Inari’s Gift

For the next several days, things proceeded roughly the same way.  Cera would get up and practice cooking over the fire with a small amount of food as Falron cooked a full meal.  After eating, she would return to her room to relax in bed as she focused on mending her soul, and occasionally switch to work on her control over her illusions.

After a few days, she was at least confident she could ensure things weren’t undercooked, even if she wasn’t confident in avoiding overcooking them.  The work on her spirit continued, going faster as time went on, though she still estimated less than one percent of what she could sense was in good condition, despite all her hard work.

Her illusions, however, seemed to be the most difficult to manage.  While she could hide nearly-stationary things against something they were right beside, trying to hide anything else was a continual source of frustration.  She’d used illusion plenty in her prior life, so it irked her to have such difficulty in this one.

Sure, before, it was a spell, and she’d had tons of enhancements assisting her, while now it was a natural ability without any assistance, but still!

Finding herself growing frustrated again, she growled to herself and pulled her tail around to hug, burying her face in the fluff for several moments before letting it go.  She considered herself lucky to have such a lovely tail in this life, as it was very useful for relaxing.  With another pat on her tail, Cera sat back up and resumed her efforts to hide her outstretched arm.

Later, she discovered that she was even worse than she thought.  While she could hide her tail before, it was directly against something from every direction except the front and above, making it easy to hide.  Resting her hand on the bed, her arm was poorly hidden, despite her best efforts, when viewed from anywhere except above.

She growled to herself before throwing herself back into her practice, forgetting about the time as she worked nonstop.  Eventually, Falron had to stop her and drag her out of her room to eat, which she found herself embarrassed by.

The next day, she decided she was done failing at her illusions, and that she would try after healing herself more, and possibly after getting some proper enhancements going.  At least, she hoped she’d still be able to enhance herself in this world.

After spending some time at work mending her soul, Cera took a break and focused on her energetic systems, studying them as closely as she could.  While she still had very limited senses, she was able to make out some of how they worked.

She found herself pleasantly surprised by finding that they worked practically identically, as far as she could tell at least, to how things worked in her prior life.  Sure, she could barely sense anything, but what she did sense matched her knowledge almost exactly.

Unfortunately, she still had no luck trying to change the form of her mana from a gaseous state, making her unable to create or alter any of her energetic organs.  While she might be able to temporarily makeshift something, it would fall apart as soon as she quit actively focusing on it, making it nearly useless.

What she needed was a way to ensure energy from outside herself could be used to maintain a creation, letting her sustain it without draining her anemic mana pool.  Following this logic, Cera began spending her time off from soul manipulation, instead working on attempting to push ambient energy into a simple light spell, breaking it time after time.

After explaining what she was doing to Falron, he simply shook his head and declared her mad for thinking she could do such a thing.  She was certain someone had to have figured it out by now, however, even if they must be keeping it secret.  There was no way that no one had spent significant amounts of time and effort on it, with all the benefits it would allow.

As such, she ignored Falron’s advice to give up and continued as she was, sparing a little time to explain some concepts from her old world to keep him from kicking her out for being useless.  She did find it gratifying to watch the old man’s magic improve significantly after taking in her words about the nature of various objects and reactions.

Weeks later, with a little bit of learning new magic thrown in, she finally found herself beginning to have some success.  She didn’t know how many thousands of different attempts she’d made, but now, her light spell could sustain itself for two seconds without her input before the ambient magic tore it apart.

Since Falron had long since given up on watching her constant failures, she called out to him as he read, “I think you’ll want to see this, even if it is still a failure!”

As he grumbled and looked up, Cera spun up another light spell, waiting for him to focus on the mana, then began pulling ambient mana into it and cut off her own input.  With intense focus on the spell, she forced the mana to stabilize, keeping it going for slightly over two seconds as Falron looked on in shock.

“I can’t sustain it anywhere near as long as I need to, and have to focus on it very intently, but I am making progress, just like I knew I would!” she exclaimed to the stunned mage.

His book fell from his limp hands as he gaped at her before demanding she explain herself.

Cera shook her head before remarking, “I can’t explain it well, but it is possible to sense patterns in the chaotic fluctuations of ambient mana, then smooth those out before merging them with more stable mana.  It still destabilizes the spell, but it takes much longer for it to fall apart than without doing so.  In time, I expect I’ll be able to manage it with less effort.”

She paused for a moment before smacking herself in the forehead with an open palm and continuing, “Or of course, I could be being a total dumbass.  It needs to merge with stable mana.  You produce stable mana.  Keep a tether of your own mana, and use that to maintain it rather than letting it slowly spiral out of control.  It would still use your own mana, but at a much reduced rate.  In theory, it should be possible to improve to the point that it doesn’t exceed your natural regeneration rate.”

Putting action to her words, she spun up another light spell and maintained a tiny trickle of her own mana going to it as she put most of her focus into smoothing out the chaotic whirls of ambient mana that she fed into it, using her own mana as a scaffold of sorts.

Five seconds later, a faint smile appeared on her face.  Ten seconds, then thirty.  A maniacal grin broke out on her face as sweat rolled down her head, and she finally let the spell die.

“Success!  Less of my own mana used than two seconds normally!  I’m sure you’ve at least heard of scaffolding, even if you might not have seen it in person.  Feed your own mana into a scaffold for the spell, then use that to anchor the external energy as you pull it in.  It may take a while to get used to the chaos, however,” she explained in a rush as Falron looked at her with wide eyes.

Falron leaned down to pick up his book, muttering under his breath about impossible foxes and impossible magic as he paged through it trying to find where he was before he dropped it.  Cera, meanwhile, returned to her work on her soul, giddy with her success.

Eventually, Falron found where he had been in his book and put his bookmark into place before setting it aside and beginning to follow her instructions.  His own light spell flickered out every second or two as ambient mana disrupted it time after time.

In time, Cera found herself to be the one who was aware of the time, with Falron focused intently on his own magic for once.  With a faint chuckle, she headed to the kitchen to make food, hoping to be able to surprise him with a meal.  She was still hardly what she’d consider a good cook, but she could at least avoid most problems in her cooking by now.

Not long after, she brought out a bowl of food and slid one of the folding tables in front of Falron, startling him as she did so.  She then placed the food down in front of him with a chuckle and returned to the kitchen to get her own bowl.

After dealing with the dishes when they finished, she headed to bed.  Unfortunately, even trying her best, she found herself far too excited to sleep.  Not even hugging her fluffy tail helped her relax enough.  When an hour had passed, she gave up and began work on her soul once more, determined to at least make the most of her time awake.

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