“Maybe…no, that’s not working either,” Loran mumbled as he sat in his shelter. It had been over an hour since he had been brought back to his shelter, and of course, it had only taken him a few minutes to grow bored. Fortunately, since his mind was unaffected by the debuff he could at least practice with his magic. Unfortunately, he might just be out of ideas.

Letting the mana fade, Loran rubbed his temples as he collected his thoughts.

His current focus was on improving the healing spell, specifically, he wanted to modify the spell so that it had greater effectiveness in reducing debuffs. The normal healing spell did a lot in this regard, typically reducing the debuff’s duration by two-thirds, but a specialized spell could potentially remove the effect immediately.

‘But how?!’ he thought in frustration. Loran had manipulated the shape of the mana in every way he could think of, and the only successful spell he managed to discover was a way to turn mana explosive. Probably useful, but literally the opposite of what he wanted at the moment.

‘Even manipulating the shape when it's at the healing density doesn’t seem to do anything.’ That had been Loran’s first idea, to take the basic healing spell and build off of that, but while that did give him several variants of the healing spell, with a variety of applications, none of it improved their effectiveness on debuffs, only the HP restoration.

*Bark*

“Go fetch!”

‘And these two certainly aren't helping right now.’

After Maya had finished healing everyone who had been hurt in the Demon Bear’s initial attack, she decided to come visit him. If she had an actual reason for doing so, it had been swiftly forgotten the moment she had laid eyes on the small wolf cub that had patiently waited for him at his shelter.

Even after having spent more than half her MP healing people, Maya had more than enough energy to play with the excitable pup, and the two were happily running up and down the path in front of his shelter. He had tried asking her to take the pup to the training field, saying that they would have more room to play, but she would just ask to stay because she had questions about magic.

And she did have a few questions. Apparently, she hadn’t learned much beyond the basic Mana Dart, the light spell, and now the healing spell. He spent a little time explaining how important shape manipulation was, but then he taught her how to make mana constructs and he was beginning to regret it.

The pup could be entertained just by watching them practice magic, but once the two realized that Maya could make toys out of mana there was just no stopping them. Currently, Maya had spent the last few minutes making what looked like a doll made of mana while the wolf pup was running back to her, carrying a large stick of mana.

‘Well, at least watching them have fun is better than sitting here with no ideas.’

Seeing that Maya was focusing intensely on her doll, the wolf cub came running to Loran instead, dropping the stick before looking at him expectantly.

“Alright fine.” He couldn’t risk throwing it with his hands, but since it was made of mana it was easy enough to send flying with a spell. At first, he tried to command the construct directly, but it didn’t move. Loran’s brow furrowed, and he concentrated more on the construct, finally making it float, but with far more effort than it should have taken. As far as he could tell, the stick was constructed with only 5 MP, but it felt like it was pushing his 15 Intelligence to its limit.

‘...Is this because of Maya’s stats?’ he wondered as the threw the stick, sending the wolf cub bounding down the path.

Although he did a lot of experimentation with magic, not too much of it had been done with other spellcasters, and never with such a huge disparity in stats. Loran was the strongest magic user of the active hunters, but Maya’s stats more than doubled his. If there was any kind of difficulty in controlling the mana constructs created by another player it would definitely be maximized for him right now.

“Did you do it this time?” Maya asked once she noticed Loran wasn’t concentrating on his new spell anymore.

“No,” Loran sighed. “I still can’t get the shape right.”

“Oh… Well I’m sure you can do it!” she said with a beaming smile.

“Heh, thanks Maya.” Letting his mind rest, he took a moment to watch as Maya held up her completed doll. There was a decent amount of detail put into it, including well-shaped limbs and a rough dress, although the clear and glowing mana made it look a lot less impressive.

Still, Maya seemed perfectly satisfied with it, having it march around and moving it into different positions and poses. Loran blinked and frowned slightly, he couldn’t say exactly what it was, but something about the doll’s movements didn’t seem right. After a moment she placed it next to her before summoning up more mana to make a second doll.

“Maya, can I see your doll for a minute?”

“Her name is Jen.”

“...May I hold Jen for a bit?”

She hummed approvingly and handed him the doll. Once it was in his hand he realized that he was right to be curious. The few times he had made mana constructs over the last few days they had all been completely solid as if made from glass or crystal. However, the doll in his hands was flexible.

‘I thought she just hadn’t solidified it when she was posing it before, but no. She actually found a way to make it flexible.’

It wasn’t completely limp like a stuffed animal, but the clothes moved like cloth, and the joints all worked while the rest of the body was stiff, as if it had bones. The joints were all able to move in ways that would hurt a normal person, but the fact that it wasn’t completely solid was completely unexpected.

‘I can’t believe she came up with this just for making a doll, and so quickly after finding out about mana constructs.’

“Hey Maya, how did you do this?” he asked while still examining the doll.

“Do what?”

“How did you make Jen flexible?”

“...I don’t know.”

Loran paused before looking up at the young girl. “What do you mean you don’t know?”

Maya shrugged, still focusing on the new doll she was making. “I don’t know. I wanted Jen to be able to move, and focused really hard on that.”

It seemed that Maya had discovered a new means of manipulating mana, one that had been overlooked by the rest of the magic users.

‘...I can’t possibly have missed something that simple, right?’

It certainly wasn’t impossible. Until now, most of his experiments with magic had been with finding new shape transformations, focusing on increasingly complex, abstract, or non-euclidian(1) shapes. Because there were so many different possible shapes Loran felt that there was enough variance to cover any kind of spell, he didn’t think it was necessary to other types of manipulation.

Furthermore, the method Maya was describing was one that he and the other magic users had dismissed. One of them had spent days trying to perform fire magic without using shape manipulation by imagining the mana having the qualities of fire, but there were no results.

‘If that's the case, then…’

Loran returned the doll back to Maya before creating his own mana construct, a simple stick. Like she said, he tried focusing on the idea of flexibility, on having the solid beam of mana becoming flexible like rubber, of the interlocking pieces of mana stretching and bending from physical force instead of direct manipulation.

Sure enough, the beam could now be bent like dough.

'Now what about...'

Next, he tried focusing on the idea of removing debuffs. On the idea of repairing the damaged muscles that caused the feeling of exhaustion. On the idea of repairing his malformed bones.

...There was nothing.

However, the experiment did give him an answer. The more he concentrated on the spell, the more he felt a subtle response. Something solid and unyielding, as if his commands were being rejected.

‘...It's a stat requirement.’

His test had all but confirmed that it would create a spell, he just lacked the stats to fully utilize this new method of mana manipulation.

‘I suppose being able to force an idea onto the mana does sound like a more powerful technique than just changing its shape. Maybe she can do what I need then.’

“Hey Maya, can you help me test something?”

“Hm? Like what?” she asked as she finished putting together a second doll.

“I told you I was trying to make a special healing spell right? I think the way you focused when making Jen is what I need for it. Do you want to try?”

“Hmmm… Okay!” she said while moving closer. “Sooo what do I focus on, healing?”

Loran’s face scrunched up. How should he explain the idea of removing a debuff to her?

‘I guess my best bet would be to focus on the idea of muscle damage to start.’

“You know how your muscles feel when you run around a lot?” She nodded. “I want you to imagine that while casting the healing spell, and making the soreness go away. Think you can do that?”

“Mh!” she hummed eagerly.

Loran held out his arm and Maya placed her hands over it. As she closed her eyes he saw the mana flow from her palms before expanding into the invisible spectrum. A soothing warmth began to fill his arm, but the intense soreness and heaviness was unaffected. Maya’s face scrunched up and the mana flickered, frustration radiating off of her.

“It doesn’t feel right.”

“Like a rock?”

“No, it just won’t listen!”

‘Is she having a hard time imagining the right properties? Or maybe balancing the intent and the shape transformation is too much at once for her.’

“You can stop Maya.”

“No, I can do it!” she said as her face started to turn red. Her concentration was broken as someone came up behind her and put a hand on her head.

“Easy there kiddo,” Soze said as he ruffled Maya’s hair. “The last thing we need is you turning into an exploding tomato.”

“But I…”

“Maya, not everything goes right the first time,” Loran said. “Sometimes these things need practice.”

The young girl began to pout, but sullenly nodded her head. “Okay…”

The wolf cub walked over and dropped the mana stick into Maya’s lap before nuzzling its head against her side. Maya gave the beast a quick hug before standing up and waving the stick around. The cub began excitedly bouncing around as it tried to grab the stick from Maya, who began laughing as she kept it just out of reach. Seeming to have already forgotten about her frustration, the two began playing again as Soze and Loran looked on, feeling satisfied and exasperated respectively.

(1) Non-Euclidian geometry is a little too complex for a footnote, but to drastically oversimplify, it is geometry using curved planes. An example would probably be something like a pyramid with no flat surfaces or straight lines.