“You know what’s the worst in all this? I can’t even hug you to console you.”, Nalaine had a disappointed expression on her face as she spoke

“I consider it more in the positive side of things, but the point is moot anyway.”

Liliei had a small smile on her face as she retorted to Nalaine. The older girl’s exuberant personality was quite appreciated as she always seemed to make everything look less terrible. She was also the one who had comforted her when Teria had been caught. After a few seconds, a thoughtful expression appeared on her face.

“You said you had an increased perception of mana, right? Can you look at your body and compare the density of the mana?”

Immediately Liliei did as she said, turning her perception to herself. Her whole body was a large chunk of mana. Everything was rather homogeneous and uniform except for a few slowly moving patterns here and there. The main exceptions were the outermost layer – which was to be expected since it somehow imitated her appearance – the permanent flow that went through her body – and was at the moment busy providing her nearly reconstructed hand – and her head, whose density was quite higher than the rest of her body.

“Hmm, it’s a bit higher in my head, but on a general level, it’s very low.”

As she spoke, Liliei realized something.

“You think it’s the reason why I’m having much less problems with my head than the rest?”

“Maybe, but there’s another thing I would like to try. You said your Ability allow you to reduce attention by using mana. Could you try to use it and look from where the mana is coming from?”

Liliei had never been much interested in how her Ability worked exactly, she just willed to use it and give the mana needed and it worked. This time she turned her perception inward again and started slowly turning on her Ability. At first she didn’t sense anything, but after a few seconds, she felt a large influx of mana coming from her head. When she looked, it was quite strange as it seemed to be just appearing there.

When Liliei reported her findings, Nalaine smiled triumphantly.

“I think I’ve got something. You know the mana pool isn’t inside the body, but in your soul right? As such, all the mana you’re absorbing isn’t reinforcing your body, but going straight to your mana pool. Which mean, you can maybe reinforce your body by adding more mana to it. And then the reason it’s so brittle and hard to control is due to that.”

Liliei thought about what Nalaine had said and only had one objection.

“If the problem with moving is due to the amount of mana, how come I was able to improve by repeating the movements?”

“I’m not sure, most of what I know of mana is all from my personal experience and my Ability, but from what I found, repeatedly casting a spell and understanding it better tend to improve the efficiency and ease of casting.”

Having no more questions, Liliei began trying to add mana to her body, which revealed itself to be quite difficult. Every time she tried the mana wouldn’t stay in her body and just came back to her head. After her tenth try she wanted to scream in frustration. When she had tried to move her body, it was slow, painfully so, but it had effects. She could see it working and her becoming more agile. But now it just wasn’t working.

“It doesn’t work, I can’t make it stay in my body.”

“Mhh, you must not be doing it the right way, but I’m honestly at a loss on this subject.”

Nalaine seemed frustrated as well not to be able to help, but didn’t seem to have more ideas. While she thought about how to do, Liliei idly checked her hand that was now nearing complete reconstruction, the flow of mana still turning in her body but now only leaving a small trickle in her hand.

And suddenly it hit her. Hell she was dumb. She tried again, but this time, instead of just willing the mana to go to her body, she pushed it in the stream that went through it. The thing was quite slow, but after only a moment, she could feel a difference. It was nothing grand, barely a change even, but it was progress and a large smile sprung on her face.

“I did it! But really it’s very slow, so I don’t think the effects are going to be there soon.” Liliei exclaimed triumphantly.

“Great!”

When she hear that, Nalaine made a large smile and moved as if to hug Liliei, only to stop after a second and make a face. When seeing that, Liliei couldn’t help it and started laughing earning a pout from the girl.

“You bully, you’ll see when you’re back in shape who’s gonna laugh.”

The two girls spent the rest of the day idly bantering, Nalaine having decided to stay for the night. When the light started dimming, Nalaine took the mattress from Teria’s room – she wasn’t using it at the moment – and placed it just beside Liliei’s bed and they then went to sleep. The whole time, Liliei was giving more mana to the slow stream in her body, slowly improving it.

The next day, Liliei immediately noticed the changes in her body. During the day before, she had been awake the whole time and as such the slow pace made it quite hard to estimate how effective it was. Now however, after a whole night of improvement, it had become quite easier to see the effective changes. First of all, her body as a whole had become much denser, nearly twice as much as before. She could also validate the idea from Nalaine, as moving correctly was a much easier task right now. She was still a little clunky, and clearly not used to move around in this body. But her limbs responded rather well.

She smiled – today was starting well – and sat on her bed. She instantly noticed that her bed moved under her at her movement, even if just a little. Nalaine was sleeping on the mattress beside her bed, and Liliei slowly got up, taking care not to wake her up. She moved her limbs, getting a feel of how they felt, then went to her clothes that Nalaine had picked up and placed on the dresser beside the empty pouch of coins where the ring had been. She still moved rather slowly, but it was a far cry from the day before, and was now due just as much from caution than from inability.

Finally, she was there, her clothes in front of her. She once again put her hand in the collar of her shirt and this time slowly started lifting it. She was able to get it halfway lifted before the weight was too great and she had to drop her grip on it. Damn the thing was heavy. Well at least now she didn’t lose an arm or anything else, which was a pretty good thing. Well now she just had to continue adding mana to her body and she would…

Well, maybe not. It seemed that her mana density had reached the highest point it would get to, as the mana deposited by the stream while passing through her body didn’t stay and either left her body, dissipating in the air, or getting sucked back by the stream. How come it didn’t work. Maybe Nalaine would have an idea.

Liliei turned to the still sleeping girl and decided to wait for her to wake up on her own. So she practiced her movement’s precision and coordination while waiting. She didn’t have to wait too long for the Demon to start stirring, and a few minuted later she woke up and looked around until her gaze fell on Liliei.

“Hey there, slept well.”

“Rather, yes. And you?”

“Well, yes. So, you want something to eat?”

She did and Liliei had some food stocked in one of the rooms for the days she couldn’t go steal something. Admittedly it wasn’t anything great but they were used to it and the two girls chattered happily while Nalaine was eating. Finally, when she had finished eating, the Demon turned serious.

“So, how’s it going?”

“Well, I’m quite a lot stronger and more solid,” she said while picking the coin pouch on the dresser, “but I’m still not even able to pick up my shirt, not to say anything about wearing it, and it doesn’t seem that I’m able to increase my density anymore, it just doesn’t stay.”

Nalaine had a pondering look on her face for a moment before she started speaking.

“You know that to use a spell you need two things, mana and Intent, right? Mana is the energy that’s all around us and that you use to power the spell, and Intent is more or less the ‘force of will’ that you use to tell mana how to act. The reason one can’t use as much mana as one want in a spell is that you need to infuse it with your intent before you can control it, and the maximum amount you can keep infused at a given time is known as the ‘mana pool’.

“That is to say, I think your problem is that your body is sort of an extension of your mana pool and your intent is only strong enough to keep that much mana under your control. So there’s three way I can think of to increase that: you gain some Levels, you gain an Ability Level that helps you, or you train it.”

“And how am I supposed to train something like Intent?” Liliei had a dubious expression plastered on her face as she spoke.

“Have you tried manipulating your body?” Started Nalaine, which earned her another dubious look from the girl before she continued “your body is made of mana, you should be able to modify it, which you could also use to solve your clothes problems, and the only way I have found of training my Intent is by using it to manipulate mana.”

The next three or so hours were spent by Liliei trying to change the shape of her body. She quickly discovered she could, up to an extent. She was able to get a little taller or smaller change a little the general shape of her body, but if she tried something too extreme, like completely changing her arm into a sword, it wouldn’t work, or change back immediately. Even with the small changes, her body seemed to want to always get back to her original form.

The next thing she tried was to create something of mana separated from her – ultimately the goal was clothes but she started with something simpler like a small cube – but this was incredibly difficult. She was able to get the mana in the shape she wanted, but the instant she stopped focusing on it it would dissipate back into the air

Trying to Level now wasn’t a realistic option: she could neither go out to kill monsters nor try to stay stealthy in a crowd, and she didn’t know what action related to her second ability would increase her level. As such the last thing she could to get a boost to her mana pool was to increase her Ability. Doing so in general was rather straightforward: practice what it gives you until the World decide your mastery of it is good enough and grants you the next Ability Level. Since Abilities Levels in the same Ability were usually related, the second one was much more likely to give her what she wanted.

She waited until Nalaine left her. The Demon had to get back to the rest of the group to reassure them, and to get some money – she earned it by going with new adventurers on the first floor of the Dungeon, as a guide and a mage. She was after all one of the largest income of the small community. She promised to come back the next day to see how Liliei had progressed, before leaving. Nalaine continued training with the damned mana cube – she was now rather good at creating it, but still couldn’t get it to stay that way, and Nalaine hadn’t been able to help on how to do it either – before she could get the resolution to do it.

Training all day had helped, and her body was a bit denser than before but it was way too slow. As such she neared the wall of her house, she needed to increase her proficiency with her Ability and she saw only one way to do so. She was soon in front of the wall, there she clenched her teeth in preparation, put all the force she could in the movement, and slammed her fist into the wall.