Gaping was all it seemed Kaltyr was capable of after witnessing the mana form within her soul. However, it wasn’t merely the sight of the aquamarine, crystalline, silky threads produced from magical essence that blew her away. No, rather than it being the beauty of the threads that rendered her incapable of thinking about anything else, it was…the sheer power she instinctively understood she now possessed.

Packed within every strand of mana she refined from magical essence was a potent sensation of fantastical intensity and force, such that Kaltyr’s confidence immediately soared to levels she didn't believe possible. She felt on top of the world.

Her eyes snapped open, a fierce glint shining within them. Without wasting a second, Kaltyr cut off her absorption of magical essence and rushed to her feet. She quickly located and picked up a random rock from the ground with her good hand, secured the pocketknife in her injured one, and turned toward where she remembered the pair of eyes to be.

Just as she thought, the eyes were not fixed on her and the creature could not be seen through the shadows provided by the forest canopy. Kaltyr saw through her Magic Sense that the blob of mana somewhere farther ahead was situated beneath another whirlpool of magical essence, indicating that the creature had taken the time to meditate after seeing her do the same.

“I have one chance…”

The hunter winced as she tightened her grip on the knife and cocked the arm with the rock backwards. Suddenly, the monster’s mana flickered as it realized that something was wrong. Kaltyr had to act fast.

“This better work!”

She had only just refined mana for the first time a few seconds earlier, but, somehow, Kaltyr knew she could pull this off. The girl urged her mana out of her soul to flow through her unimaginably complex web of meridians to arrive at her throwing arm, which it then filled.

The impression of power intensified, and with it came a vicious smile.

To Kaltyr, the moment had arrived. She was about to prove to herself that the world she awoke within would not be nearly as scary as she had thought, and instead, it would be the stepping stone to her journey with the goal of getting answers from The System.

The tension in her arm built up to its limit and the dangerous entity in the bushes had become aware of her scheme. She began to throw the rock.

Yet…

“Shit, what was that?!”

An incredible sense of danger washed over Kaltyr, prompting her to stop releasing the tension in her arm and to bring it back to its throwing position. Somehow, and for some reason, she understood that throwing the rock while her arm was powered by mana would be disastrous.

“But I can still salvage the situation!”

The mere moments her indecision cost her allowed the creature enough time to exit its meditation in full, and the blob of mana began to rise. However, Kaltyr would not let it escape her range. Without completely knowing what she was doing, Kaltyr redirected the mana from her arm straight into the rock she held.

“Nothing says that I can’t just pump the rock full of mana, instead!”

The beast in the bushes, which Kaltyr only recognized with her Magic Sense as a blob of mana, was already beginning to run away from the clearing when she threw her arm forward and let the stone fly.

Shrubbery shook as their branches were destroyed in the rock’s path of destruction, until a thud and a hiss resounded. Adrenaline coursing through her, Kaltyr immediately followed, her knife now in her good hand. She did not hesitate even a second before crossing the invisible barrier that protected the clearing, instead smiling wickedly at the thought of obtaining her first beast kill on the first night after awakening in Manic.

“Ah, damn it!” The girl cursed after arriving at the site her rock landed. “It was just a glancing blow! I know that if I had hit it square in the body, it would not have been able to get away so quickly. Not with the force of that empowered rock.”

She sighed before returning to the clearing, which was only a few meters away, and sitting behind the pile of embers left by the once great campfire. Then, with what little moonlight she had available to her, Kaltyr inspected the rock she had used to attack the mysterious creature. When she first picked it up she had noticed that one of its sides was wet with something she doubted was water, and under the moonlight…

“This is clearly not water, but it neither smells nor looks like blood. It’s not even red, I think.”

She tossed the stone aside, then focused her attention on a more important matter than of the prey that escaped her.

“I learned a lot from this little experience, didn’t I?”

Kaltyr laughed into the night sky as she compared her previous mental state to when she first spotted the pair of strangely starry eyes.

“Yeah, I’m definitely bipol-“

Kaltyr froze in place, still staring up at the sky. With her attention pulled away from self-reflection, the ambient forest noises became more evident again, only making the mood eerier.

“Uhhh…what?”

Neither afraid nor uneasy, the lass was very simply…confused. Far above her, slowly spinning in a circle, were six differently colored objects she just didn’t expect to see—moons. The sight of them allowed Kaltyr to immediately understand what a “moon” was, but just like with the colors of the sky, they didn’t feel real, as though they weren’t supposed to be there.

“Speaking of which, why do their colors match the phases of the sky? Red, orange, yellow, green…”

Kaltyr stared up at the moons for a little longer before slowly turning her attention back to herself and what she had recently learned, since she couldn’t think of any reasons why the moons and their colors would affect her.

“Anyway…yeah, I can make and use mana now.”

Kaltyr loudly cheered and pumped her fists into the air, contentedly lied down on the grass, then began reciting that night’s important events.

“Okay… Firstly, I figured out that to absorb and refine magical essence I need to extend my will onto the essence rather than do something with my meridians. That system just doesn’t feel right to me, but, whatever. Secondly, that my soul is what does the refining and is where mana is stored. Thirdly, besides while meditating to refine it, I don’t seem to be capable of retaining magical essence within myself. Fourthly…”

Kaltyr subconsciously gulped as she recalled the dreadful warning of danger her instincts had relayed to her when she tried throwing the rock while her arm was powered by mana.

“Despite definitely feeling like I could reinforce my body with mana, actually doing so was…dangerous? I don’t get it, and I’ll experiment with that later. Fifthly…”

A large grin plastered on her face, Kaltyr directed her attention to the notification flashing in the corner of her vision.

You have obtained the skill: Body Mana Reinforcement

You have obtained the skill: Item Mana Infusion

After being met with an additional alert alongside the one she expected, Kaltyr’s smile further brightened.

“Holy shit! I figured that putting my mana into the rock would grant a skill, but also strengthening myself? Maybe I almost injured myself because I tried to do something that the skill level doesn’t allow yet. This requires more experimentation!”

The girl hooted in elation a few more times before leaning forward to pick up a small stick that hadn’t burned together with its brethren for the sake of cooking her fish. Then, with the last of her available magic power, Kaltyr began magically infusing the stick.

Just as she had done a few minutes before, blue crystalline threads, sparkling like diamonds beneath the bright sun, flowed from the spirit residing within her brain down through the many magical channels and into her arm. From there, Kaltyr only needed to perform another mental flex before the silky threads slid from her fingertips to the piece of wood.

Despite seeing what happened when she infused the rock with mana, Kaltyr was still somewhat surprised that there was no visual effect produced when the stick was pumped full of energy. It didn’t glow blue, or anything. However, that wasn’t to say that nothing changed, because through her Magic Sense, the lass could clearly “see” a bright blue light that wasn’t there before.

Then, intent on figuring out just how useful her mana was when infused into an item, Kaltyr secured her hands around both ends of the stick and applied pressure by twisting her wrists.

SNAP

She jumped at the sharp sound and blinked a few times out of surprise, dropped the two pieces of wood, and sighed.

“I way overestimated the power of my mana.”

The girl had imagined that the stick, after being magically strengthened, would at least provide enough resistance to prevent her from breaking it at all…which it wasn't even close to achieving. At most, Kaltyr could confidently claim that she felt something, just not enough. Frankly, she wondered if she made a difference at all during her attack on the mysterious beast when she infused the rock. Had it changed anything? Or did she only waste a bit of mana?

“Well, I guess I can't really call it a waste if I had nothing better to do with it…which is something else I have to look into!” Kaltyr thought aloud. “What else can mana do? I can empower both myself and items I hold, but I don’t know to what extent it's beneficial. And then there’s the rock…”

She fished around in her cargo pockets, eventually taking out the fat, stone disc covered in mystical-looking markings.

“Now that I can use mana I can probably power this thing…”

She stared at the shiny stone for a moment, mesmerized by the complexity of the etches that seemed to come alive when she stared long enough. They swirled, twisted, shrunk, and grew at random, as though conforming to a single design would be their end…or like they didn't want to be memorized.

“But I don’t have any mana to test it out!” She groaned, then followed it up with a yawn. “And I'm tired…”

Kaltyr allowed herself to fall onto her back, and she closed her eyes. All the excitement of that day, the adrenaline from both fear and joy, took its toll on her stamina. She was dead tired, and convinced herself that it was best for herself to be rested in order to make the best decisions on how to move forward from there.

Her senses began fading as the earthy smell of the forest and the soft caress of the wind eased her mind into a state of serene comfort. Lying atop the lush grass was not nearly as uncomfortable as Kaltyr expected, and in fact, contributed to the ease at which she relaxed.

Mere moments passed before silence reigned, and Kaltyr entered a blissful sleep…

Until a guttural shriek pierced the night.

Kaltyr's eyes snapped open and her body shot up. She was on her feet and looking around for danger before she had even fully awakened, but saw nothing. The bestial cry had come from far away.

“Y'know what? I'm going to fill up on mana in case the protective warding really ends tonight…”