Sometimes during her meditation training, Andrew had disappeared. Surprisingly, to Victoria at least, she had somehow gained the Meditation Skill. Surprisingly, because she was still very far from the efficiency Andrew had talked about, regaining maybe fifteen percent of her Mana and Aura, and half as much Psy. She just couldn't wrap her hand around the placement of the Skill-thresholds.

As the morning bell was rung, she slowly stands up, her body stiff from sitting still for so long. Deciding that she still had a few minutes to spare, she started to stretch her body.

When Victoria was still young, she had taken ballet lessons, and while she normally wasn't a fan of pain, it had instilled in her a bit of a masochistic side that could enjoy the pain resulting from doing stretches. Also, she just liked staying limber, and still being able to do the splits was a bit of a point of pride for her.

Earned Skill:

Body: Agility

That was why when the system showed her this message, and her muscles suddenly stretched a bit further and the pain receded, she had slightly conflicting feelings.

When she went back into the house, Grandma Meg was already up and about.

"You've been running around for a while already, haven't you?"

"Morning Grandma. Yes, getting us water, having a little morning workout, playing around with Telekinesis.", she answeres, giving the old lady a hug.

"Yes, I can smell that. Get yourself washed up and ready, we still have to make a hundred sets of clothes and have far too little time. But do it in your room, I need the kitchen free."

"Will do.", Victoria replies, carrying away the water bucket.

Once back in her room, she put the bucket down and closed the window shutters. Then, she prepared the fat lamp and tried to light it. She tried again. And again. She definitely knew how flint and steel were supposed to work, that didn't mean she could actually use them. Well, she reasoned, once she could use Magic, no one would notice.

After a few more tries, she finally gave up and opened up the window shutters. Looking around, trying to think of a different solution, she finally noticed the roll of cloth neatly tied up over the edge of the window.

Turns out, she had curtains... She quickly opened the cords holding the cloth, unrolling it in front of the window. Then she secured the lower two corners over two conveniently placed hooks.

The curtain, like any other fabric she had seen until now, was linen. Seriously, did they have no other kinds of fabric?

Probably not, now that she thought about it. At least not on a mass-producible scale. Victoria had no idea how many new cities were created with every Wave, so even if the older ones could only produce linen, it was actually amazing that they could make enough to make new clothes for everyone.

The door closed and the morning sun softly shining through the curtain, Victoria finally took her clothes off and began to wash herself, cold water making her shiver and hard soap burning where the coarse fabric and sweat had worked in tandem to scrub her skin raw.

That wasn't something she could let continue. She had put too much work into her body and skin to let it get ruined like that. Of course, she was already training in Magic, and may soon be able to use cleaning Magic, but that would only take care of half the problem. It didn't change the fact that the only fabric she could get her hands on was coarse linen.

Maybe she could try and make something else herself? She didn't like to admit it, but she had no idea where to start. Leather was one possibility, but that was not one she could realize in any short amount of time.

It took her a while to realize that she was trying to go about the problem from the wrong direction. If she couldn't get her hands on better cloth, she had to get a better body. Sure, it sounded absurd, but that was before the Waves.

She quickly started to experiment, gathering Aura in and under her skin on the back of her arm. At first little happened. But as she kept changing, moving, and manipulating the Aura, she soon found a promising-looking result.

As she kept prodding and pinching her skin, trying to feel if she achieved what she was hoping for, she could feel her Skin turning harder. At that point, she stopped changing the pattern and kept it the way it was. After keeping it for a few seconds, her skin slowly continued growing harder, taking on a darker, leathery shade, and turn rough.

It was very far from what she wanted, but it was a beginning.

She quickly tried to reproduce it on her other arm, before changing it back and trying again until she had committed the feeling to memory. Then, she started to experiment in earnest.

She slowly started to change different parts of the Aura pattern, always looking at the new results to try and isolate what had changed.

The first thing she actually figured out, was what had changed her skin color to change, allowing her to first get it back to normal or even slightly paler. She had always wanted to have such skin but was too much outside in the sun for that to be possible.

Of course, it wasn't all that simple. Like in an overly complex mathematical formula, changing a single number, caused several others to change as well, causing it to lose some of the toughness that had been her primary goal. But it was still more than enough to make her resistant against coarse fabrics.

But she still wasn't done. She continued experimenting, slowly figuring out how to make her skin softer but stronger, how to turn it harder, stiffer, more elastic, or smoother.

When she finally applied the effect to her whole body, she could see her skin becoming a bit paler. But that wasn't all, she had made her skin smoother and softer, but also stronger and more resistant to damage than it had any right to be and it had a wonderful elasticity to it, that gave her skin a strange bounciness.

As she was looking at her old clothes, that she still had to wash, she got another idea.

Her thoughts were briefly interrupted as she caught herself caressing and poking her new skin, she just couldn't help it.

Looking at her clothes, she got another idea. She slowly started to apply effects she had discovered previously but hadn't thought to be useful. Through careful application of various effects, including one that turned her skin into a shell-like state and another one that allowed her to stretch and contract it, she slowly managed to take full control and restrain all the choice bits of fat that she had left on her body.

Victoria jumped in place a few times excitedly, but it was perfect. No flopping, no bouncing, and no pain in her shoulders. Not if she didn't want it.

Earned Skill:

Enhancement: Beauty

Of course, it still wasn't perfect. She could already feel several areas where she might still be able to make improvements. Effects that didn't mesh well together or used more Aura than they needed.

But for now, it was good enough. But for all that it had made her more beautiful, in her completely unbiased opinion at least, and able to go around wearing coarse fabrics without underwear beneath it and not suffer from the resulting problems other women might have, the thing that made her almost even more proud, was the careful balancing.

Because, despite being extremely versatile, she had noticed some of the limitations of Aura. Mainly, the fact that every effect had side effects, just like trying to harden it had turned her skin dark and leathery at first. She had to be very careful to make the effects only so strong that she could still do something about the side-effects.

What made her also happy, was that no one would be able to just copy her. Not because others couldn't try to do the same, but because it was an enhancement. The end result would still be dependent on the original product.

"Girly, what are you doing?", Grandma Meg's voice suddenly came from behind her, the door to her room open.

"AH!", Victoria yelped, covering her body with her hands, before blushing furiously in embarrassment.

Sure, she wasn't ashamed to show off her body, but she still had common decency.

"Here I thought reality had finally caught up with you and you needed some time for yourself. So I left you. But then I decide to take a look after you disappeared for one and a half hours, and what do I see?"

One and a half hours? Surely I couldn't have been that long already. Could it be...? No, she hadn't had any sudden bouts of narcissism or megalomania ever since she got out of puberty, and that had been two years ago.

"You are jumping around your room, naked! If that's some kind of coping mechanism, you should find someone to talk about your problems before it's too late.", Grandma Meg interrupts her thoughts.

"G-give me second, I will be ready in a minute."

"Right, where can I wash my clothes? I still have one set, but the others are a bit sweaty.", Victoria quickly adds once Grandma Meg left the room.

"You are lucky then, Washing days are on Thursdays and Sundays. Today is Sunday.", came the old woman's voice through the door.

That means she would have to use one set of linen clothes for her workouts and wear the others for two days each. She wanted to keep her shorts and T-shirt combo as everyday wear since they were so much more comfortable. Not what she had hoped for, but understandable. Their only source of water was a well, so they would have to be thrifty with their use of water. Especially when the population increased by over two hundred in just a few days.

Maybe she should teach the old woman some Magic? Actually, that made her wonder how many people could use magic and Psy.

But right now she had other things to do. So she quickly washed and put on the last set of fresh clothes, they were still coarse and scratchy, but she could feel that they wouldn't be a problem anymore.

Then she dumped the dirty water out of her window and brought the bucket back into the kitchen, where she found a plate with a piece of bread and a mug of water on the table.

A quick and unfulfilling breakfast later, she made her way into the working room where the old seamstress is already working on another linen shirt.

Turning around, the old woman took a good look at Victoria.

"Hmm... What the hell have been doing in that room? You got some kind of plastic surgery or what?"

"Well, close enough I guess. All that linen was chaffing my skin, so I decided to do something about it with some careful application of Aura. I did get a bit caught up in it I guess..."

"Aura? Ya mean that stuff that supposedly makes you stronger? Everyone else in this place is scared for their life and using it to train to fight. You on the other hand are so worried about your looks that you are running around in High-heels all day and using your Aura as cheap cosmetics. Hell, you can even sew with a needle. What are you? Some kind of princess?"

"Nope, no princess. And if it's fighting I can already do that. But since I already have little left to lose, I don't want to lose my looks as well."

"I don't know if you are amazingly tough or just a weirdo."

"Anyway. You like it? I could teach you how to do it, could probably shave off twenty or thirty years?"

"Ha! Sixty years ago I would have said yes. But honestly? It's a bit unsettling."

"I think it looks pretty good though?"

"It does, unsettlingly so. Too perfect. Makes you look less human."

"Really? Hmmm..."

"Doesn't matter right now. If you're sufferin' under anything less than an existential crisis, get sewing. We still have to make a hundred orders of the same damn clothes. And I ain't gonna do that alone."