World Seed

Author’s Corner: First of all, I would like to thank Cruxio for the positive review of the story on the main page. *gives Cruxio an extra cookie*. Next, something that he mentioned in his review, a genome tree. After googling what he was talking about, it looks like most of the abilities of the genome tree are things that he can already do, or will be able to do in time with Nature Magic. Though, it did give me a few ideas. As always, if people have questions or comments, feel free to post them! The more questions I answer, the more it forces me to think in depth of the world mechanics, which leads to a better story for all!

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After a couple hours spent cultivating, I was somewhat annoyed that I hadn’t made much progress. Though, I also should have expected it. Although I managed to raise Earth Affinity to 6%, neither of my other affinities increased. Back when I was solely focusing on one at a time, it’d take several hours to gain a single percent, and now my attention was divided between three of them.

Maybe I should practice them one at a time until 10%, and then work on them in the background while I practice the next? I thought about it like that, and decided that I’d start working on it after I did some more training with Nature Magic. And in order to do that, I’d need to study the wolf corpse I had collected.

But… better safe than sorry. So, breaking out of my trance-like training, I looked over and saw that Jarl was sitting near Sharon, watching her practice her first session of cultivating mana. “Jarl, quick question.” When I saw I had his attention, I went ahead and asked. “There isn’t a penalty for studying the mana of a dead animal rather than a live one, right?”

He thought about it for a moment, and then shrugged his shoulders. “Yes and no. If they have an activated ability like your birds, you won’t be able to study it. But… if they’re just normal animals, you can still see the aura left behind, as long as it’s not been dead for too long.”

I winced slightly at that. “How long is too long?”

“Twenty-four hours, typically. After that, the aura begins to degrade. That’s why resurrection also has a twenty-four hour window. Once the aura begins to degrade, it shows that the soul has left the body. So, unless a corpse is magically preserved so that the aura isn’t damaged, you only have that long.”

I nodded my head, a bit relieved at that. It had definitely not been a full day since I killed the wolf, and if I remembered right, I had not quite killed the snake twenty-four hours before I studied its scales. Taking another look at the armor’s mana signature, I discovered that the paths of light that I had previously memorized in the snake scales had started to shrivel up and lose their glow.

Having resolved my doubts, I pulled the body of the wolf out of my inventory, and decided to use my new skill, Aura Sight. What I saw caught me off guard for a moment. I could still see the wolf, the grass around it, and myself, but inside of each there were the strands of light I have come to associate with mana signatures. Even floating between the wolf and myself, thin, nearly invisible wisps of white light which seemed to be wind mana were mingling with straight, yellow rays descending from above. The latter, I decided was like light mana.

On the body of the wolf, I was pleased to find that the lights weren’t shriveled up or fading like the snake scales. Though it was missing the extra level of detail since I wasn’t actually touching the aura, I could still clearly see it. Only.. I wasn’t sure how long it’d take me to study even one small portion of it from this perspective.

As I dismissed the Aura Sight, I began to wonder something else. Just how had I managed to activate it in the first place? The system has never really assisted me in the activation of skills before in this game, so maybe Aura Sight is a common skill that anyone can do by passing mana into their eyes, and the game took pity on me to let me know? If so, that’d make me feel like a real idiot…

Well, that might have been the point. I mean, I never did try to sense things away from myself, even though it seems like an obvious thing to do now. Anyways, back to the wolf! There were a couple of things that I wanted to get from the wolf, primarily their claws and nose. I didn’t need to be able to turn fully into a wolf, but if I managed to learn the entire aura by then, I wouldn’t be one to complain.

Thinking about it like that made me a bit depressed, because I probably don’t have enough mana to shift into a wolf form, seeing as it took practically all of my mana just to turn into a bird. As such, I’d have to increase my intelligence stat a bit more to get more mana. And to do that, I need to level up!

Back to the wolf… again. I first focused my mana on sensing its paws, and looked at the structure of the lights within. While the composition of an aspect can be determined by what colors and patterns the lights are, the form of it is determined by the shape of those lights. So… the wolf’s furred skin is an interwoven gray and purple light, but I could just as easily replace that with the pattern of the snake’s scales. What I needed to focus on was the shape that those lights made.

I can’t wait to get back to leveling, and selling the bodies to earn money. Then maybe I can get another kind of magic. What would compliment my Nature Magic well? Summoning? Eh, I already have to deal with more animals than I’d like to, and anything my summons could do, I could do eventually. Gravity, then? It’d be nice, but not necessary. I almost dismissed Technomancy outright, since it would conflict with the druid image and Nature Magic, but then I realized something… If I was able to store information like a computer, or have mental access to such, then memorizing mana signatures would be far easier! Not only that, I might be able to mix and match configurations to make ‘preset’ forms.

Alright, that’s decided, once I get another five silver, I’ll learn Technomancy. Wait, I was trying to focus on something, wasn’t I? Dammit, this is why it takes me so long to do things, I keep getting bored and distracting myself! Wolf, wolf, study the wolf! Come on, Falenel, you can do it!

Roughly half an hour later, I had finally managed to memorize the pattern of the wolf paws. Taking a look at my own hand, I made sure I was doing this right before I started. I didn’t want to edit the wrong part of my mana signature, and have the paw coming out of my elbow!

But, with a fair amount of caution, I shifted the mana signatures in my hand to match that of the paw, complete with its claws. It felt weird, seeing my thumb melt into my hand, while my fingers thickened and reshaped themselves, my fingernails growing out into thick claws. But, since I didn’t copy the fur of the wolf over, my hand was still bare.

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