head stabilized, the next thing I did is to stabilize the mana in my whole body. I don't want it to go berserk and destroy my body due to the rush of finding out the main cause.

Once the stabilization of my mana has returned to normal, I grab my jacket and heat packs before opening the door to the balcony in my room and escaped there silently before anyone from the house noticed I was gone. I don't want anyone to know what I am currently doing at the moment. They might get worried over something that I am still not that certain of.

Silently escaping from the perimeter of my mansion, I recall the coordinates of where I was before and took a bit of time identifying where I should go. After a few seconds of analysis, I marked down in my mind where the place I saw before is currently located and rushed there. Without anyone around the streets, I didn't hesitate to use my swift movement to traverse the streets and reach my current destination fast enough.

When I arrived at the location that is causing the disturbance in mana inside the mana stream, what welcomed me is something shocking even for me.

Before me is a small hole. It is a hole big enough for the size of my head to enter and exit without getting trapped in it. I can't call it a hole though because not only does it has a dimension beyond its hole, it looks like a portal to me and currently, a cold breeze that is freezing the surroundings is currently being released from its hole.