Still stealthed, Kaltyr swiftly entered the clearing she knew to be the only place wherein she’d be completely safe.                “Woooo!”                Mentally exhausted from exerting herself so much in just a few hours, the girl let loose a celebratory cry and pumped her fists into the air, dropping and scattering the fish for the last time.                Then, a …

Kaltyr solemnly stood above the bloody corpse of what used to be the first enemy she provoked into a fight. It didn’t matter to her that the beast technically began it all by trying to take her food—she would always remember herself as the aggressor, and she would grow from this experience.                But for now, she’d bemoan the world …

Although Kaltyr had resolved herself to kill, she was also fully aware that her agility did not even remotely come close to what her new opponent was capable of, and so chose to give the furball just one more chance to redeem itself and flee. If it did not take it, the girl would really end its life.                Slowly …

Blood gushed from Kaltyr’s exposed thigh, but it came in little rivulets rather than a waterfall. It seemed to the girl that her wound had begun healing incredibly quickly compared to what her gut said it should do, just as her hand did. Though the wound still appeared fresh, with her skin and flesh very obviously mangled in the golf …

Kaltyr held her stomach, laughing, as she allowed her body to roll backwards onto the gravelly dirt. Her gut soon ached from the involuntary exercise, but the girl only took delight from the experience. For whatever reason, she had the impression that it had been too long since the last good laugh. She’d laughed a couple times the last two …

“Way grosser than I expected.”                Kaltyr sat in the river near where she killed the overly aggressive fish and splashed herself with water, scrubbing away at the blood she’d stupidly gotten on herself. Moments before, she obliterated the skull of the dino-goose during its confusion born from having its neck so easily immobilized. The bird’s head easily crumpled under …

Half observing the world through her eyes and half through her Magic Sense, Kaltyr followed her memory, and the long knife marks in some trees she’d made, in order to revisit the river she’d found the day before, all the while doing her best to not be mesmerized by the beauty of nature.                “Mother Nature did one hell of …

Gaping was all it seemed Kaltyr was capable of after witnessing the mana form within her soul. However, it wasn’t merely the sight of the aquamarine, crystalline, silky threads produced from magical essence that blew her away. No, rather than it being the beauty of the threads that rendered her incapable of thinking about anything else, it was…the sheer power …

Viewing her spiritual body again, Kaltyr ran through her mental checklist of ideas related to refining magical essence.                “Firstly,” the girl thought, “the book says that I can ‘absorb’ magical essence, so, that’s what I’m working toward. Secondly, I don’t seem to have any control over my meridians nor what I think is my soul, which doesn’t make sense! …

With no visual input to make sensing magical essence more difficult, Kaltyr then did her best to block out the ambient forest sounds before searching within herself for those magical channels she knew were there.                “These gray lines…”                Her mind’s eye open, Kaltyr observed the countless meridians snaking through her entire body. Her meridians, she knew, were what …