This damn Owlstrich is going to give me a headache. Is this how my father feels when he tries to restrain me? I wonder. The cool air of the early hours of the afternoon are not helping me cool off, not at all.

[Listen, Bright Beak, I'll say it again, we are communicating through magic, so any speech patterns that may have become habitual for you mean nothing here. Your “s” sounds are entirely derived from your mental understanding of conversation.]

[That doessss not mean anything to me, wench.]

[I know damn well that it should mean something to you. Use your brain and think again.]

[By your tone, I'm tempted to throw you off my back and leave you to rot in the sssssssnow!]

[...If you drop the “s” sounds I'll buy the tastiest grilled meat for you when I leave Hitherbliss.]

[...]

[...]

[I suppose that sounds like a fine compromise. Consider it a done deal. I expect you to honor your words, wench.]

This damn bird, it could've dropped the whole act when we first met but it still kept it up? For what reason?!

[So, this whole time, what compelled you to talk like that? If you think it made you more intimidating, I want you to know it made conversation with you near insufferable.]

[I wasn't lying when I said it was taught by the ancient elders of my flock, wench. They considered it a proper way to communicate with all forms of lower creatures.]

[And I am considered a lower creature?]

[Without a doubt.]

[Hm.]

[If you're dissatisfied with that evaluation, make yourself aware that I spare no cares about your opinion.]

[Is that so? Bright Beak I'll have you know, - actually, wait, Bright Beak is too tedious to say all the time. I'm calling you BB.]

[What is this sudden disrespect, wench?!]

[I'm simply returning what you've given me, BB. Opponents in battle must trade blows for things to be interesting, don't you agree?]

[I'd rather hunt down my prey without a struggle.]

[Ah, but I am not an easy prey to be hunted, even in a pitiful verbal encounter like this.]

[Your vanity will hurt you one day, wench.]

[I am anything but vain, BB, I'm simply trading blows, were you listening to me? Regardless, back to what I was saying earlier, I highly doubt I am a lower creature. It seems you are lower in this situation, for I am riding on you.]

[You dare…!]

[I do.]

[You are like a fresh hatchling, ignorant to the ways of the flock, that attitude you possess is suffocating, wench.]

[Don't worry, this won't be a common occurrence, I'm just finding a way to pass the time. Though, BB, you've been running around for quite a few hours now, we can take a break if needed. I doubt the estate knows I'm even gone yet.]

[You are light as a feather, and I have traveled for far longer than this before, this task provides no hassle to me.]

[Hm. Alright then.]

We travel nearly 18 hours towards Hitherbliss, mostly because I had unintentionally misdirected us. Perhaps internal cartography is not my strong suit. If I were to get familiar with an area, then I would wager that I needed to spend a long time exploring it, like how I did with the forest and mountains I lived in.

I'm not too keen on entering Hitherbliss just yet, even with my preparations, because there's a stigma against travelers entering the city at night. If I ride up on BB and try to get into the city I'll be questioned even with my Wilstrom Plate. I need to procure “merchandise” to convince the guards a little more, and because the guards are less alert during the day, we'll have to wait a fair few hours. A simple trip to the surrounding wild areas will solve these problems easily, so I goad BB into heading that way.

The forests near Hitherbliss are a bit rockier than I would have liked. BB went to go hunt, and I know damn well that he won't bring me any food, so it's up to me to figure out what I want to eat and how I want to procure it. I could also just go without eating. It wouldn't be the first time, and it certainly wouldn't be the last either. The bitter taste I've been feeling hasn't gone away yet, unfortunately, so I'm leaning towards skipping the meal.

And yet, I need to bring something that will allow me access to the city without suspicion. Admittedly, identifying fauna isn't my strong suit, and with such a rocky forest, something tells me that most of the smaller plants around here are weeds anyways.

Guess I gotta kill something then.

What would be valuable around here? Freezing Newts could be fine, but honestly I'm not in the mood to deal with so many nuisances. I can't rely on any caves because I don't know the terrain either.

Maybe I'll just roll the dice and see what I'll get. I direct some mana to my index finger, sharpening it on the edge of my nail, and then I trace the underside of my left forearm in a thin slow motion to draw blood. A mild cut, but any predator worth their salt will easily track the smell of the blood to me. I'll stay here for about… 3 hours to see what happens.

In the meantime, I need to fiddle around with a couple of things. Firstly, Scipio. While I can generally grasp the various transformations my dear comrade can now pursue, I need to become familiar with how he weighs and feels in each state. The cane is simple enough, and in that same sense, so is wielding him as a baton. Scipio's body doesn't change from the default for those uses, so what I need to focus on first is channeling my magic through him. I've done it plenty of times for the old Scipio, but again, this is a new body. While the handle may be wooden and familiar the rest of him is different.

Essentially, I need to spread my mana through him constantly and with the goal to make it an unconscious effort. Living in the wild with stickman Scipio meant that I kept him close as a coping mechanism. My input of mana was so frequent that I was able to keep a stick like him for such a long time, to the point where it stood against Vulnus… even if he was cleaved during that battle.

So I make sure to start. I walk around the trees nearby, being sure to stay within the same general area so a monster can identify my location. At the same time I'm using my right hand, which is holding Scipio, to direct mana into him, establishing the lost link that we once had. Additionally, I've removed my internal magical brace for now. I still fully intend on returning to Benedict and seeing what his intentions truly were, and for that, I need to not fall on my face at the Church.

Scipio proves to be both more adaptable than I imagined and an excellent walking stick. While I do still stumble a bit with my damaged leg, Scipio is a firm support tool. Also, the connection I thought we lost wasn't severed, but rather, modified. It seems Grandfather found a way to artificially modify Scipio's mana channels, damaged as they were, into a set of weaving lines that not only allows for more speedy mana flow, but seamless transformation of the tool itself. Once again, I find Grandfather to be a genius of his craft. If he truly wanted to make it big, he could, even in his old age.

Just to make sure that my mana flow to Scipio is habitual, I focus just the slightest bit of effort into detection of my own mana flow at my hand. I can feel the small rumblings of moving mana and the miniscule emptiness as it leaves my body. Seems like everything is fine. If I needed to focus on using Scipio as a tool, rather than a natural extension of myself, that would hinder me in battle. I've also found that Scipio's various features, like his hidden spearhead, his foldable segments, and so on and so forth, are very easy to activate for me. Grandfather had some trouble showcasing it, but if anything, that's simply a testament to Scipio's bond with me.

Hm. An hour has passed already. I draw another line of blood on my forearm’s underside. I think I'd like a fight now, but I guess I can work on my other curiosity while I'm waiting. Mana apparitions. Mister Mourngrown's studies still have kept my interest, flawed as they may be. I fully believe I can use this technique in clever ways, but I need to hone it first. My first big use of the technique in the basement library was fractured and haphazard. Coding my own mana once it's already outside of my own body is the complete opposite of optimal. What I need to do is find a way to code the mana apparitions before they escape my natural mana flow, but how?

Switching emotions on the fly would have perhaps been possible in one of my earlier lives, for a noble villainess lady is an expert at manipulating emotions. Not me though. I'm quite the opposite, having lived and died so much, I am likely emotionally stunted at times. Whether that's a good or bad thing, I'm not sure, and frankly, I don't have the time to worry about that.

My emotional states mean that I need to pull from memories of previous, earlier lives in attempts to replicate the emotions I really, truly want the apparitions to feel. Since the mana apparitions need the emotions to be, well, what they are, the emotional aspect is a key part of the equation. Without them, they are simply my father's technique, acting as a frozen caricature of my mana signature in the shape of my mana channels.

How do I elicit a strong emotional response without actually conveying the emotion myself? It seems the answer lies in coding my own magic to mimic it. Magic responds to the body’s change in emotion. My father’s body heats up the room when he gets angry, and similarly, the temperature drops when he's in silent somber. Not all magic is temperature based like his, but he is a strong example of how versatile emotional magic can be. I strongly believe that Mister Mourngrown might have been more successful if he had met my father, since his thesis of external emotional magic seems to match well with how the Duke naturally operates.

That aside though, I need to focus on how to code a mimicry of emotion. I've never really paid attention to my own mana with the upswings and downswings of emotional turmoil. After all, it's a bit difficult to reflect internally when a strong feeling rises up. I need a way to make myself strongly feel something without actually being emotional enough to miss how my mana changes.

How the heck am I supposed to do that? I'm sure this life will provide me those opportunities eventually, but it's a bit disappointing that I'll have to wait for them while also being prepared to spring into action in case I do give off enough of a response to warrant magic study. Ugh.

Even with the setback, that doesn't mean I'm out of ways to practice my technique. I can simply do exercises involving breaking off my mana from my body. Part of the mana apparition creation process is the separation from the body into its own falsified sentience. They become their own force powered by a lingering emotion, and so perfecting that separation is also a necessity. If the magic goes wrong one day, and a mana apparition does something while the connection isn't fully broken, that would leave me in a bad state. It's better to make sure that doesn't happen. I make sure to practice the separation from multiple points in my body too, just for some extra security.

I now have over 20 mana apparitions floating around. Well, they're still mana signatures, since they lack emotion, but they do retain my shape, which is nice.

The next step of my practice is something I admittedly have an adherence towards doing. I want to take back these signatures into my own body and replenish my mana. It's a simple enough task. Some great warriors have done it plenty of times, taking their signatures, or perhaps borrowing someone else's mana by sucking it into their own mana flow.

This brings with it plenty of possible problems. Incompatible mana will fight an internal battle with itself and cause the user to suffer. But more than that, one of the most gruesome ways I died was because I took in someone else's mana. I forget which life, but it was one of the ones where I decided to properly participate as the Duke's daughter in noble society. A young nobleman by the name of Serafin had an unfortunate magical outburst in the middle of a banquet, and I was forced to ease the situation despite me knowing that it was my death day. I figured I could at least save someone else's life in place of mine, so I took in his mana and quite literally blew up from the overcharge. I'm sure the party guests that day had quite a morbid show. Naturally, that wasn't a fun death.

Leaving one's magic signature out for too long can cause the spirits to naturally twist it into something new as it fades away. It won't be a problem today, these have only been outside for a few minutes, but still, that knowledge and past death do make it a bit uncomfortable, even if I do feel a bit less empty magically when I take them all back in.

I decide to leave one mana apparition outside and start to modify the code. No monsters have traveled my way yet, so I'm going to channel a sense of fear into this one. Some monsters can smell fear, and that's what will get them to head my way, if nothing else.

It's not hard to reminisce on terrifying moments. I don't linger on them too long for the sake of my own focus, and just push them all into the mana apparition. I sense it starting to shake and become stiff. That'll work. I clutch Scipio and wait to see what happens.

In the next half hour, I finally get a monster prowling my way. My magic tells me it's a Direwolf, but something's odd about it. Its size suggests that it is an alpha, but it is followed by no pack, and within its mana channels I can sense some blockages. They're big, pulsating clumps of mana of a completely different type from the main body. It's clear this discrepancy will pose a problem if I don't figure out the reasoning behind it.

But that's fine, I can simply use the adrenaline of a battle to stimulate my thinking. Alpha Direwolves tend to give commands to their pack through a series of complicated barks and howls, even using those noises to remind themselves how to attack alone, but I'm getting none of that here. Instead the Direwolf seems to be… whining? Wheezing? It's in pain. Does it have to do with those mana clumps?

I dodge a preemptive swipe from the beast with a simple roll, but even just that movement tells me what I need to know. This Direwolf is moving in jitters, jumping straight into its next attacks without any natural movement in between its actions. I can hear its bones cracking with every swipe of its claws at me. It's got magical parasites.

Going by the environment, I think it's right to assume that the clumps of mana are actually a type of bug monster called Cryo Crawlers. These menaces will bury into the skin of other monsters and start to puppet their bodies so that they can lay their young inside them. They clump up mana, and eventually freeze it all together, killing the monster so the babies can be born from the corpse. Truly a disgusting cycle, but that's just how parasitic relationships are. I won't mind putting this Direwolf out of its misery, it's practically already dead even if I were to excise the parasites now anyways.

I whack it a few times in the legs with Scipio, easily avoiding the sluggish and stiff scratches it throws my way. All is going well until my body locks up out of nowhere and I faceplant into the snow.

Ah. It has a paralysis technique. Is this the Cryo Crawlers freezing my mana channels, or was this simply an ability that the old Direwolf had? It doesn't matter, if I stay laying down here, I really will be in some deeper trouble, so I quickly fix my situation.

When trying to move my mana within my body, I find that it has been stalled and moves slower than molasses, so I rely on the coincidental backup that I have, which are the tips of my index fingers. I still have the specialized mana in those two fingertips walled off from the rest of my body for when I use my sense of touch to read books. It seems those walls of mana have protected that accumulated mana from paralysis. Similarly my eyes were protected for the same reason.

Four places to use mana from, it seems. I'll have to risk using my eyes again. I tap very slightly into my haywire mana within the eyes, as if I'm dipping my toes into a cold lake. I instantly start to feel pain in my head, but I'm so brief with my dip that I get what I want. I sense the mana all around me within a surprisingly large radius, perhaps about 500 paces long. The influx of magical perception is rough to deal with, but because of such a big sense, I don't need to worry about using my mana pulse… not that I could right now anyways, but that's besides the point.

I feel tears from the strain, but ignore them as I start to repurpose the mana in my two fingertips. I will use this mana to create a series of double-layered mana threads to puppet my own body like a weaponized doll. Ironically, I'll be using a puppeting scheme similar to the Cryo Crawlers.

I don't escape a swipe to my side as I make my threads, but that's a simple injury that can heal well enough. I use the first set of threads to drag me close to a tree before I start to intricately move them around my body and the surrounding forest. I'm like a spider weaving its web with how many threads I need to use for this.

Scipio now in my puppeted hand, I jerk my body upwards and to the left, flying through the trees limply with just a twitch of the fingertip. I purposely zigzag through my threads as I approach the Direwolf knowing that the Cryo Crawlers have no hope of keeping up with their slow command system.

Scipio thankfully has retained my mana from the earlier practice time within himself, and so I simply use the mana he has to blast the Direwolf in all sorts of places, with the reaction being catalyzed by the mana in my fingertips. I also make sure to continuously hit the Direwolf roughly in the joints with Scipio's physical body when I can. In a weird way, the structured and fixated movements of my body under the threads’ control seems to do more precise damage to the beast. Perhaps I should try using threads to modify my attack positioning in the future.

It's not long before the Direwolf, or rather, what's left of it, is left struggling to stand up in the snow. My body floats above it, stuck in my own threads, handing almost upside down as my head hangs back and faces the beast. Well I've basically won the battle here, but I need to wait until I'm unparalyzed to finish the job. My fingertips have drained their accumulated mana, so they feel weird now. I'm so used to feeling just a little more than usual with them, but it seems like I've lost my sense of touch in them for now. I'll have to send mana past their blockades and remedy that soon enough. I still would like to read despite my preference for the wild.

It takes a good half hour for the Direwolf to stop trying to get up, and it lays down defeated, waiting to accept its fate. Not even five minutes later I can move my body again. Coating Scipio in my mana, I have him sharpen the mana in a way that mimics a blade, and through a clean swipe the Direwolf’s head is sliced completely off in one smooth motion. I can sell the head as its own piece of loot, with the rest of the body being used for processing meat, or fur for clothing, or whatever. This should serve as merchandise well enough. It was a fine fight, wolf.

I'm about to grace the battle scene with a snow angel when I hear the chittering of the Cryo Crawlers. Ah. Right. Sometimes these damn parasites can grow into something that resembles a beetle. There were about… seven clumps of mana in the Direwolf, I believe. Cryo Crawlers tend to link up to each other and become something like a centipede the size of a Junior Basilisk. Essentially, they can team up and become a freezing rope that wraps around their prey at least once. Once the prey die of the cold, these monsters eat them away to nothing, sparing not even the bones.

I guess they'll be making an attempt to nibble at me. How valiant. With my newly freed body and their weakened state, they have no chance as I squish them one by one with my feet. Scipio doesn't need their bug juice on him, and I can simply wash my feet off. The last one manages to freeze my foot ice cold, but I use mana to warm it back up and melt the ice away.

There we go. Now we're done. I promptly provide my snow angel of complete victory once again, and lay against a tree until BB finds me.

I'm not worried about my mana signature being all around here, nor do I care that my snow angel is very obviously my battle mark. I have a foolproof plan to hide myself from the Duke, one that involves Alarick, who is plenty capable of what I need, so I just need to deal with that drunkard properly to secure the win.

[So this is where you were, wench. I see you have succeeded in your own hunt. Irritability, it was bigger than mine.]

[Hello, BB. Welcome back. It's not a meal, but it is merchandise. I'll need you to carry this Direwolf on your back as we had to Hitherbliss in the coming hours.]

[...I do not understand. You are not going to devour the hunt, but parade it around the humans? You must be a fool.]

[I'm going to sell it so I can buy that meat I promised, I have no need to consume it.]

[And what of your meal? It has been nearly a full cycle since you last ate.]

[I've gone longer without one, this proves no problem to me.]

[Do I need to feed you like a fledgling, wench? I doubt your kind takes pleasure in eating regurgitated rats.]

[If you even think of trying that, I will tie up your neck like a rope and pluck your tail feathers.]

[...You are quite violent for a child. How bloodthirsty.]

[How else would I have decapitated a Direwolf filled with parasites? Enough of this, in a few minutes I'll tie the corpse to you and we can slowly make our way to Hitherbliss.]

[What other creatures have you slain, wench? You speak so casually, as if a Direwolf is an easy hunt. You've also shared that you've hunted Avians greater than myself. It does not make sense.]

[It's a bore to list them all, but I'll satisfy your curiosity and say that a Lectro Dragon was one of my favorite hunts.]

[...My eyes say that you do not lie, but I find it difficult to believe that you speak the full truth.]

[Trust your Truth Sight, BB. It will never fail you.]

[But you are a child! If the magic is correct that means you are a paradoxical existence. Lectro Dragons exist in lands far past this one, with your age and undeveloped body, it should be impossible. Your very existence is confusing!]

[That at least, I already know. Far too well. Shall we get going? The Direwolf is secure on your back.]

[I will have my answers from you one day.]

[Hm. Good luck.]