Draft: 48 Mana Headaches

Being in the color world for long enough, beige and grey started to collect on James again. This time, though, whenever that happened, she would scratch at the colors until they went away. She could think clearly enough to know that she should do that. Or perhaps she maintained enough clear headedness on that particular thought since it was the last thing she tried before she seemingly went under again.

She would have probably stayed in that weird limbo state if she weren’t slowly getting desensitized to the stinging hurt she got from the colors. Every time she scratched them, they hurt a little less the next time they latched onto a particular spot again. Eventually, she wasn’t even reacting to the colors on her, and her body slowly took on a form of grey and beige quilt work.

Finally able to think clearly, James was relieved that she wasn’t in enough pain to make her disregard how her state of mind was completely changed by the addition of the mana covering her. Or forget to consider how much time could have passed since she awoke in this mana. Of course, that thought scared her into trying to figure out what was happening again.

Interacting with the mana surrounding her with mana already clasped onto herself was different than without. For one, she could feel the mana in a weird way, almost like she could feel its intention. Most of the intentions were benign, aimed at attracting sunlight or bees, or confusing, like trying to make the ground softer. Another difference was how the mana moved around her, suddenly not just swirling around her now-visible limbs but getting right up to her.

She released a mana blast again to see how that changed given her current circumstances. Nothing new emerged though, as the last time she’d tried to use it it was also when she was covered in mana.

Pursing her lips, James went to parse her hand through her hair only to realize that that hadn’t come with her to this mana realm. James really had to get back to the Tutorial, she wasn’t enthused about missing her hair. She might have been alright with cutting it once she got her dagger, but she wasn’t trying to go bald!

Trying to think back to all her mana interactions, or suspected mana interactions, James considered how she approached these problems before. She had a feeling, now that she had way too long to ruminate, that whenever she had assigned a headache to something or someone it was related to mana. Her first experience with that was all the way back in her first Tutorial when the white signs had turned on for the first time.

Of course, trying to mess with her headache that was attached to the large white screen had been what had gotten her sent over to her current Tutorial. And it wasn’t like she had a headache to prod right now, she hadn’t noticed anything since she got her mana sense. She’d try that last, she didn’t want to find out how she could be kicked out of this Tutorial into a worst one somehow.

The next encounter she had with mana, or some variation of it, was very shortly after seeing the white signs: speaking with the blue Pact alien. Nothing to be learned from that though, she was just so thoroughly overpowered by it she couldn’t even glean a lesson.

After that, she had met Arthur and Christian, two people with very different feelings attached to them. She actually missed Christian, if she thought of him, while she hoped to never see Arthur again. But she had never tried to ‘mess’ with those headaches unless you counted using Christian’s aura as a way to be semi-normal.

The biggest headaches, though, were from the panic attacks caused by the semi-regular goblin raids. Somehow the goblins were connected to mana in a way neither she nor Christian had been able to examine. Those headaches she had tried to combat varying levels of success. Mostly they were correlated with how large the attacks were, at least according to the data Christian had kept and shown her.

The one time she had some real success in that area was on the day she was finally able to escape. Coincidentally, she wasn’t in the clearing at that time. Something to consider for another day. The only thing relevant to her now was that it most likely didn’t have much to do with her abilities to control herself. Her mind wandering for a second, she wondered if mind discipline was a hidden stat.

That same day she had escaped, though, she had managed to gain both her Class, Mana Blast, and Mana Sense. Bringing herself back to that moment she had used Mana Blast for the first time, she remembered how overwhelmed she was and how she just wanted everything to go away. She didn’t care why, or how, or what the consequences would be. She had just wanted to crush everything around her. So she had manipulated her headache the same way she did to that white sign that first day of the Tutorial.

Mana Sense was different, though. She had the feeling that she had only gotten it because she could already feel some mana and it had evolved from whatever related Skill her Class had given her.

Ultimately, she reached the conclusion she feared she would. She would just need to try and prod a headache that wasn’t even there anymore. Easy as pie.

Trying to find the correct region of her brain, James tried to apply the same techniques she learned from Mana Blast, namely to visualize whatever goal she had. Concentrating on another spot of fuchsia mana she tried to get it to move. Repeating the same exercise again and again, she made subtle changes in the way she tried to initiate it.

Initially, she tried to sledgehammer it, but nothing seemed to activate. Then she tried to think of a different swirl the mana could follow. She could feel something started but was stymied along the road to completion. Continuing to make subtle changes, she felt as a more subdued hand with a strong visual component seemed to go the furthest before stopping.

But James was nothing if not persistent. You didn’t survive with severe social anxiety in a world made for the social if you weren’t hardworking and stubborn. So it wasn’t a surprise when the mana finally started responding. And even though it took a long time for each try, it wasn’t a surprise that with each attempt James got better. James was just like that: when she put her mind to something, it got done.