A [Skill] has been improved!

You have understood [Mana-Sense] more deeply

There were no lies to be had when it came to how [Mana-Sense] worked. It was a truly brilliant tool Utilitywise, not able to change much on its own but allow almost all other skills to have the edge needed to prosper. It was the sword that blinded the heavens, the lightning strike that started the fires of the world, and the wave of wings that made the mountains collapse. Granted, the Core only knew about half of such examples through the skill gained at that moment, but it still mattered just as much as before.

The second upgrade of the skill had been… quite something. The three paths had been guessed correctly enough, the extra dimension of identification being the right thing to study at that moment. While the choice to study anything and everything about Mana was there, it seemed that the skill was focused enough that all chose the same route in the end. Though… Arcane wasn't the only part of Mana that could be identified now. While the information what each field was, the Core understood it would be able to tell the difference between them in the future. How many were there? It had no clue. Only time and experience would tell the full truth.

But that didn't mean that information was without anything more. Information had been more than a small part of the upgrade, so many innocuous facts about the world told. It seemed that there were many small bits of knowledge meant to be known beforehand, just as the shapes of nature, what the sky seemed to be like, and how it all fitted together on a more grand scale. Never before had the Core suspected oceans to be a real thing, yet it seemed to be larger than its mind could fathom. And the creatures able to live beneath the waters… the Entity only knew it would not try to cross the streams any time soon. And it wasn't like it would need to do something like that anyway. But the thought was still there to occupy its mind forever, the darkness of the deep never able to go out out of the mind. The possibilities down there… it was unfathomable to one that had never tried it. Yet that small image into what it could be had caused the Core so much mental fatigue that it could barely even think.

Moving on, there were many other general facts about the world which had been told. Trees were a thing, whole forests of bark existing. It was much like [Moss], only growing vertically instead of to the sides. The Core supposed that was a good idea with limited space, even if that also allowed for the trees to fall on each other. Not very practical in its mind, but who truly cared about that? Not like it was allowed to comment on much anyway.

Dirt and stone were much more common than the Core had thought, the world almost being made of it entirely. There were complicated things above and under the first layer but none of that was understood too much. Or maybe the [System] was saving it for later. There was no way to know. And it wasn't like the Core cared too much either, the gift of general knowledge being more than what had been expected already. Who was it to be angry about the minor things?

Going back and forth again, looking through the information gained, the Entity could not help but become more aware of its position. Dirt was above it, which hinted at it not being too far away from the surface. How close was that? Anywhere from ten to a hundred meters, depending on the location above. Even dirt could become hardened with enough time. Yet… there had also been roots coming through at some point, leaving the Entity to think that it was close to the surface more than anything. How far down could roots even go? The Core guessed at fifty meters, not truly having any real idea. It would need a look at a tree's pattern to be sure, and there was little chance of that happening soon.

Instead, it looked away from the mountain of information given. It knew that it would be able to spend hours or even days just thinking about it all, trying to slowly piece it together into a conceivable version of the world never seen. Yet that would be saved for later, another goal having been reached. With two of three paths having been fulfilled, the last and most important one had been granted through the [System]. And the effects were everything it could have ever wanted. It was as if another layer of dirt had been removed from the Core’s lens, a new way to look at the world suddenly sprouting up.

Everything was so detailed. The individual points on an ant's Mana-Vein could be seen without even glancing at it too hard, it growing to become so much more the instant that it tried to focus. The Core had been given the gift of sight, and it was better than it could have ever expected.

Colours are never seen before sprung up, not due to them being out of the spectrum but due to them being so minor that they simply don't exist in this sight before. The detail was like nothing seen before, though that was much should have been obvious. The Core just never considered being able to see… so much. Blindless was comparable to the previous sight, the amount of information constantly blasted into the Core being unimaginably larger than before. That it could even handle it had to be due to some built-in passive boost from the skill, lest the Entity would have already fractured from the pressure.

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The borders were seen more clearly now as well, the shape of creatures being so much more obvious. What was before simplified curves became a straight edge, the outside of the ants losing their smooth features and showing the more jagged sides. Truly, it was a sign of a beast instead of the scavenger-like set-up seen before. The Core understood more and more why such creatures could be feared.

The air! Oh, how detailed the air was, the micro-concentrations of every cubic centimetre being filled with so large assortment of things. Before only the gasses could be seen, yet it seemed there was so much more. Materials of all kinds floated in the air, so small that gravity had next to no effect on them. Or that was at least the only description that seemed good enough, the small bits of stone seemingly just ignoring the physical laws set upon them. How utterly interesting it was to see. And what else could there be? What other secrets could be found with just a bit of prodding and learning?

Well… there was one part of the creatures that had been desired to look at for quite a while now. There was one simple reason that the Core wanted to gain an upgraded version of [Mana-Sense] to begin with. It was not so it could stare at the air and mess around with the secrets inside and neither was it to see how the creatures looked on a more refined scale. It wanted to see everything in a size where the eye would never be able to see. The Entity desired to locate the changes in an ant never seen before. It wanted to see what changes life had granted the current batch of creatures. And, for that, it needed an example.

The greatest example to find the effects of the Mana-based evolution would, of course, be to have baseline ant to then base all new findings on to determine whether or not something was new or if it had been there since the creation. However, there was a minor problem with this.

Every single ant in the Core’s possession was either level two or above that. Which made it hard to get a baseline read, since it required that a new creature would level up within moments of being created. And while the Entity thought it had prospered much within the last couple of weeks of being alive, it had not yet figured out how to accelerate the growth of a creature. Perhaps in another week or two but certainly not now.

Instead, it would have to do something called brute-forcing. It would gather every single sample of data, compare them all alongside each other, figure out what parts were seen in the most creatures, and then treat those as if they are the baseline. It had the chance of creating misconceptions, a majority perhaps getting the same mutations from some small chance, yet the Core did not care too much. In time, the issues would be figured out. The grand scale just needed to be figured out first, and that was something it could do with no larger hassle.

However, if there was one complaint that remained throughout the journey of doing it all, it was the fact that it took so much more time than it had been intended to take. With all the new information and detail, the Core was careful to thoroughly search through each and every part of a [Giant-Ant]. And while the ‘Giant’ prefix might not have been meant to be like the giantness of mountains, it was still more than large enough to give a rather big handful of mass. And with a whole nine-level two ants to go through, this meant that more than two whole days were spent with the simple task of gathering information. The Core had not believed it until the time came to check how the Moss had progressed. With no real mechanism for checking the sun, as the Core now knew existed, it instead based its perception of temporal movement as the growth of [Moss]. And how it had grown. Too much, in fact.

How much time had truly passed? That was something the Core would normally have been able to tell quite easily. The rate of [Moss] growing was quite constant anyway, total perimeter allowing for the same multiplier. Yet… what was being seen couldn't be real. It had grown way too much to make sense. Had two full weeks really passed since it last checked the time? That was too much, even by the Core’s standards of focus. Could the desire to learn the skill truly have pushed it to the limit where time grew immeasurable? Or had the rate of Moss changed since it last looked?

Using an hour manually counting the seconds, the Core was sad to say that the rate was still the same as ever. It might even have slowed down by a per cent or two. That was quite a surprise to hear. It was certainly not appreciated in the least, the Core slowly beginning to ponder how much time had passed.

And what part of the tasks had been the cause? The search for an upgraded skill was certainly time-intensive yet was it truly the cause behind it? There was also the need to figure out what evolution was, to begin with, yet that felt like it had taken only a few minutes. Yet the very idea that only took so little time made the Entity worry that it had been the actual enemy in the grand scheme of things, making it forget the true amounts spent.

There was no need to think about it. Time had passed no matter what, and it wasn't like any of the tasks would be repeated. Moving forward was the only real option. With how much data had been gathered, there was much to look through. Looking at the [Moss] for one last time, the Core began to look through the data.

That process was much quicker than anticipated, luckily, the Entity already had done the hard work of distinguishing what patterns were seen most often. The answer to that, though, was that most ant’s structure was just about identical, with only a few innocent parts being different. It could be detected yet it wasn't serious enough to warrant any real investigation. Except with one or two with mandibles, a bit more of grey Mana hovering around there. Yet it was still nothing that the Core truly thought would have promised a long way down the line.

However… there was one ant that did stand above all when it came to change. One ant whose structure had been altered to the point where the legs could hardly be recognized. Even when looking at it with the eyes of before, it was just as obvious. And what [Giant-Ant] was this? Well, it was the one which had been ordered to stand above a certain path of [Blood-Moss]

Also, that ten times rate of growth had not been a lie. The Core should have noticed that way earlier.