I wake up the next day feeling fully refreshed.
I had woken up a few times during the night, but there weren't any signs of nearby danger, so I quickly dozed off again.
The only problem is... my body aches. It turns out that sleeping inside burrows is not very comfortable. It's still preferable to being in the open, though.
I get out of the burrow and stretch, using some basic exercises I remember.
"I could use this moment to study and train before continuing the journey."
The thing is, my only combat tools are the taser aria, the lightning bolt aria, and the short sword.
I have no training with the sword, so the only uses I have for it right now are using it to finish off an immobilized opponent, and as a last desperate resort if I ever find myself in a combat without mana.
In any case, it would be wise to, at least, try to get my hands and arms used to swinging it around.
I don't have any martial arts experience or anything, so I have no idea of proper form. But I guess just swinging it through repeated motions would at least strengthen my arms and my confidence.
So I take it in my hands, try some different swings to feel its weight and how those swings strain my body, until I settle into a couple that seem to force different muscles.
That will be my first morning routine. Swinging the blade several times for each of those swings. I know that I'm not doing them the right way, but it's better than nothing.
When I finish, I search around for another of those cacti, drink its water, and eat the rest of yesterday's meat.
At least the dry climate means that cooked meat takes longer to spoil. If I had the leeway to try to dry some meat under the sun, I would do it.
With my hunger satiated, I devote myself to the second leg of my study.
:::
In this world, there is magic.
All magic here is based on either the Primary Elements of fire, water, air, and earth, or the Composite Elements, like my lightning.
For example, my illusions are based on distorting the air currents to shift the light beams off a surface. It's further empowered by some lightning, which has the property to create light in a limited manner, like LEDs.
It's a really hard to master type of magic, to which I devoted the last four years of my life.
As it requires great capacity for minute manipulation of magic, and has little use on the battlefield, most mages brush it off as useless.
It was my trump card for escaping that slavers' den, but I wouldn't have managed to do it if it weren't for the two arias my mother taught me.
But it demonstrates the greatest weakness of the mages of this world. They don't seem to be able to imagine magic without the constraints of the elements.
And most don't know about the Cosmic Elements.
The three elements of light, darkness, and spirit are a secret very well hidden by the Goddess and her Church.
Any book that mentions them will be immediately confiscated, and any person who openly talks about them will be prosecuted as a heretic.
The light element was the pure power of creation and birth. Its name was very misleading, because it didn't have anything to do with proper light. It was the element behind the healing spells that the Goddess blessed her priests with.
The dark element also had a misleading name. It wasn't about the absence of light, but about decay, rotting, and death. Together with light, they formed the circle of rebirth.
Then, the spirit element was the attribute of consciousness. It was what distinguished, for example, a rock imbued with magic from a golem.
Mastering any of those could potentially put a person on the path to godhood. And that was the reason for the Goddess of this world to conceal them.
How did my mother know about all of that?
When I asked, she just gave me a sad smile and changed the topic.
Probably she was a heretic herself.
Which means that maybe...
It doesn't matter right now, focus, Sophia. Focus!
I need to improve the weapons and tools that I have right now. Let's start reviewing my spells.
:::
The one I call 'strengthening' is like drinking a liter of that drink that gives you wings, then taking an injection of growth hormones.
It manipulates synapses within your nervous system, using the lightning element. It also reduces the perception of weariness, letting your body act like everything was right, and it also empowers your muscles.
Its aria has a lot of words that seem to be body parts in some old language. At this moment, I can't do much with it.
The 'taser' one is a lot simpler. It simply conjures lightning at the palm of my hand, which is immediately released onto whatever the palm is touching.
The risk is that if I'm not touching anything when I activate it, it will be released on me.
This aria is very rudimentary, and it's also in that ancient language. It's very cost-effective, though, and it has proven itself very useful.
I used it as the basis for the 'lightning bolt' aria, mixing it with some parts of a spell I had created that made the illusion of a burst of flames.
The main problem is that the spell I created is in the human language I learned from my mother, Esperansy.
So the lightning bolt aria ended up becoming a jumbled mess. It's relatively powerful, but it consumes too much mana to be a main weapon in a fight.
As it is, it's a backup weapon for powerful or numerous foes, especially because of its big area of effect.
:::
Also, on everyone's mana core, there are colours. Each colour represents one element.
While most people have only one or two, very rarely, three, I have eight.
The biggest one by far is the purple of lightning.
The other ones are:
Teal - air;
Blue - water;
Dark red - fire;
Cyan - ice;
Dark grey - smoke;
White - radiance;
Black - vacuum.
In summary, I have access to three of the four Primary Elements, plus five Composite ones.
Including two composite ones that are directly related to the elements of light and darkness.
My mother told me to avoid those two, radiance and vacuum, until I'm strong enough. She said that if badly handled, those elements might misfire in catastrophic ways.
Also, the size of those colours inside me is indicative of how much affinity I have with each element.
Using that as a reference, I'm primarily a lightning mage. In second place comes vacuum and radiance, then water and air, then ice, then fire and smoke.
My mother taught me the names of the elements in the ancient language. It was a pain to learn it all by heart without any writing utensil to rely on, but I pulled it off.
Now, let's get to the practical tests.