Emily closes her eyes again but pauses before diving back into the Spellweave.

Since this is only pushing mana to my cortex for experimenting on known spells, please tell me this works. Sub-cores, learn all first circle spells using the Spellweave.

Instantly, three of her four cores buzz to life and mana and machina pour into her cortex before spreading throughout her entire system as her expanded mental processing net starts tearing through her command. While her cores follow her instructions, Emily watches her mana level slowly decrease.

It’s a drain, but it's only small.

Splitting her thoughts in two directions completely, in a manner that feels alien yet all too natural to her at the same time, she uses one thread in her primary core to watch her mana level and internal flow, and the other three to restart The Technomancer’s Breath that stopped when she gave her cores a new command. The mana that rushes into her body from the surrounding array instantly overpowers the drain of her skill, filling her reserves and slowly expanding them.

Woah! My meditation technique wasn’t upgraded, but it appears my ascension naturally increases my mana intake and generation by a lot.

She smiles happily at the change, basking in the warm embrace of mana. After twenty minutes, the activity in her cores fizzles out. To test the results, Emily raises a hand and thinks of the light spell. In a fraction of a second, a dazzling orb of white light spins into existence in her hand.

“That was fast,” she mutters absentmindedly, feeling an odd sense of connection with the spell as if she’s been casting it daily for years. “Strange. I almost feel as if I could just…”

One of her sub-cores bubbles with mana for a few seconds, before passing three runes to her primary consciousness. Emily bends the light spell’s magic circle, reforming three of its existing runes into the new ones supplied, and with a quick switch of mental image, the orb before her changes. The glowing white is quickly burned from the centre, being replaced by a flickering orb of ethereal orange flames.

Emily excitedly passes her other hand through the flames and feels no heat.

I just changed the element of a utility light spell to a violent element without changing the effect! Does this mean I could heal with fire? Or create light with earth? What are the limits?

As her excitement for the topic grows, one of her cores starts playing in the Spellweave to bring her answers. Emily moves on, leaving the question as a background task, and stands up to test her new strength.

“Let’s do this properly,” she says with glee, walking to the training room’s entrance and leaving. She adjusts the settings before walking back in, finding a wide, empty space with ten mages standing in a line before her. Each mage has a blank set of white robes on, and all of them have a smooth, white, featureless mask in place of a face.

“Disperse!” Emily commands.

The training dummies follow without question, spreading out evenly in the room.

“Activate defensive spells!”

Ten different magic circles appear around the dummies. A multitude of elements are used, from rocky armour to bubbles of fire. Emily starts by pointing at the closest dummy, wrapped in a protective sheen of water. She rapidly casts bolt, forming the magic circle of the spell completely within her own circles. The spell tears a line through space towards the dummy, ripping through the second circle defensive spell with relative ease.

Internal casting of second circle spells, check.

The training dummy disintegrates into particles, surprising Emily a little.

“It still had enough power to destroy one of these?” she mutters incredulously, lining up her hand with another dummy and sending a burning lance of fire into it.

The flaming lance bursts against the stone armour covering the dummy, ripping the rock together in the process and shredding the dummy with rocks and fire.

I see. Increasing my mana purity and density even makes weaker spells drastically stronger.

“Line up and stack barriers!” she orders the dummies, planning for one last magical test.

Emily stands before the line of dummies, each providing some form of large-scale cover to protect themselves from her. She closes her eyes for a moment, drawing on a carefully refined mental image: produced after hours of research into the bows still used with terrifying lethality in the Lerus Isles.

A massive circle is carved into the floor around her, burning its way into the world in an orange-and-white glow, the white far more pronounced than with Emily’s normal fire spells. The circle quickly fills with runes, before they leap from the ground, drawing blazing arcs as a complicated matrix of movement wraps around her. A shining white bow of light forms in the air before Emily, condensing till it appears as a milky-white crystal, with a blisteringly bright arrow of orange fire nocked and ready to shoot.

Emily feels her mana draining, close to a thousand points flowing into the spell as the bow slowly draws back and the centre of the arrow forms a glistening white core of molten metal and light.

“Blazing Arrow of Light!” Emily announces proudly as the circle bursts with power and the tension in the taut bow’s limbs is released.

Even with her enhanced reactions and eyesight, Emily struggles to follow the motion of the arrow as it flies out of the bow, releasing a cracking sound as it tears through the air and impacts the first barrier within an instant. Meeting little resistance, the arrow burns through the first barrier of fire, punching a hole clean through the torso of the dummy behind as it continues its flight. The arrow draws a line of burning light, tearing a path through every barrier in its way and only dying out as it buries itself into the chest of the seventh dummy.

“Seven barriers in one go!” Emily mutters happily.

Though some of them were poor matches. Those fire barriers would have put up no resistance. Also, it took far too long to cast. I need to learn some real third circle spells. It's a shame that I can’t cast a second circle ritual spell with internal casting though. Why is that?

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

She begins casting the spell again, watching the circle being carved into the floor around her once again as she considers.

Ritual spells work by temporarily manifesting an array, turning the ground or air around you into a conduit to hold a large amount of mana, more than a normal mage at that level can handle in one go.

Emily’s mana flows quickly into the magic circle from the new, unstable circle around her heart.

I see, since I’m using more mana in one go than second circle spells would allow, I can’t hold the spell in two circles. They don’t have enough mana throughput to build up or discharge that large an amount of mana at once, causing the spell to become unstable.

She cancels her casting and lets the spell fizzle out around her with a hint of disappointment in her eyes.

That’s a shame. I’m probably going to have to get rid of burning arrow after spending so long on it... Maybe I can remake a third circle version?

Emily takes a deep breath, releasing it slowly to calm her racing thoughts, still slightly adjusting to her once again increased processing speed from the ascension.

Four threads on each core, and each thread is more powerful. I’m going to have to start consciously matching my processing speed properly to the world around me. Wait. Am I?

She pauses for a moment, quickly building a plan in her mind and confirming the validity based on her new instinctual understanding of her cortex. She shuts her eyes, drawing her focus inwards and picturing her cortex as four orbs of light forming in her blank mindscape, each orb representing one of her four cores. One of the orbs quivers before elongating into a shining humanoid form, and Emily’s perception joins to the form smoothly.

She looks down at the form’s glowing hands, gazing closer and seeing a small network of neurons, all sparking with light.

Good. This should make things easier. Though it uses two threads on my main core to maintain such a detailed rendering.

She reaches out for the core managing Technomancer’s Breath’s passive use, drawing it into primary focus in the space and splitting it apart into four separate nets of light.

First, we need one thread to maintain the energy circulation. I don’t need one for maintaining the breathing anymore: my body seems to be doing that naturally now. Then one of these threads will be designated to manage the other cores’ workflow. Next, one of these threads will manage the primary consciousness’s perception: limiting the current thread use based on processing demand or danger. It should keep me running at normal human speeds unless I’m actively trying to work something out quickly, or engage full assistive processing with all cores if I’m in danger.

The gaze of her virtual form falls on the final thread within this core.

Let’s link this thread to that one. This last thread will constantly watch my magical senses for threats and oddities in my surroundings and alert me if needed. This core will be designated the control core and will remain on these tasks unless needed in combat.

As she finalises her choices and releases the core to return to the view of all three, she sees the other two cores kicking into motion, both working on different projects within the Spellweave.

Good, now my cores should be getting utilised properly in downtime. For now, I’ll use them all as much as possible. But in the future, if it's needed, I can set the control core to manage a rotating sleep schedule to keep me permanently awake.

Emily opens her eyes, leaving her mindscape and returning to a view of the training room.

Right, one last test before I leave here.

She pulls out The Clock, staring at the seconds hand ticking by.

Full assistive processing.

The seconds hand stops. Emily watches it, counting seconds in her own perception as she waits. Three seconds later, the hand moves.

It has only increased by a little. I guess I’ll need a lot more cores to make it seem like time’s standing still. Return to designated tasks.

Time returns to normal, and Emily tucks The Clock back into her breast pocket. She turns towards the door and strides out of the training room.

“Let’s go surprise Jules,” she mutters with a grin.

***

Unfortunately, when Emily returns to the dorms, Juliana is absent. Shrugging off her disappointment, she enters her room and decides to take a shower while she waits for Juliana to return.

She strips out of her equipment and enters the bathroom, freezing as she sees herself in the mirror.

Was my skin always that smooth?

She leans into the mirror, looking closely at her face. Her skin is pale and smooth, without a single imperfection or visible blemish.

My acne scars are gone. Wait, my scars!

Eyes widening in a moment of panic, Emily’s gaze falls on her exposed torso. Instantly, she sees the scars tracing her form. Running her eyes down from the small jagged line across her shoulder, a gift left by Jeremy and Kyle’s attack, to the particularly pronounced mark from her left hip to her belly button, a record of a particularly close encounter with a knife-wielding adult in the slums, she lets out a sigh of relief.

“Good,” she mutters, rubbing her fingers fondly over the cut.

Taking a step back, Emily strips off completely, taking in her current state with a critical eye. Her skin is completely smooth and blemish free all over, the only signs of the life she’s lived being the scars and calluses that remain. Even the light hairs covering her body have vanished, leaving her smooth to the touch. Her muscles are taut and well defined, and her face and proportions, while hard for her to judge, seem to have changed as well.

Is my ascension improving my body aesthetically as well? Is that intentional or just a side effect? I’d lean towards intentional, since my freckles are missing but my scars remain. If it was a side effect, I would have thought it would remove scars first. Instead, it’s like it got rid of the bits I didn’t like, but kept those I do. Either way, I’m certainly happy with the changes.

With a small grin, Emily stops admiring herself and climbs into the shower. She takes her time, enjoying the warm water washing over her body. After climbing out and drying off, she hears a three-beat knock at the door. She throws on a shirt and underwear before opening the door for Juliana.

Juliana pulls her into an immediate hug, but as she pulls away to look at Emily, a small frown creases her brow. Emily keeps a neutral face, tilting her head in confusion as Juliana leans in to look closely at her.

“What’s wrong? You don’t think I’m pretty anymore?” she asks in a teasing tone.

“Ha,” Juliana scoffs, narrowing her eyes. “If anything you’re even prettier. What did you do?”

Emily’s lips part into a sly grin as she releases her mana, letting it flow freely from her body. Pressure crackles in the air around them, revealing the power hidden within Emily’s robust frame. Juliana’s eyes open wide in disbelief.

“I reached third circle,” Emily says, snapping Juliana out of her shock.

“Congratulations!” she cheers with glee, pulling Emily into a kiss.

Emily giggles after they separate, pulling Juliana further into her room and away from the door.

“Wait, was that thunderclap you then?” Juliana asks, dropping into Emily’s lap on her bed.

“Yes. My ascensions seem to cause a commotion when they happen. Do you think there’ll be any trouble?”

“Probably not. It was weird that a magical effect like that managed to penetrate The Dome, but I would have shrugged it off if your ascension didn’t happen to line up with it. Anyway, what’s your plan now then? You’ve been waiting for this for a while, right?” Juliana asks while relaxing into her chest.

“Yeah,” Emily nods, running her hand through Juliana’s hair. “I have a deal I made with Agnes that I need to follow through on first. Then, I’m gonna plan another expedition into The Glade.”

Juliana’s grip tightens at her response. Emily sighs, reassuringly patting her girlfriend’s head. They sit in silence for a few minutes until Juliana speaks again.

“I’m coming with you.”

Emily starts slightly at the statement, surprised by the firm certainty in Juliana’s tone.

“Are you sure?” Emily asks, leaning back slightly to look at her face.

“Mm huh.” Juliana nods, looking up at Emily with tears in her eyes. “You’re going to be leaving afterwards, aren’t you?”

“Ah,” Emily’s words catch in her throat, the sadness and resolve in Juliana’s gaze driving a wedge into her heart.

“Haaa,” Emily lets out a deep sigh, dropping her head to rest on her girlfriend’s shoulder. “You knew?”

“Of course I did,” Juliana says, running her hand through Emily’s hair as tears roll down her cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” Emily whispers, unable to hold back her own tears.