Perspective: Marcus Delgado
Setting: Nexlify building roof, 11:12 PM PST – March 28, 2025
The sun sank low over Seattle, bleeding oranges and purples across the skyline. Hands shoved into jacket pockets, Marcus Delgado stood alone on the Nexlify rooftop. His thoughts clattered inside his brain as the wind tugged at his jacket. Last week’s excitement and watching people on TV do crazy things still gnawed at him. Those weird glowing swirls punched straight through his calm. The shame of it burned.
This was his sanctuary—the place where he could breathe, where the hum of traffic and the distant pulse of life washed over the noise in his head. Blood-soaked nights saving lives, co-running a startup with brains like Elias’s that left him scrambling to keep up. All the while an uncaring city never knew how close he came to unraveling. He’d built walls to hide that kind of crack, forged from the rush of stitching a wound or cracking a logistics snag. He felt exposed, a first responder with no kit to fix himself.
He liked to think he lived for these moments when everything clicked. When he stabilized a patient with seconds to spare or found a workaround for the latest company crisis, piecing together solutions with geniuses while hauling the load of making payday. The EMT gig was a snap decision that now was a large part of his life. It was visceral, blood and chaos, the weight of a stretcher in his hands, pushing past exhaustion to save someone he’d never see again. “Haz el bien y no mires a quién”—do good, don’t ask who—his abuela’s words, his north star, driving him to patch lives and rig fixes without hesitation, feeding that rush he craved. The System’s magic spooked him, and admitting that brought fresh pangs of regret bubbling through his stomach. Elias’s drones, Luka’s fireballs on TV, that guy who literally flies like some comic book hero. These were puzzles he couldn’t solve, a patient he couldn’t save. Even up here, where he’d always found steady ground, the wind offered no answers, just a cold slap against his doubts.
A heat simmered in his chest. Something deep spread through his ribs like a wildfire, hot, wild and powerful. Arms tingling, he shook his hands as they buzzed with anticipation. He rubbed his sternum, calloused hands pressing hard, his practical mind racing for answers—pulse racing, anxiety growing, hot and cold all over—, “panic attack?” he asked himself, “now?”.
This felt different though, the heat pulsed, steady and alive, like a heartbeat. His breath hitched, desperate to suck in air that felt heavy in his lungs. His hands shook and a faint glowing energy swirled around them. Just like Eli, he thought, fresh fear spiking through his heart, freezing him in place.
Pressure climbed his spine, heavy and slow, settling at his skull’s base, a weight grounding him even as his mind spun, and he grunted, muttering, “Breathe, Delgado.” Memories flooded through his mind’s eye, every save, every late-night fix, every time he’d jury-rigged a win from scraps, crashed against the dread that this was bigger, wilder, a beast he couldn’t tame. The wind howled in his ears, mocking his empty hands. Glowing with purple-red mist, his hands shook as the heat surged, promising something he couldn’t name, something he couldn’t control.
Snap!! A clanging crack, like metal snapping.
The weight eased, the heat settled into a steady hum, and a screen flickered—green text slicing the dusk:
It blinked out, and Marcus exhaled, ragged and raw, the air cold against his teeth as the shimmer in his hands dissipated. “Guess I’m stuck with it,” he muttered, voice rough with the vulnerability he loathed, flexing fingers that felt heavier, ready to shape something, and thought, Character sheet
Marcus stared, lips twitching—Manasmith, what’s that? A new screen shimmered into existence.
Reading over the message, his anxiety subsided as the concepts flowed into his mind. Focusing on [Mana Forge], he gained new insights into how to use this amazing skill:
“No time like the present, Summon Aether Forge.” his voice cracking slightly, his outstretched hand shaking slightly.
The air compressed in front of him with a whoosh. Purple and red light blazing a few feet in front of him, drawing ambient mana into a core, burning like a furnace. A few seconds later, the machine was real, glowing with orange and yellow lines, the center furnace a purple-red bruise glowing with power. It truly was a workbench, very much like the one he saw his father working at every weekend. There was a stool and a sketch board, electronic scanners of all kinds, tools and equipment waiting for him to use. Solutions and creations swirled through his mind as the System began compiling his knowledge into blueprints.
Several minutes later and trying to control the smile on his face, he raced downstairs to tell the team what happened. His haste had nothing to do with the fact that the System found no blueprints in his head. Praying to God that Dennis wouldn’t start in with the project manager never creates, only destroys diatribe, he burst into the office like a tornado.
In the days that followed Marcus and Elias’s discoveries, Alicia and Dennis both formed their Mana Core. Alicia, a [Flow Weaver], was a healing class with tendrils of mana she could use like extra sets of hands. Dennis became an [Arcane Warden], a combat class giving him the power to [Bond] with animals. Thanks to the internet providing workable blueprints, Marcus grew more familiar with his new abilities, improving his Manasmith profession, and teaching Elias how to use [Mana Batteries] to power his drones. The team spent a lot of this time brainstorming and gaming out how they could synergize their skills. From stealthy missions to all out brawls, they crafted strategies and counter strategies, determined to be ready for anything. TJ, quietly listening to the team discuss fighting strategies, cracks of doubt surfacing over when her core would form.
