Several agonizing marks later, I was finally able to relax my control over the mana coursing through my body. I let out an exhausted sigh of relief. Of all the ways to end up meeting my ancestors in the realm of shades, I couldn’t think of many more embarrassing ones than death by overeating.
As I waited for my improved regeneration to dull the pain in my abdomen, I tried to focus on the benefits of my most recent misadventure. Beyond a valuable lesson in moderation, the experience had been excellent practice with my mana perception and control. If I wanted to cast any really big and impressive spells, I also had plenty of power to fuel them.
It was hard to come up with more positives as I clutched my aching stomach.
With little better to do, I started going through the long list of updates. To my relief, I found that I was able to pick and choose which ones I wanted. Many of them looked like they just somewhat increased the existing capabilities of my system. Others added new abilities entirely.
One of the first updates I selected was the long distance messaging. If there really was someone out there, I wanted to be able to talk to them as soon as possible.
Unfortunately, like pretty much everything else the system could do, I needed to wait for the new subfeature to integrate. I was able to order several more updates. Things like an improvement to what my status boon could detect and the range of my codex link were added to the integration queue.
Anything I was unsure of, like an update that would change the preset defaults for many subfeatures or a modification to my codex’s recording capabilities were put to the side to consider later. There were several more updates like the restricted access or system barrier that I completely rejected.
I worked my way through a few dozen updates, but eventually needed to stop. I had read through so many options, everything was starting to blur together. Fortunately, I was already starting to feel a little better.
I still didn’t feel up to doing much walking, but I had recovered enough to set up camp for the night. Once more setting up the serpent’s wings as an impromptu tent, I settled in to wait for nightfall.
As the light dimmed, I practiced some minor spell craft, paying close attention to how my mana affected the ambient mana around the spell. The small amount of mana I used slowly influenced the mana around it, gradually shaping it into the form I desired. A similar change had happened to the serpent’s mana within my body. Slowly but surely, the mana was growing indistinguishable from my own. It was already very different from the writhing mana in the corpse.
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Thinking about the corpse’s mana, I realized that it wasn’t fading away or calming down. Instead it seemed to slowly be building and growing more tumultuous.
I leapt to my feet as I recognized what was going on. After what happened with the dead titan, there was no way I wouldn’t recognize a wraith starting to form.
My first panicked thoughts were that I needed to run and hide immediately. Before I had made it far, I remembered how I had overcome the titan’s wraith. If I had been able to thwart such an incredibly powerful entity at its full strength, I could deal with this unformed nightmare.
Drawing out my sigil paint, I considered the light filtering down through the canopy. I probably had only a two-mark at most before nightfall. I didn’t have much time to work.
To start with, I drew two sigils on the side of the serpent’s head. The first was my ever-reliable harvesting sigil. The second sigil was one I usually only used to connect other sigils.
As the harvesting sigil activated, the mana moving sigil sent a portion of the serpent’s writhing mana spewing out into the air. I watched as the cloud of twisted mana slowly faded away.
Bolstered by the initial success, I started drawing sigils all the way down the serpent’s body. Periodically, I had to cast spells to break up the dispersed mana further. It was slowly mixing with the mana in the air, but as the ambient mana influenced the twisted mana, the reverse also held true.
Using magic to spread the cloud thin seemed to help. With some experimentation, I found that forcing the chaotic mana to flow in consistent directions caused it to fade away much more quickly than it otherwise would.
As the shadows around me deepened, I found the writhing mana in the air growing more persistent. I had to expend more and more effort just to disperse it.
Even with the serpent’s mana fueling me, I was starting to run low. Rather than take any chances, I renewed my sigils of concealment.
Sitting down, I watched the mana in the serpent’s body. My efforts had made a very sizable difference. There was hardly any of the writhing mana left in the corpse.
Though I remained terrified that a wraith would inevitably form, I instead watched the chaotic mana dwindle further. After only about another mark, the serpent held no more mana than the night air.
I let out a sigh of relief. That made two wraiths that I had successfully overcome. Strangely, the night didn’t seem quite so frightening anymore.