-The next day-
When I woke up it was already noon, and I wasn't the only one off to a late start to the day. My mother also hadn't been able to get any sleep from staying awake all night unable to go back to sleep. I then went through my usual morning routine which consisted of going to the bathroom(I could go without a diaper at this point), exercising, eating, and then going outside.
As always I started by going for a little run. I also used neutral body strengthening and healing to increase my familiarity with mana and magic. On other days I would also use different types of strengthening such as (Wind Body Strengthening T. 1) which uses the air element, and (Light Body Strengthening T. 1) which uses the light element.
The wind strengthening increased my agility and dexterity, and the light strengthening made me lighter and increased my agility. Both were very helpful in advancing my knowledge of how mana coursed throughout the body.
At first, I had lead mana out of my mana pathways and then looped it back into my body, but I realized that it was very inefficient to do that, and instead made a shortcut. Instead of leading the mana out and back, I simply never let it leave. I would course mana through the circuits as normal but instead of going out and back in, I simply split the mana to envelop my body the moment it was done going through the element.
During the last bit of my run, I stopped using mana so it would count toward the daily quest. By now I had a bit over 100 points and could finally buy something so I sat down outside and looked through the store.
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>= 100
(Cooking Profeciency) (Fatigue resistance) (Pain Resistance) (Thought Acceleration) (Mana Efficiency) (Passive Mana) (Increased Memory Capacity) (Running Proficiency) (Swimming Proficiency)...
>= 200
(Perceptive) (Eagle Vision) (Mana Vision)...
>= 300
(Multiple Minds) (Future Vision)...
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I filtered the skills by cost and looked through the ones I could currently afford. Some of the higher cost ones looked very interesting but I couldn't buy them yet. As I scrolled through the skills, there were two that especially caught my eye, (Passive Mana) and (Thought Acceleration).
These two looked to be especially beneficial and could be used throughout my life. The moment I looked at the descriptions of the two, I knew I would have a hard time deciding.
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(Passive Mana)
This skill allows you to passively gather mana from the environment at a speed proportional to its level. The mana obtained from this skill cannot be used to strengthen your core, but the speed at which the skill gathers mana is much faster than your core. At level one this skill can gather mana at half the speed of your core, and at level two, it can gather at a third of the speed of your core. This allows you to focus on other tasks that you could be doing instead of gathering mana yourself.
(Thought Acceleration)
This skill allows your thoughts to go faster than normal, increasing your mental capacity, processing time, reaction speed, and other thinking skills. How much the acceleration is depends on the level.
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These two skills were both useful, but anyone could tell that obviously (Thought Acceleration) was the better of the two. The thing was that I didn't need (Thought Acceleration) right now and (Passive mana) would be way more beneficial to me. I had to spend a couple of hours to completely recharge my mana manually when I was at the (Perfect-Sienna) stage, but this could help me.
In the end, I chose to go with (Passive Mana) as it was more useful to me at the moment and I could earn back the points anyway. Another thing was that I knew that at the base level, (Thought Acceleration) would be negligible. I mean who would possibly put an overpowered skill at that low of a cost?
I purchased the skill and saw my points drop immediately. When I opened my status, the skill was there under my passives. I could feel my core filling little by little at a much faster pace than normal and knew that it hadn't been a dud. Something else I noticed was a little level indicator next to my passive skills.
Both (Mana Sense) and (Mana control) were at level 3 and (Passive Mana) was at level 1. As I looked over my status and noticed my stats had risen by 0.2, Avery's voice rang out.
'Alex, the daily quest has been updated. These updates will take hold tomorrow.
< ------ >
Daily Quest: Physical Conditioning
Details: The daily quest adjusts to your body and strength to make sure that it is actually of help to you. Again, you cannot use mana to help yourself complete any of these,
Requirements: 20 minutes of meditation, 10 pushups, 20 crunches, 20 meter run
Rewards: You strengthen your mind and body. 1 System Point.
Punishment upon failure: You will be weak.
Time-Limit: Until Midnight.
< ------ >
The daily quest will constantly adapt the the host.'
The daily quest had become quite easy, but now it was going to get hard again. The requirements were the double last time, but I was confident of being able to handle it. My body was already built up quite a bit from a combination of magic and exercise.
I had been sitting in the grass for a while now, so I got up and dusted myself off. It was fall and by my calculations, November. It was chilly, but not freezing yet and I had warm clothes insulating me. If worse came to worst, I had magic to heat myself.
I looked around and noticed that I was all alone at this time. Come to think of it, the maids that normally looked over me were nowhere to be seen. This was the perfect time for me to test out higher-level magic!
Not wanting to be spotted, I went into the woods that enveloped the hillside. I made sure not to go too far from the manor and decided to go back after an hour. The staff were busy getting ready for winter and wouldn't miss me if I was gone for only an hour. Any longer though, and that might cause the house to seriously worry.
In a small clearing, I found, I first tested out earth magic. I began by manipulating the earth. I made a patch rise, sink, form a ball in the air, ripple the ground, and make a spike. It was awesome being able to see my magic in action so clearly, and I had a lot of fun. I even made an earth trampoline that shot me up a couple of feet.
After playing around with the earth for a bit, I moved on to lightning magic. Lightning was just the movement of electrons, so I focused on the image of moving electrons from one tree to another and then added magic to make it come true.
After a second, a loud sound roared out as both trees with shattered and burnt. Debris flew all around me, but I was able to form an air and earth shield in time. After the shields lowered I saw the aftermath of what I had just done. Both trees had fallen over and the wood was still burning hot red.
To avoid a fire I quickly doused it with water and ran back home. The thunder had most certainly reached the house and the first thing they would do it to make sure I was inside and safe.
My mother came outside to find me running around and out of breath. She then quickly told me to stay inside, until they could find out what made the noise. Being a model child as always I complied. Even in my past life, I had tried my best to be a good person, and that wasn't going to change now.
I had used a non-negligible amount of mana and I was tired, so I decided to nap to test out my newly acquired skill. It was also getting dark, which was around 5 P.M this time of year. I got into my crib, which I would outgrow soon, and laid down my head to take a little nap until dinner. I was famished and hadn't eaten much of a lunch, mostly just some snacks I had stuffed in my pocket.