"James, what's wrong?"

Dana was dumbfounded at what James had just done. The designs that Dom had valued were just thrown on the floor. James had walked out of the room, ignoring her. And she could hear him next door moving things in the storeroom.

While he was busy, Dana checked that Annie was comfortable, so bundled up more of the slightly grubby fabric used for polishing, and gently laid Annie's head on it. She looked so peaceful when she was resting, and... almost unfamiliar when not pulling off her usual stoic expression. Quite cute, even... Dana forcefully broke herself from this train of thought. She was beginning to think of Annie as no more than a child.

Despite what she had done before her very eyes.

Dana was immensely grateful to Annie for how she reacted to the monster in the room. Dana had done nothing and still felt guilty at her inaction. So far, all she had done to help the others was hit the monster when it was already dazed, then watch it swipe pathetically at her while Annie made some sharp stakes to stab it with. Her arms still ached from the hard skull of that goddamn lizard.

Dana resolved herself to be more useful, to James or anyone else. So she went back over to the dropped paper and unfurled it. Then James' reaction made sense. Dom was obviously not the genius that she thought he was. While she had expected some kind of basic armour or weapons, she was maybe half correct.

Dom had drawn what she supposed was the norm in some of the RPG games that he played. Essentially, there was an exquisite set of full armour sketched onto a male build, and an ornate bikini on a female... with shoulder pads.

Dana sighed. While she imagined that she would look fantastic in this armour and that James would definitely appreciate it, she didn't want to die, so would much rather the full set. She had seen James in the workshop before, and while she wanted to think of him as a master of his craft, he was only ‘pretty-good’ at best.

He emerged from the hallway with a bundle of the scaffolding poles tied to gather under one arm, and a roll of leather under the other. She looked at him with a questioning expression. If he wasn't going to use the designs he was given, what was he going to do?

"Annie gave me the idea to make spears. They're easy to make and seem sturdy enough to cut the lizards' skin. That being said, lizard skin is probably pretty good at not being cut... So, cut resistant armour and spears are what I can do."

Nodding to himself, James laid down all of his gear and left the room again before re-entering with half a dozen more batteries.

"It's going to get pretty loud in here, so can you try to barricade the door in case something big tries to get in?"

Dana jumped at the bit, and immediately tossed aside her pole, and pushed over two of the spare worktables, making a pair of loud crashes, causing a wince in return. Ignoring the fact that she had probably just awoken more of those big-ass lizards, she pushed each table against the door and grabbed some small planks of wood to wedge against the floor.

Satisfied with her handiwork, Dana asked herself what she should do next. Annie was still unconscious and would be for a while. James was already lost in his own world, a set of Maths stationary seemingly appeared from thin air, and he was drawing on the poles with a thick marker. Knowing that trying to help would more likely be a hindrance; she decided to reflect on herself.

Dana was about as knowledgeable in this case as James was, so she resolved to learn more. While they had already learned everything they could from her stats, Dana was individually interested in mana. Her intelligence and wisdom were at 13 and 9 respectively, so while her Mana was quite low, as long as she was careful, she could probably avoid the same fate as May.

But how?

Taking a page from Mays book, Dana sat cross-legged on the floor, well away from James and his crafting. Closing her eyes, and remembering what she knew of what exactly spells were, she attempted to envision what Mana was. To her understanding, it was like mana was a substance everywhere, and bodies could store it.

So she pictured Mana as like air, only better, and instead of breathing it in, it was slowly absorbed by the skin... or the mind... or the heart.

Understanding of mana has unlocked a skill:

Mana sight (B):

Mana isn't a material thing but can be seen by one's spirit.

Mana can be seen in every substance and observed in a sentient user. Many things can be learnt from watching.

Cost: 0 s/s

Excited at her new skill, and its lack of a cost, Dana immediately activated it with a slight whisper.

The world took on a dull blue hue, with white light seemingly radiating from everything. Maybe Mana wasn't like air, but rather like light, but that was something she could look into later.

More importantly was how she saw Mana users. James was highlighted in her image as a silhouette of pure white. Strangely enough, he also had an area of pitch black about the size of her fist next to where she guessed his heart would be. Having no idea what this was, she looked around more.

Specifically at Annie.

The first thing she noticed was the stillness. While the Mana in the air seemed to flow in random directions, and the Mana in James was orbiting the black core, Annie's was completely still. She had a core in the centre of her chest, a pale blue one, but the Mana was almost motionless. A small tendril of Mana seemed to coil around the damaged arm, the source of which Dana could trace back to the light blue core.

Suddenly, a pounding headache looked over Dana, and she deactivated her mana sight with an agonized voice. A headache rapidly receded, and Dana looked up to see that James had not reacted, but to be fair, the room was very loud, and unless he was not looking at her, he wouldn't have noticed anything was wrong. She decided to use mana sight a little more sparingly, and for a shorter time.

Looking at her stats again, and smugly confirming that mana sight was there, Dana decided she was ready to try magic. Armed with a superior knowledge of Mana, Dana closed her eyes again and imagined what she had seen with her Mana sight, how tendrils of Mana had been controlled by the core in Annie's chest, how it had moved and curled.

Dana pictured her own core in her own chest, and willed a strand of Mana to coil up from her left shoulder all along her arm, and reaching her open hand. Feeling a cool sensation encroach along her arm, and seeing her Mana drop only by a few points, Dana imagined more tendrils following the path of the first, weaving into more, tighter curls.

Her arm felt cold now, but where the tendrils all ended in her palm felt hot. Perhaps the Mana was travelling along the tendrils and had nowhere to go, so she extended all the tendrils back, retaining the washing and crossing pattern until they reached the same place as the source, and Dana felt all the energy that had left her rush in at once

Spell learnt:

Mana body infusion ©

Coating one’s body in Mana can increase the potential of it as long as the caster retains control.

Cost: (8 m/s per infused region)

Amazed at the physical capabilities this could give her, but somewhat disappointed at the 9 Mana spent on discovering this, Dana laid back on the floor and tried to relax for the first time.

But... She did still have over 30 Mana left, and if she infused just a leg, for only a second...

And so, she did.

Still lying on the ground, Dana kicked off one of her shoes, and activated Mana body infusion, focusing on the tendrils to wrap around her right leg.

The mana formed the construct much faster than she had in her discovery of it, and she imagined it worked better too, but hastily using her power before her Mana ran out, she slammed her heel into the floor. Hard. She had expected a dent to form, but she was met with the floor giving away unexpectedly easily, and for her leg up to her knee to go straight through the floor, into the classroom below.

Jumping up, stopping Mana body infusion, and pulling her leg through the gap, Dana shook off the gaze that James was surely giving her, and looked through the hole in the floor. She was met with the strange sight of a bright pink blob taking up almost half the room.

"Huh..." Dana muttered under her breath.

"Whose idea was it to bring some goddamn slime to life?"