Inari’s Gift

The following day, Cera threw out several spells and began to passively maintain them for practice after she verified her change from the day prior was still intact and functioning.  Due to her reduced regeneration, however, she could feel her mana slowly draining, unlike before.  She wasn’t concerned, though, she could easily pull the mana from her body as needed.

After breakfast, she informed Falron, “I believe it has come time for me to work on non-elemental magic.  Do you have much more you can teach me, or should I begin experimenting again?”

Falron responded by going over a list of things, mentioning, “I know you understand the shield spell, but I don’t think we went over manasight or the lie detection.  There is also scrying, but that is incredibly complex, and it isn’t something I can teach well at all.  I can teach how to link yourself to an object and then sense the direction and distance, however.”

Cera nodded before stating, “I could definitely use the ability to see mana other than my own.  And lie detection… I don’t remember if you taught me that or not, so that could be another one.  And being able to find my staff if I misplace it would be nice as well.”

“Manasight used to be pretty difficult and dangerous, but a few decades ago, someone learned that you don’t need to alter your actual eyes.  Instead, move some mana, say… a third what you use for an externally-powered light spell, into any location on your skin, then shape it similar to an eye, including the iris.  Then you can control it and make use of its sense by focusing on it,” Falron explained, gesturing to his forehead as he mentioned placing it anywhere.

“Alternatively, you can recreate the structure of the eye inside your actual eyes, which then works at all times.  But that is much more risky, and a mana pulse can damage your eyes, so I don’t recommend it at all,” he continued.

Cera nodded and promptly followed his first set of instructions, forming a mana eye on her hand and focusing on it.  As she did so, all her passively maintained spells failed and sputtered out, alongside the addition to her energetic system.  With a groan, she quit focusing on it and began to rebuild the lost construct.

“It appears that doing that ruins my subconscious concentration as it begins to interpret what it sees.  On the plus side, it means more intensive training, which will increase my abilities quicker,” Cera stated with a sigh.

Falron nodded before explaining, “The lie detection method shouldn’t do that.  It’s entirely a conscious process.  It doesn’t work well on mages, since we have better control over our mana, but for non-mages, or those who are still new to it, it works reasonably well.  You infiltrate their mana with your own, then observe your mana.  When someone lies, they tend to have fluctuations in their mana, which will then shift your own and be easily sensed.  When someone believes they are telling the truth, they don’t tend to have any shift in their mana.  This does, however, mean that someone who believes a lie won’t be detected.”

Cera nodded and responded, “Sounds simple enough, though I can see how many might run into issues.  It isn’t easy to sneak your own mana into someone else after all.”

“For the locator spell, you need to be able to hold a link in your mind to the item at all times.  First, you create a unique mana pattern that you place into the item.  Afterward, you keep a link to it in your mind.  If you do it properly, you can feel the linkage and follow it, but it uses more mana the further from you it gets,” Falron explained the next bit of magic.

Cera frowned before remarking, “That sounds like I’d accidentally break it tons while practicing.  I guess I’ll go without, at least for now.  I think I’ll focus on combining manasight with other passively maintained spells and see if I can get them all working together.”

Putting her words into action, she swiftly recreated the mana eye before trying to also maintain a small light spell.  Unfortunately, it appeared that, at least for now, the manasight used too much of her subconscious processing power, and she needed to improve.

This was immensely irritating to Cera, as in her prior existence, she could easily maintain countless constructs at once, without any strain.  She did, however, have the advantage of a great number of alterations to herself in that life, which made it easier to process everything.

In this life, however, she still had to rely on natural growth, rather than artificial enhancements, so she’d have to slowly work on improving.  As such, she simply groaned and resumed her efforts.  Even by the end of the day, however, she found herself unable to combine both manasight and another subconsciously maintained spell.  Fortunately, she didn’t find anyone in need of healing during her daily trip to the village, and simply continued practicing during that time.

Before heading to bed, Cera once again created the mana-transfer construct so that she wouldn’t waste her regeneration overnight and would instead store it within her body.  The following day was much the same, with her still unable to keep anything running at the same time as manasight without actively maintaining it.

The next day, however, she was finally able to keep a simple light spell going at the same time, causing her to celebrate by taking some time off to brush her tail for enjoyment.  Soon after, however, she was back to her practice.

After an uneventful trip to the village, she managed a second light spell, and then a third as she went to prepare dinner.  She paused for a few minutes to dismiss all the light spells before rebuilding her mana transfer construct, finding herself pleased as she could maintain it as well as the manasight.

Cera did, however, run into a bit of an issue shortly after, however.  She’d been placing the mana eye on her hand to avoid getting too much feedback from it, but this time, she happened to move it in a way that caught Falron in its line of sight.  In the short moment before her spell collapsed, she was briefly blinded by the intensity of mana contained within his systems.

Fortunately, her mana transfer construct was unaffected, but she did lose focus on her manasight due to the sudden flare in her feedback.  She shook her head and brought it up to Falron, only to find that he thought she already knew.  Apparently, he expected her to have noticed almost immediately, as he expected her to copy him and place the mana eye on her head where it would share field of view with her physical eyes.

In the end, she supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised, given what she’d seen during the goblin attack.  She simply hoped that she’d be able to do similar, in time.  The ability to store mana within her physical body was already a good step, though.  She was up to being able to store multiple days’ worth of her regeneration within herself at once, then pull from that reservoir as needed.

After shaking her head in annoyance at herself, Cera resumed her practice.  Eventually, dinner time came, and she assisted Falron in making food before they ate together.  Not long after, she headed to bed, thinking about the future and what she hoped to accomplish.

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