I woke from dreams filled with half seen faces and shifting shadows to bright sunlight. In a testament to the exhaustion of the previous day I had not risen with the sun which now hung high in the sky. Fighting off the last remnants of sleep I take in my surroundings, memories of the previous day written across the clearing. My gaze is inexorably drawn towards the remains of the collapsed tower and a shiver runs through me at the memory of being trapped beneath it.

“Mel we are going to have to be more careful in the future. Even now that I have started to learn earth magic, I don’t want to end up in a situation like that again.” I say as I pull my gaze from the tower. “I wish the tower were still standing since there was probably more we could have learned from it, but I guess that I will just have to content myself with what I’ve got.”

Reaching down to my storage belt I pull out the seven glass covered songs that I had taken from the top of the tower. Three of them are now visible while the other four remain almost completely hidden. “It seems that my guess from last night was correct Mel. By the looks of it whatever enchantment was placed on these will keep me from reading them until I learn the songs.” As I speak, I pick up the newest piece to reveal itself, the song of earth.

The sheet is divided into three parts. One has the words, another the notes of music and the last the flows of mana. Just like with the previous two songs I can see many ways that it can be used. The flowing lines of mana describe how the earth could be moved shaken or even cracked should I decide to call upon the songs power. This however was not the only thing the song taught me.

While the song itself would call directly upon the primal power of the earth it also showed me how I could manipulate simple earth mana. This new knowledge would expand my powers into a new realm allowing me to use new magic and experiment further with combinations of different mana. One of the most important of these was nature. Now having both water and earth within my control I should be able to learn to use nature magic without needing to rely on enchantments.

With a mountain of new possibilities before me the urge to spend time experimenting was nearly overwhelming. Trying to find a solution to my dilemma I listened to the forest through my connection to it and tried to see if I had the time to spare. As it turned out I did.

“Well Mel it looks like we are going to be staying here for a little while. We’ve got some new skills to play with and I want to try and figure out a few uses for my new magic.” I announce. In response Mel sends an indifferent pulse of energy before sending out a faint feeling of hunger. “Hahaha, oh you. Always a hungry one aren’t you.” I reply, chuckling softly.

I am about to summon some mana to give her before pricking my finger when a new idea comes to me. Why should I feed her both mana and blood separately? I should be able to do both at once. If I can infuse my blood with mana then I could give her both at the same time. Who knows it might even improve the quality of the blood. I will have to ask her when I’m done.

Interested to see the outcome of my new plan I summon a mana blade and draw it across my palm. I wait for a small amount of blood to pool in my hand before quickly healing myself. Focusing on the blood I start to extrude a small amount of mana and push it towards the pool. The blood eagerly drinks up the mana that I feed to it. As the blood absorbs more and more of the mana it begins to change. At first it starts to turn a brighter red then as more mana is fed into it the blood starts to shimmer faintly. The shimmer builds until the blood starts to glow, first with a faint light then brighter and brighter until it suddenly bursts into flame.

“Ahh!” I scream as a small pillar of flame shoots up from my hand completely evaporating the blood and leaving bright painful burns across my palm. “Don’t you go laughing at me. I just gave it a little too much power. Next time it will turn out better.” I snap at Mel who is sending out rapid pulses of mirth.

After healing my hand I repeat my experiment. This time I stop feeding mana into the small pool of blood when it first starts to glow. Smiling slightly at my success I hold Mel in my other hand and slow start to feed the mana infused blood to her. At first she sends out a little pulse of surprise but it quickly turns into one of delight. She greedily suck it all in and when she is done she is nearly purring in content.

“Well I’m glad to see that you liked that so much. Care to tell me if there was any difference to it?” I ask. Mel seems to struggle to come up with a way to communicate the difference in a way that is simple enough to get across our bond. After a short wait I get the images of better, stronger, and a circle sent to me. I puzzle over her response for a few moments before asking, “Better and stronger all around?” Mel’s response is a happy affirmative.

“Interesting. If infusing the blood with mana made it that much better do you think it would do anything for me?” I ask as images of me fueled by super blood fill my mind. Mel responds with a hesitant feeling of possibility. I start to get ready to try it when Mel sends me an image of myself glowing before bursting into flame. “Hey! I’m not that stupid am I?” I ask, feeling slightly hurt.

Mel remains stonily silent refusing to answer. I let out a long sigh before replying, “I see your point. I do tend to jump straight into things don’t I. But I think that it would be worth a little bit of risk to try this. If I can infuse my body with mana then it might be really helpful.” Mel again replies with hesitant approval and another image of me bursting into flame. “Will you stop with the whole tower of flame thing. I don’t plan to do anything as extreme as what I did for you. I’m only going to add a little bit of mana to myself and see if anything happens.”

Taking a moment to harden my resolve I step into my mental landscape. I am once more looking at the intricate glowing display that is my mana core and channels. Hmmm, so how to do this without exploding? I need to somehow infuse my body with mana but to do it slowly enough and dispersed enough that I don’t explode or infuse only part of me. That means that I can’t just leak it from my mana channels as that would be too fast. I also can’t just start feeding mana into my blood as it wouldn’t be done evenly and I don’t think that having pockets of mana infused blood floating around in me would be a good idea. I need a new perspective on this.

To get a better idea of how to approach the problem I make a slight alteration to the image within my mental landscape. Where once there was only the image of the mana flows I now add my skeleton and circulatory system. A vast tangle of blood vessels and bones in now displayed before me. The image while fairly creepy is also quite fascinating. As I stare at the intricate tangle I slowly come to realize that if I want to be able to infuse the entire system evenly I am going to need to create an entirely new mana network.

Well this is going to be a whole lot of work so I certainly hope that it is worth it. With a mental sigh at the enormity of the task ahead of me I set to work. Over the course of the day I slowly build up the new system within my body. Around the blood vessels I braid small channels that while not totally encompassing them will allow mana to be infused from all sides along their entire length. For the bones I do something slightly different. Being more dense than the fragile blood vessels the bones require a much more robust system than simple braids. To satisfy what I think will be needed I wrap all of my bones in a fine mesh of tiny hexagonal channels.

Exhausted and with my mind straining to maintain the new network I step back to take a look at my creation. I look it over time and time again trying to find any flaws or places that are not evenly coated. Not able to find any flaws I turn hesitantly to my mana core. The last step to completing the network is to connect it to my mana core and fill it with mana. Hesitating only slightly I connect the system to my core and begin to fill it with the swirling liquid mana.

The process takes much longer than I had thought as the new system is much more extensive than any other I have. After waiting for my core to refill several times the network is finally charged. Feeling both tired and excited I step out of my mental landscape. This is something that I will need to be able to experience to properly judge its safety.

“Alright Mel I’m ready. Wish me luck.” I say before letting the smallest trickle of mana out of the network and into my body. Instantly the strangest sensation washes over me. It feels like the cool rush I get whenever I use my mana is permeating my entire body. The feeling is almost impossible to explain as it sinks into my blood, bones, and organs all at once. As the tingling starts to fade I examine myself trying to feel any differences. There doesn’t seem to be any.

“I’m not burning up like a torch and I’m not writhing in pain so I guess that can be considered a success. I don’t feel all that different except maybe like I am suddenly full of energy again, or at least my body seems to think it is.” I explain to Mel. Her response is cut off as the familiar sounding of notifications chimes in my head.

Ding!

Mana Manipulation has reached level 30!

Meditation has reached level 5!

Skill acquired – Enhancement Matrix!

Enhancement Matrix – You have learned that all things including yourself benefit when infused with mana. Without killing yourself you have managed to evenly infuse your body with mana. As your body becomes more saturated with mana it will grow stronger. Your bones will become harder to break, your organs will resist damage more easily, and your muscles will grow both faster and stronger. Be warned that infusing your own body with mana is a delicate process. Should you try to push this skill before your body has time to adjust to and absorb the infusions of mana you will die. +1 Strength +1 Dexterity +1 Constitution +1 Endurance per skill level

Enhancement Matrix has reached level 1

Alert! Due to the discovery and use of liquid mana all bonuses from Enhancement Matrix have been tripled!

“Holy crap Mel this is amazing!” I squeal excitedly. “This new skill will help to improve all of my physical stats! I can finally start to improve consistently. It’s a bit of a shame that I have to do it slowly but if it keeps improving me all over like it says then I’ll take it.” I continue to babble excitedly until I am finally hit with a wave of exhaustion. Slightly confused and tired I look around and realize that night has fallen. “Oh my. I guess that took a long time didn’t it.”

Fighting heavy eyelids I go through the motions of taking care of myself and Mel. I make a small meal from the stored tri-horn meat and make Mel some more enhanced blood before collapsing into the soft embrace of sleep.

The next morning I wake with the sun excited to continue experimenting with magic. Today like the days in the past I practice my skills and do my best to test out my new magic. Things are pretty normal as far as I would consider. I learned how to move small bits of earth and to shape them to my will. I could create spikes, arrows and even small walls from earth. Creating the walls was exciting as it meant that wherever I went I could make a temporary shelter rather than just hiding in a tree.

After gaining a basic understanding of how I could manipulate earth magic I moved on to trying my hand at nature magic. Mel seemed to especially like this part as I made seeds sprout into plants and shaped the way that they grew. She pulsed in delight as I grew small bushes into the shapes of various animals we had seen so far. I learned that I could also apply this new ability to my bow crafting skill. By using nature magic I could cause the branches I worked with to regrow patches that were sloppy or slightly reshape a branch to fit more with what I wanted. My skills weren’t good enough yet to just grow a fully completed bow but they were good enough to fix some of my mistakes while carving one.

My successes with nature magic spurred me to make my first new and startling discovery of the day. I had known that combining water and air mana made storm mana, and that combining water and earth mana made nature mana so I decided to try combining air and earth mana. At first the two just seemed to slip over each other and refuse to combine, this lasted only until I hit some unknown ratio of the two. As soon as the ratio hit a correct amount the two combined and a painful shock of electricity blew me off my feet. I had managed to create lightning mana.

This naturally lead to a bevy of tests to see the extent of this new power. I shocked myself more times than I care to admit but was eventually able to gain some control over the element. I could play sparks across my hands and even managed to create lightning arrows.

My second startling discovery of the day was when I decided to start applying enchantments to my arrows. I had noticed that while it was possible to create arrows out of the elements they were not as effective as the ones made out of pure mana. To correct this problem I started creating pure mana arrows and etching small spells into their tips. The results were quite satisfying. I could now soot an arrow into a large stump and have it discharge ice, wind, or lightning.

Happy with my successes I decided to try putting a gravity enchantment on the arrow. Working off of the sphere I had used to protect myself from the tower collapse I made an arrow that should create a small repulsion field around itself after impact. After shooting the stump with my newest creation I frowned slightly as nothing happened. I was just about to repeat the test when the stump exploded. Staring in shock I slowly let my next arrow fade away and decided that I never wanted to be hit with anything like that. Ever.

With the latest shock still fresh in my mind I decided that it was time to stop experimenting for the day. I was happy to see after reading over my notifications that I had gained levels across most of my skills. Mana manipulation, elemental arrow, throw, bow crafting, archery, enchanting, and spellweaver had all gained levels reaching 32, 8, 15, 6, 8, 9, and 18 respectively. After reding over all of the gains that I had made I pulled up my status page to check my overall gains.

Status

Name:

Reiza

Classes

Druidic Defender lv. 14

Level:

1

Orionian Archer lv. 3

Race:

Beast-kin: Celestial Fox

-

Gender:

Female

Final Class

-

Age

14

Atributes

Strength:

32

Stamina:

79/690

Dexterity:

186

Mana:

123/1470

Constitution:

57

Endurance:

69

Free stat points

5

Intelligence:

138

Wisdom:

147

Luck:

10

“Things are starting to look pretty good for me Mel. My physical stats are finally starting to go up and with all the new stuff that I learned today my combat potential is increasing greatly.” I say with a smile on my face. With nothing else left to do for the day and the sun starting to touch the horizon I made a meal for myself and Mel before starting to craft my newest bow.

With infinite care I slowly shaped and carved the branch. When I made mistakes I would use nature magic to fix them before starting again. It was a long and slow process but the end result was worth the effort. The bow was a glittering smooth grey. Its curves and balance were far beyond anything that I had ever made up to this point. It would serve me well in the days to come.

[Ashwood Recurve Bow – Quality Very Good]

Putting the bow in my storage belt I lay down closing my eyes. Before sleep claimed me I whispered to Mel, “I think we are as prepared as we can get Mel. I’m not going to improve a whole lot more staying here. It is time for us to finish our journey north. I have drakes to hunt.”