Zoe wondered where she should even begin with trying to repeat the process over again with another element. What pieces of the mess of mana were responsible for creation, which parts were responsible for ice? Or would there be no similarities between them at all?

Was creating Frost its own independent process, and creating Earth would be a fundamentally different pattern on all fronts? Or was it split up into a creation and an elemental definition piece?

Given what Zoe knew about the system so far, she assumed that it would be creation plus an element, and that swapping out the bit that defined which element was being created would give her another element being created. That made the most sense to her, it fit with her experience of getting the Manipulation skills which acted in a similar way.

But copying a tangled mess and truly understanding what it was doing were two very different things. Just because Zoe was able to repeat the process of creating Frost without the system’s help didn’t mean she was all that much closer to understanding what the process of Earth creation even looked like.

Again she lamented not having another skill to look at. If she just had a Fire or Water skill to look at then she’d be able to know for sure how it all worked. She could piece the other one apart and compare her findings to build up a rough framework.

Maybe the library in Flester would have some more information for her, but going back to town for every little problem defeated the purpose of her adventure. She wanted to explore and discover, and most of the fun from that came from the journey. Zoe didn’t care much for having the skills, for getting lots of levels. She enjoyed piecing apart how things worked and stubbornly throwing herself against the problems until she overcame them.

That’s what filled her with pride, it’s the driving force behind everything she does. Reading a book that tells her everything just ruins the fun. Maybe she was missing something fundamental, something so basic to this world that she should know. But there was no way to know.

How much of the world was water? How many dungeons were there and how were they created, where were they and what purposes did they all serve? There was so much to learn. Even some of the kids she saw while she was in Gafoda knew much more about the world than she did.

But that was exciting, that was fun. There were so many things to learn and do, and she was enjoying herself. Maybe she’d be stronger or make faster progress if she spent more time in town, found some basic education and learned all the common knowledge this world has to offer. She could maybe talk with some people at a school or ask a friend for a run down on everything they were taught growing up.

But Zoe wasn’t here to revolutionize the world, she wasn’t here to further society’s technology and prowess. She was thrust into a world without her consent, and the world could be damned for all she cared. What she wanted was her own personal enjoyment.

And part of that was spending weeks, and months. Maybe years, and at some point in her long life maybe even decades or centuries just studying things that other people might already know. It wasn’t about the knowledge, it was about the process. It was about overcoming her own personal barriers, and feeling proud of what she’d managed.

So she sat on her bed and started studying her Manipulation skills. She had a good understanding of them from when she first got them, but she wanted to spend some time piecing them apart and understanding more of what the system itself was doing that maybe she missed on her first attempts.

The skills were broken up into three parts as far as Zoe could see. There was the elemental definition — something Zoe hoped she would be able to just copy over to the Creation skill once she had figured out which part was what. Then there was the base manipulation effect. These two pieces were all she needed to acquire the skills, but when she did the system added a third piece that Zoe couldn’t understand.

It was a small piece, a tiny percentage of the total mana being thrown around in the skill. But it weaved into and through both of the other pieces and made the whole process look a lot more confusing than it needed to in Zoe’s opinion.

She wasn’t sure what effect it was having, maybe it bound the elemental definition to the base effect, or maybe it was just the system itself being wrapped up into the skill. Maybe it was some pre-built command to assist in whatever the skill was used for.

Zoe wasn’t sure. But even after months back in Flester of studying it, she hadn’t managed to figure out anything that it was doing other than make the mana look like a tangled mess.

She returned to her Frost skill and worked on piecing together everything. If her experience with the Manipulation skills was anything to go by, the creation skill would have a similar breakdown. Perhaps more, since it was a combined creation and manipulation effect.

Zoe grinned. She hadn’t even thought of that before, in the months of studying the skill. Frost was a combined creation and manipulation effect, it might have the base manipulation effect wound up into the tangled mess as well. If she could find it and remove it, then she might end up with just the creation and elemental definition components.

And if the extra mana wound into all three portions of the skill, then isolating one part of it might make the threads of mana that weren’t necessary stand out a bit more too.

Another few months flew by as Zoe continued studying her Frost skill. At first she thought finding the manipulation effect in the mess of mana would be simple. She already knew what it looked like and she knew what it was supposed to look like after the system wove in extra mana.

But she soon learned how naïve she’d been. There weren’t three distinct segments, there were dozens. Each part weaved into the other and connected, pathways leading throughout the entire skill.

Zoe stuck with it and continued to hold onto some semblance of hope that it was just the system weaving its superfluous mana through the skill that made it seem so hopeless to replicate. She tried to weave together the mess of mana with small changes a couple times, but nothing ever happened. If even a single wisp was out of place the entire thing was worthless.

Maybe that’s what the extra mana did, Zoe thought. Like a verification that the skill was what it said it was, and that Zoe wasn’t casting some heinous skill that she shouldn’t be. Without the system’s protections she had freedom to do what she wanted, but within the system’s bounds she was stuck with preset effects.

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She changed her plan. Finding the manipulation effect wouldn’t work if she had the mess of mana making the whole process a confusing mess. She needed to find and isolate the system’s superfluous mana and remove it before she could continue.

And so Zoe spent even more months studying her skill. She watched the mana form, felt the pathways within it shift and churn with power and each time she felt a little closer to understanding which parts mattered and which didn’t. Over time, the unnecessary system mana began to stand out to her.

She noticed a pattern. When she cast her Frost skill, there was a large chunk of the mana that didn’t seem to do all that much. It was present, and it moved with the rest of the mana as it warped and churned. But it didn’t seem to do anything but dissipate into the atmosphere when the ice formed.

Except for when she tried to cast the skill without the system’s help, and with a small change made. When she got something wrong, all of that mana jumped into action and ripped the skill apart. It was so ingrained into the tumultuous web of mana that it was hard to notice, but after almost a year of doing little other than watch her skill form it stood out to her like a shining beacon of possibility.

Zoe isolated all of what she thought was the system’s superfluous mana and tried casting the skill again without the system’s help. Hundreds of tries flew by, each one a failure but bringing her one step closer to success.

Understanding the structure of mana was a difficult process. Which part of the mana was ripping the structure apart, and which part was just being dragged along in the current of destruction? Which part was truly useless, and which part just seemed like it wasn’t doing anything but was actually information about the shape and density of what was being created?

But bit by bit, Zoe crept closer to true understanding, and one day she sat on her bed in her cave, confident that this would be her last attempt she’d need. She was confident on all of her attempts, but there was a desperation this time.

Winter was days away, her birthday in just a few weeks. She’d decided, somewhat on a whim, that she wanted to get this figured out before her birthday, and each failure brought her one step closer to success but another moment closer to failure.

She reviewed her plan for the attempt — a mess of notes on the paper that didn’t make sense to anybody but Zoe. Scribbles and lines that represented bits of mana she would form, and other scribbles that were bits of mana to avoid creating. She looked through it a few times and then closed her eyes to delve within herself.

First, Zoe turned off her Frost skill. And then she repeated a process that she now had an intimate familiarity with as she pulled mana from herself to flood the world. The mana wove into the organized structure that she wanted, and a ball of ice stitched itself together right in front of her then fell to the ground.

Zoe took a deep breath and grinned while she stretched out on her bed. This was only the first step, but it was a big one.

No longer was she working with a tangled mess of mana, a confusing bundle of power that she could never hope to understand. Now she had a real structure, something to expand off of.

Early on, she had hoped that once the tangled web was removed the segments would be clear. Manipulation, creation and an element definition. But even with the mess removed, she was left with five separate segments, each with pathways of mana connecting them to some of the others. None at first glance looked similar to the manipulation effect she was used to.

And it made sense, when she thought about it. Earth Manipulation was so much simpler than the Frost skill. It wasn’t just manipulation, it was better manipulation. And it probably wasn’t just creation, either. But Zoe didn’t know what a lone creation effect would look like.

Zoe realized a problem with her testing, and tried to cast the skill without the system again. But this time when the ball of ice formed in front of her, she tried to grasp it with her mana and keep it afloat. The process was effortless. Mana rushed out from her and the ball stayed in the air.

So the balls of ice weren’t useless as she thought, but there was no automation to the process. When she used her Frost skill, the ball would stay floating where she created it even if she didn’t tell it to. But when she cast it like this, the ball wasn’t given any orders to follow and so it fell to the ground.

That confirmed that manipulation was a part of the structure, at least. But it still didn’t help her figure out which part was responsible for the manipulation.

Zoe spent the next few weeks changing bits of the mana to see what happened. One portion controlled the shape, though she had no clue how they were correlated. Small changes in the mana took it from a ball to a misshapen blob. It didn’t matter though, shape wasn’t important, she just needed to create anything.

One section did seem to be related to manipulation, as when she changed anything about it, the balls of ice were much harder to move around with her mana. And sometimes even impossible. They would fly around far too quick, warp and twist as they floated, and she even managed to make one bob up and down in place.

A third section seemed to be just for storing mana. Removing it didn’t seem to have any negative effects other than making the process take less mana. Maybe that was what made the combined skills more potent? They just had extra mana to play with? Zoe wasn’t sure, but it was unnecessary for now so she left it out of her testing.

The fourth and fifth sections Zoe assumed would be responsible for creation and elemental definition. Zoe wasn’t sure which was which, but it didn’t matter, she could just try replacing both with Earth’s definition and hope for the best.

Zoe first tried replacing the fourth segment, but nothing happened when she cast the skill. Then she tried replacing the fifth segment and a small ball of rock slowly stitched itself together in front of her.

*Ding* The Earth Manipulation skill has been upgraded to the Earth skill.

She jumped from her bed and pumped her fist while she shouted with joy. In only a year of practice — if you didn’t count all the time she spent trying for it back in Flester, she had discovered a repeatable process for upgrading any manipulation skill she could get her hands on.

Discovering the definitions would be a struggle in itself, but once she did there was nothing left in her way to get the combined skill. As long as every skill followed a similar path, anyway. She hoped they would.

Zoe turned her attention to her Wind Manipulation skill and repeated the process over again.

*Ding* The Wind Manipulation skill has been upgraded to the Wind skill.

She laid down on her bed and smiled. Spending more time gathering more elemental skills jumped up her priority list, but first she was excited to get back to exploring the frozen cavern again.