And then of course there was the other project taking up my time. Getting Lea settled was a pressing issue. Taking proper account of my assets and how to fully take advantage of them was valuable. Progressing in my studies and advancing several promising lines of research was key to my continued success––and survival––in Avalon.

There were a lot of things I wanted to be doing over the winter break, but figuring out just what exactly I’d done to myself with Professor Williams’ help was absolutely crucial and could not wait. It was recommended to give such magics some time to ‘settle’ before examining them too closely, but that time had now passed and I was already starting to notice some things that I thought were related. That wasn’t good enough though. I needed to know, not just make educated guesses.

Unfortunately, circulations were possibly the least intuitive form of magic there was. With a structured spell you could get a pretty good idea of what it did just by looking at the spell matrix. Given enough time, or simply sufficient experience with related magics, you could identify which spell form each section of the spell matrix was drawn from, how the sections were combined, and ultimately understand exactly what the spell did and how it did so.

That was actually a skill that Avalon intentionally cultivated in its mages and was a fundamental building block of magical combat. If you knew what spell your enemy was going to cast before they could do so, you could counter it far more effectively. For instance, if you knew that your opponent was about to launch a fireball at you, you could erect a far simpler fire-disrupting field instead of a more robust all-purpose shield. We’d discussed the topic in depth in Professor Shrike’s class and had touched upon it in a number of earlier required courses.

The same idea applied to rituals as well. Ultimately, a ritual was just a structured spell flattened and drawn out on the ground. Sure there was some variability based on the material components, the mindset of the participants, how the ritual was charged, and some other factors, but if you knew the runes that the caster was using you could literally read the ritual like the page of a book.

Or well, theoretically at least. Rituals could get very complicated very quickly and it was unfeasible for even an archmage specializing in them to actually understand everything about one at a glance. But theoretically, everything was right there and could be analyzed and understood. There were just so many potential factors involved that any genuinely advanced ritual had to be created from scratch, unlike a structured spell that could be cast by anyone with essentially the same effect each time.

Magic done with raw mana manipulation was even easier to understand, at least in most cases. Mana could be partially converted into other forms of energy––I was particularly partial to force myself––and then, well, manipulated. Such feats could be difficult to recreate, but they were rarely inherently complex. Anyone with a sufficiently refined mana sense could get a pretty good idea of what someone was doing at a glance.

Circulations on the other hand? Not only were they a lot harder to examine in depth, what with being inside of people and magical creatures, but they were also all but impossible to interpret without long hours of study, comparing them against well-understood similar circulations, and educated guesses based on the creature itself.

To further complicate matters, the circulations that my trait-theft ritual had created inside me weren’t simply torn from one creature and implanted within me, but rather created wholly by the ritual itself based on the alien energies of the outsider I’d sacrificed. Even after several sessions I still only understood the bare basics of what was going on inside of Miranda, and she was several generations removed from any true outsider.

Fortunately, I had a few advantages to help me out in this endeavor. Firstly, I was trying to examine something inside my own body, not someone else's. It was much easier to perceive mana within the bounds of your own soul than it was when looking externally. I’d be able to see the mana that made up the circulations far more clearly and with much less effort than while I was examining one of my cows or Miranda.

Secondly, I already had a pretty good understanding of how mana flowed within my body and how it interacted with my existing circulations. Every body and soul was slightly different, but I knew what had been present very well, which should theoretically make it much easier to detect any particularly subtle areas based on differences from what I remembered.

Not only that, but I’d gone through all the effort of establishing a shifter’s body and hadn’t yet had the time to update it to reflect the new additions to my magic. That did mean I was currently unable to safely use any sort of shapeshifting, but it gave me a reference to compare against for places where my memory was insufficient.

Finally, I wasn’t really going in blind. I’d done a lot of research into the type of outsider I’d used in the ritual, had noticed a number of effects in the past few weeks that were likely connected with the new circulations, and had done a lot of research into complex, esoteric circulations over the past few years. Not to mention that I’d been the one to design the ritual, if with considerable help from Professor Williams, and knew what I’d been trying to accomplish.

Combined, it turned a rather daunting task into something a lot more approachable. I doubted I’d be able to figure everything out––according to Professor Williams learning the ins and outs of stolen circulations could take months or years even when using simpler sacrifices––but it was important to start somewhere.

I had a few specific goals. Firstly, I wanted to identify and analyze which portions of the circulations corresponded to some of the effects I’d noticed so far. Things like the odd social hunches and flashes of emotional understanding I’d started to notice recently while I’d been talking to Clarient, Lea, and Brenda and the automatic adjustments that kept happening to my other circulations.

Beyond that, I wanted to make sure I knew what parts of my body were now being ‘taken up’ by the new circulations. I hadn’t run into any issues so far, but it would be potentially catastrophic if I tried to build out or steal a new circulation that in some way interfered with what I’d gotten from the outsider. That shouldn’t be an issue, particularly since it seemed to directly interact with other circulations within my body, but it was always better to be safe than sorry. Always.

Finally, I wanted to learn as much as I could about circulations in general from the experience. Over the past few months I’d progressed my understanding of circulations by leaps and bounds by studying the natural circulations of magical creatures and this was another invaluable step in that direction. The circulations I was capable of crafting manually were like a child’s finger art compared to the legendary masterpieces within the bodies of Miranda and my elves.

From what I’d seen so far, what I’d gained from the outsider was similarly complex and elegant. This time however, it was inside my own body so I’d be able to look at it much more closely than I could manage when studying circulations in someone else’s body. I wasn’t certain yet, but I hoped that seeing something like this up close would help me refine my technique. I was still absolutely confident that, with sufficient control and knowledge, it was entirely possible to manually recreate the natural gifts of magical creatures, without the need for complex rituals and sacrifice. This was just another step towards that distant goal.

All that was why a few days after I’d finished getting Lea resettled, Camille, Miranda and I stepped into one of Avalon’s specialized meditation rooms, the meter-thick stone door shutting soundlessly behind us. I looked around curiously. I’d never actually been in one of these. They were very popular and highly limited in number, making them rather difficult and costly to reserve.

Stolen novel; please report.

Fortunately, it wasn’t actually me who’d made the reservation this time. Unlike me, Camille tended to do most of her studying either in groups or in the public parts of the library, meaning that she had a lot more of her yearly room quota left. She’d reserved this particular time slot a month in advance for the same reason as I wanted it. Namely, examining the effects of the enhancement ritual she’d used for Professor Williams’ class.

The room was perfectly spherical and half-filled with a dense, translucent gel that provided a floor for us to stand on. It was slightly springy and my feet sank a quarter of an inch into the substance with every step, but not a drop stuck to my boots and it didn’t really make it harder to move around.

The walls were made from huge blocks of lazulite that fit together so perfectly they looked like a single solid whole and polished to a mirror sheen. The blue crystal shone from within, evenly illuminating the entire room without a hint of shadow anywhere to be soon. Thousands and thousands of runes had been carved into every inch of the crystal and then filled in with mana-forged gold.

Just in terms of materials alone, this room would probably have beggared a minor kingdom. A small bar of mana-forged gold was worth twenty pieces, and it had probably taken at least one bar to fill each rune, perhaps more for some of the larger ones. Lazulite was a lot cheaper––it could be transmuted without too much trouble––but the stone that made up the room had either been found naturally or charged with enough magic to make up for the magically inert nature of transmuted materials. And the gel, well, honestly I had no idea what it was or how much it cost, but I doubted it was cheap.

And all of it was designed with one purpose in mind. Making it easier for a mage to get in touch with their soul and mana while meditating. I was very excited to see how well it worked.

“Well, we have six hours,” Camille said softly. “I think it's supposed to work best if you sit right in the middle. I guess we can––”

That was what I’d heard as well, and I didn’t really pay attention to what else she was saying. We only had a very limited amount of time before the next person or group’s slot, and I intended to make the most of it. I took a few steps forward and sat down with my legs crossed, my butt and feet sinking slightly into the gel.

A moment later, Miranda dropped down onto my lap and wrapped her legs around my waist, pulling out bodies together. She went to wrap her arms around my neck, but I stopped her with a raised eyebrow. “Will you be able to stay still?” I asked.

Miranda wiggled her butt, grinding our hips together as she got comfortable, then nodded.

I raised an eyebrow and she grinned unabashedly. “Fine then.” She smiled, wrapped her arms around my neck, and leaned against me, then closed her eyes. With our bond firmly in place ensuring she couldn’t even think about hurting me, her presence was not particularly distracting the way it would have been otherwise, and I did not begrudge her the chance to make maximum use of the room.

Miranda did not have any new circulations to examine, but she’d recently taken an interest in learning more about how her inherited abilities worked and I was happy to encourage that line of inquiry. This way she’d be able to guide my probes when I went to examine her natural circulations in the future.

After a moment, Camille settled down beside us, leaning her back against my side. I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing, allowing my consciousness to sink inward.

I could almost immediately see the effect the room was having, and it was staggering. I’d put a lot of work into my mana sense over the past few months and my proficiency with it had grown by leaps and bounds, but this was something else. Everything was so clear and crisp, every droplet of mana flowing through my body visible in stark relief.

I could feel my core like I never had before and my circulations were like lines of ink on white parchment, perfectly visible despite the background glow of the rest of my mana that typically washed them out.

Just at a glance, I could see issues that I’d never noticed before. The surface of my core was not perfectly smooth like it should have been, but littered in tiny flaws I’d never noticed before. Now they stood out like mountains on an endless field of grass, so obvious I had no idea how I’d managed to miss them.

My circulations were even worse. Threads that should have been perfectly uniform were bumpy and covered with hundreds of loose strands like bits of wool protruding from poorly spun yarn. Tiny streams of mana flowed between nearby strands, connecting sections that should have been kept completely separate. And the coils…I barely wanted to look at how poorly I’d managed to ‘wrap’ the threads of mana together.

I’d thought my internal mana control was relatively good. I’d internally scoffed at all the little mistakes Janna kept making, but this was little better! Was this really the best I was capable of?

I reached for my core and, like I’d done countless times before, smoothly drew forth a single fine strand of mana, ready to be shaped into a fresh circulation. My technique was perfect. Or at least it felt that way. But the result?

My heart fell. It was…terrible. Utterly unacceptable. I hadn’t even done anything with it yet, and I could see so. Many. Problems.

It was uneven, covered in wisps of loose, chaotic mana, and wasn’t even perfectly straight like it should have been! It didn’t look quite as bad as some of what I was seeing, but those were all problems that would only be exacerbated if I actually tried to work it into a circulation.

I had half-heartedly hoped that the problem was the odd circulation-modifying effect of the abilities I’d stolen from the outsider, but no. That only came into play once the circulation was finished. This…this was all me. My failures and lack of skill.

I briefly turned my attention to the other mana paths present within my body, the ones I’d taken from the outsider. I’d been worried that I’d have trouble differentiating them from my hand-made circulations, but that was apparently just my arrogance speaking.

They were perfect. Every strand, every thread, and every node was utterly flawless. Free from the abject incompetence of my own efforts. It was like comparing chicken scratch to the work of a master calligrapher, or a child’s muddy handprint to an emperor’s royal portrait.

Already knowing what I was going to find, I looked at one of the circulations I was most proud of. It was my own work, an original design made by combining circulations I’d learned from books with the insights I’d gained by probing my cows’ natural magics.

Awful. Just…awful.

No wonder this place was typically monopolized by sixth and seventh-years with their far larger room quotas. To fix a problem, you had to know it existed in the first place. No doubt there were even more errors I still couldn’t sense, even with the boost from the room. I’d need to look into more ways to refine my internal mana sensing. I’d thought I was good enough at the technique, but clearly I was sorely mistaken.

With a thought, the mana flowing through my circulations stilled and I felt their effects fall away. My shoulders sagged and I had to shift slightly to compensate for Miranda’s weight. She was rather thin, with a slim waist and long, slender legs, but there was a lot of fat in certain places that really added up.

Not wanting to look at them for a moment longer than I had to, I began to spin my core, dragging the strands that made up my circulations inward where they quickly merged back into the central mass of mana.

Soon, only the ritually-gained circulations remained. They, like any other natural circulation, were not connected directly to my core and so had been completely unaffected by my cleanup. Any incidental damage I might have done to them by dragging my other circulation back into my body had been repaired in moments. Such circulations were thankfully self-repairing as long as the damage wasn’t utterly catastrophic

I momentarily focused on my mana core again and winced. It was so…lumpy. Still better than what I’d felt from mage’s outside of Avalon, but I could scarcely believe that I’d missed so many issues for so long.

I really wanted to fix it. The urge was almost overwhelming. Here was a flaw in the very foundation of my being, and I wanted, needed, to fix it.

But I couldn’t. Adjusting my core would take hours and hours if I wanted the changes to stick after I’d stopped meditating, and I just didn’t have the time.

I’d come here with a goal in mind, and that was what I was going to focus on. Nothing else. No matter how much I wanted to.

Trying to avoid thinking about all the minute flaws I could suddenly see, I swiftly began to rebuild a handful of my circulations––the most essential, mind-augmenting ones that I’d need to make the most of my time in this room. As soon as I was finished with that, I finally turned to the new additions to my body and soul and mentally cracked my knuckles.

I had about five and a half hours left. I could work with that.