Chapter 8: Chapter 7: some tests

“All things considered, you are still yourself.” James says with a smile.

“But am I though?” I have memories that George never had, hell I even refer to George in the third person. 

“Yup, you are yourself. No questions asked.” Jools continues, not letting me sink into that hole. I’ll probably need to sort out my thoughts properly in the future, but stabilizing the current situation comes first. Sitting back up again and focusing on the immediate need for clarifying the current state, I say “So, what’s different between game-Jools and real-Jools?”

“Don’t know, haven’t thought much about it. Accessing the inventory is harder if nothing else has changed.”

“You have mana, not a lot, but that’s infinitely more than in the game. How does Jools compare to James then?”

“The difference is kinda like comparing me from before I started working out, to just before this happened. I just feel stronger, and moving is just easier in general. How is it with Zena?”

“I don’t think I feel any weaker, though that might just be because I haven’t tried to really exert any real force. Magic feels good, and is different than in the game. Honestly one of the weirdest feeling is that I kinda just stop before hitting things. It sounds almost stupid compared to everything else, but not hitting the ground with any real force when falling is soooo odd. I mean physics is one of the things we have spent our entire existence learning. Not just use, but ALL previous generations and we are almost hard-coded to expect certain things.”

“I can’t say I really know what you are talking about, I still hit things hard. Probably slightly harder, since I have gotten bigger.” He looks at me in confusion.

“It’s the fall damage reduction.” I remind him.

“Right, the one you bugged the developers into creating. It’s such a mage thing to literally alter physics.” he answers with a chuckle.

“Yeah, the devs literally had to dig into the game’s physics to implement it. Luckily for you, it also opened the door for increased impact damage when ramming, which you were so fond of.”

“Yes, but I have already thanked you for that.”

“I think I have an Idea for what we should do for the rest of the day.” I say, with an Idea forming in my head.

“Then, please do tell, princess.” He says with a cheeky smile, causing me to freeze up. Spending a few seconds rerailing my derailed train of thoughts, I continue “I think we should head out of town and systematically check what has changed during the transition. I at least need to check which spells are still viable and what the different status effect actually does. You should probably do the same with your abilities. And we should do it outside of town, because we are probably significantly out of the norm and attracting to much attention would be bad, at least until we figure out how to keep ourselves safe.”

“That sounds like a good plan. Should we return here afterwards, or go somewhere else?”

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“I’ll rent this room for another two nights, since it would be easier than finding somewhere else.”

With a plan formed, we left my room. On the way out of the inn I gave the proprietress another gold coin, saying I want to extend my stay another two nights and she seemed all too happy to allow me. Once out in town, I absentmindedly start walking towards the area I entered town from. After a few minutes of walking, He asks “any particular reason for going this way?”.

“Not really, I just trace back the way I came into the town since I figured it would be easier than finding a new way” I answer, to which he simply nods and keeps walking beside me. Fifteen minutes of silence later, we pass the house which I would tentatively call the last house in the town. Deciding that we are far enough away, I fire off mana thrusters and speed up significantly. It only takes a couple seconds for Jools to catch up. Just casually running next to me. I’m not going all out, but neither is Jools.

About half an hour later, we pass the border of the forest. This being far enough away from anything, I decide to stop by hitting a tree, thrusting the altered physics to stop me. Jools on the other hand, takes a bit longer to stop. Walking a bit further into the woods, away from the road, we separate and start testing out powers.

Starting out with the basic skill, I first confirm my findings from yesterday regarding the mana bullets. Firing off a small one, and it shakes the tree it hit. A slightly more powerful one, smashes away the bark and doubling the power again causes it to chunk out the wood, just enough for the tree to no longer support its own weight.

Testing the barrier next, I summon it with the same amount of mana as the first bullet. Touching it, I find it hard and slightly warm. Deciding to punch it, I find my arm slowing down just before hitting it, negating my puch. Right, altered physics. Needing a different method of testing its durability, I fire off the small mana bullet at it. The barrier stops the bullet, but shatters into shards which then proceeds to evaporate. I repeat the test with two more arbitrarily chosen quantities of mana which reveals that the barriers can stop a mana bullet with at most the same amount of mana. At this point I should probably mention that my mana is tainted green. It was a feature in the game that the base color of a character's mana was affected by their specialization. It was one of the deciding factors when I decided to go with the whole green and black color scheme for Zena. There was a similar effect for stamina, though it was more limited in the possible colors, sticking more shades of yellow and red.

Finishing off the triplet of starting skills, I prepare myself for the use of the mana thruster, the actual skill, not the one i’ve been using so far, which was called ‘dimensional impulse’ or something else like that. The memories Zena has of this skill doesn’t seem pleasant, but I feel the need to verify them. Just as I am about to fire it off, I hear a loud boom and what sounds like a tree falling. Figuring it’s just Jools testing a skill, but being nervous anyways, I decide to fire the thruster I was preparing such that I fly towards the sound. And wow, it felt like I was kicked. It left me sprawled out on the ground and dizzy about ten meters from where I started. The dizziness cleared away just seconds later, leading me to believe that it was the accuracy debuff that accompanied the low level skill. Getting back up, completely forgetting the sound I was heading towards, I spontaneously cast a healing spell on me to get the feel for it. The feeling is odd, warm and comforting with an undertone of annoyance as it doesn’t find anything wrong with. Continuing on with the gauntlet, I go through all my spells that afflict statuses on the target, both positive and negative, though notably skipping over poisons and paralysis, since I intend to keep on living. In the game, paralysis just froze your character in place for a little while, which means that you might be unable to breathe now that it’s real. Turns out that most of the status effect feels just as I imagined, slowness is fatigue, accuracy debuff is dizziness etcetera. A combination of an accuracy debuff and focus down, which is a decrease in spell potency and leaves your mind slightly unclear, probably feels uncannily similar to being drunk.

So far, I have confirmed that pretty much all spells behaves as expected, with the exception that I can alter the potency by altering the amount of mana I feed the spell. Many spells, notably the higher leveled ones, have a minimum mana requirement, but I have yet to hit an upper limit. This is probably because I haven’t pushed all my mana into a single spell, but I feel that that would be a bad idea, either because the spell will fail spectacularly, or because something is destroyed in the fallout of the spell succeeding.

Having cast so many spells in succession, I have been noticing something that I have been doing unconsciously, namely the patterns I move the mana to achieve the spells, and the fact that I route the mana through my ear-ring. I’m pretty sure the complex pattern is the actual spell and routing the mana through the ear-ring is either a habit Zena has made, or they have some attractive force. Casting a simple spell without the use of the ear-ring reveals that there is no attractive force and that it is indeed a habit coming with this body. The thought sends a shiver down my spine, but I’m not about to stop doing it because the spell was significantly weaker.

To further test my control over mana, I prepare a mana bullet, which I now realize is just a collection of mana without any complex pattern, but instead of firing it off, I try to alter its shape. I start by elongating it, finding it easy. Continuing to morph the lump of mana, I flatten parts of the surface, leaving a number of edges between them with the final result being an elongated octahedron. Further pushing the limit of my knowledge, I try to guide the mana back into my body, which it does, however it does not rejoin the regular streams coursing through my body. As soon as I stop holding it inn, it spreads and leaves my body, leaving me with a deeply uncomfortable feeling. Intuitively knowing that now would be a good time to use a healing spell, I cast one on me, warm and comfortable, particularly in the area where I release the lump of mana. The undercurrent of annoyance is notably missing, leading me to believe that the spell did find something wrong. Noted, don’t absorb mana into my body, it’s bad. Maybe I just went about it wrong, but there is no need to do it anyway. Continuing my manipulation on a new lump of mana.

After a few more interesting shapes, I get the idea to form it into a blade, which I grab in my hand. Looking at the green blade, I add more mana until it is the size of a shortsword. Swinging it at a tree, I find that it is not stopped by my altered physics. It still leaves me disappointed, since it barely cut through the bark. Dissipating the blade with a pop and a crackle, I look at the sky, finding that the sun has moved significantly across the sky. 

Satisfied with my tests for now, I start looking for Jools.