Liz sat with her legs crossed. Her hands held each other with her slender fingers. Her lips touched the tip of her knuckles and her eyes closed. Her hair covered most of her scrawny face as well as part of her shoulders.
She was as focused as a sniper before shooting a target miles away. All her mind power used to try and understand the internal part of her body. She waited there, immobile, visualising the inside of her body. The strange organs she never saw before, noting what she lacked.
I see, basically my heart is on the wrong side, my lungs are smaller, I have 4 kidneys instead of 2, but the second pair looks different. My whole digestive system is missing, replaced by a small bone-like chamber at the end of my oesophagus. She listed.
Not only that, but my mana core is also missing, and so does the split in the spine that is supposed to protect it. Based on the fact that these weird lines that are carved in my skin feel similar to mana vessels I assume this body doesn’t need a core to use magic.
Know the fun part, if I don’t have a core, how do I channel mana? She started considering her options, the most logical approach would be to try and replicate the magic of her world without a core. But this had two main problems: 1. She didn’t have a core, crucial for mana manipulation. 2. Magic relied on her ability to change the laws of the world, if she didn't know them, she would have a tough time changing them.
“You know Elisabeth, for someone who claims to be the strongest, you lack basic magic knowledge” A voice started.
“Huh?” Another voice replied. It was her own, she knew that much, yet it seemed distant, unreal. I get it now, this is a memory.
“You treat magic as a power, not as an entity. Magic is the force that keeps the world together. Its potential is limitless, yet its influence in the physical realm is almost nonexistent.” A woman of purple hair and eyes explained. “That’s why humans need a nexus, an organ that can connect the abstract power to the physical reality.”
“And I assume that organ is the mana core, right?” A young girl answered. She was sitting next to a desk.
“Corect, all mages have figured as much. But their spells are inefficient.” The woman of purple continued, while some purple mana gathered around her hand. “They just harvest ambient mana and use it to materialise their wishes. But true magic is more than that. True magic is about willpower, is about controlling the abstract nature of mana, about bending reality at your will. And you, who lack that ability, are as weak as a kid in the eyes of true mages like me or Kai.”
Liz was speechless, trying to understand why that memory showed up just now. It was long ago, more than a hundred of thousand years ago. Just at the start of her second life. Still, she knew that Bel’s explanation was the best way to control magic.
If I can't harvest mana through my core, but my body is still prepared for mana, I must assume mana is present in the physical reality in this world. The gears of her brain started moving as she imagined all possible ways mana could work.
She then separated her hands a few centimetres, and visualised the effects of the spell she wanted to cast. It was simple, a thin mana cord connecting her hands. And she began her experiments.
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“FUCK!!!” Liz screamed. How can it be this hard??? Even if I don’t understand how it works. I’m supposed to have advanced affinity, shouldn’t that help me a bit.
She lay down on the black dirt and looked at the sky. It has been a couple hours already but nothing seems to change. The sky is the same dark blue, the trees are still twisted, the blue flames keep burning…
She then stood up, walking towards the nearby trees. If I can’t do magic, I should at least try to explore. She avoided stepping on the grass, she wasn’t sure if it was as sharp as it looked, but she didn’t want to test her luck either.
She grabbed a flat stone from the floor, big enough to barely fit in her left hand. Perhaps I could use some tree bark to make some shoes, maybe even a weapon. When she got close to the trees she started inspecting them. The wood was grey and twisted, covered with hundreds of spikes as big as her nose.
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As she prepared to use the stone and get some bark, one of the vines launched at her, with a sharp black spike in its head. “The fuck!?” she quickly hit it with the stone and leaped back. But her atack only left a scar on the vine.
“Now even the plants want to kill me, lovely” She said as she prepared for the fight, she wasn’t going to let a couple of plants stop her after all. The vine seemed to understand that and it also rose its spike.
Liz jumped forward as fast as she could, unfortunately for her, the vine was faster. It rapidly positioned itself on Liz’s right flank, as far as it could from the stone then, it attacked.
Liz understood that the vine was intelligent almost instantly. A simple plant wouldn't be able to attack in that way after all. Still, she expected it to be kind of dumb, it was a plant after all. Her lips turned into a dark grin when she saw the vine launching towards her right side. “Gotcha”
Her right hand grabbed the fine just under the spike, taking full control of it almost instantly. Then she stepped on it, preventing it from moving. Finally, she started hitting it with the stone, again and again and again. At first, the stone only left slight scratches, but after several minutes, its skin began to break.
Of course the vine didn’t let Liz kill it easily. It’s main stem was constantly moving, trying its best to free itself from her grasp, but it was useless. One of its sides was directly attached to the tree and the other was under all of Liz's body weight, so it's freeing attempts were completely useless.
Eventually, the vine stopped moving and fell to the ground, like a puppet whose strings have been cutted off. Liz sat back as she tried to catch her breath, only one word filled her mind. Weak, I’m too weak.
Notice: You have killed a level 27 red vine. Less experience is awarded for killing a decaying enemy.
Notice: You have levelled up to level 2.
Notice: You have levelled up to level 3.
Liz’s thought process was stopped. Level 27? That? And why was it decaying? Unfortunately for her the world wasn’t going to let her think about that. Suddenly 3 more vines launched in her direction.
Once again she dogged their attacks and hitted them back with the stone, for the same nearly useless result though. She then grabbed the head of the vine she had already killed and ran away, she didn’t want to test her luck after all.
She ran in the opposite direction, away from the vines that attacked her. However, she was still in the middle of a forest, so everywhere she went, all she could see were the same blood red vines. They did not move, but she quickly understood that those vines stayed immobile until a prey showed up.
She kept running for several hours, trying to find somewhere safe from any potential danger. Then she realised she was lost. Not lost in a forest, but lost in a world she knew nothing about. Perhaps the rock she held in her hand was waiting to attack her. Perhaps the remains of the vine she kept as loot were corrosive to the touch. Perhaps even the air here was dangerous.
Anything was potentially dangerous. Anything could try to kill her at any time. So all she could do was run. Run until she finds somewhere safe, if there is a safe place in this world that is.
Finally, after too many hours of running, she found a crack in the ground. It wasn’t exactly big, probably barely bigger than two adult men. But it was clear that it was the entrance of a cave.
Liz considered her options for a couple seconds. She could either keep running hoping to find a better place to rest, or she could test her luck with the cave. Sure, it might have dangers inside, but at least she would be able to hide from anything that was outside it.
Slowly, she stepped inside of the cave. She was received by a long narrow hallway. She began to walk deeper and deeper into the cave, which was getting darker and darker the farthest she got from the entrance.
I forgot that I can’t use night vision spells, lovely. When the lack of light started to become annoying, all the lines on her skin started to glow. Huh? Well this is really convenient.
Eventually she reached the end of the hallway. And with it, the end of the cave. A part of her felt relieved, knowing that the cave was small comforted her. But she also felt underwhelmed, almost as if she expected a killing mushroom or something living inside it.
Status.
Name —> Liz
Ч̴͚̯̓͋͋̇̄͗̀͝у̴͉̎͋̐̊͌͝ж̵̧̠̅̀̋̀̅̊а̷͇͖̰̥̤̫̀̐͊̀̇͊̍̀͜ͅͅк̷̠̰̜̟͔̈́͑͊̈́̿̄̉̑͠ —> lvl 3
Stats:
Strength —> 5
Agility —> 5
Vitality —> 5
Endurance —> 10
Intelligence —> 11.11 (11 + 1%)
Power —> 11
Available stat points: 6
…
So I get 3 stat points per level. As much as I would love to increase my power or intelligence, I should probably focus on my physical abilities until I learn how to do magic. She thought. I’ll give 3 points to strength, 2 to agility and one to vitality, that seems like the safest approach after all.
Now, I think I should try to work on my magic again, but this much running has me exhausted. She thought as she sat with her back resting on the cave’s wall. Her eyes slowly closing and her breathing slowing down. I’ll keep practising when I wake up…