Chapter 9: Meditation


    Dave woke up with cold sweat on his forehead.


    ''Damn, nightmares!''


    Nightmares started haunting him when the apocalypse had descended on the. At first, they were more or less bearable, but as he continued to survive, more nightmares followed him in his sleep.


    Seeing how Brian and Adam were still sleeping, Dave smiled slightly chasing away his worries.


    ''I think it is time to use knowledge from a past life.''


    After a brief sleep, Dave felt refreshed and energized. He crossed his legs and sat on the ground entering a meditation state.


    Increasing spirit points wasn''t the only way to obtain mana.


    In his past life, survivorster learned that they can attract mana from the surroundings, but most of the people still added free points to spirit stat since it was too difficult to increase mana through meditation.


    Dave knew that spirit stat was more about soul power than mana. The increase in mana was just a byproduct of strengthening a soul.


    Dave had trained diligently over his past life picking up several tricks to strengthen himself, so he was able to learn meditation, though he spent lots of time learning it.


    After 15 minutes of meditation, Dave sensed blue particles around him drifting in the air. They were concentrated clusters of mana.


    He concentrated his mind on one of them, attracting it to his body. As another 10 minutes had passed, the blue particle moved close enough to his body.


    When he finally absorbed his first particle of mana, a system notification appeared before his eyes.


    [You have learned Meditation (LVL 1)]


    [Regression is reacting towards your new skill]


    [Meditation (LVL 1) have turned into Meditation (LVL 3)]


    Dave was shocked by the consecutive system notifications. He never thought that his Regression would still hide more surprises for him.


    ''Can it transfer my experience from past life to the current one to level up my skills?'' Dave thought that it was a reasonable idea since his Meditation had leveled up to the level from his previous life.


    Still excited from his discovery, he decided to leave the meditative state and try another skill from his past life.


    He paced his breathing to force his heart to pump the blood faster through the blood vessels. As his heartbeat faster than before, his body started heating up.


    Dave felt as strength surged through his body. However, right when he got at thest moment, he felt a sharp pain from his heart as it was going to explode.


    Gasping for air, Dave convulsed on the floor, his hands on his heart.


    He gritted his teeth as he tried to bear with the pain. It felt like all his body was being shredded as his heart was going to explode.


    Fortunately, after several minutes the pain decreased slightly as he tried to stand up from the floor.


    ''It seems that I should wait until my stamina reached the requirements.'' Dave groaned painfully as he thought till that point.


    Dave was ready for the bacsh right from the beginning. Usually, to learn a skill he wanted to acquire, people should have 10 points in stamina.


    However, he hoped that Regression would help him with learning it, even though he had only 9 points, 1 point short from the 10.


    ''It means that I can''t ovee the basic requirements to learn the skill'' Making conclusions in his head, Dave started nning on how to use his innate ability.


    ''I learned lots of main and misceneous skills in my past life, but most of them have requirements I have yet to fulfill.'' Thinking up to this point, Dave renewed his meditation.


    He couldn''t help but notice that he entered a meditative state much faster than before. At the same time, he absorbed blue particles of light much faster than a full 10 minutes. The time had gone down by 2 and a half minutes.


    As he was immersed in his meditation, time flew by. At some point, Brian and Adam woke up from their sleep.


    The first thing they noticed after waking up was Dave who sat cross-legged. It was hard not to see a person who was sitting strangely on the floor as though he was a monk.


    "Dave, what are you doing?"


    When Brian saw how Dave was meditating, he couldn''t help but exim surprisedly. Both he and Adam were surprised to see Dave waking up early than them, not to say, meditating next to the wall.


    Interrupted by Brian, Dave left a meditative state. He decided to teach them more about mana covering it by the premise of sudden discovery.


    "I woke up a bit earlier than you, and I decided to do some experiments. I discovered that we can increase our mana reserves through meditation and learn to control it with our will.


    Putting it into simpler words, if we take mana as water and spirit as a suction force, then meditation is an effective way to apply force to gather more water"


    Dave tried to exin the theory behind mana as simple as possible. Brian seemed to be in a daze trying to understand his words, while Adam looked like he got a gist of what he wanted to say.


    "Should we also try it?"


    Adam was the first one to propose it. Even though Dave implied it in his words, Adam showed a willingness to get stronger.


    When Adam proposed to meditate with him, Brian chipped in. Both of them wanted to grow stronger since the world was no more a safe ce to live.


    "Adam, if you want it, you can try meditating. As for you Brian, I want you to learn how to control your innate ability."


    Dave didn''t have high hopes that Adam would learn meditation immediately, but it was better to start learning it now.


    As for Brian, their survival depended on his Life Pulse. The faster he learns how to control the range of his innate ability, the more chances they will have to survive.


    "But I already tried it before. I have no idea how to do it."


    Brian tried to retort his words, but Dave was unwavering.


    "Don''t be too hasty. At first, you may try to direct your Life Pulse in one direction. It is your ability and only you know how to use it. I won''t be much of a help."


    Dave was sincere here. Even though he knew that it was possible to control an innate ability, he never had one in his past life. Hence, the help he could provide was limited.


    asionally sharing his insights with them, Dave wanted to n their next step. But at first, he wanted to check how much mana he had gathered since he had no time to check it before his meditation was interrupted by Brian.


    ''Status''


    [David Murckly


    Level: 3


    ss: None


    Survival coins: 12


    Mana: 5/5


    Strength: 16


    Agility: 10


    Stamina: 9


    Intelligence: 11


    Spirit: 0


    Free points: 0


    Innate ability: Regression


    Skills: Elementary Cooking (LVL 2), Gaming (LVL 8), Mathematics (LVL 7), Leadership (LVL 1), Meditation (LVL 3)]


    ''I had increased my mana by 5 points in just 5 hours which would have taken me a day worth of time if not for Regression. However, the higher it goes, the harder it will be to increase my mana pool in the future''


    As Dave thought, his Regression was amazing. Not only it had sent him back in time, but it was also able to transfer his experience from the past to this life.


    People couldn''t just level up their skills even if they had enough understanding of it. It leveled up depending on two factors.


    First was understanding of their skills to move it to the next level. For example, a person can''t have a higher level of Math if a user didn''t have knowledge corresponding to the next level.


    The second depended on how often it was used. More often you use it, the more adept you will be in it and the faster it will level up.