Cyn’s hearing was starting to come back, though it was very muffled. It sounded like the party had regrouped, but no one was bothering her yet so there was time to think about her new skill more. Cyn had assumed she would be able to use mana in this way after using the Mana Ball only once, based on feeling alone, but this skill indicated that was normally not the case. Doing so required permission from the System. Without having met another Mage, it was impossible to tell if this was actually something special, or more like she just chopped off her training wheels early. Cyn quickly read the description again.

New Skill Gained! Freeform Mana Casting (Unique)(Passive) -

The System honors your willful attempt to manipulate mana without skill assistance, and has permanently removed all natural safeguards relating to mana use. Proceed at your own risk.

[Human] - Evolutionary path altered.

[Mage] - Evolutionary path altered.

‘Proceed at your own risk’ did not sound like a warning you would get if you were progressing normally. Nor did removing all safeguards at once. Cyn wasn’t even sure what safeguards existed in the first place. She was only level two for goodness sake. To top it off she was apparently already shaping her evolutionary path as well…

Cyn was interrupted by a soft tap on her foot. Closing her menu, she opened her eyes to reveal Scott crouched down in front of her, looking a bit worse for wear himself. There appeared to be some kind of burns up and down both of the Guardians arms, and a nasty looking puncture wound that was still oozing on one hand. It was also dark again, her diadem having run out of juice, and only the webs around them to provide passive light.

“Can you hear me?” His voice was muffled, as if she had headphones on while someone was trying to speak to her.

Cyn went to nod and winced. Bad idea. “Yah, mostly. Still kinda fucked up.”

Scott’s relief was crystal clear as he reached up to rub his face with his unpunctured hand, shoulders slumping as the tension ran out of him. Cyn knew if she had gone permanently deaf in here, there was no way she would make it out. The whole party may not be able to make it out.

Carefully taking a look around in order to not move her head too much, Cyn tried to take stock of the party's condition.

Dana was uninjured, the Archers priority clearly having been to get Cyn off death's door and to relative safety as soon as possible while the others finished off the mimic. She was now seemingly wrapping up one of Sam's legs in his own cloak.

Sam was covered in blood. While with the low light Cyn wasn’t able to tell where it had come from, she noticed the Warrior didn’t look like he was suffering too badly and she took a guess that it was mostly superficial injuries other than his leg. His health seems stable.

That was a really odd thought to have. Looking at Scott again she also got the feeling he was stable, though with lower health than Sam. She had either gotten really good at just eyeballing her party’s condition suddenly, or unlocked some kind of hidden ability to detect health without actually seeing numbers.

It took a moment for her to find Hex to see if she had feelings about his health too. He was sitting and leaning against the wall to her left, the opposite side of her as Sam and Dana, with his mask off and eyes closed. His health is low. Outwardly the Rogue looked alright, with the same scattering of burns as Scott and some tears in his clothes. Cyn did not physically see any open wounds or signs of blood, but she was almost positive he was carrying hidden injuries.

“Hex, you should drink a potion.” He opened his eyes to look at Cyn, but only for a moment before waving her off dismissively.

“I’m fine. We are taking a break anyway.”

Cyn hesitated, but did not push the issue. He would probably be fine if they all rested for a while. Cyn didn’t feel tired, or like she could even sleep, but she did desperately need to regenerate. She was also having to bet on either Restoration or her natural health regen fixing broken bones.

She ended up informing everyone she was not able to turn the lights back on indefinitely, or heal anyone, and she only vaguely explained she had done something with her mana that she probably wasn’t supposed to do. Since none of them really understood how mana worked anyway, no one questioned it further. While he was helping remove the mimic tongue from her arm, Scott also quietly apologized for having her attack the mimic first, and for not being closer when it attacked. He did not think the level difference was significant enough to be problematic, especially with a preemptive magic attack.

Cyn brushed off his apology, uncomfortable with how guilty the old man seemed to feel. While she agreed he probably should have been more prepared to tank the mimic’s retaliation, his logic of making her attack first made sense at the time. Plus, she hadn’t even realized it was a mimic. If no one had, she likely would have been the one getting grabbed anyway based on her position. For Cyn, all that mattered was that she didn’t die, so it could just be counted as another lesson learned.

***

A few hours later Cyn opened her eyes again. While she had not slept, she found that meditating, even badly, seemed to have a positive effect on her regeneration rate. She had never been good at truly emptying her mind, but she zoned out to her own internal voice like a pro. Her physical wounds also had healed fully, including the break in her shoulder. Having it snap back into place suddenly was not a great experience, but at least it was fixed now and everyone could breathe a sigh of relief that breaking a bone was not an instant death sentence. It was also very convenient. Cyn couldn’t help but wonder if she had a more drastic injury, such as losing a limb, if that would ultimately be cured as well. At the same time, she definitely did not want to be the one finding out.

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While resting, everyone had finally felt actual hunger and got to try the Survival Wafers. Much to the party’s regret. The description calling them ‘unappetizing’ was an understatement. Scott mentioned they made him miss MRE’s, although Cyn wasn’t sure that was meant to be flattering to military food. Regardless, the hunger had come and passed quickly.

Her mana situation had also resolved, although it had been more than an hour into the party’s rest before it started regenerating again. She guessed it to be some kind of overdraw penalty, and in the future Cyn was going to have to be very careful not to trigger that accidentally. Standing up with the help of her staff, having been fetched from where it was dropped by Hex and Dana, she stretched and looked around.

Her party had been sparring on and off in the dark nearby for a while now. They did not take as long to recover as she had, but no one had complained about not moving on yet either. The mimic had really spooked them all. Being ambushed was one thing, but having an advantage and still having the fight go so poorly left everyone a bit skittish. Speaking of the mimic…

“Was there anything inside the mimic?” Hex and Sam stopped their bout, Hex once again wearing his mask, and the whole party glanced over as she spoke.

“I don’t think any of us thought to look at the time. We were kind of concerned about you being dead.” Hex looked around to confirm, and the others just shook their heads. Infusing her diadem again to illuminate the space around her, Cyn started the walk towards the corpse.

“Someone come with me, please. I just want to look. Every iteration of mimic I know is stuffed with treasure.”

Hex was the one who ended up striding after her, his long legs catching up in only a few steps. “I think I would have sensed treasure.”

“What if monster loot isn’t considered treasure?” The Rogue rolled his eyes but did not have a comeback.

As it turned out, either monster loot wasn’t treasure or Hex’s just skill failed to pick it up. He had to reread his skill, and it said he could sometimes detect treasure and hidden objects. Cyn had found a sort of handle inside the bucket portion of the minecart mimic, and pulling on it revealed a small cavity containing five identical black tokens.

Rare Monster Treasure Token (Rare) - Dropped from rare monsters. Infuse mana into the token to generate a reward based on your combat performance.

If infused by persons who did not participate in combat with the monster that originally dropped this token, token will instead generate a single random consumable.

Dropped by Mimic - Level 4.

You are eligible for a performance reward.

Cyn tossed one to Hex and, feeling a little giddy because who doesn't love loot, quickly walked back to share the rest with her party. Everyone's mood brightened upon their triumphant return, hoping that the rewards they received would make whatever came next easier. There was also relief that came with confirmation that mimic’s were rare, and thus a problem not encountered regularly. Cyn would still be trying to use Inspect as often as she could remember, not just to check for mimics but in case of surprise information like the Illuminant Web Mass had had. Hopefully it would become like second nature over time. Agreeing they could all take a few minutes to use the tokens, Cyn eagerly infused hers with mana.

‎It barely took any mana to activate, and Cyn watched as the coin in her hands changed drastically. She now held a soft looking pair of dark leather boots that would reach to just below her knees.

Boots of Near Death Experiences (Rare)(Soulbound) - The larger the gap between your health and maximum health, the faster all resources regenerate.

Enchantments: [Oops]

Oops Enchantment (Rare) - Allies take less damage from incidents of friendly fire caused by you.

It would appear that ‘based on your combat performance’ was a very literal description on the Treasure Token. Despite them being a reminder of what a disaster that fight had been, the boots seemed good. Or maybe Cyn was just tired of being barefoot. Either way she was already sitting down to put them on her feet.

The Archer and Warrior both were also putting on boots, with Dana’s appearing leather like hers and Sam’s looking like they had metal plating over the leather on the tops of his feet and front of his calves. Scott had on new plate gloves that reached all the way to his elbows. Cyn wasn’t able to find Hex until a pair of stained gray sweatpants sailed out of the darkness behind the Guardian to hit Sam in the face.

The Rogue walked back into the light as he spoke, sporting a new pair of black leather pants, “If those don’t fit you, give them to Cyn. I know it's kind of gross, but I am really tired of playing peek-a-boo with your junk.”

Everyone, even Sam, laughed at that. No one was unhappy with their loot, and after the Warrior barely managed to squeeze himself into his ‘new’ pants the party set off again, in the same order they had before the mimic. Scott had wanted to change it up, mostly to make sure he was walking in the center to be ahead of Cyn, but they were able to convince the Guardian that what they were doing before was the best option.

Cyn just needed to not be the first one to attack in a fight. Easy to do, theoretically, but she also had a new ability to play with and a party of people who were able to kill the Illuminant Harvesters too quickly. After an hour of walking and a handful of easy spider deaths, Cyn was able to convince her allies to let her try something on the next waiting arachnid. Her target was a Harvester that was waiting to fall down from a small crevice in the ceiling atop some poor, unlucky soul. Cyn, determined to not end up being that soul, did not argue when the Guardian insisted on being by her side while she made her attempt.

She just made him stand on the opposite side from her casting hand, since when she had attempted this on the mimic no one had seen the exact result. They had only seen her and the monster becoming separated. Focusing on the pool of mana inside of her, Cyn tried to bring it out through her fingertips again.

It was easier than expected, and she had to take a few seconds to control the flow as the blue mist vented out. It seemed to be vanishing into nothing quickly however, and she struggled to take control once the raw mana was no longer inside of her. She could feel it was still ‘hers’, at least until it vanished, but without the assistance of a skill actually using it was going to be tough. Dana ended up shooting down that arachnid too, because Cyn did not want to use too much of her mana at once with experiments.

Hours later they were still traveling down the same tunnel. The only changes to their environment had been an increase in the number of encountered arachnids. The Harvesters were still level two though, and no more difficult than before since they still waited to ambush in solitude, or at most in pairs. Bored out of her mind, Cyn had been periodically venting small amounts of mana and trying to ‘grab’ onto it mentally. Still no success in the endeavor, but she felt like she was making progress.

They also were expecting to level up at any time. The fact the party had killed dozens of spiders during the past few hours and still had not leveled up was confusing. Either these Harvesters did not give much experience, or the experience needed to level increased at an insane rate. Then out of nowhere, Hex said he sensed treasure up ahead. Multiple treasures, actually.

‎