Ronald’s vision came back to him slowly as the darkness faded away. A strange sense of vertigo seemed to smash into him, causing a weird feeling of nausea. He couldn’t feel his stomach rolling like what usually happens when he experienced this sort of feeling, but his mind felt as if it was rolling around in his head.

  He looks around himself for a minute and realizes that he is not where he should be, but he can’t remember exactly where he should be at this moment. In an attempt to move his arms and legs he also realizes that he doesn’t have them anymore.

  He finds a way to look at his body and all he can see is a strange wooden vehicle, much like a wagon, but longer than ones he can remember from earth, with multiple sets of wheels. At least 8 wheels. The wheels are not what he was expecting either, instead of the thin wooden wheels from his memories, these wheels are much wider and appear to have some grooves cut into them.

  As soon as he sees his new weird shape and body a staggering information floods into his ‘Brain’ and he recalls a voice telling him that it is sorry, but they are desperate and need him to save the people of this world from a horrible fate.

  Ronald also gets instinctual information on how to use some of his new abilities, like the ability to assimilate materials and turn it into usable mana for expanding his body. He opens his status screen and is given a screen like from a video game, but notices that unlike what he thought he has some strange stats, like durability.

  Status page:

  Name: Ronald Peters

  Class: Hero Transport Core

  Titles: Chosen Hero, Last Hope, Innocent’s Chosen

  Abilities: Assimilate lvl 1, Transport Expansion lvl 1, Full speed lvl 1, Ram lvl 1, Sanctuary Aura lvl 1

  The information on the status screen wasn’t as expansive as he was hoping, but it did give him plenty to work with. His name displayed the same as he remembered that had always been his name in his old world.

  Power: Ability of the transport core to provide power for movement. Correlates to top speed and pulling power, but not acceleration.

  Traction: Ability of transport core to maintain forced contact with road providing for improved maneuvering especially at high speeds.

  Thrust: Ability of transport core to provide the needed acceleration in order to reach top speed quicker and in a shorter distance.

  Toughness: Ability of the transport core to absorb incoming damage as well has ability to absorb more damage and maintain function.

  Assimilate lvl 1: Allows the transport core to break down materials into base mana components, adding that total mana to the mana battery. Adds assimilated material to the database for expansion.

  Transport Expansion lvl 1:

  Allows the transport to expand itself and increase its capabilities based on various difficult potential upgrades.

  Full speed ahead lvl 1: Allows a burst of speed to get up to max speed very quickly. Cost moderate amount of mana.

  Ram lvl 1: Allows the transport a burst of speed to crash into a target. Damage to the target is based on transport size vs the size of the target. Materials of both can cause damage to be multiplied or divided. Causes damage to both transport and target, damage to transport is generally half of the potential damage to the target.

  Sanctuary Aura lvl 1: Protective area provided by the transport core. At level 1 aura will help to boost healing and mana recovery for non-hostiles and will provide limited obstacles for sensing abilities. Will deactivate if the enemy has entered the auras area. Assimilation can be used inside the area of the aura. Aura will extend 10 meters beyond the transport’s frame.

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  After reading his skills and getting a feel for them, Ronald looks around and begins to take notes of his surroundings.

  He is at the bottom of a group of hills, gentle rolling hills. Not very tall, but he believes that were he still in a human body he would be exhausted after walking up and down them to get to a destination. Not too far away he notices a dirt road that appears to connect a nearby forest and leads off into the distance, rising over a hill.He also notices some debris by the roadside, the perfect time to test out his new assimilate ability. It appears that whatever was in this spot before had been attacked as the area was littered with scorched holes and broken arrows. He also noticed quite a lot of blood stains on the ground both near his wagon and a distance away. He also notices that the further away he attempts to ‘see’ using this new form of sight, the more difficult it becomes to make out any meaningful details. He is able to tell from the general shape, and color what objects may be, but it is very small compared to what he can remember being able to see as a human. One of his first thoughts after noticing the area around him was that he would need to find water, shelter, and eventually food. That thought made him stop mentally. He wasn’t a human anymore, he probably didn’t need food to fuel his body, and his new instincts told him that he now consumed ‘mana’ as a fuel source, but that mana also came from him as well, but his skill sheet had told him that he could ‘Assimilate’ objects with his ‘Assimilate’ ability to gain mana at a much faster rate than what he naturally produced. He looked within himself to attempt to see if he could find or locate this mana substance, and strangely enough he could feel its presence with his core. He could also feel mana diffused into the air around, but also the ground and the debris scattered around the area. He could feel that the mana in the air was extremely thin and his instincts told him that he would gain nothing by trying to bring it into himself with his ability.

  As he shifted his focus to the mana in ground, his instincts yet again poured information into his brain, he knew that certain areas, those that were controlled by ‘dungeon cores’, whatever those were, were richer in mana than the ground he found himself on now. He knew that he would recover more mana from the ground than the air, but that he would also gain almost nothing from it as a whole without greater levels in his Assimilate skill. Dragging his attention to the debris around him, his instincts told him that he would get far more from these objects than he would from either the air or the ground. How much, he did not know, but he believed he needed to find out, he needed more to work with than the small amount he had at this time.

  By looking inward and finding the ability within himself. He gains an understanding of how it works. He has an instinctual feel for the range that he breaks things down and assimilates them into his core as mana. Ronald's mind comes to a halt at that thought, if he is turning matter into mana, is this mana also a form of matter or is it energy? He remembers vaguely from school that when converted to energy, even a small amount of matter houses tremendous energy potential.

  He tries to shake the useless thoughts from his mind, but all he manages is to make his wagon body shake a bit. He thinks to himself, “That’s going to take some getting used to.” He returns his attention to his new ability to break what little he had understood about the laws of matter and energy and tries to reach out and find a way to break down some of the ruined wooden boxes and pallets spread around his immediate vicinity. Knowledge came rushing forward telling him exactly how to use his assimilation ability to break them down into mana for his core to use to expand itself. Strangely, to him it felt as familiar as riding a bike.

  Trying not to think too hard on how this information was essentially just appearing in his new mind, Ronald reaches out his invisible focus and begins to use his Assimilate ability on the boxes he has selected for his test. Inside his vision, Ronald can actually see the crates slowly break down and turn into different colored energies. That same energy rises from the crate as it is converted and then flies over to the small light blue orb that he now understands is his new body/heart/mind. As he watches the colored mana come into contact with the orb of energy, he can also feel that the once aspected mana is converted into a neutral non-aspected form of mana. Again, as if by some weird instinct Ronald just knows that his core has mana in the non-aspected form and then will change it to an aspected form in order to be used properly.

  He paid attention to the mana in his core as it entered to get an idea of how much it gained from breaking down the boxes. He could feel that it did increase his amount of mana a sizable amount, but compared to how much he could hold in his core it was only a drop in the bucket. He understood that his core did have a limit to how much it would be able to hold, but he would not fill it up by just breaking down one box.

  His attention turned back to the crate and was caught off guard, it was gone. The whole thing had broken down. He understood instantly after having returned his focus to the now empty spot. The whole process of breaking down the crate and everything afterward had taken far longer than he had believed. He must have been so caught up in the process that his mind was oblivious to the time he spent doing it. That thought honestly scared him a little. He was not human anymore, he understood that, but never before had he been so mentally focused on something before that he actually lost connection to time passing. He hoped that wouldn’t become a problem in the future.