Rue looked at the crystals, their colors now illuminated to her. Each of the hues seemed to correlate with one of the crystal’s affinities. The one in the middle glowing a multitude of different colors blended and swirling within its confines. When she looked at the swirling patterns of magic in the room a Magenta tinge colored all of the mana floating in the room with a more cyan tinge covering all of the objects and walls.

Now that she could see the mana all she had to do was learn to move it and perhaps she could complete the task. She could already move the mana within her body so perhaps this stage would be the easiest so far.

Rue’s tail swished back and forth as she gazed at the crystals. They had irritated her but she still desired them in her collection. They were magical as well! Perhaps she could get shiny gold magic items. Her belly rumbled in appreciation of that thought. But for her to find these items she would need to break free from this room.

Rue looked at some of the mana floating in the air and willed it to move like a snake, she asked it to coil around and move toward her. She felt some form of resistance and the mana refused to move, continuing to form its circles and loops, an ever-present and complicated pattern within the room.

Rue looked at a different thread of mana and willed it to deviate from its circle, to expand, contract, to do anything but continue on its current path. Once more she felt her mind grip the mana and simply slide off, much like how she could not move nor damage anything in the room…

It could be that much like the room she was simply not strong enough to overcome whoever had created it, she could not break the casters hold upon the mana. That was one explanation she could think of with her lacking knowledge of spellcraft. Perhaps she should find some unused mana in the room. Rue looked with her mana sense trying to spot some free mana, not currently wrapped up in performing a spell. There were a few patches of green hewed mana floating in the air and when Rue used her mana sense further on the small motes of mana, she could tell they were floating aimlessly. No pattern repeated and they seemed to not want to interact with the rest of the mana flowing in the room.

Rue approached the small mots and tried to move them with her will. They as well refused to so much as tremble before her monumental effort. She concentrated, blocking out the whole world. Her own rumbling growls not even noticed through her concentration. Her will slipped off the mots of mana, leaving them unaffected. Rue growled and let a short gout of flame, blasting the motes of mana. After its passing, they were gone and now, new slowly settling motes of green-hued mana were left in the wake of her flames.

Rue sat down and considered if she could not move mana outside her body but the skill clearly said she should be…Just look at the skill. It was available in her core.

Mana Manipulation [1]

Allows you to manipulate mana on an almost instinctual level. This allows for the formation of spells, charging of reservoirs, and sensing mana inside your body but outside your core.

But she could already do most of that, but what did outside her core mean. That was still inside her body? Rue was confused and decided to just try moving her mana around inside her body and see if perhaps she could get it to leave.

She gripped some mana from her core and slowly drew it outside, past her flesh and to her skin, using the tip of her tail so she could observe it in front of her by curling up. Unlike previous her previous attempts long ago where that mana was lost one outside her body, she could now still perceive the mana and kept controlling it. The mist left her skin and began to coalesce into a small ball of mana, multi-colored hues subtly shifting in the glowing ball of magic.

Ding! +[Mana Manipulation [1]]

Rue felt a moment of triumph and smugly swished her tail back and forth as she kneaded the indestructible stone of the floor. It was quite satisfying earning new skills, even if it had taken her a long time to figure it out.

Mana Manipulation [1]

Allows you to manipulate mana on an almost instinctual level. This allows for the formation of spells, charging of reservoirs, and manipulation of mana outside the body.

What? The skill description changed when she got the skill? Was it because she got a different skill or because she learned it manually rather than buying it from her Core? Rue growled in frustration, magic was hard and made very little logical sense. Rather than a challenge, she wished this stupid room would give her answers! Her elation at learning a new skill faded, she didn’t understand why this was a different skill. And the other mana manipulation disappeared as well!

The next half an hour involved Rue, staring at some lumps of shiny rock, blasting flames into the room, and generally a very angry dragon. It was only after she calmed down that she tried to reason a way to complete the challenge. Well, if the center crystal was in the center and had all of the affinity of mana/magic and the ones outside it had a single one.

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A blast of hot air escaped her nostrils, making the air shimmer, the air already vibrating with heat. Her aura had been on a steady burn, increasing the ambient temperature high enough to cook eggs. It was subconscious, and likely a sign of her growing frustration and desire to just claw and burn her way to victory.

The only thing she could think of was to separate all the colors in the central crystal into the matching surrounding crystals. The only problem with this being she could not move any mana that was not her own. Rue let out another blast of fire towards the central crystal in her agitation, forcing her magic into the fire with intent to incinerate the vexing object. The flames washed over the podium and resident crystal in a blast of red-hot flames and a tinge of green mana. Once the flames subsided the podium remained unchanged, and the surrounding mana continued its ever-repeating pattern.

Stupid magical rocks.

Rue was fast deciding that she might not want any of these objects in her collection. The limited shininess was losing its meager appeal. She was liable to destroy any of them the first chance she got, just in revenge for the frustration this room was causing her.

Rue stalked up to the crystal and touched its surface gently with her snout. If she couldn’t move the mana inside it she would just replace it with her own, she would just use her own mana. With luck that would perhaps work.

Using her snout as the entry point she pushed a tendril of mana into the crystal with the intent of seeing if she could fill it. As the tendril of mana entered the slowly moving mana inside the crystal seemed to stick to her mana, coating her tendril with a layer and making it thicker. When she moved her mana, the attached mana moved as well.

Well, that was progress. Rue suppressed her desire to jump around and celebrate with large gouts of fire and concentrated. She withdrew her mana and the mana stuck to it followed. She carefully manipulated it and then tried to push her mana and the foreign mana into one of the other crystals. She chose the green one because sometimes her breath weapons and magic created green mana and perhaps this would be the easiest.

As she pushed the mana towards the crystal the green mana in the crystal seemed to become agitated as did the free mana struck to hers. Not willing to push the two closer together rue looked inside her mana tendril deeper, down to the eight separate colors, and tried to only move the green. She broke it away from the main tendril and then watched as it neared the crystal and was vacuumed inside. The color grew brighter inside the crystal. She had done it.

Rue decided to concentrate, for now, if she succeeded then she could celebrate.

Rue continued to repeat this process, filling the green crystal with magic until it would accept no more and anymore was not sucked into the gemstone, but slipped off its surface.

It was as she was repeating this for the other colors that it occurred to her that she was not using the mana from the central crystal at all. It just stuck there, doing nothing. What was the point? Rue decided to stop using the central crystal and just use her mana to fill the gems.

As she finished filling the last crystal with pink mana the whole room seemed to change. The lazy and repeating patterns of the room’s mana broke apart. They grew faster and large sections changed their patterns completely. The pillars began to retract into the floor, much of the mana in the air was woven together or detached and reabsorbed into the walls. Had she completed the trial?

The air hummed with magic as words appeared in her mind. The strange system message, much like when she had first entered.

Ping! Completed Annorak’s Trial of Magic!...

Ding! +[Annorak’s Accolade: Magic[1]]…Pending

A new skill? The trial did not seem to be made by the system, yet it had the power to grant skills? It had not yet appeared on her skills list. Was the magic of the room holding the skill back? How powerful would someone have to be to do that?

Ping! Choose a Reward…

As the message possessed into her mind glowing text appeared in front of her, she could understand the strange symbols and read them.

‘+5 Intelligence’

N/A

N/A

Rue looked at the three options, two of which she could not even choose. How was that a choice? Why could she not choose the other two? Rue was still frustrated from the long stupid challenge, but she did not want to anger whatever was running this challenge, so she chose her only option. At least it was some free attributes, she would have preferred to go and level a bit in the labyrinth. It would have been far quicker and less frustrating.

Ding! +[Annorak’s Accolade : Magic[1]]

You have completed the first level of Annorak’s Trial of Magic. Grants the right to challenge [Level 2]. [+5 Int].

Strength

Vitality

Dexterity

Intelligence

116

138

100

113 + 5 (118)

Ping! Do you wish to challenge Level 2, move on to the trial of Wisdom or exit the challenge?...

Exit, Exit, Exit!!!

Rue sent her emotions of getting the hell out of this torture room of stupidity, leave the damn crystals behind. She needed to kill something, to go and relieve the stress.

The magic began to fade, the walls regaining their mundane qualities. The gaps in the blocks of sone reappeared and the wooden door remerged from magic and stone. Rue bounded over to the door and scratched at it to open the door. Her claws left no marks, but the door swung open none the less and she bounded down the corridor. The huge nest of monsters awaited, and she needed to kill something.

It was only as she rounded a corner and nearly crashed into a large thick dwarf that she remembered her current situation. Rue looked up and stared into the face of a dwarf.

Their eyes met and all Rue could think of was her desire to be knee-deep in blood and screaming prey…