Melena sat at her table in the middle of her garden as she began recording. "If all goes well, this video will be nowhere near as exciting as the last one. Today, I will be talking about energy manipulation and conversion. Energy manipulation can be very helpful, or even required, for some Skills and disciplines, such as enchanting, and energy conversions are required for almost all of the more advanced types of Magic Skills.
"The easiest of the energy manipulations to obtain is Mana Manipulation. It is also the most useful, as Mana is very easy to manipulate and has the most conversions. You simply need imagine pulling Mana from a non-zero fourth dimensional coordinate toward the fourth dimension's axis, bringing it into reality. The Mana you pull out will be under your control and you will get the Mana Manipulation Skill.
"This is useful imagery, but not actually what happens. As far as we can tell, Mana is simply created as needed. We have used every Skill we can find relating to dimensions to find out where it comes from. It appears to simply start existing when the System decides.
"Next is Stamina Manipulation. Stamina Manipulation is only really useful if you want a Skill specifically requiring Stamina Manipulation to use and/or create. Stamina Manipulation has a very high cost and is very hard to control accurately, making it useless for enchanting and similarly delicate processes. It is not required to have Stamina Manipulation to convert Stamina, but increasing the speed of Stamina conversions is one practical use for the Skill.
"To gain the Stamina Manipulation Skill, imagine extracting electricity from the flow of your own blood. This can be done by a hydroelectric generator or any other method you can think of. You will not actually alter the flow of your blood, so it is still harmless even if you have low Endurance or a negative effect increasing the likelihood of obtaining non-System negative effects.
"The last and most situationally useful Skill is Health Manipulation. Health has the least number of conversions, only able to be converted to Mana and Stamina, while also requiring its manipulation Skill be used to convert Health; however, it is very useful in that it can be used to cause the body to regrow as if it had higher current Health than it does, as well as moving someone's Health to someone else. The latter case is less useful than a specialized Skill, but it leads into those Specialized Skills quite easily."
Melena pulled up a Vitalower, showing it to the camera. "This is a Vitalower. Inside it resides liquefied Health. Health is typically gaseous and invisible without a specialized Skill, unlike Stamina and Mana which are closer to a liquid at freezing point at all times." She cut the stem of the flower and a small bit of liquid Health flowed out and into a clear cup.
She held the cup up to the camera and said, "Imagine a gaseous form of this liquid constantly evaporating from your skin, then capturing it and bending it to your will. It may take a few hours to first get the Skill, especially since you are unable to see the results of your efforts, but assuming you plan on using any of the Skills locked behind the Skill, but don't plan on going down a Path that grants them, it can be a very important Skill to have."
She sat the cup down and continued, "Next is energy conversions. Many of the Paths involving magic already give you the most important conversions, and many Skills from Paths come with some sort of conversion already included, such as Rapid Cell Division. However, for those of you who did not take the low-tier mage Paths or any other Path with an energy conversion, I will show you how to convert Mana into electric charge, heat, kinetic energy, Stamina, and Health; how to convert Stamina into Mana, Health, and the overcharged versions of the 3 main energies; and how to convert Health into Mana and Stamina.
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"Other conversions exist for Mana and Stamina, but those are the most useful. A full list can be found on our website, linked in the description. We shall start with converting Mana into electric charge. To do so," a white board appeared behind Melena, a marker appeared in her hand, and an eraser sat in front of her, "'simply' manipulate some Mana into this shape," she said, drawing a very complex shape on the white board, showing it from many angles, "and pass your Mana through its center. This conversion can be slightly more efficient if you make the structure out of soul material instead of Mana.
"All but 3 conversions are just doing this. All but one conversion is more efficient to perform using a structure of soul material than Mana, with the one exception being converting Health to Stamina. Using Mana as the structure is so slightly more efficient than soul material that you would probably never notice the difference between the two. I will quickly write all the basic conversions mentioned previously on the board. The only three I will exclude are the Stamina to overcharged Resource conversions, as they are special."
She did so, labeling each one appropriately, leaving them on frame for 11 seconds so people could easily find them and pause on them while using J and L to navigate the video before moving on to the next one. "The reason I excluded the three overcharged Resource conversions is because they act differently. Instead of simply passing the Stamina through a single structure, you must build a somewhat elaborate series of structures.
"It is unknown why, but despite these structures converting Stamina to each of the other Resources before recombining them into the appropriate overcharged Resource, you cannot skip those steps by providing the Resource directly. The most popular theory is that the structure uses part of the Stamina to power the exchange.
"I will also briefly cover the dangers of overcharged Resources, as they can bypass Health and directly damage you, but overcharged Resources can, thankfully, not be forced upon you. First and foremost, overcharged Resources can act like triple the amount of the normal version of that Resource when used as a cost for a Skill. You can even inject it directly into yourself to regain some of that Resource.
"However, doing so is dangerous, as prolonged exposure to a overcharged Resource will cause various effects within yourself. These effects almost always show themselves after at least 5 seconds of exposure, but if you frequently get close to that threshold, it can get as low as half a second.
"Prolonged exposure to overcharged Mana rapidly deteriorates your brain, causing System-ignoring death if not rapidly dealt with. Prolonged exposure to overcharged Stamina slowly petrifies you, eventually leaving you trapped in your body as it refuses to move. Staying in this state, as you can imagine, usually leads to madness or any other mental condition you can get from prolonged isolation.
"That may as well be a death sentence if you don't get help fast. Prolonged exposure to overcharged Health causes your body to rapidly necrotize. For some reason, this ignores your brain, eventually leaving you as a conscious brain, unable to experience the world around you. Once again, this may as well be a death sentence.
"My point being, except as the very last resort in a life or death fight, never play around with overcharged Resources. Only ever use them as a way to power your Skills using nothing but Stamina. In some cases, however, it is not very useful for this as the conversion takes time, making it not very useful for rapidly activating multiple high-cost Skills. Anyway, with that warning out of the way, here are the structures to create them," she said before drawing the most complex structures yet.
Melena: Are you ok? I had expected you were just busy, but a full 24 of your hours with no response from you is somewhat concerning, considering your rapid responses all but last time. I hope you are alright! Since you are still on my friends list, I will assume you are alive.
Once again, Degritone did not respond.