After the specter attack, Sarah had petitioned Arthur for an improved ki practiced schedule. Arthur allowed her a surprising amount of jurisdiction for ki training. He was wise for such a young commander.

It was with no small amount of joy that she cut Drill Instructor Ormanno’s physical training in half, to make more time for ki training. In the morning, during the period that used to be Ormanno’s, soldiers would spar with normal ki to learn better manipulation and increase their ki volume. After noon, they would meditate.

Sarah had explained to them her theories on intents, and the ability to form stronger intents by combining multiple smaller intents. The soldiers had listened, enraptured, and threw themselves into the arduous process of creating an intent and learning how to coax it into ki. Undoubtedly, the power of the separation mage was vivid in their minds.

Sarah passed her meditation sessions remembering the feel of the mold colony’s speed ki passing through her legs, allowing her to kick goblins to death faster than they could react. As she examined her memories with newfound knowledge, Sarah realized that the mold colony’s speed intent was most likely a second-tier or higher intent, which explained why she had little success copying it until now.

So much time wasted, she complained.

She shifted gears and mapped out different possible paths to acquiring a high-tier speed intent. Eventually, she came to a clear conclusion. I can’t go wrong by creating a velocity intent. It’ll speed me up, while also helping form speed intent in the future.

And so, Sarah meditated. And meditated. It took her multiple days to form the intent, and that was only because she had memories of the mold colony’s speed intent to examine. Sarah wasn’t a genius, like Sasha, or even Isabela. She merely had gotten lucky with being given chances to feel how a more experienced alien entity wielded ki.

When her velocity intent finally formed, Sarah stood up in glee, only to fall over as her limbs moved faster than she thought. She spent the next half-hour tripping over herself again and again, to the amusement of all watchers. Immediately, the pitfall of her velocity intent became clear: it improved her speed, but not her dexterity or reaction time.

Sarah thought back to how the separation mage had spread their intent too far, and decided keeping her intent focused was a good thing. She had barely any martial training, and so re-training to account for faster movements wouldn’t be a big deal.

Following that thought, Sarah asked for private lessons from Drake Skallagrim, the quartermaster and cold weapons expert. The man was surprisingly enthusiastic, quoting how he wouldn’t miss such a chance for the world.

Their spears clashed as Drake once again deflected her thrust. Sweat ran down the back of her neck as she pushed velocity ki into her arms, stabbing five times per second. Still, the Swedish man twirled his spear like a staff, nudging each thrust just enough to brush past him. Finally, he lunged forward, feet spread out and body lowered close to the ground.

His spear closed the gap to her in a split second, snaking past her spear and coming to a stop in front of her chest. Then, he relaxed and stood up straight. No sign of exhaustion marred his appearance.

“So, what went wrong, missy?” he questioned.

A sigh escaped her lips. “I misjudged your range of motion, and I didn’t take full advantage of mine. I need to understand lunges better.”

Drake smirked. “Exactly. Now give me sixty spear lunges as fast as you can.” She immediately settled into form and lunged.

“Farther! FASTER!” he yelled non-stop, pushing Sarah to her limits.

“This is too much,” she panted in exertion. Her muscles were ripping under the stress.

“Use your healing power then! You should never have the problem of physically being tired!” Sarah mentally slapped herself and immediately relieved her burning muscles with a wave of green ki. Instead of juggling physical and ki exertion, now Sarah had to focus on simultaneously working regeneration ki and velocity ki into her muscles.

Such lessons continued every day during the evening, after normal ki practice. Soon, Drake started wielding different weapons during spars, giving Sarah an intimate grasp of the advantages of a spear. Rapid progress was a given, and even Drake was positively impressed by her growth.

One day, during afternoon ki meditation, Peter stood up and shouted in joy. He released a blast of red ki at the ground, which left a deep gouge in the dirt floor. He had formed slicing intent, with inspiration taken from the separation mage’s own intent, and Sarah’s advice to go more specific.

That night, the whole squad hosted a small party. Marilee and Peter sang karaoke, others talked about the absurdness recently striking the world, and Sarah got to know many of her previous sparring partners in deeper detail. For the first time since arriving at the military base of Pebbletown, Sarah felt accepted.

At some point, Erica and her band of scientists crashed the party, adding some much needed variety to the participants. They took out alcohol from who-knows-where, and no-one questioned the obvious abuse of laboratory funding.

For some reason, even when incredibly drunk, Erica kept Sarah from trying out any alcoholic drink. That turned out for the best, as it fell down to Sarah to drag the inconsolable drunk blonde genius down the street to their house.

The couch creaked under the weight of Erica’s body as Sarah set her down. The intoxicated girl leaned on her side to stare at her.

“How are you taking this so well?” Erica asked suddenly.

Sarah pulled up a stool. “I don’t know what you mean,” she replied.

“How- how are you so calm? You saw people die right in front of you! The world as we know it is falling apart, and civilization is being threatened!” the girl ranted.

The words sent a burst of sadness down Sarah’s spine. The floor looked particularly interesting at the moment.

“Ever since I woke up in the mold colony, this world has been all I’ve known. Death and fighting is normal for me,” she uttered. Pity immediately flashed across Erica’s face. “And, those brave soldiers died protecting those who couldn’t protect themselves. There’s nothing to regret.”

The old-fashioned grandfather clock chimed once.

“You should always feel bad when people die,” Erica repeated softly.

“Is that what you’ve been taught? Because that seems irrational to me. As long as the choices I made were right, I won’t burden myself,” Sarah said with uncharacteristic seriousness.

The elephant in the room had to be addressed. “You don’t have an innate sense of morality, do you?”

“No, I don’t. I lost that with my memories. All I have left is my rationality.” Sarah left it at that, and went to her room. Although she said she wouldn’t feel bad, Sarah couldn’t help but feel some pain at Erica’s disdain. She cared a surprising amount for what others thought of her.

After all, if a person loses their personal goals and identity, suddenly what others make of them becomes significantly more important.

***

Sarah walked into Arthur’s office. The man kept the room to an impeccable standard of cleanliness, with none of the stacks of paperwork stereotypically assumed to positions such as his. The brown-haired man sat leisurely in his chair, and motioned for her to sit down on a stool on the other side of the desk.

“Hello Sarah. How are you doing?” he opened.

“Hello Arthur. I’m doing well,” she replied, leaving it at that. The Colonel sighed, resting his forehead on his palm.

“You should ask Erica for more social interactions training,” he noted. “Anyway, I’m sure you’re confused as to why I called you here.” She nodded, and he continued. “You did a spectacular job during the specter attack on Houston, and the military wishes to thank you. Private First Class Sarah Clay, you have been rewarded the position of Supernatural Specialist, which will put you on the same rank as Sergeant Kim, your previous commanding officer.”

It felt like Arthur’s words entered one ear and left through the other. “I’m confused,” she remarked. “I don’t think I’m ready for a command role, and I don’t think I deserve this.”

That made Arthur smile. He explained, “Don’t underestimate the impact of your lessons on using ki, and how many lives you saved by taking down that separation mage. You’ve done more than enough. And don’t worry, you won’t have to command a unit. Your new duties will simply include training soldiers in ki and mana use, what you are already doing.”

Then, he suddenly become more serious. “Sarah. Part of the reason why Headquarters is giving you this position is in the hope that you will study the mana you recently gained, and figure out a method to spread it. Although the chance of you succeeding is small, the potential impact is too big for you to not try. Accepting this position will put a lot of pressure on you. Will you be able to handle it?”

That was a challenge if she ever heard one. “Yes, sir!” she saluted sloppily, but seriously.

“I’m glad. Take this folder with you before you go, Specialist Sarah. Dismissed.” The manila folder was thin, and Sarah wondered what was in it. She peeked at the insides as she left the room. There were four sheets of paper. One of them contained basic information the military had gathered on her previous life. The other three sheets did the same for her mother, father, and boyfriend.

Sarah had lived in a block of houses that had been taken over by the mold colony. Everyone she knew was presumed to be dead. Perhaps some of them were still alive, preserved as zombies, but there was little chance they would be saved. Sarah herself might have to kill them if she encountered them during a raid.

She wished she felt worse than she did.

A bell rang, signaling the end of lunch and the start of afternoon practice. Glad for the distraction, she zipped down the hallways and arrived at the practice fields only a minute late.

Like Arthur said, I can do much greater good with mana. I should focus on that today, she thought.

As such, when the soldiers in the field started meditating in the hopes of forming an intent, Sarah delved inwards in search of her mana. Ki loved to move, swirl, and form cycles. In a way, ki was like a flexible cardiovascular system that could extend outside the body.

Mana was completely different. It didn’t naturally flow. In fact, it didn’t even have a physical presence like ki did. Sarah couldn’t pinpoint the exact position of her mana like she could with her ki. Her mana was like a cloud of fog, generally centered around her head, but removed enough from the physical world for its position to be in flux.

Sarah was reminded of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and the probability-wave like nature of particles.

Mana flowed through her body like a gas would diffuse, sending bursts of chilling down the path of any mana flow. Trying to cycle mana like ki took a huge amount of effort, and left her body freezing cold.

“Hey, sorry to disturb you, but could you see if my skin feels cold?” she asked her neighbor. The man instantly focused on the symbol on her shoulder.

“Yes, sergeant!” he replied. “Your skin feels normal, sergeant!”

Sarah felt uncomfortable on the receiving end of military-speak, but she refrained from asking the soldier to talk casually. She understood the importance of treating ranks seriously, after all.

So the chill from mana is more of a mental illusion, and not an actual chill, she concluded. It matched with her understanding of mana as a more abstract form of ki. After another hour of manipulating her mana, she felt confident in her understanding of the energy. Surprisingly, her practice manipulating ki transferred nicely to mana, despite the differences in the energies.

Now’s the big test, she thought grimly. Sarah isolated a puff of mana, formed her regeneration intent in her mind, and pressed it against the mana with her will. Immediately, the mana rejected the intent. She tried again, with the same result.

Sarah wasn’t immediately deterred. While forming a concentrated enough intent was hard, the true difficulty came in merging it into ki, and presumably mana as well. As such, it was natural for her to fail initially.

When she failed to make significant progress after the whole day, however, Sarah knew that her intent wasn’t suited to mana. Perhaps, if she spent the whole week pushing hard, she could form regeneration mana, but she got the sense that it would be significantly weaker than regeneration ki, if not useless.

Conclusion: Ki intents don’t mesh well with mana. They are hard to combine with mana, and likely weaker even when successful. Taking into account the mana intents I’ve seen so far -purity, separation, sloth, charity- it seems like mana intents are better as mental concepts, a.k.a. not entirely physical.