Focusing on the tamed spiders, I direct all of them to follow her orders as if they were mine own and to have at least the same level of dedication to her.

Automatically, I feel a shift in the relationship. While they still are completely under my control, I can feel their previous connection to Gong, turn rock solid. Instead of a boss-employee relationship with her, their allegiance feels like a fanatic army for her use at this point.

Gong also feels the shift as she gasps. “Did you…? No, that can’t be… You made them completely loyal to me!” She seems a bit too excited.

She pants.

Can spiders even pant?! Also, is that drool?

Licking her lips thirstily, she gulps and follows up with a question, “S-so, does this mean I have sole control of them?”

I immediately retort against that, “Definitely, no.”

She immediately pouts, but then regains her happiness soon after, while a mysterious smirk and upturned eyes shine at me. “Well… that’s not bad in its own way…”

Ignoring that previous comment, I think this will be a big value add for our little group. Well, I guess a sizeable group now. God, I hope this was the right idea to give the crazy spider lady a spider army.

As I internally ponder whether this was actually a good idea, Gong turns somewhat serious.

“Hey. I know you wanted time to work on figuring out your abilities. I’m pretty set over here. When we meet back up as a group, I’ll let you know how we can use this to our advantage. I’ve been thinking of something like this for a long time, but I never imagined having this much control.”

Before I can say anything in response, she lowers her hand to my chin, in a quick, but soft move. She tilts my chin up to look at her, as she moves her face closer to mine.

o-oh.

“My, my. You just keep helping me with things, don’t you? I’ll repay you for this someday… good luck on your side, I’ll make sure it was more than worth it to do this for me!”

My mouth hangs open as she releases my chin with a sly grin. Turning away to the opposite direction. I can see the hint of reddened ears, as she turns (with my scan).

With that parting statement, she rushes down into the tunnels. I can practically feel the air shift, as the many… many spiders flood down behind her. Even the big ones squeeze past me to follow.

That’s not the scariest part though… The scariest thing about these tunnels is the fact that even with all these spiders, there are still deeper tunnels below, that they weren’t living in. What lurks in those dark places…?

Moving on from that disturbing thought, I head back to the room.

Gong must have forgotten in her excitement, but there are ton of passageways I could get lost in. If I didn’t have my scanning ability, there’s a chance I could have gotten lost in here. Especially, since there isn’t that much lighting this deep in the ground.

Note to self: Be careful when Gong gets excited about her favorite things. She forgets about other important aspects for surrounding people.

Though honestly, who doesn’t go through the same thing?

After my journey with Gong and my return to her room, I pace around the edges of the giant webbed bed for a bit.

First things first, what the hell is going on with my large mana count? It feels like it has ballooned up so quickly!

After pacing around the room and running numbers, it becomes apparent. Every time one of my skills levels up, my mana amount doubles. When I query for a formula, to make it easier it is: [10 x 2x], where x = (Combined Skill Levels – 2). In this case, 14.

That’s absurd. I run the numbers again. And again, and again.

Isn’t this too crazy? This is more than enough for what I need it for. Honestly, with this kind of growth, do I even need to train it?

Adding to that, further scanning reveals that my mana regeneration is percentage/time based. It also seems to run off a formula connected to my skill levels: Mana Regeneration to 100% from 0% = (300 seconds [5 mins] x (Combined Skill Level -2))

… it seems to be (300 x 14) = 4200seconds [70mins].

That means every 42 seconds, I’ve recovered 1% of my mana… which is almost 34 mana per second. Based on what I’ve seen… I could passively heal a ton of people, without putting a dent in my regeneration.

The taming maintenance fee seems to be a bit of a counterweight to that, though. It permanently takes away mana from my ‘pool’ of sorts.

Even with that, I could have a vast army of creatures and also still be able to have a ton of mana left to use!

It’s probably best I focus on the here and now, and how I can improve what is available to me. I’ve never been a theory crafter, but I can at least come up with some ideas.

With that in mind, I turn to my other abilities.

I need to get my low concentration/effort scanning to always be on. Using it as a pulse isn’t enough. Unless I recognize I’m in danger, it will be useless.

So, even if I can’t maintain the 10m radius pulse version, I need to have something there that is always on. In a sense, I need it to automated.

To help test this, I call out a few flying insects from ones I tamed earlier.

Big, shiny green beetles, each the size of my fist fly around the corner and head on a beeline for me.

In their little eyes, I can see what feels like joy and excitement.

Unluckily for them, I’ve never been a big fan of bugs.

With the speed they approach with, I barely stop myself from swatting it away.

To be specific, I took a swing but moved my hand out of the way. I can feel a twinge of dismay and betrayal from it, from my almost lethal action.

After some heartfelt apologies, since I’m the one that actually called them out here, I attempt to use them to test something.

I try using them to see the strength of the scan, focusing on distance, efficacy, range, and detail of the field. With them flying in and out of it, I have pretty good parameters to test.

What I find out?

…it’s great.

I can get it a quarter of a meter away from my body. At this distance, I can tell that I could maintain this with no strain on any of my other abilities. If I want to put more energy to it, but still maintain it all day, I feel I can push it to 3m. Which honestly isn’t too bad.

What I notice, though, is that this requires some version of constant attention or awareness.

I need to make this a natural reaction for my body, like hearing or smelling something. From what I’ve seen of the scanning ability, I can use this to help determine what would work best for me. This could be a good time to practice the “genius” level intuition idea I thought of earlier…

Using this chance, I activate my scanning ability at its intuitive level and avoid getting detailed information.

Then, I point to the flying bug and if I accurately can get its position, it will stop and hover in place. I make sure to block and reduce the power of the scan, so it is as close to the ‘raw’ data form that it originally came in, while still allowing me to interpret it.

It feels as though there was a concept on the tip of my tongue that I can quickly figure out to assist me.

Along the way, I get hints that jog my memory along and cause me to jump to a conclusion. Strangely enough, these hints and concepts seem to make a weird kind of sense, by using contextual aspects that I might reasonably know.

Things like how I feel my body react or how I perceive things. For things I couldn’t possibly know, it is more a feeling than anything.

This is exactly what I was hoping for.

If someone was to watch me practice this, they would see flying bugs swarming around and as I point to it, the bug makes a fake death animation while hovering in place. Its little arms gesticulate widely, before it does a little spin and makes it tiny arms limp.

I find it hilarious.

… don’t judge me.

I don’t leave my permanent scan abilities to chance and pull up a full list to determine best methods to have a permanent scan. I put parameters in place, involving my current knowledge and something I could reasonably know.

It seems the ‘farther out there’ an idea is, the tougher and more damage it does to me. What actually makes something far out, I’m not able to pin down.

What I find (with a bit of a headache), is what can be considered an awareness technique. This technique is all about maintaining awareness at all times. Since it is a mortal technique, it isn’t something as amazing as having perfect 360 spatial awareness. I’ve actually heard of something similar in my world. Which is why it was likely not that painful.

I immediately try to test the ability.

The bugs continue to float lazily around as I close my eyes.

Leaving my scan on, but putting the awareness technique into practice reveals a lot.

Each beat of the wings, movement of the bugs is caught by both my scan and the technique.

It appears allows my body to pick up signs that something has changed nearby, even if the person is asleep. I think it normally uses a combination of all the senses to achieve this, and a certain state of mind. While sleeping, it should be like always being on the cusp of reacting.

This would be extremely difficult to practice, without extensive time and training. Luckily for me, I have the scanning technique, which is even more amazing than I thought. I can go through each part of the technique and my body’s reactions to refine it.

As I continue to use it, I feel my concentration fail and myself distracted. The scanning ability takes over and still keeps the information.

I don’t want to fully rely on these abilities. While I don’t think they’ll be taken away, I want to make sure that I cover as many bases as possible. I think one of my college friends had mentioned something he learned in his classes… n+1 redundancy. Which is to have what you need, plus one more. If something happens to the first one, no matter how improbable, you will still be okay.

I turn my focus back to my bodies state. I didn’t notice it, but I am exhausted. Mentally and physically. The healing constitution helps me to recover, but this seems to be a different form of training. I think I need to learn this, rather than ‘exercise’ it.

It definitely will still take some time to train my body in, based on what I’ve seen, but this awareness ability will definitely be a cheat in its own right.

I’ll use my scanning ability to support my learning of it, more than support the ability itself. That way it will be like having a teacher that can see every muscle, thought process, and even cell. If I’m able to master the awareness ability, I’ll be able to autopilot the passive scanning radius. Combined with my scanning ability, it actually will give me a true 360 spatial awareness, even while sleeping. The while sleeping part, is the most important aspect.

My ultimate goal for this scanning ability was to make it as intuitive as possible.

If I continue to use it in this manner, I believe that might not be a pipe dream. Considering how it works, I could even imagine my shadow ability turning into something that could allow me to dodge arrows or attacks without seeing them. I don’t even want to imagine what will happen when I get access to an actual spiritual sense.

Quite exciting.

While I think of all this, though, one of the beetles had landed on my shoulder to rest for a bit.

I totally didn’t notice it. Totally cute. Frightening how open I was.

I definitely need some work.

Moving on to my personal healing, I need to figure out the extent to which my abilities can heal.

Since I’m not one for hurting myself, this is one that I must use my detailed scanning ability to determine the information. I can’t risk working off of guestimates when I’m bleeding on the ground, dying.

This is a desperately important question. With my beetle buddy on my shoulder, I look down at a scanning sheet for the specifics. I unconsciously ask it to move a bit.

It basically lists that I can instantly heal one-hit KO, fatal obliteration wounds.

As my jaw drops open, I then see the mana cost, which actually causes me to fall to the ground.

Beetle buddy leaves me. Traitor. I believed in you.

Oh wait, I had sent him away.

As I look into the ability a little further, by tying this healing to my healing constitution, I can make it an instant heal for myself. It is still a high cost, far beyond my current mana count. In the millions of mana. What is interesting is that I can do lesser versions of it. It appears the closer to death I am, the higher the cost is. Spread out the time to heal, lessens the cost significantly.

If the instant heal is the heal back to perfection instantly from death, with optimization, the lesser version is an instant version of coming back from a lethal wound.

I do find out that I can have this automatically paired with my healing constitution, as a reactive ability. Obviously, only once I can actually come close to actually paying the cost. From what I can tell, the healing constitution plays a huge part to making this work. However, there appears to be a large maintenance cost to keep the reactive healing active, even for normal injuries. Overall, I’m not able to afford the cost at this time.

However, a thought sobers me. No matter how high my mana is, whether I can heal instantly, or even how fast my regeneration is, if I can’t use it right… I’ll die like anyone else.

I can feel it. Even at my strongest with this ability, I might survive a lethal blow, but there will be a time when I can no longer come back if I rely on it too much.

Not only that, but as I query the ability further using my scan, I can see that the ability still has limitations… though I can’t see them.

Literally.

It won’t let me view it, even with my high-powered version. Almost as if it isn’t allowed. Not yet.

It’s easy to forget, but these powers didn’t come from me. I was given them. Something is telling me to not probe any deeper. I’m not one to test those kinds of limits.

This is pretty exciting, though!

With this, I could take an assassin’s blade to the neck and still survive. Considering how my healing works, I might also have to train regularly. Honestly, this ability is absolutely absurd, though.

Not even thinking about the full heal, since the healing optimizes the body after injuries or conditions, each muscle tear in a workout will build it stronger immediately. I’ll try every exercise I know!

Feeling pretty proud of myself, I lay back in the webbed bed. Before I feel myself drift off to sleep, I work on my awareness technique and activate my autoscan ability.

I lie awake, unable to sleep.

Don’t think about those limitations. Don’t think about those limitations. Don… Dang it!