Kaltyr cut the flow of mana to the disk-shaped rock, allowing her surroundings to return their somewhat darkness. She couldn’t stand using that magical tool in the rain because without shadows, within the nigh pure white magical illumination, every drop of water appeared more like drawings, as though they were sketched onto the very fabric of reality with a pencil. It gave her a headache since words like “black and white photography” came to mind, which she didn’t seem to be allowed to know, for whatever reason. The first three words of that phrase were comprehensible, but if read alongside the last word, they lost all meaning. It was strange, confusing, irritating, and befuddling.

With her right arm only half functioning, and a wound on her right shin that made walking difficult, Kaltyr had no choice but to turn around and return to her territory. If she came across another enemy as powerful as that praying mantis, she’d likely be doomed. Sure, she could probably use the same trick with the magical tool that lit up her surroundings, but that would only get her so far now that she was so heavily injured.

The girl panted hard, still feeling as though she were asphyxiating from overdrawing her stamina. It was going to be a fun trek back.

……

“I’ve been paying close attention to their progress. They’ve done very well.”

“Indeed, sir. The decision to introduce assistance earlier than planned seems to have only boosted the ratings. Only one has died so far and the rest are progressing very smoothly.”

“Mmmm. It seems I was wrong to want the subjects to suffer a bit more for the sake of obtaining a hardcore reputation. Although the audiences still don’t understand just how large the gap between the subjects and themselves is, they’re enjoying the show more than I predicted. I thought things would only really pick up after at least a few weeks.”

“Quite right. The attention retention is high right now, and I was always opposed to your idea of presenting the extreme difficulty from the get-go because a good portion of the audiences would be put off by it and avoid participation. However, with how things are going now, the fans are too distracted by the potential awesomeness and will buy in as soon as the products are released. Even the weaker people, who won’t achieve anything. By then, they’ll have already spent the money before realizing that they bit more than they could chew.”

“So calculating. You make it sound like we’re scamming them.”

“Sor—… That is not my intent, sir. It’s simply my psychological analysis and speculation.”

“I’m aware and of the same opinion. It’s not a problem. Now, onto the main topic of today: their progress shouldn’t be delayed anymore. I want them to be pushed toward the next objective as soon as possible. A few of the subjects are already closing in on the various goodies sprinkled across the lands, but most of them are not. Only the fan favorites, like Zilpah and Kaltyr, seem to be on the right track by getting more into exploration. Even then, they’re severely injured or lack the proper equipment, so have them be directly taught a few things to speed things up.”

“Sir, my colleagues and I—”

“I don’t care. Get it done.”

“Yes, well—”

“We need to maintain the current momentum. Don’t argue with me.”

“SIR! We agree! I was only going to say that my colleagues and I came to the same conclusion. Currently, though the human subject who showed signs of suicidal thoughts ultimately still died in combat after the intervention, we believe they’re all prepared to accomplish more. Additionally, with how popular some of them are, like Kaltyr and Zilpah, if one of them dies while attempting to achieve greater heights, they’ll cause a storm of exposure for us. The audiences will be much more attached to those who survive.”

“Err, okay. I understand. That will be all for today. You’re dismissed.”

……

[Welcome back, Kaltyr. That is a good corpse you have behind you.]

Sir Quiggly-Do the Fifth’s darkness puppet—which didn’t seem to get wet in the heavy rain—hovered above the cold campfire at the center of her clearing as a small flock of birds pecked at the corpses beneath her storage lean-to. The beasts didn’t seem to be aware of the puppet’s presence at all, or were ignoring it. However, they couldn’t ignore Kaltyr when she skewered one of them with the throw of a spear. The regular birds took to the skies while the few magical beasts among the group flew at her.

The girl was not amused by their efforts to kill her and wasted no time playing around. She dropped the praying mantis corpse she’d dragged there, then she grabbed a second spear from her bag, which became a blur as she infused it with mana and heartlessly destroyed her attackers. She put no effort into preserving the structure of their corpses and simply swatted all the little bastards out of the air within a few seconds. No remorse. No hesitation.

She sighed at the mess, preparing to drop her spear and drag the corpses away, when suddenly, a mana signature flared from somewhere in the canopy to her right. A pencil-thin bolt of white lightning crashed down onto her limp right arm, but soon dispersed across her body, leaving no damage. Kaltyr growled as she cocked her head back to see a black bird sitting on a branch, whose feathers were streaked with bright patterns zigzagging down its body. The attack had stung, but her Body Mana Reinforcement had no trouble brushing it off; the bird was only Life Level 3.

The lightning crow looked to be in its element, so to speak, as rain swirled and wind howled around its body, giving the creature an intimidating air. It began channeling mana for another spell, but Kaltyr was having none of it. She’d been dreading the thought of how long it would take to naturally heal her arm when the damned bird had surprise attacked her. Had she not reacted in time to defend against the lightning, her arm would probably require much longer to return to a functioning state. With a deep grunt, Kaltyr left-handedly threw her spear at the bird. It moved to dodge, but its wing was clipped, so it fell to the ground. Then like a reaper, Kaltyr kicked off the grass toward the grounded bird—which was essentially crippled without the ability to fly—and crushed it to death with a single stomp.

Water flowed down her face into her eyes, but she shook it away, causing her long hair to dance briefly before settling down again. She decided to retrieve the spear later, which was probably stuck in a tree somewhere far away, and turned to the puppet that still hovered above the firepit.

“Didn’t you say that there are only six elements? I don’t remember lightning being one of them.”

[Nope.]

Kaltyr frowned, but didn’t argue. It was right. It told her about the six elements she already figured out, and that the sky’s colors were related, but not that they were the only elements.

“Whatever.” The girl kicked the lightning crow’s splattered remains aside before trudging to the mantis corpse, dragging it to the center of the clearing next to the firepit, then trudging back to her lean-to and collapsing onto the fluffy animals skins within. Her mana continued to course through her despite the battle being over for the sake of numbing her pain.

[Channeling mana through injuries not only numbs pain, but also speeds up the healing process slightly. So, keep it up.]

Sir Quiggly-Do the Fifth’s puppet sat at one end of her lean-to, offering knowledge.

“I figured.” She turned her head so that her eyes met the puppet’s…or at least where eyes would go if it had any. “Magical beasts obtain the ability to cast spells at level 3.”

[Correct.]

The girl pursed her lips slightly.

“While I won’t naturally learn anything, disregarding Magic Sense.”

[Correct.]

“And the beasts learning spells at level 3 is just one of the things The System Wishes You Good Fucking Luck hinted at with the mentions of liking the number three?”

[Correct.]

“Wow, three ‘Correct’s in a row. I’m on a roll.”

[Correct.]

“Don’t patronize me.”

Kaltyr lightly threw her pillow—which she’d made by sewing together animal skins filled with feathers—at the darkness puppet, but it simply passed through the thing without any resistance and landed outside the lean-to…under the rain.

“Damn you.”

[You threw it.]

“I didn’t expect it to go through you.”

[Correct.]

Strangely, the girl sighed contently. The banter was welcomed—pleasant, even—and it distracted her from the pain a little… The pain from having her arm sliced open and her leg nicked. Kaltyr didn’t fully understand it, but chatting with Sir Quiggly-Do the Fifth after so long without even seeing its shadow—so to speak, because its puppet now seemed to be entirely shadows—left her satisfied. She didn’t worry about what to do next, the countless beasts wanting to gut and devour her, or the potentially existent malicious people of Manic discovering her. She simply…relaxed.

“Are you helping me relax with magic?”

[Correct.]

“Okay, that got old after the fifth time.”

Kaltyr sat up and stretched as much as she could within the confines of her little shelter, undisturbed by the entity’s admission. It was only helping her, so there wasn’t any need to be fearful or paranoid of its mysterious abilities.

[I could have said ‘Correct’ again after your last statement, but I did not.]

The girl gave a small smile. “Correct. And I appreciated it when you didn’t.” She seated herself in the lotus position before donning a serious expression. “So, I don’t think I discovered enough to warrant another visit for stuff to be explained. Is something going on?”

[You are…right, about the first part.] The puppet shook its head. [Not the second.]

“Good. As you can tell, I’m injured. If there was, like, a hoard of beasts heading by way or a powerful enemy that rose up nearby, I’d be screwed.”

[Nothing like that, fortunately for you. Though, I am here to facilitate your recovery. Or at least, to teach you how to heal yourself faster.]

Kaltyr’s eyebrow lifted, her curiosity peaked.

“Go on. I imagine there’s a lot more that can be done to heal myself faster than solely channeling mana through the wounds.”

The shadowy puppet nodded, and its next few words caused the girl’s jaw to drop.

[Have you considered the possibility of brewing potions or concocting pills?]

……

To Kaltyr’s disbelief it was actually possible, with the limited resources available to someone stuck in the middle of a forest, to concoct medicine. The process was actually much simple than anything she would have predicted, similarly to how easy enchanting was. If it weren’t for Sir Quiggly-Do the Fifth’s assistance, she would have been stuck resting her arm and leg for who-knows-how-many days before returning to her tip-top shape. Though, Kaltyr had a feeling that healing back in her past life wasn’t so simple as just resting. Something told her that with the severity of her injuries, she might never have regained the precise control over her arm that she had before the praying mantis’ sneak attack.

After causing Kaltyr’s jaw to drop with its question, Sir Quiggly-Do the Fifth brought Kaltyr south of her base to the outcropping of rock, where she gathered the saplings necessary to craft her arsenal of spears. The rain still poured heavily on the girl, and the winds still blew her sopping wet hair into her face on many occasions, but the excitement she felt knowing that she’d soon learn to concoct medicine made ignoring the weather an effortless task.

The puppet instructed her to find a sharp rock that could fit in her hand, infuse said rock, pick out a bed of stone big enough to lie on, then start hacking away at a single spot on it. The lass was perplexed at what she’d just been told to do, and couldn’t quite wrap her mind around what stabbing a rock with a smaller rock had to do with medicine, but the promise of making medicine out in the wilderness where she had no contact with other humans soon took over. She infused the rock she held with as much mana as it could hold, then began hacking away. Though, it felt strange to be destroying something using only one of her arms while the other hung limply at her side.

After striking the large bed of stone with her infused rock enough times, Kaltyr was rewarded with a depression large enough to fit her fist into, and a pile of loose debris that used to fill that depression. Tired, she looked up at the shadow puppet with an eyebrow raised in a silent question. She doubted it wanted her to gather the rock rubble as ingredients for whatever potions or pills it had in mind, but anything was possible, she had supposed.

[Continue until you can fit your head into the hole.] It had told her, resulting in an expression of disbelief. But she continued just as instructed, monotonously hacking away at the stone bed, keeping herself busy by practicing the manipulation of her Magic Sense’s range of awareness and wondering just how much the native fauna was going to eat away at her pile of corpses waiting to phantabilize while she was away.

It was at least half an hour until Kaltyr succeeded in her given task of widening the depression until her entire head fit inside, and she had blushed in embarrassment when Sir Quiggly-Do the Fifth laughed at her for making sure of its depth the way she did. She pouted, asking the small puppet of what to do next.

[For starters, smoothen the bottom so that there are as few bumps as possible.]

By then, the hole she’d dug into the rock was full of rainwater and she really didn’t feel like digging through it, nor did she wish to have to bother emptying it with her hands. She had asked the mysterious entity for advice, and it stated that she was already capable of using magical means to empty the hole she dug, but also that she could just dig through the water.

Thus, the girl had gotten to thinking on the former option it mentioned. She lacked any skills that could assist her in the task, but did she actually need any? Kaltyr experimented with moving the water with her mind like she did to the magical essence in her environment. No luck there, unsurprisingly. She moved on to her next guess, which involved using her mana to control the water. At first, she infused the water with mana before attempting to lift it through the connection she built, but that, too, was wasted effort. Somehow, there was a fundamental difference between commanding a strand of mana to leave her body and infusing something… The answer was on the tip of her tongue.

Kaltyr had struggled with that difference for a while until she realized that solely contemplating about an issue wasn’t always the best way to figure something out. She then extended a strand of mana out through her finger into the water, but didn’t use it as a pipe to pump more mana through, instead just purposelessly moving that strand around in the liquid. That strand of mana remained intact, not leaving any of her energy behind in the water because she willed it not to, and was unable to interact with the liquid. Despite trying to, she had not been able to stir the water by simply concentrating enough, like what she could do with magical essence.

The girl sat atop the rock bed, staring down into the small pool of water, wind and rain still pounding against her small frame. She realized once again that she was getting nowhere, so chose to recoup on mana while she thought. After closing her eyes and focusing her mind, a whirlpool of magical essence formed around her and flowed into her lungs with every breath, as was commanded by her will. She was essentially using solely her mind to control a fundamental aspect of the world to suit her needs. Her will controlled a magical part of the world.

A part of the world…

An aspect of it…

A single…element, of a whole.

Kaltyr’s eyes slowly opened, sparkling with enlightenment as she pictured a ladder with only two rungs. In her mind, she stood beneath that ladder, too short to reach the first rung, called “magical essence”, even if she jumped. However, after thinking long and hard about her predicament, the girl figured out that if she focused her resolve—her intent, her will—hard enough, she could materialize a force that lifted her onto that first rung called “magical essence”. There, sitting cross-legged on the magical essence rung, she refined mana, gaining a whole new power. A much more potent power than just her mental energy. With it, she could run faster, jump farther, and hit harder… But she couldn’t reach that mysterious second rung, whose identity eluded her.

That was, however, until a friendly spirit appeared to guide her. While sitting on the second rung of that ladder, heavy rains began to fall, and strong winds pushed her around. The guide told her only as much as it could—explaining that she was definitely capable of reaching that second rung through the power she gained after stepping atop the first one.

The girl’s eyes were open, but her sight had been elsewhere. After Kaltyr discovered the answer, her mind returned to the outside world and she extended a strand of mana into the small pool of water once more. The hydrogen and oxygen atoms bound together by fundamental forces of nature—whatever that meant—was no longer so difficult to see the nature of. The liquid that gave rise to life and stood in-between all extremes, the substance that once felt like just another thing…was not so anymore. The water came to life under Kaltyr’s urging, no longer taking the shape of the depression she carved into the rock bed, but instead taking the shape she willed it to, with the help of her mana. She had not infused the water, only connecting it to herself via the single strand.

Within a few breaths’ time, the small pool of water was no more, left only to be an empty hole…at least, until the rain filled it again.

But Kaltyr ignored that the storm raging above attempted to wipe away her progression as she turned, eyes full of wonder and awe, eyes that saw through the secrets of the world, eyes that pierced through the fog that the storm brought upon the lands around her. She had gaped at Sir Quiggly-Do the Fifth, questions about who that mysterious entity was circulating in her head. About what else it was capable of if it could so easily guide her toward seeing the truth of the world. As far as she knew, she’d only been on Manic for seven days by then, yet with the help of the being beside her, she seemed to take one large step closer to knowing all.

“Was…was this what you wanted to teach me, Sir Quiggly-Do the Fifth?” She had asked.

The adoration she showed through her eyes was even enough to cause the mysterious entity to be slightly uncomfortable. It responded simply.

[No. I had you dig a cauldron to use for refining pills within. The basic manipulation of water was simply a consequence of it raining, requiring you to empty the cauldron. Now, go on. Smoothen the cauldron’s bottom like I instructed.]

Kaltyr felt the urge to punch something after that, but resumed to her given task.