Morgan was having a rather dreary day, all things considered. She had indulged in a much-needed breakdown and a good cry as she finally processed everything that had occurred to her since arriving in this new world, culminating in the rainfall carrying her to sleep in an unplanned nap. She felt much better upon waking, but the rains had not abated by the time she awoke.

 

“Looks like two nights in the same spot this time, Lulu,” she said as the ever-curious scrubby wurbled its way across her hip, to once again disappear into the newly-enchanted storage rune.

 

“Oh, come out of there!”

 

The scrubby had spent the minutes since Morgan woke up inspecting this new change to its mistress, its reaction having changed from shock to a childish wonder. She picked up the purbling loofah after letting it back out of the spatial pocket and placed it back on her shoulder. The loofah’s curiosity was infectious though, and she decided to experiment with the new rune on her own.

 

“So how much do you think I can carry in there, Lulu?”

 

A brief test with the discarded pottery shards soon demonstrated the capacity of her new spatial pocket. After a few dozen finger-width pieces vanished into the warped space, the enchantment remained dim when she brought the next one close.

 

“So, a couple of pounds of stuff, maybe? But is it mass, or volume...?”

 

She carefully removed the shards from within the rune, floating them up between her hands. They seemed to sort of slip into existence as they left the Living Enchantment with only a gentle feeling of Mana pulsing through the tattooed design. She poured her Mana into the stone, squeezing them down into one lumpy mass with [Earth Sculpt]. With the same amount of matter now occupying a smaller volume, she put the clump of earth back into storage and was able to add a few more pieces of the broken jars.

 

Morgan frowned, tapping the rune. “Hrm. Seems to be a little of Column A, little of Column B…”

 

Another attempt, this time spinning the lumpy stone into a larger but hollow shape proved to also reject any effort to make it vanish into the magical space.

 

She nodded to herself. “Volume’s going to be the more limiting factor, looks like..”

 

Incrementally shrinking the sphere and redistributing its weight, it was finally small enough to vanish into the rune. The spatial warping that allowed things to disappear into and return from the storage rune seemed to have a size limit roughly that of a volleyball -- at least as far as she could tell without any way to take precise measurements.

 

Her next experiment was to see just how much mass she could carry outside the storage rune. Levitating more than twenty or so separate pieces of earthen shards seemed to be her upper limit, a limit which surprised Morgan as she scooped up a cluster of them with a surge of Mana and mental effort.

 

Compared to her other spells and skills, the one she had the most actual practice with was [Earth Sculpt]. Since leaving First Raven’s Roost, the string of campsites and stone hutches she had abandoned in her wake had finally allowed her to master the ability, not to mention her habit of using it to stave off boredom by playing with stone like it was silly putty.

 

There had always been a maximum limit to how densely she could compress the stone, a plateau past which pouring more Mana and effort into it simply yielded no greater result. But, partly due to her modern education on Earth and her experience learning about various types of stone for usage in architecture, Morgan knew she had not come close to producing a material nearly as strong as marbled granite or quartz.

 

“I think the problem with the stone is that just regular dirt isn’t all one thing,” she mused out loud. “There’s all kinds of things mixed into most dirt and rocks. Silicates, clay, minerals and organics. I should have paid more attention in Geology class, dammit!” she exclaimed as she let the clump of squeezed dirt fall to the floor.

 

The rains pattering on the roof were showing no signs at all of letting up any time soon, so Morgan settled in for an evening of experimentation. Alleviating her boredom by simply playing with her magics killed two birds with one stone.

 

Or several birds with one stone, she realized with a thought. Why only practice one type?

 

Within an hour she was already making progress. A sphere of purple flame hovered a few feet away to her left, and a globe of water to her right. Balancing two opposing types of Mana while holding them steady was difficult at first, and would definitely have been beyond her abilities before acquiring her Class. The extra levels in their respective affinities alleviated the strain once the notifications popped into her head, however, and prompted Morgan to really push herself.

 

The flame sputtered and dimmed, and the water rippled, threatening to lose cohesion. Slowly, ever so slowly, the lump of earth she had fused together from the discarded shards began to rise directly in front of her. She could feel the strain on her Mana, even though Earth was her strongest Affinity. The addition of a third manipulation began to strain her; she would normally use gestures of hand or arm to help direct the flow of mana, and both hands were currently otherwise occupied.

 

A bead of sweat fell victim to gravity, travelling down her forehead and into her eye. Her concentration disrupted, the flame died and the water splashed to the ground, followed quickly by the misshapen stone. Panting to recover from the effort, she stood stooped over with her hands on her knees while Lulu set about inspecting this new mess in its domain of cleanliness.

 

Deciding a break was in order, she tore another chunk of squirrel off the spit and returned to the mossy bed, drawing her feet up to sit cross-legged while she recovered. “I’m glad you seem to be entertained,” she remarked wryly, as the diminutive little puffball wurbled its way around cleaning up the splashed water and mud.

 

“I didn’t realize just how much I was giving up along with the clothes, Lulu,” she mumbled around a particularly chewy piece of gristle. “I made the choice -- and I can’t really complain, magic is badass! ...Even when it hurts like hell.”

 

Hunger sated and Mana restored by the short break, Morgan settled herself into a more serious meditative pose and resumed her experimenting. She caught another fist-sized globe of water from the falling rain, pulling it in through the window and stabilizing it above her right hand. Another push with her will and an orb of flame appeared over her left, a flickering [Candleflame] that she pushed more Mana into until it was a roiling violet sphere the same size as the ball of water.

 

Once again the lump of molded stone began to rise, shaking at first as her Mana seemed to slip around it without gaining purchase. Then an inch became two, then four, and soon the distorted rock was over a foot above the ground. Morgan felt her Mana draining, sweat dripping off her face to track uncomfortably ticklish rivulets between her breasts and down her belly. Holding two Elements stable while trying to manipulate a third was not simply difficult; it was like trying to lift an impossible weight with the barest tips of her fingers, extended awkwardly while she had no leverage.

 

The draw on her Mana made her feel hot and flushed, uncomfortable despite her [Heat Affinity]. She still refused to give up, mentally leaning into the effort, a spike of pain driving itself between her eyes. Two feet off the ground. Then three.

 

And then, the lump of stone shot straight upwards with such force that it buried itself into the ceiling of the campsite hutch, as Morgan felt her Mana surge on its own. A wave of force rippled out from her body, bending the ambient light with a faint pulse before it slammed into the floor and the walls and the stone bed upon which she sat. The orb of flame and globe of water dispersed into sparks and spray as she lost control of her Mana entirely.

 

You have mastered the skill [Earth Affinity]!

 

By mastering this affinity, you have gained the bonus skill [Terrakinesis]! With this, your command over the Earth itself will grow, permitting extraordinary feats of spellwork. Continue experimenting with Affinities to unlock additional kinesis abilities.

 

Morgan flopped onto her back in a most unladylike manner, caught in a sudden bout of extreme dizziness from the instantaneous drain of her entire Mana pool. She jerked about like a puppet with tangled strings as the spinning sensation in her head turned to nausea and her recently consumed haunch of murdersquirrel chose that moment to make its reappearance into the outside world.

 

She just barely managed to roll herself off the bed in time to catch herself on all fours as she violently retched up the contents of her stomach. Her wobbly arms betrayed her then, and she failed miserably at avoiding the spreading pile of acrid bile and chunks as she collapsed from sudden vertigo.

 

Even Lulu was offended by the mess, hopping back from its mistress while making worried wurbling trills. She finally managed to bring her trembling limbs under at least partial control, leveraging herself back up to her knees with one arm over the stone stool that had been her seat earlier in the day.

 

“Graa- urgh!” she choked out like a drunk on a three-day bender, still swaying side to side even with her knees on the ground. Her [Regeneration] skill kicked in once her head began to clear, restoring her Mana at the expense of precious calories. The improved form of the old [Naked Recovery] skill was much more efficient, however, and within a handful of minutes she was back to nearly a third of her total magical reserves without yet suffering any more debilitating strain on her fat reserves.

 

As her Mana returned, so did her cognitive abilities, and the acrid smell of puke and bile stung her sinuses as she heaved to catch her breath while wiping snot and vomit off her face. She staggered to her feet and turned to her makeshift door, determined to at least rinse off in the rain before dealing with the pile of nasty that was now smeared across the floor.

 

The door she had fashioned was a makeshift affair without hinges, merely a slab of stone set in the opening to the campsite hutch. It had another stone bar set across it with notches on either side, preventing anything from just pushing it open. Reaching out with her Mana, she expected the stone bar to feel as heavy as every other time she had levitated it out of the way.

 

Instead the bar, the door, and several inches of the surrounding masonry cleanly came away from the wall, the edges separating as smooth as liquid glass. She could feel the weight and the mass, but it was no longer a grunt-inducing effort of will to keep it floating.

 

“Whoa,” she choked in surprise. “Must be [Terrakinesis]...”

 

Talking through the horrible taste was an ordeal, and she made her way outside into the rain on swaying legs to lean against the outside of the hut. With the dizzy feeling subsiding and her mana returning, she let go of [Regeneration] and simply stood there letting the downpour wash away the ick.

 

After a few minutes, time which Morgan spent rinsing out her mouth with rainwater, Morgan felt much better;l good enough to deal with the mess, at least. She promptly did so, directing a blob of rippling water into the hut and using it to draw up the worst of her refunded lunch. With a surge of Frost Mana she solidified the water around the floating wad of nastiness and heaved it away from her campsite as hard as she could with her magic.

 

With most of the splatter now rinsed away, Lulu resumed her normal routine of wurbling around to tidy things up. Morgan simply stood with her hands on her hips for a long moment, watching and thinking.

 

“I haven’t been that sick since my high-school graduation,” she grumbled to herself from the doorway while she inspected the damage to her humble abode.

 

The floor, the walls, the ceiling ceiling -- every surface in the hut was spiderwebbed with cracks. But they were not jagged and sharp like she would have expected. Instead, the fractures had the appearance of softened and extruded candle wax. The wall by the bed where she had been sitting was now bulged outwards like a blister, and the stool a few feet from the bed was bent in the opposite direction like a sad mushroom cap. The squirrel that had been waiting over the coals now lay in the coals, its stone skewer now bent and twisted. As if I could eat any more of that after tasting it on the way back up.

 

“Well, [Terrakinesis] really did a number on this shit, Lulu.” she said flatly, taking in the damage.

 

She had no intention of risking the building collapsing on her during the night, and drops of water were leaking through imperfections now lacing through the structure. Curiosity about the new skill also had a part to play along with the safety concerns as she reached out with her Mana and her senses.

 

The stone and earth now felt far more real to her senses; she could tell that difference right away. Her effective range was increased, and as her magic permeated the stone and ground below, there was a sense of a more detailed perception. At first, [Mana Sight] did not show her anything she had not already seen, but her expanded senses allowed her to interpret far more information about the Mana flowing through the stone in swirls and eddies.

 

The notification for her vision-enhancing rune gaining a level went almost unnoticed before this new information. It made sense to her; after all, she had been relying on it constantly since her Class Selection and acquiring the first [Living Rune], so it was bound to level up sooner or later.

 

What was revealed to her enhanced senses now came in much finer detail. She could pick out the various things that actually made up the stone. Parts that she were almost certain were clay were interspersed with what tasted to her senses like the scent of rust. I’m pretty sure that’s iron oxide in the strata, she thought with no small amount of wonder.

 

Other things ran through the stone as well. Grains of metals had varying flavors ranging from dull to a fizzy buzzing taste like licking a nine volt battery. The sharp tang of different crystalline structures stood out in some parts of the stone as well. And with her newly acquired [Terrakinesis], all of these things could be moved.

 

“I see now why I couldn’t make the stone any stronger! It’s all smushed together with no underlying crystalline structure!”

 

The drain on her Mana for manipulating a given amount of earth and stone felt noticeably lighter. Pushing her magic outwards into the stone was not quite as easy as breathing, but it came fairly close to it. Another firm shove with her willpower and roughly a fifth of her Mana later, the stone walls, roof, and floor were just about as packed with magic as she figured she could get them, far more than she had ever been able to before.

 

With that much of her Mana flowing through it, the stone flowed as well. Like a warm syrup, the various underlying structures within the mass began to rearrange. Morgan did not try to think of every single cubic millimeter of the substance, she merely let it flow into as strong of an interlocking pattern as she could get by feel. Clay and silicates shifted around iron and other hair-thin traces of metals, and collapsed in around the quartzy buzzing crystal structures.

 

The almost-liquid stone also flowed around another contaminant that had earlier helped prevent her from condensing the material. Tiny air pockets smaller than pinheads drifted to the surface of the stone, and she could feel it getting denser and stronger as the gaps that she had never realized existed were now filled in on an astonishingly tiny scale.

 

So entranced was Morgan by this new expanded ability that she almost did not react in time to the tingling sensation on the back of her neck, but [Primal Instinct] had leveled as well in the days since leaving Moghren’s home. Lulu’s senses also proved to be just as effective as her own, and the scrubby gave its signature wurbling warcry as the [Skyclad Sorceress] dove sideways out of the doorway into a tucked roll.

 

As she rolled back onto her side, facing the doorway, she let loose a short burst of [Lightning Bolt] combined with [Spell Channeling] for a crackling stream of pellet sized destruction. The brilliant incandescence exploded against something that rippled in the rain and had far too many legs for Morgan’s comfort. The tiny bolts of lightning, normally able to drill straight through the enormous trees of the forest with far less mana than she was using, skipped off some manner of shield.

 

She had to use [Acceleration] in order to dodge her own spell fragments as some of them bounced straight back at her. As the thing, whatever it was, barreled through the open doorway, an enraged loofah came zooming out of the stone hut in full-blown exfoliate attack mode. Rainwater and silty mud were sent flying in a miniature bow wave as the spinning ball of lethal lace raced immediately to Morgan’s side to take up a guard position.

 

Turning back to face into the building, she finally saw her assailant.Now occupying Morgan’s former temporary home was a hard-shelled creature over ten feet long, with hundreds of legs and vicious mandibles at the end that held the glittering eyes.

 

As if that weren’t enough by itself, its armored segments of shell seemed to have ridges of crystal along the edges where they overlapped. These ridges, the tips of all of its legs, and especially the mandibles were lit up like the Vegas strip to her [Mana Sight]; angry colors that clearly indicated its immense threat.

 

“Holy fuck that’s a lotta nope!” she exclaimed.

 

Direct spell attacks having proven ineffective once, she was in no hurry to try blasting it with something more powerful and risking the blowback from its shield. It seemed more intent on claiming the dry space as territory rather than coming back out into the rain, so Morgan simply reached out with her new skill and quickly jerked the door section back into place, sealing it with a burst of magic.

 

“Well shit,” she said after her heartbeat slowed slightly and she finally caught her breath. Almost as an afterthought, she ripped up a basketball-sized chunk of dirt and squeezed it down into a broad flattened dome which she levitated above herself and the still-trilling loofah.

 

“Eagles, wolves, lynxes, tyrannorabbits, murdersquirrels, even my own ancestor wants to eat me in this fucked up world!” she shouted in frustration. “And now some fucking doom-noodle wants to run me out of my own house!?” The loofah wurbled angrily in agreement. Although its understanding of her actual words was up for debate, its loyalty was most certainly not.

 

Fed up, angry, and definitely not willing to slog however many miles it took through the rain to find another good spot to camp, Morgan decided that enough was simply enough.

 

With a bit more force than she intended, she pushed the domed roof of the hut downwards and flattened it out. The whooshing of air out of the chimney-vent and the small windows was immediately followed by a flurry of angry hissing and scuttling noises. Mandible tips periodically poked out of the hand-sized openings, but the creature was simply too large to get out that way; the reinforced stone was now too strong for it to break even with those frightening vice-like jaws.

 

The hissing was followed by thumps and thuds as it charged wall after wall, but Morgan’s construction held true. After flattening the roof, she opened up even more tiny vents, strengthening the remaining stone as she squeezed it into a rough form resembling a net. No space wider than her hand, and no span of stone any smaller than that either. Another wave of Mana and a little more effort smoothed out the windows to seal the walls, leaving only the openings in the now-flattened top of the structure.

 

Steam from the coals of her once-campfire trickled up for a moment or two before the rains quenched the last of the smoldering fire pit. Coldly, methodically, Morgan pulled water up from around her and lobbed it into the hut-turned-pool. The rains were heavy, providing plenty of water for her to work with. Within minutes, the hut was overflowing.

 

The creature thrashed at the top of the makeshift cage, its reflective magical shield unable to affect the mundane water it found itself trapped in. Morgan simply waited for her mana to recover while considering how to best bring about a swift end to the creature. She was also quite aware of just how tasty [Primal Instinct] was telling her this new invader happened to be.

 

With that in mind, and very much not interested in eating another murdersquirrel, Morgan reached through the stone with her mana to feel the even dozen [Candleflame Rune] enchantments inscribed around the inside of the stone hut.

 

At first the runes seemed to have no effect. The water simply had too much mass to quickly heat up, at least not quickly. The draw on her Mana was still fairly light with such simple runes, so Morgan paced around the structure placing more runes every couple of steps. These ones she inscribed down lower, and with more sources of heat pushing energy into the water the effect finally became noticeable.

 

The stone was warmer to the touch already, low mist beginning to steam where the rains dripped down the outsides of the hut. The creature thrashed harder, actually managing to cause the walls to shiver and kick a spray of droplets away from the sides of the building.

 

Morgan pushed even more of her magic into the [Candleflame Runes], prompting another bout of frantic attacks against the walls and top of the hut.

 

And then she activated [Spell Surge], and shoved so much Mana through the runes that the stone began to glow.

 

The creature screamed in pain and agony as it began to boil alive.