(Dana)

Dana ran through the garden towards where she knew the centre was.

Her pathfinder skill gained levels rapidly as she almost instinctively took turns at a moment's notice.

The explosion could only have been James. Whatever skill or spell he had used was a dangerous one. It made sense why he hadn't told her earlier. But he was being strange. He was captivated by the cache, as soon as he analysed It, she saw it in his eyes.

She rounded the penultimate corner, and slowed, not wanting to run into the blinding light. But, it was darker than she expected. There was no light coming from around the corner. No sound either.

"James?" Dana crept around the corner not knowing what to expect.

The first thing she noticed was the metal benches that has surrounded the stage.

The benches were all warped outwards as if a great enough force had pushed them away. She supposed James had made that force.

Shit, James!

She ran through the mangled remains of the benches and saw James lying spread eagle, his right fist stuck in the cache, cracks radiating out of his impact.

But it wasn't what he had done to the stone box that was the problem. It was what it had done to him. Whatever he had done had a massive repercussion on his body.

With a held breath, she used analyse and saw James was still alive, if only slightly.

James Lander :

Level: -

Health: 1/88

Status effects: severe mana fatigue (21:17:20), severe mana sickness (13:20:01)

The status effects were horrible, and he seemed to only be hanging on to life by his fingertips.

Dana's heart wretched at the sight of him clinging to life, so despite all her fears that she would make it worse, she went to him. She turned him over as gently as she could and was met with another sight of horror. His face was a bloody mess, with it dripping from his eyes, mouth, nose and ears.

Dana tried desperately to think about what she could do for him. He had mentioned her practising healing, but she had no idea where to start. The best clue she had would be the image she had of Annie slowly healing with the tendrils of mana from her core wrapping around the wound.

Desperately hoping this was the right decision, she activated mana sight, an examined James in better depth. Where she had expected to see a figure of pure white, she was met with a body devoid of mana completely.

Of course. The status effects talked about mana use, so his body was massively mana deficient. But she could heal that. Maybe.

Using analyse again, and deactivating mana sight before she got a headache, Dana focused on the status effects, trying to get a better idea of what had happened to James.

Severe Mana Fatigue (status effect):

The cost of attempting to spend over 100× the user's max mana at once is severe, and the user may end up scarred because of it.

Effects: the fatigued user will be immobile until the body can be repaired and mana replaced.

Severe Mana Sickness (status effect):

The cost of attempting to channel over 100× the user's max is a near impossible feat which may drastically alter the user's body if survived.

Effects: the sick user will be unable to regenerate any sustenance besides mana until the body can repair it's Mana channels.

Though she didn't fully understand what both of the effects were saying, Dana understood that essentially, James needed a lot more mana. And quickly.

She had no idea what his mana regen was at, but judging by the time it would take to replace the mana he used and heal himself, it wasn't great.

So she just had to up his regen. And she had a few ideas of how to do that. She could use her mana to direct more of the mana in the air towards him, or directly channel her mana to him.

A quick look around with a short activation of mana sight told her that there was plenty of mana in the air that she could use and it looked like some of it was coming from the plants around her.

In fact, some of the plants were brightly shining white when she looked individually at them, so they must be saturated with mana.

Something to look into while her mana regenerated possibly.

Eager to heal him as soon as possible, Dana let her stamina completely fill, and activated Mana sight once more. Careful uses of mana force allowed her to manipulate the mana immediately above James into a curled tendrils, and slowly directed it towards his empty core.

The mana disappeared when it touched the core instead of clouding around It, and Dana took that as a good sign. She continued this method for a few seconds, pulling more and more mana in from around her, widening her field. The once thin tendril thickened and almost gained a gravity of its own, making it easier to pull in the mana.

Spell learnt: Single Mana Boost (D)

Selectively increase the regeneration of one target by channelling more mana into them.

Lasts for 15 seconds.

Cost: 5 mana

The spell instantly took hold, the shape of the curl straightening and becoming more like a whirlpool above him.

Dana felt the beginning of a headache take over, so she deactivated Mana Sight and rested for a moment.

Though the mana above James couldn't be seen anymore, it was replaced by a faint blue mist that formed above his chest and entered it. Dana had to guess that mana actually became visible when it was concentrated enough. Like in the mana saturated flowers and fruits, which she saw had blue colouring in or across them.

She had less than 10 points of mana left, so she waited until the last spell wore off, and recast it before looking to get something from the plants.

Her target was the bunch of small apples. They were obviously blue, and there were a lot of them. Besides, she hadn't eaten much today for all they had done, and she was starved.

They were easy enough to reach and pick, but felt softer than normal apples, as she couldn't pick one from the bunch without denting it. She was just about to take a bite before she remembered that poison was a thing and almost sheepishly analysed the fruit.

Rank 1 mana fruit (Gala grapes):

Select extracts can be used In mana potions.

Gives 5 mana upon consumption.

Wondering about how interested May might be in these, Dana was satisfied that there was no mention of poison in the description and took a bite.

Unsurprisingly, it was softer than an apple, with a consistency more like a banana. And while it had a faint sweetness to It, didn't taste of much. Dana decided she wasn't a fan. But there was a lot of mana in these and a lot of them to eat. Dana sighed and had to remind herself why she was doing this. She hurriedly ate the rest of the apple-thing and was surprised to find it had no core. It was essentially just an oddly shaped ball of mana filled mush.

But now that she had that mana, she could continue treating James. She cast Single Mana Boost from across the clearing, and saw the dip in mana and reforming mist to confirm it had worked. While the range of the spell hadn't been tested, she didn't need to be far away at any point, so didn't worry about it.

And so began one hell of a chore. Over the next two hours, Dana kept casting Single Mana boost and kept eating the mana-rich fruit. Before long, she had to wander out into the surrounding paths to find more of the gala grape trees. Luckily, they were not uncommon so she took the bunches off multiple trees and brought them back. While she waited for the spell to wear off each time, she flicked on mana sight and kept a close look at James' healing progress.

If she looked closely at his core while mana was being pushed into It, she could see tiny filaments of mana sweeping across his body like spiders legs, leaving a light glow in their wake. He was healing. She could tell. Once he could regenerate more mana than was needed to heal, he would wake up. She told herself this multiple times, reassuring herself every time.

But the constant eating of these small fruits was sickly at first and was making Dana nauseous by the end. After an hour and over a hundred casts, she was exhausted and couldn't even look at the stupid fruit let alone eat another. This must be a way to make sure people don't abuse the fruit. Make it so hard to eat so many at once that you begin to look for a better alternative.

Dana stood a little unsteadily and took a break from healing James. She needed one or she might make something worse. One final cast of single Mana Boost and she allowed herself 5 minutes to go wandering.

As she left the clearing at the centre of the maze, she felt instantly better. The air hear didn't smell vaguely of blood or sweet fruit juice. She recognised the blue tinted flowers she had seen through mana sight growing everywhere, but more commonly under one of the blue canopy trees. While she had seen three types, red green and blue, it wasn't hard to allocate its affinity with one of the substances.

The blue canopy tree dropped small nodes of slowly falling light onto the waiting flowers. She noticed that not only were they bigger here, but mana sight showed they had more mana in them.

Dana sighed as she watched the lights fall like ashes and fade away. It was a beautiful circuit. She loved the flowers here. They had given her an occupation, and they were all so pretty.

Dana picked a handful of the large blue flowers and replaced the flowers in her armour with them. She analysed one before she placed It, trying to get an idea of any bonus they may give.

Greater Mana Bloom:

Hp:5/5

Mp: 19/20

While she always found it odd that a plant now had hp, it was weirder that this plant had so much mana in It, and was also somehow spending it.

But that might be a question for someone who knew more about flowers. Or an alchemist maybe. Dana shrugged the questions away and kept decorating her garment. With her occupation, it would be useful to have flowers close to hand at all times, and maybe these mana infused petals would be better than any other she found.

As she was placing one of her last flowers, she received a notification.

Occupation level increased:

Floral Oracle is now level 2

INT +2

WIS +1

DEX +1

Occupational skill learnt: Floral Garment

Despite how odd it was that she got occupation xp from messing around with flowers, what was stranger was that she felt a massive rush of mana.

Focusing on her bars, Dana found something irregular.

Health: 58/58 (0.3)

Mana: 71/71 (2.5)(+3)

Stamina: 50/50

Her mana was regenerating way faster than it should. The regen counter next to the bar confirmed it.

Really, it could only be the new skill she had just learnt, so Dana put together the pieces and wasn't at all surprised when she read the skill description.

Floral Garment [1] (skill):

Many wear flowers, but they are more than that to you. Worn flowers and plants give a small bonus related to their key feature.

Progress: (26%)

Current Garment: Greater Mana Blooms (Decorative)

Effect: +5 mana regen

That skill was massively useful but somewhat odd that it was allocated by her class. Either way, she welcomed the boost and returned to where James was still lying. His colour seemed to be a little better, and the blood running down his face had dried and was starting to peel. If Dana thought she could spare any of their water, she would wash his face at least, but she couldn't leave him for too long. And was not ready to go back into the college on her own.

Knowing where the others were would be super useful right about now, but none of them had their phones, and none of the lights were on in the college.

Dana sighed, looking at James' analysed status again.

James Lander :

Level: -

Health: 1/90

Status effects: severe mana fatigue (15:03:24), severe mana sickness (7:10:51)

The status effect timers had dropped by roughly 6 hours each in the last 1 hour. That gave Dana hew hope. She could finish healing James after another hour or two of repeated use of her spell. So she sat down with an already half full mana bar, made sure there was water nearby and tried not to think of the fruit. She could get by without it now.

Not even 1 hour into her vigilant compilation, she got a notification about her spell.

Repetitive use of Single Mana Boost has evolved the spell.

Single Mana Boost can be evolved down one of three paths:

• Increase time

• Increase targets

• Increase effectiveness

The prospect of spells evolving after excessive use fascinated Dana, but this was far from the ideal time to investigate it further, so she tried to decide what to pick. Increasing targets would only increase the mana cost without any benefit for this situation, so it was between time and effectiveness. Really, they would both do the same thing for James, so she just had to think about a potential combat situation.

Deciding to increase the time of the spell, Dana chose the corresponding option, and another notification appeared.

Single Mana Boost has evolved into Single Mana Boost +.

Single Mana Boost + (spell):

Selectively increase the regeneration of one target by channelling more mana into them.

Lasts for 30 seconds.

Cost: 8 mana

The changes to the spell were actually surprising. The time had doubled, but the mana cost hadn't.

Dwelling on it wouldn't help her, but since the breaks between spells would be shorter and less frequent, it would help James.

Dana got comfortable again and continued her healing.