Her head ached. Well, everything ached, but her head was even worse. Still, if she was hurting, she should at least be alive, right? She tried to open her eyes, but was somehow unable to do it. She tried again, concentrating as much as she could and finally, with an excruciating slowness, her eyes opened. She was still on the ground in her house from what she could see, and she tried to get up, but her muscles weren’t responding. She tried to turn her head, that was strangely facing up, but nothing worked. Dammit what was happening? She then got an idea, she couldn’t speak, but it wasn’t actually necessary, so she enunciated in her mind.

”Status”

After a very long second – it was supposed to be instantaneous – informations started flooding her mind.

[Liliei Sil

Race: Analysing

Level: 3

Abilities:

-Main Ability:

1) Tendency to be harder to notice. Ability to use mana to reinforce concealment and reduce the chance of being seen.

-Secondary Ability:

1) Burst of movement tends to be faster and more precise.

Stats:

-Agility: 6

-Dexterity: 5

-Perception: 2

-Mana Pool: 1

Skills: None]

[A Class B change has been detected, access to second Main Ability has been advanced.

Race has been modified.

Old Stats have been modified to relevant ones.]

[Liliei Sil

Race: Mana Spirit

Level: 3

Abilities:

-Main Ability 1:

1) Tendency to be harder to notice. Ability to use mana to reinforce concealment and reduce the chance of being seen.

-Secondary Ability 1:

1) Burst of movement tends to be faster and more precise.

-Main Ability 2:

1) Increase efficiency at manipulating own mana, and allow faster reconstruction.

-Secondary Ability 2:

1) Increase perception of mana.

Stats:

Own Mana Manipulation:

-Speed: 5

-Precision: 4

-Intent Potency: 1

-Perception: 2

-Mana Pool: 2

Skills: None]

The instant the second wave of information hit her and her Abilities and Stats updated, She felt her whole body and everything in it was wrong. Where she should have been flesh and bones, she was only a construct of mana. She tried to feel inside her head but, nope, nothing just an even amount of mana, and not even a large amount, no. Her honest impression was that she was so brittle even too much wind would disperse her. She tried to move her arms and surprisingly it worked better than before. It still was quite a lot of effort but at least she could now move.

”Heh.”, a small nervous laugh escaped her.

Right she could move. And moving her only required twice the effort she needed before to sprint.

”Hehe.”

Like that was any consolation to the fact she was made of freaking mana. Hell she wasn’t sure if she was still considered alive. But it could have been worse right, it only took her two fucking minutes to sit. And she was in a state of physical and mental exhaustion like she had run for a few hours while shooting spells non-stop.

”Heheh”

She was finally able to get up after resting five minutes. And slowly turned toward her bed. She idly noticed that although her clothes where strewn on the floor where she had been, she wasn’t cold. Yay I won’t be cold, it’s like really great considering I’m not even sure if I’ll even be able to get out of my home. All she wanted now was to get to her bed – only five minutes of struggling not to fall for one meter travelled – and sleep. Could she even sleep? If not she was going to crash herself down the hole to go out, she could even gather enough courage to go move to there.

She was only a step away from her bed when due to a wrong move her left arm hit her dresser and the world exploded into pain as her arm literally exploded into tiny little flocks of blue light. She barely stopped herself from crashing on the floor with a monstrous effort of will – it seemed like a really bad idea with how her arm fared on such a slow collision – and gritted her teeth waiting for it to pass. It took nearly fifteen minutes before the pain diminished enough to let her sit slowly, making her already slow movements painfully so due to her caution. And after another ten minutes she was finally laying in her bed, who barely bent when she applied her weight on it.

Great only one hour to get to her bed, she needed a medal. She wanted to cry, but even that she was unable. She couldn’t get a single tear out, and a wave of despair and exhaustion took her over as the world faded to black again.

***

When she Liliei woke up, later, the world was a little brighter and she didn’t feel as despaired as she had been. That was until she tried to get up, failing miserably, and her mood went back down a notch. Oh right there was that wasn’t there. Sighing deeply – and even that took a conscious effort from her, but she needed it – she slowly got up, careful not to risk hitting anything with too fast a movement.

After a few seconds she also noticed that her left arm – the one that had literally exploded earlier – was back with her like it never happened. Well, that was convenient, and she felt she was going to use it quite a lot in the near future.

This time, she was a bit faster when moving and she got to the hole in the floor in only ten minutes. Which was great right?

She definitely needed to become faster when moving, else living was going to be quite a pain. When she got to the hole, she looked down, and felt exhaustion wash over her again. Right, there was no way she was going down there any time soon. After another sigh, she went back to her bed – slowly obviously – and sat down for a few minutes to wallow in despair comfortably. It didn’t make her feel better, but she really felt like she needed it.

Then she decided to start practicing. First of all she needed to be able to move, not push her limbs until it worked. She started with her right fingers. She looked at them and willed them to move, pushing with all of her willpower. Slowly, ever so slowly, they moved, taking the position she had wanted. Well, it worked, but… that was not going to work, unless she wanted to die of old age before getting to the edge of the city. And the stairs, oh the stairs to go up… well, that was if she even could get out of her house without falling to her death which was, hmm, not going well at the moment.

Then she needed to improve her movements. She started by willing her fingers to move again and this time concentrated on feeling what happened when she did. It was quite strange really, but after a few tries she started to get it. She hadn’t ever given much attention to the way she moved her fingers before, but she guessed it was pretty much the same, except not exactly. It was rather like she suddenly had a new limb and had to learn to control it, except the limb in question was her whole body, but that was a detail, right?

It took her the better of two hours before she started being able to move her fingers again without having to mobilize all of her attention and willpower over it. When her finger finally started moving instinctively she felt a wave of elation. Yes, she moved like someone who had lived fifty turns too much, had at least ten illness related to movement and was frozen to the bone, but that was a detail, yes? Then she looked down on herself, needing again all her willpower to do so – and oh right she was still naked, she would have to do something about that when she could move, so considering how it went, in a few month, maybe a turn.

Suddenly elation disappeared and was once again replaced by despair, but she pushed it aside, not allowing herself to wallow anymore, and got to work. After all if she wanted to move in a more or less correct way before the end of the turn, she couldn’t just wait for it to happen.

She continued training her fingers until she could move them approximately right then went down to the rest of her arm, and started again. The room was always more or less bright due to the light of the enchantments on the higher floor, but it was still possible to guess the time from the difference in luminosity, so when the light dimmed she went back to sleep, mentally exhausted.

The next day as a whole was spent on getting her left arm right and starting the right arm. Overall, it took her six day to be able to move each of her limbs individually with relative ease. She was starting to practice moving her whole body in a coordinated fashion – well, at the moment it was more of a mess of random movements but… – when she heard someone coming in the entrance of her house.

“Hey, you’re here Lei?”, the voice was quite loud, and a little high-pitched, and she immediately recognized it.

“Hey Tren, yes I’m here, you can… in fact no, don’t come just now.”

Tren was one of the other people living on this floor. He lived with a small group that were settled quite close from her house and she often went to chat with them. She would normally have let him come but right now, she still hadn’t put her clothes back. In her defense, she didn’t feel cold at all and had other things to think about.

Thus she immediately went in direction of her fallen clothes in a rather wobbling and quite slow gait, but it was still a lot better than a few days before. She then slowly bent over her old shirt, placed her hand in the collar, and pulled as she unbent. The thing was, the moment her arm was fully extended, instead of the shirt coming with her hand, it was her hand who stayed in the collar, the shock enough to separate it from her arm.

Instantly, pain exploded in her arm, rushing to her whole body in less than a second as her hand slowly dissipated in the ambient mana. The pain was sudden and strong enough that she let out a yelp of pain, and immediately she heard Tren’s worried voice.

“You’re alright? Wait just a minute I’m coming”

Liliei fought through the pain for a few seconds before being able to get a reply out. Even if her voice was still laced with pain. It was in fact strange how her voice had still been instinctual and expressive when the rest of her body had been so hard to use. Her facial expressions as well had taken only a fraction of the time needed for her other limbs.

“No, don’t come! I’m fine… Well, more or less, but you wouldn’t be able to do anything. In fact, could you get Nalaine to come please?”

Nalaine was the most competent one of the little group in the matters of magic. Well it still was not good, objectively, but she may be the one most capable of helping her. And she was a girl. Which was good considering her… predicament.

“You sure?” asked Tren before correcting himself, “In fact, no need to answer, I’ll bring her here soon.”

While she waited for Tren to come back with Nalaine, Liliei decided to watch how her hand reconstructed. The pain was still there but more as a dull ache. Her second secondary ability giving her and increase perception of mana had been quite useful for moving, and it proved its utility once more. She could feel a very slow flow of mana going through her body and slowly rebuilding her hand from the inside out. It was a very slow process, and would most likely take a few hours. She didn’t know how long she had spent just observing the process when a sound coming from the lower floors distracted her.

“Hey, Lei, I’m here!”

“Come right in.”

The cheerful voice of Nalaine had brought a smile to her face and she had immediately replied. The young girl didn’t lose time and Liliei could hear her climb up to the hole as soon as she had finished speaking. Nalaine wasn’t bad at acrobatics and, if she wasn’t as fast as Liliei was – or had been – it didn’t take long before her head pointed out from the hole. Nalaine was a Demon but had only two of the four characteristics, being her two small midnight-blue horns atop of her head and the large patch of dark-sapphire blue scales running along her arms from the back of her hands. Her hairs, also blue but a shad lighter than her horns, were rather long, going down a bit past her shoulders. Her turquoise eyes were brought out by all the darker shades, and gave her rather round face a friendly look.

“So what happ… why are you… what happened to your hand?”

The Demon girl seemed quite troubled – near a full blown panic in fact – as she changed her question while she took in more elements. As she asked the last question, she started rushing toward her, but Liliei – who had sat while waiting – brought her to a stop a just a meter from her.

“Stop! My hand’s nothing grave, but it could be trouble if you touch me right now. As to why I’m naked, well my hand got this way from trying to pick up my clothes,” said Liliei, her voice reflecting her tiredness.

Nalaine shot her a strange look and then sat down in front of her.

“I think you would better explain from the start.”