Sylvia awoke quite late the next day and was very quickly reminded of yesterday’s injuries, but they hurt far less now. When she removed the impromptu bandage on her arm, the wound looked surprisingly good, with a scab having already formed. However, the main thing wasn’t the scab itself, but instead that the area it covered looked a lot smaller than what she had seen after washing the blood away.

“Wow.” Amazement filled her at the speed of her recovery. “Thank you Geb. Your recovery boost is really great.” Even though it had recovered that much, she figured that she’d still be out for the rest of the day, so she had to figure out what to do in the cave. But before that, she lit a fire and grabbed some food, specifically some of the ones with high water content, to avoid going down to the creek.

“I need a weapon, that’s a definite must. A sword is out of the question, I don’t have the materials for that, same for a bow. Maybe a spear, that could certainly be made with a combination of nature and earth magic. Oh yeah, I also leveled up, hopefully my MP is higher now. More practice would be really nice.” As she now had ample time, she opened up her status page to take a look at the changes, and what she saw, shocked her.

Level: 4

Class: Classless

MP: 576/576 Strength: 16

Vitality: 17

Endurance: 13

Mana: 24

Wisdom: 12

Perception: 9

Taking herself to her head, she had a hard time preventing her mind from short-circuiting at her mana and MP. “From 2 to 24 and 48 to 576. What the hell? I’m quite sure that the notification yesterday said something closer to 8 mana. Same goes for my vitality, I’m pretty sure it said 6, but it’s jumped by 9 instead.” Then it hit her, she had some crazy titles, whose effects she mumbled while reading. “Mana Growth, plus one mana per level, all mana is doubled, MP is doubled. Geb, plus one vitality per level.”

“So, if I half my mana and subtract the three extra I gained, then I’m at nine mana, which would fit with half of my previous two mana plus the eight from leveling up.” The reality of the situation finally struck her. “Holy fucking shit! My MP is like four times that of other people, not to mention racial bonuses. The impossible rating is sounding more and more understandable.” Even though she reasoned her way through that whole situation, she still found it hard to believe; the same kind of distrust as when a math question is too easy, so it feels like you’re overlooking something.

“Alright, I need to calm down. I don’t get anything from overreacting.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, doing her best to release any tensions in her body. As she felt herself breath in and out, the flow of the air reminded her an idea she thought of shortly after learning magic but had then placed to the side and forgotten. She focused on her heart, the place she felt her mana flow from whenever she used mana.

It didn’t take long before she was able to feel something there, it actually felt like a tank full of liquid, but with each beat of her heart, the liquid was pushed along and kept in circulation. Having now found what she believed to be the origin point of her mana, she tried to mentally form a link that went from one side of the tank, down below the heart, and back in on the top of the other side. Focusing on the feeling from when casting magic, she tried to create a point on the path for the mana to move over to, but nothing happened.

After a couple more tries to make sure that she didn’t just pick a bad spot, she changed her intent to instead be for the mana to flow from the one end to the other. Immediately, she could feel a loop of energy circulate through and beneath her heart, and as soon as she thought for it to stop, the entrance to the path became blocked and the mana flew back into the tank, after which the path disappeared. She opened her eyes and smiled in triumph, just to be happily surprised at a notification box.

Skill, Internal Mana Control has been learned.

|Internal Mana Control|

Level: 1

Rating: Common

The ability to control the mana whilst inside of the body.

Sub-skills:

-Mana circulation

“Cool! Nice that it’s possible to learn skills. And it’s even something common, so even if I struggle with it, I should be able to ask for help. Granted that I actually find people to begin with.” The last part of her talk with herself actually left her a little bummed out, but she decided to not focus on that part right now, as she was actually doing surprisingly well, not counting that wolf yesterday. “I think I’ll practice this a bit more before moving on to the spear.”

Now that she knew that it was a thing, she increased the size, making the path go from her heart down to the hip below, before moving over to the upper hip, after which it went up again and back to the heart. While the mana flew, she brainstormed multiple ideas on its uses, before eventually finding one that seemed interesting. “Since I can make a temporary path, would it be possible for me to make a more lasting pathway over to my hand, that my mana could flow through while casting magic. Maybe it will speed it up or increase the efficiency, and if nothing happens, then I at least tried.”

With a new plan in mind, she stopped the flow around her upper body and changed her focus to the tip of her right index finger, as that’s the one she’s used for magic the most. From her heart, she imagined that a line ran up on the inwards facing side of where her ribs connected, before using the collarbone as a path over to the shoulder, from where it ran through the marrow of the bone in the upper arm, after which it used the two bones in the lower arm as guiderails to reach the hand. At the hand, it once again moved through the marrow of the bones, until it reach the tip of the index finger, where it breached the bone and skin, to allow her to channel mana into the environment around her.

Unlike when she earlier wanted to move mana to just a specific point in the path without success, as soon as she intended for it to leave her body, it quickly streamed along the designated path and into the air. Shortly after the first mana escaped, a notice popped up.

Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

Sub-skill of |Internal Mana Control|, Mana expulsion, has been learnt.

With her MP dropping multiple points per second, she quickly halted the flow of mana, but kept the path in mind. Since she now had a path that worked, the next step was to try and make it stay there for some time, regardless of it being in use or not. Her way of doing that was inspired by tunnel construction, where materials are brought in as the tunnel grows longer. So, as soon as she made her mana flow again, the amount that flew away from the tank had explosively increased, and even before any left, her mana dropped by tens of points per second.

However, she could feel the mana settle in her body and harden to a limited extent, which actually increased the flow rate of the mana passing through. By the time that her mana reached a little below hundred and she stopped it, the path had progressed all the way up to her shoulder, and even when the circulation path disappeared, the one that had actually been built stayed around, though she couldn’t feel it without thinking about it.

As she wanted to use the remaining mana on the spear, she was about to transform back into Frank, as it was after all a craft, when she remembered the state he was in. “Phew… Luckily, I thought before doing it.” She moved out to the other tree and did her best to squat down, prepping herself for the extra pain from her leg and arm.

The first thing he noticed after the transformation was the pain, with the second thing being how much lighter the tree actually felt. Now it felt more like the tree was around as heavy as a 50 kg bag of sand he had had to move back on Earth, granted, that was still way heavier than anything he’d want to carry for longer than necessary, especially with a bad arm and leg. So, after the surprise of the change in strength from the level up, he dropped the tree on the ground and went back inside.

Before sitting back down, Frank found the spear stick and a couple stones to experiment with for the head. He placed a finger at the center of one end, and with the intent for it to split into quarters and move to the side, pushed his finger in, just to see the wood split like intended. Once he had a good five centimeters to work with for each quarter, he stopped splitting it and moved on to the head.

For the head, he took a rock that was around the size of his palm and formed it into something like a flat spike, around 15 centimeters long, 10 wide, and 2 thick at the middle of the base. On each side of the center at the base, he formed a holes in the stone, so that the quarters could be moved in through those and reconnect with themselves. When the two holes were done, he moved on to giving the spike an actual edge, or at least something he could sharpen into a sharp edge later.

With the head done as well, he placed it in between the split quarters, with two on either end. By sending mana through his thumb and index finger, he moved one quarter from each side through their hole, until they hit the quarter they shared hole with, after which he connected them with their respective quarter, end to end. After ensuring that both were solidly connected, he grabbed around the stick where the quarters began and moved his hand upwards, making the wood grow back together as he did so.

Since his intent was for the head to keep facing straight, the quarters pulled through the holes almost looked like vines, as they moved around so that and equal amount from both sides was used in keeping the head steady, allowing him to regrow the almost all the way up to the stone. With the main part now done, he moved on to the secondary priority, his grip on the stick itself. Like before, he moved his hand down the entire stick, but this time with the intent to straighten any bends and flatten buds and remove the bark. He also formed a thin planar surface along each side of the stick that ran parallel with the head, to improve edge alignment.

With that done, all that was left was to sharpen the head, and after a quick look at his MP, which also made him notice the increased speed of MP regeneration, he deiced to spend the remaining fortyish MP on attempting to sharpen it through magic. As he would now be dealing with something potentially quite sharp, he elected not to place his finger straight on the edge, instead keeping it around half a centimeter further in on the stone.

Kinda like he had done all the way back when he made the pebble into a spike, he focused intently on his meaning of sharp, where to apply it, and just sent in his mana, hoping it’d do as he wanted. After a good couple seconds, he stopped it and lightly touched it with a finger. “Yep, that’s sharp. Now to do the rest.” The next couple minutes then went with sharpening the rest of it, leaving him with less than ten mana left over. “Phew, managed to get it done in time. Finished.” As the last part of the craft, he acknowledged the newly made spear as finished.

Created item: Natural Stone Spear

Name: Natural Stone Spear

Rating: Beginner

Quality: Good

Strength: +1

Vitality: +1

A good spear made purely through magic by the crafter Frank. Due to the way it was made, it’s almost as if the stick had grown around the stone on its own.

Now that the spear was done as well, along with his mana being pretty much done, there wasn’t exactly a lot of ultra-important stuff for him to actually do, so he decided to just practice his woodworking skills, as while magic had made it quite simple to make the spear, it was far less enjoyable and immersive compared to doing the work physically. To practice, he took some of the sticks he used as kindling and began to carve small figures out of them, or at least he tried to.

Excluding a quick lunch and dinner break, that was what the remainder of Frank’s day went with, and by the end he felt like he had a fair bit more control over his ability with the knife, though none of the figures he had tried to carve could even be called alright. As night fell, he rechecked on his wounds and found them mostly recovered, though they still needed a fair bit more time; time they should get whilst he slept.

As a last thing to do before bed, he switched over to Sylvia to use her fully recovered and larger amount of MP to continue work on the pathway. And as such, the next couple minutes flew by as work progressed, eventually ending out in her reaching the end of the finger, where she imagined a valve that could opened and closed to be made. As soon as that was constructed, and she was able to release expel mana trough her finished pathway, a notification popped up.

Sub-skill of |Internal Mana Control|, Mana pathway creation, has been learnt.

Feeling quite tired and happy at her success, she chose to wait with thinking more about that notice until tomorrow, where she’d hopefully be able to go out and feel some trees or hunt some animals. With that decided, she went to bed.