Caught unprepared, Kaltyr fell backwards. Shock at experiencing an entirely new form of pain overwhelmed her senses as she landed on her back, unable to move. From her ears, she lost her sense of balance. In her mouth, she tasted blood. Of her eyes, she was too distracted for anything to register, making it so she effectively couldn’t see. Worst of all were the waves.

Waves, undulations, ripples… A bafflingly strange form of discomfort wafted through the girls entire body, spreading out from where she was struck in the chest, nearly directly above her heart. The pain affected not her flesh and bones, but her meridians and mana, shaking the very foundations of her power. Her control over the very energy that made her strong was disturbed and weakened, causing more issues to arise.

Kaltyr’s feet grew cold as her mind went numb, the idea that something could have happened to reverse the progression she’d achieved in Manic worsening her state. Forget the stab wounds in her waist delivered by the Life Level 2 buck; flesh wounds would heal, but…could damage to her meridians or soul be reversed? If she were to survive whatever just happened, would she ever be in top condition again?

Just as sudden as the initial attack was Kaltyr’s inner voice saying…“Shut the fuck up. You’re more damning to you than the enemy is. Get your ass up!”

Sunlight touched her eyes once more. The rustling of leaves and calls of birds echoed through her ears again as she found her balance. She felt the soft texture of the grass beneath her. Not long at all had passed since the attack, but eons flew by to Kaltyr through her panic. Until now, when she returned to her senses. Though, her mouth still tasted of blood.

Kaltyr’s inner voice was correct. Her panic produced from encountering the new, peculiar pain was probably more to blame for her inability to take action than anything else.

“I guess…that’s what’s called a…critical hit…” She said in-between pained breaths as she lifted herself up into a sitting position and finally got a look at what attacked her. “Oh, so…it’s not zombies they turn into, but ghosts?”

Floating above the storage lean-to was what could have only been described as a fish’s astral projection. As though it were a sparkling illusion made of infinite shards of glass, the enemy was a great deal translucent, allowing enough light to pass through its form that the background of trees could almost entirely be seen through it.

Kaltyr spit out the blood pooling in her mouth—she’d bitten her tongue during the fall—and tightened her grip on the sharpened antler piece. Somehow, she hadn’t dropped it.

“So, if it’s a ghost…”

She tossed the antler into the air and through the fish ghost with perfect accuracy—her levels in Small Projectile Throwing Arts working their magic.

“Damn! It really CAN pass through physical objects…”

Before Kaltyr could search the ground around her for a rock to infuse with mana, a small burst of light exploded like a firecracker from the fish’s mouth. Much calmer the second time around, she reflexively lifted her arm to cover her head. Of course her body was still reinforced.

“Whaaaat?”

But no spell struck her. Nothing struck. Confused, Kaltyr lowered her arm to see the fish preparing a third attack while still floating in the same spot. This time, the girl didn’t raise her arm to block at all, simply pouring more mana into her Body Mana Reinforcement so that she could see the spell be performed in its entirety. While simultaneously watching the fish gather magical essence—not mana, strangely. It seemed to be controlling the essence around it directly rather than absorbing and refining it—through her eyes and with Magic Sense, the fish ghost released the spell. A tiny blue beam escaped the fish’s open maw, hurtling through the air in her direction so quickly that she wondered if she’d be able to dodge if she were standing instead of sitting.

Then, nothing. The beam dissipated just before it could reach her…exactly one meter away from the fish.

“HA!” Kaltyr’s laugh came out more like a high-pitch squeal. “That happened to me, too!”

Ignoring the fact that she was sympathizing with a fish ghost’s lack of magical capabilities, the girl raised a…“finger gun” toward the fish and released her own Crude Mana Bolt spell through her pointer finger. Of course, she didn’t expect it land because her limit was previously proven to also be a mere single meter…

The Crude Mana Bolt hit the ghost fish, sending it slowly tumbling backwards through the air with a dazed expression…as much as a ghostly fish could look dazed. Judging by its reaction, her Crude Mana Bolt had about the same effect that its attack had on her.

“Reeeeaally?”

Kaltyr raised a puzzled eyebrow at her hand, wondering if it was holding out on some secrets. Like, was it secretly practicing the Crude Mana Bolt spell without her notice? Did the skill level-up so many times that its range doubled?! Did…did the skill level even affect how far a Crude Mana Bolt could travel?

A facepalm—the fourteenth—later…

“Oh yeah. Slaughtering that family of deer raised my Life Level. That’s probably it!”

By then, the sparkling, glass-like ghost of a fish reclaimed control of itself and flew within a meter of Kaltyr before beginning the process to attack for the fourth time.

“Oh, no you d—”

Kaltyr jumped to her feet, then froze, stopping herself just in time for the fish to gather enough magical essence for its shot. With a buzzing sound that she hadn’t noticed the first three times, the beam of light struck her chest.

“Ugghgh, that doesn’t feel very good.”

However, unlike the first time, the girl was not caught unprepared. At the last second, Kaltyr had decided to make the most of the strange situation she found herself in. It wasn’t every day that she had the opportunity to fight a fish ghost, after all.

“In all seriousness, these circumstances are great!”

Kaltyr shook off the wave of pain produced by the spell, finding that it was more akin to a tingling now that she knew what to expect, and stood completely still.

“These attacks don’t seem to be doing any damage besides expending the mana in the area it hits, so this is a good opportunity for me to test a few things.”

To begin with, the girl had few doubts that whatever happened to the fish to transform it into the apparition it became was commonplace. Besides paranoia, nothing pointed at the fish ghost being the result of an outside force messing with her. In fact, if there were some kind of third party powerful enough to make ghosts out of the beasts Kaltyr killed, she doubted that they’d use all that power in order to create some wimpy fish that could do nothing more than tickle her meridians a bit roughly.

“And even if creating undead is not an uncommon ability, and is being used by a new enemy, I still have to use this chance to experiment.”

Although she leaned more on the side of, “corpses turn into ghosts sometimes”, even if the truth was something different, that wouldn’t change the fact that she’d probably have to fight more ghosts later down the line. And since she was fighting such a weak ghost now, it only made sense to figure out what it can do.

“Come on, hit me again!”

Unsurprisingly, Kaltyr’s taunts changed nothing, and the fish took the same amount of time to gather the magical essence required to attack, then performed the same spell. Again, the blast exploded against her chest, deleting a small percentage of the mana she reinforced her body with. She allowed the fish to repeat the same process a few more times before she found herself yawning.

“Ya know what? All this thing seems to be capable of is shooting its lousy beams that only amount to my Life Level 1 mana bolts in power. Guess it’s time to figure out how to kill it.”

Nearly bored to death from her expectations of a strong enemy being crushed, Kaltyr lifted a pebble off the ground, infused it with as much mana as it could contain—surprisingly little—and threw it at the fish. The pebble bounced off rather than pass through.

“Nooow we’re getting somewhere!”

With a nasty grin, Kaltyr readied another finger gun and filled it with around the same amount of mana she had for the first mana bolt, wanting to see how many bolts were necessary to kill it. However, because she moved so casually due to her lack of fear, the fish shot just before she did, and its beam intercepted her bolt.

After a tiny poof, the fish’s beam struck her torso again. Though, significantly weaker.

“Really? Its beam destroyed my mana bolt?”

Kaltyr was mildly annoyed at being outperformed by the fish.

“Whatever.”

The girl put down her finger gun and approached the little bastard, preparing to test whether she could kill it with a single empowered punch. Yet, when she neared the fish, a sense of…something arose in the back of her mind, warning her that two things felt off.

Kaltyr stood face-to-face with the fish ghost, still lacking any concern for her safety. She wanted to figure out what felt wrong, but couldn’t quite put her finger on it…until a bubble began to form in front of the ghost.

“Oh, so that’s it.”

The girl couldn’t immediately tell that the fish was performing a different spell, but after paying close attention to how the magical essence flowed within the beast—was it still a “beast” after turning into a ghost?—it became clear that a different effect would be produced.

The entirely clear bubble in front of the fish steadily began transforming, darkening in color until it was the same light blue Kaltyr had seen on many flowers in the area.

Then, the bubble shot at her and exploded against her face.

“GAAAAAGGHHH!”

Kaltyr was toppled once more as she brought her hands to her face, trying to rub away the pain. Her meridians flared in agony, burning much like fire, distracting from even the shock of landing on a rock.

“BASTARD!”

The girl scrambled to her feet before removing a hand from her face and grabbing the fish ghost, apparently not passing through it because her entire body was reinforced with mana.

With hatred glowing in her eyes, Kaltyr began slowly tightening her fist on the glass-like creature, watching with delight as its eyes bugged out and it lost control of the surrounding magical essence. No blood poured from the beast, but the essence it had already absorbed did leak out of its scales.

“Oh. That’s right.”

Kaltyr deeply growled, realizing the second thing she felt was wrong about the situation: the fish ghost was inside of the clearing, which was said to be the only safe place for her in the entire world. Her mind still engulfed by the burning pain in her face that was like acid flowing beneath her skin, she stopped speaking as she moved in silence, walking toward the clearing’s edge with the dying fish in hand until she stood directly next to it.

With a grunt, the girl moved her hand beyond where she thought the invisible barrier to be. There was no resistance. Then, she tried bringing it back to her side.

Good.

Her hand was caught in place, unable to return to her. The barrier was still up and active, preventing the fish from entering the clearing even while she tried with all her empowered might to pull it in.

Having learned what she wanted to know, she closed her fist, imploding the fish in a gory shattering of sparkling, glass-like particles.

……

The ghost fish’s bubble attack didn’t burn a lot of mana, and it only took around twenty seconds for the pain to fully dissipate…but it was incredibly irritating. So much so that Kaltyr knew, despite it probably having only a fraction of the power behind it than the normal beam attack, the bubble spell was far more useful.

If I had such a spell available to me…

After obliterating the fish, Kaltyr wordlessly transitioned into meditation with a frown, angry at being had like she was, sitting herself down next to the firepit and entering the lotus position. After using a few minutes to refill on mana—she expended nearly forty percent of her total mana stores from playing with the little bugger before executing it—the girl opened her mind’s eye and closed her physical ones, directing her attention to the magical layer of the world.

Immediately, she was faced with the infinite number of meridians that made up her magical channels, spanning from even her toenails to her brain. Though, Kaltyr thought it strange that toe and fingernails, along with her hair, also had meridians. Were meridians expendable? Were they easy to grow? Did they “grow” at all? If she cut her hair, would those “hair meridians” be lost forever, even after new hair grew in? Some of those answers were solved when she took a closer look and determined that the parts of her that could be cut off without causing damage to her nervous system contained special meridians. Of what made them special, she had no idea. But she could channel mana through her hair and nails just fine, so, did it matter?

Kaltyr put aside those distracting thoughts before returning her attention to her main goal: learning new spells. She’d seen the fish ghost perform two different spells—though, the beam attack seemed to be the magical essence equivalent to her Crude Mana Bolts—but was that single encounter enough for her to expand her spell repertoire? A few issues quickly arose.

To start with, the ghost beast had been casting spells with magical essence directly rather than mana. Were those spells only capable of being performed with magical essence? If so, did that mean learning a spell from that ghost beast was impossible?

Kaltyr thought not. To begin with, she’d seen no rule stating that she couldn’t also cast spells with magical essence. Yes, the guidebook spoke of refining magical essence into mana to perform great feats with, but it also said that she’d have to learn a lot about the magic system—and Manic in general, for that matter—by herself.

With passionate determination, Kaltyr opened her eyes and focused her will on the surrounding magical essence, beginning, and quickly winning, the tug of war of control before bringing it into her body. However, even if she wanted to refine it into mana, she couldn’t because her soul was full to the brim, unable to contain anymore of anything. With nowhere to go, the magical essence did nothing after entering her meridians, and after a short while, she lost control of it altogether.

That was when it began to hurt.

Almost as though she were placed into a vice, a crushing feeling befell her. The meridians that the magical essence stagnated within seemingly began to crumple, being crushed by who-knows-what. Kaltyr released an ear-piercing shriek into the sky, startling a few nearby birds into taking flight, and the panic began to set in.

She’d done something she shouldn’t have.

Inundated by the crushing pain, Kaltyr’s body involuntarily shook as she sought to regain control of the magical essence, to no avail. Either she couldn’t concentrate well enough to get the job done, or the job wasn’t possible to complete in the first place and magical essence within her meridians couldn’t be manipulated after a certain amount of time.

Then, the girl remembered why the essence was forced to sit within her magical channels in the first place, and she opened the floodgates, nearly emptying her soul as she filled her meridians with mana and washed the magical essence out through random channels. Exactly like what happened to the fish ghost when she’d crushed it, the magical essence oozed out through her skin.

Kaltyr panted hard, hands tightly gripping her knees, her eyes wide open. Tremors ran through her body, fear from what had just occurred attempting to take over.

But she didn’t let that mishap stop her. A mistake was made, yes, however, the pursuit of knowledge and power was always potentially painful. Potentially life-threatening. Kaltyr could have avoided any interactions within the forest for the sake of keeping her life, but that would have resulted in no growth. Power came at a cost.

The girl spit out another glob of blood. She’d bitten her tongue again during the panic.

Now, the second problem.

The first issue with Kaltyr’s idea to somehow copy the spells the fish ghost used was that the fish didn’t seem capable of using mana and only utilized the ambient magical essence for its attacks. It was now clear that Kaltyr couldn’t use magical essence directly. The second issue Kaltyr thought of was regarding...

How I have no idea if copying spells is possible in the first place.

Although the lass had a lot of success with mimicking the utilization of mana from beasts…they weren’t doing anything crazy difficult. Body Mana Reinforcement was a classic “brute force method” in that it required no finesse to perform. All one had to do was maintain a continuous flow of mana through their body and BAM! Presto! They could then perform feats of great strength! Kaltyr merely saw the family of deer doing it, then followed by example. Not difficult at all.

And yet, there was still a little hope for learning the more difficult stuff, because Kaltyr also had an example of learning a not-so-simple skill through observation.

Stealth. How did I pick it up so quickly?

That question had bothered the girl since learning the skill, but put it off her mind in favor of just being glad that she learned it at all. Could knowing how she learned it so quickly be beneficial? After seeing a ghost fish perform spells, yeah. It could very well be beneficial, because if it were the case that Kaltyr either had a natural inclination toward learning such things—meaning that she was talented—or that learning them wasn’t actually as difficult as she assumed, then she had every reason to try to reproduce the effects of every spell she witnessed!

But was that the case?

Again, with passionate determination, Kaltyr dove into her inner self and trained her thoughts on her meridians. The System Wishes You Good Fucking Luck stated something along the lines of, “there are countless meridians and countless ways to channel mana through them to achieve different results”…she wasn’t sure and wasn’t going to bother checking. If what it said was true—the guidebook never lied to her before—then what she needed to figure out was which meridians to channel her mana through…

Like a bucket of cold water splashing onto her, reality set in.

These are fucking endless! How am I supposed to figure out which are the right ones?!

The density of meridians within Kaltyr was no joke. If she didn’t focus her view on anywhere specific and just viewed her entire body as a whole through her mind’s eye, it looked as though she were just a single mass of magical channel. Singular. If she wanted to see individual channels, the amount she needed to zoom in…

Welp. I’m never going to learns spells this way.

Kaltyr wallowed in, and was submerged by, the urge to give up. Even if she were immortal, she had no interest in trying a nigh-infinite number of possible combinations just to potentially learn a spell!

The lass returned to the physical world with a sigh and allowed her body to fall to the ground.

She watched the thickening clouds meander by, the threat of rainfall looming overhead.

She sighed again.

But I really don’t want to give up.

The lass closed her eyes, cutting off the outside world to focus on her memories. The memory of the fish surfaced. She remembered sensing the area where the magical essence flowed through the beast when it began casting the bubble spell, but had no confidence in pinpointing the exact meridians. To perform such a spell, was she required to pour her mana through VERY specific meridians, or did the general area count? Crude Mana Bolt was easy enough to perform since it was, after all, crude, but was that particular spell an outlier? Did the majority require specificity down to single meridians out of the millions there were? What if they did? She’d never discover how to perform ANY spells!

But what if they don’t?

The painful question echoed around in her skull, demanding her attention.

She sighed yet again.

Yeah, I can’t give up just yet.

Kaltyr closed her eyes, not bothering to sit up.

I don’t know how close fish physiology is to mine, but…

She recalled the scene where she stood face-to-face with the fish while it gathered the magical essence required to cast the bubble spell and pictured where in the beast the essence specifically flowed through. As far as Kaltyr could tell…the neck, then its mouth.

I’m making soooo much progress.

The lass couldn’t help but to deride herself.

Well, better to give it a try and fail than never try and never succeed.

With that mindset, Kaltyr slowly took in a deep breath, then held it, not wanting to distract from the control of her magical power by breathing, which sometimes happened a little.

She channeled a decent portion of her mana from her soul to her lungs, figuring that it was a good start considering what a “bubble” actually was. From there, she cycled the mana so that it passed through her neck to reach her low jaw.

Nothing happened, of course.

After returning the blob of energy to her lungs, Kaltyr released the stagnant air and took in another breath.

More specific!

She’d passed the mana through innumerable meridians, doing nothing more than reinforcing her flesh like normal. She had to get more specific. Much more specific.

Well, the essence just went through its neck area! What am I supp—

She played the scene one more time, watching carefully until she noticed that something was strange about the way the ghost beast channeled it.

The magical essence…separated?

The lass couldn’t be sure, but it seemed as though the essence coursing through the fish split into three branches, each flowing with an equal distance between them in a triangle through the neck and jaws before exiting the fish to meet at a single point in front of its mouth.

How I didn’t notice that detail first, I have no idea.

Hoping that the single detail she’d missed before was enough for her to succeed on her next attempt, Kaltyr slowly moved the mana through her neck according to the memory, separating the energy into three equally-sized beams with an equal amount of distance between each of them. From there, the mana flowed into her jaw, maintaining the distance between the currents. Two moved through either sides of her lower jaw while the third traveled across the top of her mouth. When they reached the front of her face, they exited her body, emptying into the air without effect.

Kaltyr sat up and blinked.

The mana…didn’t become mana bolts.

At first, the fact that the mana she released didn’t turn into Crude Mana Bolts puzzled the girl since she didn’t successfully cast the bubble spell, but then she smiled brightly. The very fact that her mana didn’t become Crude Mana Bolts was evidence that she was heading in the right direction!

After all, I can shoot mana bolts from anywhere. I just do so through my fingers or palms because it’s easier to aim. But since the mana didn’t do anything like become bolts, then that might mean I failed to perform the bubble spell! MEANING IT’S POSSIBLE TO CAST IT!

Unwilling to allow the memory of how she cycled the magical power to fade, the lass jumped right back into experimenting. Over and over, she channeled her mana through her neck and mouth in slightly different ways, changing which meridians mana flowed through and the speed at which it did. Each time, the result was failure, as her mana did nothing more than escape her body to join the ambient magical essence. Whatever happened to her mana once it left her body without being consumed in a spell, she had no idea.

Eventually, the nagging feeling that she was missing something pecked at the back of Kaltyr’s mind when she started the process of casting the bubble spell again. Somehow, there must have been another key detail she was missing.

But what? I have the general flow down, and since it’s a “bubble” spell, I’m imagining it flowing like air. Should I be focusing on where the mana starts the journey? Like the lungs? Ughhh…my lungs are pretty big. If that’s right, then this is going to take soooo long.

Through her magical perception, the girl viewed her lungs, the sheer number of meridians within them, and how complicated their paths were. Her lungs were, after all, organs, which weren’t nearly as simple as the muscle, bone, and connective tissues she’d been working with before. If the bubble spell involved channeling mana through her lungs…

Kaltyr closed her mind’s eye and returned to the physical world. That nagging feeling…

“Fish don’t have lungs. Oof.”

The fifteenth facepalm.

Yeah, fish have gills. But, what does that mean for the bubble spell?

A feeling of dread welled up inside Kaltyr.

Was all this for nothing because I don’t have gills? But it felt like I was on the right track!

The lass took a few deep breaths and resisted the urge to pull at her hair in frustration.

Calm down, me. This is still only halfway through my third day on Manic. I have plenty of time to figure out this magic spell stuff. Don’t be impatient. I have time. I have time…

She returned her focus within and began channeling mana again.

Think about how fish breathe. They force water into their mouths and out of their gills. The fish ghost definitely moved magical essence up its gills and out of its mouth, so I have to think about it in the reverse. When water passes through the gills, I think dissolved oxygen just passes directly through the blood vessels into the blood.

It was time to test the limits of her imagination. She imagined gills on herself—slits that led to entirely new and different respiratory organs, and visualized how water was passed through gills to, essentially, filter oxygen out. Then, she restarted the casting process, bringing mana to start at the base of her neck around her collarbone before it split into the three streams and began its way up. However, when the mana entered the region where Kaltyr envisioned to be gills, she slowed the streams, visualizing the mana flowing through filters before coming out the other end as tiny bubbles. Those tiny bubbles then made their way into her jaws, still maintaining the three streams.

A new aura began emanating off of Kaltyr.