Inari’s Gift

After another few days of working on restoring her soul, Cera found she had enough mana that Falron said she almost matched a novice just starting out with the basics.  A pretty poor situation to be in, but she could now manage much more than she did before.

Where she used to run low within an hour of working on her soul, she could now spend over four hours at a time on it without having to pace herself, working on much larger areas than before.  Unfortunately, she was still well aware that she could barely sense any of her soul at the moment.

Even before, in her prior life, she had never fully mapped her own soul, despite making massive changes to it.  And now, she no longer had the enhancements she had back then.  It was hard being without them, with things that used to be effortless now taking immense amounts of work.  Before, all the healing she’d done from her arrival to the present moment could have been done in under a second.

Fortunately, it appeared that Falron was okay with her focusing mostly on mending herself rather than spending the time learning more about magic.  Due to this, she continued her work, hoping to eventually reach a point where her natural abilities worked more effectively.

When she brought up her concerns about how difficult it was to use her illusions to Falron, however, he made an amusingly simple suggestion; since it was a natural ability rather than focused magic, perhaps she should quit trying so hard and just let it happen with minimal oversight.

After hearing the suggestion, she took some time off and tried out what he suggested, finding that it did work much better.  It was, however, still unable to fully mask things that had much going on beyond them, so she still remained unable to hide her ears or tail while upright.  While it still wasn’t usable for what she wanted, it was much easier to manage the same level of illusion, so she accepted that trying to force it was the wrong way.

Several more weeks passed with Cera focused on healing, each day making incrementally more progress than the prior day.  In time, she felt that she had healed a fair portion of what she could see, and should focus on other things again.  Asking Falron to help her with magic again led to him chuckling and easily agreeing.

Amusingly, the next spell he was going to teach her was the simple fireball that so many people seemed to love in stories and games.  The first step was simple: using a method similar to what she had been shown before, she formed a ball of fire instead of a small burst, then used the same complex three-dimensional formation as she did with ice to project force and hurl the ball forward.

Her first several attempts either petered out partway through flying, or hit with so little impact that they couldn’t even set the grass on fire.  Additionally, due to her limited mana, she could only try three times before having to rest, unlike working with ice, which was far more efficient in terms of mana usage.

Eventually, however, she did finally manage to set something on fire with her spell, though it was still very weak, having almost zero concussive force, and only a relatively small amount of heat on impact.  In the end, she decided that she wasn’t likely to use it much, and wanted to move on.

The next form of magic she was to learn was how to produce an electrical charge and project it into the distance.  Unlike with fire, there was no simple form, and instead she had to deal with another complex sigil to begin forming a charge differential, then a second new sigil to form an ionized path for the charge to follow.

As with the fireball, her first several attempts were barely even noticeable, more like a static shock than anything else, and possessed very short range.  At this point, Falron began questioning if something was wrong with her.

“Well, I was very heavily specialized in what I did before, to a… rather intense degree.  I’m not surprised by this at all,” Cera replied when he asked her what was going on.

“I was already expecting to do poorly with anything but shielding and crystalline style magic to begin with.  This just proves my expectations were accurate,” she continued with a laugh, even as Falron shook his head.

Falron sighed before responding, “Isn’t that a little too extreme of a difference, though?”

“Think of it this way: have you ever seen an elementalist try to heal someone?  Or a healer try to create a tornado?” Cera replied with a chuckle as her tail flicked behind her in amusement.

She shook her head before continuing, “There are levels of specialization, and I happened to go to the extreme end.  It was common to find someone with less than three months of experience who could still outdo me in many areas.”

In response, Falron simply sighed again and began discussing what he knew of healing.  For this, Cera paid extra attention, as several of her future plans relied heavily on the concept.  In her prior life, she’d gone down a more mechanical approach, removing damaged parts and replacing them, much like a machine rather than a living being.

This time, however, she wanted to remain natural and fluffy, though she wasn’t against some temporary modifications or wearing armor.  On that note, she needed to see about asking if she could obtain a staff for all the useful functions it had.  For now, however, she focused on Falron’s explanations.

For the most part, it appeared that healing was a process of speeding up natural regeneration, though there were rarer cases where it directly altered what was there.  For her goals, the latter was the most useful.

The actual method of healing was a combination of understanding the wound and weaving mana through the flesh, casting a spell internally rather than allowing it to manifest externally, and pushing it inward.  Fortunately, she’d learned some basic information about the human body in her prior life, and her new body wasn’t that terribly different in general, other than the ears and tail.

Since she’d recovered some mana, she idly created a small blade of ice from the moisture in the air and ran it across the back of her hand, leaving a thin cut.  A bit of focus later, and it slowly began to seal again, Falron looking on in silence.

“You probably shouldn’t just randomly cut into yourself mid-lecture, you know?” he began as he shook his head at her.

“It’s fine, isn’t it?  Just a little scratch, so even if I couldn’t heal it, it would heal quick enough on its own,” Cera remarked in return, her tail calmly swaying behind her as she focused on him again.

Next, Falron began describing how to feel feedback from your own mana interacting with that of someone else’s, an especially useful tool when trying to heal, though still useful for other situations as well.  Eventually, Cera found herself unable to keep focused, however, as it wasn’t directly relevant to her future plans.

“Could we stop for now and resume tomorrow, maybe?” she inquired, once Falron paused for a moment.

“Certainly, but why, if you don’t mind me asking?” he replied, since she hadn’t shown any signs of wanting to stop beforehand.

Cera nodded before responding, “Well, most of what I’m planning requires healing magic, but only on myself, and I’m getting distracted thinking of the future.  If things work like I think, I’m going to learn to modify myself.  I did a lot of that in my prior life, though admittedly, not through a biological system.”

Falron frowned upon hearing this, remarking, “That is incredibly dangerous, and I can’t recommend it at all.  Many people have tried, and most have crippled themselves at best.”

“Don’t worry too much, Falron, I’ll be fine.  I did plenty of experimenting on myself before, and intend to be very careful about it now that I’m starting over.  It’s going to be quite some time before I do more than the very basics,” Cera explained, thinking of the damage she’d done to herself in her prior life, and her desire to avoid repeating the same, or similar, mistakes this time around.

With Falron more relaxed now that he knew she wasn’t going to immediately commit such insanity, they headed back inside.  Cera offered to make food, and shortly afterward, brought out meals for both of them, then, once they finished, took care of the dishes as well.

Cera then decided to head to bed, curling up with her tail again, as usual, and dropped off to sleep.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!