There were so many overlapping voices that I couldn't pick any particular one out of the crowd. This was mostly because they were speaking too loudly, which caused the microphone to peak.

The townsfolk were arguing about something, I just couldn't tell exactly what. Maybe the sudden onset of winter spooked them.

A young woman in a flowing robe approached and yelled something. Everyone fell silent. She'd cocooned herself in Mana using a very precise structure. I don't think I could do that without using Authority as if it were water.

"Enough with the nonsense, we're not sacrificing anyone to the spirits," she said, to which I agreed. Why would I want meat? Just the thought of that putrid, rotting substance made me shiver. I wouldn't turn down an interesting plant-based material, though.

Maybe the other monster likes meat?

"Spirits," she spat, "What a ridiculous notion. You are adults, don't make up stories to explain what you don't understand."

I was fairly certain spirits were real. But if the Zone was going to pretend they weren't, that's cool too.

"No. There's something wrong with the Mana in the air. What we're dealing with isn't a spirit of fable. A being of power has declared its domain around our village. An entity of winter and ice."

Just as she finished speaking, a gust of wind ripped through the village. Hats flew into the air. Mothers clutched their children close.

"What do we do? Can we bargain with it?" a broad-shouldered man asked. "If not, how long will this winter last?"

"Until it moves on," she replied, settling herself onto a nearby rock like she had all the time in the world. "Perhaps we can. It depends if it's interested."

Then her eyes landed on one of my cameras.

The exact one I was paying attention to at the moment, as if staring directly at me.

Shit.

A man came running down the road toward the group. He looked even less happy than the rest of the village. After catching his breath, he spoke.

"Hajime is dead."

The crowd gasped.

"Down by the river," he added. "Something got him."

The other monster was becoming active. Hmm. I think I'm being given a choice here: side with the town, or don't.

Either way, I might as well try to play up the role I've created for myself.

"Is it the being you spoke of?" The first man asked the lady with pretty good Mana control.

She shrugged, turning her eyes away from the camera, "I will not make assumptions. Perhaps. Perhaps not."

Smart lady. Not antagonizing an unknown threat right after provoking it.

People were already moving towards the scene of the murder, leaving the woman sitting on the rock completely alone. I waited until I couldn't spot anyone within sight of her, then pulled out my staff and walked up from behind her.

"You wanted to make a deal?" I asked, and the ON-CAMERA icon popped up the moment before I started speaking. "I don't think you have anything I'm interested in."

She didn't even turn to face me, but spoke anyway, "What's a Child of the Mountains doing in these parts?"

Is that something the story made up about my character? Child of the Mountains, huh.

I hate it.

"Not a fan of being called a child." I released my tense hold on my Authority and allowed it to envelop hers. Not as a threat, just a reminder.

Her aura felt… Stiff, like she was on edge. "I meant no disrespect. How would one such as myself address one such as yourself?"

I hopped up on the rock sitting on the opposite side from her, "How about 'My Radiant Benevolence, She who Brings Everlasting Joy'?"

"Well, My Radiant Bene—"

"I'm fucking with you, call me Ellie if you have to. Preferably, don't call me anything," I cut her off before she could continue the stupid name.

"Ah," was that disappointment I was picking up? Lady, I'm not into that kind of play, I'm sorry.

We sat there in silence for a beat, just long enough for it to begin to feel awkward. "Hajime wasn't me, by the way. It's another… Hmm, you might know more, actually. Are you familiar with anyone or anything that considers this land their territory?"

"You currently own this land—"

"Not what I meant, this is my domain. Which is why it's a good thing you didn't try to turn on me. That would be a stupid thing to do in my domain." I played it up a bit to make it clear to the audience that I held the upper hand here. "I meant before I arrived. There's something that claims to own this land that has crossed me, and I'm trying to get rid of it."

"I… I'm not sure. I'd have to look into it. Perhaps amongst the town's archives," she muttered to herself.

"You help me track down that pest, whatever it is, I'll deal with it for you," I said, which should establish me as clearly able to beat the creature in the audience's eyes. It's just my character can't find it.

A message appeared in my vision.

Warning: Oaths are binding.

I didn't make a fucking Oath! I didn't even make a promise. What the hell are you talking about?!

The woman flinched, and I realized I had been squeezing her aura. I loosened that hold and pulled mine back into myself, locking it inside again. I slowed the trickle of Mana into my Authority Core as well because it was starting to feel like an over-inflated balloon, except without the elasticity.

Now that I was paying attention, I noticed a circle of frost had formed on the ground around me. The snow hadn't yet begun to stick as the ground was still too warm, but I was sitting in the centre of a circle of ice shaped into replicas of growing plants.

Oops.

The Oath thing must be the fucking Zone. If I were supposed to be a fae-like being, then my word itself was law. Ugh.

Before I got myself in any more trouble, I decided to leave. I stood up and began to walk away, and one last thought came to my mind before I left.

"What's your name, by the way?" I asked.

"Kaede Sato."

"Why is everyone here using Japa—" A crackle of energy popped inside me, and I had to bite back a squeak in pain. Don't break character right.

Kaede seemed not to have heard what I said, so I just moved on, "Okay, Kaede, when you know what we're dealing with, just press this and stay where you are. Preferably do it while alone."

Growing a small artifact in my hand, I built something that would release a burst of Mana, sort of like the way that the rings in the Puzzle worked. But on a much larger scale. I ensured that my body included a receiver that would only respond to the exact set of pulses the transmitter emitted. Then I threw it towards her.

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She caught it without looking. Her hand only began moving as it flew through her aura.

I let out a huff. Showoff.

From there, I left the way I came, walking out into the forest, the On-CAMERA indicator vanishing soon after I left the area. The moment it vanished, I sighed in relief. Gods, I hate talking to strangers. I wish I could take a nap.

Unfortunately, that wasn't physically possible unless I shut myself off, which would be a bad idea.

Whatever, that should set the stage for the narrative. I'm now here to hunt the other creature, and narratively, I should have a power advantage over it.

I hope that can fix the difference between me and it, because it's likely rather high-level.

I wasn't sure about whether that would help me fare against Kaede, though. She was clearly the strongest in the town. I didn't think anyone else even touched Mana. Excess Raw Mana was flowing out of their bodies, as was the case for everyone I'd seen so far, but unlike most people, I didn't think they had conscious control over it.

That meant unless they could do something special with Life Energy or had some kind of unique innate Skill, they were weak as hell. I was glad I didn't just blindly head into town and try not to stand out. It's much easier to take on the role of a mysterious stranger who betrays the village in the end.

I'd give her some time to examine the dead body and do some research. Typical protagonist stuff… She was probably the main character, wasn't she?

She was the only magic user in town and commanded a degree of respect. That part was unusual because it betrayed the trope of nobody believing the main character until it's too late. Maybe this was a different kind of narrative, I wasn't sure. If she was the town's mage, it might also be a detriment because responsibility landed on her. If things went badly, it was her fault, but if she succeeded, then it was already going to happen, and she had done nothing to contribute. I couldn't wait to make things go horribly wrong for her.

Pulling open the minimap I received when I accepted the Quest from Kaelzar, I made my way back to the ancient tree.

While I was waiting here, I decided to split my mind, one part of myself being sent into the simulator to try and figure out Winter-aligned Nature Mana.

I wanted to take some time to try out [Biomagical Analysis] with the materials I had available. But first, it seemed to come with a guide. The Skill itself wasn't really a Skill in the traditional sense. It was as if a previously blocked part of my Core was now available to access.

This meant I didn't have the traditional information dump when I received the Skill. Instead, I received a package that detailed how it worked, the package having already been stored in my Core. It was similar to how [Arcane Interface] worked. I activated the Skill targeting the blueprint for Scorchbranch Husk in my Listed Materials.

[Scorchbranch Husk] Description: A chitinous, organic material created through the combination of effects carried by physical Runaspriggan Flesh and the conceptual identity of Ashenflare Stem. It was created through a corruptive evolutionary process. Material is naturally anti-conductive to Mana. However, it becomes moderately conductive to Mana when the user applies an intent to do so. Change aspect carried within the evolutionary process caused Soul Refinement to be more effective by a minuscule amount. Heat resistant up to but not including Wyvern Fire.

Structure - Chitinous Composite Origin - Runaspriggan Flesh (Physical) + Ashenflare Stem (Intent-Focus) Mana Signature - Cinders, Corrupted, Adaptability, Resilience Tier - I - Basal AMSS Profile (Rathe-Scaled) ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Blunt Resistance: R4 Pierce Resistance: R2 Shear Resistance: R3 Elasticity: R1 Mana Conductivity: R3/-1 (Reactive) Mana Capacity R1 Mana Resistance: R2 Mana Compliance: R1 Non-Mana Conductivity: R1 Heat Tolerance: R0 (Fails above 2500°C) Cold Tolerance: R1 Kinetic Sheen: R2 Contact Serenity: R1 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ [Structural and Energetic Reference Sheets Available] Soul Reactivity: +5% Fortitude –8% Grace +12% Might Change Modifier - +2% All [Please input more data to find potential alterations.]

I was suddenly being thrown a ton of data about the material, half of which I didn't even know how to process, causing it to be filtered out of what was displayed to me.

I had to open the reference sheet to figure out what any of this actually meant.

Rathes or 'R', according to my System, were weird. It was a measurement of the Soul's effect on a material based on each set of standards. They measured both how well Mana flowed through something and how much punishment it could take. They were built on a exponential scale—each point doubled the value.

For example, when considering my Fortitude, using this material specifically to block blunt attacks was eight times more effective. A Rathe value of zero meant the multiplier was zero, and a Rathe of one meant there was no multiplier. This didn't mean the material was bad. It just meant it wasn't Stat-dependent.

Might improved Mana compliance, but I thought that was just because compliance referred to how easily I could apply force using my internal vascular structure. I believed it acted this way because Might affected my strength, even though I was using Mana to move, which should imply Arcana was my strength modifier. Grace applied to Kinetic Sheen, which seemed to be a measure of how little friction the material could experience when moving through a fluid, and Contact Serenity minimized the force transferred on contact.

I didn't realize this before, but with the information provided, I could see that Arcane and Spirit also affected materials. Arcane improved Mana capacity and resistance. Spirit enhanced both types of conductivity.

Lastly, Fortitude applied to the other Resistances, Tolerances, and Elasticity.

There was some kind of physics fuckery happening at the smaller level with how Stats and materials interacted that I couldn't quite determine. Like, just because I had an insane Fortitude didn't make brittle materials act like rubber, even if the material had a Rathe value of one, but it did allow it to push past its normal limits. Maybe something to do with fracture tolerance, I hadn't brushed up on my condensed matter physics in a while, so don't get mad if I was rusty on how all this worked.

The data on capabilities was just inserting various samples of Mana into the specific input module within the portion of my Core unlocked by the Skill. It would test my Mana and advise me on routes I could take with the material. I thought. It wasn't totally clear how it would work.

I began feeding various types of Mana into my Core. Basically all of the ones that I had runes to convert into and basic combinations I knew, which, given all the puzzles I'd done, was quite a few. In the end, I had Fire, Water, Ice, Cold, Heat, Light, Sound, Earth, Shadow, Air, Kinetic, and the two types of Nature I could produce. Corruption, and the sad version of Winter I could make

What happens if I run Nature Mana through the inverting rune?

It had never occurred to me to try to do that before. What would it even make? Death is a part of Nature, so it wouldn't be that. Urbanization Mana? That didn't seem right. Urbanization Mana would be a stem of Civilization Mana, which was a topic I was not even considering thinking about, because those immense conceptual types of Mana kind of scared me. I couldn't even begin to imagine what would go into something as specific and unique as a Mythos.

While considering the topic, I had already created the mechanism within myself and begun converting Nature Mana. The output felt… Rigid. Which made sense. Nature was fluid, able to change on a whim in response to outside pressure, while something that was its opposite had to be stiff and unevolving.

I tried to manifest something with it, just anything at all. But it refused to form into anything and rapidly dissipated into the surrounding Mana. Odd, I'll have to play around with it.

I checked in on the separate version of me in the simulation, they were at the moment at thirty times acceleration and sitting cross-legged with their eyes closed at the top of a mountain overlooking a Winter wonderland. I decided to trust their process. Perhaps meditating on the concept would be beneficial.

It was odd, though.

Were these separate versions of me actually the same person as me? Because I was starting to get more and more evidence that they might not be. Meditating for more than a minute would cause me to have a panic attack. The manic version of me was believable to a degree, but that in particular was not. You couldn't get me to meditate with a gun to my Core.

Eh, it probably doesn't really matter. They all have the same goals as I do, which is good enough. After all, is there really a difference between you and someone who would, in the end, get the same results in life but take slightly different paths to get there?

I looked up at the sky, watching the animations of clouds pass by. Kaede still hadn't contacted me yet.

Might as well start making new materials.

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