The first few days in Forked were a blur of observation, but Zeon, now he was using the name, found himself in deep disappointment. The city was totally a mess, a stark contrast with the world he lived in before, making him feel that he was a man who was drifting through a place that didn't belong.
He found a small and cheap room at a local inn, a place that reeked of stale beer. The bed was a lumpy straw mattress. He ate what he could afford at the local small restaurants, simple stews and tough bread, and only spent his days walking around the city, studying.
One thing he felt a bit relief, that he was beginning to understand how to deal with the Sin System. Last night, he had seen and observed how the Sin System within him worked.
The Greed was rising, and it was giving him the calculation of the seven deadly sins as he predicted before. All the sins' stats were zero, except for one, the Greed. It was rising by 75 points, giving him total XP of 112.5. And he needed 300 XP to level up, from level 1 to level 2.
If he could gather more XP to 300 and level up, the system would grant him an ability per level. And he was given a hint on what the ability he would gain, it was the mana combat ability.
Zeon was both relieved and worried. The seven deadly sins would include the Lust, and he was someone who avoided all girls and mature women alike in his previous life.
It didn't mean he liked being with a man, a gay in terms of it, but his personal morals and experiences told him that dealing with them would hinder his goals, even leading him to his downfall.
Therefore, he decided to deal with this. He would avoid the Lust sin as much as he could, and would try to do situational compromise with the other sins.
"No point in moral debates if I starve to death," he muttered dryly, rubbing his temple.
Sighing, he shifted his focus to more pressing issues. He was a human, after all. He needed to eat, sleep, and some other necessities to survive in this world.
He had a large sum of monthly salary as a law enforcement officer and also an engineer, a professor in the science and technology of his own world. His mind was trained to understand how things worked, to reverse-engineer complex machinery from a few stray parts, especially related to the ones of the criminals used to do their crimes.
The world of Carja had no machines… at all. But it had mana.
At a blacksmith's shop, he watched a dwarf with a braided beard work. The forge didn't have a bellows, and the fire didn't burn with wood alone. The dwarf stood before a fire pit and simply held his hands over it. He closed his eyes, and his palms turned white, then a faint blue glow enveloped his palms. The dull orange fire flared to a white-hot intensity, making the gray iron bar begin to glow cherry red in seconds.
Zeon leaned closer with a genuine curiosity. The dwarf glanced up, while wiping sweat from his brow.
"The heat… it just flared up like that. You didn't use the bellows? You using fire magic?" He asked, almost a whisper, without realizing he said it out loud.
The dwarf chuckled, "Magic? No, lad. Just a bit of mana. Nothing special"
Listening and observing the dwarf, made something click on his mind.
'That's thermodynamics…energy transfer. He's using mana to heat the metal, exciting the molecules. Brilliant…' he thought in fascination.
He quickly understood how mana worked. An idea formed in his mind, of him to create a mana-tech synergy. It would be much more advanced than anything in this world, even on Earth.
A skilled mana user was both the power plant and the conductor. The source of energy was a part of the person, and a physical manifestation of an external force.
Excited, he spent the next few days watching everything. Everywhere he looked, he saw the same pattern. Mana was not a chaotic and mystical force, unlike ones depicted in fantasy games.
It was a quantifiable energy, a part of daily life, a form of technology they took for granted. Just like Earth, where people used electricity without understanding the physics behind it, people in Carja used mana without understanding its scientific principles.
*******
Back to his dingy room, Zeon sat on the creaking chair and took some papers, the quill, and the ink. The tutor on this previous body owner's memory, had been trying to explain the principles of Mana flow to a bored Zeon.
"Mana is a current. It's directed, channeled, and amplified." The tutor explained, and drew lines on his diagram of the human body.
It was a different kind of nervous system, and realizing it made Zeon feel a thrill run through him. He could use reverse-engineer on this system. The laws of this world was a world of applied physics, but the fundamental principles of engineering remained.
The tutor had mentioned a mana gland near the heart, a tiny organ that pulled in mana and stored it. The mana gland was the body's natural mana converter, taking mana and storing it for use.
And mana infused metals were available in this world, alloys that could be imbued with mana to make them stronger, lighter, or even to give them the new properties. The gray bearded tutor mentioned mana weaving as well, a way of braiding mana into fabric to create clothes that were impossibly strong and light.
"You're totally an idiot, Zeon," he muttered, while scribbling down what he just saw from the memories. "This a gold mine. No… a diamond mine."
But then he froze mid way. He had forgotten one crucial thing, this stupid body owner didn't know how to use mana properly.
So he needed to find a teacher, someone who could teach him to use this energy. He also needed to get his hands on some of these mana infused metals and figure out how they worked, before he could build something.