After that I started practicing with wind magic instead. I thought it'd still be just as dangerous because my default spell was wind blades which were pretty good at cutting, but apparently wind magic was inert by nature and needed special rhythms to turn dangerous, whereas dark magic was more or less the opposite.

Thus all I had to do was remove the pulse patterns of the spell the system taught me, and just focus on the channeling of the mana through my mana veins. Though it was rather challenging at first to learn the alternative way of converting my non-elemental mana.

Darkness magic had a cold, chilly feeling like a breeze running through a graveyard. Wind magic was more like the refreshing, but wild scent of spring. Learning to convert my mana to the first was easy, because I was just following the system's directions and didn't really have to think about it much.

But learning to convert my mana to a second element was far more challenging. Suddenly I had two different paths for converting the mana, and differentiating between them was far more difficult than I thought it would be, especially given that their essence wasn't as different as I might have liked it to be.

Hence when I first switched over to practicing the wind spell, I kept half-a**ing the conversion, either ending with half-converted mana, which quickly dissipated into my natural soul energy, or converting it into half-baked combinations of wind and darkness energy resulting in a sludge like energy that would easily block up my mana veins if I wasn't careful with the meditation necessary to dispel it.

"Why is magic so hard?" I grumbled as we set up camp that evening. After practicing all afternoon following my failed darkness spells, I had only just managed to circulate pure wind energy, though I was still suffering from the same leakage problem, and I still occasionally failed the elemental conversion.

Rivi snorted. "You've been learning for about one day," She flicked my forehead. "If you were learning a new skill or language, don't you think you'd be just about as slow? Magic's just about the same as anything. It takes a long time to learn, an even longer time to master, and no matter how much time you spend on it, there will still probably be geniuses out there who can beat you in their sleep."

"Hey," I protested, covering my forehead. "I get it, I get it, you didn't have to get violent." I looked at her a little hurt. "I just wanted to complain a little, what's wrong with that?" I folded my arms. "It's not like I don't have my own cheats if I want to use them…"

Rivi grinned a little at me. "Sure, sure, I'm very proud of you for choosing to learn the hard way." She pet my head.

I would be lying if I said it didn't feel good.

"Rufi," I turned to our little Shadow Chimera who had been following us silently the whole day. "How you doing?" I scooped her up into my lap. "You've been so quiet, I almost forgot you were here. What's up? You don't like my scritches anymore?" I scritched vigorously under her chin, combing my other hair through her fur. Rufi quickly relaxed into my arms, closing her eyes as a soft rumbling purr soon moved through her little body.

"Speaking of missing companions…" Rivi came back to sit down after setting up the tent. "How's your little soul fragment doing? The one in your system soulscape?"

"Oh, Bell! I don't know, I haven't talked to her in a while." I pulled up my system window a little guiltily, wondering if I just had missed a bunch of messages from her and ignored her, but to my surprise there weren't really any I hadn't seen.

[Silvie: Bell? How are you doing? Everything going well in there?]

[Bell:....(¬⤙¬ ) Fine, no thanks to you.]

[Silvie: :O]

[Silvie: What did I do!!!? I'm sorry!!!! Was it that I haven't been interacting with you much?? I'm sorry, I've been busy and stupid. Do you want to talk more now? I have time…]

[Bell: Humph, who needs to spend time with you? I don't! Everything's fine and dandy. The void is beautiful these days. I spend my days so wonderfully and having so much fun even you'd be jealous!!!!]

[Sivie: Is that so…?]

I crossed my arms with a frown. She doesn't exactly sound like she's being honest with me here…

[Bell: Of course it's so!!!!!!! I've been familiarizing myself with all of the functions of the system, and making adjustments here and there to make my life better, and, and I've been developing powerful new magic spells so that you can blast all your enemies away, and I made a friend!!! Um, someone super important that you can't meet, because they're busy with their own stuff, but they spent tons of time with me, because that's just how cool I am!!]

I chuckled a little as I continued fondling Rufi in my lap.

[Silvie: Oh? Did you make friends with Noe? I guess that's good…sorry I can't be around to hang out all the time…But, be careful ok? Noe's cool, but she's kinda weird and she seems to like lying a lot…]

[Bell: I'll like who I like!!!!!!!]

[Bell: And It's not Noe I'll have you know!!!!!!!!!!!!!]

Not Noe? I frowned at the screen. Then who could it be? Are there really other beings she can access through the system? Or is she just bluffing because she's self-conscious? Ah, it's probably just that. Even if there were someone else she could access, I doubt Noe would overlook them and put her in danger. I blinked looking up at the darkening sky. Am I treating her too much like a little kid?

In a corner of the void stuffed with cute pillows, snacks, and several large magic monitors, a certain developer spat out the noodles she was in the middle of consuming. "Weird!!? Likes lying a lot!!? Where does this girl get off!" Noe blinked, looking down at her fingers resting on a limited edition pink-white keyboard she had grabbed from earth after the release of the second season of her favorite anime. "Well, a little prank couldn't hurt too much, could it...?"

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