The next morning I awoke feeling remarkably well rested. Even the thin sleeping mat from the tent was a wondrous improvement over the damp and uneven earth I normally had to contend with. Though I could hear the others starting to tear down the camp through the fabric walls of my tent, I was tempted to lie there for a while longer.

Begrudgingly, I forced myself to my feet. As much as I wanted to enjoy my newfound luxury, I still couldn’t afford to laze about.

Pulling stakes out of the ground, I tried to figure out how exactly I was supposed to fold the tent back up. The others made it look easy, but I assumed that was just the results of practice. After receiving some tent folding assistance from Mathew, we once more set off through the jungle.

With so many eyes watching for danger, I felt safe enough to experiment with my new mana perception. Looking at the various plants of the jungle, I marveled at the new mana forms all around me. Though I didn’t have any idea what most of the mana forms were actually doing, I diligently recorded them in my codex.

Looking inwards proved quite interesting as well. I had no idea just how much magic ran through my body. There were plenty of the odd, organic mana forms that I had observed in other creatures, along with a great deal of more structured mana. These structured mana forms caught my interest immediately.

There were a few different types of artificial looking mana forms in my body. They were much more complex than the more natural magic, yet each one was almost perfectly formed. It didn’t take me long to deduce that the system was probably the source of the artificial looking magic.

I still didn’t know what these mana forms were doing exactly. Unlike the mana forms I learned directly from my codex, these ones didn’t provide any intuition about their uses. I was just going to need to experiment until I could figure it out.

Before starting on that, I took a look at my companions. I expected to see even more artificial mana forms in people who had been exposed to the system for longer. Instead, I saw nothing at all. I couldn’t even see the natural mana forms that existed in all other creatures.

I was very confused by what I was sensing. Even the dirt beneath my feet and the air around held swirling and clashing mana. The fact that the mana in the bodies of my companions was completely stagnant was unnervingly unnatural.

After a quarter mark of puzzling over the strangely still mana, I realized something was very off. I knew that these people all had the system, yet I couldn’t sense it at all. Somehow, my mana perception of others was being completely concealed.

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The most obvious cause for the odd concealment was the system itself. I hadn’t encountered any such ability for myself, yet I still had a long list of updates to look through.

Calling up my interface, I worked through the list of updates again. No matter how many I looked through, the list seemed to go on and on. Eventually, I found the likely culprit.

System barrier

Creates a mana construct around the system to prevent direct modification and examination.

Subfeature of mana pool. Enabled by default.

If the system had spread its influence through my entire body, it was likely that it had done the same in the others. If the barrier blocked all perception of the system, then that would explain why I couldn’t look at the mana in the others.

This frustration was proof that not all of the updates would have been beneficial to me. I had a great deal to learn from the system’s modifications. Having that information locked away was quite frustrating.

Closing my interface in frustration, I switched to examining my codex as we walked.

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As we set camp for the evening, I examined Salvador's spear spell again. It was certainly powerful, but I wasn’t sure if I would be able to use it in the heat of battle.

The spell required precise timing. If I unleashed it too early, it would pull the spear from my grasp. If I finished the spell too late, my target would be able to escape. Without the direct aid of the system, I doubted I would be able to manage.

While I had been looking through my codex, I had come across a set of runes that would activate magic in response to pressure. If I could trigger the spell the moment the head of my spear struck a target, timing wouldn’t be an issue.

Sitting by the others at the fire, I pulled out my bone knife. The blade had grown rather dull from use, but it was still enough to scrape runes into the shaft of my weapon.

Sliver by sliver, I carved the necessary grooves into the wood. The round shape didn’t help, but I managed to work around it.

From the bottom upwards, I carved runes of invisible force and runes to shape the force. Towards the top, I scratched the outline of the impact trigger. I planned to place harvesting runes evenly along the length, but held off from adding them. I knew I would need at least a few nights to finish the weapon and I didn’t want to fill it with mana before I was ready.

I was satisfied with my progress, but I felt like I was being watched. Glancing up, I noticed Liam staring at my spear. I couldn’t blame the other rune crafter for wanting to examine the runes I was using.

I did wonder why his face turned so red as he looked away though.