Inari’s Gift

Once again, Cera focused on her attempts to maintain her magic passively after counting her money.  This time, she tried to maintain small candle-like flames, managing two of them at once due to their increased complexity.  Eventually, time for bed came, and she put out the flames.

The following day, she repeated the process until it was time to go to the village, at which point she switched back to light spells, which weren’t visible in the bright sunlight.  By the time she left to return home, she’d managed to passively maintain a full dozen light spells, showing that she was getting used to the particular spell.

It was, however, still mentally straining to divide her focus, even if it wasn’t her conscious mind putting forth the effort.  As such, she ended up with quite the headache and dismissed all but one of the lights.  Instead of trying to maximize what she was doing, she switched to trying to maintain one light and one small flame at the same time, finding it quite difficult to focus on both different spells at once, as one or the other would tend to vanish.

Eventually, near dinner time, she succeeded in her goal, and was able to keep both spells going with no conscious attention on either of them.  Satisfied with her success, she dismissed both spells and went to make food.

After finishing her dinner, she took some time to brush her tail, then went to bed, once again enjoying how fluffy her tail was as she hugged it.  The next morning, she moved on to three different spells, keeping a small chunk of ice in her hand at room temperature while a small flame hovered nearby and a light floated over her head.

She regularly lost focus on the ice cube, but it was easy to take control of it again, so she didn’t worry too much about it.  By the time she went for her trip to the village, she’d managed to maintain all three spells at once, and decided it was time to go for something more useful.  First, she dismissed all the spells, then began weaving energy within her systems, carefully linking it to the existing components.

Several minutes later, the simple construct was complete, and she carefully began to reduce her focus on it, reaching back any time it began to unravel.  It took until she returned home to successfully maintain it, but it did work eventually.  She then finally activated it, and felt as her available mana rapidly drained, being forced into her flesh instead of her energetic systems.

A few tweaks followed, reducing the drain to just below what she regenerated, and placing a limit so she wouldn’t harm herself by overloading her body.  After ensuring the tweaks were also passively maintained, Cera took some time to relax, smiling at her success with the first alteration she’d done to herself that didn’t require constant attention to keep functional.

Falron noticed her smiling as she sat down and asked, “Did something good happen?”

“I finally have begun to alter my energetic systems, now that I’ve put some time into training my subconscious to keep things running for me.  It’s far from optimal, but a tether of passive focus is holding the new component stable, and I no longer have to consciously pump mana into my body.  I just have to adjust it as my tolerance increases,” Cera replied, tail twitching beside her in the chair.

She pauses a moment to sigh before continuing, “Unfortunately, I am still a very long way from being able to do anything actually impressive.  That requires me to get several amplifiers working, and much stronger ones than I can currently manage as well.  I used to be able to make permanent changes rather than merely passively maintained ones.”

In response, Falron shook his head and stated, “It is already incredibly impressive.  I’ve only heard rumors of that being possible, never actually heard of anyone succeeding with it.  Most people never even sense things on that level.”

With a short laugh, Cera remarked, “Well, that was a large part of how I became as strong as I did.  If you stripped me of all my modifications, I was one of the weakest mages I’d ever met.  But I’d built things up to the point where it didn’t matter.  A child driving a wagon can carry more than a strongman, after all, despite being far weaker.”

After shaking her head in amusement, she continued, “My changes were… ever so slightly more extreme than that.  I’m actually stronger here than my relative natural strength in my past life, though this plane of reality is significantly weaker overall.  It’ll be quite impressive once I finally manage permanent changes to myself.  Or even just more of the passively maintained ones.  I know how energetic systems function, how they tie into the body and soul, and how to alter those connections.”

As Falron took in what she’d said, Cera shook her head again and stated, “I bet you could handle one of my earlier creations if you can hand over control to your subconscious mind.  If you have some paper, I can draw a diagram of how to construct it for you.  Perhaps you can even manage a phase-change.”

Falron numbly nodded and stood to grab some paper and a pen, handing them to Cera as she pulled one of the folding tables over.  Not long after, she’d sketched out a complex structure with multiple ports, labeling all but one as input.  Each component had notes attached to it on how to focus on it, which concepts to apply to the energy involved, and where to place it.

When Cera passed the paper to Falron, he frowned deeply as he looked at it before remarking, “You’re sure this is safe?”

Cera laughed and shook her head, replying, “If you screw it up, it can cause permanent harm, until someone else can fix it.  But that’s if you make it permanent.  With current methods, we can only make it temporary, so simply releasing your attention will make it disperse and restore you to normal.  This particular creation is something I call a mana amplifier; it compresses mana into a denser form, ideally shifting its phase from the natural gaseous state into a more liquid or even solid form.”

She paused a moment to take a breath, tail twitching back and forth in her seat as she continued, “I’ve never managed to manifest mana into the physical, but liquid-type mana takes much longer to disperse when you lose focus on it, and can be shaped into spells of much higher power than gaseous mana.  The solid form is what your systems are made of, and requires zero focus to maintain itself, making for permanent constructs.  It is, however, much harder to manipulate.  When I can manage solid mana, my strength will skyrocket as I rebuild what I’ve lost.”

Falron continued to frown, though he obviously was focusing on creating the object Cera had designed.  Cera remained quiet for the several minutes it took him, then grinned at the surprised expression his face shifted to.

“It’s quite interesting how it changes things, isn’t it?  Did it change phases, or is it still gaseous for you?” Cera asked as she leaned forward.

“I think it is still gaseous, but it is much denser for certain.  And it feels like I can store more of it than how it was before,” Falron remarked slowly as he examined himself.

“That makes sense.  It doesn’t disperse instantly, and you can hold much higher pressure of mana than you naturally regenerate to.  I wouldn’t be surprised if you could hold five or six times as much now; that design is superior to the one I’ve tried to create, but it is too complex for me to keep functional for now,” Cera explained as she shook her head at her own weakness.

Falron shook his head before stating, “I can’t maintain this for long; it’s too complex, but I’ll try to work on it.  This is revolutionary!”

Cera simply laughed before remarking, “You’ve no idea how it can get.  I’ll skip the examples, they’re too unbelievable.  But you’d be amazed at how far you can go with it, especially once you reach hard mana.”

She pushed aside the table and stood before adding, “I think I’ll get some food for us before heading to bed.  It’s been a long day.”

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