The journey home was thankfully uneventful. Jen noted that her small section of cave had become home sometime in the last few days, and laughed a little at how so little could mean so much. Even though it wasn’t anything more than a source of water and a slightly more comfortable mossy area to sleep on, that was enough for it to become a place of security. Compared to having literally nothing, even a little could be worth a lot.

The mushroom light did fade away before she was completely back, but by then she was close enough to navigate using the sound from her pool to stay on track. After reaching the mossy section, Jen stockpiled the crystals she had collected while she considered her next objective. In the end, she determined that before she did anything significant, she would need to regain her mana. From generating light to feeding the antimagic mushrooms, to eating them in turn, Jen had expended her magic almost constantly throughout the day. Turning the experimental mushroom into a beacon had been beneficial, but she had drained herself in the process. If her clock was accurate, she had only the eight mana that she had regenerated since then, less whatever she had spent by the river. While her rate of regeneration had increased, so had her maximum mana capacity. With a total pool of 80 MP, It would take her twelve hours until she had a full pool to work with again. That could be lessened slightly by meditating, but the thought of doing nothing for a period of ten hours or more just to marginally increase her regeneration was offputting.

As much as Jen wished she had access to a mana potion to instantly recover her expended magic, she knew that it was nigh on impossible for her to craft one with the minimal resources she had available, assuming such magical items even existed. As much as she might dream otherwise, she highly doubted that anti-magic mushrooms, water, and mysterious crystals would combine into a regenerative item. A lethal poison would be much more likely.

In the end, Jen decided to just go to sleep early. Even though she had been awake less than ten hours by her mental count, there was enough strain and pressure that she felt weary. Sleeping would also reduce her bodies need to eat. She might be able to eat the mushrooms out of a sense of necessity, but she still hated them both for the poison they contained and the precious mana that they stole from her.

Waking up was easier. There was still the same slow transition out of the dreamstate, with no light to cue her that she was now awake, but Jen figured that her body was becoming adjusted to that in its own way. Fully awake, her attention turned inwards.

She was impressed at just how visible her mana channels were to her senses. Whether her sensitivity to such things continued to increase, or whether it was tied to her increased maximum amount of mana, but Jen could almost feel the magic flowing throughout her body, pulsing with its own rhythm as it seemed to have a new density to it.

Projecting a small amount into her palm was almost effortless, the concentration of mana such that she had no need to pull it together from all over her body, but merely expel what was already pooled in her hand. Taking advantage of the light she pulled up her status screen.

Her mana was sitting at a comfortable 72/80 MP. Jen was pleased, as this meant that she hadn’t wasted any regen while she had been sleeping. Remembering her Self Improvement skill, she amended that thought. It wouldn’t have technically been wasted, but the return from her skill was low enough that she preferred having the regeneration go into restoring her mana for the moment. Her eyes did note that her stamina was higher than it had been, increasing from 49 to 50, presumably thanks to her skill. Grateful to see some return, no matter how small or currently irrelevant, Jen moved on. It wasn’t like she could affect the speed of conversion, but at least she knew that the skill did have some effect.

After recommiting her current stats to memory, Jen closed the screen and turned her attention to the notifications that appeared. She had purposefully ignored them at the river, more focused on using her limited illumination to explore than to read messages.

Echolocation is now Lvl 7.

Listen is now Lvl 10.

Navigation is now Lvl 4.

Mana Manipulation is now Lvl 6.

Chronos’ Heart is now Lvl 5.

Low Light Vision is now Lvl 2.

Meditation is now Lvl 7.

Combined with her earlier gains, Jen now had 19 plot points to spend. She had also decided which of her two paths to invest in. While her current point total wasn’t enough to finish off the Magic Mastery path, she still felt that it would be more valuable to start on that path than to complete the Underdark Dweller.

While she might be trapped here for the moment, Jen had no intention of making it a permanent residency. As such, she preferred Magic Mastery as it was more likely to give her tools to escape, while Underdark Dweller would probably give her skills to make living underground more tolerable.

If she had been struggling to survive her choice might have been different, but she felt confident in her current capabilities. Before she could start second guessing herself, Jen quickly spent all her points.

Each investment was valuable, giving her a point in Willpower, Composure, and Intelligence in rotation. As she had been half-expecting, the tenth point was different, giving her a flat regeneration increase of 1 Mana/Hr. The next nine points returned to giving her stats.

In total, Jen received an increase of 6 to all of her mental stats, as well as a flat regeneration bonus. A quick check at her status screen confirmed what a large bonus that made to her mana pool. Her max capacity had skyrocketed from 80 to 128, and her regen had increased from around 6 mana per hour to almost 9.

Spending a few mana here or there to make a light was no longer a large drain on her resources, but something that could easily be accomplished for only fifteen minutes of regen.

Comparing the relative gains between her various paths, Jen almost regretted spending so many of her plot points on the path of patience. Both the Intro Path and the Magic Mastery had given much better returns for the amount of points invested in them. She wondered how much better off she would be if she had invested into the other paths straight away. For only forty skill points, she could have completed all of them.

She shook her head. There was no way to turn back the clock and try a different route. Trying to think positively, she noted that if she had ignored the path of patience and if it was no longer available like she presumed, she would be sitting on a surplus of plot points with nothing to spend them on. She had yet to unlock any more paths, and while she assumed that specific actions were necessary, she had no idea what those actions might be. Furthermore, the Patience skill gained from that path had already proved its worth. Without it, Jen wasn’t sure she would have been able to handle the parasitic mushroom as best she had.

While she had distributed the free points provided, she could see the value in them as well. The ability to strengthen a specific stat was powerful, especially compared to relying on the more or less random increases that the other paths provided.

Better to focus on earning more skill points to spend instead of bemoaning her potentially wasteful expenditures. Jen closed the path screen and opened up her list of skills.

Listen 10

Poison Resistance 8

Determination 7

Echolocation 7

Meditation 7

Pain Resistance 6

Mana Manipulation 6

Singing 5

Chronos' Heart 5

Ribbon Dancing 4

Navigation 4

Taste Testing 3

Patience 3

Dancing 2

Low Light Vision 2

Yoga 1

Crafting 1

Whip Mastery 1

Identify 1

Self Improvement 1

Fist Fighting Mastery 1

Her eyes were drawn to her Identify Skill. It had been somewhat useful with the mushrooms, and now she had a cache of crystals to examine. At the very least, it was low level and would hopefully provide her with the last plot point needed to finish off her Magic Mastery path.

Taking a crystal in hand from the pile, Jen peered at it closely, trying to replicate whatever circumstances had triggered the Identify skill. It took almost a minute of observing various minutiae before a text box appeared.

Fluorite, Common

Gratified to see a skill success, even if the information given wasn’t detailed or useful, Jen refreshed her ball of light and went about identifying the rest of the crystals for practice.

Over the course of the next few minutes, she managed to greatly decrease the amount of time it took to identify a crystal, determined that all the crystals were made of fluorite, and her identify skill increased by two levels.

Putting aside two of the crystals that had been identified as rare fluorite and possessed less flaws than the others, Jen turned her attention back to her path screen.

Feeling satisfied, Jen added the 20th plot point to the Magic Mastery Path, and was pleased to see a skill notification appear.

Congratulations! You have learned the skill Mana Control Lvl 1.

Slightly disappointed that it wasn’t an actual spell she could use, Jen returned to her skill screen to read the brief description provided there.

Increases your ability to control mana, both internally and externally.

It seemed to have a large amount of overlap with Mana Manipulation, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Complementary skills could potentially allow her to do much more than she could with a single skill on its own.

Wanting to test her new skill, she turned her attention to the ball in her hand. While her magic had before seemed to leave her control once she had forced it out from her body, now she had a low level awareness of its presence. Wanting to try and change its shape, she was pleasantly surprised to see the surface of the sphere quiver in response to her idle thoughts.

Focusing on the shape of a pillar, she watched in amazement as it slowly pulled itself upwards. The edges were still rough, undefined compared to her mental image, but it had taken none of the effort that she had been expecting, just a concentrated application of her will.

Letting the magic collapse back into a sphere she turned her attention inwards. With Mana Manipulation, she had the ability to sense her mana channels, especially when they were full. Taking that awareness, she began to try and maneuver her mana around.

Before this had been an arduous task. Her increasing intelligence and willpower had made it easier to a degree, but it had still taken a concerted effort to accomplish anything.

Mana Control changed that. Instead of having to make an effort to move her magic where she wanted it to go, Jen found herself having to try and minimize her actions to prevent herself from pulling the totality of her mana to a location. Despite feeling the burn from overloading small areas with mana, Jen was ecstatic.

To Jen, Mana Control was the musculature to Mana Manipulation’s nervous system. Mana Control lacked the feedback and fine control, but more than made up for it with its ability to shape mana with an ease that still amazed Jen.

Together? Together they’d let her take her magic to a whole new level.