Alright, that's one thing down. With smaller pieces of metal, especially if they're round disks instead of anything pointy, I should be able to tie them against my skin with bandages for the battle. I learned last time that I might need to use mana during the battle itself, so I need to be able to convert more because I really don't want to overdraw mana like I had to last time to avoid using up my colored mana.

So these small disks should solve at least one problem. What's next? Back in the street and thinking about the battle again, I shudder a little, taking more deep breaths as I try not to panic. Come on, keep working toward solutions, just panicking won't help.

The second half of that plan is bandages to tie the metal against my skin. I have piles of those at home already, so I don't think I need to buy any more. I should get lele fruit again, it was the thing that saved me last time. It'll last until the end of the week at least, so I make the short trip over to the central market, since it's already nearby and pick some up.

I also buy a small woven basket like my last one, since I've kind of been using this bag I borrowed from Emily for... a very long time now. And then I buy a spare in case this one gets destroyed too.

"Ok, what else?" I ask myself as I stand at the edge of the central plaza, watching everyone mill about, buying things like usual. They give a much less tense feeling now that the attacks at the edge of town have nearly stopped. It's not back to normal, but definitely better than it has been lately. Still, as I just stand and watch, a few people look back at me, mostly eyeing my hair.

The attention makes me shiver, so I turn away from the crowd and start to head home. It's not long after the ninth bell and I can't think of anything else to do out in town. I'll just practice with my mana at home. So I run up North Main Street, arriving home and plopping down on my bed. I start to unload my basket, wrapping the lele fruit in some bandages so I don't have to worry about touching them, stuff the spare basket out of the way, and...

"Oh." I realize aloud. I gave most of my metal ingots to Gremory to work with.

I am so stupid.

Ok, ok, no need to panic.

I'm hyperventilating, I don't have any of my metals I need.

"Calm yourself," Hilde suddenly commands in his weirdly matter-of-fact tone. I'll be picking them up again the day after tomorrow, there is nothing to worry about. Even if something goes terribly wrong and I can't get them back, I can just buy more before the end of the week. He forces the thoughts at me, and I manage to push away the panic.

Right, yes. It'll be fine. There's nothing to worry about. It'll only be for a couple days.

But it still means that I can't actually convert any mana right now. Still breathing deeply, I take stock. I get a feel for the amounts of mana I'm holding, and take a moment to convert to single units of mana. Currently, I have about one water, half a fire, and half a lightning. That leaves about two colorless, and about a half missing, so I'm not completely full.

That's what I have to work with, at least until tomorrow, I'm sure Eryk will let me use some of the metal at work if I need to. No need to panic, really.

"Alright, I'm fine," I say to myself, and sit down on my bed. I take a few more deep breaths, finally bringing my breathing back under control again. Then I pull my feet up to kneel, close my eyes, and meditate.

I take some time to clear my mind, just sitting and letting myself be calm. Once I've done that, I go over all of the different things I've been working on, all of the abilities I've discovered and consider which ones I might be able to figure out or practice more, that might even give me the faintest advantage, anything to increase my chance of surviving the next battle.

Just running them down, I list them all off:

Being more aware of my mana all the time, commanding mana indirectly, isolating a single mote, telepathy - both types... then there's my work on making physical things out of mana. That sort of involves studying those mana structures. So that includes manastones, rail unit manastones, and... maybe my mark or even my divine gear, though those aren't as clear. I've never even tried looking inside my divine gear since I have no idea how it works. And my mark is... is it a physical thing? I mean, it shows up on my face when I channel it, so I guess so?

Alright, let's see, I have a whole bunch of different options and things in mind, but out of all that, what could actually help me survive?

Well, let's do the easy thing first. I go over to my divine gear and without channeling it, slip inside.

Yuuup. An infinitely complex web of interconnected structures of mana. The work of a god, just like when I looked at Effy's manastone. Giving up on that, I consider my other options instead.

I still have the manastone I made, so I pull that out from under my bed. I want to see if there's anything I can do with it, or learn from the structure inside, but I am a little worried. If I mess anything up, or manage to make it into a functional mana well, I might lose the special fire mana inside. So just in case, I pull it out, swapping with some of my colorless because I don't actually have enough room left over to hold all the fire.

Taking another look, I note that it's about one unit of mana. Then I turn my attention back to the stone.

Alright, what can I learn from this? Back when I made it, it was originally a hobin. I converted it using light mana at the time, and then... I wince from a bite of random pain thinking back on it. That's right, I sort of... went crazy at the time, didn't I? I used something from all that strange knowledge I learned to modify the manastone in a way that I can't actually wrap my head around now, and just thinking about it sort of hurts.

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Maybe that's what Reena was talking about when she said I should have lost my mind. I mean, I kind of did there, didn't I? Or at least, I started doing kind of crazy things that don't really make sense afterward...

Still, using that knowledge, I was able to change that manastone in a way that I can't even comprehend anymore. There's no way I could do the same thing now, with any of the methods I actually understand. "Huu..." I exhale slowly. I don't know if I'll get anywhere with that, I can barely understand anything I dredge up from that weird information, it mostly just makes me feel awful if I think about it too much.

Instead, I push those thoughts away and just study the structure of the manastone instead. Let's see, it's just like I remember from the first time I looked over one of them. Solid, like a hard sort of... thing. Since this manastone only has a core part with no connections like those ones I found in that mysterious rail unit building, I can only look at the section around its core, with the single piece of light mana inside.

Unfortunately, I don't know what I'm looking for, or what I'm trying to learn. I sit and poke at the manastone and its structure for a while, but I just can't accomplish anything. Finally, I give up with a sigh. After putting the special fire mana back, I tuck it under my bed again. Since the manastone was too simple to help, and my divine gear was too complicated, is there anything in the middle?

I mean, there's Reena's mark, but that's still the work of a god...

Since it's the only thing I have left to study, I reach inside, without channeling my mark. There's no reason to bother Reena right now. Instead, I look at the big thing inside that looks, well, just like my mark. As I noticed last time, it seems to be made of a ridiculous number of tiny lights.

Taking a closer look at one of the lights that make up a tiny piece of one of the red circles, it's definitely one of those nested light things, like I saw with that hobin, before I did whatever I did to make it into a manastone. I push through the structure around the tiny red light, into the space inside. This new space actually contains more than I expected!

Let's see... Feeling the structure inside, it actually has three parts. First is... another nested light? So inside of the light, is another light... At least this one is white instead of red like this space looks from the outside. Still, trying to keep this straight is starting to make me dizzy...

I push on anyway. Attached to that core piece, there's yet another light, but at least this one is just a regular bit of light mana instead of yet another space shoved inside of this one. And connected to that is... fire? Why fire? I mean, fire is red I guess, so is that why the light was red?

Deciding to be thorough, I sink into the nested light at the core, and thankfully, it doesn't have anything else complicated going on inside, just a single core piece of light mana.

I pull all the way back out, this is too much to keep straight in my head. I'm going to try writing it down. I pull my blackboard from under my bed and try scribbling down something to describe the structure. I have to wipe it away a few times when it isn't clear, and eventually go with something similar to math, using parentheses to help me picture how things are all nested.

Finally, I have the structure written down in a form that I think describes it.

( Me ( Mark ( Red Light (White Light(Light)->Light->Fire) Red Light ) Mark ) Me )

So, if I go based on what I've seen, and a few guesses... The innermost part just contains a core of light mana. Like I saw before, that makes it look like a bright white light when seen from outside. However, when that white light is used as the core piece of another... not mana well... I need better terms for these things, there are so many different types...

I shake my head, trying not to get distracted. When that white light is used as the core for another space, but the structure it's in also has a piece of light, then fire mana, it makes that space appear like a red light from the outside, instead of white. Alright, I think I get it.

Lying back and staring at the ceiling, I'm reminded that this is one tiny dot out of an uncountable number that make up whatever that thing is, inside my mark. Maybe it just makes my mark look the way it does? I mean, what else could it possibly be for? Thousands and thousands of individual lights, what else could they do?

I have no idea.

Well, I still want to be sure of things, so I dive into a few more of the tiny dots of light. The red ones all have identical structures, but the white lights that make up the small white triangle in the middle are more simple. Instead of the extra stuff going on in the red lights, they just have that one core piece of light in them to make them white light.

I scratch that one out on my blackboard too.

( Me ( Mark ( White Light(Light) White Light ) Mark ) Me )

Well, at least that sort of confirms what I was thinking about how the light was colored. Still, all of that for what? Maybe the mark on my face? And why does it look like light in the first place? The structure of the white lights is identical to the manastone under my bed. Why are they lights instead of stones? What's the difference?

I'm not getting anywhere, and this is actually starting to make my head hurt. After thinking about it just a little longer, I give up for now. I'll just have to keep it in mind once I have more information to work with.

That leaves me no closer to my goal. How in the world are physical objects created using mana? I know they have internal structures that use mana inside them, but I have no idea what those structures are, what they're made of, or how they work.

I could try to figure out more about how they work by changing things inside my mark and trying to see what happens, but I really don't want to mess anything up. I'm kind of amazed that despite its absurd scale, the pieces that make it up are surprisingly simple. Just two types of lights. But... I have no idea what will happen if I change one of the lights wrong. I saw how changing the structure of mana wells could cause them to completely change into something else. I don't know if something like that might happen and mess up the mark.

What I need is something I can afford to lose.

----------------------------------------

I spend a long time lying on my bed, staring off uselessly. Why can't I get anywhere with any of this? There has to be something I'm thinking about wrong, or something I'm missing. But without any help, any single hint where to look, I don't know how I'll ever find the answer.

Eventually, I try to turn my thoughts back to something productive again. Mentally running over my list of things still to do, I decide to continue on with my efforts to command my mana unconsciously. I know I already do it when I'm channeling my mark or divine gear, so I try to work with that feeling, try to duplicate it for other purposes.

I meditate, practicing through the last few bells of the day. I don't know if I'm getting anywhere, but I keep working on it anyway. I finish up once Emily gets home, and we settle in for the night. Seeing her opportunity, she tells me another bed time story, this one about a man in the mountains, and how he had seven sons, who all went off to find their fortunes, before returning home later in life. It's a pretty long story, but I'm not sure what the lesson is supposed to be...