To say that Zoe wasn’t particularly thrilled with the development would be a bit of an understatement. Even if the paladin wasn’t after her specifically—which might actually be likely—it was still quite a complication.

In the case that the paladin was not truly following her, the reasonable conclusion was that they were also headed towards the village that Millie said had been taken over by infernal cultists and turned into a base of operations of sorts. Under that assumption, the most reasonable thing to do would be to give up the plan entirely and head somewhere else.

Unfortunately, that interfered with Zoe’s goal of figuring out why so many people had been after her in the first place and then implementing a solution to it. She was pretty sure the cult would have some clues, at the very least.

Also, finding more about whatever organization the paladins were involved with, along with their current movements, would be beneficial.

Zoe, then, decided that she would continue in pursuit of the cult. She would have to adjust her plans a little, of course—ideally, she would switch to following the paladin instead of the other way around. She would honestly be pretty content to let the holy warrior deal with the dirty business while she got down to the heart of the problem.

This would also give her a pretty strong hint as to whether the paladin was specifically targeting her—or even aware of her existence. Actually, I wonder if news has gotten around that one of them died in Basil’s lair… Zoe hadn’t actually given all that much thought to the long-term repercussions of her little conflict with Alexander. I hope that when they do find out, there’s nothing that will lead them to me.

Given the amount of people targeting her, though, Zoe wouldn’t get her hopes up for that.

In any case, it was definitely time to get moving. Ducking back behind the rocks, Zoe turned her eyes back to the ascent. At their current pace, she suspected she had enough time to find the den and retrieve Millie before the paladin made it to her current position. It might be a little close though, so she shouldn’t delay.

Scurrying up the steep, rocky slope, Zoe did her best to hold onto the vague mental imagery that she had gleaned from the memories of the colossal sloth. While she hadn’t consciously recognized any particular landmarks yet, she felt fairly confident that this was the right direction.

Zoe realized that the intense steepness of the slope was steadily decreasing just a couple of minutes later. It was still steep in absolute terms, but far less than it had been before. In fact, it would probably be more efficient and comfortable for her to switch back to bipedal locomotion instead of effectively crawling.

Now that she was in less danger of tumbling back down from a single misstep, Zoe decided it was time to do another investigation of her abilities. The first thing order of business was to go ahead and rank up {Mana Manipulation}. Zoe was pretty confident at this point that she was ultimately going to do a straight rank up without consuming anything else. Therefore, there was no point in delaying it even more. Doing so would only give her less time to understand the upgraded version and also delay additional levels.

{Rank up Mana Manipulation?}

Yes.

{You have learned Arcane Manipulation!}

{Arcane Manipulation - 1, Silver}

Okay, that sound pretty reasonable. Given such a broad and basic—if rare and powerful—ability as {Mana Manipulation}, it made sense to Zoe that a straight rank up wouldn’t do anything fancy. Or at least, it didn’t sound fancy. {Arcane Manipulation} just sounded like the same thing but cooler. Maybe it affects magic and general and not just pure mana? Seems likely. She would definitely have to test it extensively.

The obvious next thing to attend to was {Meditation}—but this presented a much greater obstacle in Zoe’s opinion. She was instinctively tempted to consume something that seemed like an interesting synergy in order to rank it up. However, when she looked over her other abilities, she didn’t see anything that she felt would grant her {Meditation}-based ability that was extra-good enough to warrant a sacrifice.

I guess that’s the dilemma the System gives you for ranking up abilities—you have to sacrifice actually useful stuff in order to make things extra awesome. Like, consuming junk abilities is probably a bad idea, so you probably can’t just clear things out that way. I think.

Also, it’s kind of annoying that I don’t actually get to see what the results would be before actually committing to it. Stupid ‘Grand Design.’

Stolen story; please report.

Ultimately, that left Zoe with just two sub-optimal options. Either she ranked up {Meditation} now, despite wanting to influence it with another ability—or she waited until she got something else suitable, which would waste potential progress.

Technically, there was the third option of consuming something she already had, but—well, they were all far too useful on their own. Well, I don’t actually know how useful {Arcane Reservoir} is yet. But it was listed as ‘Gold,’ so Zoe wouldn’t count on it not being practical.

Which, of course, brought her to the third point of business. But before Zoe could activate the new ability to test, she caught sight of a twisted, blackened, solitary tree that she recalled as one of the major landmarks she was looking for. It was quite unlike all of the other trees in the area—but {Predator’s Eyes} didn’t reveal anything else special about it, so she simply adapted her course and moved on.

Venturing off to the right, it didn’t take very long for Zoe to come to the narrow, deep ravine that she was to pass through. By this point, all semblance of a dominant slope was entirely gone. That’s not to say that the mountain was anything approaching level, of course, but it appeared that she had finally reached a peak of sorts.

Or at least, a wide local maximum.

Entering the narrow fissure, Zoe made note of the sudden increase in life of all varieties. Just outside, the landscape had transitioned to almost nothing but barren rock, without even the pitiful little bushes or creeping vines. The gnarled dead tree had been the liveliest feature.

But now, her senses were comparatively overwhelmed with vitality. Dark, bluish vines hung every which way through the air, forming a thin, natural canopy over the top of the ravine. Mosses and mushrooms sprung up from the ground and walls, far more numerous even than rocks and boulders.

The air itself was teeming with small, shiny insects darting this way and that, creating a low ambient buzzing. Fortunately, either they weren’t the biting sort or Zoe’s scales and chitin didn’t provide an enticing target.

Stalking forward at a moderate, but slightly more cautious pace, Zoe kept an eye out for either the entrance to the den or any creatures other than the bugs that might be keen on attacking her. She didn’t immediately pick up on any real danger though—even the paladin now appeared to be out of range at present.

Good.

Unfortunately, the mists had grown particularly dense here. Zoe could only see a dozen or so meters ahead, quickly putting the opening to the wider mountaintop out of sight. Naturally, there was something about a dense, gray mist that unsettled the nerves—especially in an unfamiliar, wild place.

Compounding matters was the fact that even {Predator’s Eyes} was failing her. It wasn’t so much that the ability was at all suppressed so much as the mists here seemed to carry a dense, slowly swirling mana of a variety that Zoe couldn’t quite place.

And while it was fairly dense, she didn’t think it should have been so dense as to overpower all other magical signatures. Whatever kind of mana this is definitely has some sort of concealing effect.

Cautious but not deterred, Zoe pressed on. Seeing as there was no imminent, observable threat, she finally activated {Arcane Reservoir}.

A deep hollowness made itself known to Zoe’s soul. She was suddenly aware of a spacious cavity of sorts—one that was deeply connected to her own magic but still somewhat separate. Or at least, less intrinsic to her very nature than her mana channels or core.

Unfortunately, it also made her aware of the previous soul damage and her patchy job at fixing it. The threads she had hastily tied together after having her heart shot out during that night on the airship had made lots of progress towards healing, but there was still quite a scar, so to speak. I should probably remember to do something about that.

The fact that gossamer-thin, tacky black spider threats were stitching the ends of the severed channels back together was neither unexpected nor comforting.

But in any case, the cavity was just that—a vessel. Quite a big one, but there didn’t seem to be anything else special about it. So what could Zoe actually do with a big empty tank? While it turned out it consumed a grand total of zero mana, there had to be something more to it.

I bet I’m overthinking this.

Instead of trying to force mana into powering the ability, Zoe focused on the idea of putting mana into the effect. To her mild surprise, there was absolutely no challenge or wrinkle. It worked exactly as it should.

The mana flowed incredibly easily—so easily, in fact, that Zoe spent several hundred points before she even realized it. Initially alarmed, she was quickly relieved to see that there was zero waste. It was perfectly efficient, and she could just as easily move it back.

Well, not exactly, actually. Zoe realized that there had been a significant pressure forcing the mana into the cavity, and trying to take it out was like fighting back against the pressure. At the same time, a sort of spiritual tension she had been barely aware she had been carrying had been quite relieved—and fighting the pressure would start to intensify it again. Wait a minute…

Zoe opened her status. Skipping past everything else to the very bottom, she looked at her mana.

Mana: 407 / 350

Reservoir: 350 / 350

A-ha! That explained it! Ever since defeating the giant sloth, Zoe’s mana had been significantly overcapped. And furthermore, surely it was no coincidence that the new, final line of her status had numbers matching her maximum mana.

So basically I can store excess mana in this new space. Meaning, I literally doubled my base mana capacity. That was quite good indeed—but Zoe wasn’t convinced that was all of it. After all, why would the ability split it into a completely separate category instead of just adding the space onto my normal mana reserves? No, there absolutely had to be something else at play.

But by that time, Zoe had then finally reached what was clearly the entrance to the den. She could vaguely sense a large amount of lively life mana emanating from within—her mystical experimentation would have to be put on hold.

Right. Let’s do some killing.

And maybe a little bit of saving too.