I tumble-rolled out of the little temple again. After three days of getting punted around, I noticed the mana-shade getting stronger. It was subtle at first, minimal increase in efficiency, slightly stronger manaballs, one more layer of manapanes. Today morning, the creature greeted me with two manaballs, then continued to throw around four at once.

It was both frustrating and exhilarating, to fight something that had the exact same abilities and stats as me, but was actually good at making use of them.

I shook my head. The spider was eating dinner, so it was already well past noon. I shuffled over to the fountain.

"Toms not back yet?" I asked the girl.

"No...", she paused to look at something only she could see. She moved her hands as if zooming in on an image on a tablet. "His dot is close to the temple border though."

I nodded and washed my hands and face. Observing the spiderling was interesting. While myself and Tom, were improving slightly every day, she was working hard to make her mana thinner, her constructs less precise. I also began to feel her mana less. There was a presence to her magics when she took things out of nowhere or read things in the air. Her constructs also.. had somewhat of a smell or taste, some sort of sense I didn't know I had. Yet, with each day, her mana was losing it, becoming like everything else I encountered in this world. If you couldn't see or hear it, you didn't know it was there.

"Learning new magic systems is such a pain...", she grumbled as the simple doughnut she was shaping, took on crystalline form.

"Why learn it then?" I giggled. I didn't care much, but we didn't talk at all the past three days. If she was going to stick around with us, I'd be that friend she wanted, rather than a decoration at her side.

"Rules... Can only use as much magic as I've learned here, or Sisters will take me back home." With those words, she threw the doughnut away, the spell shattering when it hit the ground. "They've been denying me all excursions since I was made... even though..." She paused again.

Her spider limbs came out, and she propped herself on them, like on a hammock. "Younger Siblings than me already got to leave to explore. Whenever I tried to leave, Sisters blocked the gates."

She tried forming few more spells, all of them turning into crystals. She dropped to the ground and sat before me. There was a defeated and disappointed look on her face. With a sigh, she raised her right hand to her temple and after a wave, a small lock appeared in the air next to it. She moved it to her ear and hung it on the lobe.

Her next attempt at forming mana created a thin manaball. She smiled sadly, hardened her face and focused on practice. She put tips of her spider limbs before her eyes and extracted a little bit of mana through them. Her limbs twitched, layering strings of mana, that dissolved into the manaball.

My stomach began talking to me and I turned to my backbag. I took out the last handful of dried berries as well as one ugly carrot and ate.

Maybe I'd do some meditative practice as well. The mana-shade adjusted to the growth in my stats, but while I could make my mana denser, I was falling behind on precision.

I formed a mana circle. Then added a second within and began condensing them. Once I couldn't push anymore, I trickled mana into the middle of the two circles to form an orb. I moved the shapes a bit, trying to keep them at equal distances from each other.

Eyeballing it, they seemed to be in place, so I moved on to turning them. The small circle remained in place, perpendicular to the ground, while I turned the larger one to be horizontal to the earth. I rotated the big one clockwise, the small one counterclockwise. I felt I was straining and exhaled.

I raised my hands to the sides of the construct, to help myself focus and kept going. Moving the mana in two directions like this, made my mind feel like it was splitting. It was a fun and new experience.

The little ball began to bop up and down, as intended.. and all three shapes wavered and collapsed. I felt like I stretched an invisible muscle too far. The mana exhaustion, somewhere between mental and physical sensation, was a curious thing.

A skinned quadripedal animal - the size of a large dog - dropped before me, on a skin. Tom stood above me, holding a freshly skinned fur and a bag of somethings. "Let's make dinner?" He asked.

"I'm kinda thin right now, maybe in an hour?" I said. Maybe I'd collet some wood later, and we could just make food over natural fire, whenever I was tired.

"Let's eat fresh veggies then." The cat thought out loud, shrugged and got to washing carrots, beetroots and cucumbers.

I leaned back against the fountain and looked at the stars around us. "Where did you even find the vegetables?"

"Academy spread them around the entire prairie. So, even if candidates fail to hunt anything, they can just dig something up." Tom explained and continued his work. He was a good kid. I patted him on the knee.

The stars truly were pretty. Most of them were a white-ish shade of blue, but there were few red and orange balls, snaking out licks of flame. As beautiful as they were, I wasn't sure how I felt about them. On one hand, I was getting sunlight from hundreds of sources, on the other.. it was dark. Maybe I should follow Toms example and go out for a walk every day. The last three, in the magnificent dark, were starting to make me feel glum.

I got up and stretched. My spine and neck cracked. That felt good. I shook my hands and limbered my legs. For now, I'd just take a jog around the plaza. I felt an urge to boost and vault over the stars, but then I'd run out of mana and there'd be no more magical practice or warm food for the rest of the day.

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I jogged on. Waddle-jogged. Everything about just being me was so damned curious now. The stars blinked and I waved at them.

Mid-way through the second circle, Tom waved me over and we snacked on crisp vegetables.

"How's it going with your training?" I asked between bites.

The cat looked up and scratched his head. "It's annoying. My technique has barely improved and I lack focus for greater illusions. Yet the mana-shades keep getting better." He took a large, angry bite out of a beet. With full mouth, he continued, "It's as if they're mocking, that I can't properly utilize my own body."

"I get you..." I nodded and yapped on, "But it's so fun. Me and my shade are just bouncing all over."

"It's fun until I get cut... it's just phantom pain, but my muscles just tense up when I go back in." Tom grumbled and drank some water. "So, how's it for you?"

"I get punted," I replied with a smile and threw a weak manaball at the kitten. "I will have to spend some time practising myself though. Today, I couldn't really do anything, just flying right out under a barrage of spells."

The spiderling yelled out in frustration and stole one of our carrots, by impaling it with one of her spider limbs. "How am I supposed to weave water?!"

She received a manaball from me and after a second, another from Tom. "Like this!" I laughed.

I and Tom got tied in crystalline strings and dumped in the water. I laughed a whole bunch more.

The girl tilted her head at us, jumped in the fountain and after splashing the water a little, walked out. "It's not fun." She furrowed her eyebrows, sat down and got back to practice.

Tom just floated on the water, swimming slowly, in a circle around the fountain. "I disagree, it's quite refreshing."

He got it. Still, I walked out, changed into a dry, red shirt and black pants with a tall belt. I fished out high boots from the backbag, and the mini-pirate cosplay was complete.

I pulled out a book about the animals in the prairie and got to reading. It began with small ones, like hares, rabbits and turtles. There was a turtle with arrow markings on it's back if it bit you, it would make you a little bit slower for a couple of seconds.

The next day, I woke up early. The spiderling either woke up before me or didn't go to sleep as she was already sitting at the large temple's stairs, weaving manaballs. I waved at her and turned, to go for a stroll outside the night-bubble.

Did I wake up early? I honestly wasn't sure. Once I got out, the sun was still low and the air was a little chilly. I decided to just walk around the night-zone.

One humming of some random noises later, I reached a spot of dug-up earth. I tried pulling the grass around it, out of the ground. The fourth handful I grabbed resisted, so I dug around it. It was a beetroot. A beetroot without its stalk. I shrugged and put it on a manabowl. I collected a few more vegetables and moved on.

On the opposite side of the bubble, a road stretched towards the sun. It was quite a pretty sight. I sang "the House of the Rising Sun" and boosted over the grass, looking if there were any animals around. Tom's catch would last a while, but I just wanted to see an interesting creature.

I saw some grass rustle and with two boosts, dived into it. I tumbled over something scaly and grabbed at it. I caught something thin and after a short pull, fell backwards. I had a green and black tail in my hand, while whatever it belonged to, run off rustling the grass. I put my catch on a new manaplate and continued my walk.

I got back to the plaza without any other developments, put my bounty in the backbag and opened the book on animals. A few pages beyond the turtles was a chapter on lizards. The one I met, was relatively mundane, it just regrew its limbs extremely fast.

Charged up on a bright sky, I went into my tiny temple to be thrown around by the mana-shade.

When I flew out, I got caught by a bunch of thin limbs. The spiderling turned me around, but somehow ended up, also turning me upside down. "Hello. Would you like to spar a little?"

I nodded. The girl put me down and walked off towards the grass on the side of the large temple. I run up to her and poked at the spider legs she didn't hide. Her shirt moved as if the appendages weren't there. I patted at the spiders back, it seemed the legs did come from it... just passed through the clothes.

The girl twitched her limbs and drew them into herself. She was fun. I run up a bit more and walked side by side with her.

She extended the limbs again and used them to walk over the fallen columns. We stopped at an open space of grass, by the end of the temple. "Here will do." She said and carried herself over to the wall.

The foundation of the temple, raised for about four spiderlings, before turning into the columns.

I boosted twice to stand opposite her and readied my mana.

"Begin when you are ready." Came the smooth voice. I shot a manaball at the girl.

Her limbs twitched and she raised herself above the projectile. I shot another one and she dropped to the ground. She skittered toward me. I kept throwing manaballs and she deftly moved herself around, making me miss both her body and spider legs. My manaballs flew between, below and above them.

Once she got close to me, I boosted up and over her. She shot up three limbs at me. I boosted myself higher up and shot two large projectiles.

The spiderling zoomed aside, turning over and slashing her four left limbs at me. She now stood with her stomach up and skittered after me.

I blasted myself back and shot three smaller balls. She avoided them as easily as the rest. I boosted myself at her and shot two manaballs from the sides.

She lowered herself, moving - as if breaking them - two limbs before herself. I bounced off her limbs, but she got hit by one of the manaballs.

I tumbled on the ground and boosted to the side. The girl was upside down, her two top limbs skewering the ground I just laid on. I shot a large manaball and it hit her.. on three limbs she put before her face.

She turned herself around and standing on the ground with the human feet, withdrew the spider limbs. She shot two manaballs at me.

I boosted up over them, then once more to look at her. She shot one ball ahead of me and another at my head. I was falling and both missed.

She waved her hand and a long strand of mana cut through the grass. I puffed myself and landed after it passed.

After a few more exchanges, the girl looked to the side, raised her hand, then pulled out a bowl of cereals from nowhere and sat on her spider limbs. "Breakfast."

I fell on my back and stared at the sky. A plastic bottle of some blue liquid dropped next to me. "Energy drink." Came the spiderlings voice.

I sat up and drank the full bottle. It tasted like lemon and blueberries. I bounced the bottle on puffs of mana towards the girl.

She slapped it with one of the spider legs and it disappeared.

After a while, the spider finished her meal, put the bowl away and stood up. She fanned the spider limbs behind herself and raised her hands, lowering her stance.

I jumped towards her and gathered mana behind myself. She shot two balls from her hands. I weaved around and shot two back at her.

She blocked one with a spider-leg and sidestepped the other. She then shot eight weaker balls from her spider limbs and I boosted around her twirling. When my back was against her I shot out a large manaball.

She cried out and I boosted up. Mana strings cut through the grass again and I bounced off the girl.

When I stopped rolling, there were four sharp tips on my throat. I tapped them and giggled.

The girl walked up to me, keeping the tips on me. She removed them when she stood above me and extended her left hand towards me. I grabbed it and she pulled me up.

"This was fun." "That was fun!!" We smiled at each other. I wondered how fun it would be, once I was a proper Devil.