The next two days flew by rather quickly. Quinn hardly even noticed how much time passed as she slowly adapted to what she was beginning to call her Mana Heart. It took quite a bit more control to move her mana about, but once the heavy substance was free of its confines, actually casting magic had become as easy as breathing. That, and her mana quantity was slowly increasing as the days passed by. She suspected the compression of mana was what allowed more to ‘generate’, but she didn’t know for sure. No book mentioned anything about increasing the amount of mana one had. At best, the books made it seem as though the amount of mana you had at birth was fixed.

Either way, she was glad for the change, even if she didn't quite understand it yet. It couldn't be overstated the usefulness of a growing mana quantity. Hopefully, it would continue to grow so she wouldn't have to worry about becoming stagnant in her abilities later in life.

Halfway through the first day, she had regained her ability to cast Lifestyle Magic, and tier-one magic wasn’t too far behind. Once she regained her ability to cast spells, she immediately set about testing her mana’s attributes once more. It turned out water and wind-attributed spells came to her quite easily. The two new magics she could easily cast, aside from Gravity Cube, were Spout and Gale.

Gale was a rather weak spell that sent forth a small burst of wind to knock over her enemies. However, from her testing, it was far too weak to knock anyone over unless they were lightweight. Its effect matched its cost as its mana price was just slightly over a single Lifestyle Magic. That being said, it was probably her favorite magic so far for a variety of reasons.

Maybe it was just her long-suppressed gaming senses, but she could easily see multiple avenues where it could be quite powerful. Although it was a weak offensive spell, the utility it promised was nearly limitless. Say she was to come across an enemy who was unstable already - such as a zombie or a bandit who took a really big swing - she would rather easily decrease their already low stability. At best, it would knock over her enemy. At worst, they would be even less ready to react to anything she did.

It could also be used as a type of propulsion if she could time it right. Say she just shot an arrow, but the target was out of range. She could use Gale on the arrow to send it slightly farther than it would’ve normally shot. Or maybe she could use Gale on a sword while slashing, increasing its slashing speed. Truly, the possibilities were quite limitless even if the spell wasn’t inherently powerful. That was the true power of utility magic such as Gale.

The spell had a dirt cheap cost, so she could use it practically anywhere. Quinn suspected the modifier runes were the reason for such a handy effect. Unlike the other spells, Gale had the modifier of Condense rather than the usual Form. She theorized that the spell simply used the already abundant wind as a focus to cast the spell rather than create wind. Since she was using something already present instead of creating it, the spell was cheaper.

This proved true when she tried it on the Sparks fire magic. Using a candle as her focus, the sparks sprayed forth from the flickering flame at a fraction of the cost. It was a rather handy tidbit of information to know considering none of her books pointed this out. Wind Magic fits the requirement of already being present quite well, though other magic types might be trickier to fit the usage of Condense. If she wanted to use Condense on Fire Magic, she would have to carry around a flame which was less than ideal.

Her testing also allowed quite a heavy insight into why some spells were inherently unstable. The modifiers were important, but the mental image of what each modifier did had the biggest effect on the stability. For instance, if she wanted to use the modifier shape but had no idea what shape she wanted her magic to take, the spell would be very unstable. With enough instability stacked up, Mana Reversion would occur. This realization further enforced her new belief in having a proper image of what she wanted before she played with magic.

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Quinn also played around with some of the other elements shown. Namely the simple elements such as water, earth, fire, wind, light, and dark. Earth was a spell called Sling that shot a small pebble forward. Seemed kinda useless at first glance, but it might be helpful. The Light Magic was called Flash and it sent a bright flash out of her palm. Her mana resisted turning into light quite heavily for some reason, so she would rather use Sparks instead. Dark was a spell called Shadow that made a small area temporarily darker. Might help if she was ever involved in shady business.

As she read up on the other kinds of magic, Quinn realized that she had a certain fondness for auxiliary and support magic over offensive spells. Maybe it was just the way her brain worked, but she found ways to use auxiliary spells far easier than offensive ones. When she saw magic such as Gale, countless ideas floated around in her head, but when she saw magic like Sling her head was emptier than a dessert.

Not everything she did over the last two days was based on magic. She also spent quite a bit of time reading various notes and passages from her books. Of course, she doubted any of the random facts of various creatures or geography would help her, but it never hurt to know. And who knows? Maybe one day she really would run across a Catylumpicus and would need to know that they loved chin scratches.

Quinn also spent more time inspecting herself than she cared to admit. She had grown over the past couple of days by quite a bit. It was weird… it was almost as if her mana being locked up allowed the rest of her body to change. She didn’t know the core reason behind the sudden shift, but it unsettled her nonetheless. It was a deeply terrifying experience to know you were changing and yet have no clue what or why… it was almost like puberty all over again. The absolute horror.

Her changes weren’t negative by any means. She had grown quite tall - maybe just a couple of inches shorter than Mikeal. She now stood taller than she ever had in her twenty-five years of life. That, and her features had stretched out quite a bit. Some of the fat evaporating helped make her look more mature and less like a little kid. Of course, she could still be mistaken easily since she still had no wrinkles or imperfections to speak of.

This change was initially noticed by Atamai and Wila when they saw Quinn, which brought it to her attention. She had gone to visit the two women according to the desire to teach her how to dodge better. While the practice was… painful, to say the least, there was no denying its effectiveness. She could now dodge one out of every twenty peanuts thrown at her. As for why peanuts were chosen? She had no clue. Or even where the two sadists found so many of the salty abominations. Seriously, who just carries around hundreds of nuts?

Aside from her other studies and magic, she also took a deeper dive into looking at Athyrn. Ever since her mana had been locked up, the mysterious substance flowed through and around her far more easily. She chalked it up to the obstruction - mana - vanishing, allowing the bits of athyr to flow smoother.

This also allowed her time to cast Mistwalk. Or at least practice it. Ever since she had gone catatonic from the effort, she had been thinking about what went wrong. After a long time in deep thought, a small clue came to her. Maybe, like mana, athyrn flowed easier according to an attribute? It made sense. That would explain why the venerus’s Mistwalk took the shape of a blood mist. Assuming this was true, just like magic, Mistwalk failed due to instability in trying to force her body into a blood mist. Maybe, just maybe, if she could follow along with her attributes, she could use the ability far easier.

This thought process proved to be exceptional as she replaced the imagery of a blood mist with just a normal, watery fog. Quinn went about the ability like she had previously except for that one detail. She focused, gently asking each and every athyr nucleus across her hand to warp into a fog. The change was immediately apparent. Not only did her hand easily turn into a smoky white fog, but she even held that form for a whole five seconds before her ‘athyrn muscle’ shredded itself and the ability failed.

As a bonus, she didn’t even pass out this time! Nope, she was as fit as a fiddle… aside from the slight overwhelming sense of exhaustion that pulled at the back of her mind. Quinn didn’t even try to resist the desire to sleep. And so, that was how she spent her final night in Mauershein…