Sun barely penetrating through the leaves told us noon had just passed. About two or three miles remained between ourselves and Yhrack, an hour if we continued at the current pace. However while tKlor’t’t forced his spawn into compliance, they still acted uneasy; were the undead to be taken into the conflict at Yhrack with the Khtraal and Iyrkraal, things would descend into chaos. So the army of the dead congregated together to wait for my return, with Clavi and the Freshmen hopping into Inventory.

Unburdened by the painfully slow zombies, Khthju lead the way, our speed almost doubling.

When we reached the site of conflict, the fighting already peaked and began to slow, but the roar of battle continued on at a ferocious rate. Our group marched north to meet Kugu’s forces early, which had already intended to strike before the other western horde belonging to Rhukrn. Spending time on our own battle, it came as no surprise we couldn’t manage to return beforehand to me. Deviating slightly from tKlor’t’t’s plan of having us back even sooner, I doubted the plan would go awry; that glutton no doubt planned for such contingencies.

Even if we did return a bit late, there was still plenty of work to do.

The hyperactivity from leveling up settled over the course of an hour and some of traveling; though I did still feel a bit on the antsy side. My vigorous fighting style subsided though, and went for pure efficiency. If I felt like it, I could grind for half a day straight; but if I didn’t, I wouldn’t. As the experience ecstasy evaporated, the tedium began to set in.

I continued on, not half-heartedly, but with full force; trying to just get it all over with. Sure there’s RADICAL FREEEEEEDOM but the rewards for listening seemed kind of nice.

Resigning the body to autopilot, it was a good chance to rest up mentally.

I spent the time wondering what my new spell from becoming Level 10 was. Did I get it automatically, would the desired spell have to be imagined, would there be a sudden flash of inspiration, or Armok forbid, were spells exempted from my Level Ups?

The last didn’t seem likely, given how faithfully most capabilities were replicated. While oddities cropped up in relation to their other possible applications, they were never lacking the functions possessed in Underworld of Armok. There were just no hints as to what my new spell was.

Woops, broke my sword. Good thing I have more.

When I had first arrived, the spells I knew were selected during character creation, they just needed to be tried out to be brought to the forefront of the mind. However merely thinking about the spell didn’t summon the spell shape, I had to have intent to cast as well. So it wasn’t like I could just list off all the spells I could remember, hoping to resonate with one. The spell just instinctively formed with its various rituals when desired…

That was it! The spell shapes instinctively appeared when I wanted them to, the magic of the world required me to desire something! Similarly, my stat improvements at each level weren’t consciously chosen, but allotted according to how I felt I should improve at the time. The processes were based on my own subconscious decisions. I didn’t need to test out every spell, just the best ones, those which were the obvious choices. The subconscious wasn’t some mythical beast that would choose an incredibly dumb option, or at least I hoped that was the case.

Then I realized while not incredibly dumb, I did not always tend towards the most optimal path. Sure I logicked my way to whatever I wanted, but that didn’t always line up with the most immediate goals. Knowing myself, I let out a sigh of exasperation as I thought about what spell had likely formed.

“”

As expected, all of a sudden many of the goblins around me seemed cottony. Thinking of what Tagalong Girl said in the past, I wouldn’t exactly call them clouds, there were intricate linkages between the masses. Of course, as always, this is an approximation for you non-magical mortals; the connections were intertwined directly, by proxy—mutually exclusive ideas for those not looking at things through the lens of magic.

At first, I could not sense my own magic. It was as if my cottony fibers would not register themselves in order not to create a crazy feedback loop. Experimentally distorting the spell shape, which remained persistent like and rather than simply on like , the spell collapsed a few times before I successfully altered the ‘filter’.

Fuzziness stronger than those from the goblin instantly surrounded the entirety of my magical perception. Since it wasn’t an actual form of sight(though it was limited to my cone of vision, plus about a foot around my body), I could see despite the obstruction. The white noise generated did give everything a quality of sameness that made things a bit harder to distinguish from each other, even including the air.

With a mind that had practice controlling hundreds of creatures with incredibly poor feedback, it was only a trivial annoyance. I instantly recognized that the haze was due to registering magic from inside my own body of magic. The perpetual screen slightly distorted the outside, but otherwise the image was accurate.

Practicing my vision with activated and adjusting for the shifts in my own magic, I realized that this was probably what was causing Tagalong Girl headaches. Just because it could easily be overcome in my case didn’t mean it was the same for her; I was quite the weird one after all. Perhaps I would be able to give her some tips on how to utilize the ability more effectively, although the other areas of training were more important at the moment.

As I slit another goblin’s throat, I realized that magic acted quite finicky in death.

Before musing on that particular observation, there needed to be a better understanding of how exactly worked, and what it registered. Due to the fact I couldn’t exactly control the mana of others, it seemed like I would have to observe the movements of my own mana, and hopefully the observer effect wouldn’t be too noticeable in the situation. I naturally began with casting on myself; the blood was making my hair a bit mangy.

The sensation of magic is similar to that of tangled threads, yet each one is only a point. Like the wave-particle duality, mana seemed to be more of a connection-vector field duality. Using caused a small depletion in my vectors—each point actually held many bits of data instead of just direction and magnitude, but most of it remained undecipherable at the time. It could be assumed that the vectors were representative of my mana. Or maybe they could be described as stuffed noodles with multiple flavors of filling, or a choose-your-own-adventure book with illustrations demonstrating their components.

Oddly enough, upon completion of the spell, a new ‘magic field’ was created at the site where the spell was about to take effect. It had a resemblance to the spell shape being formed, however I could clearly tell they were not one and the same. Contained within the soul, the spell shape had no truly defined position. It was almost as if the spell shape projected the image for which the magic actually followed.

A connection also formed between myself and the magic field of , although it quickly vanished as the spell expended itself. The strength of the vector field seemed to indicate the level of mana, but the meaning of the connection eluded me. Connections within my own magic field were much stronger than those in the goblins, but I couldn’t tell if that was just a result of or an accurate assessment. If it did hold water, then it could be assumed to mean maximum mana, which seemed like a sensible hypothesis. Unfortunately it would likely be some time before my mana rose—then again, that was also what I thought about leveling up a bit ago; though the situation might be changing by a more drastic amount this time around.

acted in a different fashion, with a much higher connection, and actual formed a magic field that overlapped with me, as well as an almost disconnected magic field where the hand was located. It’s hard to describe how the presence manifested itself in , the ‘hand’ itself had no presence, only an effect. Maybe I should call it ghost hand, because it was spooky action at a distance.

The third type discovered were found in the projectile type spells a la . From it, I learned that the magic field could totally lack a connection. As soon as the spell had been cast and the dart began to move, it separated to become a foreign body. Unlike , the dart also lacked a great deal of the vector strength; it was almost imperceptible. This was an incredibly strange revelation; a construct of magic that would barely be registered by ? Surely it should have been easier to view than the magic potential of the goblins.

The final distinct effect of magic I discovered was through the use of Negative Energy. Unlike spells, summoning raw Negative Energy only excited my own magic potential. The loose strands moved mana to where the Negative Energy formed, pushing out the energy from them. Piping mana to the point of creation, the loss seemed to quickly equalize across the body’s reservoir of mana.

As for the actual mana, it didn’t appear to be one homogenous mixture; which had been hinted at by picking apart death and decay aspects from within Negative Energy. The categories didn’t seem to be absolute; even if the type didn’t match, extra effort would ‘push’ it through, like dough through a colander to reshape it.

This brought some confusion about as to if magic was actually ‘typed’ according to its abilities or composition, but it also served as a bit of a revelation. The reason why after multiple uses of death or decay specific energies became more difficult was because a larger portion had to be converted, and the concentration of the aspect decreased.

So if I could work on my ability to agglomerate, or find a way to make the type change proceed more smoothly, then Negative Energy’s utility would surely rise. Not to mention the other possibilities, now that I knew what to look for, I could try to find if there were locations in the spell shapes that required this sort of transformation and could be further optimized.

Though as comfortable as I was with many of my spells, the battlefield was still a bit too chaotic to be messing around with the delicate structures of spell shapes. It didn’t take much thought tearing up the Rhukrn, but it wasn’t quite to the level where I could do any science that required finesse.

Instead, I set those sorts of tests aside for the moment; choosing to simply leave active to get used to it. Being able to intuitively recognize what could be seen and integrate it with your own knowledge is on an entirely different level than simple interpretation. Besides, I seemed to be accumulating senses like candy on Halloween; if I wasn't intimately familiar with them, it would be impossible to keep them all active simultaneously.

In the new haze of , I then tried delving into what my first Minor Perk was. I suspected it would be much like the manner in which had been chosen. There were many boons available, and it really was difficult for me to figure out which one it would be; you could never have enough perks.

My {Negative Energy} didn’t change. Neither had {Fear Aura} improved, which was a pity. {Ancient Memories} was difficult to test on the battlefield, but I didn't think it had been improved. {Life Drain} only really showed its usefulness on small scales for a long period of time, but even as a skill I did like the sound of it had not experienced any benefits.

Then I realized what felt different since before the battle. The souls around me being drawn in were more pure.

{Soul Control}’s [Soul Preservation]?

Sure it can serve as a foundation for the future, but it wasn't helpful with expendable minions! At this level, the benefits were practically negligible!

Ahhh, I've been gypped again! Subconscious, why did you pick this skill now? Couldn't you have waited?

It seemed I had a long road of slow levels and inefficient resource allocation ahead of me.