Picking herself up, Alice dusted off her leathers while keeping her eyes closed. That last root was just a bit too sneaky for her to sense, ‘looking’ closer, it seemed to only be marginally off colour dirt. Her lack of depth perception clearly didn’t help.

Though that probably wasn’t the best way to say it. She had an incredible sense of how far away mana was, it just gave her a headache to look at the complete image she got. When focusing, she could tell the root’s mana was farther away than that of the air, while also closer than the ground around it. Sadly, trying to keep that level of perception up for just the area in front of her strained on her mind in a way she just couldn’t understand.

She kept going however, both for her own entertainment and for training her ability to sense mana. This also reminded her that she had other ways to see the world that she often ignored, such as her oft neglected [Fate Vision].

Another collision and Alice found herself rubbing her shoulders as she took a step back from the tree she could have sworn was further away. Her eyes opened out of reflex to see that the tree really shouldn’t have caught her off guard like that.

Her eyes closed again and she figured she could try to walk to a rock about 30 meters away without hitting something. But just as soon as her quest started, it ended with Alice sprawled out on the ground once more. Technically not her fault though; the ground she stood on had collapsed when she placed weight on it. Ignoring the fact that both her mana sense and actual eyes would have alerted her to the partially collapsed ground had she paid more attention, this was entirely caused by bad luck and nothing else.

After pulling her foot out of the sudden sinkhole, eyes open to avoid further ‘bad luck’, she re-closed them and moved in the direction of the rock she had seen before. A few near misses and close calls later, not to mention a few more falls, she could finally sense the rock. Though something was off about it.

It was definitely in a different place than before. Unless every tree, plant and stone in the entire world moved to the right by a few meters before she got here, the ‘rock’ had changed position. It also felt a bit more afraid than normal rocks.

Alice had no clue why she sensed fear of all things, but that’s what her mana sense was telling her. Opening her eyes, Alice noticed many things that were off about her new friend. It was lacking the moss she would have expected from anything in such a shaded and moist area for so long. It’s colour was a bit too consistent, missing the dark flecks of local stone, while still being noticeably darker than it should have been. Not to mention the clear gap between its bottom and the ground, hovering a few centimeters above.

Moving closer, Alice used all her analysis skills to see if she could find out more.

Level: 12-22

Race: ?(?)

Stat total: +400,000

A scared Rock shivering in fear.

Fate sight with her familiar book as a focus also read as a totally normal rock, falling to time and crumbling away, but in a place that was distinctly not where it currently was. Shooting a [Basic Identification] at a less fearful rock also let her know that the skill should have done nothing were this rock as ‘standard’ as it presented itself.

The knee high creature showed as nothing but stone aspected mana to her mana sense, though it was different from the stone mana she had been trying to use in her spears. In fact, it was different from the stone mana in other stones, it was just slightly off. But when she tried to find out how exactly it was different she felt her eyes widen in real time.

None of those stones were the same as each other! Not even just the sense of them differing in details. In her mind, none of them could even be considered to fall in the same category!

It seemed more like this rock had its own unique brand of mana similar to Alice’s ‘Alice’ aspect mana. Even if Alice was similar to other humans, ‘human’ aspect mana could never be the same as hers!

Alice felt her mana sense explode in both detail and range, making her dizzy as everything suddenly felt clearer. The strange rock could wait until later, she had just found something out.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

As much as Alice wished she could simply close her eyes and find herself somewhere more suitable for practice, she still had to walk back. She did keep her eyes closed however, noticing things she never had before. Everything was unique in its own way and yet came together to something greater than the sum of its parts.

No two branches were the same, and when they came together to form a tree, that tree was different from every other tree in the forest that they formed.

This was similar to mana. Sure you could say tree mana was made of water and wood and life and growth mana, but if you put those things together the best you could get would be an approximation of wood. Actual tree was all those concepts bound together with the purest distillation of tree.

It was more than mana, it was something else. Maybe essence?

She still had no clue how to make or manipulate it though. But in a perfect world, her new methodology would be to fill dirt with, not earth or any other mana, but the distilled essence of a packed dirt spear. She would then shift that essence to that of a sharp stone spear.

Unfortunately, on her way back to the village, she heard the familiar bellow of a screer. Before she could decide what to do ,if anything, the screer ran into her mana sense and she could feel it hesitate before running even faster. Not far behind it was a gigantic lizard, it was only waist high, but it almost definitely weighed more than she did at 3 meters long.

As it entered her mana field, it stopped before looking right at Alice. Realising this would probably be a fight, Alice opened her eyes and cast [Basic Identification] and [Eyes of Fate] before focusing her senses on the lizard.

Level: 8-12

Race: Lizard(?)

Stat total: -3000

A threatened lizard attempting to frighten an enemy.

If her mana sense was doing anything to the surprisingly weak creature it refused to show it, instead letting out a silent hiss as it bared its teeth at her. Suddenly realising just how unarmed she was, Alice quickly began forming a ball of mana while trying her best to capture the essence of stone.

Knowing she got it wrong she stepped towards her foe with her best attempt at a threatening sound, coming out somewhere between a bark and a growl. That seemed to frighten the lizard more than anything else but somehow only served to make it more aggressive, taking yet another step toward her.

Alice tried again, failing once more before remembering her newest skill. She let her ball disperse before forming a head sized ball of fire and waving it about. When she thought the lizard would finally flee she saw it running towards her, almost comically slow. She pushed her fire into the lizards face as she jerked herself into a sidestep that saw her failing to keep balance.

Despite the lizards clear dislike of the heat, it managed to burst through the fireball barely harmed. That didn’t stop it from rolling around though.

Now on the ground, Alice formed another fireball as large as she could, before shrinking it from its almost meter diameter to that of her palm, that seemed to do the trick as the fire became so hot she could feel tingling in her cheeks. Before her quarry could even contemplate turning tail, the orb of heat and death flew into the lizard.

A few more silent hisses were probably let out as the smell of charred flesh began to fill the air. Getting back up, Alice saw the lizard running around uselessly despite the lack of flames surrounding it. Apparently lizards were a bit too wet to light that easily. That’s not to say it was unharmed though, it was almost definitely too crispy to survive for more than a few days.

Starting to feel bad, Alice decided an earthen spear to the neck would be best for both of them. And in her very first field test of her new and improved spears, the unthinkable happened. It bounced! It was about as effective as simply throwing a rock at it! That sadly meant Alice’s only other lethal option was more fire.

And so the acrid mix of burnt flesh, cooking meat and congealing blood nearly had Alice losing her lunch. Wanting to spare herself the sight, and smell, Alice closed her eyes once more and walked away. Interestingly enough the lizards unique essence now had aspects of fire and burn in it, implying that it wasn’t just essence shaping the physical but the physical also shaped essence. That or her flames artificially induced that change.

But regardless of the truth, Alice chose to believe the one that gave her something to work towards.

She almost started to test that theory— how she would do that was beyond her— before she realised the change in the mana behind her. Paying more attention to it revealed two more lizards eating their kin. Her eyes opened once more and she thought of what she could do about it.

One was quite a bit slimmer and more lithe looking, fit to be a dancer, while the other seemed bulkier and had bands of thick muscle showing through its scales. Considering the larger one the bigger threat, a ball of stone mana, and Alice’s most timely attempt at essence, landed somewhere in the creatures abdomen.

The creatures were almost entirely incapable of detecting mana since it continued posturing and trying to intimidate her despite the foreign mana within it.

Thinking herself safer, Alice tried the same on the smaller one. That was apparently the wrong move as the lizard started panicking and threw any sense of caution out the window. It dashed to the side and before Alice realised what was happening she could feel the lizards teeth around her ankle. A single tug threw her off balance enough that she nearly fell over.

The thick brute made its way over while it’s lissome compatriot kept her occupied. Fire was yet again Alice’s first reaction. The ball was made as large and dense as possible before being thrown at the waist high beast approaching her. The searing heat whistled as it hit the red scales and washed harmlessly off of them.

Now especially panicked, Alice created a singular dirt spear before filling it with essence from the dirt around it. Half-praying for the stone spear she wanted she willed the essence to stone and found the dirt a little more stone like than before. Holding the double sided spear she stabbed downward into the smaller lizards head, almost surprised by how easily the spear went in.

With more time to think she finally realized just how slow the behemoth was compared to how scared she got. The proof was ho easily she could run around its side to stab at it.

Showing its worth, the spear punctured through its scales with only moderate difficulty. Alice easily jumped back away from a swung tail and jaw, though she noticed she put too much energy into the jump, leaving her slightly off balanced. Thankfully she had just enough time to rebalance herself and repeat her attack-dodge combo.

Rinse and repeat a lot more times and the lizard looked incredibly haggard and tired. Alice was honestly surprised it was still alive. With all its wounds it should have collapsed from blood loss and stab wounds ages ago, but instead, it’s wounds closed in minutes. Those that didn’t continued to pour out what was practically an unlimited amount of blood.

It did die in the end, but it’s extreme survivability got her thinking.